Edmund Crispin - Holy Disorders

‘You mind your language when there are ladies present!’ said the mother indignantly. The baby began to bellow again. ‘There – see what you’ve done to the child!’

The intruder ignored her. He produced a Mirror and Herald , and, after slapping the former down on his knee, opened the latter at full spread, so that his elbows waved within an inch of the noses of those on either side. The woman with the rug, after her first sortie, had recognized defeat in the monotonous stream of blasphemy and become silent. Geoffrey, Fielding, and the clergyman, afflicted by a bourgeois terror of offending this unruly manifestation of the lower classes, sat impotent and disapproving. Only the mother, who maintained her intransigence with scornful glances, and the fat man, whose position was more desperate, still showed resistance.

‘I suppose,’ said the fat man, abandoning his Pareto, ‘that you’ve got a first-class ticket?’

A deathly silence followed this question. The intruder jerked himself slowly up from his paper, like a pugilist who has been unfairly smitten in the belly and is gathering forces ponderously together for retaliation. The others looked on aghast. Even the fat man quailed, unnerved by the ominous delay in answering his query.

‘What’s it got ter do with you ?’ asked the intruder at last, slapping his Herald shut. A dramatic hush ensued. ‘Not the bloody ticket-collector, are yer?’ The fat man remained dumb. ‘Just ’cos I ain’t as rich and idle as you, ain’t I got a right ter sit in comfort, eh?’

‘Comfort!’ said the woman with the baby meaningly.

The intruder ignored her, continuing to apostrophize the fat man. ‘Snob, aren’t yer? Too ’igh-and-mighty to ’ave the likes o’ me in the same compartment with yer, are yer? Let me tell you’ – he tapped the fat man abruptly on the waistcoat – ‘one o’ ther things we’re fightin’ this war for is ter get rid o’ the likes o’ you , an’ give the likes er me a chance to spread ourselves a bit.’

He spread himself, illustratively, kicking Fielding on the shin in the process. The baby wailed like a banshee. ‘ Caliban ,’ said the mother.

‘Nonsense!’ the fat man protested feebly. ‘That’s got nothing to do with whether you’ve got a first-class ticket or not.’

The intruder twisted himself bodily round and thrust his face into that of the fat man. ‘Oh, it ain’t, ain’t it?’ He began to speak very rapidly. ‘When we get socialism, see, which is what we’re fighting for, see, you and yer like’ll ’ave ter show some respect ter me, see, instead of treating me like a lot o’ dirt, see?’ Finding this line of thought exhausted, he transferred his attention to the fat man’s book, removing it, despite faint protests, from his hands. He then inspected it slowly and with care, as a surgeon might some peculiarly loathsome cancer after removal.

‘What’s this?’ he said. ‘Vilfreedo Pareeto,’ he announced to the compartment at large. ‘ Ther Mind and Society ,’ he read. ‘Oo’s that – some bloody Wop, is it? ’Ere, you,’ he addressed Geoffrey. ‘You ever ’eard of ’im – Vilfreedo Pareeto?’

The fat man looked at Geoffrey appealingly. Treacherously and mendaciously, Geoffrey shook his head. Worlds would not have induced him to admit acquaintance with that sociologist.

The intruder nodded triumphantly, and turned to Fielding. ‘What abaht you?’ he said, waving the volume. ‘You ever ’eard of this?’ As treacherously, but with more truth, Fielding denied it. The fat man turned pale. So solemn were the proceedings, he might have been awaiting sentence from the Inquisition, the only two witnesses for the defence having been suborned against him.

The intruder breathed heavily with satisfaction. Portentously he turned the pages of the book. ‘Listen ter this,’ he commanded. ‘“The principal nu-cle-us in a de-riv-a-tive (a non- log-ico-ex-per-i-ment-al the-ory) is a res-i-due, or a number of res-i-dues, and around it other sec-ond-ar-y res-i-dues cluster.” Does that make sense, I arst yer? Does that make sense?’ He glared at Geoffrey, who feebly shook his head. ‘Sec-ond-ar-y res-i-dues,’ repeated the intruder with scorn. ‘Lot o’ nonsense, if yer arst me. ’Ere’ – he turned back to the fat man again, hurling the book on to his knee – ‘you oughter ’ave something better ter do with yer time than read ’ighbrow books by Wops. And if yer ’aven’t, see, you just mind yer own business, see, and don’t go poking yer nose into other people’s affairs, see?’

He turned back aggressively to the other occupants of the compartment. ‘Anybody got any objection ter my sitting ’ere, first-class or no?’

So successful had been the process of intimidation that no one uttered a sound.

Presently the train started.

All afternoon the train rattled and jolted through the English countryside, towards the red clay of Devon and the slow, immense surge of the Atlantic against the Cornish shore. Geoffrey dozed, gazed automatically out of the window, thought about his fugue, or meditated with growing dismay on the events of the day. The possibility – almost, he decided, the certainty – that he had an enemy within a foot or two of him made Fielding’s company very welcome. Of the why and wherefore of the whole business he thought but briefly; strictly there was nothing to think about. The occurrences which had followed his arriving down to breakfast that morning, in a perfectly normal and peaceable manner, seemed a nightmare phantasmagoria devoid of reason. Almost, he began to wonder if they had taken place at all. The human mind properly assimilates only those things it has become accustomed to; anything out-of-the-way affects it only in a purely superficial and objective sense. Geoffrey contemplated the attack on himself without a shred of real belief.

Fielding and the woman with the rug slept, shaking and jolting like inanimate beings as the train clattered over points. The young clergyman gazed vacantly into the corridor, and the mother rocked her baby, which had fallen into a fitful slumber, beset in all probability with nightmares. The intruder also had gone to sleep, and was snoring, his chin resting painfully on his tie-pin. The fat man eyed Geoffrey warily, and put down the Daily Mirror , which had been forced on him in a spirit of scornful condescension by the intruder, and which he had been reading unhappily ever since the train left Paddington. He grinned conspiratorially.

‘Devil of a journey,’ he said.

Geoffrey grinned back. ‘I’m afraid you’re worse off than I am. But it’s bad enough in any case.’

The fat man appeared to be considering deeply. When he again spoke, it was with some hesitation. ‘You, sir, are obviously an educated man – I wonder if you can help me out of a difficulty?’

Geoffrey looked at him in surprise. ‘If I can.’

‘An intellectual difficulty merely,’ said the fat man hastily. He seemed to think Geoffrey would imagine he was trying to borrow money. ‘However, I ought to introduce myself first. My name is Peace – Justinian Peace.’

‘Delighted to know you,’ said Geoffrey, and murmured his own name.

‘Ah, the composer,’ said Peace amiably. ‘This is a great pleasure. Well now, Mr Vintner – my whole problem can be summed up in three words: I have doubts .’

‘Good heavens,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Not like Mr Prendergast?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In Decline and Fall .’

‘I’m afraid I’ve never read Gibbon,’ said the other. The admission appeared to irritate him in some obscure way. ‘The fact is that by profession I’m a psycho-analyst – quite a successful one, I suppose; successful certainly as far as money goes. The amount of money,’ he said confidentially, ‘which some people will pay for information which they could get from three hours’ intelligent reading in any public library…However’ – he became conscious that he was getting off the point – ‘there it is. I suppose in London I’m pretty well at the top of my profession. You may think we’re all charlatans, of course – a lot of people do’ – Geoffrey hurriedly shook his head – ‘but as far as I’m concerned, at least, I have tried to go about the business methodically and scientifically, and to do the best for my patients. Well, then—’ He paused and mopped his brow to emphasize the fact that he was now coming to the crux of the matter; Geoffrey nodded encouragingly.