The Unbaited Trap

by Catherine Cookson

  The man who came into the hall was a painter. He had a can in his hand. ‘Oh, hello,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know anybody was there.’

  ‘Is Mr Emmerson in please?’ She was shaking, not a little with relief at the respite.

  ‘Oh, no. There’s just Mrs Stringer here. Will I get her?’

  She hesitated, then said, ‘Yes, please.’

  She saw him go along a little passage off the hall and heard him speak to someone; then, coming towards her, she saw a woman in her fifties enveloped in a large overall. She had grey hair and a round face and looked motherly.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked, looking straight at Cissie.

  ‘I…I’ve called to see Mr Emmerson.’

  It was as if a skin had dropped over the motherly countenance. Cissie saw the mouth tighten and the eyes narrow.

  ‘Mr Emmerson isn’t here. They’re abroad on holiday.’

  ‘I mean young Mr Emmerson.’ She knew that the woman was well aware which Mr Emmerson she was asking for.

  ‘Oh, I’m afraid he’s away too.’

  ‘Could…could you give me his address?’

  ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t. You see…you see I don’t know where he’s gone.’

  Cissie looked into the woman’s face. She was a working-class woman. If you were speaking of levels you could say that she would be considered as far down in the social scale from herself as she was from Ann Emmerson. Yet this woman was an ally of Ann Emmerson. She was not only tied to her in servitude—the latter she would have denied strongly—but all her loyalty was to her mistress; she might be of the lower working class and talk their language, but her ideas, her way of looking at life, her condemnation of all those who didn’t confirm to a particular pattern, would be the same as Ann Emmerson’s.

  Cissie knew all this instinctively, yet she felt that she must get behind the hard core of this woman. Her voice low, she said, ‘It’s…it’s so important that I should see him. It’s for his own good, believe me.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion, Miss, but as I said I can’t tell you ’cos I don’t know.’

  Cissie took her finger tips and wiped the sweat from her brow, lightly pushing her lank hair back from her face as she did so. She was hot and tired, and she felt at the end of her tether, like a child that had been for a long walk and calls at a house and says, ‘Can I have a drink of water, missus?’ She wanted to ask just that: could she have a drink of water? But she wouldn’t ask this woman for water, nor would she plead any more or cringe before her. She managed to lift her head and straighten her shoulders as she said, ‘Thank you. Good afternoon.’

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  She knew the woman was watching her walking away and she kept her steps steady and her back straight until she was out of sight of the house. Then sitting on the grassy verge of the road in the shade of the hedge, she took off her shoe and stocking and straightened the plaster on her heel. And when she had done that she wiped her face with a handkerchief, then said to herself, ‘Don’t. Don’t. You’ve likely got a long way to go yet and crying is not going to help you.’

  The next morning she phoned the office of Ratcliffe, Arnold and Baker and asked to speak with Mr Ransome.

  ‘What name is it, please?’ asked the secretary.

  ‘Mrs Thorpe.’

  It was a full minute before she heard a man’s voice, saying, ‘Ransome here. Good morning, Mrs Thorpe.’

  ‘Good morning, Mr Ransome.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I wonder, Mr Ransome, if you could give me Mr Emmerson’s address.’

  A long significant pause now, then Mr Ransome’s voice saying pleasantly, ‘Oh, I’m afraid it’s beyond my power, Mrs Thorpe. You see they’re on a cruise …’

  ‘I mean Mr Laurance Emmerson, Mr Ransome.’

  ‘Oh! Oh, Mr Laurance. Well, that’s just as difficult. I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mrs Thorpe, because I don’t know Mr Laurance’s address.’

  Cissie waited a moment, then said, ‘Mr Ransome, please, please if you know Mr Laurance’s address, please tell me. It’s very important.’

  ‘Believe me, Mrs Thorpe, I would if I knew it, but I don’t. The only place he might be that I can think of is in Oxford with his uncle.’

  ‘Well, could you give me that address?’

  ‘Dear, dear. Now, I don’t really know that either.’ Mr Ransome sounded flustered. ‘The name is Emmerson, as it’s Mr Emmerson’s elder brother, but that’s as far as I know.’

  ‘What do you call Mr Emmerson, I mean the one at Oxford, I mean his Christian name?’

  ‘Ronald…Ronald I think.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Ransome; you’ve been very helpful.’

  When the phone clicked, Arnold put down the receiver. ‘Helpful?’ This was all very puzzling. He was under the impression that if anybody knew where Laurie was it would be Mrs Thorpe. It was all over the town that he was living with her in her flat. John’s departure abroad was put down to this fact, more than his need for recuperating after his illness. He hadn’t set eyes on Laurie for weeks. But that was understandable; he’d been so knocked about that he didn’t want to be seen…But this was very odd, her not knowing where he was…If he wasn’t with her then where was he? …

  It was later in the morning when Cissie got through to Ronald Emmerson’s house in Oxford, and when a hearty voice greeted her she asked directly, ‘Is Mr Laurance Emmerson there please?’

  ‘Laurie? No. Who’s speaking?’ the voice asked.

  ‘I’m…I’m a Mrs Thorpe.’

  ‘Are you a friend of Laurie’s?’

  ‘Yes…Yes I’m a friend of his.’

  ‘And you expected him to be here?’

  ‘Well…well, I thought he might be.’

  ‘So did we, but he changed his plans. We expected him to come on after he came out of hospital, and then we got a letter from him saying he’d got some kind of job. He wouldn’t explain what and was very brief, very brief, but he said he would be getting in touch with us. We’re rather worried about him; we feel that after this eye trouble he should have somebody to look after him. John and Ann are away on a cruise, you know, and we promised Ann we’d see to him. It’s all very worrying…You say you’re a friend of his, Mrs Thorpe. When did you last see him?’

  ‘Oh, just before he went into hospital.’

  ‘Was he all right when he came out? I mean as right as he could be; you can’t feel very right losing the sight of an eye.’

  She hesitated before saying, ‘Candidly, I didn’t know he was going into hospital. I saw him just before but he didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Stupid boy. Stupid boy. He did the same with his mother. She doesn’t know a thing about it. Myself, I think he’s going through a very bad patch, mentally disturbed, you know what I mean. Something went wrong when he broke off his engagement. We were coming through for the wedding, everything was settled…’

  The voice went on and on. This was John Emmerson’s brother but he sounded so different. He was a chatterer. She broke in on the voice, saying, ‘Could you give me his address, I mean from where he wrote last?’

  ‘Oh, that was from their new house, Meadow Mere, Bromford Way, but he said he wouldn’t be going back there, having got this job, and as I said before he promised to write us later, and he hasn’t.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Emmerson.’

  ‘I wish I could tell you more. We are very worried this end.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I understand. Thank you. Goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Cissie sat staring down at the desk. It was as if he was trying to lose himself, trying to break contact with everyone he knew. The only one she felt who could help her was the woman up at the new house, but it would be easier walking through a stone wall than getting any information out of her. It was some days later when the thought struck her that perhaps he had to attend the out-patients’ department at the hospital. After she had phoned she sat with her head in her hands. Yes, they had said, he atten
ded the out-patients’ yesterday. No, he wasn’t due to come again…at least not to this hospital. No, they didn’t know which one he might attend.

  The weather changed abruptly and autumn came with a rustling stride. There was hard bright sunshine some days with warm patches, but all the evenings were cold, and when the north-east wind blew it seemed to go straight through the body.

  Every Saturday and Sunday, whatever the weather, Cissie, Pat with her, would take a trip out to Bromford village where they would look round the church, and have tea at the only café in the main street, then walk back up the road that passed Hill Lane, looking, always looking, for a blue Rover car. Sometimes they even ventured up the lane and came within sight of the house.

  Pat knew whom his mother was looking for. She had explained to him enough to make him understand that because of them Mr Emmerson had lost the sight of an eye, and he was as anxious as she was that they should meet up with young Mr Emmerson again, even, he thought, if he did make her cry, because for a long time now she had been different, and he didn’t like her being different.

  There were nights, before it got too dark, when she would leave him in the house to do his homework, with the strict order not to go out, and she would take the bus to Bromford.

  Her visits to the village became so frequent that people began to wonder about her, for evidently she didn’t come to see anyone, for she just went into the church, then walked up the road. Perhaps, some of the old ones said, she went into the church to pray for someone belonging to her who had died, perhaps along the road there, at the toll bend. Two people had been killed there last year. Yet no-one asked her why she came to the village, not even Mrs Bailey in the teashop. Customers’ affairs, she said, were none of her business; serving tea was her business, and the blonde young woman was always good for a tea and left a respectable tip.

  Then one Saturday, late in October, as they came out of the teashop, Cissie saw the blue Rover, but driving it was John Emmerson, and sitting beside him was his wife…They were back.

  She didn’t go to Bromford any more after this, for the thought of meeting up with John embarrassed her greatly now.

  It was almost a month after she had seen John in Bromford that he phoned her.

  ‘Mrs Thorpe.’ His voice, quiet as ever, brought a tightness to her throat, and she had to clear it before she could say, ‘Yes, Mrs Thorpe here.’

  ‘This is John Emmerson.’

  ‘Oh, hello, Mr Emmerson.’ There was a slight pause now and she added, ‘I hope you are better.’

  ‘Yes, I’m quite well again, thank you.’

  ‘Did you have a good holiday?’

  ‘Oh, yes, a splendid holiday.’ Another pause, and now John said, ‘I wonder if I could see you?’

  Oh, no. No. She hadn’t spoken the words aloud. She gathered the skin of her neck into her fist and waited.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes…Mr Emmerson…I—I think it would be better if…’

  ‘This is nothing personal, Mrs Thorpe…You understand? Nothing personal.’ His words were rapid but scarcely audible.

  She made no comment on this and again she waited, and he went on, ‘I heard only yesterday—it was during the course of a conversation with Mr Ransome—that…that you had been enquiring after Laurie. It is that I would like to see you about. I…I can’t discuss it over the phone, you understand?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her voice was as low as his.

  ‘Would you care to meet me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Oh. Oh, I don’t know.’ Not at home. Not at home. Never again.

  ‘I could be walking through the market about half-past five, say on the Education Office side.’

  ‘Yes, yes, that will do. I’ll be there exactly half-past five.’

  ‘Very well. Goodbye, Mrs Thorpe.’

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Emmerson.’

  She sat with her hands tightly clasped on the desk before her. During the last few weeks her mind had settled down into a state of acceptance: if a thing had to be, it had to be; if it hadn’t, it hadn’t. She had done her utmost to make it possible and it wasn’t to be, that was all. She had lost her chance. Everybody was given one chance, sometimes two. She had only been given two and she had made a hash of the second but she wasn’t really to blame because the chance had been presented to her in such a way that she hadn’t recognised it.

  It was going to be awkward meeting Mr Emmerson. The way things were she just didn’t know how she was going to face him, and no matter what the result of their meeting would be she knew that she would feel she had let him down, and that he would feel this too, and in a way blame her.

  She saw him coming towards her just past the Education Offices. He was wearing a grey overcoat and trilby and was carrying a dispatch case under his arm. His skin looked healthier, browner, but the expression on his face was one she remembered from when she first met him. He stopped in front of her and raised his hat, and as they stood, looking at each other, the embarrassment was high between them. And then he said, ‘I would rather we could have met at some place more congenial than this but…but you understand?’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  He stood blinking and peering at her; then he said, softly, ‘You’re looking tired.’

  ‘It’s the cold; I don’t like the cold weather.’ She shrugged her body beneath her coat. ‘The nights are drawing in, I think it’s always colder in the twilight.’ She looked over the roofs of the market stalls housed in the middle of the big square. The fading light was merging them into one. Then looking back at him she waited, and after blinking rapidly again John said, ‘Well…About Laurie. Did you know he had lost the sight of an eye?’

  ‘Yes, I did, and…and I feel responsible.’

  ‘No. No, you mustn’t feel like that. Any blame must be attached to me. I sent him to Bolton.’

  ‘But it was about Pat’s business.’

  ‘These things happen. You mustn’t blame yourself. Tell me, when you last saw him did you know his eye was bad?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head.

  ‘And when you found out that was why you wanted to see him?’ It was a question asked softly.

  As she stared at him through the dim light two women with prams pushed past them and they had to move towards the kerb, and the movement seemed to give her time, and courage, to say to this man, who was the last person in the world she would want to hurt, ‘Not exactly.’ She bowed her head and into the silence that fell between them she whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Oh, don’t. Please don’t be sorry, because if you’re sorry it’ll make me be sorry for something I value, for a period in my life that I’ll cherish to the end of my days.’

  She was staring up into his face. ‘Don’t talk like that.’

  ‘Why not? Why shouldn’t I value something good that I experienced? Life for most of us is humdrum routine, so why not welcome the breaks?’ He was speaking lightly. ‘What we must face up to is that these episodes are merely breaks, they can’t go on…It couldn’t have gone on.’ His voice lost its light tone. ‘I realise that now; that period had something of a fairy-tale quality about it…You know, as you grow older you often find yourself reading the books you enjoyed as a child, and groping back into the world of fantasy because you remember nice things, unusual things happening in that world. It was like that with me.’

  Again they were staring at each other in silence. And now John, wetting his lips, said, ‘But I wanted to see you to tell you about Laurie. It…it was a great shock to us when we returned to find he’d had an operation on his eye. We had a further surprise when we found he’d taken up a new way of life. He’s taken on a dilapidated farmhouse with four acres of land attached and is working it as a smallholding. It had been a smallholding before, I understand, with pigs and poultry, but he’s turning it into a nursery for flowers and such things.’

  He stopped speaking and she said haltingly, ‘I’m glad; it’ll do him
good to work outside. Perhaps he’s taken after you, you being born on a farm …’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘I don’t know about doing him good. Laurie has changed. He doesn’t seem to want people about him any more. It…it has upset his mother greatly. She…she doesn’t often see him now.’ He paused here and his eyes held hers, and by his look he tried to tell her what he found too difficult to put into words, the rejection of his son by his wife. At one time their close association had been unbearable to him. The irony of it was it didn’t matter any more, for the pain and the jealousy had been transferred to his son’s association with this girl. But he hadn’t realised until he was talking to Arnold that they weren’t together. He had never stopped imagining they were. This seemed to be confirmed when after their return they received a letter from Laurie telling them, in so many words, that he didn’t expect them to visit him. He said now, ‘Would you like his address?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, please.’

  He was fiddling with his dispatch case. ‘It’s quite a way off, between Rothbury and Alnwick. The best way to get to it, if you’re going by rail, is to go to Alnwick and get the bus back towards Rothbury. The place is called Slagbottle Farm. Not a very pretty name, and it doesn’t do justice to the surrounding country. It’s…it’s beautiful in parts, but rather wild and isolated. Look, I’ll put it down for you.’ Tucking his case further under his arm he put his hand in his pocket and took out a diary, and after writing in it at some length he said, ‘There, that should help you to find it. I…I would advise you to start rather early because after getting to Alnwick there’s quite a journey by bus, and they’re not very frequent, I understand…I haven’t been to the farm, but, but I know where it is. I—I took a run out there one weekend.’ His face was scarlet as he finished.

  She took the flimsy piece of paper from his fingers, and now her hand impulsively gripping his, she said, ‘Thanks. Thanks. I’ve…I’ve always thought it, and I’ll go on thinking it, there’ll never be anyone quite like you.’