E-Book, Englisch, 350 Seiten
Mitchell As Far as You Can Go
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ISBN: 978-0-571-30415-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
E-Book, Englisch, 350 Seiten
ISBN: 978-0-571-30415-8
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Julian Mitchell (b. 1935), is an English playwright, screenwriter and occasional novelist. He is best known as the writer of the play and film Another Country, and as a screenwriter for TV, producing many original plays and series episodes, including at least ten for Inspector Morse. Born in Epping, Essex, and educated at Winchester College and Oxford, he would publish six novels in the 1960s (all of them since reissued in Faber Finds) including the prizewinning The White Father (1964), before shifting his focus to theatre - a move which has come to appear permanent.
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IN THE MURKY SECONDS of struggle between sleep and waking he heard the pattering of rain on the tin roof of Mr Blackthorn’s bicycle-shed, and before he opened his eyes he groaned sadly, for this would mean the end of summer and he still hadn’t taken his holiday. Dragging himself towards wakefulness he made the groan an angry grunt, punched his pillow weakly, then rolled over on his back and said “Damn” out loud.
The room seemed full of light through the thin curtains. The patter of raindrops sounded just like the crackling of a newly kindled fire.
In a second he was out of bed and tearing back the curtains, looking with terror at a cloudless early morning sky. Then he was half-dressed, trousers and unbuttoned shirt, bare feet, hammering at the door of Mrs Fanshaw’s flat on the floor above, and then he remembered and ran and was outside in the street looking at the black smoke drifting lazily up and over the chimney-pots, at the almost silent flames leaping behind the heat-cracked glass of her kitchen window, at the placid row of houses, and then he was shouting “Help!”, twisting his neck as he shouted, “Fire!”, searching for a sign of life, “Help! Fire! Help! Fire! Help!”, his voice cracking on the final “Help!” as the door of number fifteen opened and out tumbled a man in a thick brown schoolboy’s dressing-gown, saying, “What? What? Where?”, his hands groping about in front of his face, pushing aside persistent cobwebs of sleep, trying desperately to wake up.
“Here!” shouted Harold Barlow, pointing. “Call the Fire Brigade!”
“First class,” said the man. He looked at number seventeen, saw the smoke and was instantly awake, though his fingers continued to fumble, dropping now to the knot of his dressing-gown cord. He went back into his house at a shuffling run, casting a slipper as he stumbled on the step.
Harold began to bang on the door of number nineteen, on the other side of his own house. He rang the bell and slammed the brass knocker. No one answered.
From the other side of the street a voice said, “They’re away. What’s the matter?”
“The house is on fire.”
The voice, which came from behind a lace curtain and seemed female, said, “It looks more like next door.”
“I mean next door,” said Harold. “Are you sure they’re away?”
“Oh, yes.” The curtain was pushed aside and a head in curl-papers emerged. “They always go to Bognor for a week in August.”
Who else should I warn, he wondered, leaving the step of number nineteen at a run, finding nowhere to run to. He stopped in the middle of the street. There was no one at number seventeen except himself. Mrs Fanshaw was in Poole, looking after her invalid sister while the nurse was on holiday, and Mr Blackthorn had gone on a coach-trip to Rome. There might, though, be other people next door in number fifteen. The flames might suddenly burst from number seventeen to attack the whole row, a new Fire of London might be starting right now in his house, he should do something. He began to run again, then stopped himself. The Fire Brigade would be on its way already.
The man in the dressing-gown reappeared, found his slipper and put it on. He danced up and down on one foot as he pulled it over his heel, saying, “Fools! They put me on to Ambulance, of all things! Ambulance! I shall write to The Times. Can you imagine such a thing?”
“But you did get the Fire Brigade?”
“What? Yes, of course. But I wasted nearly a minute. Someone’s life might have been lost.”
“Is there anyone else in your house? They ought to be woken and warned.”
“First class,” said the man. He had knotted the cord of his dressing-gown just to the left of centre, and Harold felt a sudden absurd urge to straighten it. His mind was full of irrelevancies. As the man shuffled back into number fifteen to wake and warn, Harold looked at his feet with an almost drunken fascination. They were bare, they were standing on tarmac, they were of a fascinating shape. Lost in wonder, he gaped at them.
The moment passed. With a little sweat of shame he wiped his soles on his trouser-legs. Even if he did seem a little ridiculous alone in the middle of the street, he had behaved responsibly and well, he had done the right thing. But now the initial excitement was over he began to feel disappointed that the right thing was so unromantic and obvious.
The danger had been small, really, and his part, if anything, smaller. It seemed definitely over now, anyway. At any moment the principal actors would appear, splendidly booted and helmeted, alarums and excursions would take place in a properly ordered manner, and Harold Barlow would become a mere scene-setter. While he still held the centre of the stage it was a pity to have nothing to do. It was like being Hamlet, all set for a great soliloquy, only Shakespeare hadn’t delivered the lines on time and till they were written the actor could do nothing at all but look foolish. Already a small crowd of extras was gathering. It was in all stages of dress and undress except total nakedness, but total nakedness was hinted at by various torsos at windows up and down the street. Everyone was looking at Harold. Someone asked him what was going on.
He stood a little straighter on his bare feet. People seemed to be expecting him to do something, and if that was what people were expecting, then he should not let them down. In any case he was damned if he was going to play one of those small parts whose function is simply to waste five or ten minutes while late arrivals whisper and bumble to their seats, open boxes of chocolates, crackle programmes and ask each other if they can hear all right. He would go and see if there wasn’t something he could do.
He walked towards his front door, feeling in his pocket for the key. It wasn’t there. In his hurry he had locked himself out of the house and any chance of a heroic role. He stopped walking and thought of his bedside-table. The coins would be turning into shapeless and valueless cupro-nickel, the pound notes curling into fragile brown ash, the print still visible, becoming nothing at a touch, and the keys would be liquefying, spreading to the edge of the table, beginning to drip to the floor. It was all rather depressing.
Looking up at the window, though, the fire seemed still to be confined to Mrs Fanshaw’s kitchen. But the smoke was thicker and blacker, and wisps were beginning to appear from the sitting-room.
Perhaps I could have put it out myself, he thought. I should at least have tried to do something before I ran. But no. You’re supposed to call the Fire Brigade first.
The man in the dressing-gown came out of number fifteen again and said, “They’re all up.”
“Good,” said Harold. It was good not to be alone in the middle of the stage. He nodded and smiled.
“Sounds nasty,” said the man, looking up at the fire.
It was true that there was a sinister roaring noise, hollow and violent, but still very quiet, more of a threat than a challenge so far.
“Bet you anything you like it was the fridge,” said the man, his hands deep in the pockets of the dressing-gown. “The wiring in these houses is simply shocking.”
Harold laughed, thinking he was meant to. The man looked at him very seriously and said, “It’s no joke, you know. No joke at all.”
He was about fifty, with a grey exhausted face, like that of someone who hasn’t slept for more than an hour or two a night since he was a young man. His hair was very pale ginger, grey at the temples and rather fine. He had a small neat moustache, younger in colour.
“I can’t think why I laughed,” said Harold. “It isn’t funny at all.”
“There ought to be a law against it. There probably is, as a matter of fact. Landlords have everything too much their own way these days, that’s the trouble.”
“Look,” said Harold, in no mood for social criticism, “can I get into our garden from yours? I’ve locked myself out, and I think the lock on the back door is weaker than the one on the front. I thought I’d go and see if there was anything I could do.”
“First class.”
They went into number fifteen, past an umbrella-stand, a row of coats, a brief glimpse of an untidy kitchen. The garden was a patch of withered one-time grass, with a sundial in the middle.
“Remember to put your shoulder against it and really shove,” said the man, helping Harold over the fence.
Mr Blackthorn’s garden was identically barren, but there was a figure of Peter Pan instead of the sundial. Smoke drifted indifferently from a top-floor window, eddying in and out, looking as innocent as if it came from an overdone Sunday roast. For a moment Harold could almost smell the meat, mixed with the permanent odour of gas-cooker that leaked down from Mrs Fanshaw’s.
He tried the door, finding it locked. Then he shoved weakly against it.
“Use your shoulder, man,” said the dressing-gown. “Shove.”
Feeling like someone in a detective story, Harold bruised his shoulder against the door. There was a creaking noise, his shoulder hurt, the door stayed shut. He launched himself again, using the other shoulder. The door opened with a magnificent splintering sound, like an axe going through dry wood, as the lock burst from its screws. In spite of the pain it was rather satisfying.
He ran up the stairs and used the same technique on Mrs Fanshaw’s door. It gave in at the first...
