The Trouble-Makers

by Celia Fremlin

  “Liked her like that—yes. But also he couldn’t stand her like that—that was another matter altogether, as they both found all too soon. And yet, if she’d been left alone, Mary could have taught him to stand it—just simply taught him, and he would have been grateful to her for ever. If only the average wife would understand that! She always thinks that if her way of looking at life is different from her husband’s, then she must either ‘give in’ and change to his ways, or else she must ‘stand up for herself’, ‘preserve her integrity’ and so forth through a lifetime of rows and scenes. But usually she doesn’t need to do either. All she need to do is to teach him to like her way of seeing things. But actually to like it—to enjoy seeing the world in this new way. And usually he’s ready enough to learn. He probably wants to learn—that’s why he married her in the first place, because this was something he wanted.

  “Mary could have done all that—easily—if only she’d been left alone.”

  “But how wasn’t she left alone?” asked Katharine nervously, fearful of bringing down on her head another tirade; as indeed she did.

  “How wasn’t she left alone?” The black eyes were flashing again. “Living here among you lot, all paddling in and out of each other’s matrimonial troubles like ducklings in a pool! All of you running in and out, sympathising with one another about your husbands’ faults and failings—it may be warm and comforting, as you say, but I would say it’s a warm, comforting morass in which a young wife may well drown. It’s a sort of mutual running-home-to-mother which is naturally consoling, but doesn’t help your marriages, any of you. Or only in the very rarest cases.” Mrs Quentin signed, and as once before, Katharine had the feeling that she was speaking from deep and perhaps tragic experience. From her own mistakes, perhaps, or her imagined mistakes, with the still unmentioned Mr Quentin.

  “Anyway,” she resumed wearily, “it’s too late now.” Did she mean for herself, or for Mary and Alan? Presumably the latter, for she continued: “I only hope that Angela may not suffer. Did Mary tell you, I’m taking Angela away with me tomorrow, to stay for a while. I—we”—Mrs Quentin looked confused for a moment—“that is, my brother feels that she’d be better away, out of this atmosphere. I’d be only too glad to keep her for good, if that were possible. There’s something about that child—a toughness, a resilience, a sort of nine-lives quality—which just answers to something in my nature. I understand her, somehow; though I’m too hard a person to understand the rest of you—as I dare say you’ve noticed.” She smiled now, a little stiffly, and with a gesture silenced Katharine’s protest: “I noticed you, you know, before we ever properly met. In a bus queue, one rainy night. I don’t suppose you remember, but I was standing there in the rain, worrying about Mary—she had just rung me up, sounding distressed—and suddenly I caught sight of you, and something made me think: That’s just the kind of inquisitive, restless, foraging sort of woman who’s causing half my brother’s troubles. Always hovering round sympathising, advising, interfering—I know the type. Of course, I may have unconsciously recognised you as a neighbour of Mary’s—I suppose I must have caught sight of you occasionally when I’ve been visiting here before. But it was only after quite a time that I realised that the woman in the queue was you. You look quite different without that headscarf on.”

  “Less inquisitive, restless and interfering?” asked Katharine, with a rueful smile; and Mrs Quentin nodded.

  “A bit less,” she allowed grudgingly, looking Katharine up and down, and seeming to assess the precise extent of these qualities like an expert dressmaker assessing the waist and bust measurements of her client. “But I still don’t really feel I can trust you.” She sat silent for a moment, and then spoke again, abruptly:

  “You know, don’t you, that Mary stabbed Alan herself? I suppose she told you?”

  “Well—yes—she did,” answered Katharine quickly, almost eagerly in her relief at finding that there was after all one other person who shared Mary’s secret, and who might, therefore, be able to elucidate Mary’s queer behaviour this evening. “She did tell me, but now I’m beginning to wonder——”

  “You see?” Mrs Quentin was truculent. “It’s just as I thought! Your inquisitiveness obliterates all other considerations. You betray Mary’s confidence—and I’m sure Mary did tell you this in confidence—simply because I gave you a lead, and you are dying to talk it over with someone. Isn’t that true?”

  “It may be true, but it certainly isn’t fair,” retorted Katharine hotly. “If Mary tells both of us, separately, she surely shouldn’t mind if——”

  “Ah, but she didn’t tell me,” returned Mrs Quentin softly. “I only guessed—from what I’ve heard, from what I’ve seen. From your behaviour, among other things. Mary told me nothing. You’re the one who told me—just now. Mary was a fool to trust you.”

  Katharine stared into the heavy, lined face, fear and anger mingling as she threshed about for a suitable retort. Surely she hadn’t really betrayed Mary? No one could say she had. And anyway, Auntie Pen was wholly on Mary’s side, and wouldn’t use the knowledge to harm her.

  “And now you’re frightened!” commented Auntie Pen scornfully. “It’s all right—I won’t tell Mary you’ve told me. Not that you’ve told me anything I didn’t know, of course. It’s all so absolutely in character for Mary, you see. The impulsive, hysterical striking out in the first place: the subsequent conscience-pricking so that she had to confess to someone—to you, as it happened, but don’t flatter yourself that it was due to anything more than chance and propinquity. There was no need for her to confess, you understand—my brother would never have exposed her in a hundred years. She could have kept it all dark from everyone, for ever. If it had been me I would have; but, of course, Mary is a weak person. Weak, and kind, and guilt-ridden, and terribly aware of having failed Alan. And silly, too, and unpractical. Do you know, I found her jumper, covered with blood, just stuffed into the bottom of her wardrobe? Anyone could have found it. Angela, the charwoman—anyone. It was a marvel of Providence that it was only me. It was past washing, of course, so I wrapped it in newspaper and stuffed it deep into the next-door dustbin one night, after they were all asleep; and Mary’s never even missed it. I’ll swear to you that she never thought of it as a dangerous clue at all. She’s so naïve—so hopeless at any kind of dissembling. So suggestible, too, and so trusting … chattering about it to you of all people. You, who can never keep quiet about anything; who’ll keep on chewing it over with her, discussing it, probing her feelings, glorying in your position of confidence—of power. I’m sorry—‘rallying round’ is the technical term for all this, isn’t it.”

  “You’ve no need to be so disagreeable,” said Katharine sharply. “I don’t talk to her about it at all, if you want to know. Never. We more or less agreed not to, as a matter of fact. We thought—in fact, I suggested to her—that she’d more quickly forget the whole thing if neither of us ever referred to it again, but spoke and acted as if the burglar story was true. And I think she ought to forget it. It’s no use letting a single isolated action haunt your whole life.”

  “Indeed no. No use at all. But people rarely choose their ghosts on the grounds that they are any use,” responded Mrs Quentin sombrely. “And Mary agreed to this?” she went on. “I’m surprised. She’s such a truthful girl—or used to be. It was one of her sterling qualities. A narrowing one, perhaps—a little childish—and not altogether loveable. But sterling—and very much a part of her nature. Yes, you surprise me. However,” she continued, “I suppose I can’t really criticise you on this score, because I have been doing exactly the same myself. I, too, have been plugging the burglar idea for all it was worth. Not entirely for Mary’s sake, I must admit; I was thinking of my brother, too. I didn’t want Mary to start confessing all round the place, causing endless trouble for him—for his job, for his reputation, everything. And it’s just the kind of impulsive, childish, inconsiderate thing that she would do. Poor Mary—she’s never
really grown beyond the ethics of the Bravest Girl in the Fourth. You know—clear your own conscience regardless of the upset and inconvenience to everyone else. My poor Mary—this sort of thing takes her right outside her natural range. That’s why I felt I had to guide events a little.”

  It occurred to Katharine that Mrs Quentin—with the best of intentions, like the rest of them—had been interfering as much as anyone; but she felt it would be tactless—as well as futile, at this stage—to point this out.

  “Where is Mary, by the way?” she asked suddenly, realising that she and Mrs Quentin had been sitting there talking for over an hour, and all that time there had been no sound from the rest of the house. “Is she upstairs? I thought she couldn’t have gone to bed, because there were all the lights on everywhere. Every single room.”

  Mrs Quentin looked at Katharine pityingly from under her heavy, wrinkled lids. “All the lights on? Yes, I suppose they are. But I told you, didn’t I? Between you, you have been driving Mary insane.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  SWIFTLY UP THE lighted stairs ran Katharine. Up, up into a white blaze of light from the unshaded hundred-watt bulb on the little landing; and all the bedroom doors wide open, too, pouring out their quota of shadowless brilliance. On went Katharine, unhesitating, through Mary’s bedroom door, and only then, right inside the room, did she pause.

  For the room was empty. Bright, and bare, and empty. No: no, it wasn’t. On the big bed the coverlet was slightly humped by what must be a long, slender shape lying perfectly still. Wisps of Mary’s dark hair were just visible on the far edge of the pillow, the coverlet pulled up smooth and nearly flat over her face. As if she had covered her head, like a child, to shut out the terrors of the night … or as if someone else had covered it for her, after she was asleep….

  Katharine’s movements were still swift, but now, quite without her knowledge or volition, they had also become stealthy. With scarcely a sound, she was across the room and lifting the coverlet from Mary’s silent head. Even as she did do, Mary’s eyelids twitched, and she gave a little sigh. So swiftly had it all happened that Katharine experienced the great pulsating relief at these signs of life almost before she had registered the fear from which the slight movements had released her; and she stood, recovering herself, and staring down into Mary’s sleeping face.

  For Mary was sleeping, of that there was no doubt; and sleeping very deeply, too, for after that single flicker of awareness she had made no further movement. Her breath was soft and even, and her usually anxious, expressive face was blank and calm.

  For some reason, Mary must have gone to bed very, very frightened. Why else would she try to sleep with the light blazing right into her eyes … and with the door wide open … and the window too, on this damp, dismal night, with fog already pricking at your throat? Yes, Katharine confirmed, moving the curtains slightly—wide open, and at the bottom, too, as if to make sure that her screams would be heard….

  What screams? Why? Why should Katharine leap to the conclusion that this was the purpose of the open window? For what sort of danger, real or imagined, could all this be a preparation?

  In the bright silence of the room, Katharine tried to recall Mary’s first words to her when they had met in the Building Site that evening. Katharine had been too much startled at the time to pay much attention, but she remembered them now: “Hush, Katharine, he’ll hear us!” Who was “He”? At the time, Katharine had taken for granted that it referred to the man from under the lamp-post, and had been quick to point out the silliness of anticipating any danger from such a source. But suppose Mary had been referring not to this man at all, but to Alan? Alan, the reserved, the mysterious, the unforgiving? Alan, who had stored up that envelope of hair, dated and labelled? … Who had refused to accept his wife’s confession to the stabbing, and had thereby, in one subtle stroke, made the crime for ever unforgivable?

  But forgotten was just as good as forgiven. Better, Katharine assured herself. And as for the hair, perhaps a punctilious, hoarding kind of man like Alan could have done exactly that, with no more motive than to have everything about himself and his life recorded, classified, and dealt with? To him, the labelling, classifying and putting away of such a relic might be a way of getting the whole episode under control, and hence of being able to dismiss it. Just as in his business the only way to get a document off his mind would be to file it in its proper place. Merely thrown away it would be on his conscientious mind for ever.

  But who could tell how Alan Prescott’s mind worked? Grim, and tortuous, and resentful unto death, as you would think if you listened to Mary? Or was it a mind baffled, tied up in its own severities, and longing to be released, as his sister, rightly or wrongly, presented it? Certainly Mary was not the one to know the answer—at first too wayward and self-centred, and latterly too frightened, she had never come within a mile of understanding her husband.

  Or had she? Once again Katharine found herself up against this blank, impenetrable possibility that perhaps Mary really had good reason for fearing Alan?

  The first uneasy wisps of fog were fingering their way into the room now, creeping, clammy and soft, round the edges of the curtains. With a little shiver, Katharine moved back to the window and closed it. For all her care, the noise of it seemed tremendous in the silent house: and Katharine felt oddly shocked at what she had done.

  But Mary did not stir; and Katharine stood for a while pondering.

  For really, there seemed no point in staying here any longer. It was late; she was growing sleepy. This feeling that she ought to wait till Mary woke was absurd, because Mary wouldn’t wake till morning—why should she? The obvious thing was to go downstairs, say good night to Auntie Pen, and go back home. That is, if Auntie Pen was still there. Was she supposed to be staying the night? Katharine couldn’t remember anyone having mentioned it; perhaps she had gone home already.

  Everything seemed very quiet. Quiet, that is, if people were awake. You wouldn’t think anything of it if the house had been dark as well as quiet; it was all this light combined with all this silence that seemed so queer.

  And then Katharine heard a sound; a sort of shuffling thud. Not from downstairs, though; from the bedroom right next to this one.

  For one bizarre moment Katharine fancied that Mary, as she lay sleeping so quietly there, must be dreaming: dreaming that Katharine was standing by her bed listening to a noise in the next room. Don’t let her be having a nightmare, Katharine almost prayed, for there is no limit to what may happen next in a nightmare…. But then the full absurdity of her fancy swept over her. Rousing herself, rubbing her eyes, she moved softly towards the door and peered out on to the landing.

  The completeness of the anticlimax almost made her reel back against the bed. Whatever furtive figure she had expected to see tiptoeing from the adjoining room, it was not this one—tall, loose-limbed, and already falling over the flex of Angela’s reading lamp that trailed across the doorway.

  “Sorry to startle you,” apologised Stella in a noisy whisper, “but Auntie Whatsit said I could just barge up and say goodbye to Angela. You know—give her a good luck message from Jack and Mavis. That sort of thing. I hear she’s going away tomorrow.”

  “What do you mean, you barged up?” asked Katharine sourly, still not recovered from her shock. “I didn’t hear a sound. You must have crept up on tiptoe. I don’t call that ‘barging’!”

  Stella looked affronted.

  “Well, all right, I walked up, then. Let’s not argue about a word. You know, when people start quibbling about words, I always just simply agree with them, because I know they must be on edge about something. It’s nothing to do with the word at all. Whatever word I’d used you’d have picked on it because you’re in a nervy sort of state, I can see. Anyway, you were making a lot of noise yourself, opening or shutting windows or something. It’s no wonder you didn’t hear me.”

  Right on all counts as usual—or at least totally insulated against any possibility o
f being wrong, which was very nearly the same thing. And anyway, it was none of Katharine’s business—it wasn’t her house that Stella was prowling round at this time of night. But all the same, it seemed odd. Who would call to say goodbye to a child often at nearly midnight?

  “But isn’t Angela asleep?” Katharine voiced her doubts guardedly, curiosity and reproof mingling in her tones. “It’s very late, surely?”

  “Yes, she is, as a matter of fact,” answered Stella lightly. “I only thought she might be awake because I happened to notice that her light was on. Anyway, I’ve left a note for the poor little thing. I thought that a little message from really secure children, like Jack and Mavis, would give her a feeling of security in the midst of all this upset.”

  You didn’t, thought Katharine disagreeably. You thought that the contemplation of Angela undergoing all this upheaval would give you a lovely, superior feeling about how much better cared for Jack and Mavis are, and how much better a mother you are than Mary. I know…. You can’t kid me…. You don’t even think you can…. Set a thief to catch a thief….

  The two women eyed each other cautiously under the glaring light bulb—and Katharine suddenly realised that Stella had just as much reason to wonder about her, Katharine’s, motive for being here as she had to wonder about Stella’s. Curiosity, of course, they could both recognise in each other. But was Stella discounting Katharine’s real concern for Mary—just as Katharine was discounting the possibility that there was an element of real kindness in the mixed motives which had prompted Stella to leave a friendly message for Angela to find, with surprise and pleasure, when she woke in the morning?

  “Of course,” Stella was saying, “Jack and Mavis don’t actually know about any of it yet, but I know they would want me to write a note on their behalf. It’s a funny thing, isn’t it, how really happy, secure children can understand the feelings of an insecure one much better than another insecure child can? I suppose it’s because they’re better able to face things … to release their sympathies in valid directions….”