As another thought came into her head she sat up rigid in her chair. He might kill her. He had killed before, with neither pity nor mercy. He was cunning enough, and desperate enough, and savage enough. If ever she tried to defend herself from him by disclosing to him her knowledge of his crime, and by the threat of invoking the law, he would undoubtedly kill her when he saw himself endangered. She was in deadly peril, peril which might become imminent at any moment.
‘What the devil’s the matter with you?’ asked Ted suddenly.
Marjorie extricated herself from the bad dreams which were encompassing her and looked round at him, as mildly and as enquiringly as she could.
‘You’re sitting there puffing and blowing like that,’ said Ted. ‘You’ve gone as white as a sheet, too.’
There was still the same old woman’s lie that she could fall back on, thank God.
‘I’ve got a bit of a pain,’ she said. ‘This business of mine – I’ve been doing too much washing today.’
‘I suppose that’s my fault,’ snapped Ted. ‘Anyone would think you hadn’t had a holiday all this last three weeks. I wish I’d never let you go, if this is how you come back. I suppose you won’t get straight again in the house for months now. Of course, it doesn’t matter about me at all.’
Ted felt aggrieved, possibly even with justification, although he himself was not sure why. With the passing years their attitude towards each other had altered so slowly that the change had been imperceptible. But seven years ago, say, if Marjorie had been compelled to be absent from him for three weeks, she would on her return have been overflowing with affection and tenderness for him. She would have chattered to him, sought his attention, followed him with her eyes. Without actually drawing the comparison Ted was acutely sensitive to the slow change in her tonight. He wanted the flattery of her glance, of her moral dependence upon him. It irritated him unconsciously that she should be able to get along without him.
He was not acute enough, or Marjorie had been too guarded, or the occasion had not been opportune enough, for him to notice any decided change since Dot’s death, or since Marjorie’s holiday. At present, all very indefinitely, he was looking forward to the time close at hand when he would subject her to himself again – he knew by experience that that was a good way of reducing her afresh to dependence on him – and alternatively he was resolving, unconsciously and vaguely, to administer to her if necessary some sort of lesson which would teach her the duty that a wife owes a husband who earns her bread for her. She was beginning to need one, he thought. He would make sure about it next Thursday. That was his final decision, arrived at after counting up the days on his fingers.
17
‘Are you playing tennis this evening?’ asked Mrs Clair conversationally, while George Ely ate his tea on his return from the office on Tuesday.
‘No,’ said George. He looked out of the window as he spoke; the question had set his mind to work at once debating how soon it would be dark enough for him to go round to the lane beside the railway.
To go there each evening had become a habit with him already, although it was a habit against which he chafed. Other men could meet their girls in the light of day, could flaunt the friendship of which they were so proud, but he could not. He could not even receive telephone calls at this office, for fear lest Grainger should answer. By the time each evening came he was full of the desire to see Marjorie, full of anxiety lest any accident should have befallen her. For an hour before darkness came he was looking forward with eagerness to the moment when she should come to him.
And yet he was experienced enough by now to anticipate bitterly the disillusionments which the evening would bring. He could foresee the minutes of nervous waiting, consumed with anxiety lest Ted should be detaining her. Then there might be five minutes in the shadow of the elderberry tree – five minutes of whispering so that Mrs Taylor should not hear, five minutes of worry lest Grainger should come stealing out upon them, five minutes with the rain dripping on them if it should happen to be raining. Then Marjorie would have to go back to Ted, and he would have to return to his lodgings, jangled and irritable and upset, with another night and another day to face and then the same ordeal to be repeated. He was already showing signs of the strain, as Mrs Clair, reading his face, was quick to observe.
He showed them, too, when Marjorie came down to him at the end of the garden.
‘Where’s Grainger?’ he asked.
‘He’s listening to the wireless. It’s all right for the present – there’s variety tonight and he likes that.’
‘So I can’t come in?’
‘No, dear, and – and – I won’t be able to stop long.’
‘When do you think you will be able to?’
‘I don’t know, dear, I can’t ever tell beforehand what Ted’s going to be doing.’
She kissed him, she did her best to cram gratification into those fleeting seconds. Another idea came to him at that moment.
‘Can’t we go out together one evening?’ he asked. ‘Go up West somewhere? Pictures or something?’
‘Ooh, wouldn’t that be nice,’ said Marjorie. It was years since she had been ‘up West’ with a man. The thought of doing so again was entrancing.
‘Well can’t we?’ persisted George.
‘Yes, I suppose we could,’ said Marjorie, doubtfully. She had thought of it before. ‘I could get Mother to come in for the evening. Then it wouldn’t matter what Ted wanted to do.’
She stopped then, abruptly. The last time she had gone up to town was when she had been to visit Millicent Dunne. Dot had come in to mind the children then, and Dot had been dead when she returned.
‘Well, let’s do it then. Let’s go – let’s go tomorrow,’ said George.
That was how it came about that Marjorie went up to town on Wednesday night in the 7.5 train. She only just caught it, running wildly down the stairs as the train came in, with George fuming on the platform. She was so breathless that she had neither words nor kisses for George until they had passed two stations on the way up – she could only smile at him faintly while recovering her breath. She had had to tell Ted that she was going up to see Millicent Dunne and win his reluctant consent, and she had had to tell her mother the same story. During the morning she had telephoned to Millicent at the factory where she was the welfare supervisor.
‘Hullo, Mill,’ she said. ‘This is Marjorie speaking, Marjorie Grainger.’
‘Hullo, Marjorie. Did you have a good holiday?’
‘Yes thanks.’ Marjorie with so much on her mind actually had to stop and think to what holiday Millicent was referring. ‘What I wanted to say was I’m going out this evening and I wanted to tell Mother and Ted that I’m coming to see you. Is that all right, Mill?’
‘M’m, I suppose so,’ said Millicent, after a moment’s pause. ‘What are you up to, young woman?’
‘Nothing, Mill, Nothing special. I just want to go out this once. That’s all.’
‘Well, take a spinster’s advice and don’t do it too often.’
This evening Marjorie had to give Ted his tea and put the children to bed, and Ted had been surly and obstructive as he always was on those rare occasions when Marjorie was going out to enjoy herself, and Derrick had been naughty as he always was, too, on the same occasion. Mother had come while Marjorie was frantically dressing herself in her blue coat and skirt and her one special pair of silk stockings – and Mother’s arrival meant that she had given George his tea and that George would be waiting already at the station.
‘I can’t stop a minute if I’m going to catch the train,’ said Marjorie, struggling with her suspenders. She had not stopped to put her gloves on, but she had run all the way up Harrison Way to the station. No wonder she was breathless when she sunk into the empty carriage whose door George held open for her as she came flying down the stairs.
Yet despite such an inauspicious start the middle part o
f the evening had been a decided success. Marjorie suggested that they should dine at the little Italian restaurant to which Millicent had taken her, and George (who hardly knew one restaurant from another) agreed. She smiled at him delightedly across the table as the waiter, romantically speaking broken English, made suggestions as to what they should eat. It was much more thrilling to dine in the West End with a handsome young man than with Millicent Dunne, who had been at school with her. At Marjorie’s suggestion they drank Chianti; Marjorie could not have named any wines other than Chianti, port, and champagne, and she knew that the last named was expensive while port was something teetotallers drank in public houses; both logic and experience told her that Chianti was the thing to drink at dinner in the West End, and was what everyone drank.
It was marvellously romantic to drink red wine, and to eat hors d’oeuvres – to have a selection from a dozen different dishes all on her plate at once. The peculiar thrill of that would have been hard to analyse even if Marjorie had tried, which she naturally did not. Then a fillet of plaice, and a piece of chicken, and an ice; a cup of coffee and one of George’s cigarettes – for the first time in her life Marjorie found herself really enjoying a cigarette – she had not smoked more than a couple of dozen in her life before. She took George’s arm in ecstasy as they walked out along the crowded pavement. This was romance, life as it ought to be lived, and George was a marvellously clever man to have thought of doing it. They had three-and-sixpenny seats at a cinema, and saw a film which Marjorie wanted to see; it was a special joy to think that the benighted people in the suburbs would have to wait two or three months before it would be shown in the local cinemas.
Everything seemed to be going right. Even in the train coming home they were left alone in their compartment before they had travelled half way, and Marjorie could throw herself into George’s arms and tell him once more how much she had enjoyed herself, and how much she loved him, and they could kiss, madly and passionately. It was while they clung to each other, lip to lip, that the joy of the evening began to fade; it was those kisses, maddening, delirious which started the trouble over again. Twice they had to draw apart when the train stopped at stations, and each time Marjorie came back to him, her slender body limp with surrender in his arms and her knee against his.
They were dizzy with passion when they got out of the train and walked up the steps to Simon Street. George drew her into the darkness of the lane beside the railway.
‘Somebody might see!’ protested Marjorie feebly, but next moment she was in his arms again.
‘Oh, I don’t want to leave you, darling,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to have to go home.’
She added fuel to his flames by what she said to him. Ted had taught her, on their honeymoon years ago, how to rouse a man’s passion. She did it instinctively now, the eloquence of her lips aided by her unresisting body as it hinted as what could not be told in words.
‘Wouldn’t it be lovely, dear,’ she said ‘if I didn’t have to leave you? If we were going to spend the night together. Would you like that, dear? Would you like to sleep with me?’
‘Yes – oh yes,’ said George.
‘We haven’t ever spent a whole night together,’ said Marjorie. ‘Oh, I’d love to wake up in the morning and see your face beside me on the pillow. You look nice with your hair ruffled, darling.’
‘Oh, I wish we could,’ said George. ‘I wish to God –’
He wished for so many things that he could not begin to list them. Nor was he helped by the up train, which passed ten minutes after the down train, rattling along the cutting below them.
‘I’ll have to go in when the next train comes,’ said Marjorie. ‘Ted’s so sharp. Only ten minutes more, darling. Oh darling –’
‘I’ve got to see you soon,’ said George, a moment later, holding back from her kisses, his head swimming. ‘I’ve got to. What’s Grainger doing tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow? What day’s that? Oh, Thursday.’ A sudden recollection altered her tone as she repeated – ‘Thursday.’
She had made calculations just as Ted had done. She knew that on Thursday would come the crisis.
‘What’s the matter with Thursday?’ demanded George. His jealous fear had caught that alteration of tone.
‘Nothing,’ said Marjorie. ‘Nothing, really, darling. But I don’t expect Ted’ll be out tomorrow. He never has anything special on Thursday evenings.’
Her tone was not absolutely convincing as she prevaricated. But she could not tell her lover that the break between herself and her husband was yet to come, when she had given him to understand that it had long been in existence.
‘What’s bothering you, dear?’ asked George. ‘There’s something worrying you.’
‘No, there isn’t. There isn’t, really. It’s only that I don’t want to leave you, darling. I don’t want to go in, and yet I’ve got to. Listen! There’s the train.’
The next train down stopped with a squealing of brakes at the station two hundred yards away. Reluctantly he released his hold of her; she was not sorry to leave him now. She was frightened in case he should press her on the subject of what was alarming in the prospect of Thursday night.
‘Let’s go back to Simon Street, darling,’ she said. ‘When I come from the station at night I always walk along the road if I’m alone, never along the lane.’
At the corner of the lane she held up her face to him again.
‘Better not come any further, dear,’ she said. ‘Goodnight, darling. Sleep well.’
She turned and ran, then, down the slope of Simon Street and round the corner to Harrison Way. The light in the first floor window of No. 77 showed that Ted was not yet asleep. He was not even in bed, but was half undressed when Marjorie came into the room.
‘You’re pretty late,’ he said. That was comforting. It meant that chance had not revealed to him how she had been spending her evening.
‘I’m always late when I go to see Mill,’ said Marjorie.
‘Funny old cow she is,’ said Ted. ‘I can’t think what you two find to say to each other. You always seem to have a lot.’
He put on his pyjama coat over his hairy chest and got into bed while Marjorie hung her best navy blue coat and skirt over hangars.
‘Buck up with that light,’ he said. ‘I’m sleepy.’
George had followed her at a distance down Harrison Way. He too had seen that light in the first floor front window, and he had guessed that Grainger was waiting there for his wife. It had been in his mind that it might be as well to remain on the spot in case Grainger had discovered anything and Marjorie should need his help. But the sight of that light upstairs drove that notion away. He saw the hall light switch off as Marjorie went upstairs, and he knew then that she was in the bedroom with Grainger. The imagination that she had stimulated tormented him with vivid pictures as he stood there staring up at the light. Grainger was looking at the slim beautiful body which was denied to him. Ely was crazed with jealousy, standing there in the silent street. The light went out and she was in bed beside Grainger now. Perhaps he was resting his coarse hands upon her.
Ely almost moaned aloud as the thought came to him. He turned away at last, walking madly through the deserted streets on his way back to Dewsbury Road. And at the corner of Cameron Road a fresh thought, breaking through his crazy self-torments, caused him to hesitate in his rhythmical stride. There had been something queer in Marjorie’s voice as she spoke about Thursday night. What was there in the prospect of Thursday night to worry her? In bed George Ely could find no peace. No sooner had he mastered his jealous imaginings that he was suddenly wide awake again, wondering about Thursday night.
18
Thursday night was one of darkness and small rain. The little wind that blew was cold and cheerless. There was nothing about the weather which would help George Ely to be patient while he waited beside the elderberry tree. He whistled again, impatientl
y, and stared through the darkness at the house where Marjorie was concealed from him. There was a light in the sitting-room, shining through the curtains of the French window. Behind those curtains was Marjorie, and because she did not come to his call immediately it was to be presumed that Grainger was there too, enjoying the light and the warmth and Marjorie’s presence. God only knew what might be going on in that sitting-room behind the veil of the curtains. Ely was bitterly, madly jealous. He clenched his fists in the darkness. He could not distrust Marjorie, nor disbelieve her vows and protestations. Marjorie was on his side against Grainger – he was their common enemy. He felt desperately in need of Marjorie’s assurance that all was well with her. He whistled yet once more, boiling with impatience and anxiety.
Now she came to him, gliding down the path like a ghost.
‘No, don’t kiss me, dear. I mustn’t stop a minute. Ted’ll wonder what I’m up to.’
He strove to pull her to him, and she resisted him.
‘No, darling, really I mustn’t. I just came to ask you to go away tonight. It’s no use waiting for me. It isn’t, really. Ted’s being beastly.’