Marnie

  When I got home I locked the door of the flat and took the money out and counted it. I had over £1,270. In fact £1,272 10s. It was my best haul.

  CHAPTER SIX

  So from then on it was the same old routine.

  A gin and french first. It always tasted specially nice. Then I combed my hair out quite loose until it fell nearly to my shoulders. While I was finishing my drink I went over the train times.

  Then I took everything off, throwing it in a heap on the floor, and went naked into the bathroom. I never would if I could help it take a flat without a private bathroom because as I’ve said soaking in warm water seemed to wash something away; not guilt because I never felt guilty, but the sort of old contacts with things and people. You skinned them off and left them in the water. When you stepped out you were being born again. Or reborn again as Marnie Elmer. I was a real person again, Marnie Elmer, not someone I’d made up and dressed up for half a year. Mary Taylor, the pathetic widow, had gone and left her old clothes on the floor.

  She really had been a bit of a fool, Mary Taylor, getting so involved. Mollie Jeffrey had had much more sense. When that man Ronnie Oliver had rung up Marion Holland just after she’d helped herself to a large sum of money from the office of Crombie & Strutt, right under the nose of Mr Pringle, the manager – when Ronnie Oliver had rung her up when she was in her bath just before she left Birmingham for ever, I’d said never again. Don’t be a fool, getting entangled. So Mollie Jeffrey had taken that advice to heart. But Mary Taylor had forgotten it. Mary Taylor had let herself be pawed about in private flats and she’d been taken to the races by a director. This was the worst and most incautious ever.

  I packed all my old things in my case and dressed again in new clothes, all not to be noticed and not dear. Then began my usual round of the flat. Everything, magazines, newspapers, hand tissues from the waste paper basket, they were all gathered up, and this time it was easy to burn them because the flat had an open grate. I picked up my suitcase and packed the money in a corner of it, then I slung my coat over my arm and went to the door of the flat, stopped for a last look.

  It was funny. There was nothing. Mary Taylor was as real as nothing. She left behind her a bank account containing seven pounds in Lloyds Bank, Swiss Cottage, and a few ashes in the grate. In a way, I thought, I was a bit like that man Haigh, was it, who dissolved his victims in an acid bath. I was dissolving Mary Taylor. She was going, going, gone.

  I left and took the tube to Paddington, changing at Baker Street. At Paddington I caught the eight-thirty-five for Wolverhampton and got a meal on the train. At Wolverhampton I took a late bus for Walsall and I spent the night there. The next morning I was up early doing some more shopping, and then I went to a hairdressing salon and had a new hair-do.

  But sitting there in the chair I began to think to myself that Mary Taylor had lived too long. I should have killed her sooner. It wasn’t as easy as usual to get out of her skin.

  By now – it was twenty past eleven – they’d know the worst. Who would be the first to find out? Probably, when she didn’t turn up, someone else would take over the rest of the pay envelopes – but there really seemed no reason why anyone should find out until the first of her envelopes was opened.

  In a way it was rather sad that Mary Taylor wouldn’t ever see Mark Rutland again. Whatever else, you had to admit he was different. I mean, if you like to be heavy, he had class. And then there was Terry too – and Dawn. They’d all somehow got themselves into three-dimensional figures, not just cut-outs any more; and they stuck in your memory.

  I left Walsall in the afternoon and went by bus and train to Nottingham. It took me eight hours to do fifty miles, but doing it I covered four times that distance. I did this sort of looping the loop every time after leaving a job. You just couldn’t be too careful. I also lost my old suitcase, deposited at a left-luggage office to rot for ever, and went on with my new one. I stayed at Nottingham at the Talbot as Miss Maureen Thurston. On Saturday night I stayed at Swindon.

  On the Sunday morning I left Swindon and made for the Old Crown, Cirencester.

  It was like going back to old friends now, it really was; it was like a second home, and in some ways more homey than the first, because when I went back to Torquay it was sort of going back to being a kid again. The old Crown was a new life I was making for myself, and this wasn’t a sham either, it was real.

  I stopped only long enough for a couple of sandwiches in the bar and to change, and then I jumped on a bus that passed Garrod’s Farm. I had dropped a postcard saying I was coming so they were expecting me, and you’d have thought Forio was too.

  He knew it was me before I even got into the yard. He whinnied and stamped his foot and made noises that I’ve never heard another horse make.

  When I went to him and rubbed my face against his muzzle he kept putting his soft mouth over the knuckles of my hand to find the piece of apple that I had for him. Always when I was away a long time I was scared he’d have forgotten me; but I never broke my rule not to visit on a job.

  When he was saddled and we clattered out of the yard John Garrod followed me saying to take it easy because he hadn’t been able to give Forio enough exercise, but I was too crazy to care, and as soon as we got going Forio nearly ran away with me; if it hadn’t been for the heavy going and a slope he would have.

  But of course it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered; it was a lovely day and the heavy showers didn’t count, and I was full of something though it couldn’t be food as I’d only had the two sandwiches since breakfast. This was all I wanted, to hell with people; they cloyed and stuck and twisted you up inside and everything went wrong; this was simple, clean, easy, no complications; a woman and a horse. No more. Nothing to be fought out or explained. You just rode together. That’s the way I wanted it always.

  It rained heavily twice while I was out. The first time I sheltered in a copse, but the second time I galloped through it, Forio at full stretch, the rain pelting into my face. When we stopped, both with no breath, at the edge of the common, we were dripping all over and the last of the shower was leaving us, and the sun threw a rainbow over the woods towards Swindon.

  I turned for home, and thought about Forio and the way I’d bought him.

  It was after the second job I’d done, the one at Newcastle, and I’d seen Mother all right and still had money in my pocket and had gone to the races at Cheltenham. Not that I was going to bet, but there I was, enjoying myself all by myself.

  One of the races was a selling plate, and after it was over I heard a man on the rails next to me say: ‘Let’s see how much the winner makes,’ and walked off, so I followed him and the winning horse was being led into the ring with a few bored-looking people leaning against the rails, and a man suddenly started putting the horse up for auction.

  Well, it never occurred to me to be interested until I saw that the horse had hurt its leg in the last few yards of the race and was limping badly and I thought, I suppose no one will bid for him now. And he was a lovely horse, with plenty of bone, and big, a bit big for me, but it was a good fault. He was almost black, with a lighter patch on his nose and his chest. Something wasn’t quite right about his ears but that might not matter. Of course I knew nothing really about horses, except riding a few hacks and what I’d read in books, but he seemed such a wonderful bargain, and you know how it is, before you know where you are you’ve started bidding. And suddenly I had nodded once too often and the auctioneer said: ‘Going for the last time – Sold to the lady in the corner, for two hundred and forty-five guineas.’

  After that it was a sick panic to make all the arrangements, to leave a deposit with the owner and swear I’d be back with the rest of the money in the morning. Two weeks later I found myself the owner of a horse, boarded at Garrod’s Farm at an awful cost per week, no job, and less than forty pounds left.

  So I had to get work quickly, and I’d been lucky to get a promising job almost right off with Crombie & Strutt, the Turf
Accountants. But it had been a bad grind for some months, living myself and paying for Forio out of eight pounds a week.

  Not that I’d ever regretted it, not for a second. From the first ride he was wonderful; he’d got a great heart, always good tempered, and such an eye. His mouth was the softest thing; you couldn’t feel his teeth. And I learned to jump with him and he was such a fine jumper. And when we galloped he’d a lovely long swinging stride. I hadn’t had him six months when a man wanted him as a hunter and offered me five hundred pounds for him.

  The sun had set before I got back to the stables and I stayed a long time with Forio, rubbing him down and brushing and combing his mane and tail. He loved this sort of thing and almost talked while I did it.

  Being Sunday there were people about, and a crowd of half a dozen schoolgirls were in the yard chattering in fluting voices that weren’t at all like the voices I used to hear in Plymouth. A dog barked in the farmhouse.

  I was hungry now, fairly ravenous. I went through into the farmhouse and looked at the bus timetable. The next one passed the house at seven-thirty. That would get into Cirencester at seven-fifty-three. Time for a bath and a change before dinner. Then an early bed.

  Mr Garrod came out as I passed. ‘Oh, by the way, Miss Elmer, there was a gentleman asking for you about an hour ago.’

  ‘For me?’ My heart’s all right; it keeps steady most times, but it gave a bit of a lurch now. ‘What did he want?’

  ‘He didn’t say. He asked if you was here and I said you was out riding. I don’t know if he’ll be back.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Garrod.’

  I soon calmed down. I suppose I might have asked what he was like, but I thought, I expect it’s that stable-boy from Mr Hinchley again, wanting to see if I’ve changed my mind about selling Forio. Well, I haven’t. Nor ever will.

  But when I stepped out of the farm I just took the precaution of looking about carefully. It was now half dark and there was no one about. I walked down the muddy path and along the short lane to the main road. The bus was due in five minutes.

  In the main road there were the sidelights of a car parked about twenty yards away. Just to be on the safe side I turned and walked the opposite way, and as I did so I bumped into a man who had stepped out from the hedge.

  ‘Miss Elmer?’

  It was Mark Rutland.

  I don’t know what they felt like when they dropped the first atomic bomb, but a sort of Hiroshima happened to me then. He took my arm to stop me from falling.

  ‘Where are you staying? I’ll drive you home.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We got to the car. Somehow I sat myself in the passenger’s seat. He slammed the door on me, and it was like the clang of a prison cell. My heart was using something thicker than blood and it was clogging up my brain like dying. I thought it’s not happening, you’re making this up to scare yourself; this man doesn’t know Marnie Elmer, he only knows Mary Taylor. Let him stay there. Let him bloody stay there.

  He stuck the key in the ignition and switched on and started the engine.

  ‘Which way?’

  God help me, it was the same car as the one Mary Taylor had been to the races in. There was the same scratch on the dashboard and the same indirect yellow lighting. Supplied by Berkeley Garages Ltd., Hendon.

  ‘Which way?’

  I wet my lips and tried to speak but there wasn’t any sound.

  ‘Cirencester?’ he said.

  I nodded.

  He started the car and we went off just ahead of the bus which was stopping to put someone down and which should have picked me up to take me back to the Old Crown. You know, that was the point where the two lines crossed. That was the point where I wasn’t separate any longer from the girl I’d left yesterday. It was like dreaming a knife-stab and finding it was real.

  We drove on, saying nothing.

  As we got to the outskirts of the town he said:

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘The – Old Crown.’

  ‘Under what name?’

  ‘. . . Elmer.’

  ‘Is that your real name?’

  I tried to say something but my tongue stuck. He said: ‘It’ll save time if you tell me the truth.’

  I looked at his face in the light of a street lamp. He was wearing an old mack and his hair was damped down as if it had been wet. I wondered how long he’d stood there waiting.

  ‘Is Elmer your real name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Cardiff.’

  ‘Where is the money you stole?’

  ‘Some of it is here – in Cirencester.’

  ‘The rest?’

  ‘It’s safe enough.’

  ‘Not lost on the races yet, then?’

  ‘I don’t bet.’

  ‘Ha!’

  ‘It’s true!’

  He didn’t speak then until we came into the square by the church. ‘Which is your hotel?’

  ‘On the corner over there.’

  He drove across and stopped at the door. ‘I’ll come in with you while you get your things.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  He got out and opened the door of the car for me. I slid out. God, my knees were weak.

  Mark went to the desk. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Elmer is my secretary and she has to cut her holiday short because of illness. Could you make out her bill, please? She’ll be leaving right away.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. Well, she’s only just arrived so there’s really nothing to pay.’

  ‘I’ll come upstairs with you, Miss Elmer,’ he said as I started to move.

  The receptionist raised her eyebrows, but nobody tried to stop him. I hated him for coming into my room because this was the one place where I’d been really myself. This was at the centre of my own life, not anybody else’s. I didn’t see why he had to force his way in here.

  He’d gone across to the window and was staring at the thirty-foot drop.

  ‘Where’s the money?’

  ‘In there.’

  He picked up the attaché case, opened it to look inside, snapped it shut. ‘I’ll take this and wait in the corridor. I’ll give you ten minutes.’

  I could have done it in five but I took fifteen. I was like someone coming round after being thrown on their head. I had to take my time.

  I was in the completest hole ever. I had always thought, if I’m caught as Mary Taylor or Mollie Jeffrey, that’s not me. Even if I go to prison for it, that’s not me. With luck I could keep them from ever knowing who I really was. I might have been able to write a note to Mother saying I was going abroad or something, keep up a sham until I came out. But there was no sham here. By some foul swivel-eyed piece of bad luck Mark Rutland had found me out as Marnie Elmer. And while, so far as I knew, there had been no link between Mary Taylor and Marnie Elmer, there certainly was a dead straight line linking Marnie with Plymouth and Torquay.

  If he checked everything I told him, then I just had to tell him the truth – or part of it. It all depended on whether he was taking me to the police. You’d think it the obvious thing.

  He was waiting for me, smoking, at the head of the stairs. The dismal light made his face look darker and more delicate. But I knew it wasn’t now. I knew it was as tough as rock and for almost the first time in my life I was afraid of someone.

  ‘Got everything?’ he said, and led the way out to the waiting car.

  ‘Where are you going to take me?’

  He put my case in the boot. ‘Get in.’

  I looked round once, thinking of even running for it because if there’s one thing I know it’s how to run, but there was a policeman on the other side of the square.

  We drove off. He didn’t speak while we left the town. I saw a signpost on the road marked Fairford. Oxford.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Just tell me why you did this.’

  ‘Did what?’

  ‘Took the money.’

/>   ‘What are you going to do? Where are we going?’

  ‘If you don’t mind I’ll ask the questions.’

  I kept my mouth shut for a long time. I had drawn away from him as far as I could. He glanced at me and then leaned across and locked the catch on the door. I wondered if there was any hope of softening him up.

  I said: ‘Mr Rutland, I’m – terribly sorry.’

  ‘Let’s skip the emotional content. Just tell me why you did it.’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I’m asking the questions.’

  I put my hands up to my face, not needing to act the misery I really felt. ‘If you turn me over to the police I’ll tell them nothing; I’ll not say a word; they can send me to prison and you’ll not get the rest of your money back; I don’t care!’

  ‘Oh, yes, you do.’

  ‘But if you promise you won’t, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.’

  ‘Good God, girl, you’re not in a position to strike bargains! I could turn you over to the nearest police station and drive away and have nothing more to do with it! And will quick enough if you try those tactics.’

  ‘They’re not tactics, Mark . . .’

  I looked at him to see how he took the Christian name. His hands were fairly tight on the steering wheel. ‘All right, I’ll begin. Where do you want me to begin?’

  ‘What’s your real name?’

  ‘Margaret Elmer.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Plymouth.’

  ‘Oh-ho, so you were lying again.’

  ‘I can’t help it—’

  ‘No, it seems not.’

  ‘I don’t mean that . . .’

  ‘Well, go on.’

  ‘I – I was born in Devonport but lived most of my life in Plymouth itself. I went to the North Road Secondary Modern School for girls, from seven to nearly fifteen. Is – is that what you want to know?’

  ‘Are your mother and father in Australia?’

  ‘No. My father was killed in the war. In the Navy, Mark.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘She died soon after . . . I was brought up by an old friend of mother’s called Lucy Nye.’