by C. P. Snow
‘I hope you told them that they had been insufferable fools. Trying to suppress things.’
‘I did.’ Briers gave his toughest smile. ‘I also told him, Douglas Gimson, that if he’s obliged to pick up young men he’d do better to stick to his own class. He wouldn’t be so likely to get into this kind of mess.’
Then Frank Briers turned irritable again.
‘That’s something we’ve tidied up anyhow. But there’s one spot where we haven’t been so clever. I blame myself, Humphrey, I blame myself.’
This had been on his mind all morning, Humphrey thought. Briers enjoyed success, but failure touched him more – which might make for efficacy, but not for animal comfort.
‘It’s the girl Susan. We may have missed a trick.’
Then Briers went into an angry description, angry but still lucid. Susan had come off her bogus story, she had no option, Briers told Humphrey. Now she said that she must have been thinking of some other night. Briers broke off, temper no better, into words about Susan’s behaviour. Now she had Loseby safely in her clutches, he said, she didn’t give a tinker’s curse for his night out with Douglas Gimson. She took homos and their doings like a cup of tea.
Then Briers got back to business. He thought they knew, he said, when Susan met Loseby after that weekend, and she agreed to cover him with the bogus story. It was some time on the Monday afternoon. That story carried her, too. Now it was all blown. It doesn’t enter. Briers went on, voice sharpened: ‘What does enter is where the young lady really was on the Saturday evening. The worry is we could have missed something. It’s a great mistake to sit back and think you’ve got all you want. It’s one of the oldest mistakes in the book. We went on plugging about Loseby, but somehow we swallowed the girl’s story. We took it for granted she’d been with him part of that night, anyway. It’s my own fault and no one else’s.’
‘What about her, then?’
‘The trouble is it doesn’t make such sense, either. We may have missed a sighting. Or else it seemed so far-fetched we didn’t follow it up.’ Frank Briers was talking roughly, as though, in spite of his protestations of self-blame, it was really Humphrey, totally innocent, who deserved to take it.
‘Come on.’ Humphrey had had long experience of bosses when they had slipped.
‘There may have been a sighting. It didn’t seem likely enough to take seriously. Those mews flats at the bottom of the old lady’s garden – someone told us there had been a girl hanging about when they went out to dinner. About eight on the Saturday night. They came back later, couldn’t be sure of the time, somewhere between half-past ten and eleven. The girl, they thought it was the same girl, was still walking about between the mews and the street. They didn’t pay much attention to her. Medium height, smartish clothes, slacks – might have fitted anyone. They didn’t know Susan from Adam – why in God’s name does no one know anyone else in London? Photographs – yes, it could have been her, but it could have been hundreds of other girls. The lads asked her about it, as a matter of course. But she laughed it off. That was the time she was sticking to her old story with Loseby left out. She couldn’t be in bed in a flat she and Loseby sometimes borrowed – which happens to be true, she always gets her back-up stories right – she couldn’t be in bed and walking about the mews at the same time, could she? So it didn’t seem worth going on. And it’s getting too late now. If they didn’t see much then, they’re not going to after a couple of months.’
‘It’s not very plausible, is it?’
‘You’re telling me.’
‘If she were there, waiting about for hours, she couldn’t have been in the house–’
‘We managed to work that out for ourselves.’
Humphrey received that snub with a faint smile.
‘So in a direct sense she would be more or less let out. No one would do a murder, and dawdle about for ever. Unless they were quite mad.’
‘She’s as sane as you are. We managed to work that out, too.’
‘It doesn’t seem plausible. Surely it’s long odds it was a girl waiting for a man to come back to one of those flats.’
‘That’s what we thought.’
‘If by any miracle it was Susan,’ Humphrey was brooding, ‘I suppose she might have known who was in the house – or who she imagined might be.’
‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs.’
That was said with something like a return to good nature.
After a while, Frank said: ‘Do you believe she was there?’
Humphrey said: ‘If she was there, she ought to have seen someone or something.’
It was Frank, quicker than Humphrey, who had seen another possibility, which was still obscure that morning. Frank went on: ‘If she did see someone, we can make up for lost time. God knows we’ve lost enough time. We’ll have to get to work on her, of course.’
‘Will she talk?’
‘She’ll talk all right. Whether she’ll talk anything like the truth, that’s quite another matter.’
29
A couple of days after the visit to the mortuary, still in that dank October, Humphrey heard quick steps on his stairs. They were steps he knew by heart. Kate hadn’t given any warning that she was coming. It was early evening, she must have just returned from work. When she came into the room, she kissed him and said, fast, as though she had been rehearsing the speech and didn’t want to be interrupted: ‘I still can’t give you everything you want. I don’t want to come under false pretences. But it’s a mistake to wait for ever. Let’s get what we can.’
She wasn’t pretending, excusing herself, finessing with a false story. Humphrey was startled. His composure left him. Neither of them spoke. Then they went, arms round each other, into his bedroom. Clothes came off. It was all as though they had been married for a long time. The flesh was kind.
Then as she lay in his arms, face lines smoothed away, she muttered: ‘Good. Any time. Any time you want.’
Rain was slashing against the window. The night was closing in. It was a night to be safe in bed. She gave a comfortable sigh. A little later, she kissed his cheek, and turned on him her disrespectful grin. She said: ‘I always wondered when you’d get on with it.’
He freed an arm, and slapped her. The flesh was as disrespectful as she was. The flesh was kind.
Comfortable minutes in the half-dark, rain chuntering on the glass. Bed chatter. She said: ‘I want to talk to you soon.’
He stirred, but she said: ‘No, we had better get dressed. I don’t want us to be distracted. Perhaps we ought to have a drink.’
There wasn’t much said until they were back in the sitting-room, Kate in her neat office dress, Humphrey in his workaday suit, both with whiskys in their hands. They were not sitting together on the sofa, but, as if it were by understanding, opposite each other in the big armchairs.
‘I am trying to be honest,’ she said. ‘It’s not as easy as it ought to be.’
‘I trust you, you know,’ he replied.
‘I know you do. And I trust you. Absolutely. But still it isn’t easy.’ She burst out: ‘I want you altogether. We’re right for each other, aren’t we?’ That was said with an edge of diffidence, and she had to hear him say: ‘I knew that a long time ago.’
‘I think I did, too. But I thought I might be fooling myself. You see, I’m not much of a prospect, am I?’
‘Don’t be so modest–’
‘I’m not. I haven’t exactly been competed for by men.’
‘More fools they.’ Humphrey understood her diffidence, and thought he mustn’t pamper it.
‘Bless you.’ Her expression was unusually soft. ‘Anyway, I know we fit each other. It’s a bit of a marvel, but I can’t help accepting it. Some of the time. So it would be wonderful beyond anything I’ve dreamed of to give you all you want. I’m trying to tell you I can’t, not yet awhile; you have to be patient. I love you very much, but I’m not quite free.’
Humphrey said, with a kind of stiff gentleness: �
�Do you still love him?’
‘No. Not as I love you. But when you’ve lived with someone for fifteen years there are ties you can’t snap all at one go. Somehow I’m still obliged to care for him. My love, you’re a self-sufficient man. Somehow you’ve always been able to look after yourself, haven’t you?’ Very close, discomfortingly close, to what Luria had said that night in the pub, Humphrey thought. She was repeating herself: ‘You’re not helpless. It makes life distinctly less exacting.’
She met his smile, but her own was mechanical.
‘No, he really is helpless,’ she said.
‘You realise, that could go on for ever.’
‘No,’ she said in a resonant voice, ‘that’s not on. Somehow I’ll find a way. I can’t endure it for much longer. I can’t endure it if you want me just for yourself.’
‘I’ve made that clear enough,’ said Humphrey. ‘But, you know it as well as I do, you’re not so clear. You can’t tell me when you’re hoping to be free. Even tonight you can’t. Can you?’
‘You’ll have to bear with me a bit longer. I promise you, I love you and I’ll do it.’
Watching her, Humphrey believed her. Even more, he wished to believe her. This was one of the reassurances of love, more unqualified than any future could be.
‘For the time being,’ she began, sounding firmer than she was.
‘For the time being what?’
‘For the time being you’ll have to be satisfied with what we have.’
He gazed at her without responding.
‘You’re good at making the most of things,’ she said, as though it were an appeal. ‘You do know, don’t you, you have plenty of capacity for happiness?’
‘If so’ – this time Humphrey did respond, with a familiar smile – ‘I must say, I’ve managed to conceal it very well.’
He added: ‘My girl, I should say that it was you who had the capacity for happiness. I’ve never known anyone with more. That’s one of the things I liked at the beginning.’
‘Let’s hope,’ she said, decision, boldness, realism all returning, ‘it’ll turn out useful for us both.’ She added: ‘While I can’t do everything–’
‘“While” is a long word,’ he said.
‘We can have plenty to hold on to. I can get away quite a bit. Like this. More than this.’
‘Does he know anything about it?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
‘Is that true?’
‘I wouldn’t lie to you. I haven’t the faintest idea. He’d never ask me. I can see you very often.’
‘Better than nothing.’ Said with sarcastic affection.
‘Yes, yes. Bed, any time. I told you.’ She gave her monkey-like grin. ‘Good for us both.’
‘Good for us both.’
‘Don’t think that I don’t know that I’m not giving you all you want. You’ve never had too much of what you want, have you? For God’s sake I can’t understand why not. If anyone was made to have a decent life, you were.’
‘It wasn’t God’s fault,’ Humphrey said. ‘It must have been my own. Something wrong with my character, or nature. Or whatever you like.’
‘Nonsense, love. Sheer nonsense. Just luck.’ She was silent for an instant, then said, struggling out with a confession: ‘I’ve never had much of what I want, either.’
‘I think I’d guessed that.’
She hesitated again. ‘I don’t like being disloyal to him. Even now,’ she said. ‘But you have to understand, that’s the first thing. I never really got on with him, ever. Even in ways I ought to have coped with. You’d have thought I was practical, wouldn’t you? I wasn’t really. When I was a girl, I had all sorts of dreams.’
Humphrey was thinking again of Alec Luria’s lucubrations, and advice. Humphrey was also thinking that Alec Luria ought to be listening. Kate continued: ‘You know he’s always taking care of his health?’
Humphrey laughed out loud.
‘Well,’ said Kate, ‘four or five years ago – I was thirty-five or so – he talked to me very seriously. He was concerned about his blood pressure. He had seen his doctor. His blood pressure had to be kept down. Otherwise he wouldn’t be able to do his thinking. Otherwise his life might be shortened. So he had to ask me, did I mind if we gave up intercourse?’
Humphrey was sure that that was the actual word Monty had used.
‘Not that there had ever been much of it.’
‘What did you say?’ Humphrey asked, offhand, gentle.
‘Oh, I agreed. I took it. I thought I had to take anything. It wasn’t altogether easy. I’m not cold. As you may just possibly have discovered.’
She chortled, so did he, with satisfaction, maybe desire.
Soon they could return to bed. They had had no real clarification. She had tried to explain, but what did she mean? There were promises away in the future. But they had confidence in each other, much more than that, a kind of unanxious delight, as though, just for once, the present was good enough.
They were tired of explanations, as a couple could be after a quarrel, though there had been none. It was then, absently, as though for casual relief, that Humphrey brought in Susan’s name. He had for a long time trusted Kate as an ally, and now that trust was absolute. He was telling everything that was known or suspected of Susan’s doings on the Saturday night.
‘This is rather a facer, isn’t it?’ she said, eyes acute, head nodding.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you really believe it was Susan? Knocking about outside?’
‘You know her miles better than I do. What do you think?’
She pressed him about the Loseby story. There was no getting away from it, he said, Loseby had spent all that evening and the small hours and probably the next day with the unfortunate Gimson. Loseby wasn’t innocent of much on this earth, but he was certainly innocent of being with his grandmother that night.
‘I wasn’t brought up to these goings-on,’ Kate said, remembering her father, a steady conventional soldier. What would he have thought of Loseby?
‘Loseby’s a free soul. You and I are mildly constrained. You don’t often meet a free soul, even now.’
‘If that’s a free soul, Lord deliver me from them.’
With Loseby disposed of, where had Susan been? On the Monday, she had been with Loseby concocting an account of the Saturday night, the two of them together, later described to the police, as Humphrey had been told, with uninhibited thoroughness. Humphrey, not especially given to sexual outspokenness, nevertheless gave a few details. Kate guffawed.
‘What a girl,’ she said. But where had Susan really been on the Saturday? And why after all this had Loseby married her? Neither he nor Kate could understand how she had finally landed him.
‘She’s a resourceful creature,’ said Kate. ‘She’s not her father’s daughter for nothing.’
‘That doesn’t get us any distance, does it?’
She asked sharply, intimately, half-accusingly: ‘Why are you so interested in her?’
He answered, also straightforward: ‘You know Frank Briers is a friend of mine? I wouldn’t mind saving him some trouble if I can.’
‘Do you really like him?’
‘Very much.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s as honourable as you are, which is saying something. He’s doing a job. On the whole, I prefer people who are doing a job.’
‘He struck me as pretty hard.’
‘No harder than the rest of us have to be, in order to get along.’
She didn’t often run against Humphrey’s dark stoicism, but she was glad that he wasn’t uniformly gentle, all the way down.
‘Well, have it your own way,’ she said, though not conceding about Frank Briers. After a moment she said: ‘Look, you can talk to Paul Mason, can’t you?’ He acquiesced.
‘He might be able to give you some light on Susan. If that’s what you want.’
Humphrey explained the practical point, whether she co
uld be eliminated as a suspect. Loseby now was; her father was.
‘Whether Paul could have anything useful to tell you, I can’t say.’
‘Why ever should he?’
‘Come on, you’re supposed to be perceptive, aren’t you? Haven’t you noticed that she was running after Paul, when Loseby seemed to be cooling off. On the rebound. Or she may have fancied Paul. He’d be a better bet than Loseby, for my money. Anyway, he could have picked up something.’
She smiled, and began to stretch herself.
‘But whether you ought to be doing this at all, I’m not too sure. If you must, you must. But I am sure that we have had enough of it for just now, haven’t we?’
This wasn’t tender-hearted, as Frank’s wife might have been. She was thinking only of him. She didn’t want him to regress to anything like his old underground existence. He was so different when he was breaking free. That night, looking at him with expectancy, she was wishing that she could have known him when he was young.
30
It was pleasant, Humphrey was thinking, to take the advice of a woman one was fond of, particularly if the advice was likely to be sensible. Thus Humphrey invited Paul Mason to have dinner with him. Humphrey said that they might as well go to Brooks’, the one club he kept up. Though young men hadn’t much use for clubs by this time, Paul in his job had to co-exist with a more old-fashioned life, and Brooks’ seemed an appropriate background for him. It was a mild November night, windless and misty, soothing to the senses. Humphrey decided that he would walk across the park.
Not that his senses needed soothing. Exactly as though he were a younger man, he was high-spirited because a love affair had begun, really begun. It was absurd, for one who so distrusted his own fortune, but he found himself looking passers-by in the face, and thinking they were dumb beasts and didn’t get much fun. He was looking forward to his evening. In his rational fashion, Paul was the most intelligent of company. He might provide a piece of information. It had been a good idea.