THE CRIME by DF Lewis and Gordon Lewis
As I walked away from the cinema I was still overwhelmed by the film I had just seen. Little did I know that it was going to have a profound effect on my life.
As usual, on my way home, I called into my favourite public house. Charlie the barman was his customary cheery self as he bid me welcome.
“Been to the cinema, Tom? What was it like?”
“It was very good as movies go,” I replied. “A bit thought-provoking, but it was entertaining.”
“I thought so, too,” said the young man who joined me at the bar. He was a complete stranger but I didn’t think he was being intrusive. He was easy to talk to as we exchanged our thoughts about the film.
“Do you think it possible to commit such a crime?” I asked.
“It would take a lot of nerve to carry out,” he replied. “Need a lot of careful planning as well as all the right props.”
We had moved away from the bar to sit at one of the tables and our conversation turned to other aspects of the film, peppered with associated items of beer talk.
“You’re not suggesting that we two could commit a similar crime, are you?” I asked.
“Why not? Just a one off job.”
I couldn’t believe I was actually having this conversation – talking to a stranger about matters that would not normally cross my mind.
He could see I was slowly becoming uncomfortable.
“Come on, come on, let’s think about this. Let’s pretend we are in a film ourselves – as directed by someone we have no control over, so we should not feel guilty if we commit the crime. We simply follow the path he – or she – has set for us and maybe we won’t even go through with the crime. Hold back at the last moment. Not reach the thrilling climax. Like a bubble bursting.”
He smiled as I nodded. Suddenly, having just watched a cinema film about a perfect crime, here I was actually appearing in one, talking to a perfect stranger about committing this very crime!
The pub became very busy. Milling about were countless folk of all shapes and sizes, gripping jugs of amber liquid, shouting instead of talking, billowing with clouds of smoke, then laughing as they jocularly split from their various groupings to relieve themselves in the realms of near privacy elsewhere. I seemed to recognise one or two faces from the film…
I shook my head. I could not believe I was thinking what I was thinking. I turned back to my new found ‘friend’.
“Don’t worry, Tom,” he said.
“How do you know my name?”
“How do we know anything in this life of unexpected turnings and wild coincidences.”
He stood up and I followed suit. The pub was becoming very oppressive.
“I want you to meet someone,” he said. “A lady who knows a thing or two.”
We hit the cold night air of the pub’s car park. Standing by one of the vehicles – a black hunched shape that reminded me more of the Sixties bubble car than anything of more modern vintage – was a tall lady in evening dress and sporting a hat that would have been worthy of Royal Ascot.
This was bordering on the ridiculous – or was I dreaming? The last person anyone would think of meeting; such a lady whose outstretched hand I took in mine as introductions were made.
“This is Tom, Nadia,” said the man who was a stranger (stranger by the minute) until I heard the lady call him Edmund. At least I now had a name with which to take a handle on absurdity.
We walked back to the pub, but this time we entered the Lounge bar where there was comparative peace.
Our conversation ran the gamut of topics, other than the one I had earlier had
with Edmund, until the subject of the film came up again. It seemed that Nadia had seen the film and became interested when Edmund mentioned the crime and the possibility of getting away with it in real life. The biggest crime of all.
I was becoming bored with the subject knowing that I wouldn’t dream of entering a liaison to carry out such a crime anyway, so I swiftly changed the subject, before it managed to change me.
Commenting on the way Nadia was dressed, I asked if she had been to a wedding. Weddings always being happy hatty occasions.
“No,” she replied, “I have been to a ‘bit of a do’ up at Wakeland Hall until I remembered I had promised to meet Edmund here.”
She had taken off her hat by this time and I couldn’t help but remark how beautiful her hair was … a shame to hide it with any kind of hat.
“Thank you, kind sir,” she simpered.
I was getting along with her very well until I sensed that Edmund wasn’t pleased with the way things were going.
“Ah well,” he said, “it’s time we should be moving, Nadia,” then turning to me, he said: “Perhaps we can meet again, Tom, I am in this area often.”
Not expecting to meet him again, I merely said it would be my pleasure – without being specific in making arrangements.
Once they had left, it felt almost as if I had never met them at all. What was more, I could no longer see any faces in the pub’s crowd that remotely retained any lingering connection with the film … the film which I had viewed earlier in the Electric Cinema. Ah, yes, the Electric Cinema. Some place! A very old-fashioned picture house with a ticket kiosk straight from the ancient memories of an archetypal childhood. Words that were more grown-up, though, blurring exactly what I intended to mean.
No wonder – any film seen in there stayed put … fastened itself in the mind as well as the mind’s flickering eye.
I took slow sips at my pint, gloomily glancing at the neighbouring drinkers who suddenly – it seemed – had grown quieter, more surly, more sullen, more potentially comprehending of my deepest sophisticated thoughts. The rough and tumble of pub talk put away somewhere behind the gravity. No more hubbub. No longer the alcoholic connections. Nobody came. Nobody left. Their bladders must be fit to burst.
I shrugged. I was no longer in control of my wayward thoughts, until I was brought to full attention…
“Want to buy a bubble car, eh?”
The voice sounded grimly familiar. It was indeed – one of various drinking pals, the one who always mumbles into his beard as well as his beer. Talk about being the soul of the party – Ted Roberts was ever its death!
“Hiya, Ted, how are you?” I mustered a smile.
I saw you outside, Tom, staring at that dame with the bubble car.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, it looked as if she were trying to sell you that little buggy!”
“Really?”
“Yes – what were you doing outside alone with the likes of her?”
“Alone?”
What about that Edmund, I thought.
“Yes – she was very strange-looking with a hat as big as … that!”
Ted stretched his hands around the wide brim of his own imaginary headgear, in order to demonstrate.
“Where are you from?” I asked. “Where were you hiding? Where were you looking from?”
Ted, by now, had turned towards another frowning toper and was exchanging a few more dismal phrases with this ugly customer. I decided not to divert Ted’s attention back to me and I left the bar, ostensibly to spend a penny.
I walked past the door to the men’s toilets and out into the evening air. The freshness after the smoky lounge bar felt good as I set off for home some ten minutes walk away from the pub. My wife Ann would probably be watching TV and have something to say about my being later than usual.
I was about halfway home when I wished I had visited the men’s convenience before setting out, so I quickened my pace.
“I suppose you called in The Dog and Pheasant,” were the first words that greeted me as I entered our sitting room. “Did you meet someone there?” she asked in conclusion.
I was about to mention the two strangers I had met but held back to say: “Old Ted Roberts was there and the usual crowd, no one special.”
With that I hurried off to the bathroom as my need had become very urgent.
Returning to the sitting room, Ann had switched off the TV and looked like she was preparing to retire for the night, leaving me to make my usual cup of tea before I too would be calling it a day.
I switched on the TV to watch the late night news as I sipped my warming cup of tea.
I was surprised by the sound of the front door bell and on opening the door I was taken aback when I saw Edmund there.
“What on earth are you doing here at this time of night and how did you find out where I lived?”
“Charlie at the pub introduced me to someone called Ted who knew your address.”
There are some thoughts that often come to you at the drop of a hat, thoughts that you cannot actually land on the bank from the torrenting river of your mind. Not a stream of consciousness as such – more a white water rafting…
“The Postman Always Rings Twice,” was one such thought, taken from a million others, it seemed. The only thought I remembered thinking.
Again, I had the sensation of appearing in a film, having learned my lines and actions in many forgotten rehearsals. I even held a stage prop in my hand – the TV’s remote control.
Edmund suddenly stood aside, revealing Nadia – now hatless – who stood behind him, beaming – a gun in her hand … glinting viciously in the cruel shafts of stage lighting that forested down from the night sky.
I then realised that it was not a real gun at all – but my own novelty lighter that I must have left at the pub in the rush for the loo. A stage prop in the vague shape of an automatic weapon and when its trigger was pulled a flame would generously plume from the end of the barrel. Indeed, she had just lighted her own smoke with an adept flick of her thumb. Momentarily, I thought her cigarette holder was, if anything, a trifle ostentatious. And I was irritated that she had the effrontery to use my belonging in such a laissez-faire fashion.
The pair had not spoken at all, as she offered the return of the lighter. She held it out to me … smiling. Not a kind smile. More a sardonic grimace. Edmund had by now clicked his fingers … and, as if at his whim, the brazen lighting effects were swiftly doused. I gazed up into the blackness, expecting to see gantries carrying theatrical spots on runners. But, no, the gulf of emptiness was simply that … with the distant drone of a plane and the clatter of vanes.
Ann, by now, had approached from the well of our hallway and stood at my shoulder.
“Why don’t you invite your usual crowd in for some refreshments?” she asked in a somewhat stilted voice.
This was quite out of character for my dear Ann. She was usually wary of strangers. She was rather shy and retiring. I was her everything. But there were those unaccountable thoughts of mine. Those inappropriate imponderables again. Ann now seemed gregarious! Ann loved visitors! Ann loved entertaining! She pushed me aside to allow the forbidding couple to breach our defences by crossing the sacrosanct threshold of our marital home. I pocketed the remote and followed behind.
And all this without even a word from anybody … because I somehow doubted that Ann herself had said anything. I even doubted that the novelty lighter belonged to me.
Tom’s mind, too, was in a whirl, almost feeling as if he’d become a different person … but he managed to introduce the couple to his wife Ann. He had nothing in common with Edmund except their mutual thoughts about the film they had seen. Surely he wasn’t going to bring that subject up again!
“I hope you don’t mind the interruption, Tom,” Edmund said, “ but I could think of no one else to turn to. My car broke down just a few hundred yards from the Dog and Pheasant and in spite of everything I tried, the damn thing wouldn’t start again. We returned to the pub but there was no room there, so we had nowhere to stay the night. As I told you, your friend Ted gave us your address and here we are wondering if you can put us up for the night.”
Tom was flabbergasted by the cheek of the man and was rendered speechless as Ann said the couple could stay if they didn’t mind being split up. The single bedroom for Nadia and the settee in the lounge for Edmund, as their son and daughter were already asleep in the other bedrooms.
“Thank you,” said Nadia, “that will suit us fine. We are not in that kind of relationship. Just friends, that is all.”
They were actually giving accommodation to two virtual strangers and Tom was trying to keep his feelings of intrusion bottled up. What else could he do in the circumstances? He had to go along with Ann’s unexpected offer.
Time was when Tom knew himself as an individual with a definite handle on his own personal self. But now he felt he had become that face across the other side of a room or bar … a rippling reflection … a stranger … a stranger with a weak bladder … in whose body glove he had taken to live and breathe and simply be.
He took the gun from his pocket. Put it to the side of his head … tentatively. Took it away again. Put it back. Time and time again. He could hear the visitors mumbling in deep undercurrents within the hastily improvised guestroom above. Tom also heard his wife’s voice. She was up there with them, uncharacteristically trilling with laughter. Shush, or you’ll wake the kids. Some joke. Some charade, perhaps. Or acting out. The usual suspects talking of a trip to a point-to-point in the grounds of Wakeland Hall … then a revivalist meeting at the newly renovated Electric Cinema.
It seemed as if all the participants had known each other for years and years. Tom almost sensed he could hear Ted’s uncouth voice among them … and Charlie the barman … but at least those voices could be blamed on imagination. Whoever they were, though, they seemed to be hatching a plot or the pre-fabrication of a crime … a gratuitous ignition…
Tom pulled the trigger…
I was surprised that it did not emit a plume of flame to singe my sideboards. I watched, instead, a black filmy bubble slowly swell from the end of the barrel before it swiftly burst.
