Take My Life

  The stoker said, looking at the disappearing Selby: ‘That’s where I was born and that’s where me home is. I pass it dozens of times a year, but all I ever see of it is the blasted chimneys.’

  The engine driver looked at the pressure gauge and thought: You wonder sometimes, oh, you wonder sometimes, why did I ever get married, and then you think, better that than to be a thin shrivelled little grouser like Bob. He blew the whistle. They were two minutes late, and this head wind …

  The deaf man said: ‘Pardon me, are they serving tea yet?’ and screwed in his ear-piece.

  ‘Yes,’ said the woman standing in front of him. ‘But the tables are all full. We’ll have to wait a few minutes.’

  Philippa said as Fleming raised his head: ‘What difference does it make? You can’t escape from what you did.’

  His face was old and tired. ‘I had until you came.’

  ‘You killed Elizabeth because she drove you to it. Isn’t that what you said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In great anger?’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘But now you were going to kill me – in cold blood?’

  ‘I can do it just the same.’

  ‘But not in anger. Not with excuse. All these weeks haven’t you been thinking: ‘‘I had excuse. She drove me to it. She was wicked. I could do no other.’’ Haven’t you?’

  He looked at her, frowning, puzzled at her perception, yet his reason answering hers.

  ‘It’s the truth!’

  ‘But you’ll never be able to say that about me.’ She straightened up, no longer so much on the defensive. ‘Dont you see? When you kill it doesn’t solve anything, it just begins all over again. You can never get away from it. Never! Evil brings evil, for ever and ever, without end.’

  He turned sharply in his seat, and she thought she had gone too far. But his gaze travelled past her to the hurrying countryside and the rain.

  ‘You’re a Christian, aren’t you?’ she said.

  He muttered: ‘For you to talk of Christianity to me, who’s practised it as you’ve never begun to think of doing! …’

  ‘You’re a man of principles,’ she went on. ‘Religion means a lot to you, doesn’t it? You believe death doesn’t end everything. Don’t you?’

  ‘Be quiet!’ he said, facing the devils in his own soul, all those devils of torment and doubt which for six weeks had been rigidly under his mind’s control.

  ‘A religious man without the courage of his beliefs.’ She was attacking now.

  He shook his head, as if to shake away her words. For a long time there was silence. In this his logical mind could no longer help him, for she was attacking him through it.

  But when he looked at her again she knew she could not let up.

  ‘And those boys,’ she said quickly, ‘at Penmair. Teaching them has been the real love of your life. You’ve told me so. Can you guide them with this on your conscience? Can you? If your mind is twisted it will give a twist to theirs. A moral warp like a – an ugly deformity! Did you ever believe you could take up your work at Lovell’s with this thing between you and them?’

  A goods train screamed past them on its way north.

  When the vibration and the noise were past, slowly, very slowly, he said: ‘I’ll make a bargain with you.’

  All the weakness and faintness in her cried out, ‘Yes, yes, what is it?’ but instead she said:

  ‘You’ve nothing to bargain with.’

  Slowly again he said: ‘Give me a chance. Your precious Talbot is safe. Give me a few hours.’

  With a queer twisted compassion moving in her she said:

  ‘Your chance has gone. Don’t you see that? You do. In your heart you’ve always known it. Nothing I can do can change it. Nothing you can do to me can change it. You loved Elizabeth, didn’t you?’

  ‘I hated her!’

  ‘You loved Elizabeth, and your life finished when you killed her. Nothing can be the same again. By killing her you defeated yourself. It isn’t a chance to save your life you need now, it’s a chance to save your soul …’

  There was another silence.

  Suddenly he sprang to his feet and wrenched at the door. At first she shrank back, mistaking his intention. But then as the door swung open she caught at his arm.

  The pressure of wind and her hold frustrated that first impulse. He struggled and cried out and loosed his hold of the door to strike at her. He hit her arm viciously above the elbow, but she caught with one hand as pain opened the other.

  He was dragging her with him, himself half out, when suddenly another form came upon them from behind, clutching at them both, pulling them to safety.

  Half fainting, with shouts and questions in her ears, she saw Fleming fall back upon the seat opposite her. Sweat was running down his face, and defeat seemed to be in the depth of his heart.

  The deaf man had come back in time.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The judge had begun his summing-up at a quarter to three and had finished it at twenty to four. Tyler, Nick knew, had been annoyed at certain opinions the judge had expressed, and in so far as anything to displease Tyler was bad for Nick, the summing-up might be considered slightly adverse.

  Since then the jury had been out and so far showed no sign of returning. Nick was in the prisoners’ room and it was now well after five.

  The prison doctor had called once, but soon went away satisfied that he was standing up to the strain. Then shortly after, Archer bad come. He had stood there and asked the warden a few routine questions, looking faintly ill at ease; had exchanged a dozen sentences with Nick and had gone out. It was queer, Nick thought, they hadn’t liked each other at first; apart from the ordinary obvious antagonism coming from the fact that Archer was trying to pin something on him, there had been that small personal antagonism always between them, which would have existed however they had met. But that had gone.

  They were still enemies because of their present situation, but the personal dislike was no longer there. Underneath reason, which would not admit it, the instinct of each recognized honesty in the other.

  At a quarter to six a warder came in.

  ‘Not touched your sandwiches, Mr Talbot?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘They’re tasty enough. Bit of ham. Not too fat. Do you good.’

  Nick smiled slightly, since it seemed only kind to humour the man who was trying to humour him.

  ‘I brought your cigarettes.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Nick accepted the packet but did not at once open it. ‘Any sign of a move yet?’

  ‘Not yet, sir.’

  ‘It’s a bit unusual, isn’t it, being so long?’

  ‘Oh, lord, no. They’re like this sometimes. You remember that case of the fire-watcher: did his wife in. They were three hours and twenty minutes over that.’

  Nick got up. ‘Any news of my wife yet?’

  ‘Not so far as I know, sir.’

  ‘What time are the trains from Edinburgh, d’you know?’

  ‘ ’Fraid I don’t.’ The warder piled up the tray. ‘Sure you won’t have a bite?’

  ‘Er – no, thanks.’

  The warder got as far as the door with the tray when he paused. He had caught the sound of feet coming down the corridor. He drew back as the door opened and another warder appeared. He glanced at Nick.

  ‘Well?’

  The newcomer glanced at the warder with the tray.

  ‘Just moving now, Bill.’

  Nick felt his stomach go cold. He bent and opened the packet of cigarettes and took one out.

  ‘Have I time for this?’

  ‘Well, just a few puffs, sir.’

  Nick was grateful that the warder held a lighter to the end of the cigarette. It would have been humiliating if his own hands hadn’t been steady.

  He drew at the cigarette, feeling the smoke fill his lungs. He drew at it again. The warder had set down the tray and was waiting for him.

  After a few moments Nick
bent and screwed out the end in the ash-tray.

  ‘Now,’ he said.

  The six-forty-one Edinburgh-King’s Cross was on time. The powerful locomotive steamed into the station, and as the train slowed to a stop doors opened all along its length like gills breathing on some strange elongated submarine fish.

  People poured out of it, porters caught up luggage, men on motor trolleys shouted, the mass congealed, spread across the platform, began to escape past the engine to the taxis and the street.

  Out of a first-class carriage came the deaf man. He had had the most harassed and difficult journey of his life. Following him came Philippa and Sidney Fleming. There was a dark bruise on Philippa’s forehead; Fleming was deadly pale like a man who had just been sick.

  The deaf man said: ‘Don’t you think … Wouldn’t it be better …’

  She shook her head at him. ‘ Thank you, no.’

  ‘The police …’

  ‘No, no …’

  Fleming was moving on, and she took hurried steps to catch up with him. But not quite to catch up. She walked at his elbow. The deaf man watched them go.

  They reached the barrier and passed through, walked out of the station.

  The journey had been a nightmare, intolerable with the strain of waiting: a taut wire that must soon snap. The deaf man had wanted to stop the train; all through it she had had her way with both of them. Something beyond herself, stronger than herself. Fleming had sat in a queer half-stupor, chin sunk, staring at the floor. Every time he stirred or sighed or cleared his throat she had expected a new move, a recovery, a crouching to attack. The stop at Doncaster had been the worst time of all.

  A woman had come along and stared in at the carriage, and then, perhaps put off by something almost waxwork in the attitude of the people within, had moved away again. But her presence, peering in if only for a moment, had roused Fleming, and he stretched out a hand as if to open the door. Then he abruptly sat back and his gloved hands dropped on his lap. For a time after the train restarted he sat with eyes closed, breathing heavily as if there was no air. Once she began to wonder if he had had a stroke. But later he had come round, and in a moment when her attention had strayed, she had glanced back at him and found his eyes fixed on her. But something in the gaze again lacked personal focus.

  Now at last they were in London. She was still in danger but would have her way, she still carried the photo in her handbag; if he recovered now …

  To snatch the bag and open it was easy, to escape, to thrust her away and take to his heels. There was only the invisible tie of her understanding. That understanding was also a challenge – to his integrity, to his beliefs. She’d no control over him but the greatest control of all.

  There was a policeman standing by the station entrance. Fleming moved towards him. She put a hand on Fleming’s arm, but he shook it off.

  ‘Where is the nearest police station?’ he said.

  The constable glanced at him curiously, at his intent, scholarly, deathly face.

  ‘Down Hower Street, sir. Second on your left.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Fleming moved off again.

  It was raining hard, a straight steady downpour, and the blobs of water made erratic patterns in the pools. The tyres of the buses hissed and splashed mud across the road. The rush hour was over, but there were plenty of people about.

  He waited patiently at a crossing like the other people going home to their villas and their httle warm suburban houses. He crossed and turned left and they came to Flower Street. Now, she thought, a hundred yards more.

  He went down it, with rain falling on his face, and as they drew nearer to the small police station – which seemed so unobtrusive among the business offices and the shops – she drew a pace closer, watching him with the last remains of her stamina. If there was a bond between them – a bond, a challenge, an ascendancy and a failure – then never must it be surer than now. Every normal instinct would fight to break it.

  At the very foot of the steps he hesitated and turned. Their eyes – which had met so often today in a conflict of wills – met for the last time. It was as if at this last moment the reality of what he had to do was suddenly clear to him in all its sordid and dismal reality. The ordinary man and the fanatic were there together. Self-preservation and self-redemption.

  He licked his lips but did not speak.

  A policeman came down the steps and passed them close.

  Fleming said: ‘Goodbye, Mrs Talbot.’

  She tried to speak but at first could not, and when she found her voice his back was to her mounting the steps.

  He hesitated on the threshold and then passed inside …

  Somehow she never doubted his actions now. There was no subterfuge or trick. In any case she hadn’t the strength or the relentlessness to climb the steps and see.

  She walked on a dozen yards and then all the street squeezed into a narrow blur of nausea and she staggered and almost fell. She found a low wall and put her face in her hands.

  Gone Lovell’s, gone Penmair, gone Fleming. I was a good man. I can take a dull boy and give him the glow of a new ambition. Moral values. All things were strong and rigid in him. To the last unbending. That was why Elizabeth had gone, why she had not. Good and evil, born in one man, grown in one man, ruined together …

  ‘All right, dearie?’ said an old woman passing by.

  She nodded and got up, The photo. That too had defeated him. She must take it. At once. At once.

  A taxi. There were no taxis here. She turned back immediately towards the main road. Get to Nick. The trial must be stopped.

  Perhaps from Flower Street police station they were already telephoning. Or would they take him for a harmless crank? Ask yourself: have you no weakness? he had said. The Achilles heel is somewhere. Mine is anger. Mine is anger.

  She reached the end of the street, but could not see a vacant taxi and the buses ground past unheeding. Instead she saw a newsboy on the opposite side of the street. The posters were up.

  ‘Trial Verdict.’ ‘Talbot Trial Verdict.’

  Oh, God, so I’ve failed!

  She walked across the road, splashing and splashed by buses dangerously near. She fumbled in her bag, found a shilling, took the paper.

  Her hands trembled so much that the wet paper tore. Then she saw it in the stop-press. ‘Jury after two hours’ retirement, found Nicolas James Talbot not guilty of murder of Elizabeth Rusman at Old Bailey today.’

  She dropped the paper in the mud and found some pennies change in her hand and walked off down the street.

  So it’s all been useless, she thought: my effort, my forty-eight hours of striving, of danger. And Fleming’s confession. Fleming’s life. She was a fool … crying for the moon. She loved your husband. What chance had I against a myth of her own creating?

  British justice. A triumph. A triumph for justice. Or was it a triumph for Tyler? Oh, Nick …

  She began to cry, weakly, and had to stop against a wall.

  She turned her back to the street and leaned against the wall, staring at the blitzed building and the rubble. No one noticed. The tears ran down her cheeks helplessly.

  Oh, Nick! So he was free anyhow. The benefit of the doubt. She was crying from fatigue and relief and relaxed nerves. Nick was free. And she was free. Would she sing again? Could she sing again? What would Ravogli say? Would he welcome her? Would people welcome her after all this? Could she sing? …

  Nick was free. Free already. Yes, she could sing. She fumbled in her bag, fingered the rolled photo, found a bit of a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. She moved away from the wall and began to walk. She didn’t know where she was walking, except that it was in the direction of the Old Bailey.

  It was still raining and her shoes and stockings were soaked. Nick was free. The benefit of the doubt.

  And suddenly she saw that all her efforts had not been in vain. For the prestige of the police was so high that ever after people would think that Nick had in fact only been give
n the benefit of the doubt. In law not guilty, but in fact not proven. Free as the next man, but left with a stigma which would cling and cling.

  Not that now. This photograph, Fleming’s confession, would change all of it. Nick would be truly and completely mind and heart free. ‘Next week-end we’ll go down to Joan’s together. From then on we’ll really start everything over afresh.’ Well, they could now. Starting afresh. Nothing in their way. The nightmare was over.

  Unconsciously her walk had quickened. Her sight was still blurred, and rain and tears made a sort of kaleidoscope of the moving traffic. People pushed against her, but she kept on her way.

  She knew she would keep on her way now until she found Nick, and then they would go on their way together.

  Down the long, shining distorted vista of the wet street she walked, heedlessly, tearfully, happily; through the pouring rain.

  Copyright

  First published in 1965 by Bodley Head

  This edition published 2013 by Bello

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  ISBN 978-1-4472-5539-0 EPUB

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  Copyright © Winston Graham, 1965

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  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

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