I looked at Mr. Abercrombie while this was going on and saw how much he was ‘‘ hear, hearing’’ in his throat. It didn’t need a lot of imagination to see how closely this sort of thing touched him, how it must have irked him in the between-war years to find upstart and opportunist firms claiming the same privileges as himself and sometimes leaving bad reputations behind them. You could see how he would welcome a move to re-name the profession and ring it round with safeguards. (Only the safeguards weren’t enough. If he but knew it a snake had got in under the fences of his own firm.)
Fred McDonald had been at the other end of the table from me and we hadn’t exchanged more than a word; but afterwards he came across and said:
‘‘Been doing any more crystal gazing lately?’’
‘‘Why?’’I said. ‘‘D’you want six away winners?’’
Charles Robinson was beside me, and McDonald turned to him quietly: ‘‘The dear boy came into my office a week ago and asked me how much Lowis Manor in Kent was insured for. A couple of days later it’s burned to the ground. Can you wonder at my question?’’
‘‘That’s not crystal gazing,’’ said Charles. ‘‘It sounds more like fire raising.”
‘‘Yes,’’ I said. ‘‘You only need to put a match to one of those places and up they go. Anyway, you wouldn’t begrudge me turning a dishonest penny, would you?’’
‘‘I wouldn’t begrudge it if you told me how you did it,’’ said McDonald.
‘‘There you are,’’ Charles said to me; ‘‘ it is those six away winners he’s interested in.”
On Charles’s part, of course, it was all light and good humoured and didn’t mean a thing. But there’d been a taint of spite in McDonald’s voice.
Dancing followed; but I made the excuse of my ankle and left early. I slept heavily, and when I woke there was an envelope on the mat I knew that this was it.
‘‘Dear Oliver (it ran),
Tracey’s mother has shown me the letter you wrote her. It
is kind of you to think of her at this time. I saw you at the
inquest but wonder you did not come to speak to us afterwards.
Victor is being wonderful about it all, but your help and
company would not be unwelcome when you have time or
inclination to give it.
I hope your ankle is better.
Sarah.”
It was a queer letter and a bitter disappointment. It was not the letter of a completely innocent woman. In any case she could not be that. It could be the letter of a completely guilty one, inviting me down so that I could still be of some use to her in helping her to get by.
Well, I wasn’t going. I didn’t reply. I didn’t go down to the funeral.
Days passed. There were of course the two claims to be settled on this fire, under separate policies, one for the house and one for its contents. Victor Moreton, who was handling the thing, engaged a separate assessor to represent them. The days became weeks. The claim on the building was settled. I went about my ordinary work and insisted that Michael should deal with it himseif. Then eventually the figure for the contents was agreed and settled. That was the last point at which she could have drawn back. Even up to that last minute I’d been hoping.
Towards the end of the summer Michael began to complain.
‘‘Listen, man,’’ he said; ‘‘there are three of us in this firm. One may be pretty elderly and the other trying to specialize, but you haven’t any need to take on all the work there is or sweat at it twenty-four hours a day. The Branwell assault tactics can be overdone. Ease up. Take a day off. You’ve got to last next year as well.”
‘‘I’m all right,’’ I said.
‘‘But you’re not all right. Look at yourself in the mirror. You look as if you work in artificial light all day and spend the week-ends at the coal face.”
‘‘Did I leave some behind my ears last week? I take care to wash well on Monday mornings.”
‘‘Let me tell you something,’’ he said. ‘‘You’re still comparatively new to this work. Don’t let it get you down. It pays us all to be conscientious, but there is a limit. You go at a thing that’s going to bring us in ten guineas as if your life depended on it. Discriminate.… Why won’t you take your holidays?’’
‘‘I’ll have a week in October. Any time will do.”
‘‘Well, come down with us next week-end. We’d love to have you.”
‘‘Thanks, I said, ‘‘but … Oh, all right. If you’re sure Evelyn can manage.”
He stared at me broodingly. ‘‘There’s nothing wrong, I suppose, outside your work? Often you’ve looked really ill. People have asked. But you’re such a close devil.”
‘‘I’m not close. And there’s nothing wrong.”
‘‘Well, you know what I mean. If there was anything—if I could help in any way …” I didn’t answer, and he ended: ‘‘You should take up golf or something. It would get you out into the country for a bit.”
So I went down. I found they were without help, and Evelyn was busy with her young baby, so I felt more of a misfit than ever; but I stayed Saturday night and we played bridge, the fourth being John Graves, who had been in our battalion and who lived near. We talked a bit about old times, and having something in common with them helped me I felt rather better than I’d done for some time, until John spoiled it by saying:
‘‘By the way, I believe you know Sarah Moreton, don’t you, Oliver? I met her last week at a party, and your name came up. What an attractive creature she is.”
‘‘Oh,’’ I said. ‘‘Yes. She’s all right.”
‘‘Oliver’s magnificent capacity for understatement,’’ said Michael. ‘‘We’ve rather lost touch with them since June. You know her husband died in a fire?’’
‘‘Someone told me,’’ John said. ‘‘It was tough luck. I think she’s living in London now, isn’t she?’’
‘‘I haven’t heard,’’ I said.
‘‘She was with a man called Fisher who does murals and things. How long is it since her husband died? June?’’
‘‘May. Why?’’
‘‘Oh, somebody told me she was engaged to this Fisher bloke. I don’t know if it’s true. She was asking about you.”
‘‘I was Tracey’s friend,’’ I said.
‘‘Yes, that’s what Fisher implied. It’s queer how it came out that we knew you. I mentioned Michael as being one of my best friends, and the name Abercrombie did the rest.”
After that no more was said, but of course it didn’t end it for me. You go on for months laboriously covering over the raw spot, one thin skin on another, until you think the thing is partly healed; but at the very first touch it comes away leaving the place as raw and angry as ever. I didn’t know what to do about it, and there seemed no cure.
Perhaps Michael felt the week-end had been a failure, because he made no objection when I said I ought to get back on the Sunday afternoon. I left about three, glad enough to be on my own again yet grateful for their effort to give me a change and rest. Leaving them I felt I was leaving normality: my life never seemed to run on ordinary lines. Not for me the Sunday dinner and the comfortable pipe, the preoccupied wife and the gurgling baby, the gardening and the golf, the week-end visitors and the annual motoring holiday.
I was more restless than I’d ever been in the past—and now miserable as well. The friends I’d made in this new life were only friendly acquaintances. Something in me put them off when they tried to make it more. The only friends I’d ever really made—or thought I’d made—had only been using my friendship for their own ends. It was unlikely I should be invited to Michael’s house again except in the course of what they conceived to be their duty. I hadn’t the frankness, the openness that you needed for real friendship. It was easy to call it shyness, reserve, but it was something much deeper. I made people uncomfortable because I made them think I didn’t like them.
And this flat I was coming back to. I could afford something better now but hadn’t th
e initiative to find it. It was as soulless as I was. Two drab bare rooms without taste or personality. A sleeping-box and a cooking-box.
Perhaps the solution was to throw up this work and get right away. If it was my fate to gather no moss I might as well have the privilege of being a rolling stone. There was nothing to hold me now except the money, the partnership, the satisfaction of the job. And the satisfaction had gone since I had let myself down over the Moretons.
You came to an end. You weren’t masters of your fate, the way that silly poem said; your life was decided and divided for you. I was coming to the end of another phase. The first had ended with my father’s death. The second with the outbreak of war. The next with peace. Part five was due to begin any day.
London was dead that afternoon when I got home. Baker Street was thinly peopled with Sunday newspaper posters flapping lightly and a skeleton service of buses; but George Street was empty, and almost the only car on the left-hand side was parked outside the little dress shop.
I didn’t suppose it was anyone for me and drew up behind it. I thought I’d go in for a smoke before I put the car away. I went in and up the first flight and saw a woman coming down. It was Sarah.
Chapter Fifteen
She said: ‘‘Oliver, I …”
I went up the next three steps so that I was only one below her. She hadn’t changed. She was wearing a light flowered summery frock and no hat, and a wide silver bracelet on her wrist, and flat-heeled sandals of green linen.
I said: ‘‘ Were you looking for me?’’
She said coolly: ‘‘D’you mind?’’
I went past her and threw open the door and then stood aside for her. Her frock brushed against my hand as she went in; there was a light perfume to it.
The room looked its worst; but now I didn’t care. Turn all the sun on and show it up. She was standing there in the middle of the room, waiting for me to speak, hostile herself.
I said: ‘‘ Won’t you sit down? It isn’t Lowis Manor, but the chairs are clean.”
‘‘Thanks.”
I felt in my pocket but the cigarette packet was empty and I went across to the bureau to see if there were more.
I said: ‘‘ You’re living in London now?’’
‘‘Yes. With my father. It seemed—the obvious thing to do.”
I shut the drawers. There were no cigarettes. She was sitting in one of the easy chairs, and the sun caught a corner of her hair, making the darkness into copper. She said: ‘‘You never came to see me. Never once.”
‘‘Did you expect me to?’’
‘‘Was it expecting too much of you? I’m sorry.” Contempt in her voice.
‘‘Yes, it was expecting too much.”
‘‘I don’t understand. I thought …” She stopped there. We were both trying to control ourselves.
‘‘Yes, tell me,’’ I said furiously. ‘‘Tell me just what you did think. I’d like to know.”
Her eyes were startled out of their own hostility. She said: ‘‘When Tracey died—the way he did; when that happened, all my friends were so kind—and understanding, and tried to help me with their friendship … all except one. And I’d thought—expected—I’d expected.… She stopped and took a careful breath, ‘‘It’s—all these months and you never even wrote. I tried not to come here this afternoon. I thought, if that’s the way he feels.… But I came because I had to. I had to make sure. I thought perhaps some sort of scruple, some feeling that you would be out of place, that——’’
‘‘Scruple is the word,’’ I said. ‘‘You said once we didn’t speak the same language; but that word should mean the same thing to us both.”
‘‘Why shouldn’t it mean the same? What is the matter? If you feel as you do—apparently, for some reason.…”
‘‘Oh, what’s the use?’’ I said wearily. ‘‘That sort of blue-eyed innocence doesn’t ring the bell any more.”
She was staring at me. After a minute she said: ‘‘Go on. Don’t stop there.”
‘‘What do you want me to say? What is there to say? That I’ve felt too sick about it all—sick to the stomach—to bother to see you or to be able to write. I found out the truth—quite by accident—just a few days before the fire. So you see it was.… I went down to Lowis Manor, was there at the time of the fire, saw it all. I don’t know what went wrong—something did—in a way just as much for you as for Tracey. But it didn’t stop you from cashing in on the fraud right up to the limit. Did it? Well, I kept my mouth shut What more was there you could have expected me to do?’’
She got up. The sun had gone from her hair and the colour from her face; she was like someone suddenly seen in black and white.
‘‘Oliver, what are you saying?’’
I couldn’t stop now. ‘‘That Bonington that was supposed to have been burned in the first fire. The man who bought it from you didn’t take it out of the country after all. It’s still hanging in his flat in Maida Vale. I saw it there and asked him about it. He described you and the story you’d told him. So I went down to Lowis Manor on the Saturday evening to see the other fakes for myself—found the fire had just been started.”
I stopped there for a second, for breath. Her throat moved. Then she turned so quickly that her skirt swung in a fan.
I was just at the door in time to get in her way.
‘‘You’ve got to listen to me now.”
‘‘I’ll not listen!’’
‘‘You’ve no choice.… To begin with I hoped—I tried to believe—that you were only in it as an unwilling partner, playing Tracey’s hand because you were his wife. Then when you said nothing, did nothing, played the innocent victim.… It wasn’t any good any longer. I’d been made a fool of by you both. There was no excuse for fooling myself.”
‘‘Please get out of my way!’’
‘‘Will you deny that you sold the Bonington to an American called Croft in the first place—pretended it had been lost in the fire.”
‘‘Deny?’’ she said. ‘‘Of course I deny it! I’ve never heard of a man called Croft. Our Bonington was burned! You’ve got fraud on the brain. And as for this—this later story it—it passes belief. If you think you’ve been withholding something for my sake, please don’t withhold it for my sake any longer. Go to the police. Do what you like to smirch Tracey’s memory. It’s good enough to stand a few cheap smears!’’
She pushed past me and out. There was a patter of footsteps and then they were gone. The slam of a car door, the rev of an engine; I rushed down the stairs after her. By the time I came out the car was turning into Baker Street.
Soon after five I drove up to Monk’s Court, N.W.8. A young woman, very tiny, with wide eyes, opened the door and I asked if Mr. Croft was in.
She smiled. ‘‘ I’m expecting him back any minute. Can I help you?’’
‘‘My name’s Branwell. I met your husband in the spring. There was something I wanted to see him about, rather urgently.…”
‘‘Well, would you care to wait? He’s only just gone, taking some friends home.”
I went in. Mrs. Croft excused herself, and I sat and read the New Yorker for seventeen minutes and never smiled once. I don’t know how long it was after that. I was flipping the pages helplessly backwards and forwards when William Croft came in.
He said: ‘‘Oh, yes, of course I remember. You called about Charles Highbury. I haven’t seen them since; but it wasn’t a divorce after all. Some marriages are tough, aren’t they? Let’s see, you take Scotch.…”
‘‘Not at the moment, thanks.” We went into the big living-room and the Bonington looked across at me enigmatically. Croft followed my glance. ‘‘Is it something about the picture? I thought that first time you came it kind of upset you.”
‘‘It’s not about the picture but about the person who sold you the picture. You told me, didn’t you, that she was in her twenties, tallish and dark and pretty.”
‘‘Yes. Sure. That’s the lady.”
‘‘With he
r hair curly, with a touch of bronze in it—her skin very clear … a—a quick-moving, vital sort of person; her eyes crinkle when she smiles and her brows straighten; her nose is straight and slim and fairly short; she sometimes catches up her bottom lip with her teeth.”
He looked at me, quizzically. ‘‘Yes, I think you might say that’s fairly accurate.”
‘‘I don’t mean fairly accurate. Does it describe her so there’d be no mistake?’’
‘‘Well, I couldn’t say that. I only met her twice for two short interviews in a shop. And that’s two years ago.” He frowned and rubbed his chin with his thumb. ‘‘Yes, I’d say it was about right. The one thing I’d question is that she didn’t seem specially vital. I thought she acted kind of tired, kind of bored. My impression was she was one of those women who put on a show of being aloof so you’ll think they come out of a higher drawer than they really do. But maybe that was a mistaken view. Maybe it was because I wasn’t her type. You’ll have a Martini instead?’’
‘‘Wait.” I fumbled in my pocket and took out a clipping from the Daily Mirror. ‘‘Was she like this?’’
He took it and frowned at it and carried it nearer the light Then he handed it back.
‘‘No. She had more prominent cheek bones, the girl I met. Different shape of face. But I’ll grant you she’s rather like her.”
When I got home I took down the telephone directory There were two Darnleys with a G among their initials, but there was no mention of either being a doctor. But one lived in Leytonstone and the other at 21 Ponting Street, S.W.7. This sounded so much the more likely that it must be the first choice.
I took the road through Hyde Park and came out at Knightsbridge and turned down Sloane Street. I tried Pont Street, and then went on down Walton Street to the South Kensington tube and took the Old Brampton Road. Ponting Street is about a mile down on the right hand side.
A short-haired fellow in a dark suit opened the door. I asked if this was Dr. Darnley’s house. He said it was. So far so good.
‘‘Is Mrs. Moreton at home, please?’’
Fortune Is a Woman Page 12