Possession

by Celia Fremlin

  Well, that is how Liz Hardwick is living at present; and I am telling you about it in such detail so that you will realise that the next development was not an extraordinary coincidence. On the contrary, it was almost a statistical probability, given the high turnover of girls in the Hardwick household, that one or other of them should sooner or later turn out to know something of the Redmaynes.

  CHAPTER VIII

  IT WAS THE Wolverhampton girl who started it all. That is to say, it was because of her that I found myself, the next Saturday morning, sitting on Liz’s stairs and receiving the unsought confidences of two overwrought and vociferous young women who were both under the impression that they were staying here as Tony’s fiancée. The young gentleman who might have been able to resolve the problem was (understandably) nowhere to be seen, and Liz had escaped to the launderette. She does this when things get too much for her, just as people used to escape to church, as being the one place which gives one the undisputed right to be sitting down, and out of it all, for a whole hour.

  But let me begin at the beginning. I had come that morning to help Liz with the Scouts’ Jumble. As if she hadn’t enough troubles already, Liz allows this stupefying burden to fall on her year after year, either because she is too distracted to say No, or, possibly, because it has nostalgic associations for her. Associations, I mean, with the dear dead days when her boys were keen little Scouts passing their Woodcraft tests and doing a Good Deed every day, instead of the kind of Deeds they go in for now.

  I don’t know; anyway, whatever Liz’s motives, the outcome is every year the same: either the van turns up and the jumble isn’t ready, or else the jumble is ready, but there is a muddle about the van. Thus I arrived with no great expectations of a profitable morning’s work, but full of benevolent impulses for soothing Liz’s never-failing astonishment at the miscarriage of her arrangements. It was thus somewhat disconcerting to arrive and find her not there at all. I felt like a doctor called out to an urgent case only to find that the patient has gone to a party. I walked in—no one ever rings the bell at the Hardwick’s, the front door is always ajar, even first thing in the morning—and across the mounds of jumble in the hall I observed a young woman, sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, and sobbing.

  As I have already indicated, this is no unusual sight in the Hardwick household; but all the same, you can’t just turn round and walk out on such a scene. You have at least to clear your throat, and look concerned; and no matter how much you hope the answer will be “No!”, you still have to murmur “Is there anything I can do?” or words to that effect.

  Besides, this particular girl looked so young; not nearly as hard-boiled and hag-ridden as most of those who appear under this roof: and even though all I could so far see of her was the crown of her bowed head and her laddered stockings, I already felt sorry for her. When I spoke she raised a round, tear-stained face, and instead of putting me off with the conventional pretences—“It’s nothing!” “I’m all right, just leave me alone,” she responded at once with heart-broken, childlike candour.

  “It’s Tony,” she sobbed. “He—he says…. I mean, I told him….” Sobs drowned the rest of the sentence, and what could I do but go and sit beside her on the stairs and encourage her to proceed with her tale of woe?

  It seemed to be rather a mixed one, the first part of it being that she hadn’t got the fare back to Wolverhampton. She didn’t even want the fare back to Wolverhampton, she’d walk there, so she would, carrying her great suitcase every step of the way, if that’s what Tony wanted! She’d probably die on the journey, and then he’d have no problem any more, would he? Then he’d be able to have his precious Sonja and never have to bother about her, Susan, ever again. That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it?—here she appealed to me with great gulping sobs—That’s what would really make him happy, wouldn’t it, if she just simply died.

  With singularly little data on which to base an opinion as to this conjecture, I gave her such consolation as I could. This Sonja, she probably flirts with everyone, I said. Tony was no doubt flattered by it, as any young man would be, but it didn’t follow that it really meant anything to him…. And after all it was she, Susan, whom he had chosen to bring home to meet his parents, had he not? Whereas Sonja just happened to be here. Didn’t she? Or was she supposed to be Giles’ girl friend? Or what? I felt that if I only knew a few facts, I might be able to be more help.

  More sobs. The point was (sniff) that that Sonja had a broken heart. Supposed to have. That was what was so unfair, the boys all finding her broken heart so fascinating. Because she didn’t have a heart at all, as she, Susan, well knew. But how could you convince Tony of this?

  “He says I’m j-j-jealous!” sobbed the poor child. “So I said, Well, if I’m jealous, you’d better not marry me, had you, because a jealous wife is a dreadful thing, isn’t it, I said. You see, the point is, Mrs Erskine, I’m not a jealous person. He knows I’m not. He’s always said how marvellous it was to find a woman at last who is never jealous, never possessive. It was like a miracle, he said, the wonderful sense of freedom I give him! And now … and now he says….”

  The tears streamed afresh. I could think of nothing either adequate or new to say, so I put my arm round the quivering shoulders, in a slightly awkward gesture of sympathy. At once she collapsed against me in helpless, impersonal longing for comfort; her wet face pressed against my shoulder, and at once I was all the mothers in the world, and she was all the daughters.

  “And what did he say then?” I asked gently—the ancient, useless, irresistible question.

  “N-nothing.” Louder sobs. “I mean, he—he said—he just said ‘God! Women!’ and slammed out of the room! Just as if I was an ordinary, jealous woman, making a scene! I couldn’t let him go like that, so I rushed after him down into the hall, to explain…. And there he was, flinging on his coat to rush out into the rain! And so I started trying to tell him just how I felt about him, but then his arm got caught up in the torn lining of his sleeve, and he just kept cursing and trying to push his fist through it; and when I tried to remind him how wonderful our relationship had once been, he just turned round and yelled at me! So then I said, Very well, he’d better look for a girl who liked being yelled at like that; perhaps Sonja would like it, I said, and he’d be pleased to hear that I was going to catch the very next train back to Wolverhampton, and he’d never have to set eyes on me again! And I did wish then, Mrs Erskine, that I’d had a ring, so’s I could have handed it back to him, all cool and off-hand. We’d been going to buy one with Daddy’s eight pounds, but it all went on that awful little room and on driving up to London because it hadn’t any petrol in. The car Tony borrowed, I mean. The girl said it had enough petrol to get us to London, but it d-d-didn’t … Oh …!”

  I couldn’t help feeling that the child would be better off back in Wolverhampton, especially if there was a Daddy there who could produce sums like eight pounds on demand. I offered to lend her the fare; but this only produced a renewed outburst of grief. And now a door opened on the landing above, and a voice, husky and cracked with sleep and exasperation, enquired over the banisters what in Heaven’s name was going on?

  Susan stopped crying instantly. She drew in her breath with a little gasp, and began to scrub desperately at her eyes with a sodden ball of a handkerchief. I looked up, and beheld the limp, languorous figure of Sonja draped against the curve of the stairs. Her face was pasty, her hair a mess, dangling unbrushed to her shoulders. She looked like a witch, and a haggard one at that—crows’ feet, bags under the eyes, the lot. The remains of yesterdays silver lipstick clung corpse-like to her cracked lips, and not for the first time I cudgelled my brain in utter bewilderment, trying to divine what it was about her that held all the three Hardwick boys in thrall. I could understand Susan’s resentment. Here she was, young, pretty—even nice—and yet it was daily made plain that her youthful charm was as nothing compared with the mysterious attraction of this haggard, nervy, half-drugged l
ooking creature who looked forty if she was a day—though I believe she was really only twenty-eight or twenty-nine: twenty-nine years of soul-searing experience on which she would enlarge in a slow, querulous voice whenever the audience warranted it—that is, when it was attentive and exclusively male.

  Even her hypochondria seemed to fascinate her adorers: she would lie on the sofa and explain to them in slow, reluctant detail exactly what her headache was like, or her night-sweats, or even her heart-burn, than which (I would have thought) there could hardly be a more unromantic complaint. Yet the young men of the household listened to it all enchanted. Normally as inconsiderate and unhelpful as three youths could be, they nevertheless vied with each other to fetch her glasses of water, and pills, and plasters for her corns. It was beyond comprehension. Beyond female comprehension, anyway. A man, I suppose, might be able to explain it.

  Slowly, with dragging feet, Sonja moved down the stairs towards us. A torn nylon nightdress showed beneath the old coat she had thrown round her shoulders, and her battered fur mules flapped dismally against the linoleum. By now Susan had scrambled to her feet; with a dreadful pleading look at me, she grabbed her bulging suitcase and staggered back up the stairs with it, edging past her rival with a frantic toothy imitation of a cool, sophisticated smile.

  “God!” Sonja toiled down the last three steps and collapsed into the hall chair. “It’s not the Tony thing again, is it? The kid must be bonkers!”

  “She’s very unhappy,” I ventured reprovingly; and at that Sonja gave a huge, exhausted sigh, and passed her hand across her brow.

  “I don’t know how anybody can be so immature,” she complained. “They ought to come and fetch her in a pram!”

  “Don’t forget that she is supposed to be marrying Tony,” I pointed out, stiffly. “She has a right to be concerned.”

  “Marrying him? She must be off her rocker!” Sonja gave a scornful little laugh. “Does she think he’s kinky, or something? I mean, it would be like marrying a toddler, wouldn’t it? He’d have to be the kind of man who lurks about outside the entrance to a kindergarten! The poor, sexless little drip! She must be mad to think that a grown man like Tony would even look at her! God, it would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic!”

  But I can be spiteful too, when I feel the occasion warrants it. I chose my words carefully.

  “Don’t forget,” I said sweetly, “That Tony is young, too. Only a year or two older than Susan. To women of our age young love like that may seem rather pathetic and amusing, but to them….”

  She measured me with her sleepy, half-closed eyes, like a hangman calculating the exact length of rope he would be likely to need.

  “Of course, I forgot: you have a daughter in the same position,” she observed. “I mean, planning to get married when she’s only just out of school. Still, if you’re happy about it, why should I worry?”

  “I certainly am happy about it,” I retorted. “It all seems ideal. Her fiancé is everything we could have hoped for. Solid, reliable, devoted—”

  “Oh; I’m so relieved! I really am!” For a moment I thought the congratulatory tone was sincere: but then her eyes slid away from me, and she went on: “So it’s all right then, is it, after all? It was just a rumour, was it? It’s amazing, isn’t it, how the gossips manage to twist everything, and give you quite a wrong impression.”

  Well, could you have kept your poise, and your pride, and bidden her a chilly ‘Good morning’ and left the house without learning what it was that she was insinuating? My fingers were already reaching for the handle of the front door, but now I paused; and in that pause she saw (correctly) that her triumph was assured.

  “You see”—she moved in to the kill—“I did hear a rumour that the man she was engaged to was a Mr Mervyn Redmayne. Of course, I was sure it must be a mistake; I knew a daughter of yours would never let herself get involved in something like that.”

  “Like what? What do you mean?” My defeat in our elegant duel of spite and counter-spite now seemed trivial. I did not mind her knowing that she had drawn blood. Even the slow, smiling pause during which she savoured my anxiety annoyed me only in that it delayed by a few irritating seconds the answer for which I was waiting.

  “You don’t mean it is Mervyn?” She stared at me in feigned astonishment. “Mervyn Redmayne? And you’re letting her marry him? Actually marry him?”

  “We are!” I said stoutly. “Why not? Why ever not? What have you got against him?”

  “Against him? Why—nothing! Nothing against him!”

  Lazily revelling in her power to prolong the suspense, she selected a cigarette from her case, lit it, and drew a long, smoke-laden breath. “I’ve nothing against him at all. But I suppose you know, don’t you, that his father was murdered? Well, of course you do; I’m sure Mervyn wouldn’t have kept a thing like that from his future in-laws: it wouldn’t be honest.”

  Her glance licked hungrily across my face, savouring in advance the look of shock and dismay that should now be suffusing it. But thank goodness I had the self-control to disappoint her.

  “Suicide—not murder,” I corrected her lightly. “Yes, of course we know. It was very sad. Very tragic for them all.”

  “Suicide? Oh. Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose that was the official verdict. That’s what all the papers must have said at the time. But it wasn’t what everyone else was saying. Those of us, I mean, who really knew the family. We knew, you see, that this quiet, contented, middle-aged couple hadn’t been as contented as all that. There’d been girls, you see, young schoolgirls—under sixteen, some of them—and this Mr Ever-so-happily-married Redmayne used to be seen driving them around in his car late at night. One of them in particular happened to be quite a friend of mine, we were at school together. And the funny thing is that she had committed suicide too, only three weeks before he did! Funny, wasn’t it? Two suicides in less than a month, in a little town like that! Suicides by hanging, too. Not the sort of death everyone would choose, is it? Besides, why would a kid like Avril commit suicide at all? She was on top of the world, Avril was. Fellows with money. Fellows with cars. Little trips up to London for the weekend. She had everything!”

  I think it was this last sentiment—this complacent assumption that “everything” was the sum of such component parts as these—this it was that made me lose my temper.

  “What are you insinuating?” I cried. “What business is it of yours—and after all these years, too? If the verdict at the time was suicide—then it was suicide! The police don’t just laugh that sort of thing off, you know! If a person is found hanged, there’s bound to be the most terrific enquiry made. They sift the evidence; examine the scene of the crime; question everyone for miles round. They couldn’t be wrong. Naturally, there’d also be a lot of ignorant chatter and gossip going around—especially in a girls’ school. I can see that you kids would have been all agog with the drama of it, and would have swallowed whole any bit of gossip or rumour that came your way. But you’re not a kid now. You’re a grown woman. Think about it. Do you really imagine that a pack of ignorant schoolgirls were more likely to hit on the truth than the police? The police, with all their experience, their skill, their special equipment—”

  “And with Mr Redmayne himself a policeman?” Sonja interrupted sweetly. “You know, of course, don’t you, Mrs Erskine, that Mr Redmayne was quite high up in the police force of the district? It was he who was in charge of the enquiry into the girl’s death. Though not into his own, of course—” she gave a weird little laugh. “That’s what made it so complicated; somebody else must have wangled the verdict on him. But of course,” she added graciously. “I’m sure you must know all this already. I’m sure Mervyn must have told you all about it. Well, naturally he would. It’s the sort of thing that prospective parents-in-law ought to be told.”

  CHAPTER IX

  I SUPPOSE THAT when I got home that day I might have sat down and worked it all out on squared paper: who could have murdered who, and for wha
t motive: all the permutations and combinations. But what would have been the use? Of all the wide circle of people who must have been in one way or another involved in the life and career of the deceased Mr Redmayne, I knew precisely three: his wife, his son, and now an old school-mate of the unfortunate girl with whom he seemed to have been involved. Why should these three, just because they were the ones I happened to know of, be reckoned the chief suspects? In Mr Redmayne’s life there could not fail to have been enmities, jealousies, involvements of all kinds of which I could guess nothing. Especially would this be the case with a man in his position: there would be professional rivalries among his colleagues; there would be all the resentments of all the people whose convictions he had helped to secure; the resentments, too, of their parents, wives, companions. And doubtless—since he was only human—there must have been occasions when his judgement had been at fault, leaving in its wake the burning, implacable resentment of injured innocence. And if, in addition to all this, Sonja had been right in her conjecture that he was given to seducing young girls, then there was no end to the troubles he might have brought upon himself. The revenge of fathers and boyfriends: blackmail by the girl herself: the possibilities were limitless.

  Blackmail? I thought about this for a moment. Could this girl Avril have been blackmailing her elderly lover? She seemed—from Sonja’s account, anyway—to have been a precocious and unprincipled young woman, with a knowledge of the world’s wickedness far beyond her years. Brought up by foster-parents too; they could not have been very affectionate or attentive ones, or they would never have allowed her to lead such a life. Or was I misjudging them? Had they started out full of kindness and good intentions, and then been bludgeoned by her teenage wildness into a sort of baffled, numb hostility, abandoning in despair any further attempts at understanding or control? I have seen this happen even with real parents, when the pressures become too agonising to be borne.