The Warning Bell

by Lynne Reid Banks

  After that began a painful blank, stretching ahead presumably into infinity. The need to get in touch with him grew and gnawed on her nerves like toothache, and there was no way she could assuage it. And she had no one to share it with. She felt lost and friendless. Somehow Tolly’s refusal to come — even though Maggie was quite uncertain why she had wanted her to — had been the last straw. She seemed to shrivel like an unwatered plant. She could scarcely drag herself about.

  One night, five days after her meeting with Joel, she arrived back at the flat after the late bulletin to find Stip sitting on the doorstep.

  Never in all the years had she been so glad to see him. She flung herself into his arms and stood there under the porch hugging him desperately. He held her with a puzzled air and patted her and eventually, when she didn’t release him, muttered into her ear, ‘What’s got into you, then? “Jenny Kiss’d Me” is one thing, but it doesn’t say she hugged me to death.’

  Wordlessly, she led him up the stairs and sat him on the orange sofa. It was getting shabby now; Stip in his glamorous clothes put it to shame. He looked as flamboyant as ever Tanya had, sitting there among the cushions with one pale blue leg crossed over the sagging arm… Her exotic, homosexual, adored and desperately needed brother.

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Yes please. I’ve been sitting out there for an hour.’

  ‘Why didn’t you let me know you were coming?’

  ‘Wanted to surprise you — idiot me. Should have remembered what incredible hours you keep.’

  She put some bottles and a glass before him on a tray and watched him mix himself a pink gin. He offered her one with a gesture, but she shook her head, her eyes fixed on him. Perhaps he was heaven-sent to help her in her hour of despair? Would he be able to? She moved over to sit beside him, hugging his free arm, rubbing her face against his blue linen shoulder, kissing his cheek.

  ‘I like this show of affection, I must say!’ he remarked, leaning back as if basking in the sun. ‘What’s behind it, though?’

  ‘Can you stay? I’ve got the spare bed made up.’

  ‘Just tonight.’

  Her face fell. She drew back as if he’d snubbed her.

  ‘Why? Why not longer? Oh, do stay with me for a while, Stip, I need company!’

  He looked at her narrowly for a moment and then leant forward and put his drink on the table. ‘Sorry.’

  There was no appeal against the finality in his voice. Her own voice gone toneless with disappointment, she said, ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘I’m going to Paris.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘For good.’

  Maggie had not thought it possible for her to feel any sadder or more abandoned, but there is always a lower rung on the ladder of misery. She stood up and went to the long window, gazing out into the street. After a while, he came up behind her.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mags?’

  ‘Nothing. Why are you going to Paris?’

  ‘To work for this chap I met on holiday last summer. He’s an established designer. Really fantastic talent. His own offices in Montparnasse and everything. He’s asked me to join him. It’s an incredible chance for me. Even Mum thinks so. She says there’ll be — how did she put it? — “more scope for my talents in a more cosmopolitan milieu”.’

  Maggie turned abruptly and looked up into his face.

  ‘And apart from his offices and the quality of his designs,’ she said, ‘is this chap a nice chap?’

  Stip’s colour came and went, but his eyes did not flinch.

  ‘He’s somebody very special,’ he said.

  Maggie slowly nodded. She examined her innermost heart and was relieved to discover that she was unambiguously glad. But when she’d gone to bed and he came in to sit on its edge and chat, as in the old days at home, she felt the gulf between them — simply in the fact that she couldn’t say, ‘Listen. I’m in love, too.’

  She put on a good show the next morning when she saw Stip off at the airport. She had never seen him look so ebullient.

  ‘I feel as if my life’s just beginning,’ he said exultantly. ‘I know now how you felt when you first came to London — as if you’d found your right place, as if you’d broken free. I don’t blame you anymore.’ He kissed her. ‘Go to visit Mum as much as you can, Mags. She’s awful lonely now Matt’s gone.’

  ‘Of course I will. Don’t you worry. Go off and enjoy yourself. It’s your turn.’

  Their eyes met. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I think so, too.’

  There was some hanging about, which is usually destructive of good partings, but in this case Maggie didn’t care. She wanted to keep him as long as possible; she felt time as a moving belt pulling them inexorably apart, and clung to him like a child until the last precious moment.

  ‘You’re okay, aren’t you, Mags?’ he asked when it came.

  ‘I’m just fine!’

  And she waved to him until he disappeared and then stood, hollow with loneliness and despair and an unacknowledged but powerful resentment. There went her last beloved person, leaving her behind.

  Out of sheer habit, she phoned the news desk before leaving the airport just in case, and discovered — to her dismay because she felt so terribly tired suddenly — that a famous screen couple were stopping off on their way to somewhere or other to make a film. A crew was on its way. She was to wait in the VIP lounge.

  The plane was late. Maggie and the crew sat for two hours amid the hideous zig-zag curtains and squodgy furniture. The crew passed the first hour in generalised moaning, and the second in devising ingenious ways of padding their expenses.

  ‘Here, Maggie, don’t sit over there all on your tod — you’re a party to this, you know!’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘If Joe and I put in for a four-course dinner here tonight, obviously you’ll have to follow suit, or when they compare our exes they’ll rumble us.’

  ‘My exes are always a pale shadow of you boys’, anyhow.’

  ‘Under normal circs, that doesn’t matter. But Joe and I are going to lay it on with a trowel, and we need your support.’

  ‘You won’t get it,’ said Maggie shortly. Cameramen’s expenses were an old sore spot. She was well-known for not padding hers at all. While this didn’t exactly endear her to the crews, normally they just laughed about it. But for some reason, perhaps because it was late and they were all fed up, tonight was different.

  ‘Listen, it’s time someone told you,’ said Mike with an edge to his voice, ‘we’re all getting sick and tired of your idiotic puritan ethics. It’s all very well for you; you’re a single woman. We married men have to pretty well live on our exes, and you’re just queering our pitch.’

  ‘Pad your exes as much as you like,’ said Maggie wearily. ‘Just don’t expect the rest of us to be dishonest to keep you in countenance.’

  She realised at once she’d gone too far. The men turned to each other with a look of incredulity.

  ‘Dishonest!’ they both shouted.

  ‘You little prig!’ added Mike

  ‘Who are you calling a prig?’ shouted Maggie in sudden fury. ‘Anyway, I’m not a single woman. I’ve got a child to support —’

  ‘Just look at her, Joe! Sitting there on her little pedestal of purity, putting down tuppenny bus-fares instead of taxis and sandwiches instead of proper meals and pretending she keeps her kid in a boarding-school on her salary —’

  ‘So I do —’

  ‘Well, we’re not all prepared to live like paupers while all the advertisers’ lolly goes into the pockets of Lew bloody Grade and his cronies! We’re the ones who do the work, and incidentally we are your colleagues to whom you owe loyalty, but of course you consider yourself too good for the likes of us and you always have and every one of us knows it!’

  Maggie, in her already weakened state, felt absolutely winded by this unlooked-for attack. ‘I wish you’d leave me alone,’ she muttered. And then, looking from one to the other and believi
ng, just for that moment, that every camera crew in ITN hated her, she lost her temper.

  Raking in her bag she pulled out an expenses pad, scrawled her signature at the bottom, tore off the page and threw it at Mike. ‘Here — make it out yourself! Say we had to buy the stars dinner at the Ritz, say we hired a Rolls to get us there. Say we spent the night! Say any bloody thing you like, just get off my back because I’m not in the mood!’

  In the end, the plane was diverted to Gatwick and the story was scrubbed. Maggie got home at midnight, tired, nerve-wracked, and convinced that on top of everything else, her years at ITN had been invalidated at a stroke.

  As she opened the front door, she saw a letter in the basket. No — there were two. Maybe one was from Matt? She switched on the hall light. One of the letters was addressed simply ‘Maggie’ and had been hand-delivered. It was from Tanya.

  She ripped it open and read it then and there. It was very brief.

  Had to let you know — I’ve met him! Just hung around near the U till I bumped into him — unbelievable to see him again — sheer magic, as if we had never parted! Thanks God I had courage to be brazen… I’m so excited, so happy, I can hardly think straight. Just had to tell you. It’s all through you. T.

  The shock shouldn’t have been so violent — she should have been expecting it. But she felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. She found herself sitting on the stairs, dry-eyed but stunned. She sat there, clutching the letter, until she heard some other flat-dweller’s key in the front door. The prospect of having to confront a semi-stranger sent her fleeing up the stairs to the sanctuary of her own flat.

  There, she switched on all the lights and read the letter again. She kept on reading it, perversely prodding the wound, making it larger and more painful. Her jealousy was patent, tangible. She felt very violent toward Tanya, physically violent — she wanted to hit her and scream at her. She wanted to do worse — to notify Oliver. She considered phoning him this moment. Instead, she sat down at her desk and pulled a notepad toward her to begin writing him a letter. She formed the words in her head, got as far as ‘Dear Oliver,’ tore the page up and stifled a cry of bewilderment and grief.

  She went to her kitchenette and poured herself a brandy. She drank it down, and then stood quite still for a few minutes, waiting for it to calm her, but it didn’t; it just made her feel light-headed and more than ever inclined to do something crazy.

  I must walk about outside, she thought. Walk the devil out of myself. I’m behaving as if I owned him. I didn’t feel like this when Bruce ran away with another woman after years of marriage… I collapsed, but it was different. I ran away from it into something like a nervous breakdown. There’s no such escape-route this time. I must just bear it, come to terms with it. But why? For what? Then I had Matt; I came to terms with my loss for Matt’s sake. And Tolly helped me, and Joan. Who will help me now? Nobody. I don’t know one soul I can even confide in. Who the hell would understand how much it’s hurting, let alone why? I don’t understand it myself.

  But she did, all too well. It hurt because Tanya was going to lay hands on Joel again, when Maggie felt deep in her guts that he belonged to her, that he was her salvation.

  She changed her shoes and put her keys in her pocket and walked down the stairs again. On the bottom one she saw a white square, and only then remembered there had been two letters. She must have dropped the other. She picked it up. The handwriting was strange. She opened it, glad to find she could still feel a mild and natural curiosity.

  The letter-heading jumped out at her: ‘University of London’.

  She felt faint.

  She couldn’t face the stairs again. Clutching the letter as if it might fly away, she went outside and sat in her car. By the dim inside light, she read the letter, also very short:

  Dear Maggie,

  I, too, feel there is unfinished business between us, and it isn’t entirely what you may be thinking. What about meeting? I suggest the coffee-shop in Dillon’s in Bloomsbury on Saturday at 5.30. If you can’t make it, give me a ring at the University and we’ll rearrange.

  Yours,

  Joel Langham

  ‘I, too, feel —’ Nothing had been said. It was a shared, unspoken feeling. The beginning.

  It was half-an-hour, spent just sitting, immobile with joy, before she thought of looking at the date. It was yesterday’s, of course. And Tanya’s letter had been written today.

  She got out of the car, slammed the door and ran back into the flat. She searched her desk frantically for his private telephone number, which she had scribbled down six days ago and which she hadn’t dared look for since in case she used it. In the end, she had to look it up in the directory. Not giving herself time to think, she did the only thing that seemed possible.

  ‘Hallo, Langham here.’

  ‘Joel, it’s Maggie.’

  She was dry-mouthed with terror. She would know, now, the instant he spoke, what today’s meeting had done.

  ‘Ah! Hallo!’

  She shut her eyes. There was no doubt at all about it. Nothing had changed. The impulse — or whatever it was — which had led him to write to her was not one he regretted, twenty-four hours and a meeting with Tanya later. He sounded as glad to hear her voice as she was to hear him.

  ‘I’ve just got your letter.’

  ‘Well, can you come?’

  ‘By good luck, you’ve picked my day off. Normally 5.30 is hopeless.’

  ‘I can see we may have trouble synchronising our free time,’ he said drily. ‘See you tomorrow.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Things were happening to Maggie with quite numbing speed and force. The momentum accelerated sharply over that weekend.

  On the Saturday, she met Joel as arranged in the coffee-shop of Dillon’s Bookshop in Bloomsbury. They sat talking together over coffee for two and a half hours and then rambled off for dinner in Hampstead, where they talked for two hours more. If their ‘unfinished business’ had been capable of expeditious completion, it would, presumably, have been tidied up quite neatly by the end of that evening, but it was perfectly clear to both of them as he dropped her off at her flat that it was nowhere near finished.

  He did not offer to kiss her, but she was perfectly well aware that he wanted her quite as much as she him, and she rejoiced that he made no move so early in the game. Any move he had made would inevitably have invited associations with Bruce and several subsequent alleged lovers, who had not been ‘green’ enough to restrain themselves but had impatiently and redly pounced.

  Later she lay in bed, very much happier than she had been after many a sexual encounter. One powerful element in this happiness was the discovery she had made, quite early on, that meeting Tanya again after so many years — ‘quite by chance, incredible coincidence, just bumped into her outside the University’ (how could an intelligent man be so naive?) — had been ‘a very-interesting experience’ for Joel. Her name had not recurred in the conversation. And it did not occur either in the lengthy one they had on the phone the following morning. The ‘risk’ had proved, from Joel’s point of view, no risk at all.

  Maggie had just a few hours to enjoy untrammelled bliss before the doorbell of her flat rang (this was at lunchtime on the Sunday). To her shocked surprise it was Tanya, encumbered by Imogen and several bulky holdalls. Maggie’s heart almost failed her, for she read the signs. She shut Ginny out of earshot in the little bedroom with some of Matt’s old picture books and led Tanya on to the balcony. She came straight out with it. ‘I’m leaving Oliver.’

  Into a silence whose frozen quality she seemed unaware of, she explained that she had found out that she couldn’t deceive Oliver ‘properly’ while living under his roof. That deceiving him ‘properly’ meant with someone she really loved, to wit Joel, went without saying between close friends. So could she move in with Maggie for a few days?

  ‘You’re not planning to — to deceive Oliver — here, are you?’

  ‘Darling, w
ould you mind?’

  Maggie turned away, her worlds colliding like thunderclouds, creating an equivalent turbulence.

  ‘In that case, of course I won’t. There’s no particular hurry now. I’ll find myself a little flat, until I can simply move in with Joel — didn’t you say his flat was quite big?’

  Maggie nodded dumbly. She forced her mind into blankness, but a little pointed face intruded.

  ‘What about Ginny?’

  ‘Where I go, she goes,’ said Tanya firmly. She seemed very much in command of herself and the whole situation.

  So now it was Tanya’s turn to occupy, with her child, the spare room, Maggie’s to clear it for them and make up the two little pine beds and put out soap and towels, just as Tanya had for her and Matt, years ago. It was some measure of Maggie’s emotional condition that she was able to float, as it were, safely above Tanya and her potentially ruinous illusions. She felt dimly, like Viola in Twelfth Night (which she associated with Tanya — they had played in it together at RADA) that time, not she, must untangle this. She did not want to talk to Tanya, though, so she went out that evening, pretending she had to work. She learnt on her late return that Tanya, having phoned Joel about twenty times, was frustrated at finding him out. This was no surprise to Maggie, who had been to a film with him. Maggie said little and went to bed. She felt something very strong, which kept her awake for hours; she couldn’t decide if it was fear, or guilt, or love, or what.

  Early next morning, the phone rang. Maggie answered it in bed. It was Joel. They talked and made jokes and laughed for some twenty minutes until Maggie heard Tanya moving about in the big room and, feeling suddenly light-headed with furtive happiness, ended the conversation. She and Tanya had breakfast together with Imogen. Imogen was subdued to the point of complete speechlessness — most unlike her. Tanya, to Maggie’s embarrassment (as much for Ginny’s sake as her own), kept talking on and on about Joel, how little he had changed, what they had talked about, how she was longing to see him again.