‘If you ask me anything more now I shall faint.’
‘Not with that warm tea inside you, you won’t . . . But anyway I think we may be getting to the end of our tether tonight. You’re sure you’ve not forgotten anything?’
I just shook my head.
He helped himself to more sugar. ‘The thing now is what we’re going to do about it.’
I shrugged.
He said: ‘Well, my love, it’s just not possible to leave it as it is.’
‘Why not?’ He didn’t answer. I said: ‘Why did you lie for me if you didn’t want to leave it as it is?’
‘I lied for you to save you temporarily, and to gain time. But it can’t be a permanent thing. You can’t live a normal life when you’re wanted by the police of three separate cities.’
‘I’m not wanted—’
‘Not as Marnie Elmer, not as Mrs Rutland. But you’re at the mercy of every wind that blows. Next time I might not be there. Next time you might not be so lucky.’
I shivered as if I’d caught cold. ‘Let me go to bed, please.’
‘There may be some way out of this, but if so I don’t know it. You just can’t live all your life as a wanted criminal.’
‘Let’s think of it in the morning.’
He put down his cup and looked at me. ‘I wonder if that’s one way you live, by saying when anything difficult turns up – let’s think of it in the morning. Or else you’ve cohabited with this idea so long that the danger doesn’t look so big. Well, it looks big to me. Not to mention the fact that I don’t think one ought to live with that sort of thing permanently in one’s personality.’
I watched him walk across the kitchen and back. His tie was round the side and his hair was sticking up. ‘Every time we went into a room together – think of it – meeting new people, keyed up for the chance accident; then denials, hasty lies, all the rest . . . until one day it doesn’t work and you’re caught . . .’
‘There’s nothing else for it,’ I said.
‘And apart from you – though you’re the chief problem – I carry not only the moral but the legal load, as accessory after the fact. I don’t want to go to jail, Marnie.’
‘Just let me go,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’
‘To jail, you mean?’
‘No, just let me leave you. I’ll quietly disappear. People will soon forget.’
‘I doubt it. Anyway, that really solves nothing.’ He came back. ‘Perhaps that was good advice of yours after all. We’ll see it clearer in the morning.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It wasn’t clearer in the morning, nor the day after that, nor the day after. We stopped talking about it, but I could see he hadn’t stopped thinking about it. But each day when he said nothing and did nothing I felt that much safer.
Well, what was there to do, honestly? He either gave me up to the police or he didn’t give me up. I didn’t believe he would ever really get to the point of betraying me – and every day he left it he was more implicated himself. Anyway, he was still in love with me, or whatever it was he did feel – that hadn’t changed – and the way he’d stuck up for me at the Newton-Smiths had been an eye-opener.
But I knew that for the next few weeks, while it hung in the balance, I depended an awful lot on his goodwill, and I was sorry I’d thrown so much of it away. I had to get on the right side of him again, or at any rate not give him cause for complaint. Of course if I’d been able to make up to him like other women it would have been easy.
Then one day, about a week later, he mentioned that Roman had rung him, and had I really decided to drop all that for good? I saw at once that if I could do it, this was the way to please him, so I said I’d try going for another few weeks. I didn’t want to start again, I said, because it always made me so miserable, but I’d do it because he wished me to.
So he agreed, and I went back to Roman, and I felt that Mark had accepted this as the only way out.
About this time one of the two old blind men – the less blind one, the one called Riley – took ill and was in bed for two weeks with his heart. This was the bad time of the year for Mrs Richards’s bronchitis too, and she couldn’t help much, so I went down every morning after Mark had left and did for the blind men. I’d sometimes spend three hours a day down there, what with one family and the other. It was queer, the way those two men worked together. Even with Mr Riley in bed he would talk to Mr Davis, telling him where things were, so that Mr Davis had a sort of eye after all. They were closer than twins.
Mr Davis had a wonderful Welsh voice, and listening to him answering Mr Riley’s instructions was like listening to someone singing responses in church. ‘Over a little more to your left, David,’ Mr Riley would say, and ‘Over a little more to my left, John,’ Mr Davis would answer. ‘Mind that stool by your left ankle, David.’ ‘The stool has been minded, John.’ By the end of the third week Mr Riley was up again and they were able to start their walks. I was afraid some motorist would run them down.
What with one thing and another I hardly had time to wonder whether there’d been any other outcome of that awful dinner party, whether Mark was any more on terms with the Holbrooks, or whether the Glastonbury Trust was persuading Rex to sell any of his shares; but I did notice Mark looking very preoccupied, and he was back later than usual. I could always tell if he was thinking something about me or when he was thinking about other things. In a way I was glad he had something else to worry about; he’d have less time for me on his conscience.
Then the second weekend he said he had to be away. He was spending Saturday night and part of Sunday with his mother at the house of some man whose name I can’t remember; he said he was a second cousin or something, and did I mind if I didn’t go because they had to beat out some family matter?
I said no, of course I didn’t mind. And of course I went to Terry’s.
Perhaps I asked for it, going like that, but I was getting pretty short of money.
When I got there I found only five of them besides myself, and it was a no-holds-barred evening, as Terry called it, meaning that the limit was off the raise. I did all right for a time and then I began to lose. It was easy to lose big money tonight, and I twice borrowed from Terry. Then I got in an awful hand with Alistair MacDonald, when everyone else dropped out early, and I had a full house. I thought from his discards he had threes and we bet against each other until he ‘saw’ me, and when he put his hand down he had four sevens.
I lost forty-seven pounds that night. This is the last time, I thought. Never again, this has finished me. When we broke off the Jewish film director came across and said:
‘D’you know, Mary, you’re the best woman poker player I have ever met.’
‘Are you being funny?’ I said.
‘No. There’s only one thing wrong.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It isn’t card sense you lack. It’s a sense of knowing when your luck is in. When I’m playing, I know. It is almost like being aware of a gentle breeze. If it blows for me I know that with reasonable cards I shall make money, with good cards I may make quite a lot of money. If it blows against me I have to cut my coat accordingly. I know that if I pick up a good hand, someone else, against the run of the distribution, will probably have a better.’
‘Well, anyway,’ said Terry, coming up, ‘she ought to be lucky in love.’
‘I’ll pay you next week, Terry,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll send you a cheque.’
‘Take it out of the housekeeping. That’s if Mark gives you any.’
‘He’s generous enough that way.’
‘Interesting evening at Rex’s, wasn’t it?’ Terry said, when the film director had gone to pick up his winnings.
‘Yes?’ I said cautiously.
‘Well, yes, I thought so anyway. All that business of a man out of your past. What did Mark really think?’
‘Darling,’ I said, ‘he wasn’t out of my past. I thought that was clear at the time.’
&
nbsp; ‘Well, yes and no, my dear. It was clear that you’d had a man in your past. The point that didn’t emerge was, had it been Strutt or Mark? They both seemed to be claiming the privilege.’
‘Really, Terry, how silly you are—’
‘And Strutt’s wife looking daggers. I’ve never seen such a diverting situation. And where did your first husband come in? I honestly think you should tell me all about it.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. I met Mark. We were just friends. When the job at Rutland’s came vacant he knew I was a widow and wrote to tell me.’
‘Night, Tommy! Night, John!’ Terry called, but when I was going to move for my coat he put those fingers of his on my arm. His eyes were that gum colour again. ‘Why d’you come here, Marnie?’ he said, quite roughly for him.
I looked down at his fingers but didn’t answer.
‘I know Mark wouldn’t want you to come. Things are pretty taut between us just now. Shall I tell you why you come? It’s because you’re much more like me than like Mark. You breathe freely here. You’re not restricted by trying to behave as you think he wants you to behave. There’s no “naval discipline”. You’re not put on a charge for whispering when the admiral goes past. Why pretend to yourself? Snap out of it, my dear.’
The others had all gone, all except the MacDonalds who were still in the bedroom. I was surprised at the feeling in Terry’s voice; there was no shrug-off about this.
He said: ‘I know you’re bogus, my dear. What sort and how much I haven’t troubled to find out, even if I could. Why should I? It doesn’t worry me what you’ve been and what you’ve done. You could have poisoned your first husband for all I care. In fact, to me it would make you more interesting. Get that in your head.’
He pulled me towards him before I could stop him; but if I’d wanted to I could have stopped him kissing me. But I let him. Perhaps I saw it as advance interest on the money I’d had to borrow. But chiefly I wanted to know if I’d changed at all. An awful lot had happened to me in the last few months, and I wondered if it made any difference to the way I felt about him. Or about men generally.
It hadn’t. I got away.
He was smiling now. ‘Don’t come here again if you don’t want to; but don’t stay away just because Mark tells you. Understand, there’s no right or wrong so far as I’m concerned; there’s only survival. You’ve survived. That’s what I like about you.’
Since I went back to Roman, I had been trying to play fair with him. Because of me depending on Mark’s goodwill to do nothing about Mr Strutt etc. I had to make some effort. I felt Roman would let Mark know if I did nothing to help. It was like being a schoolgirl who’d had one bad report and couldn’t afford another until after her birthday.
So we had a sort of honeymoon two weeks, with me trying to be helpful and him not trying to probe too hard. I even went so far as to tell him I’d once stolen money and it worried me I couldn’t pay it back, but he didn’t seem very excited or impressed by that.
Somehow, though, as time went on, even though he didn’t probe, I began to talk. More things began to leak out, not only in my talk but in my memory. I remembered odd bits of events that didn’t seem to link together. I remembered looking out of the kitchen window at Sangerford at the rain splashing down the drainpipe; there was a break in the drainpipe and the water gurgled and splashed against the sill. The taste of brandy-snaps was in my mouth, so I suppose I must have been chewing them. And the heavy jangle of trucks was in my ears (we overlooked a railway siding but it wasn’t used more than twice a day). There was a man in the kitchen talking to Mother and Mother was at her most frigid. The man was trying to persuade her to do something, to sign something that she didn’t want to, and Mam kept saying: ‘Part with her? Not if it’s the last thing I do!’ I could hear her voice so clearly, but I couldn’t remember who or what she was being asked to part with.
And another time there was somebody fighting; I don’t think I was actually in it, but I remembered the heavy clump of fists and the grunting of men’s breath. And there was a woman of about forty I remembered very clearly now. She was probably a nurse from what I could recollect of her clothes, but I was scared of her. She’d got braided fair hair that had lost its colour, and a tight upper lip, and she always smelled of stale starch.
One day when things had been dragging rather, Dr Roman said: ‘Let’s see, have you one parent alive or both?’
I stopped then. ‘What d’you mean? You know they’ve been dead seventeen years, both of them.’
‘I beg your pardon.’
‘You’re thinking of your next patient, not me.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I was thinking of you.’
‘So you don’t believe anything I’ve told you at all?’
‘Yes, I believe a great deal . . .’ He paused.
‘Well, go on!’
‘No, you go on, Mrs Rutland.’
‘I’ve told you over and over! Dad died when I was six. I remember he used to carry me round in his arms. No one’s ever carried me round since. Coh! I wish I was back at that age now, and none of this palaver. Then maybe you could carry me around instead of leaving me floundering on this couch like a landed seal!’
‘You’d like that?’
‘I might like it if I really was six and if I knew you better. I don’t know a thing about you, while all the time you’re prying into my life. You just sit there behind me like a – like a father who’s no good. What good are you, to me or to anyone?’
‘Why was your father no good?’
‘I didn’t say that! I said you were no good. You never advise me! You never tell me anything. You never suggest what I ought to do.’
‘As a real father should?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘But yours did not?’
‘Who said not? Now you’re putting words in my mouth! When he died I had a picture book with an elephant on and I didn’t say anything but just put my head down on the book and let the tears run on to the elephant. It was a cheap book because there was a sun behind the elephant and my tears made the colour run until it looked as if I’d been crying blood.’
‘Who told you, Margaret?’
‘Lucy Nye. Mother wasn’t there and Lucy told me. I’d been playing with the kitten next door – there was an old wash-tub in the garden and a broken pram – and she called me in and I didn’t want to come and I sulked and at first she didn’t tell me why she called me in and I sat and read the book.’
Tears were running down my face and I grabbed my bag and took out a handkerchief. This was the second time now I’d cried at these sessions – really, I mean, not for effect. I felt such a fool crying there because I’d remembered something I’d forgotten and because I felt again the twist of the grief inside me, remembering that day and how I knew I’d never have complete protection or shelter or love again.
Mark had invited this Mr Westerman to dinner. Mark said he was a very old friend of his father’s, and I rather got the idea that he had something to do with the underground squabble that was going on around Rutland’s. He was a lean man of about sixty with a sharp nose and grey hair slicked back. I suppose I ought to have guessed something by the way he buttoned his jacket.
After dinner Mark said: ‘I’ve some business to talk over with Humphry, so I’m going to take him into the study for a time. You’ll be all right on your own, Marnie?’
I said I would, and after powdering my nose I helped Mrs Leonard to clear up. As I passed the study I could hear the murmur of voices, Waterman’s booming over the top of Mark’s.
When I dried the dishes for Mrs Leonard she said: ‘The first Mrs Rutland was awfully nice – a real sweetie – but she never did help like you do and it makes a difference, don’t it, just that little bit extra. She was one on her own as you might say. Often you would talk to her and all the time she was thinking of something else, you could see. Mr Rutland used to laugh at her – really laugh. You don’t often hear him like that now. They used to laugh togeth
er. You’d hear them sometimes in the mornings when I was getting the breakfast. It was lovely . . . But by midday every day she was deep in it. Books on the table in the study piled half-way to the ceiling. Then she’d be away three or four days – didn’t care how she looked – he used to join her at the weekends. They used to dig up things called barrows, or some such. Funny what interests some folks have.’
I put away the wine glasses. Funny? I wondered what sort of companionship Mark had expected from me. I mean, we laughed sometimes, and of course there was the day-to-day business of living in the same house. But there hadn’t been any real companionship, not the sort I suppose there might have been. Often he made some move and then froze off short.
Mrs Leonard said: ‘Was the lamb really all right?’
‘Yes. Lovely.’
‘I said to Mr Rogers we don’t want anything but the best tonight. It’s important, because we’ve got a bigwig coming, and one that’ll be on your trail fast enough if you sell us mutton dressed as lamb.’ Mrs Leonard tittered at her own wit.
‘D’you mean Mr Westerman?’
‘Well yes. Chief Constable and all that. I mean to say.’
‘Chief . . . Mr Westerman is the Chief Constable? Of – of Hertfordshire?’
‘That’s right. I think he retired last year, didn’t he? I ain’t sure, but I think he did. But once one of those always one of those, I say. Not but what I haven’t always been law-abiding myself. And what with that great telly aerial you have to put up, you just have to pay your licence these days.’
She went on talking. I went on drying knives and forks. Mark and this Humphry Westerman were in the study.
I felt as if someone had clamped an iron band round the top of my head and was slowly tightening it. I went on drying the things until they were all finished. I looked at the clock and saw that they had been in the study now for fifteen minutes. I thought, I can go in and ask them if they want more coffee, but if I do they’ll stop talking and wait for me to leave. And if I don’t leave, if I won’t take any of the hints, it will only delay whatever they’re discussing until another time.