Home through the Dark

by Anthea Fraser

  The second bell had sounded by the time he arrived. He came bounding up the stairs unwinding his scarf and tossed it and his coat to the girl in the cloakroom before striding into the foyer.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said briefly. “We’d better go straight in.”

  The curtains were just moving as we hurriedly took our seats in the front row.

  “If music be the food of love, play on, give me excess of it.” Roses of Picardy, I thought numbly. Carl thrust a program into my hand but I had no need of it. Half of my mind repeated the text of the play word for word with the actors, the other half was centred exclusively on Carl; his arm on the rest between us, the familiar tang of his after-shave lotion, his general physical nearness, which was as disturbing to me as it had always been. Attuned to him as I was, I was conscious of his only partial concentration on the play, and wondered what was claiming the other half of his attention. Not myself, that much was obvious. “Strictly business,” he had said, and that was the way he was going to play it.

  There was no interval at the end of Act 1 and with the beginning of Act 2 I sensed his interest begin to stir. Robert Harling, his official reason for being here, was playing Antonio to Stephen Darby’s Sebastian. “Though it was said she much resembled me” . . . She did, too, I thought. Joanna Lacy as Viola, tall and strong-featured with her rich brown hair, was a much more likely sister for Stephen than small dark Rachel. My mind wandered backwards. When had Carl and I last sat side by side in an auditorium?

  “Do you want a drink, Ginnie?”

  I came back to my present surroundings to find the lights going up at the end of the second act. “Will you mind being stared at by the populace?”

  He grimaced. “I can thole it, if you can.”

  I nodded and he guided me out to the foyer, his hand light under my elbow, but even this casual contact was enough to make me long vehemently for the time for us to be alone together when, surely, we should be able to settle everything. In the meantime I made a determined effort at light conversation. “What do you think of Antonio?”

  His eyes went quickly to my face. “Why do you ask?”

  “I thought you were considering him for Clarence.”

  “So you did remember that,” he said, an odd note in his voice.

  “Isn’t that why you came down?”

  He handed me my glass. “Yes, yes it is. What do you think of him?”

  “Good – I think they’re all good.”

  “Yes, it’s a pretty high standard.”

  “Did you speak to Laurence about releasing Robert?”

  “In broad terms, yes. He has no objection.”

  “Joanna said she wishes you could take them all lock, stock and barrel.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You seem on remarkably good terms with them all.”

  “Not all of them, actually.”

  “Oh?” He waited for an explanation but I sipped my drink without replying.

  The play unfolded, its complexities were solved and at last it was over. Carl said, “Where’s the best place to eat around here?”

  “I don’t know, really. The George Hotel is probably as good as anywhere.”

  Margaret Baillie was at the reception desk as we went into the hall. “Miss Durrell! I was wondering how you were getting on. How nice to see you.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Baillie. May I introduce you to Carl Clements? Carl, Mrs. Baillie, who was very good to me when I first arrived.”

  Mrs. Baillie’s face had flushed. “Carl Clements? Of course! How exciting! I’m delighted to meet you.”

  Carl made some smooth, conventional reply and led me away. There was a grillroom downstairs, which I felt would be more conducive to an intimate conversation than the large, impersonal dining room I had used before. We went together down the wide carpeted stairs to be met by a waiter and led to a corner table. Carl ordered the meal, after a minimal consultation with me, and then leaned forward, his hands folded on the table.

  “Now, Ginnie, I have to know what your connection is with that theatre. How well do you know those people and how did you come to get mixed up in it? It would be as well if you told me the truth.”

  “I’m not in the habit of lying to you, Carl,” I said stiffly. My brief, rosy hopes of a reconciliation faded and were gone. Business he had said, and business he meant. His tone left no room for doubt.

  “Well then?” he prompted impatiently.

  “I’ve been helping out in the kitchen, so of course I know them, some better than others.”

  “And?”

  “That’s all.” I stared at him defiantly, willing the tears not to come.

  His gaze was locked onto mine. “I hope to God it is.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I wish you’d be frank with me, that’s all. Why didn’t you admit in the first place that you came here because you knew I’d come soon to see Harling? That was why you made straight for the theatre, wasn’t it?”

  I glared at him furiously. “Of all the arrogant, conceited – ! Let’s get one thing quite straight. I most emphatically did not know you would come. I’d forgotten all about Robert bloody Harling and I didn’t remember until I saw his name on a program. Believe me, my only thought was to get as far away from you as possible. If I could have used the passport I would have done, but in this ghastly, male-oriented world I’m not allowed to!”

  “I see. Well, you’ve made it clear enough now. There’s no need for any further histrionics. If that wasn’t your reason for coming here, I should be grateful if you’d tell me what it was. I assure you I have a very good reason for wanting to know, quite apart from my responsibility as your husband.”

  I said shakily, “Isn’t it a bit late to start talking about responsibility in that direction?”

  His mouth tightened but the arrival of the waiter with the avocado pear prevented an immediate reply. As he moved away, Carl said brusquely, “I wasn’t intending to get involved in a personal discussion this evening, but since you’ve brought it up, who was that fellow at the flat the other night?”

  “Just a friend,” I answered noncommittally.

  “He seemed bloody officious to me.”

  “If you remember,” I said coldly, “you were molesting me at the time.”

  “Molesting! My God, Ginnie –”

  I dug the spoon viciously into the firm, creamy flesh of the avocado. “Anyway, what’s the point of this catechism? Why should it matter to you how involved I am with Marcus, the theatre or anything else?”

  He said tiredly, “I think you know the answer to that.”

  “You mean you don’t like me straying from the fold? I’m supposed to stay meekly at home knitting and arranging flowers, while you leap in and out of bed with whoever takes your fancy?”

  “Ginnie!”

  I dropped the spoon with a clatter. I hadn’t meant to say any of that but I wasn’t thinking very clearly and was only aware of a primitive need to lash out, to hurt him as he’d hurt me. His hand shot out and closed bruisingly round my wrist.

  “Now just you listen to me.” His voice was low, shaking with the effort to control himself. “I knew something like this would happen if we let personal grievances come out, but what I want to say is simply this. You’re to keep away from that theatre, do you hear?”

  “Why?” I flung at him.

  “I’m getting more and more convinced that there’s something shady going on and I won’t have you mixed up in it.”

  “Oh, you won’t?” I was struggling to free my hand.

  “No, I won’t. You little fool, can’t you just accept that there are some things you shouldn’t meddle in?”

  “If you’d only stop being so mysterious I might have some idea what you’re talking about.”

  “It’s safer for you not to know. You’ll just have to take my word for it.”

  I’ll never know what made me say it. Probably just an irresistible desire to shake his superiority, his air of knowing more
than I did. For whatever reason, say it I did, and the repercussions were immediate and total. “I suppose you’re referring to Madame Lefevre?”

  I realized my mistake at once. He withdrew his hand from my wrist as though it had burned him. His face whitened and his eyes were unreadable.

  He said incredulously, “You know? You? Ginnie, what is this?” And then, his eyes boring into mine, “You little bitch! God, you bloody little bitch!”

  There was no point now in trying to retract, to insist that I didn’t understand the relevance of Madame’s name nor why it should have such violent reactions whenever I mentioned it. In Carl’s eyes I was utterly damned, and nothing else mattered.

  The waiter hovered over my barely touched plate. “Perhaps madam would prefer something else? Some soup or prawns?”

  I shook my head blindly. Carl, seemingly as incapable of speech as I was, gestured for him to take the plates away. After an aeon of silence he said in a low voice, “He’s in it too, isn’t he? That was the conclusion we came to.”

  “Oh yes,” I said ringingly, uncaring for Marcus’s reputation since my own was gone, “he’s in it all right.”

  I looked up and met his eyes, a bright and bitter blue.

  “Forgive my curiosity,” he said, “but which of them was it you knew beforehand?” I stared at him blankly. “Obviously you must have known at least one of them. Was it from the university?”

  I shook my head, unsure what he was referring to.

  “Honour among thieves!” he said, and his voice cracked.

  It was too much. I said in a rush, “Carl, I don’t really –”

  “Spare me the excuses. At least you can save me the trouble of seeking them out again. Just tell them, will you, that it won’t work. They won’t get one penny out of it.”

  The steak had come, fragrant with garlic butter, garnished with mushrooms and tomatoes. I pushed my chair back. “Don’t bother to see me home. I’ll get a taxi.”

  He stood up quickly, fumbled in his pocket and dropped a five-pound note on the table. He caught me up on the staircase and his fingers dug into my arm. “Ginnie, get out of it, for God’s sake. Now. I won’t tell her you’re involved. Go away, anywhere, until it’s all blown over. If the police do eventually come in, heaven help you.”

  “I imagine the adverse publicity wouldn’t help your career.”

  “Do you think I care about that? If I really drove you that far, I deserve all that’s coming.” He didn’t let go of my arm until, shivering uncontrollably, I was in the car. Neither of us spoke again until without any help from me he had driven directly to the Beeches. I pushed open the car door and this time he made no attempt to get out with me.

  “You will tell them, won’t you, that she’s not going to pay? There’s no point in carrying on with it any longer.” He sat staring up at me. “God, Ginnie, I still can’t believe –”

  “Good night, Carl.”

  “Goodbye.”

  Somehow I was undressed and in my dressing gown. The shaking had lessened a little but not enough to enable me to think clearly. Carl’s words were a meaningless jumble in my head. The memory of the expression with which he had looked at me across the table turned every bone in my body to water. What in heaven’s name did he think I had done?

  Helplessly I walked through the flat from one room to another, picking up books and ornaments and laying them down again. The hands of the clock pointed to twelve – twelve-thirty – one. I was very cold and wrapped my dressing gown more tightly round me. It was October now; perhaps I should think about switching the heating on. I didn’t know how to go about it. Carl had always seen to such things. I sank to the floor in the middle of the drawing room, my head in my hands. Sometime during that brief and terrible meal our positions had shifted. After my own half-suspicion of his involvement in the mysterious happenings, he now had no doubt about mine. What had happened to us, that we were apparently able to believe such things about each other? His vehement condemnation echoed in the depths of my being.

  Sometime later I rose unsteadily to my feet and went through to the bedroom, switching off the lights. I lay down on top of the bed, pulled the quilt over me and stared up at the ceiling. I don’t know how long it was before the turmoil of my thoughts subsided enough to allow me to become aware of the light. My eyes swivelled sharply to the long windows at the end of the room. There was a faint chink where the curtains had not properly come together and it was from this gap that the wavering, uncertain glow poked into the room like a probing finger. Silently I slipped off the bed and padded over to the window.

  The room behind me was in darkness and as the light moved away a little, I lifted a corner of the heavy curtain and fearfully peered out. At first I could see nothing, then my eyes made out erratic, spasmodic flashes moving about in the darkness of the park, as though someone were flashing a torch to see his way. But why had its light been playing on the windows of my bedroom?

  Suddenly, as I stood watching, a dark figure materialized down to my right and with a little clutch of additional fear I pressed back against the window frame. Someone was coming from the Beeches! Had the light been a signal, an assignation? The dark figure merged into the shadows as it swiftly crossed the road and became lost in the greater blackness that was the park. There were no more flashes of light. Nothing moved again, even I, for five, ten minutes or more. Then at last a shadow detached itself into the figure of a man coming back across the road. And at that exact moment, with the timing of expert stage management, the moon slid without warning from behind the clouds and its light, surer and more revealing than the uncertain beam of the torch that had summoned him, shone full onto his face. It was Marcus Sinclair.

  Chapter 9

  I REMEMBER very little about that Friday. I went into the office, of course – it was my last day there – and mechanically typed out requests for planning permission and particulars of houses. The world was a hostile place and Rachel’s sullen, wary face across the room was a constant reminder of the fact.

  “And how did our poor little play appeal to the great one?” she had asked obsequiously when I first arrived.

  “He was quite impressed,” I replied quietly. We barely spoke again. Despite the faint possibility of meeting Marcus, I went to the usual café for lunch. I was counting on the fact that he was unlikely to come after my tone at our last meeting, nor did he, which was fortunate, because superimposed on all the images of Carl which were branded on my brain that day was one of Marcus in the moonlight. At five o’clock Mr. Holding thanked me warmly for my help during the last three weeks and expressed the hope that he might contact me again during the holiday season next year. But I couldn’t begin to contemplate next year.

  There was as usual a man on the bench opposite when I reached home just after five-thirty. I felt an urgent need of fresh air myself, and was also curious to know how he would react if I suddenly trespassed into his domain. Accordingly I put the car away and went straight out across the road before I could change my mind. Surprisingly, I had never been in the park before. The untidiness of autumn was strewn over it; drifts of golden brown leaves lay scattered on the grass, splashed with the pink spikes of dahlia petals and the dry, rust-red of dying hydrangeas. Acorns and beechnuts littered the paths and crunched under my footsteps and the scent of bonfire drifted in the air.

  Slowly, my hands deep in my coat pockets, I walked round the outer perimeter, studying the houses that faced the park on the other three sides of the square. There was a bowling green with a little wooden hut at the far side from the Beeches and further round a rose garden, now dug neatly over with all the bushes pruned and only the occasional vermilion gash of a late flower against the rich brown soil. A gardener, raking over one of the lawns, paused to nod to me as I passed. Then I had completed the circuit and was back opposite the Beeches. And the man who had been sitting on the bench had gone. A pity. I sat down myself instead and stared over the low railings across the road. From this seat bushes scree
ned the main part of the house, but the east wing was clearly visible. In the upper window I could see Stephanie moving about, probably laying the table for the evening meal. Below, the long Georgian windows of my own flat presented their mirrored glass blandly behind the wrought-iron balconies. The sun, low in the sky behind me, reflected prisms of refracted light in a myriad gems of blue, green, red and gold. Not a good time of the day for spying. It would be better in another half hour, when it would be dark enough for the lights to go on inside but too early to draw the curtains.

  After a few minutes I got up and went slowly back across the road. “Tell them she won’t pay.” So Madame Lefevre had been the recipient of the ransom note – but who was the victim? And whom should I tell? I smiled involuntarily at the thought of Stephen’s reaction to such a message. She won’t pay. I wondered uneasily how kidnappers would react, faced with this ultimatum. “This has dragged on far too long,” Laurence had said. Their nerves were being rubbed raw. How many of them were involved? And what would happen if they suddenly collapsed into panic?

  “If I really drove you that far, I deserve all that’s coming.” Trust Carl, I thought resentfully, slamming the oven door shut, to put everything on a personal basis.

  Saturday morning. With what dreary inevitability the weekends came round, waking in me a frenzied desire to fill the limitless hours. And now that my job at Culpepper’s had finished, the weekdays would be no better. I should have called at the secretarial bureau before this and found myself somewhere else. At least I shouldn’t have to bear Rachel’s sullen company any longer.