by Jane Duncan
‘Quietly does it,’ he said, coming into the room and sitting in a chair on the other side of the window from my sofa. ‘You see before you a fugitive on the run.’
Out of the shaded dimness, his teeth flashed a smile, his eyes gleamed under the ruffled shock of black hair, and his brown skin shone with sweat above the soiled white shirt that stuck to his chest. In that moment the thought came to me that I could well understand Lucy Freeman and that I would never understand Dee Andrews. This was a bold reckless young man, a creature with only the barest veneer of so-called civilisation, maybe, but vitality, courage and gaiety sparkled all about him, seeming to light with a bright glow the dim corner where he sat, seeming to make the humid inert air vibrate with energy.
‘So well you might be on the run!’ I said, but I could not help smiling at him. ‘What are you doing here?’ My attempt at severity was not a success. ‘How did you get here, anyway?’
‘Got a lift on a truck and then walked in through the cane. I didn’t want to risk coming in by car.’
‘Why come here at all? Especially here?’
‘This is the last place they’ll look for me,’ he told me with an impudent grin. ‘Where’s Dee?’
‘Upstairs. It’s all right,’ I reassured him. ‘She is in bed with a cold.’
‘Good.’
‘What have you come for?’
‘To meet the kid – Sandy. He hasn’t been here?’
‘No.’
‘He is bringing me a suitcase from the house.’
‘What made you choose to meet him here?’
He reached a long arm across to my sofa and picked up But Not for Love. ‘This. I suppose you know it’s mine?’
‘Yes. Dee told me last night.’
He looked down at the book. ‘I came because of this and because you gave me the keenest pleasure I have ever known when I saw you reading it in the ship and you said it was good. You said it was good in the right way and for the right reasons – I mean my way and my reasons. That made me think you wouldn’t sell me down the river today.’
‘I won’t sell you down the river, Roddy. What are your plans?’
‘There’s a lumber boat sailing for the Gulf tonight – I’ve shipped on her as a hand. I’ve sailed that way before. It’s cheap and I like it.’
‘You’re making for the States?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your passport?’
‘It’s in order, visa and all. It’s among the stuff the kid is bringing.’
‘Money, Roddy? Dollars?’
‘I’m all right. That first slim volume’ – he nodded with a smile at the book – ‘has hit the best-selling lists in the States as well as England.’
He looked so gaily on top of his world that I felt I must bring its reality and general intractability to his notice. ‘I suppose I ought to raise a general alarm about your being here.’
‘All you have to do is to call your yard boy,’ he said, laughing, and I suddenly began to wonder why someone as bold and reckless as he was should be running away like this.
‘How did you know that today was the day to clear out?’ I asked.
‘The kid phoned me at the office that Sir Ian was at the house talking about me and Lucy Freeman and horse whips, so I told him to meet me here with the locked suitcase from under my bed.’
‘Roddy,’ I said, holding the book between my hands, ‘with this book to your credit, why don’t you stand your ground and face things out? You are not the first man to get a girl into trouble, as it is called, and you won’t be the last and—’
‘Just to clear the ground,’ he interrupted me, ‘I am not responsible for Lucy’s trouble. That is the result of an encounter she had with a seaman in Victoria Court. Paradise office doesn’t know that Lucy spends most of her nights in Victoria Court.’
‘But you could have been responsible?’
He grinned at me. ‘As my Glasgow landlady says: If you go among the crows you must be ready to be shot at. Yes, the infant could have been mine, I suppose.’
‘Anyway, she has had a miscarriage.’
‘I knew she was doing her best about that.’
‘Roddy, why are you running away like this?’ I asked point-blank, for I felt that he was trying to lead me away from this question and I was very much more wary of Roddy now than I had been formerly.
‘Because I am a coward,’ he said.
‘Look here,’ I said angrily, ‘the least you can do is to be honest with me!’
His face changed, became naked and vulnerable as if he had allowed a protective mask to drop from it. ‘It is true,’ he said. ‘I am a coward – not a coward-and-a-bounder-by-Gad-God-dammit . . .’ he parodied the voice of Sir Ian, ‘—perhaps – but I am cowardly about a scene with my father. I don’t want it to happen. If my father and Sir Ian came at me in a horse-whipping frame of mind, somebody might get hurt. I am younger and more agile than they are. And that would be a pity.’ As he spoke, his jaw tightened, cording the muscles in his neck, and I knew that Roddy, with his temper out of control, would be a formidable adversary. ‘It’s better to get out and let everybody cool down,’ he ended.
‘But this?’ I held up the book. ‘If you tell them about this?’
‘The damage would be done before I could get round to it.’ Another change came over him. He seemed to withdraw into himself, even to lose physical colour, as if his vivid eyes and brilliant hair were merging away into the dim shadow where he sat. ‘I have been trying to tell my people about that book ever since I came home in December. I’ve never got round to it. I’ve missed my chance now.’ He stared straight at me, frowning, as if he were trying to come to a decision. ‘Have you a cigarette to spare?’ he said then. I gave him a cigarette, and, as he struck the match, he seemed to make up his mind. ‘All this is difficult to explain, Missis Janet. You see, when I wanted to read English at the university, I was asked at home if I wanted to be a bloody schoolmaster. I didn’t. I wanted to be a bloody poet, but I had enough sense not to say that. I went to university and read English at the parental expense for five years. I reckoned if they had the money for me to do what they wanted, which was engineering, the same money would do for what I wanted. The chances are that I shall have to go on living with me for a long time, and, with all due respect to Twice, I find engineers pretty boring.’
He gave me his impudent grin again and I felt that, very subtly, he was beginning to lead me away from the main issue once more, and it irritated me that this six feet of vibrant blood, bone and muscle should be as elusive as a brown trout in a Scottish stream. I am not quick of wit, but I think I have a certain tenacity.
‘I still think,’ I said in the voice that Twice calls ‘hammering’ and in which I could myself hear the beat of persistence, ‘that if you told your people about this book—’
He expelled a long sigh, as if giving up. ‘In the light of all that has happened,’ he said, ‘you probably think I have got cheek for anything. I haven’t. Not about my writing.’ He pulled, his shoulders forward, tucked his elbows close to his sides and he made me think of myself scribbling at the writing-table, when Twice came in unexpectedly and I hid the papers under the blotter, screening them, protecting them, while, physically, I seemed to feel myself shrivel and grow smaller as I shrank towards the core of myself. ‘My writing makes a coward out of me, a real coward,’ Roddy went on, talking more to himself now than to me. ‘It is the fear that they will laugh or the look of non-comprehension on their faces or with that’ – he pointed to the book I held – ‘the fear of how they will try to value it, ask how much money I got for it, and when I am going to get on and write another one. I – I get craven at the thought of talking to them about it, of seeing them pick it over as if it were doubtful fish lying on a slab!’ His voice shook as he spoke the last words, but with a physical jerk he broke away from the thoughts he had spoken aloud and said: ‘God, I wish that kid would come!’
‘When does your boat sail?’
‘Six.’
‘There’s time yet.’
I passed my cigarettes to him, noticed that his hand trembled as he took one, and now I felt a little ashamed that I had forced him into this exposure of himself, and I also felt embarrassed, as we tend to feel when someone steps outside the mental image we have held of him. It was easier for me to sit opposite and talk to the devil-may-care Roddy I had always known and to wait until I was alone before trying to encompass this new image that had emerged.
‘What in the world made you propose to Dee Andrews?’ I asked him after a short silence.
‘I didn’t.’
‘Didn’t?’
‘No. It was her idea. She suggested it and I was brought up to be a little gentleman after all, but please believe me when I say that it was a marriage that I never intended to take place.’
His strong white teeth showed in a mischievous grin, and the Roddy of the Pandora was before me again, but after a second he became grave. ‘That poor brat is in hell’s own muddle, Missis Janet. I’ve meant to tell you this before, but it’s a bit difficult and I hadn’t the guts, but I’ll tell you now. If you throw me out, it doesn’t matter. I’m on my way, anyhow,’ He grinned again, became grave again. ‘That girl is a-sexual, Missis Janet – maybe a Lesbian like that Denholm beanpole down at the Peak – but a-sexual, anyway.’
‘I know,’ I said, hoping to astonish him and succeeding.
‘You know?’
My satisfaction was only momentary. ‘Yes, now. But I didn’t know until Cousin Emmie drew a diagram for me last night,’ I confessed. ‘I think she drew a diagram for Dee too – a diagram of Dee for Dee.’
‘That was what was needed, but I hadn’t the guts to do it,’ Roddy said.
‘Anyway, Dee is now going in with Isobel Denholm on the Mount Melody project.’
‘Dear heaven! What goings-on here in Paradise!’ said Roddy and began to laugh uproariously.
‘Hush! She is upstairs, remember!’
‘Think of that old Cousin Emmie—’ Roddy began.
‘Yes, just think of her. It was she who blew the gaff about you and the Freeman girl, by the way.’
‘Damn it, I might have known it! One couldn’t have a tumble anywhere without her happening along. She makes me think of the chorus in a Greek play.’
I laughed, thinking that this was as apt a description of Cousin Emmie as I had yet heard. At that moment I saw from the window a suitcase being pushed on to the garden wall from the cane-piece beyond.
‘There’s Sandy!’ I said, and Roddy sprang up. ‘Wait here. I’ll go.’
I could see only Sandy’s red head on the other side of the wall and the head of Samson, his pony, as he asked: ‘Is Number Three here. Missis Janet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you give him this case? And tell him good luck. I gotta go back – Mother’s only at the Great House.’
‘All right, Sandy.’
There was a rustle among the sugar-cane, Sandy and the pony became invisible, the afternoon sun blazed down and, feeling that I was caught up in some absurd melodrama, I lugged the heavy suitcase across the lawn and into the house.
‘I feel a perfect fool,’ I told Roddy.
‘As long as that’s all, it’s all right,’ he said, kneeling down by the case, taking some keys from his pocket and checking what it contained.
‘And now what?’ I asked as he relocked the case and stood up. ‘How do you propose to get from here to the Bay carrying that?’ I pointed to the case and glanced at my watch. ‘It’s twenty-past four.’
‘I’ll manage all right.’
‘Take these,’ I said and gave him a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches. I held out my hand. ‘Good luck!’
‘Thanks.’ He shook my hand and jerked his head at the book that lay on the sofa. ‘I’ll send you a copy of the next one for free,’ I picked up the book and held it between my hands again. ‘Shall I tell Paradise you wrote this one?’
‘Tell them if you like. What’s one more sin among so many?’
Suitcase in hand, he stepped out of the French window. In the sunlight, he turned to smile at me, the bold, reckless smile that comes only to those who have the world before them and no old debts to the past and no old doubts from the past trailing behind them.
‘My cousin is out looking for you,’ said a voice at the door at the other end of the room and I swung quickly round from the sunlit figure in the garden to the brown shade of Cousin Emmie, the parasol in one hand, the canvas bag in the other, so that the book slipped from my hands and fell at my feet ‘There will be trouble—’ she began but broke off, sat down and disposed bag and parasol about her chair.
When I looked back to the window there was nobody there. The lawn was empty, but the heat of the day was over and the Insects were waking to their clicking, chirruping, rustling life, I picked up the book, walked down the room and laid the volume aside.
‘My cousin is still in a temper,’ Cousin Emmie said, ‘so I thought I would have tea with you.’
‘Of course, Miss Morrison. I’ll just call Clorinda.’ When I came back into the room, I said: ‘Let’s go out to the front veranda. It will be cooler there now.’
As we settled in wicker chairs at the end of the veranda, there was a movement behind me and, looking round and through the mosquito mesh, I saw Dee’s Daimler slip past, rolling of its own momentum down the slope of the drive. When it reached the gate, the engine purred into life and Roddy’s brown arm waved from the window as the car turned the corner and sped away.
‘Oh, heavens!’ I said. ‘Look at that!’
‘He’ll leave it in some safe place,’ Cousin Emmie said, quite unmoved, re-disposing her bag in a more convenient spot. ‘He has a respect for cars – that seems to be about the only thing he has inherited from that engineering father of his. In any case, I always said it was a mistake that little girl bringing that car out here with her. You never know what might happen.’
‘No. You don’t, do you?’ I said.
‘Where is he going?’
‘The States, I think.’
‘Just the place for him. A fine big place for a young man like him. But I wouldn’t go to the States.’
‘No?’
‘No, I am too old. I’ll go back to England.’
‘Oh? I thought you didn’t want to sail next week.’
‘I’m not going to sail. They play Scrabble on boats. I don’t like playing Scrabble. I am going to fly. It’s all over in about twenty-four hours.’
I have a long, hard Highland memory and I remembered now how she had croaked about the danger of flying when Twice went off round the islands. ‘I thought you didn’t trust aeroplanes?’ I said spitefully.
‘Neither I do, but I’d rather travel in an aeroplane than on that boat with that man Cranston.’
‘And will you go back to live in London when you land?’ I asked, pouring tea.
‘If I land,’ said Cousin Emmie, looking facts in the face. ‘Yes. I’ll go back to our flat.’
‘With Miss Murgatroyd?’
‘No. Miss Murgatroyd is dead. She died last October,’ said Cousin Emmie, taking the cup of tea from my arrested hand and helping herself to a sandwich. ‘That’s why I came out here on that boat. It is difficult to find yourself alone after fifty years.’
‘Very difficult – it must be,’ I said gently. ‘But wouldn’t it be better to move to another flat, perhaps? Won’t it feel very lonely?’
‘No. Not the way things are. I am going to marry Miss Murgatroyd’s brother. He asked me to marry him just after Fanny died. I came out here to think things over.’
She took another sandwich and began, thoughtfully, to eat it. I did not interrupt her cogitations.
‘It’s an odd thing,’ she said after a moment, ‘but I don’t really know why I am going to marry Martin. When you get to our age there’s no sex, just people. It’s Marion that wants us to be married. He is in holy orders, you see. Of course, he is retired now. We w
ill be company for one another and he plays a splendid game of chess and bridge and it is a sensible arrangement for two elderly people like us, but, you know, I don’t believe I would bother to get married to him if it wouldn’t annoy my cousin so much.’
‘Madame Dulac?’ I breathed.
‘Yes. She has always looked down on me for not getting married.’
She chewed thoughtfully at her sandwich for a further moment. ‘I just wish I were sure that she isn’t forcing me into something I may regret. I have never liked Lottie.’
‘I am quite sure,’ I said with conviction, ‘that what Madame may or may not think has not had the slightest effect on your decision, Miss Morrison.’
‘You never know,’ she said distrustfully. ‘People do things for all sorts of reasons. Look at that little girl upstairs getting engaged just to please you and Lottie and people. Look at you helping that young man to get away from Ian today just because you like books and so does he.’ I was silent in the face of this acuteness of hers. ‘You were always talking to him about books on that ship. Of course, you like young people too and you like good-looking people – all that would have something to do with it.’ She lapsed into silence, and after a moment I dared to revert to the subject I found most fascinating: ‘Have you told Madame that you intend to marry Mr Murgatroyd?’
‘Yes,’ said Cousin Emmie, and for the first time since I had met her it seemed to me that her face and voice were animated by some emotion, if, that is, malicious glee can be called an emotion, ‘That is why she is in such a temper. The way she was about that typist girl carrying on with that young man Maclean is nothing to it.’
‘Let me give you some more tea, Miss Morrison,’ I said with a rare and genuine pleasure in speaking these words to her.
She and I were still sitting on the veranda, comfortable if rather silent companions, when Twice came home about six o’clock, but almost before he could greet us Clorinda appeared and said: ‘Please, sah, Charlie cryin’ an’ Dram gettin’ in a state.’