The bundle was being covered in the old newspaper. When it was completely wrapped up in a neat squarish parcel and tied with string, it was disposed of on the top of a steep pile of newspapers. The newspapers were so arranged, perhaps by chance, that they concealed the parcel. It was there, it was safe, but you couldn’t see it: and yet it was not quite hidden.
There was nothing furtive or hasty about the movements of the person who was hiding the bundle. Everything was done with composure and calm. All the same, it was not an entirely straightforward act.
If all that was needed was to store this bundle in a safe place, then it could have been tucked away in one of the empty boxes, of which there were many.
If, on the other hand, it was simply rubbish to be got rid of then it could have been burned in the furnace, which was roaring away in one corner of the room.
But neither of these things was done.
‘I’m not feeling at all well,’ said Tom Gilroy. He was a tall thin graceful man in his late thirties. He moved over and studied his face in the mirror. He poked out his tongue and gazed at it, he had to squint to get a good look; it seemed covered with a faint white film that alarmed him. ‘I mean I might be really ill.’ He took another look at his tongue.
‘How strange you look with your tongue hanging out,’ said his wife Con dispassionately.
‘Thanks.’ He moved his head slowly backward and forward. ‘ I haven’t got a headache, anyway.’
‘I knew you hadn’t.’
Con always knew that his head felt better than he did himself, Tom reflected, watching her face in the mirror. She was sitting there on the big old sofa in the window, smoking as usual, and smiling slightly. Every so often she dropped the ash from her cigarette into the flower pot. The window sill was filled with flowers and sunlight and smoke from Con’s cigarette; Con loved all three. His head gave a tiny muted little throb just to show its independence of Con’s smile.
Tom coughed and then, in case she hadn’t heard, coughed again.
‘I heard the first time,’ said Con. ‘You won’t get cancer just from watching me smoke.’ But she was a kind-hearted wife, so she put the cigarette out and got to her feet.
Through the wall which separated them from the house next door came a splendid surge of music to which the house vibrated.
‘Wagner this week,’ said Con. ‘It’s a good recording though and when you come to think of it, it does save us wondering what we are going to play in here … Can you hear that teeny weeny little noise in the background? That’s Burgen playing on his recorder. I wonder why he always feels he must join in.’
‘He needs his freedom,’ said Tom.
The geranium in the window shivered in the noise and its petals began to fall, one, two, three.
‘This house,’ said Con. ‘We ought to move.’
The houses in the middle of Laurel Rise, the only houses to have basement rooms, accommodated families from the teaching staff at the Deerham Hills College of Arts and Sciences, and were consequently known as ‘College Row’. Mathematics, art, literature and biology were represented. Tom was literature and Burgen, oddly enough, was biology. ‘ With him it’s strictly theory,’ Con had once said. Con herself was art, but as a side-line she acted as Mother Confessor to the pupils, who often had plenty to confess, more even than they let on to Con. She was a warm-hearted, tender woman with an underlying streak of toughness and determination. She and Tom were attractive, unusual figures in Deerham Hills. Con had the nicest clothes and the prettiest hair of anyone on the teaching staff at the College. She had some money of her own which subsidised the Gilroys’ standard of living. Tom was liked, without being popular in the way Con was. People felt sympathetic to him and admired him.
‘It’s strange how I feel today,’ said Tom, going back to his first preoccupation. ‘Friday, the end of the teaching week, exams all over, I’ve finished the fourth chapter of my book, I ought to be feeling fine.’
‘You’re a little lost boy,’ said Con; she said it without emphasis but it seemed to convey some meaning to Tom.
‘Ah, don’t start that again, Con.’ He didn’t want to sound frightened, he hated to sound frightened, but in spite of himself the fear came out.
‘I’ll find you again one day, little boy,’ said Con kindly. She took his hand. Con was ten years older than her husband, although it rarely seemed so. Con knew, though, and perhaps in his heart so did Tom.
‘Yes, do, Con.’ Tom was breathing heavily. He gripped her hand with both of his. ‘Don’t lose me.’
‘Have I ever yet?’
‘No.’ The picture in his mind was slowly fading. Gone was the crowded city, the people he did not know, the heavy feet that dragged, the speech that would not come. Tom wiped his forehead, which was wet.
‘We won’t do that again, eh, Con?’
The image of the city faded and another picture came into his mind, led there by some unconscious association; he grasped at it rapidly in order to anchor himself firmly in this world where he had a home, job, wife and friends.
‘I saw a metal bird in the sky today.’
‘I love it when you talk poetry.’
‘Poetry nothing: I saw it.’
‘You must really be in a bad way, then.’ Con blinked her eyes.
‘It was only small, of course. Say a foot across.’
‘Oh, a little bird,’ said Con, as if that made it all right.
‘One of Burgen’s toys. He really is clever. He’ll make his fortune.’ Burgen was always inventing mechanical toys. All the real life and energy in him seemed to go into this.
‘No,’ Con was decided. ‘He won’t, and if he would, old maid Doris wouldn’t let him. She’d have moral scruples.’
‘He really is under her thumb, isn’t he?’ said Tom thoughtfully. ‘Funny. I can understand being under your wife’s thumb but not under your sister’s.’
Con flushed and gave him a quick look, but Tom was perfectly unconscious of having made a loaded remark.
Wagner suddenly ceased his noise and the two houses were quiet.
‘That’s all for tonight, then,’ said Tom with relief. Burgen seldom indulged in two outbursts of super-noise in a night. Sometimes weeks would go by without an explosion of noise of this sort and then you might get two or three in a week. The trouble with living so close together in houses with such thin walls was that you knew too much about each other … And when you worked together as well … Yes, too much knowledge was added. And knowledge was power.
‘Yes, we ought to move,’ he said, going back, as he so often did, to Con’s last remark but three.
‘Oh, we’ll move one day,’ said Con idly, no longer listening. She was sitting down again, enjoying the sun on her face, the scent of the roses in the bowl close by her head, and the hush now that Wagner was still. She knew as sharply as her husband that College Row could be a dangerous place to live, but at times like this she could shut her mind to it. Wasn’t it true that Tom would probably have been promoted to be head of his department three years ago if it hadn’t been commonly known among all their neighbours and from them seeped out into the rest of the College that Tom wasn’t really married to his new wife Con because she had a husband already living in Tokyo? All correct in a way, Con did have a husband living in Tokyo, but she had divorced him, and was quite legally married to Tom. Everyone knew this now, but it was too late for Tom to be promoted. The maddening thing was he hadn’t minded. Perhaps he had really started the rumour himself because he knew he was going to miss the promotion or perhaps because he didn’t want it anyway. There were endless permutations with Tom. ‘ I never truly liked living in Tokyo,’ she said dreamily. And then thought sharply and fiercely: but nothing alters the fact that Tom lost that job because of Doris Burgen and her gossip. ‘She’s got something to gossip about now,’ she said almost viciously and again aloud.
Tom understood her non sequitur without difficulty. He had good cause to.
‘You mean Mary Lou Palla
s?’
‘Yes.’
‘I haven’t noticed Doris on that so much, somehow,’ he said uneasily.
‘She’s frightened, that’s why.’ Here once again was Con knowing someone else’s mind with telepathic clarity. Precognition was another of her gifts. ‘She’s worried in case Burgen is really interested. Or could be.’
‘Oh, he could be all right.’ Tom in his turn could read people’s minds. ‘ She really hates herself, that girl, and for someone like Burgen that could be terribly attractive.’
Once again a loaded remark and once again Tom did not see it. Mary Lou Pallas had appeared at the College at the start of that term six weeks before and studied anything she could study. She came only twice a week because the rest of the week she was employed as a nursemaid.
She was what was called a day-release student: a student who also had a job but was continuing her education. The College had many day-release students; they came and went and the teaching staff rarely got to know them well. Mary Lou Pallas was an exception.
‘She must be the weirdest nursemaid alive,’ said Tom. ‘Like employing Clytemnestra as a nanny. Have you contacted her employers?’
Con shook her head silently; she did not pass on to Tom her belief that Mary Lou Pallas was not employed as a nursemaid. She arrived in College in a small if old motor car, and her clothes were numerous if cheap. No, Mary Lou Pallas was probably not a nursemaid.
‘I mean, they ought to do something about it if her terrible old father really is chasing her,’ said Tom.
‘I couldn’t get on to her employers. No one answered the telephone. I’ve got an idea she doesn’t really live there.’
‘Just comes in for the day?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘We ought not to let her be around so much,’ said Tom; he sounded exasperated. ‘I mean there she always is, slopping round in those flat shoes with her hair in her eyes like an old English sheepdog, attracting old Burgen and carrying around with her the burden of incest, rape and child marriage.’ All these things Mary Lou Pallas said had happened to her before she ran away from her Cornish home.
—That may not be the only thing she’s carrying around, thought Con.
‘If there’s any trouble with Burgen, old Doris will have it in for us,’ cried Tom.
‘If there’s any trouble Doris will land it on us,’ said Con in a cold clear voice. ‘That’s the way Doris operates.’
‘One day Burgen will blow up,’ said Tom. ‘He’ll just go pop.’
Con kept quiet. She did not say that this very morning Mary Lou Pallas had come slopping in to her where she sat quietly working and said that she was afraid she might be pregnant.
The Burgen brother and sister were both in their living-room. Peter was by the window placidly humming and mending one of his toys, a boat which had taken too adventurous a trip, and had lost its engine. Doris sat at her work table sewing. On a low table precisely between them was a tray of tea and cake. They made a pleasant sight. And in fact, despite what Tom Gilroy had said about them they were a very harmonious couple, far and away the most contented in College Row, never quarrelling and hardly ever even disagreeing.
Burgen (no one ever called him Peter) got up, stretched his legs and yawned. Then he crossed to the tea tray.
‘Another cup of tea, Doris, while I’m pouring?’
‘Please.’ She did not raise her head from her sewing, which was a delicate piece of petit point.
‘This is a good cake, Doris. One of your best. The touch of orange in it is delicious … And there’s something else, too.’ He chewed it thoughtfully.
‘I thought you’d like it.’ Doris sipped her tea. Then she said, ‘It is Cointreau actually.’
‘I’d never have guessed. You are brilliant, Doris.’ He honestly admired her.
But she admired him too. ‘I never told you how good your little bird is, Burgie. I think it’s far and away the best thing you’ve made. It really does have the air of flying. It’s beautiful.’
‘Yes, it is.’ As well as admiring each other, Burgen and Doris admired themselves.
She rolled up her sewing and placed it in its own bag.
‘Finished tea? I’ll take the tray then. Baked ham for supper.’
They smiled at each other. What Tom Gilroy in his cleverness missed was that they were happy.
When she had gone Burgen took a pile of essays to his desk, put on his spectacles and picked up a red pencil. He marked the papers frequently with great red scrawls. Apparently what he read did not please him for as he read he began to look cross. Even when cross his plump smooth face looked gentle and agreeable. He was a man of forty-eight, six years junior to his sister Doris, but he looked younger. Both were well preserved, good-looking people. Burgen’s appearance went beyond this and had elegance as well. What it had in addition, and he was very far from being aware of it himself, was a sheltered air as if Burgen had always been protected.
He worked on in the warm sun, a tranquil figure. It was difficult to think one could ever be nervous or frightened of Burgen.
At a few minutes before six he laid down his pencil, tidied his desk, and then switched on the radio on the shelf beside him. Doris was clattering the dishes in the kitchen so he turned the sound up louder.
He heard the news about the weather, about the latest strike, and was told that the new super-sonic airliner would be delayed in its trials. ‘A small day,’ he thought, and was putting forward his hand to switch it off when he heard the name of the town in which he lived.
‘Deerham Hills police,’ said the announcer, ‘are investigating the disappearance of eighteen-year-old Arlette Grey of Abbot’s End, Deerham Hills. The girl is a student at London University. She left her home on the morning of Tuesday, June 9, and has not returned. She had very little money on her and only the clothes she was wearing. She was wearing a grey pleated skirt, a blue cotton blouse and blue cardigan and carried a leather bag containing her books. She had a handbag which she usually carried under her arm.’
Burgen had never heard of Arlette Grey until this moment, but he was always interested in girls. He went at once to the kitchen and called Doris.
‘Here, Doris,’ he said. ‘Listen to this, there’s a girl missing in Deerham Hills.’
She appeared at the door wearing a blue apron, her hands covered with flour.
The announcer was repeating the details about Arlette.
‘A girl of eighteen, wearing a grey pleated skirt, a blue cotton blouse and blue cardigan, and carrying a small leather bag and a handbag under her arm. Will anyone who …’
‘That’s enough of that,’ said Doris, snapping off the radio. She used such force that the little machine jerked.
‘Thought it might be the girl Mary Lou Pallas was worried about,’ muttered Burgen.
‘Mary Lou Pallas is never worried about anyone but Mary Lou Pallas,’ said Doris.
‘You don’t like her.’
Doris was silent; she did not like Mary Lou Pallas, she disliked her and thought her a liar.
‘Mary Lou told this story about this girl she knew and it certainly sounds just like her, grey skirt and flowered blue blouse and all,’ said Burgen obstinately.
He made a hurried movement towards his desk and started to tug at the bottom drawer which responded slowly as if it was very heavy. ‘ I could show them my newspaper cuttings about other similar cases with girls. Tell them the story and show them my records.’
The drawer suddenly jerked forward, spilling the papers on the floor and over his feet. He stood up straight and faced his sister. ‘I’m a man that knows the value of records.’
‘Burgen, you go to the police with your story and your records and before you can turn round they’ll have you lined up in a row as a suspect.’
Burgen didn’t answer.
‘Remember,’ she said significantly.
‘That was different,’ he said stiffly. ‘ I was younger then. You and I don’t always see things the same way,
Doris. I have a strong sense of my duty which you don’t have. I’m not blaming you,’ as Doris made a stifled sound of protest, ‘ but you don ‘t have it. Now I feel that society has to protect these young girls. Against themselves.’
Doris sighed. ‘ Burgen, I’ve told you before: you’re much better not dwelling on young girls and thinking of stories about them. Just forget girls.’
‘How can I? I have to teach them.’
‘Well, rise above it all. Don’t dwell on it. And if you can’t, then go to a doctor. I’m sure there’s something you can take for it,’ commanded Doris briskly.
In the kitchen she leaned against the door, giggling at her own advice. If there was something you could take for it, what an unpopular medicine it would be. As she leaned there she heard on Burgen’s record-player that fierce outburst of Wagner from which Tom and Con Gilroy were at that moment recoiling, and she recognised it, as they had not, as Lohengrin, the perfect knight. She felt relieved.
‘That’s right, dear,’ she thought. ‘Make it Wagner. Good therapy. Better than getting cross.’
Then she remembered what Burgen had said about Arlette Grey wearing a blue flowered blouse. She went over to the kitchen table and from a drawer removed the evening newspaper which had contained a report of the disappearance of the girl. She had every intention of keeping this from Burgen. There was no mention in it of a flowered blue blouse. The phrase was ‘blue’ and blue only. Burgen had introduced the word ‘flowered’ and it might, of course, mean nothing.
She stood there, then went over to the kitchen table and resumed her cooking.
All the time she was thinking about Burgen and what he had said or what she had imagined he had said. Had he really said it? Should she play that scene again in her mind and see how it ran? This time her memory presented her with a slightly different scene. She was used to this: she had noticed before that this was how memory worked. Who was to say which was the definite version?
There Lies Your Love Page 2