by Roy Lewis
Hell. He had to get her out of his mind.
Peter downed the whisky and poured another, then rose and walked across to the cabinet where Jeannette had kept all her records and tapes. He pulled out one tape and stared at it, oblivious of the tumble of the others. Many of them would be current pops: he had struck lucky first time — Dvorak’s New World Symphony. It would do. Jeanette had catholic tastes.
In everything.
Had had.
Did he really mean what his thoughts inferred? Where had she gone — correction, to whom had she gone, if anyone, when she had left him? Did it matter?
Not anymore. She was dead, and he was wallowing in Dvorak and whisky and self-analysis and self-pity. And horror. Don’t forget the horror, he thought as the music washed over him and he still saw the blackened tongue and the bloodied teeth. Don’t forget the horror.
How had it been in the interval between her death and Potter’s bumbling inquest? A strain, certainly, a difficult, horrible time but different from the way things were this afternoon. There had been people around and he hadn’t been alone. All right they were not real people, not friends, or relations, just police and ghouls and sightseers and reporters, but they were people of a sort. And in his anger at them and frustration at them he hadn’t had time to think too much, as he was thinking now — of the sunshine of their courtship, of the excitement of their marriage, of the pain of her going away, of the bite of pride and the dulling millstone of work, of the searing agony of her return . . .
The day she had come back . . . He had just returned from Moorside . . .
Moorside. The whisky was warm inside his throat and the sun was breaking through. The horns soared on the tape and Peter’s head fell back drowsily on the cushions of the settee.
He slept.
When he woke he was cold and there was a dark stain on the carpet where the whisky bottle, kicked over some time ago by his dangling foot, had gulped out its contents to the receptive carpet. He swore, not for the stained carpet but for his hammering head. There was another bottle in the cabinet; he rose groggily and walked across to get it. A stiff dose, to chase down the two white headache powders he clumsily pulled out of the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. The bathroom mirror showed him a pale face, paler for the contrast of his dark hair and eyebrows. His mouth looked discontented, even petulant — they were not words which he had previously thought applicable to himself. He bared his teeth: they were sound, and even, at least. With a shrug he took the powders and the whisky. Whisky, water and headache powders. Wasn’t it dangerous, liquor and drugs? What wasn’t dangerous?
The steps seemed elongated as he walked down the stairs.
Another drink. Stupid. When he had drifted off to sleep something pleasant had warmed him. Now he was depressed again. Music. That’s what it was. The tape had ended long ago: there was now only the hum of the playback. The sky — no, it was darkening now. People: it was the thought of people that had warmed him, people and music.
And yet it wasn’t — not people, just one person. At Moorside.
Shirley.
He wanted her company, and he wanted the whisky and he wanted music. Unsteadily, with his head still thumping, he walked into the sitting-room, tucking the whisky bottle under his arm. The music tapes lay in an untidy jumble: he grabbed five or six of them and almost dropped the bottle. He put the tapes and the bottle down and walked to the kitchen, pulled an old paper carrier out of the waste-bin, lurched back into the sitting-room and stuffed tapes and bottle into the bag.
It bulged.
He kept one hand under it and one arm around it as he walked out of the front door, pulling the door closed behind him with his foot. The bang echoed in his skull.
With the paper bag dumped on the back seat of the car he reversed carefully into the road, and drove away from the house.
‘Now steady as she goes. With the way your reputation lies in shreds at the moment, with dear old Stephen frowning at you and John looking on unhappily, with Potter mouthing stupidities, and Betty thrilling vicariously each time you step through the office, and Joan being her efficient self in spite of it all, it would simply not do if you were now to be taken into custody by the local constabulary on a charge of being drunk in charge of a motor-car and driving to the danger and detriment of the general public—’
Peter realised that he was talking to himself and stopped at once. Aware of his intoxication, he began to drive more slowly: he was not infected with the common alcoholic bravado that he had seen in certain of Jeannette’s friends when they had come to her parties at the house. Then, suddenly conscious of the fact that police cars sauntered suspiciously after vehicles that appeared to be moving too slowly, Peter increased the pressure on the pedal and moved into top gear.
He ran the car down through the town.
The street lights were on and the neon lit signs flashed cheerily at him. When the crossroads loomed up he stopped carefully, took a good look each way and moved on. The slope of Gladstone Hill took some of the power out of the engine and he slipped into third: he was driving too slowly again, for the car usually sailed up here.
Usually. When had he last driven up Gladstone Hill? It seemed a long time ago. It was a long time ago.
When he swung round the bend at the top of the hill the town twinkled at him in the basin below: the moor stretched away darkly to his right. The line of bungalows huddled together just below the skyline: his headlights would be blazoning the hill for watchers down below.
A mile farther on there was the copse, and then the one small bungalow, squat, with leaded windows that reflected his headlights, staring at him in surprise as he turned into the narrow drive. Why shouldn’t they? They hadn’t seen him in quite a while.
And yet Shirley didn’t seem surprised when she saw him leaning there in the doorway, one hand out to press again at the bell, the other still clutching the paper bag to his chest. She simply stood there. The light was behind her and her face was not clear to him but he knew there was no surprise in it. The flatness of her voice told him that.
‘Peter.’
Just that.
He was deflated. There had seemed some point in coming out: he had felt a need to be with her, near her, with a drink, and soft music. People. Jeannette.
He could say nothing, and he stood foolishly looking at her standing in the doorway. It was a mistake. He shouldn’t have come. He shook his head and half turned away and his foot slipped on the step. He fell to one knee, but kept a tight grip on the bag.
‘Peter! Are you all right?’
‘Hell!’ he commented bitterly, feeling the red gravel bite at his knee.
‘You’ve been drinking.’
When she thus stated the obvious her hand touched his shoulder.
‘You’d better come inside.’
And there he was, on the settee, in the small, simply furnished sitting-room that he knew so well, with the paper bag at his feet and Shirley frowning at him.
‘You’ve cut your knee,’ she said abruptly, and left him. Peter gazed at the tear in his trouser leg and saw the stain of blood. When Shirley came back with a bowl of hot water and a first-aid package he reached for the paper bag. The warmth of the room had revived his spirits.
‘You want that I should take a snort before ya operate, Doctor? Seein’ you got no anaesthetic?’
He waved the whisky bottle at her. She didn’t smile.
Foolishness, and sobriety, came back as he sat there with one trouser leg rolled up. Shirley bathed the small wound, squeezing out some tiny pieces of gravel. She said nothing until there was a small patch of plaster over the cut. Then she looked up at him.
‘Why did you come here, Peter?’
He looked down at the plaster, then carefully rolled down the trouser leg. He’d have to wear the grey suit to the meeting tomorrow.
‘I really do feel like a little boy, falling down and cutting my knee.’
‘I asked you a question.’
In th
e time Peter had known her he had never heard her speak sharply, as she did now. He looked at her. Her dark hair was the same as always, cut fairly short, curling naturally at the nape of her neck, framing the oval of her face. Her skin was as smooth and unlined, her nose was as straight and as short, the smudge of freckles as faint across the upper part of her cheek — but her brown eyes weren’t as warm and soft as he remembered, and there was an unremembered hardness to her mouth.
It had been a long time since he had last come to Moorside.
Even as he stared at her, lost, she relented somewhat. She rose from her knees.
‘While you’re thinking of an answer,’ she said more softly, ‘I’ll get you some coffee. It seems to me that you need it.’
Why had he come? He tried to tell her, over the dark brown coffee that she gave him, deliberately avoiding her eyes as he did so. He tried to tell her of the anger that Potter’s words had caused him and she broke in—
‘It doesn’t matter. We know it was over a long time ago.’
He tried to tell her that he had felt the need to speak to her after the inquest to explain why he hadn’t objected to Potter’s statements and she insisted—
‘It’s of no consequence, Peter.’
So he had to come to his depression and the reasons for it, Stephen Sainsby’s words, the whisky—
‘. . . and I wanted to see you. Simple as that. Don’t know why. Wanted to see you, be here in this room, where I used to feel warm and, well, happy. I wanted to talk with you and hear music — I even brought some tapes over — and drive out the image of . . . of . . .’
Wordlessly, Shirley took the tapes out of the paper bag, and selected one. A few minutes later from the tape-recorder in the corner of the room came a Sinatra song, slow and vibrant. Shirley sat in the chair opposite him and sipped her coffee. Her eyes were fixed on his. He couldn’t read what they said.
He finished the coffee. Songs for Swingin’ Lovers swirled around him. Shirley sat there, staring at him.
‘I have the uncomfortable feeling,’ he said eventually, ‘that you don’t even see me.’ She smiled faintly.
‘I see you, Peter, but clearly, for the first time since we met.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You came here tonight because you remembered this as a place where you were warm and happy, wasn’t that what you said? What did you leave unsaid? Let me tell you. You came back here because you were down. Because you wanted a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. You came back hoping that things would be as they were. Hoping that you only had to walk in through the door for the months in between to be forgotten. I used to think you were sensitive and thoughtful, but now I see you as a selfish, egocentric boor. I sit here and I look at you and think of you as you were — as I thought you were — but it’s all overlaid with the image that you now present. Half drunk, hardly coherent, and expecting me to fall into bed with you the moment you feel desire coming on.’
The tones of her voice were even and measured. They held no rancour. The words didn’t nettle him. Perhaps she was right. But he didn’t think so. Even though some of her criticism was justified.
‘I never came round here again, after Jeannette came back,’ he said slowly.
‘Quite right,’ she agreed.
‘And I didn’t telephone or write.’
‘I didn’t expect you to, after the first week.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He looked steadily at her.
‘I’m indifferent,’ she shrugged. ‘It hurt then — not now. It’s been over for some time now, and your coming here tonight was a mistake.’
‘Yes.’
But her coolness nettled him somewhat.
Deliberately he left her and walked through to the small kitchen to take down two tumblers.
‘To celebrate the end of a friendship,’ he said coldly.
‘Not for me, thanks,’ she replied, equally coldly.
Her glass remained untouched while he took a long drink.
‘I’m equally indifferent to you getting drunk — as long as you don’t do it here.’ Peter ignored the remark, and took another drink.
‘You’ve described me as an egocentric boor,’ he said, ‘so I might as well behave like one. I’m going to tell you the story of my life — at least, my life with Jeannette and—’
‘Peter—’
He raised his hand, staring at her a little owlishly.
‘I know what you’re going to say. It’s of no consequence to you. All right, I accept that. The fact remains that I’ve got something to remove from my system and I’m going to try to do it. You, perforce, will be my audience. You say you know why I came here tonight — I’m not convinced that you were right or fair in what you said. I certainly needed to apologise — I’ve done so, I am doing so. But I also need to explain — and the fact that you don’t want to hear is irrelevant. I’m that egocentric.’
Peter took another drink. He felt a little lightheaded. Shirley sat quietly, with her hands in her lap, staring at him. Her eyes were very bright.
‘There’s only one word for the way Jeannette came into my life. She swept in. I was knocked clean off my feet — indeed, if you bear in mind the fact that she was always capable of bowling me over you’ll appreciate what happened later more clearly.
‘I married her within three weeks of our meeting. She was bright, beautiful and vivacious, with traditional blue eyes and long blonde hair — but I needn’t describe her, you knew her. Why did she marry me, though? Boredom, security? — I don’t think so. I believe she was genuinely fond of me, perhaps in love with me, for a while. But I couldn’t live her sort of life. She wanted gaiety, and parties, and sudden impulsive trips. She was an expensive woman to keep and my junior partnership was not that remunerative. I did my best to increase the firm’s profits, and I even did some speculating.’
Peter stopped suddenly, staring into his glass. He thought of Sam Gaines’s words and he shivered.
‘But arguments developed,’ he hurried on, turning away from Shirley, ‘particularly when I came home some days to find she’d arranged a party at the drop of a hat. After one particular incident — the details of which I won’t bore you with, but it was quite a slanging match — she charged out of the house in what is described as high dudgeon. I thought that she would cool off, and return the next day. She did, when I was out. But only to pack her things. I didn’t see her or hear from her for seven months.’
He turned to face Shirley. She nodded. ‘That’s where I came in,’ she said softly. ‘I . . . I think I will take that drink after all.’ He watched her sip at the glass.
‘I didn’t want to hurt you, Shirley.’
‘Forget it.’
‘I didn’t even want to start an affair with you — it just happened. You remember how I’d seen you working in the library a couple of times and we’d met accidentally at the country club and how that clown Edwards was causing trouble. You remember that my impulse to take you home wasn’t a planned thing at all and then—’
‘I remember,’ she said flatly. ‘Yes.’
Peter sat down morosely, pouring himself another drink. The bottle was looking the worse for wear.
‘I didn’t get in touch, or try to do so, with Jeannette. She’d left me, she’d made her decision and well, I admit, with the way I was working and the pleasure I took in your company, I was living very much for the day, each day, with no thought to the future.’
‘You were well set up. A job, a girl-friend, and a wife in the background who could conveniently be forgotten.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he flashed, ‘and you know it. All right, my pride was hurt when she left me, and I worked hard to get her out of my mind. I was succeeding, and with you—’
‘Spare me the details.’
‘You’ve become cynical.’
‘It becomes me.’
‘It doesn’t.’
Silence fell between them.
‘Anyway,’ she said suddenly
, ‘it all changed when she came back.’
‘I had just dropped you home here, and when I got back there she was, hanging her clothes in the wardrobe. I was stunned. I’d almost forgotten the way she was, the way she looked. And there she was.’
‘And there I wasn’t.’
‘Shirley, I’m sorry. I should have seen you, or written. If the truth be known I was afraid. Jeannette had always been able to do as she willed with me: I loved her and she used it. I still love her, Shirley, I’ve always loved her — you must realise that. I didn’t want to lose her again: I only once asked her where she had been and what she’d been doing when she was away during those seven months. She laughed, and I didn’t pursue it. I wanted her back.’
‘Thanks.’
‘It was no reflection on our relationship,’ he said slowly. ‘I’m only trying to be objective and honest about it. I was very fond of you, Shirley. But Jeannette always had me, tight.’
‘And now she’s dead, and you come running — I’m sorry, Peter. I shouldn’t have said that.’
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Jeannette was dead. And nothing he could say would change that, and nothing he could say or do would change the way in which he had behaved towards Shirley, or justify that behaviour. She deserved better than a whining weakling like Peter Marlin, an indecisive, amoral coward who couldn’t even see straight at the moment. Whisky-soaked.
Time he went. Time he wasn’t here. Apologise once more, say something grandiose like you’ll never see me again and walk out into the night. Trouble was, difficulty in rising.
‘Peter, are you all right?’
‘Of course.’
He was upright. But his words had been slurred. Shirley was standing too, but her features were blurred.
‘Shirley—’
He put out a hand. He wanted to say he was sorry, that he was going. But he felt a heat rising through his veins. He could hardly breathe and his heart was hammering violently. He was rocking, lurching on his feet. Briefly he felt her shoulder under his hand, then he was falling . . .