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The Spike or Victoria College Review 1938

Murder

Murder

A man may be alone with a book although the whole of humanity presses about him, and that is why I read in crowded tram-cars. But no book could have shut out my consciousness of this woman. She was fat; she smelt of cheap scent, and she seemed to overflow on top of me. This I might have suffered with disgust; it was her voice for which I hated her. Her piercing, discordant voice cut through the lovely coloured words I was reading, and scattered them like broken beads. I tried to edge away from it and found I could not.

Her neck was like a pudding. She craned it impertinently round to see what I was reading. It was "Music at Night." I heard her piercing, discordant voice reviling Huxley, and talking of books she had read with her little, narrow mind, and had not understood. "As for "Eyeless in Gaza'," she said, "the book is filthy, absolutely filthy."

I saw a slender knight, flashing the two- edged sword of wit and truth, charging through the forest of hypocrisy to fight dragons in the darkness. And as he passed this voice was spitting on his cloak of coloured words.

The voice had ceased. Her throat beneath my fingers had been fat and horrible. Her face had gone blotched and purple, and her piercing, discordant voice had gurgled like a bath-waste.

She was limp and repulsive. A woman near me shuddered, and I put the body underneath the seat.

"You can't do that without a luggage- ticket," said the conductor.

I bought a luggage-ticket to the lost property office. It was fourpence. How cheaply may one purchase peace in this world!

—M.J.