The Warning Bell

by Lynne Reid Banks

  ‘Your husband had an affair with an Ibo?’

  ‘One of the servants. Besotted. Potty about her. Couldn’t help himself, he said, and I could see it was true… Love, that kind anyway, is a sort of madness, or perhaps a sort of drunkenness. Jimbo didn’t approve of too much drink, though he liked his evening glass, of course. But he got blind drunk on that girl. I think myself it was her sticking-out seat. I was always very flat behind — carried all my charms before me, so to speak.’ She patted her large and still shapely bosom ruminatively. ‘I read something about it later. Something to do with the angle, I believe.’ She coughed. ‘Of course I didn’t know a damn thing about such matters in those days. Positively Victorian, me! Shut your eyes and think of Wiltshire. I literally used to do that. Poor old Jimbo, who can blame him? Not me.’

  ‘Not even at the time?’ asked Maggie, chin on palm, exercise books quite forgotten.

  ‘Ah! Well… At the time I was young and intolerant. At the time, I made a most fearful scene. You wouldn’t believe it of me, would you? I actually belaboured him about the head with a pillow.’ Maggie lowered her eyes. ‘Till it burst.’

  Maggie tried not to laugh, without success, and Joan, after a moment of bridling, irresistibly joined in.

  ‘Sorry,’ spluttered Maggie. ‘The mental picture —’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes, I can see the funny side now, feathers everywhere… Just like Jimbo to wait till we were in bed and I was trying to snuggle up, to tell me earnestly all about this girl… ’Course I had her off the roster first thing the next morning. Almost the first thing. Seem to recall I made her clear all the feathers up first, seemed only fair somehow…’

  Maggie laughed till she hiccupped. They both got quite helpless. Wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, Maggie finally asked, ‘Why on earth are you telling me all this?’

  ‘Seemed to me an … apposite cautionary tale,’ she said.

  Maggie sobered in an instant.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well… Just wondered if you might be having a bit of the same sort of trouble with your ould-fella.’

  Maggie stared.

  ‘Bruce? Joan, are you crazy? You’re not thinking he’s got an eye on Tolly?’

  Joan looked very shocked and hastened to say that of course she had no such notion. ‘Good Lord, no! Bruce wouldn’t look twice in that direction. Good Lord! Trust me to give you the wrong idea! No, not Tolly.’

  ‘You’ve heard something.’

  ‘No. Not a word. I swear,’ Joan said. ‘It’s … just a feeling, plus a few observations.’

  Maggie opened her mouth to demand a name. But just at that moment Bruce, who’d been out at a meeting, was heard coming home. Maggie gave Joan a look that said, ‘Later!’ But afterwards, when she thought about it she made an almost deliberate decision that she didn’t want to know, not who, not even whether. She never went back to the strange, quite uncharacteristic conversation. And Joan, like a doctor with a terminal patient, seeing she didn’t want to know, didn’t press it, but let matters take their course.

  That year when it was time for their leave, Maggie’s subconscious had been at work. Some deep alarm made her suggest to Bruce that they take their leave together, and if nowhere else would attract him, then to Cape Town to the new house.

  When he seemed reluctant, Maggie’s suppressed disquiet burst out in the form of anger.

  ‘Why? Why don’t you want to go? You seemed so crazy about that place when you first bought it, longing to show it to me —’

  ‘And you, flatly refusing to take any interest in it —’

  ‘Well, I’ve changed my mind. If it’s really ours, I want to see it.’

  ‘Not now,’ he temporised. His manner was definitely odd. He seemed nervous, furtive — even rather aggressive. ‘You’ve never shown the slightest desire to see it. You’d never even talk about it. Not a single question —’

  ‘I wasn’t ready. And you hurt me by buying it without consulting me. But now I’ve got used to the idea.’

  ‘How typical. Now, when it’s too late!’

  ‘How do you mean — too late?’

  He hesitated as if trapped. ‘I’ve — I’ve sold it.’

  ‘Sold it!’

  ‘Well, nearly. It’s being sold.’ He took one look at her face, and turned his head away. ‘I — I thought you didn’t want it.’

  Angry as she had been when he had told her about buying it, she was, however irrationally, even more infuriated now.

  ‘Am I never to be told or asked about anything! What the hell is going on? You behave as if I were a mental defective, simply not here at all!’

  ‘I feel as if you weren’t here, most of the time,’ he retorted.

  It was the first time for many months that his studied politeness had been ruptured by a little real feeling. But the row, which might even have done some good, did not develop, because Bruce reined himself in instantly. The servants were still about. Later, the pair went as usual to kiss Matt and by this shared ritual reminded themselves that they were, technically, husband and wife. Maggie suddenly asked, as they got into bed, ‘Bruce, what’s going on?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Something’s wrong. There’s a lot you’re simply not telling me.’

  There was a silence. They lay side by side.

  ‘I should have told you about selling the house. I’m sorry. I was hurt too, you know. It was just like a smack in the face to me when you reacted the way you did about it.’

  ‘Was it — a nice house?’

  ‘I thought so,’ he said with a shrug in his voice.

  ‘Is it really too late?’ she asked.

  The question when she put it meant no more than, ‘Is it too late to stop the sale?’ but the minute it was out, she heard in it all sorts of echoes. He heard them too, or so she thought later, replaying in her head the way he had said, with unwonted hollow-sounding soberness, ‘Yes, I’m afraid I think it is.’

  And at that Maggie was so frightened that, for the very first time in their whole marriage, she tried to bridge the physical gulf that had opened between them. She tentatively laid her hand on his thigh, copying, out of her basic ignorance, the gesture (abandoned for many months now) by which he had invariably used to open what passed for his love-play. For a moment, she felt an answering tremor through his thickly-muscled leg but it stopped with a little jolt, and then he turned away as if he had not noticed anything, and she was left — as he had sometimes been — with her hand in mid-air. Though she had not desired him, his rebuff stung and dismayed her. She had always taken it for granted that he was keeping aloof for her sake.

  Still she did not understand, though she could no longer avoid suspicion. But instead of opening her eyes, she turned them away, busying herself in her work and Matt. Only occasionally in the strange months that followed did she allow herself to look at Bruce, even in the simplest physical sense. He no longer suggested a paradigm of complacent masculine fitness. His skin became sallow and drawn and his eyes were shadowed. She asked him once or twice if he were ill or needed a tonic, but when he brushed off her enquiries and pushed himself harder than ever at work (thus, at any rate, he accounted for his frequent absences) she assumed that he was succumbing to the punishing effects of the climate, the reason why however successful a man may be, his company or government does not allow him to stay in the tropics for more than a few years. These years were nearly up for Maggie and Bruce, but when Maggie occasionally asked Bruce what plans he had made he became evasive.

  ‘You didn’t care for my first plan. Let’s hear one from you.’

  ‘Well, why can’t we go home, and you can work for the London office?’

  He shuddered.

  ‘The horror of London! Those grey skies, those grey streets… I think about it as a cold, filthy prison.’

  ‘Well, what then?’

  He shrugged and offered nothing. It was very disquieting, as if he foresaw no future beyond the next few months or w
eeks.

  The blow fell suddenly. Maggie had been away for a weekend in Lagos to shop, and when she came back, Tolly met her on the front doorsteps and told her, ‘Master done gone.’ Just like that.

  It was quite as shocking as a death, more so in a way because people can’t help dying but they can help leaving. They leave because they don’t want to stay, and that, even to an unloving but dutiful wife, can be a terrible affront as well as a loss far more profound and crippling than ever she might have expected.

  Tolly told her how Bruce had come into Matt’s room at about 6 a.m. and stood by his bed and looked at him sleeping for a long time. Tolly said he was crying, but she must have been wrong because Maggie had never seen Bruce cry, and privately thought he probably never had, at least since he was Matt’s age himself. He turned round at last and said, ‘Goodbye, Tolly. Take care of my wee boy, won’t you? I know you will.’ And without looking her in the eye, he pressed quite a lot of money into her hands (all of which Tolly gave straight to Maggie) and hurried outside to where his car, piled with suitcases, was waiting. Puzzled, she stood watching at the window. She reported that he sat in it for a long time before he started it up and drove away.

  There was a note: ‘I’m sorry, but it never was a real marriage, we just lived together. If you had ever loved me the way I love Angie I would have known about it. I can’t miss out on this chance for real living and real feeling. I am going to live an entirely different kind of life and I’m longing for it. I thought I wanted to stay in Africa but that was before I knew what wanting meant. The worst is Matt. I feel terrible about leaving him but there it is. I will not try to excuse it. I just can’t help myself. But you will not be short of money, certainly not at first. I’m going to set up a trust for him to go to my old school, Glencora, in the Highlands.’ (The ominousness of this struck Maggie only much later). ‘I only ask one thing, that you don’t try to turn him against me. I have tried to treat you both as well as I could, till now anyway. Whatever you feel about me I deserve for leaving you, but please let Matt keep some good memories of me. I will give you a divorce as soon as you want one and I hope you find someone you can love the way I love Angie. Then perhaps you’ll be able to forgive me.’ He signed it simply ‘B’.

  Maggie looked up from this to see what appeared to be a great black wave rolling relentlessly towards her. She stared at it, petrified, and when it reached her she fainted for the first time in her life. When she came around, Joan was sitting beside her; the company doctor was holding her wrist and Tolly was whimpering and rocking her body rhythmically like an old Jew at prayer.

  ‘Right,’ said Joan the instant Maggie opened her eyes. ‘You’ve hit bottom. Now up you come.’ Maggie had heard her use that tone to recalcitrant children at the school, but without any tears lurking in her steely blue eyes. The doctor was muttering about rest and shock but Joan would have none of that. ‘Sit up. That’s it. Feel woozy still? Head between your knees, that’s the girl… Just give Tolly the prescription, doctor, that’ll be fine. I’ll deal with the rest.’

  When they were alone, Joan gave Maggie a whisky, then stood her up firmly and marched her up and down the room, talking all the time.

  ‘Bastard!’ she said. ‘I saw this coming. Should have told you. I did try — none of my business, I thought. What a ghastly shock for you. I blame myself, though nothing could have stopped it —’

  ‘Please Joan, let me sit down! — Did everybody know?’

  ‘Oh come on, what do you care? I shouldn’t think so. Doesn’t matter, anyway. What matters is what you’re going to do now.’

  Maggie saw a shadow of the wave looming and kept it off with tears. ‘I want to go to bed!’ she sobbed piteously. ‘Please, Joan! I want to sleep —’

  Joan looked at her narrowly.

  ‘All right. I’ll tuck you up for a couple of hours. But then I’ll be back. And don’t forget tomorrow’s Monday; you’re due at school.’

  She meant all this for the best, of course, but it didn’t work. The wounded can’t be ordered on to their feet before they’ve had any time to heal. When the couple of hours were up and the doorbell pealed, Maggie summoned Tolly and told her not to let Joan in. She would no more have welcomed her invigorating presence at the moment than a cold douche. She took two of the pills the doctor had left, curled up foetally in her dark bedroom and took to unconsciousness.

  Later she was to upbraid herself for the almost feudal state of dependence she had fallen into. How could she have allowed the man-prop to have become so important that when it was, entirely predictably and even deservedly, yanked away, she collapsed?

  All possible encouragement was given to her to have a breakdown. Tolly seemed to expect nothing less than that she turn her face to the wall and die. The doctor came daily with bleak looks and enough sleeping pills to end it all with even less delay. The WC contributed a series of telephone calls and unannounced courtesy/curiosity visits which, through her closed door and her drowsiness, Maggie could hear the servants dealing with; the awful prospect of having to deal with them in person would have been quite enough to keep her immured for weeks.

  It was Matt, of course, who saved her. Matt was in a sorry state. His father vanished, his mother taken to her bed, and Tolly, his remaining pillar, in a state of emotional retreat… But mercifully this was not her normal condition, and she returned. On doctor’s orders she resolutely kept Matt away from Maggie for nearly a week, and then, her instincts triumphing over imbecilic modern medical advice, she carried him one morning into the bedroom and stood at the bedside quite silently until Maggie’s eyes opened.

  What Maggie saw was Matt giving an anguished imitation of an orphaned orangutan — a leggy little orange-topped creature clinging silently to Tolly with all his limbs, staring at his mother with huge, pain-filled eyes. The effect was much the same as that of his elemental cries as a newborn baby. Instant contact was made with some primordial source of strength within Maggie, who threw herself out of bed, perhaps symbolically knocking the sleeping pills to the floor where most of them scattered under the bed. She took him in her arms, kissed his face all over and said, ‘I’m better, darling. Look! I’m fine! Now I’m going to shower and get dressed, and you and Tolly and I are going to the sea.’ How, without a car, she didn’t know, but in that moment she had the strength to walk all the way there with Matt on her back if need be. The fact that Joan turned up in the nick of time to take them was no surprise to Maggie.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘You’re really going, then.’

  Joan stood in the doorway of Maggie’s bedroom, looking round at the chaos of trunks and suitcases, open doors and drawers and heaps of clothes. Some of them were Bruce’s. There was a special crate to receive these; they were going to the mission, though it was hard to imagine an Ibo in any of them.

  Maggie glanced at Joan, and then looked again, harder. The light was, as always, shuttered to dimness, but Joan looked very much as if she were about to burst into tears.

  ‘Joan…’

  ‘What?’ she barked.

  ‘Don’t mind that much! Please. I have to go.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean, why? What alternative have I?’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got an alternative! You could stop here. Well, why not? You’ve got a job. I know it doesn’t pay much, but I could work on Mrs Hatchard to give you a full-time job on full-time pay. As for somewhere to live, what’s wrong with my place? Two can live as cheaply as one.’

  ‘It’s three. Plus Tolly.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve been thinking about poor Tolly. How are you going to feel about leaving her? How’s she going to feel? How’s Matt going to feel?’

  These terrible questions did not need to be vocalised to make them vitally real and pressing to Maggie.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ she said shortly.

  ‘Turning the child’s life on its head — dragging him back to that bitter bloody cold climate, that awful gloom — Scotland! Went there
once. Just once. Personally, I’d rather be dead.’

  ‘Joan. Shut up, please, and put those things into that crate.’

  There was a period of silence. They worked back to back. Then Joan renewed the attack.

  ‘Presumably you’ve told Tolly.’

  ‘Not directly, but she’s not half-witted.’

  ‘On the contrary … she’s very bright. You’ve been immensely fortunate to have her.’

  ‘I know that, Joan.’

  ‘And now you’re throwing her on to the scrap-heap. And William.’

  Maggie threw a pile of cotton pants on to the bed with a childish gesture of rage, and turned on her.

  ‘Joan, I am not throwing anyone on the scrap-heap! How many times have you told me that it’s the Ibos who are lucky, that one mustn’t worry too much about them, and that where the Company is concerned, they go with the house and the job? William will be perfectly all right with whoever takes over Bruce’s job.’

  ‘I know something you don’t know. He’s a bachelor.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘The new man. You know what that means. No job for Tolly.’

  Maggie’s heart sank, but she kept up her defensive.

  ‘What are you saying then, that I ought to take her to bloody, gloomy, cold Scotland with me?’

  ‘No. That you should stay here, and teach, and — and keep me company. How the devil am I going to manage with nobody to talk to except those dreadful little female toe-rags of the WC?’ She plonked herself on to the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette with hands that, large and capable as they were, were visibly trembling.

  Maggie sat beside her and put her arm round her shoulders. After a long time, she said quietly, ‘Joan, I do love you, and in a way I wish I could stay, but I can’t.’

  Joan blew out a long thin stream of smoke and stood up. ‘I know that perfectly well. Just wanted you to know you’ll be damned well missed, and not just by me. The children are heartbroken… All right, all right! Not another word. Now, where does this lot have to go?’