The Walking Stick

  Going, going now. Cars outside had choked the lane. Much revving of engines, people trying to manoeuvre, laughter, slammed doors. Ted here still, talking to Arabella, eyeing her as if he’d like to bed her; she eyeing him back, flirting as usual with anyone for the fun of it. Leigh came back from outside, looking at me again. The room a shambles. Cigarette smoke and ends, empty glasses, gloves someone had forgotten, burned out Roman candles in a jar, bottles on their sides not even dripping, a paper bag with Catherine wheels. Arabella’s young man. ‘Thanks, Deborah, lovely to have met you. The car’s outside and it’s just raining. Goodbye, Leigh.’ Only Ted now. And Leigh knew Ted well enough to get rid of Ted.

  Back to the door. We were alone.

  We knew it had been a great success. We knew everyone had enjoyed it. We stood a moment and smiled at each other, and then laughed. Then we moved and met, and kissed, still laughing. We fondled each other, breathing a sort of deep fundamental affection, of which desire was only a part. But because of the amalgam breadth and depth were added in some chemical synthesis of which perhaps even Douglas would have approved. In the wreckage of the party we made love as never before, moving the very wells of body and spirit where for a while we dwelt together and alone. It happened. I know it happened like that. Even though it never happened like that again.

  Deep in the breathing dark of the night he said: ‘You awake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I heard the rain. You?’

  ‘I been thinking.’

  ‘Nice thoughts?’

  ‘Of you – fabulous. But not all of you.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  He drew me against him. ‘No. Sleep.’

  We lay for a time, warm and deliciously drowsy. The wind was blowing and rain beat on the windows. All the more infinitely comfortable here. Twice I dozed, each time woke knowing him awake.

  ‘What is it, darling?’

  He moved his arm, stretched. ‘God, you were marvellous.’

  I lay with my face against his hand.

  After a while he said: ‘Lucky about last night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The rain kept off.’

  ‘Yes, it would have been a mess. What’s worrying you, Leigh?’

  ‘D’you want to know now?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s only five.’

  ‘Well, I shan’t sleep if you don’t.’

  Silence. He said: ‘I’ve been asked to ask you something and don’t dare.’

  ‘What?’ I giggled. ‘I can’t imagine anything you wouldn’t dare—’

  ‘No. This is serious. Somebody like Jack Foil. Not Jack Foil but somebody like him. They want information.’

  ‘What d’you mean? What information can I possibly give them?’

  ‘About Whittington’s.’

  Silence. Mind move around in its little cell, probing, cold cell, the heat has been turned off. ‘What sort of information?’

  ‘The sort of precautions that are taken at night.’

  ‘Against burglary?’

  ‘That kind of thing – yes.’

  ‘Somebody wants to break in?’

  ‘It’s being considered.’

  Silence. I lay very still.

  He said: ‘I don’t know how they’ve come to think of you. I suppose seeing you here and friendly with people . . .’

  ‘With Jack Foil.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  I breathed out on his fingers. ‘Well, just tell them no. Tell them to go and feed the swans.’

  ‘It’s not so easy as all that. There’s no one else they know who has an inside on Whittington’s.’

  ‘Good, I’m relieved. Tell them to try Sotheby’s instead.’

  ‘Whittington’s is the place they’ve got in mind, see. Of course . . . There’d be money in it for us.’

  Stare up into the dark. Almost sightless dark. Voice and body beside me. Can be heard and touched and deeply loved, but not the brain activating . . .

  ‘You’re not seriously suggesting I should do it?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve been awake so long about. Beating it out, saying to myself, I’ve no right to ask her, and then thinking, it’d be five hundred. That’d get us in the clear with Jack and give us the beginning of a nest egg.’

  ‘Oh, Leigh, stop it! Don’t be so utterly silly!’

  Silence. ‘I know it’s silly. I know it’s silly.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘It sounded plumb crazy to me at first, I promise you. But that’s what I’ve been mulling over. When you come to think of it, it seems easy money for so little.’

  ‘So little?’

  ‘Well, when you’ve told ’em what you know they may decide to do nothing at all. That’s up to them.’

  ‘And pay us the five hundred? Oh, ho!’

  ‘Maybe not . . . I don’t know. I don’t think I can reason straight tonight!’

  Silence for a while. ‘I reckon the place is insured, is it?’ he asked.

  ‘What, Whittington’s? Well, of course.’

  ‘I suppose if they were broken into, the publicity would be almost worth the upset.’

  Not the brain activating, not ever. Not even in the fusing fires of love.

  ‘When did you hear this? When was the proposition put to you?’

  ‘Last night.’

  ‘By Jack Foil?’

  ‘No, someone else. Someone bigger than him.’

  ‘At the party? Ted?’

  ‘No. One of the others. It’s not important. You’ll never guess.’

  ‘You should have kicked him out.’

  ‘That would have been very unhealthy.’

  Think this over. ‘Leigh, have you got mixed up with a gang or something? It sounds awfully melo—’

  ‘No. Not that. Only people I know.’

  ‘You know some strange people.’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘Darling, they don’t know me. So if they’re so silly as to think . . . well, that’s excusable. But for you to think the same . . .’

  ‘I said I didn’t dare ask you. But you pestered . . .’

  ‘Well, you can’t be surprised, surely, at the way I feel.’

  Long silence. I said: ‘Could you drink tea if I made it? Or Horlick’s? Or . . .’

  He said: ‘I’m sorry, Deb. Honest. I knew how you’d feel and yet . . .’

  ‘Yet what?’

  ‘It’s so difficult for the likes of me. You get a proposition like this – you chuck it out. I get a proposition like this – and it sticks. So it makes you that much better than me—’

  ‘Oh, rubbish—’

  ‘Well, it does. But I’ve told you – we come from different ways of living. My dad’s on the railways. Mum died early and he had kids to bring up. All my life I’ve seen him scraping. You haven’t a clue what that means. When you were short of money it meant you couldn’t afford a luxury. When we were short of money it meant we couldn’t afford a necessity. I was second eldest. I had to wear all my brother’s clothes, when they were already rubbed threadbare by him. Always the cheapest food to try to make it go further. Always making do with fifth rate. Of course the money came in every week. We made do. But every penny gobbled up. Never a penny spare. I swore when I grew up I’d not be like that. I swore it through my teeth every time we went short. So you see . . . money means different to me. It means too much, maybe. But that’s the way it is, Deborah. I can’t change now. I’m not saying I’m right – I’m only saying the difference.’

  I began to feel a bit sick. ‘And . . . you’d like me to give information to thieves who want to break into my firm, a firm that trusts me, for £500. Just £500. You want me to betray them for that? I’d rather give you £500. I’d rather give it you so that you can say no!’

  ‘Oh . . . forget I ever spoke!’ He turned half away, and sighed, blowing out a long deep breath.

  ‘I can’t, Leigh. I want to know.’

  He said: ‘This b
usiness of honesty . . . we’ve talked about it before. I don’t know. I’m not the Lord God. But who’s honest and who isn’t? I know you are, love; but how many others? Anyone knows – you can pick a hundred cases. Lord X. His great-grandfather was a dirty moneylender and bought property in Rotherhithe. His grandfather and his father were slum landlords, employing men to squeeze and bully their tenants while they lived in a great house in Sussex and owned a private yacht and what all. The property is half blitzed and half condemned, so the present Lord X sells it to a development company for £600,000. Is that honesty? By the laws of the land, yes. But how much honester is it than the Great Train Robbers? Who caused the most suffering? Look at half the Rolls-Royces in London today. Who owns ’em? Old men driving about, lechers, gluttons, sitting on fortunes. How did they come by their money?’

  I took his hand. ‘Of course that’s partly true. But you can always justify yourself in anything if you point your finger at other people. It’s really only yourself you can judge.’

  He took his hand away. ‘You sound like a parson.’

  ‘No, I sound like a prig. You don’t give me much choice, do you?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve told you, forget I ever spoke.’

  There was a silence that lasted into minutes. Somewhere a clock chimed the quarter hour.

  I said: ‘Forgive me, darling, for being like this. Don’t think I think myself better than anybody else. Of course I was brought up in lucky, comfortable surroundings – I grant you that. But that doesn’t make the difference – not really. It’s just that there – there are – are things I feel I can do, things I . . . just can’t see myself doing at all, under any circumstances. You’re a much more generous, open enthusiastic person than I am – kinder, more thoughtful, so often unselfish. You beat me in all these things. But when you ask me to – to cheat the firm I work for – it – it isn’t on. It’s as if someone asked me to cheat you!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’m sorry I asked.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  No word of it next morning. Up early, trying to make some order of the chaos before he woke. When he did he said he had a headache and would go out for the Sunday papers. He was away a long time and didn’t get in until a few minutes before lunch. We ate without much conversation.

  He was perfectly pleasant but cool. But what he’d asked was a lead weight in my stomach; that he said no more of it emphasized by omission.

  Rain all day, and we didn’t go out. There were enough bits of leftovers from lunch and yesterday to make a scrap supper. I went through my presents, a coffee pot from Douglas and Erica, perfume from Sarah and Arabella, stockings from the Foils, chrysanthemums from Philip Bartholomew; but the savour was lost. I wondered if I really was a prig. Or, even if I wasn’t, whether I seemed one to him. This same big gap in our mental outlook. However much we loved, sometimes we might have been of a different race. Did he make any effort to understand me? Did I make any to understand him? At the party, thoughts across my mind: I’ll die for him. But not lie for him – is that it? The big noble sacrifice, but not the small shabby one.

  A busy day on Monday, and I stayed late, deliberately, stayed on until the security guards came at seven. Home by bus. Nearly eight. He wasn’t in.

  When I was late we usually ate out, though I tried to avoid this by bringing food home with me, as it was so much less expensive. Tonight there was nothing in the house but eggs and bacon. I poured myself a gin and tonic and waited. He came in at nine-thirty, looking tired.

  ‘Hello, love. Been waiting? Sorry I couldn’t let you know. We ought to be on the telephone. I applied and then cancelled it because we couldn’t afford it.’

  Quite nice. Pleasant, cool, friendly, no resentment. But cool.

  ‘There’s only eggs and bacon, will that do? I didn’t have time to get anything.’

  ‘Well I’ve – eaten a bit. Couldn’t avoid it, really. You eat and I’ll just have a whisky or something.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any whisky. Two or three wouldn’t drink wine on Saturday.’

  ‘Blast. Oh, a cup of tea, then.’

  I made tea but didn’t cook myself anything. I buttered a couple of crackers and put cubes of Cheddar on them. He ate one and I the other. We talked a bit and then got ready for bed. He didn’t say where he’d been and I didn’t ask him.

  I asked him on the Tuesday evening how they’d taken my refusal.

  He said: ‘D’you mean . . . ?’ and blinked his heavy lids. ‘Oh, that . . .’ He put his knife and fork down and cut a piece of bread from the loaf on the table.

  We continued to eat for a bit. I said: ‘I suppose they didn’t like it.’

  ‘No, they didn’t. Not much.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They asked me to ask you to think again.’

  ‘And what did you say?’

  ‘What could I say?’

  ‘That you would?’

  ‘Yes.’ He looked at me steadily for a second. Queer look. Sombre. No warmth in it. ‘Yes, I said I’d ask you to think again.’

  ‘Why? Why make it worse?’

  He pushed his plate a couple of inches away from him with his thumbs. ‘I was trying not to make it worse. It isn’t easy just to say no.’

  ‘Why not? You owe them nothing.’

  He shrugged. I said: ‘Or do you mean you do owe them something? Is Jack Foil pressing you for his money? Is that it?’

  He got up, thrusting back his chair so that it screeched. ‘Jack’s a receiver, not a blackmailer. He’s my friend.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘Well, not so as you’d notice. They weren’t very friendly today.’

  ‘Well, can they do anything about it, if I refuse?’

  He shrugged again. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

  ‘But this – this is ridiculous. It’s another form of blackmail—’

  ‘Oh, it’s not as bad as that – they’re not thugs. Nobody’s going to be beaten up, if that’s what you’re thinking. But this is a tough world, Deborah, as soon as you get out of the nice little suburbs. It only means – I’m only saying that it’s not easy for me just to say no, just like that. I’ve got to think all round it. And so have you. So I’m playing for time. I said I’d let them know definite by next Sunday.’

  On the Wednesday there was a big miscellaneous sale at Whittington’s which really took off from the start. Every auction room knows this can happen. Six sales will be quite normal, good business, etc. The seventh seems to go from the first lot. People bid more quickly, they bid against each other at the right times, in the heat of it all prices rocket.

  This was the sale in which we’d put the single Meissen piece. It fetched 3900 guineas. Two eighteenth-century candlesticks reached 580 guineas. A young American paid £3700 for a tiny jade toucan with emerald eyes; interviewed afterwards, he said it was a Christmas present for his fiancée in Boston. Two or three of the less reputable dealers were there and were working in collusion, but private interference was so great that this time they couldn’t do much to control the prices. One of Shaw’s Prefaces, signed by the author, went for £l0,000. I looked at the catalogue. ‘Fabergé clock, the property of the Hon Mrs Anthony Justine . . . Chinese lacquer screen, the property of Lord Suppint . . . the property of the late Earl of Calshot.’ All the property of someone, and all fetching ever-increasing prices. Money flowed like milk. An elderly woman in a print frock paid £7000 for a Stubbs while scarcely bothering to lift her eyelids, and another, 600 guineas for a Sheraton breakfast table. Money, money. Of course I could see what Leigh meant. The hideous discrepancy. Leigh’s father was an ardent trade unionist battling dourly for his pay rise of 11/6 a week. Leigh looked at it differently. Leigh was in with an odd crowd and saw no particular harm in trying to persuade his mistress to sell a little information for a sum of money that represented 11/6 a week for sixteen years – and that tax free. You could see his point of view.

  But De
borah Dainton had her standards. It sounded prissy but it was true. How far did they go? It was very odd. With a little effort one could probably produce a perfectly rational case for doing what Leigh wanted. The moral issue, as he said, was very confused. Nobody would come to any harm. One of the vast insurance companies might pay away a little of their profits. Nothing more. But Deborah Dainton didn’t do it. Not if she wanted to go on living with herself, she didn’t.

  But what if she wanted to go on living with Leigh?

  He was a bit strange all that week. No one could say he was sulky or moody or short-tempered or unkind. But a sort of thin transparency had come between us. This was perhaps not deliberate on his part, but it was as if I had damaged our relationship. He bore no ill will but it had happened.

  It’s much easier to justify yourself if the opposite party gives you cause for complaint. If he’d snapped at me I should have felt better. So I began to snap at him.

  On the Thursday he said: ‘All right. I’ll go and tell them tonight that it’s no sale. That satisfy you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t sound as if it does.’

  ‘How can I?’ I said, nearly crying, ‘unless I feel you agree with me.’

  ‘How can I when I don’t?’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He stopped. ‘Not just in those words anyhow . . . I honestly don’t know what I agree with. One minute I think one thing, next minute the opposite. I know you, and I know it’s a hell of a thing to ask you to do. But it’s choosing between two things, isn’t it, and neither of ’em’s good. That’s the trouble.’

  I bit at my finger. ‘D’you want me to leave you?’

  ‘I thought we were going to get married.’

  ‘So did I. But this . . .’

  ‘You’d break it for this? You can’t care much.’

  ‘You ought to know how much I care.’

  He put his hands up to his face. ‘Why the hell did this ever come up? I’ll go now. Don’t wait supper. I’ll have it while I’m out.’