The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories Read Free Page B

funny thing. Your man, he’d not died asleep, as he might have done had he been suffocated with that smoke. He’d woken up and tried to get out. Now it’s natural for people to get confused in smoke-filled rooms, but he’d found the door all right. There was blood on the handle and his hands were all bloody too. But why didn’t he manage to get out? The door was never locked or anything.’
    The fireman paused and looked into the distance at nothing in particular. I sensed that he had more to tell.
    ‘You know, there was this old lady who lived over the road. She was the one who rang the fire brigade. She swears she heard voices coming from that building. From two people, not just the one. One was frantic, screaming like, but there was another, sort of slow, a bit drunk like, laughing almost. She said that voice fair gave her the horrors, much more even than the screaming, which was bad enough.’
    ‘Did she hear what the voice was saying?’
    ‘Nothing much. Just “How . . . ard! . . . How . . . ard! . . . How . . . ard!” Like that. Fair gave me a fright even to hear her saying it. Wasn’t that the name of your friend who died?’
    We were incapable of responding. When the fireman had left us Jane and I walked for a while in the dreary crematorium garden without speaking.
    ‘Well, at least he’s free of Ray now,’ I said eventually.
    ‘Not unless he wants to be,’ Jane replied.

FENG SHUI

    When Mr Pearmain discovered irregularities in some of the overseas accounts of Stolz International, the firm for which he worked, he went straight to his superior and reported the fact. The superior thanked Mr Pearmain politely and said that this was a serious matter which would receive his immediate attention. Some weeks went by before Mr Pearmain went to his superior again. Irregularities were still occurring: what was being done? The superior said that the situation was being dealt with ‘through the appropriate channels’. Once again he thanked Mr Pearmain politely, and if there was a touch of frostiness about his courtesy Pearmain, who was not sensitive to such nuances, failed to notice. Months passed; further irregularities were discovered and reported by Mr Pearmain. By this time even he had begun to notice that he was being shunned by his colleagues. One of them hinted to Mr Pearmain that he would be well advised to drop the matter of the overseas accounts, but Mr Pearmain did not understand. He was an accountant; it was his job to see that the company accounts were in good order. He would be failing in his duty to Stolz International if he did nothing.
    Pearmain began to find that he was put under pressure at work; he was made to fulfil impossible and unnecessary deadlines. As a result his health suffered and for the first time in his life he found himself having to take days off work. His superior spoke to him kindly: was this the right job for him? Would he not feel more comfortable in a less stressful and high-powered environment? Perhaps it would be best if they were to let him go? Pearmain, whose powers of resistance had been carefully eroded, agreed and he left Stolz International.
    His wife Alice received the news with mingled irritation and relief. She was glad that he was no longer under pressure; at the same time she was aware that it was his scrupulous, unimaginative honesty which had brought them to this pass. The very quality for which she loved him was the one which she now found most exasperating. They had two sons, both at expensive schools, what were they to do? Pearmain could get freelance work, but it would not be nearly so well paid as his position with Stolz.
    The Pearmains lived at Lime House, a handsome, detached Victorian mansion in a street of similar mansions on the outskirts of Cheltenham where Stolz, which manufactured electronic guidance systems for aircraft, was located. The house was a little too large and too expensive for them, but they had bought it when Pearmain joined the firm