‘Yes, I feed the local sparrows,’ said Mrs Mayben. ‘I do my bit.’
A silence fell between them, and then Mrs Mayben said:
‘It is odd to have lived opposite you for all these years and yet not to have spoken. I have seen you at the windows, as you have seen me. I have seen the lady too.’
Edward felt the blood moving into his face. He felt again a sickness in his stomach and thought his hands were shivering.
‘You have heard of me,’ he casually said. ‘I dare say you have. I am notorious in Dunfarnham Avenue.’
‘I know your name is Tripp,’ said Mrs Mayben. ‘I know no more.’
‘She is my sister, the woman you see in that house. She and I were born there, and now she never leaves it. I go out to do the shopping – well, you’ve seen me.’
‘I have seen you, certainly,’ said Mrs Mayben, ‘returning from the shops with a string bag full of this and that, potatoes and tins, lettuces in season. I do not pry, Mr Tripp, but I have seen you. Have more sherry?’
Edward accepted another glass. ‘I am known to every house in the road,’ he said. ‘Parents warn their children to cross to the other side when they see me coming. Men have approached me to issue rough warnings, using language I don’t much care to hear. Women move faster when Edward Tripp’s around.’
Mrs Mayben said that she was not deaf but wondered if she quite understood what Edward was talking about. ‘I don’t think I follow,’ she said. ‘I know nothing of all this. Like your sister, I don’t go out much. I’ve heard nothing from the people of Dunfarnham Avenue about you, Mr Tripp, or how it is you have become notorious.’
Edward said he had guessed that might be so, and added that one person at least in Dunfarnham Avenue should know the truth, on this Sabbath day.
‘It’s very kind of you to have repaired my fuse,’ said Mrs Mayben a little loudly. ‘I’m most obliged to you for that.’ She rose to her feet, but did not succeed in drawing her visitor to his. Edward sat on in the comfortable armchair holding his sherry glass. He said:
‘It is a hell for me, Dunfarnham Avenue, walking down it and feeling all eyes upon me. I have rung the bells of the houses. I have trumped up some story on the doorsteps, even on the doorsteps she cannot see from the dining-room window. She always knows if I have talked to someone and have been embarrassed: I come back in a peculiar state. I suffer from nerves, Mrs Mayben.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Mayben more loudly still. ‘And how nice to meet you after all these years.’
‘I am going to tell you the truth,’ explained Edward, ‘as I have never told a soul in my life. It is an ugly business, Mrs Mayben. Perhaps you should sit down.’
‘But, Mr Tripp,’ protested the old woman, greatly puzzled, ‘what on earth is all this?’
‘Let me tell you,’ said Edward, and he told her of his sister standing at the top of the stairs while their mother broke to her the news that her two coloured story-books had been handed out to a beggar at the front door. ‘He’s only little,’ their mother had explained to Edward’s sister. ‘Forgive an imp, my dear.’ But Emily had not found it in her heart to forgive him and he had sniggered at the time.
‘I see,’ said Mrs Mayben.
‘I knew you would,’ cried Edward, smiling at her and nodding his head several times. ‘Of course you see. You have a kindly face; you feed the birds.’
‘Yes, but –’ said Mrs Mayben.
‘No,’ said Edward. ‘Listen.’
He told her about the woman in red at the funeral of their mother, the woman his sister had seen, and how he afterwards prayed in the back garden and had been sternly answered by Almighty God. He explained how he had come upon his duty then and had accepted all that was required of him.
‘It has nothing to do with the present,’ said Edward. ‘Do not see my sister and myself as we stand today, but as two children playing in that house across the road. I sinned against my sister, Mrs Mayben, every hour of my early life. She was stamped into the ground; she was mocked and taunted.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Mrs Mayben. ‘I’m sorry there have been these troubles in your life. It’s difficult to accept adversity and unhappiness, I know that.’
‘I was cutting ham,’ repeated Edward, ‘when my sister turned to me and said you had been murdered by a man in canvas shoes.’
‘Murdered?’ repeated Mrs Mayben, opening the door of her sitting-room and appearing to be nervous.
‘She’s affected by the past,’ said Edward. ‘You understand it?’
Mrs Mayben did not reply. Instead she said:
‘Mr Tripp, you have been most gallant. I wish you would now return to your home. I have my lunch to prepare and eat.’
‘ “I saw a dog today,” my sister said, “a vicious dog abroad in Dunfarnham Avenue. Go to the houses, Edward, and tell the mothers to look to their children until the dog is captured and set to rest.” She talked for seven hours, Mrs Mayben, about that dog, one day in 1951, and in the end she watched me move from house to house ringing the bells and warning the people about a vicious animal.’
‘This is no concern of mine. If your sister is unwell –’
‘My sister is not unwell. My sister pretends, exacting her revenge. God has told me, Mrs Mayben, to play my part in her pretended fantasies. I owe her the right to punish me, I quite understand that.’
Mrs Mayben shook her head. She said in a quiet voice that she was an old woman and did not understand much of what went on in the world. She did not mind, she said, Edward ringing her doorbell, but she wished now that he would leave her house since she had much to do.
‘I have never told anyone else,’ said Edward. ‘Years ago I said to myself that when I had to come to your house I would tell you the truth about everything. How I have grown up to be an understanding man, with the help of God. How the punishment must be shared between us – well, she has had hers. D’you see?’
Mrs Mayben shook her head and was about to speak again. Edward said:
‘ “There’s a smell of burning,” my sister said to me in 1955. “It comes from the house with the three Indian women in it.” She had woken me up to tell me that, for it was half past two in the morning. “They are women from the East,” she said. “They do not understand about precautions against fire as we do.” In my dressing-gown, Mrs Mayben, I walked the length of Dunfarnham Avenue and rang the bell of that house. “May I use your telephone?” I said to the Indian woman who opened the door, for I could think of nothing else to say to her. But she said no, I could not; and rightly pointed out that she could not be expected to admit into her house a man in pyjamas at half past two in the morning. I have never told anyone because it seemed to be a family thing. I have never told the truth. It is all pretence and silence between my sister and myself. We play a game.’
‘I must ask you to go now. I really must. An old woman like me can’t be expected to take a sudden interest. You must do the best you can.’
‘But I am telling you terrible things,’ cried Edward. ‘I killed my sister’s guinea-pig, I pulled her pansies by the roots. Not an hour passed in my early childhood, Mrs Mayben, but I did not seek to torment her into madness. I don’t know why I was given that role, but now I have the other since I’ve been guided towards it. She is quite sane, you know. She plays a part. I am rotten with guilt.’
Mrs Mayben clapped her hands sharply together. ‘I cannot have you coming here,’ she said, ‘telling me you are rotten with guilt, Mr Tripp. You are a man I have seen about the place with a string bag. I do not know you. I do not know your sister. It’s no concern of mine. Not at all.’
‘You have a kind face to live up to,’ said Edward, bowing and smiling in a sad way. ‘I have seen you feeding the sparrows, and I’ve often thought you have a kind face.’
‘Leave me alone, sir. Go from this house at once. You speak of madness and death, Mr Tripp; you tell me I’ve been murdered: I am unable to think about such things. My days are simple here.’