John Bingham - A Fragment of Fear

“Gone?” said Juliet.

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” asked Stanley.

“He’s emigrated. Gone to Portugal. He left this morning.”

“Gone? Suddenly? Just sort of flittered away? Like that?”

I saw this fool’s eyes come to life. He was back to square one. You get to a point where the jangled nerves won’t stand any more.

“You bloody well think I’m nuts, don’t you?” I suddenly shouted. “You think the whole thing is a creation of my mind? Just because I can’t produce a snapshot of the man calling himself Sergeant Matthews, or the messages, or a recording of the man on the ’phone, you think I’m just a bit barmy-well, don’t you? Just because this is something which you’ve never come across in your safe humdrum life, you think it can’t exist. You make me sick, and I don’t mean mentally sick, though it may come to that, by God!”

I saw Elaine Bristow suddenly swell and turn pink. She said:

“Stanley was only trying to help, James! Stanley was going to make a suggestion, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh, indeed? What sort of suggestion?” I asked acidly.

“Even before this last-well, your last outburst, he was going to suggest that, well-” She began to falter.

“I know a man,” said Stanley Bristow unexpectedly loudly. “I know a damned good man in Harley Street.”

I looked at him and saw that he had gone as pink as Elaine.

“How nice for you.”

“Listen, old boy,” he went on, snuffling the words out rapidly, almost incoherently, “there’s nothing to be worried about, nothing at all, and nothing to be ashamed of, and we’re not suggesting anything for the moment, but later, perhaps after the wedding and the honeymoon, we thought, Elaine and I, that is, we thought that perhaps if you had-what shall we say? — a good overhaul by this chap, it would do no harm. See what I mean? Not psycho-analysis, or any nonsense like that. Knew him in the Army, splendid chap, full of common sense. Not now. Later. And anyway, perhaps when you and Juliet get back from the south of France, we can think again. Perhaps these-these gangsters-perhaps they’ll have stopped persecuting you by then, see what I mean?”

He stopped. The mumbling contradictions in his speech didn’t occur to him. Elaine looked at him almost admiringly. She seemed to think he had put it over rather well.

Then they both looked at me, and Juliet, who had been pretending to read an evening paper, gave me one of her sidelong glances without raising her head from the paper.

I got up and walked over to Stanley with my glass.

“Can I have another brandy?”

“Of course you can, old boy,” he said, though not very willingly. He was probably thinking that hot, sweet tea is better for cases of shock. He poured out one of the smallest tots I’ve seen. I raised my glass.

“Here’s to the Doctor, and I hope he can swim, because as far as I’m concerned he can go and jump in the river. Thanks all the same.”

There was another awkward silence.

“I’m sorry you take it like that, old boy.”

“Stanley was only trying to help,” said Elaine.

“I know,” I said, and sighed. “Oh, God, don’t I know it! But Elaine, this Colonel Pearson exists-there’s his letter in the paper! And I saw him this morning.”

“I’m sure you did, dear,” said Elaine.

“It’s a pity he’s gone,” muttered Stanley. “That’s all.”

“Why? Why is it a pity? All he did was to spark off the blackmail idea in my mind.”

“He’s right, Elaine.” He glanced quickly at her. “All the Colonel did was to spark off this blackmail idea. Just as a joke. He wouldn’t have believed it, see what I mean? Anyway, we can’t see him. So it’s no good crying over spilt milk.”

“What spilt milk? What good would it have done you to see him?” I said angrily. As I spoke I banged my glass of brandy down on the marble chimney piece. The thin goblet shattered and the remains of the brandy lay in a small pool on the marble.

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, “I’m sorry I broke your glass.”

“It’s all right, old boy,” said Stanley. He watched Elaine grab a shovel and hearth brush and sweep up the mess.

Suddenly, from the settee, Juliet said:

“I want to have a word with Jamie. We’ll go out for a stroll.”

But Elaine said, over her shoulder, “Don’t bother, darling, Stanley and I are going to bed anyway.”

“Bed?” said Stanley. “It’s a bit early, isn’t it? Anyway, old boy, what was in this last message you say you had?”

“It’s not a question of a message I said I had, it’s a message I did have.”

“Yes, well, all right, old boy-what did it say?”

“Much the same as before,” I said sulkily. “Except that it said that if I agreed to their demands I should place a red geranium on my window sill.”

“A red geranium?”

“Yes, a red geranium.”

“Have you got a red geranium?”

“Of course I’ve got a bloody red geranium,” I flared up. “It’s in my damned kitchen! As they well know.”

Juliet got up from the settee. Stanley took the hint, and moved to the door. Elaine followed him. At the door Stanley stopped and said:

“Well, there you are, old boy! Stick the geranium on your window sill-and then they’ll all go away, won’t they? — they’ll disappear, all these gangsters that are after you.”

He went out, followed by his over-ripe, shoddy wife. I think I can be permitted to describe her like that, even in print, in view of what happened later, just as I have been frank about Stanley.

But I stopped him before he had shut the door and said:

“That’s not the point. You wouldn’t understand this, perhaps, but it’s important to me.”

He paused with his hand on the door knob, and stared down at me.

“What’s important to you, old boy?”

“It’s the individual, that’s what’s important, it’s a question of whether the individual can survive when he’s pitted against the organisation, that’s what matters, that’s what matters to me, that’s why I’m being so bloody-minded-it’s not a question of whether the individual gets submerged in the State, it’s something far more primitive-it’s a question of whether the individual-me, in this case-has a bloody chance at all against the jungle these days, whether it’s a State jungle or any other kind of modern jungle. The peasant had a chance in the old days, not much, but just a chance, but has he now, Stanley?”

Elaine had gone along the passage, Stanley Bristow stood looking at me blankly.

“It’s all right,” I said. “Forget it. You don’t understand.”

“Of course I understand, old boy. You want to prove you can stand on your own feet. Quite right, too!”

I guessed it was silly to have submerged him in a stream of words and ideas. I imagined he was thinking that it was bad enough to have me suffering from an imaginary persecution, without having me build abstruse theories upon it.

“That’s right,” I said hastily. “Well, good night.”

“Good night, old boy.”

I helped him to close the door in case he came back at me. I couldn’t bear any more of him. Then I turned and saw Juliet, and in a way I was pleased and in a way I was shocked.

She was standing stiffly by the fireplace. All the superficial brightness had gone out of her.

The fear was back in her eyes.

“You don’t want to worry,” I said uneasily.

I went to put my arms around her, but she drew back.

“What’s the matter?” I said, as though I didn’t know.

“I now think it’s true,” she said, staring at me with big, frightened, dark eyes. “I think what you said is true, I think you’re up against something-some big criminal thing. It didn’t make sense till you saw Colonel Pearson, but it does now.”