The Breaking Point Read Free Page B

Victorian villa. The kitchen, scullery and pantry had now become the woman’s living-room, kitchenette and bedroom, and in their transformation had increased in squalor.The ugly pipes, the useless boiler, the old range, might once have had some pretension to efficiency, with fresh white paint on the pipes and the range polished. Even the dresser, still in position and stretching nearly the full width of one wall, would have been in keeping some fifty years ago, with polished brass saucepans and a patterned dinner-service, while an overalled cook, bustling about with arms befloured, called orders to a minion in the scullery. Now the dirty cream paint hung in flakes, the worn linoleum was torn, and the dresser was bare save for odds and ends bearing no relation to its original purpose - a battered wireless set with trailing aerial, piles of discarded magazines and newspapers, unfinished knitting, broken toys, pieces of cake, a toothbrush, and several pairs of shoes. The woman looked about her helplessly.
    ‘It’s not easy,’ she said, ‘with a child. One clears up all the time.’
    It was evident that she never cleared, that she had given in, that the shambles he observed was her answer to life’s problems, but Fenton said nothing, only nodded politely, and smiled. He caught a glimpse of an unmade bed through a half-open door, bearing out his theory of the heavy sleeper - his ring at the bell must have disturbed her - but seeing his glance she shut the door hurriedly, and in a half-conscious effort to bring herself to order buttoned her cardigan and combed her hair with her fingers.
    ‘And the room you do not use?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ she replied, ‘yes, of course . . .’ vague and uncertain, as if she had forgotten her purpose in bringing him to the basement. She led the way back across the passage, past a coal cellar - useful, this, he thought - a lavatory with a child’s pot set in the open door and a torn Daily Mirror beside it, and so to a further room, the door of which was closed.
    ‘I don’t think it will do,’ she said sighing, already defeated. Indeed, it would not have done for anyone but himself, so full of power and purpose; for as she flung open the creaking door, and crossed the room to pull aside the strip of curtain made out of old wartime blackout material, the smell of damp hit him as forcibly as a sudden patch of fog beside the river, and with it the unmistakable odour of escaping gas. They sniffed in unison.
    ‘Yes, it’s bad,’ she said. ‘The men are supposed to come, but they never do.’
    As she pulled the curtain to let in air the rod broke, the strip of material fell, and through a broken pane of the window jumped the black cat with the wounded paw which Fenton had noticed beneath the plane tree in front of the house. The woman shooed it ineffectually. The cat, used to its surroundings, slunk into a far corner, jumped on a packing-case and composed itself to sleep. Fenton and the woman looked about them.
    ‘This would do me very well,’ he said, hardly considering the dark walls, the odd L-shape of the room and the low ceiling. ‘Why, there’s even a garden,’ and he went to the window and looked out upon the patch of earth and stones - level with his head as he stood in the basement room - which had once been a strip of paved garden.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘yes, there’s a garden,’ and she came beside him to stare at the desolation to which they both gave so false a name. Then with a little shrug she went on, ‘It’s quiet, as you see, but it doesn’t get much sun. It faces north.’
    ‘I like a room to face north,’ he said abstractedly, already seeing in his mind’s eye the narrow trench he would be able to dig for her body - no need to make it deep. Turning towards her, measuring the size of her, reckoning the length and breadth, he saw a glimmer of understanding come into her eye, and he quickly smiled to give her confidence.
    ‘Are you an artist?’ she