She kept drawing in great gulps of air. She felt sick; literally, she could be sick. He turned her round and pressed her against the seat, saying soothingly, ‘Look; I always carry a flask. Have just a nip of this; it will pull you together.’
She did not stop him from pouring the whisky into the silver cap of the flask, and although she didn’t like the spirit, she drank it almost gratefully.
‘Well, we’d better get going. That’s if you want to. I’m willing to stay longer.’
She said, ‘Let me sit for a moment,’ and as she made this statement she knew she was asking for time, not only because she felt ill but because somewhere in the back of her mind was a fierce longing to see the woman Paul had kept secretly from her all these years.
The sickness subsided and she sat gazing through the trees towards the gate, with Bill Tapley by her side quietly smoking. He knew what she was waiting for. She was just about to say ‘Let’s go,’ when she heard the children’s voices again. Then they came into view. They were dancing up and down on the narrow garden pathway, and with them was a woman. She was tall and had a child in her arms. They were looking towards the garage and a car being backed into the main road. Alison now watched the woman walk slowly down the path. She was wearing a headscarf, but even if she hadn’t been, it would have been impossible to have seen her features plainly from this distance. She now watched Paul getting out of the car; the children were bouncing at his side, hanging on to each hand, and he bent down and kissed them. It was painful for Alison as she watched them both clinging to his neck, but the pain was nothing compared with when he walked to the gate, and leaning forward, kissed the baby, then the woman. Alison did not close her eyes. What she was watching was the departure of a familiar figure. Paul had kissed that woman as a man kissed a woman he had lived with for years; not passionately on the mouth as with a mistress, but on the side of the cheek, a familiar gesture that a husband makes to the woman who is part of his life, part of himself. She heard the distant revving of his car. She saw the children and the woman waving. Then the car moved onwards and the woman turned and walked back up the path, the children scattering before her.
Bill Tapley’s hand was on hers once more. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ He started up the car, but when they were in the main road he said, ‘You’re not going straight back; you’re going to have something to eat.’
‘I couldn’t. Thanks, but I couldn’t.’
‘Well, you’re going to try.’
‘No. No, I want to go home.’
‘Sure?’
She nodded her head. ‘Good enough,’ he said. ‘But we’ll let him have some distance. I don’t want to run into him at the traffic lights.’
As they neared Sealock, Bill Tapley, turning his head slightly towards her, said, ‘The sale will be over. We’ll call in and you can take that stuff.’
She did not reply. She had quite forgotten about…‘The written-in lot’. Yet but for it, she knew that she would have gone on living without the knowledge that was at this moment tearing her apart.
In the corner of the saleroom, among a few scattered people, Alison wrote out a cheque, while Bill Tapley stood beside her, much to the puzzled speculation of those about them, and when she had handed her cheque in and had given the numbered slip to a porter, he still waited by her side. Then with a twisted smile, he said, ‘You won’t hold today against me, will you? You know the old saying “All’s fair in love and war”. Anyway, I think it’s about time you got yourself straightened out with regards to him. He’s played on your emotions long enough.’
She was prevented from making any reply to this by the porter handing her a cardboard box in which he had stacked the plates and tea caddy. ‘Give them here.’ Bill Tapley took the box from the man and, walking away, said over his shoulder, ‘You can’t carry this. I’ll run you to the shop.’
Alison was now conscious of and embarrassed by the amused gaze of the porter who had witnessed their battle earlier in the day.
Before getting into the car she said quietly, ‘I don’t think that you should come to the shop.’
‘Why not? All the cards will soon be on the table. And anyway, I have no intention of coming in. But you can’t carry this. Get in.’
Within a few minutes they had arrived at the shop and there, right outside, was Paul’s car. Bill Tapley’s caustic comment of, ‘He came straight back, too,’ did not elicit any retort from her, but getting out and taking the box he handed to her, she looked downwards as she said, ‘Thanks.’
He was standing in front of her, peering at her through the now fading light, and light rain. ‘Do you mean that?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do. I thank you for opening my eyes.’
‘I’ll be seeing you, then. And if you want any help, just give me a ring.’
She turned from him and went into the shop, to be greeted by Nelson with, ‘What you got there, eh?’
She shook her head. ‘Oh, a few things I bought privately for…for a customer.’
‘Oh, let’s have a look.’
‘No, leave them, Nelson.’ She held the box closely to her and turned her body from him. ‘I’m taking them upstairs. They’re going straight away again.’
‘Oh!’ The patch over his eye was lifted when he raised his eyebrows, but he said nothing more and she went upstairs…not straight to the drawing room but into her bedroom. There she put the box into her wardrobe and took the precaution of locking the door. Then taking off her hat and coat, she looked at herself in the mirror and was amazed and dismayed at what she saw. Her face looked lifeless…dead. She went out of the room, up the second flight and into the drawing room.
‘Oh, almost on my tail!’ Paul had turned from the mantelpiece to greet her. ‘I’ve just got in.’
She saw at once that he was in a very good mood, quite different from that in which he had left the house and herself earlier in the day. And she knew the reason for the change…there was no mystery any more. Today she had had the explanation of his varying moods over the past months…over the past years. It must have been difficult for him running two homes. The cold way in which this thought presented itself to her caused the deeply emotional side of her to rear and cry silently, I hate him! Oh, how I hate him!
‘You look cold,’ he said.
‘I am cold.’
‘Where have you been? What have you been doing with yourself?’ He was reaching for his pipe and the easy, relaxed manner that she had loved was in evidence again. She said slowly, ‘I’ve been to Eastbourne.’
‘Oh, Eastbourne! I’ve just come from there myself. What were you doing in Eastbourne?’
She did not answer and her silence turned him about to look at her searchingly. She kept up the silence for a space of time and then she said flatly, ‘I was watching you.’ The silence was between them again. Then with his eyes wide and his lower jaw drooping, he brought out slowly, ‘You…mean…you…followed me?’
‘Yes, I followed you.’
She watched him straighten up and he seemed to swell before her eyes. Then with his teeth clenched and his lips spread he gazed at her for a moment in frightening fury before exploding: ‘You blasted little…!’ He took another breath and gritted his teeth to prevent the word escaping. With his breath slowly subsiding he said, ‘Well, I hope you enjoyed what you saw and you hadn’t too long to wait. But let me tell you—’ he took a step towards her and so frightening was his attitude that she backed away from him. ‘Let me tell you. I don’t give a damn what you saw. You would get it all wrong anyway. What I object to is being spied on. You couldn’t wait, could you? I told you I wanted you to come to Eastbourne with me tomorrow. But you couldn’t wait.’
‘Apparently I’ve waited long enough.’
‘Oh? So you’ve waited long enough! What damn business is it of yours, anyway, what I do or where I go? But I’m telling you, you’ve got this all wrong. I know what you’re thinking.’
‘Yes, I’m bound to be wrong. A woman with four children, and he
r husband away, and you visiting at least once a week, I’m bound to be wro—’ She shrank back under his uplifted hand as she waited for the blow to descend on her, and from out of the corner of her screwed-up eyes she saw the quivering fist hovering at the side of her face. She watched it tighten into a white bony mass, before it swiftly dropped away.
When at last she straightened up, he had his back to her. His head was bowed and he was supporting himself on the edge of a small table.
She too needed support. She leant against the back of a high chair. Paul had almost hit her. In her mind’s eye she saw the notches on the stanchion of the door in the shop. She watched him now rubbing his hand over his eyes as if trying to obliterate the scene. The silence went on so long that she thought they would never speak again; and then his voice, rusty sounding, as if from long disuse, said, ‘Why didn’t you ask me about this?’
It was some time before she could say, ‘How could I? Something you had kept secret for years.’
He had turned quickly to her. ‘A secret? I never kept it secret. I just did not see any reason why you should be told. You were too young when it happened, and there was a definite reason why I couldn’t take you to that house before. Yet tomorrow you would have known everything…Tomorrow…one more day. But as for keeping it secret, I’ve kept nothing secret…What made you follow me as if I were … were—’ he stopped and moved slowly towards her again; and their eyes holding fast, he said sadly, ‘Oh, Alison, why did you do this? Tell me.’ He shook his head, ‘Who put you on to this? Who suggested that I was…?’
‘It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter. It means a lot to me.’ His hands came out and moved towards her shoulders, but she shrank away from him and he stood for a second with his arms outstretched in mid-air; then thrusting them down to his sides he barked, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t shrink from me as if I were…’ With a swift movement his hands came up again and he gripped her shoulders. ‘Listen to me, Alison. I want to know who told you about this. Come on.’ He began to shake her now as he growled, ‘I won’t let up until you tell me.’ Her head was bobbing on her shoulders.
‘All right. All right.’ She could tell him. As Bill Tapley had said, the cards were on the table, and she had no hope that any explanation of his would make Bill Tapley a liar. She pushed at him with her hands, gasping, ‘Stop it. Leave go, I’ll tell you.’
When they were apart once more, she had to wait until she regained her breath before, her head moving up and down, she said, ‘Bill…Bill Tapley. He…he wanted to prove to me that…that…’
He broke in on her, ‘Bill Tapley! Tapley? The swine!’ The words were deep, slow and low. ‘And he took you over there?’
Her silence was his answer.
‘The car in the wood? My God!’ He shook his head heavily. ‘The dirty devil. And you in there with him…Ugh!’ He almost spat at her, and then he was across the room and into the hall before she could cry, ‘Paul! Paul!’
Mrs Dickenson, coming out of the kitchen, said, ‘What is it? He’s gone past there like the devil in a gale of wind. Aren’t you going to have any…?’
Alison almost pushed the older woman over in her headlong rush towards the stairhead door, and she leapt down the stairs after him, calling, ‘Paul! Paul!’ When he reached the door leading into the shop he surprised her by turning and waiting for her, and she grasped the banisters as she was pulled to a halt by the expression on his face. She had never seen Paul with an expression like this: wild, almost ferocious. And she didn’t recognise his voice either when he growled, ‘You stay where you are. Do you hear?’
She did not move until the door closed behind him, but when she heard the key turn in the lock she rushed at the door and battered it with her fists, again shouting, ‘Paul! Paul!’ She was still hammering when the door was unlocked and there stood Nelson. He looked a very perturbed old man, of which he gave evidence when he said, ‘God! Miss Alison, what’s got into him? Aa haven’t seen him like that for years. Something’s radically wrong, that’s a fact.’
He had hardly finished speaking before she pushed past him and rushed though the shop, but as she pulled open the door she was only in time to see the back of Paul’s car as it moved away.
Nelson was behind her, speaking to her again. ‘Come in, miss, out of that. Look, you have no coat and it’s pouring.’
Alison paused for a moment, then taking no heed of Nelson’s voice calling after her, she ran down the hill, straight through Badger’s Alleyway, across the square, skirting the wall by the old disused cemetery, then through short cuts and side streets until she arrived at the end of the Regency terrace. Through the driving rain and the dimmed street lights she saw Paul’s car drawn up by the kerb, and as she raced up the street towards it, past the curious glances of the rain-protected passers-by, her heart was pounding as if it would burst from her body.
The green door was ajar, the hall was lit, and although there was no-one to be seen the whole house seemed to be reverberating with voices. She made for the drawing room, and there they were in the centre of the room facing each other, and her cry of ‘Paul! Paul!’ was lost in the shouting.
‘You’ve been planning this for years, you dirty swine!’
‘Dirty swine, am I? Look who’s talking. And who do you think you’re trying to kid? You won’t kid her with that tale. She might be young but she’s not to be fooled with you and your side shoot…’
It happened so swiftly, even in the space of her taking a step. Paul’s fist shot out and Bill Tapley reeled back, staggering against a beautiful inlaid card table that went crashing over onto the stone hearth. She was hanging on to Paul now, crying, ‘Stop it!…Don’t! Don’t! Paul, listen to me.’
But he was not listening; he was watching with furious gaze and unblinking eyes as Bill Tapley rose slowly to his feet. He watched him grope out behind him and grip the back of a chair, then stand shaking his head and slowly moving his fingers over his bleeding mouth and along the line of his jaw before bringing his hand from his face. And now, looking from his bloodstained palm towards Paul, he muttered slowly, ‘You shouldn’t have done that. Talking’s one thing, this is another.’ His fingers were touching his jaw again. ‘You’ll be sorry for this. If I have to wait a lifetime, I’ll make you sorry for this, Paul Aylmer.’
Alison clung on tightly to Paul as she felt the muscles of his arms contracting again, and as she looked at Bill Tapley there was no feeling of sympathy in her, for here was the real Bill Tapley again, cunning, wary, waiting; not the man he had presented to her this afternoon. He was looking at her now, speaking to her through closed teeth. ‘Don’t be hoodwinked by any soft-soap tale he’ll tell you…You saw for yourself this afternoon.’
Paul’s whole body jerked as if about to spring again, but he did not move forward. He remained still and silent for a moment before saying thickly, ‘You always were a snake, Tapley. I’ve been wary of you for years. I knew what you were working up to and I’ve played you at your own game. If she hadn’t hated your guts I would have stepped in before, but I knew that any move you made would be turned down flat, so I let you go on. But you couldn’t wait to play your cards; and you pushed them too far today. You should have been more patient and gone on with your plan, which was to marry her, get her money out of the firm and break me…once again. That was it, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ll do it yet.’ Bill Tapley was carefully wiping the blood from his face with a handkerchief.
At this point Alison realised that neither man was aware of her presence; they were taken up in this moment with their hate of each other. This hate that had materialised long before she had come on to the scene. Yet it was she who had brought it to a head.
At this point Paul shrugged off Alison’s hold, and his lip curled upwards, leaving his large teeth bare as he muttered deep in his throat, ‘I’ll be ready for you. And when you try it, I’ll give you the same treatment I would a snake. It’s a good job I knew your father or
I would have been deceived by your smarm more than once, but there’s not a pin to put between you. He’ll be alive until you’re dead. He once said to me there were different ways of crucifying a man, and by God, you’ve learned well from him. But I’m warning you, Tapley, you step near my preserves again’—at this point he actually pushed Alison before him—‘you won’t get off as lightly as you did this time. Remember you can drive a man so far that he comes to a point where he doesn’t give a damn. I’ve reached that point, so just remember that.’
When Alison once again found herself pushed, and roughly, towards the door she did not protest. And as they went out of the house, no word of retaliation from Bill Tapley followed them.
As she stepped into the street Paul pulled the car door open and almost thrust her inside. Then going round into his seat, he started the engine and let in the clutch so quickly that the car seemed to leap from the road.
She was shivering again, but now partly from cold. She was wet through and suddenly very tired, as if she herself had been doing battle, and she wanted desperately to bend her head and cry.
It was a matter of minutes later that she realised they were not on the road leading to the house. They were on the main road with the traffic skimming past like phantoms through the rain. Turning to him, she brought out quickly, ‘Where…where are we going?’ When he did not answer she cried, ‘Paul, look! Where are we going? What are you doing?’
His voice was cold and impersonal as he answered, ‘We are going to Eastbourne. You like Eastbourne, so we’re going back there.’
Her shivering became intensified, and now she felt frightened. She said quickly, ‘I don’t want to go. I want to go home; I’m tired.’
‘That’s your lookout; you should have thought about that in the first place.’
The Lady on my Left (The Mists of Memory) Page 12