The Walking Stick

  ‘We don’t know yet.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well . . . whether they’ll be caught.’

  Pebbles glinting like prisms, he looked at the German girls. ‘I doubt if they will be. People who plan such a clever robbery . . .’

  My food came. I forced myself to begin.

  He said: ‘You called to see me last night.’

  ‘Yes . . . Well, no. Doreen. I called to see Doreen.’

  ‘She said you were worried about something.’

  ‘Was I? I don’t think so.’

  ‘She said you looked worried.’

  ‘Oh . . . I expect it was just – late nights and that sort of thing.’

  ‘That sort of thing . . . Yes. You were asking her, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Asking her questions. I thought perhaps you were worried.’

  ‘Why should I be?’

  ‘Doreen said you were asking about how long we had known your sister.’

  ‘Yes . . . Well, we just talked. We talked about a lot of things. That was just one of them.’

  A long silence between us. His food came. The German girls were laughing, sharing a personal joke.

  I said: ‘Leigh was out. I felt lonely. I thought I’d call. Doreen seemed pleased.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes, she’s a friendly girl.’ He piled floury potatoes on his fork and put them in his mouth. ‘She said you were also asking about Leigh.’

  ‘Was I? We talked about him. It’s natural, isn’t it?’

  He smiled. ‘German. Such an ugly language. And yet it sounds pretty, coming out of pretty mouths.’

  ‘Please?’ said the blonde girl.

  ‘I beg pardon. I was thinking aloud.’ To me he said: ‘You were – first class the other night. Leigh’s told me. Ted’s told me. It’s just what I thought – what I expected. The elite person always stands up to test.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I passed him the tomato sauce.

  ‘But,’ he said, ‘these things have an aftermath, a backwash. The higher strung you are, the worse it is. Don’t let it get – into your system.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He eased his stomach against the bleached pine table-top. ‘All is going very nicely now. Your part is over. My part – the hardest part, in some ways – is just beginning. But don’t worry. All will be well. Ask no questions. It’s better really.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Just now we’ve got to be careful, but later on – who knows – we might plan a little holiday together, just the four of us. I know Doreen has quite a liking for you – as I have a liking, you know that. Have you ever been to Majorca?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We might go there together, this summer, the four of us. I know a little place. It would be rather jolly.’

  I hadn’t finished the sole but I put my knife and fork together. I watched him cut a slice of sausage.

  He said: ‘But just for the present be careful. Better not to call. It might be remarked, who knows? Later on – we can celebrate, just you and Leigh and Doreen and me. Ted if he wants, but Ted is rather – a rough diamond, as the saying is. He doesn’t quite blend. You know what I mean.’

  ‘I must go,’ I said.

  ‘So soon. I was hoping . . .’

  ‘What?’

  He smiled with blind eyes. ‘That you’d stay. D’you know, Miss Dainton, I can’t get used to calling you Deborah. I was going to tell you – oh, but it sounds boastful – I was going to say that when a windfall like this comes in I always give some of it away. Usually to waifs and strays. Or the physically handicapped. The Purley Heritage for thalidomide babies – that sort of thing. It helps.’

  ‘What?’ I said bluntly. ‘How does it help?’

  ‘It helps to be able to. D’you know that Toc H saying – “The rent we pay for our room on earth.” That’s how I feel when a windfall comes in.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ I said.

  I couldn’t ring again during the afternoon. Anyway the probabilities were that Sarah would have another spell of duty until five or six and then have the evening off. This was a pattern which had occurred before.

  I might even go round to see her after work. Leigh had said he would not be back early tonight. I think in the euphoria of success he was going to call and see his parents, but this was only speculation.

  Over the length of the afternoon the tension built up in me so I couldn’t concentrate on anything at all. Numbers and pottery marks blurred, voices reached me from a distance. Twice Mary Fent asked me if I was ill. She said she felt like a touch of flu herself.

  Every day at Whittington’s nowadays became endless. This was Friday. On Wednesday none of it had yet begun. Only my adventure, my aberration perhaps, had begun months before.

  About five, I saw Inspector Malcolm talking to Smith-Williams. They were going through a list together. Missing jewellery or the suspects on the staff?

  I left as it was going dark. When it came to the point I couldn’t face the possibility of a fruitless journey to Ennismore Gardens. Wait at a telephone booth. Many people still in the streets, the last of the office people and senior staff from the shops, drifting away to trains and movies and home and TV and books and bed. The commonplace life, the ordinary human life which somewhere on the way I had lost.

  In. Dial. ‘Sarah?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Oh.’ Now it had come I had lost the words.

  ‘Deborah? Sorry I was out last night. Anything important?’

  ‘Well . . . I just wanted to ask you something.’

  ‘Say on. But, ducky, how are you? Did the robbery upset you?’

  ‘I’m all right—’

  ‘Odd we should be talking about that sort of thing when you came to dinner—’

  ‘Sarah, this is just a homely little personal thing; but d’you remember when Leigh and I met?’

  ‘Do I not! When I threw that party I didn’t realize I was laying a gunpowder trail!’

  ‘Before then – before that night – did you know Leigh well?’

  ‘No, I’d met him twice. Both times with David Hambro.’

  ‘So did he know you had a sister?’

  ‘He probably knew I had two. David could have told him even if I didn’t. So what?’

  ‘What I’m trying to find out is whether he knew that one of your sisters was medical and the other wasn’t.’

  ‘What on earth can you want to know that for at this stage? He soon did know when he met you!’

  ‘But did he know before he met me? Try to think.’

  Silence at the other end. Suddenly I didn’t want her to answer, wanted to close my ears and my eyes, to hang up the receiver and leave the box and go home.

  ‘He probably did. I think at David’s he asked me about my family. It’s not an unnatural thing to discuss.’

  ‘Did he—’ I stopped, choking, not able to go on.

  ‘What is it, darling? Are you upset? I can’t tell whether you’re upset or—’

  ‘I’m laughing. Sorry. Sarah, it’s just a silly joke.’ I snorted and held my throat. ‘Just one other thing. D’you remember that apple green Rockingham plate you and Arabella clubbed together and bought me for my birthday – the birthday before last?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Have you bust it?’

  ‘No. Where did you buy it?’

  ‘That’s our business!’

  ‘No, seriously, Sarah. I must know.’

  ‘From that shop in Old Brompton Road.’

  ‘Sefton Antiques?’

  ‘Yes. That friend of Leigh’s who was at your firework party. Foil.’

  ‘I suppose he asked you in to see his indoor plants?’

  ‘Not then. Later.’

  ‘How much later?’

  ‘Oh, dear, I don’t know. It was Christmastime. Not this Christmas. The one before.’

  ‘Thank you, darling, that was pretty much what I wanted to know.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

 
I was feeling queer, so this time it was lucky the taxi driver would take me.

  Jog along. Lean back in the dark impersonal womb of the cab hidden from the peering lights. Still some mistake? Still only a hunch? Pray that it was. Pray for error. Pray for shame at a shameful suspicion. Pray that Leigh perhaps would be home after all, to talk, to comfort, to reassure. To lie?

  The small middle window slid down. ‘Which way from ’ere?’

  ‘Turn left. It’s off Rotherhithe Street.’

  So again into the quieter places, the warehouses, the parking lots, the storage sheds. Like last night. Like all the nights. Again no car outside. I paid the taxi driver, went in.

  Lights. Fires. I slumped in a chair in the kitchen, put a damp tea towel to my head. For a time I seemed to lose awareness of my own identity. Minutes passed. Then I got up, took off my coat, went back into the studio. It was too late to feed the swans.

  Leigh’s desk. The bottom drawer only, I remembered from dusting, was locked. The letter of his I had seen last night at Jack Foil’s showed that correspondence passed between them. It might be innocent, but in any case Leigh by nature was less careful than Jack and might have failed to burn . . .

  I sat and stared at the desk. To do this would be to take the step that was not retractable. To make a move of enmity between us that was not retractable. No going back. Better to wait until Leigh came and have it out with him direct. But how did you have it out with a man you loved but did not trust? Love destroyed judgement, suspicion destroyed love.

  Wait a bit. Eat something. I’d only swallowed a few mouthfuls at lunchtime. I went into the kitchen and opened the tiny fridge; there was nothing that attracted. Back in the studio. Look through tonight’s evening paper. Already the sensation of yesterday was forgotten. Whittington’s had no more claim on the attention than the half hundred other places which had been robbed in the course of the last year. It was not even mentioned. The press were concerned with a new parking scheme, a baronet’s divorce, a story of rape in a respectable suburb.

  I threw the paper on the floor, picked up a magazine, but that soon followed it. Time was passing. Come soon, Leigh, come soon.

  I went to the desk. It was a plain oak desk with three drawers, six cubbyholes above, a flap that let down, one brass support broken. It had probably been new from Waring & Gillow or somewhere about 1925. Ink stains and paint stains, papers overflowing. Suddenly I began. Quite suddenly I began. I began. I started at the top left-hand cubbyhole and began methodically to search . . .

  For twenty minutes I searched, until the sweat came out on my forehead, and my hands were trembling. Absolutely nothing. But the bottom drawer was still locked. I had always noticed it while dusting, while hardly remarking – certainly not resenting – the fact. I had been through the cubbyholes and the other two drawers. Absolutely nothing.

  I went into the kitchen and put on the kettle for coffee and came back with an iron rod Leigh had found on the beach one day. It had a beaten end like a screwdriver, and Leigh used it for opening cases. It was now used to open a drawer.

  Not nicely done. John Irons would have hated the mess. I split the wood all round the lock, bits of it flaking onto the linoleum, before the lock gave way. I felt as if I were destroying some part of Leigh, and some part of myself.

  . . . Books, letters, receipts. Drawer only half full. Catalogue from King Charles Shop, Carnaby Street; travel folder of Southern Spain; manual of birth control; photo of his mother; passport (he’d be twenty-three in April); school reports in a rubber band; new paperback of The Perfumed Garden; copy of the will of Annie Hartley, deceased; tenancy agreement for the studio.

  Letters. One from his mother dated three weeks ago. ‘Dear Leigh, I don’t understand why you never came near us once all through Christmas, the present was nice, and thank you for it but it isn’t the same as you just even calling in for an hour or two. Your Dad . . .’

  Lorne’s handwriting. Four letters. But the latest was dated last May. ‘Dear Leigh, Thanks for yours. Its no good writing like that because Im telling you its all over between us. As weve agreed all along havent we. And its no manner of good raking up Stevies name for he never ment a thing to me as you well know. You still havent sent my manicur set which was a present from a friend when I left Cork so you might send it please. And theres that book of wildfowers with those bits pressed in it we collected that day in Suffolk you could send that too. Im staying here the summer as summer is the busy season. Then maybe its back to Ireland. Ive paid two of the bills you sent on but dont think I should pay the groceries. Lorne.’

  Letter in a man’s hand – asking for the last payment on Triumph Spitfire.

  Tin box. Unlocked. In it money. About twenty pounds in notes; some insurance stamps; foreign stamps cut off envelopes. Four or five brief scrawls on exercise book paper. One, which had had something pinned to it, was folded over. It was just a few lines of writing, signed J.F. It said: ‘This is the final from the Vosper thing. You did well to get on to it so quick, but you’ve got to realize that the boys in Switzerland did the work so they take the big cut. J.F.’

  There was another one which still had a paper clip attached. The clip had gone rusty with the damp air, and the money enclosed had long since been used. This said: ‘If you can make it all right with her take her to Spain. Sunshine is very useful for softening ladies up. I’ll foot the bill. J.F.’

  The water had boiled away. The kitchen was full of steam. I switched off the electricity and tried to vomit in the sink. Nothing came up.

  I went into the tiny bedroom and collapsed on the bed. I lay diagonally across it, head without pillows, stretching my stomach.

  I was walking hand in hand with Leigh across the soft green slopes toward Beachy Head. It waved like a sea, and in the distance were yellow cushions that seemed sometimes to be cushions and sometimes to be toadstools. Leigh’s hand was clammy, and I came to understand that Leigh also was a part of the decay of the world. Nothing grew but what grew in cellars and breathed poison and foul air. Corruption, death and decay. The contamination of disease that I had suffered at the age of eleven was nothing to the contamination that my mind and soul suffered now. The room was beginning slowly to go round. Every second I stared at the yellow toadstools the spinning world went faster.

  I rolled off the bed and fell to the floor, body on the carpet, knee bruised, face on the cold linoleum.

  Time passed. I lay very still. If I made no move perhaps it would go away. Yet nothing could take away the fetid and sticky emanation of the truth.

  The distant clock chimed a half hour. Raise head. Get slowly to feet. Weak, frail, cold.

  On top of the wardrobe were the two suitcases in which I had brought most of my things to this place.

  Shakily I stretched up, lifted one down, opened it. Open wardrobe. Underclothes, stockings, skirts, hardly know where to begin. Shoes, frocks, summer coats; as always, more grew even in a few months than had ever been brought by case. And there was the porcelain in the next room. None of it broken yet, even after two moves. ‘Dear Leigh, please send me the Coalport plate painted with flowers by William Cook. I have paid the two bills I owe but not the groceries . . .’

  Hands still shaking like malaria. I folded three summer frocks, laid them in; two skirts, a couple of blouses. Ten minutes to pack the case. That done, I clicked the catches, lifted it off the bed, looked up at the other case, could not somehow begin on the next.

  Couldn’t act. Couldn’t rest. Back into the studio. A ship was going past the windows, gaily lighted. I opened the French windows and stood out on the balcony to watch the lighted ship disappear round the bend of the river. It was like the last of my hope and my love.

  Sheltered here, not cold. I thought of the firework party, when all had gone so well. I thought of New Year’s Eve and the Very lights and the echoing sirens, echoing in the distance. I thought and thought, and there was nothing my mind could touch that wasn’t contaminated.

  I thought more c
learly of all the time since last April: the early meetings, the separation, the coming together, the portrait, the holiday, the break with my family, the suggestion first put forward in November and the gradual procession of events since. I thought of learning to skate and learning to dance and learning to drive. I thought of learning to love.

  When I got back in the studio I was shivering. I put on heavy winter coat and scarf against a cold that was not the winter cold. Yet all this time my mind was exploring the shock, even while my body still cringed from it. It was like someone badly wounded whose mind moves ever more rationally and clearly, even while death is creeping up toward it.

  One last thing. One last point to clear up. I went out, leaving all the lights on, walked to the nearest telephone box, opposite the Brunel. I looked up a Temple Bar number. Still no threepenny bits. A sixpence went in.

  ‘Safeguard headquarters.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I wonder if you could help me. I wanted to know how Mr Evans was. Whether he was back on duty.’

  The man’s voice said: ‘I’m sorry, we don’t answer personal calls.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I understood he’d been very ill. It’s his niece speaking. He didn’t tell me he’d been ill at all.’

  A pause. ‘Hold the line, please.’

  I could hear faint whispering. After a minute or so the same voice said: ‘What name was it?’

  ‘Evans.’ I gave an apologetic laugh. ‘Sometimes people call him “Baker” Evans, I think.’

  ‘What’s your name, caller?’

  ‘Clara Evans.’

  Pause. ‘I’m sorry. There’s no one of that name employed in our organization.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Hold the line, please.’

  Another pause, and then a new voice came on. ‘Miss – er – what is the name? Miss Evans? Where are you calling from?’

  ‘A call box. I only rang to inquire about my uncle, if he was better.’

  ‘Your uncle being employed by our organization?’

  ‘Yes. One of the security guards.’

  ‘Would you give me your full name and address, please.’

  ‘Clara Evans of – of 121 Sutton Street, Hampstead.’