He resolved to start again. He owed it to art.
* * *
—
Quinn had lived in a small top-floor flat, a little bijou place, in Conduit Street. Ramsay had been there several times in the past. The landlady lived on the ground floor and acted as a kind of concierge, and she recognized Ramsay when he knocked on her door. “Oh, Mr. Coker,” she said, “isn’t it awful news about Mr. Quinn?” Ramsay agreed that it was awful （it was） and said that Mr. Quinn’s mother had asked him to come and pick something up. “A book of poetry, I believe, for a reading at the funeral.”
“So soon? He was only found dead yesterday.”
“She’s thinking ahead.”
He was let into the flat. The landlady hovered, but he persuaded her that it might take him some time to find what he was looking for. In fact, the quest took hardly any time at all. The grail was sitting on Quinn’s desk in plain sight. A big brick of a manuscript, the edges aligned meticulously. Folderol, it announced itself on the top page.
* * *
—
The fires were lit by the time Ramsay returned to Hanover Terrace, and he crushed the title page of Quinn’s novel and threw it into the flames in the drawing-room hearth.
He took the stairs two at a time to his room—his malaise had lifted. Committing crimes seemed to give him energy. He sat in front of the typewriter and took a swig of Collis Browne. He flexed his fingers and cracked his knuckles and then took a new sheet of paper and rolled it into the Remington. For a few moments he gazed at the paper, as white as Alpine snow, in a kind of reverie. He typed a title—The Age of Glitter. The dedication followed on a second clean page. For my friend, Vivian Quinn. He placed the two sheets of paper on top of Quinn’s manuscript.
Voilà!
The doorbell rang. It would not be for him. It never was.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
There was no one who saw it as their job to answer the door in Hanover Terrace and so the bell had been ringing for some time, clanging away in the hallway, refusing to admit defeat. The cook was making bread, an activity that always seemed to infuriate her. Even from upstairs Phyllis could hear her in the kitchen, thumping and thudding the dough on the big deal table.
Phyllis eventually surrendered and answered the summons. The determined bell-ringer was a small, filthy boy who looked as if he had just been up a chimney. She was about to box his ears and send him on his way when she realized it was one of her many cousins. “Got a message for you,” he said, thrusting a piece of paper into her hand. “Urgent,” he added, rather pleased with the drama that had sent him racing all the way from Whitechapel on a stolen bike. He lingered, hoping for a reward, and Phyllis said, “Wait a minute,” and sneaked into the pantry while the cook was still intent on slamming the dough into submission and came out with a big wedge of sticky ginger cake.
“Tell ’em I got the message,” she said to the boy, giving him the cake. The boy couldn’t answer because he had crammed the whole slice of cake in his mouth at once, but he gave her a thumbs-up and jumped back on his bicycle. “And hurry!” she shouted after him.
“Who was that?” the cook asked. She was shaping the loaves now and had simmered down.
“Message for Mrs. Coker. I’m to take it to her.”
The cook placed the loaf tins in the new refrigerator to prove until tomorrow. She liked her bread to have a long prove. The refrigerator was not unlike a mortuary cabinet. Peace reigned in the kitchen once again. The bread has been conquered.
“Off you go, then,” the cook said.
* * *
—
“It’s tonight,” a breathless Phyllis told Nellie when she reached the Amethyst. “Maddox is coming for you tonight.”
“Better get a move on, then, hadn’t we?” Nellie said.
* * *
—
Maddox drank a cup of weak black tea at the breakfast table. He had an acid stomach and never ate before noon. Around him, his children were spooning up their porridge. All five of them, including the baby, had remarkable appetites. “Eating me out of house and home,” he would laugh, but he wasn’t really joking. If he didn’t have to make endless provision for his children and his unsatisfied wife he wouldn’t have to worry about money. His household didn’t run on fresh air, unfortunately.
Eggs appeared next, boiled, two for each child, except the baby, who was still sucking at his wife’s worn-out breasts. Maddox’s children were as plump as piglets being fattened for the spit. He watched the skin stretching over their round pink cheeks as they chewed. Two of them were in school uniform, ready, if reluctant, for the walk to school. Maddox couldn’t wait to be off himself. He loved his wife and children, but he couldn’t stand being trapped in the house with them.