by Nina Bawden
“I don’t think it would be that,” I said.
“Don’t you?” She gave me a relieved little smile. “I hated to think. I’d been jealous. And then …” She flushed … “when Henry and I … fell in love, I thought I ought to go away. I couldn’t bear to hurt Venetia, and I was so afraid she’d find out. So I told her that I thought Sebastian and I ought to go back to Tony, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She tried to make me divorce Tony, and she was quite angry when I said I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t because of Sebastian, you see. After all, Tony is his father, and a boy ought to have a father. I couldn’t argue with her because she was so clever, but I think she saw that I wouldn’t do anything definite, so she said just that I must think about it and that anyway I could stay with her as long as I liked.
“After that, of course, I felt awfully mean about Henry and me. If I’d thought, that Venetia really loved Henry, I would have gone. You do believe me, don’t you, Paul? But she didn’t love him, and Henry did so want me to stay, although he thought that Sebastian should go away to school. We had rather a row about that. Venetia agreed with me. She said Sebastian was too delicate and that I mustn’t think about it. She was so sweet and reasonable I quite loved her for it, and I was rather cross with Henry for getting angry with her.”
“Did Henry get angry?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes. He made quite a scene, and shouted, which wasn’t like him at all. It was after dinner one night. Henry said I was stubborn and foolish and that Sebastian oughtn’t to be tied to my apron strings. Venetia let him talk for a bit, and then she said that Henry mustn’t interfere, and that he’d make me think he didn’t want Sebastian to stay with them. That was nonsense, of course, because by that time Henry and I knew how we felt about each other, but he stopped shouting about it, and looked at me in a funny way and said that we should have to look after Sebastian at home as best we could.”
“When did all this happen?” I asked. I found I was very interested in what she was telling me, although the idea that had come into my head was quite fantastic.
She wrinkled her forehead.
“Let me see. I’ve been here about four months. I came in November … just before Guy Fawkes Day, because we built a bonfire for Sebastian. It was just after Christmas, I think. Yes, of course it was, because Sebastian was quite ill after Christmas and that’s what started Henry talking about him. And it was just after that that he started being difficult.”
“Who? Sebastian?” I said.
“Yes. He started to pretend that someone was poisoning him. I didn’t think much about it then, but I did mention it to Dr. Lewis, and he gave me some stuff to make him sleep better at night. He said he was a neurotic little boy and we weren’t to take much notice of him. He said it was only a game he was playing with himself, and it was best to let him eat with Dorry in the kitchen if he felt happier that way. It wasn’t very easy, trying not to notice, I mean, and it didn’t make him any better. And now … since last night … I’ve been thinking how dreadful it would be if it wasn’t just something he was making up.” She looked at me with tears in her eyes.
“I shouldn’t reproach yourself,” I said. “It won’t help. He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”
She smiled. “Yes, I think so. Dorry is reading to him now. He’s still very weak and queer. Dr. Lewis wanted to know what he had been eating besides the stuff in your little flask, and Dorry said he hadn’t eaten any tea at all. So … so it looks as though what made him ill must have been in the flask.”
“Yes,” I said. “It does. Dr. Carter didn’t say anything about it, I suppose?”
She shook her head.
I poured myself out another drink. Then I said:
“Brigid, do you really think that Venetia didn’t know what was going on between you and Henry?”
She gave me a quick, anxious glance, and twisted her hands together in her lap.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. Then, “I did think for a little while that she must know. Sometimes I saw her looking at us in rather an odd way. I don’t mean she looked angry or suspicious or anything like that. Just … almost as though something was pleasing her. I can’t quite explain. Somehow, although she’d been so sweet to me, it wasn’t a nice look.”
“Like a cat watching a mouse?” I suggested.
She looked startled, and a little reproachful. “Oh, Paul. You mustn’t say things like that. Though I did think for a while that she was acting rather queerly. She used to leave us alone in a kind of pointed way, and then I did wonder whether she had any reason for it. But then I saw how awful of me it was to think like that when she was being so kind, and I decided that there wasn’t anything in it. Except that she saw that Henry liked talking to me about things that didn’t interest her, and leaving us together was just niceness.”
She looked at me anxiously. “It’s so easy to make things seem more important than they are, isn’t it?”
I felt tired and unhappy. I wanted to think. I said, with what I hoped was convincing surprise, “Good heavens. It’s nearly lunch time.”
Brigid got up, flustered.
“Oh, dear,” she said. “I haven’t done anything. I must fly.” She went to the door and looked back at me with a faintly wistful expression. “You know, Paul,” she said, “this is the first time you’ve let me really talk to you.” Then she blushed and went out, tripping over the rug in the hall and recovering herself with a clatter.
I lit a cigarette and stared at the ceiling. I wished I could get things straight in my mind. I wondered how soon Sebastian would be well enough to talk. Then I wondered about Henry. Why had he wanted Sebastian out of the house? It was unlike him to make a scene about a thing like that and it puzzled me.
I got up from my chair and walked up and down the room. There was a worn pattern of pink roses in the carpet; lengthwise there were seven roses, and across the width there were five. The walls of the room were painted a dingy cream colour, and on the mantelpiece were Henry’s school and army photographs. I started to look for Henry in the photographs; in several of them he sat in the middle of a row of boys dressed in football shorts or cricket flannels. He wasn’t so beefy then; his face, thinner, had a shy and anxious look. The photographs looked as if they hadn’t been disturbed for years. There was one of Henry in uniform, standing with some other officers outside a tent. His moustache had made its first, timid appearance, and he was fingering it with a deprecating hand. There was another, similar group of officers. In it, Henry looked older; he had a bewildered, rather unhappy look. I wondered whether that was after he had married Venetia.
There were no photographs of Venetia in the room, and this was odd, I thought. There were a very few books in a shelf above the desk, a Latin grammar, a dictionary, a few books on farming and several anthologies of the poets. I stared at their worn leather spines, and remembered that Henry had said that Venetia had made him want to read poetry.
Chapter Five
After lunch I went out of the house. The rain had stopped and it was muggy and cold. The trees were gaunt, with still, black branches, and the drab sky hung low over them. The lane that curved down to the village was soggy with melting snow.
In the village the shops had just opened after the lunch hour; a few people were about, their faces cramped up with the cold. I saw Rella outside the fishmonger. She had her back to me and I wondered whether to turn down a side street and avoid her; instead I stopped at her side and said “Good afternoon.”
The top of her head did not reach my shoulder. She wore a bright red scarf round her hair.
She said, “Are you shopping too?”
I shook my head.
“Then you can carry my parcels for me.” She gave me a string bag to hold and collected a newspaper parcel full of fish. She stuffed it into the bag and we walked down the street together.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“To our house,” she said, and laughed. “Where else?”
The Adlesburgs li
ved in a small cottage on the main street. It was dark inside, and stuffy and cold at the same time. The furniture was of the kind that is only to be found in houses that are let furnished. The sitting-room had an un-lived-in air, as though the occupants had always been ready to pack their bags and move on somewhere else without leaving any trace of themselves behind. I sat on a shiny leather couch with rolled-over ends while Rella went to make coffee.
There were very few personal possessions in the room and no flowers. There was a hideous electric fire in the grate that gave out a steady, malignant glare. It was a long, narrow room; in the middle of it there was a gatelegged table almost as wide as the room. There were a few books and papers piled on it. I looked at them; there were a few German books and a novel from the public library. The papers were mostly bills. I could hear Rella in the kitchen down the passage and I listened to her for a moment before I went over to the bureau that stood in the far corner of the room. The top part of it was locked, but there were two drawers underneath, and they were open. I thought at first that they were both empty, but when I tried to shut the bottom one it jammed and I put my hand to the back of it to see what was in the way. It was something oblong, smooth and flat. It had caught at the back. It was a studio portrait of Rella. She had written in English across the bottom of it, “To my dearest Tom.” The name of the photographers was engraved on the mount. Werther and Sons, New York. I heard sounds in the passage and I put the photograph back quickly, and shut the drawer.
Rella came in with a tray. She had taken off her coat and scarf and she was wearing a scarlet pullover. She looked young, flat-chested and boyish, and I had the feeling that the effect was deliberate.
The coffee was good, strong and hot. I drank two cups and she crouched on a stool and watched me. I wondered how old she was. When I had seen her at first, I had thought her very young. Now I wasn’t sure. She was the type that looks much the same at thirty as she did at twenty.
“Where is your father?” I asked.
“In bed,” she said shortly, and held out her hand for my cup. I gave her a cigarette and she lit it, pouting her mouth as she let out the smoke.
“Is he ill?” I asked politely.
“Just tired,” she said.
I tried again. “I didn’t know he was a doctor,” I said.
She looked at me sharply. “Did he tell you that? Yes, he is a doctor. He was a surgeon in America before the war. He left my mother to go there.”
“Did you join him in America?” I asked.
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “No. I met him in Vienna during the war. I hadn’t seen him since I was a baby.”
“He doesn’t practise now?” I asked.
She shook her head. Her face was shut as an oyster. There seemed no point in my staying, so when I had finished my coffee I stood up and buttoned my coat.
“I’d better be getting back,” I said.
She looked at me speculatively, narrowing her long, golden eyes. Then she got up quickly and came towards me. She put her hands against my chest.
“Don’t go,” she said softly, and held up her face. I kissed her because she seemed to expect it. I had thought she looked passionate and I was right. It was all there, and more thrown in for good measure; when I let her go I felt a little breathless. I sat down upon the couch again and she sat beside me, her thin legs curved beneath her.
After a little while she said:
“Did my father come up to the house last night?”
“Yes,” I said.
She looked frightened suddenly, and drew herself away from me.
“Did you talk to him?” she asked.
I nodded, and she looked away from me, her small brown hands twisting together in her lap.
She said in a distant voice:
“He thinks she was murdered. If she was murdered … then …”
“Go on,” I said.
She clenched her hands so tight that the knuckles whitened.
“I am just surprised that someone did not do it before,” she said.
“Did you hate her so much?” I said.
She looked at me suspiciously.
“No,” she said. “Of course I didn’t hate her, I didn’t mean that. I had no reason to hate her.”
“I could think of a reason,” I said.
Her mouth tightened, and she went white.
“Why then?” She spat the words at me like an angry cat.
“Because you aren’t Adlesburg’s daughter, are you?” I said. “You speak English much too well for a girl who has just come from Austria. At a rough guess I would say that you met him in New York, just before the war.”
I thought she was going to hit me. She crouched at the far end of the sofa, hunched up and taut. Then she relaxed, and smiled at me.
“You’re clever, aren’t you?” she said. “But what does it matter? We don’t want to talk about other people, Paul. We want to talk about you and me.”
She slid along the sofa until she was close to me. I kissed the top of her cropped head. She twisted round to look at me, her eyes were shining, and her lips were parted. I kissed her, and she pulled my head down against her shoulder. I could feel the pulse beating in her neck. Then she jerked away from me and stayed still, her head a little on one side. Someone was moving about upstairs.
“Tom’s getting up,” she said, and she patted back her hair with her fingers.
“I’d better go,” I said. I felt rather furtive. I didn’t want to meet Adlesburg just then.
She put her hand on my arm. “Come again soon,” she said, and suddenly it wasn’t only Adlesburg I didn’t want to see.
She saw me to the door and watched me go down the street. I think she must have stayed in the doorway until I turned the corner, because I didn’t hear her shut the door.
The air smelt good after the stuffy house, and I breathed in great gulps of it. I wondered if Rella was like that with all the men she met, or if there was some special reason why she wanted me to make love to her. I wondered how much she had hated Venetia, and if Venetia had known she was Adlesburg’s mistress.
As I passed the farm on my way back to the house, I saw Henry working in the yard. He was cutting wood with the circular saw; he fed the trunks to the whining saw and the smooth-cut logs dropped among the sawdust. He did not look up as I passed; his face was absorbed and peaceful.
Back at the house, it was very quiet. The drawing-room and the study were empty, and as I settled myself into an armchair Dorry came in with wood for the fire. She knelt stiffly on the hearth, placing the logs carefully and sweeping back the white ash.
“How is Sebastian?” I asked.
She sat back on her heels and her face was tender.
“He’s much better, poor little lamb,” she said. “His mother’s up with him now to give me a chance to get on with my work, though he didn’t like to see me go. Not that I wanted to leave him myself, but work’s work, that’s what I say, and it won’t do itself.”
“Isn’t there anyone to help you?” I said.
She shook her head.
“Annie … she’s from the village and not much good, I say, though she does do the rough … she usually comes up in the mornings, but I sent word she wasn’t to come today. I don’t want her poking about here and asking questions, nor would Master Henry, if I’m any judge. It would be all over the village in half an hour, and this afternoon, with Mrs. Sykes being taken away to hospital, she’d have too much to gossip about.”
“They’ve taken Venetia away?” I said.
“Ambulance came just after dinner. Master Henry was ever so upset. They’re taking her to the hospital to open her up. ’ Tisn’t very nice, that sort of thing, and I think I was right not to let young Annie be here when it happened. Not but what everyone won’t know soon enough.”
“You knew they were going to do a post-mortem?” I asked.
“Master Henry came and told me this morning,” she said. “I’d gone down to the kitchen to make
up a drink for the poor little chap upstairs, and when I took it up he’was as excited as you please. Said he’d heard the doctors talking outside his door. You’d have thought they’d have had more sense than to talk about such things where a little boy could hear them. I’d have given them a piece of my mind if I’d been up there.”
“He’ll have to know some time,” I said.
“That’s as may be.” She got up from the hearth. “But what I say is, there’s a time and a place for everything. And they’ve done enough to that child in this house.”
Her middle-aged face was indignant; she stood with her hands on her hips and looked at me as though I was to blame.
“What do you mean, Dorry?” I asked.
“All that talk about someone trying to poison him,” she said gruffly. “Proper scared, he was. Wouldn’t touch so much as a biscuit outside my kitchen.”
“But that was only a game he was playing,” I said.
She made a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh.