Once more he felt a hint of excitement. It was a confused feeling now, belonging as much in his body as in his mind. In a dim kind of way he seemed again to be telling the story to Mrs Harcourt-Egan or to someone else. Telling it, his voice was quiet. It spoke of the compassion he had suddenly felt for the small, unattractive Jewish, woman and for another woman, a total stranger whom he’d never even seen. ‘A moment of truth,’ his voice explained to Mrs Harcourt-Egan and others. ‘I could not pass these women by.’
He knew it was true. The excitement he felt had to do with sympathy, and the compassion that had been engendered in it. His complicated nature worked in that way: there had to be drama, like the drama of a man dead in a bed, and the beauty of being unable to pass the women by, as real as the beauty of the Madonna of the Meadow. With her cigarette and her Brolio, his ex-wife wouldn’t have understood that in a million years. In their bedroom in Siena she had expected something ordinary to take place, an act that rats performed.
Never in his entire life had Attridge felt as he felt now. It was the most extraordinary, and for all he knew the most important, occasion in his life. As though watching a play, he saw himself assisting the dead, naked man into his clothes. It would be enough to put his clothes on, no need to move the body from one flat to another, enough to move it from the bedroom. ‘We put it in the lift and left it there,’ his voice said, still telling the story. ‘ “No need,” I said to her, “to involve my flat at all.” She agreed; she had no option. The man became a man who’d had a heart attack in a lift. A travelling salesman, God knows who he was.’
The story was beautiful. It was extravagant and flamboyant, incredible almost, like all good art. Who really believed in the Madonna of the Meadow, until jolted by the genius of Bellini? The Magic Flute was an impossible occasion, until Mozart’s music charged you like an electric current.
‘Yes, Mr Attridge?’
He moved towards her, fearing to speak lest his voice emerged from him in the shrill whisper that had possessed it before. He nodded at Mrs Matara, agreeing in this way to assist her.
Hurrying through the hall and hurrying up the stairs because one flight of stairs was quicker than the lift, he felt the excitement continuing in his body. Actually it would be many months before he could tell Mrs Harcourt-Egan or anyone else about any of it. It seemed, for the moment at least, to be entirely private.
‘What was he?’ he asked on the stairs in a whisper.
‘Was?’
‘Professionally.’ He was impatient, more urgent now than she. ‘Salesman or something, was he?’
She shook her head. Her friend had been a dealer in antiques, she said.
Another Jew, he thought. But he was pleased because the man could have been on his way to see him, since dealers in antiques did sometimes visit him. Mrs Matara might have said to the man, at another party given by the Mortons or anywhere else you liked, that Mr Attridge, a collector of pictures and Staffordshire china, lived in the flat below hers. She could have said to Attridge that she knew a man who might have stuff that would interest him and then the man might have telephoned him, and he’d have said come round one afternoon. And in the lift the man collapsed and died.
She had her latchkey in her hand, about to insert it into the lock of her flat door. Her hand was shaking. Surprising himself, he gripped her arm, preventing her from completing the action with the key.
‘Will you promise me,’ he said, ‘to move away from these flats? As soon as you conveniently can?’
‘Of course, of course! How could I stay?’
‘I’d find it awkward, meeting you about the place, Mrs Matara. Is that a bargain?’
‘Yes, yes.’
She turned the key in the lock. They entered a hall that was of the exact proportions of Attridge’s but different in other ways. It was a most unpleasant hall, he considered, with bell chimes in it, and two oil paintings that appeared to be the work of some emergent African, one being of Negro children playing on crimson sand, the other of a Negro girl with a baby at her breast.
‘Oh, God!’ Mrs Matara cried, turning suddenly, unable to proceed. She pushed herself at him, her sharp head embedding itself in his chest, her hands grasping the jacket of his grey suit.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, dragging his eyes away from the painting of the children on the crimson sand. One of her hands had ceased to grasp his jacket and had fallen into one of his. It was cold and had a fleshless feel.
‘We have to do it,’ he said, and for a second he saw himself again as he would see himself in retrospect: standing with the Jewish woman in her hall, holding her hand to comfort her.
While they still stood there, just as he was about to propel her forward, there was a noise.
‘My God!’ whispered Mrs Matara.
He knew she was thinking that her husband had returned, and he thought the same himself. Her husband had come back sooner than he usually did. He had found a corpse and was about to find his wife holding hands with a neighbour in the hall.
‘Hey!’ a voice said.
‘Oh no!’ cried Mrs Matara, rushing forward into the room that Attridge knew was her sitting-room.
There was the mumble of another voice, and then the sound of Mrs Matara’s tears. It was a man’s voice, but the man was not her husband: the atmosphere which came from the scene wasn’t right for that.
‘There now,’ the other voice was saying in the sitting-room. ‘There now, there now.’
The noise of Mrs Matara’s weeping continued, and the man appeared at the door of the sitting-room. He was fully dressed, a sallow man, tall and black-haired, with a beard. He’d guessed what had happened, he said, as soon as he heard voices in the halclass="underline" he’d guessed that Mrs Matara had gone to get help. In an extremely casual way he said he was really quite all right, just a little groggy due to the silly blackout he’d had. Mrs Matara was a customer of his, he explained, he was in the antique business. ‘I just passed out,’ he said. He smiled at Attridge. He’d had a few silly blackouts recently and despite what his doctor said about there being nothing to worry about he’d have to be more careful. Really embarrassing, it was, plopping out in a client’s sitting-room.
Mrs Matara appeared in the sitting-room doorway. She leaned against it, as though requiring its support. She giggled through her tears and the man spoke sharply to her, forgetting she was meant to be his client. He warned her against becoming hysterical.
‘My God, you’d be hysterical,’ Mrs Matara cried, ‘if you’d been through all that kerfuffle.’
‘Now, now –’
‘For Christ’s sake, I thought you were a goner. Didn’t I?’ she cried, addressing Attridge without looking at him and not waiting for him to reply. ‘I rushed downstairs to this man here. I was in a frightful state. Wasn’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘We were going to put your clothes on and dump you in his flat.’
Attridge shook his head, endeavouring to imply that that was not accurate, that he’d never have agreed to the use of his flat for this purpose. But neither of them was paying any attention to him. The man was looking embarrassed, Mrs Matara was grim.
‘You should damn well have told me if you were having blackouts.’
‘I’m sorry,’ the man said. ‘I’m sorry you were troubled,’ he said to Attridge. ‘Please forgive Mrs Matara.’
‘Forgive you, you mean!’ she cried. ‘Forgive you for being such a damn fool!’
‘Do try to pull yourself together, Miriam.’
‘I tell you, I thought you were dead.’
‘Well, I’m not. I had a little blackout –’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, stop about your wretched blackout!’
The way she said that reminded Attridge very much of his ex-wife. He’d had a headache once, he remembered, and she’d protested in just the same impatient tone of voice, employing almost the same words. She’d married again, of course – a man called Saunders in ICI.