‘And Mrs Rutland?’
‘Mrs Mark Rutland? I always thought she was a bit queer. Brainy type. Not pretty. Attractive, but made nothing of herself. Used to dig up old stones – arche – what do you call it. They say she was writing a book when she died.’
I combed my hair and turned it under at the ends with my fingers. ‘Does Mark ever do like Terry?’
‘What d’you mean, do like him?’
‘Take the staff out – make passes at them.’
Dawn laughed. ‘Not Mark. Not as far as I know. Why, has there been a pull on your line?’
I noticed as the weeks went by that nobody checked the weekly takings on the retail side against the size of the cheque drawn for the wages each Thursday. Of course, it all had to balance up in the books; but if the wages to be paid were £1,200, and the weekly retail takings were £300 no one except the cashier had the responsibility of taking 3 from 12. If she took 3 from 12 and made the answer 11, so that the cheque to be drawn was £1,100, no one would know until at least the following Monday.
Late in June Mark Rutland sprained his ankle playing squash, so nothing was seen of him at the works for two weeks. Terry Holbrook had hardly spoken to me since the night of the dance, but he’d looked at me quite a bit when he thought I wasn’t noticing. He made me more uncomfortable than any man I remember.
One day I had to go in to him, and he was standing by the window thumbing over a copy of the Tatler. After I’d done what I came to do he said: ‘And how is my donna intacta?’
I said: ‘I’m sorry I don’t know what that means.’
‘Can’t you guess, my dear?’
‘I can guess.’
‘Well, I’m sure you’re on the right track.’
‘I didn’t have that sort of education.’
‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s exactly what I suspected.’
He’d turned my meaning round. ‘I can’t stop you thinking what you like. I’m sorry it bothers you.’ I turned to go.
He put his hand on me. I don’t know why but he always managed to find the place where your sleeve ended and your arm began. ‘Must we fight?’
‘No . . . I don’t want to.’
‘I mean to say, dear, most women don’t consider it an insult to be thought madly attractive. Why do you?’
‘I don’t.’
He looked at me sidelong but rather seriously, as if he’d been considering it.
‘I’m a persistent fellow. Water weareth away stone.’
‘Not in one lifetime.’
Looking back, I suppose that sort of answer wasn’t smart, but I felt I had to say something because he was seeing too much, seeing too deeply into what I was, and I wanted to cover up.
He let me go then. He said: ‘Life’s awfully short, Mary, and seven-eighths of it is spent in work and sleep. You should try to enjoy the other twelve per cent. Give out, let your hair down, spread yourself, dear. Give some man a run. It’s all right while it lasts, but it doesn’t last long, nothing lasts. One should try to make hay, even at Rutland’s . . . Do I bore you? That’s a great mistake. I can’t believe you were born to be an accountant. It’s contrary to nature.’
That same week the holiday season was beginning, and in a small firm like Rutland’s people had to double for each other at times. Mr Christopher Holbrook’s secretary was one of the first to go and Mr Ward told me to do her work in the mornings. The first morning, I went into his office before he came, opened his post and put it out on his desk ready for him to read. About half an hour after he came he rang the bell and I went in with a pencil and pad.
‘Oh, Mrs Taylor, did you open these letters?’
‘Yes, Mr Holbrook.’
‘Did you not notice that two of them were marked “Personal”?’
‘I believe I did see it on one envelope.’
He looked through me. There was no electric fire on this morning. ‘It was on two envelopes.’ I saw he had fished them out of the waste paper basket. ‘It’s not customary in this firm, Mrs Taylor, for a secretary to open such letters – nor is it in any firm I know.’
‘I’m very sorry. I hardly thought anything of it.’
‘Well, remember it in future, will you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
I went out, duly torn apart. I tried to recollect what the letters had said. The first, if I remembered rightly, was from a firm of stockbrokers in the city. It said they had purchased on Mr Christopher Holbrook’s behalf the two hundred and fifty shares held by Mrs E. E. Thomas in John Rutland & Co. Ltd. They said they had been successful in obtaining them for only three shillings above the latest market quotation. And they remained his faithfully.
The second was from a firm called Jackson & Johnson Solicitors & Commissioners for Oaths, and it was a personal letter from one of the partners telling Mr Holbrook that they had been making further inquiries following Mr Terence Holbrook’s visit of last Monday and indications were that the Glastonbury Investment Trust was interested. ‘However,’ the letter went on, ‘it is perfectly clear that with so few of your shares in public hands, you cannot be coerced into taking any steps that would be out of accord with the wishes of your present board. Let me know what your feelings are, either as a board or, if you differ from the rest, as an individual. In the latter event I am sure that a private meeting with Mr Malcolm Leicester can be arranged.’
One letter seemed to tie in with the other. If he hadn’t made a fuss about me opening them I should have forgotten them.
The whole of June was hot, but the third week was hottest of all. On this Thursday afternoon Mr Ward sent for me and said: ‘Can you drive a car, Mrs Taylor?’
‘No.’ I could, but I had no licence in that name.
‘A pity that isn’t among your many virtues. I hoped you could have helped us.’
‘What is it?’
He unhitched his spectacles and looked at them as if he didn’t like them. ‘It’s this printing job for the Livery Company. It’s promised for Wednesday next and I’m not certain as to the layout. In the ordinary way I should change it as I thought fit, but it is one that Mr Rutland has taken on personally, and of course it involves the dinner they’re giving to the Queen Mother, so we have to have it right. I’ve been speaking to Mr Rutland about it.’
‘Do you mean he wants to see it?’
‘Yes. And of course, as you may have observed, he’s still laid up.’
‘I could take a taxi,’ I said.
He looked at me down his long thin sarcastic nose, and you could see him working out what it would cost. ‘Yes, I suppose you could. He’s at his house at Little Gaddesden. If Thornton was not away I’d send him . . .’
I thought it would be cooler out, but it wasn’t. The day had been clouding up and the atmosphere was as heavy as one of Lucy Nye’s yeast cakes. The clouds were over London and looked as if someone had exploded the H-bomb. It took the taxi the best part of forty-five minutes, and the house was on the edge of a golf course, not big but smart-looking with tall chimneys and long windows and lots of grass all round to give it prestige.
A middle-aged woman in a striped apron let me in. He was in a room with open french windows that looked over one of the lawns towards some pine trees and the golf course. One of his legs was up on the sofa and he was watching a race on TV.
He smiled and said: ‘How are you? Sorry to bring you over like this. Do sit down.’
I smiled back and gave him the programme. ‘I expect you know what Mr Ward wanted to know. Is your ankle better, Mr Rutland?’
‘It’s doing fine. Now let’s see.’ His thick wad of black hair was as untidy as ever, but in an open-neck shirt and old flannel trousers he looked less pale than in a city suit. It was funny that he looked less delicate when he ought to have looked more.
While he turned over the programme I looked at the TV.
‘Yes, Ward was right. I don’t like this a bit.’ He took a pen up off the table. ‘Hot, isn’t it. Did you come by taxi?’
‘By hire car. Yes. He’s calling back in fifteen minutes.’
‘Switch that thing off if it annoys you.’
‘No . . . it’s nearly over. It’s Kempton Park, isn’t it.’
He began to write on the margin of the programme. ‘Are you interested in racing?’
‘I love it.’
He looked up as if he’d caught something different in my voice. ‘D’you often go?’
‘Not often. When I can.’
‘Going to race meetings seems the sort of thing one does in company or not at all. But perhaps you do have company?’
‘Not now,’ I said, remembering in time that I was a widow.
‘Your husband was fond of it?’
‘Yes.’
He went on tinkering with the programme. There was a rumble of thunder. It began as nothing but came nearer, bumping downstairs like a garden roller. I got up and switched off the TV just before the race finished.
He looked up when I didn’t sit down again. ‘This will probably take me another five minutes. If you like roses go out in the garden. They’ve been very early this year, but there’s a bed of Speke’s Yellow round the corner.’
‘I think it’s going to rain.’
He nodded. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’
The room really was dark now. The sky outside was a ghastly coppery yellow and the leaves of a tree by the window glistened like old spoons. There was a flicker of lightning that made me jump about nine inches, and I did a graceful retreat towards the back of the room.
Old Lucy Nye. You couldn’t get away from her, you really couldn’t. ‘Cover the mirrors, dear,’ she’d say. ‘If you see the lightning in ’em you’ll see the Devil peering out at you. ’Tis true. ’Tis God’s way of showing you Hell. Cover them knives; let the lightning get in ’em and it’ll get in you next time you pick ’em up. I seen folk struck by lightning, split like a tree. I seen a man with his clothes cut in ribs, his face black and purple, his poor burned hands twisted up like he was boxing. He was still alive when I got there even though ’is eyes and face had gone . . .’ You couldn’t beat her at that sort of X-certificate stuff.
It was nearly too dark to see at the back of the room, all shadows – and the furniture was pretty depressing anyhow. There were shelves with old cups and figures and vases on them, some of the vases chipped and broken, and some were so smothered in old dry mud or clay that you wanted to get at them with a scrubbing brush. Just in front of the shelves was a grand piano as big as two coffins, and on the piano was a photograph of a young woman standing at the entrance to what might have been a bit of Stonehenge. Dawn had been quite right; she wasn’t pretty; her face was too long; but she’d got nice hair and her eyes were big and bright.
A flash of lightning: the thunder that followed was near and nasty and noisy. ‘We’re all corrupt,’ Lucy’d say, holding me on her knee as if I was going to slip down a nick somewhere. ‘We’re corrupt an’ the worm’ll eat us. But better be eaten than burned. See that one, ah, ah, nearly got us! Come just inside the window, it did, I seen the tongue flickering. Just didn’t reach us. The Devil’s out tonight all right, lookin’ for ’is own. Keep your ’ead covered, dear, don’t look at it, guard your eyes!’ You couldn’t beat Lucy, she really was laughable. I laughed.
He looked up, but I turned the laugh into a cough. ‘That’s about it,’ he said, looking again at the programme. ‘Anyway it’s decently balanced now. Look, can I explain it to you in case Ward doesn’t follow?’
I went back to his sofa half a step at a time and he began to explain. But while he was doing it there was a flash that cut right across us, and I gave a yelp and dropped the sheet I was holding.
‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘did it startle you?’
I began to say something, but it got nowhere in a rattle of thunder that stamped down on the house. The whole room shook and shivered like with an earth tremor. Then there was an awful silence.
I could see he was waiting for me to go back to him by the window but I didn’t. So he said: ‘Put the lights on if you like. The switch is by the door.’
I went over and fumbled around, but I couldn’t find it and my fingers were trembling. There was not a sound outside, no rumbles, no rain.
‘It’s like waiting for the next bomb to drop, isn’t it,’ he said. ‘Would you like tea? It’s nearly time.’
‘No, thanks. Shall I help you away from the window?’
‘No, I can get about with a stick.’ There was a wait. ‘I think it’s moving away.’
‘Sorry; I always get in a panic over a thunderstorm,’ I said.
‘That’s rather surprising.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, when you ask me, I don’t know. Except that perhaps you don’t give the impression of being a person who would get in a panic easily over anything.’
‘Ho . . . you don’t know!’
‘Quite true. We don’t know each other really at all. Look, it’s beginning to rain.’
I edged diagonally nearer the window. Two spots the size of shillings had fallen on the step and were spreading as they dried.
He put down the proof programme and eased himself out of his chair. Then with a stick he got up.
‘You interested in Greek pottery?’
‘I don’t know anything about it.’
‘I noticed you looking at it. They were my wife’s things. She collected them, mainly before we were married.’
‘Oh.’ Another rattle of thunder.
‘What about my taxi?’ I said.
‘Oh, I doubt if he’ll be back yet.’
‘I don’t want to go in this, anyway.’
‘Don’t worry, it’ll soon be over.’
I suppose he saw I was in a state, so he started talking about the Greek things to take my mind off it. I heard him say something about Crete and Delos and so many hundred bc, and he put a little pot in my hands and told me it was a stirrup cup, but all the time I was waiting for the next explosion.
It came. The room lit up – two mirrors, the tiles of the fireplace, the glass over the photographs, all flickered and winked, then there was darkness. Then there was a sound as if the sky was made of cheap tin and was cracking under the weight. Then the sky split open and the weight fell on the house.
Death and disease and disaster. Thunderstorms and judgment and corruption. The worm dieth not.
‘And did she – bring it back – with her?’ I asked.
‘Yes. I don’t know if it does anything to you, but to me, to hold in my hand as my personal property a piece of pottery that has been turned by someone living five hundred years before Christ . . .’
Another flash was followed right on top by a great tearing roar of thunder, all round our ears.
‘That was a bit close,’ he said, looking at me. I wondered if he could see the cold sweat on my forehead. Anyway he hobbled across and switched on the lights. ‘Sit down, Mrs Taylor, if it worries you that much. I’ll get you something to drink.’
‘No, thanks.’ I was irritable as well as scared.
‘The chances of being struck by lightning are awfully small.’
‘I know that. I know all the answers.’
‘And it doesn’t help?’
‘No.’
He said: ‘In a sense I suppose you and I are in much the same boat.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘Well, you have lost your husband recently, haven’t you?’
‘Oh . . . oh yes. I see how you mean.’
He put the cup back and shifted a couple of other things on the shelves. ‘How did it happen – with you?’
‘Well, it was – it was very sudden, Mr Rutland, Jim – was on a motor bike. I just couldn’t realize at first, if you know what I mean.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Then when I did begin to realize I felt I had to get away. I couldn’t have stayed. It’s much worse, isn’t it, like you, to have stayed.’
He eased his foot. ‘I’m not sure. In some ways it’s
a challenge. In others it’s a comfort, to be among the things that she knew . . .’ He stopped. ‘One hears a lot about the way one should take these things but when it comes to the point it’s a new page, absolutely new. What you write on it is anybody’s guess. The only thing certain is that it never runs to rule.’
The lull came to an end with a flash and an explosion like a bomb hitting the damned house. The lights went out and there was a crackle and a crash outside. I don’t know who moved first but we somehow collided. I was in such a panic that I didn’t know it was him until some seconds later. Then he seemed to be holding me while I trembled. I was trying to get my breath.
In the silence there were voices somewhere. It was the woman in the apron.
Then it began to rain. The noise grew until it was a noise like the drums at a firing squad.
I was standing on my own now and he had moved to the door. The woman came in. ‘Are you all right, sir? It’s that maple tree: all down the side; and the lights has fused! Lucky you wasn’t by the window: I was afraid for you! All right, miss? There’s a car outside. I wonder: oo, look, yes, see it’s broken the glass in the dining-room window!’
Mark hobbled back towards the window, but I wouldn’t go. By the time I got half-way I could see the lawn already under water and bobbling like with fish, and rose petals had drifted off the trees. A branch of a tree had been split and had fallen across the step.
‘It’s real dangerous today,’ said the woman. ‘Worst I ever remember.’ She pulled the french windows shut and bolted them. There was water already on the carpet.
‘There’s some brandy in the dining-room, Mrs Leonard. I think Mrs Taylor would like a drink.’
I sat down in a chair well back in the room, clutching my hands together to keep them still. He seemed cheerful, more cheerful than he had before, as if the whole foul thing was rather fun.
‘The chances of being struck by lightning are very small,’ he said. ‘In future I’ll keep my big mouth shut.’
‘That taxi-dr-driver. He’ll be get-getting drenched.’