“For God’s sake, boy! you’re like an infernal gramophone! What man and what motor-car?”
“The hiker—he wasn’t a hiker at all, he was a commercial traveller. He was selling something, he wouldn’t tell us what it was, so I don’t know; but he took her into Corby to post the letter. I didn’t want him to, I tried to stop her going with him; but she was worried—the car nearly knocked me into the drive. Then I came back here and I let the dogs out because when I was downstairs I heard the bed—”
“But when?”
“What time was it?”
They had both spoken together.
“To catch the last post,” he said with triumphant remembrance, “that was it. That was why she went with him. She would never have gone with him otherwise; I know she wouldn’t. She didn’t like him, he hinted at things all the time. We couldn’t get rid of him.”
George Harkess straightened himself.
“Three quarters of an hour ago,” he said, “say an hour ago at the outside. Don’t worry! I’ll have her back inside ten minutes and this fellow, whoever he is.”
“Oh George! Please be quick. It’s not like her; she never speaks to strangers. Don’t waste a moment. Go straight to the Police Station. If—if she’s not in the village, they’ll put out a message; they’ll stop all cars.”
He frowned.
“For heaven’s sake don’t panic, Enid! There’s no need to call in the Police at this stage. Think, girl! Have some sense! We don’t want them up here at Nettlebed questioning this blasted—asking the boy questions. She’ll be in the village, you’ll see. I can’t think what came over the young monkey,” he paused, chewing his moustache. “How old is she?”
“Oh George whatever does that matter?” From her place on the linoleum she gazed at him tearfully.
“It matters a great deal. Come on now, what is she? fourteen? fifteen? I’ve never been able to make up my mind.”
“She’s thirteen, only thirteen; but please don’t waste any more time—”
“Is she by God! Well that’s too young by half—or too old, whichever way you look at it. You give her too much rope Enid, running round the moors, having her boy friends to stay with her in the holidays. For thirteen, she’s too well on, too provocative; she—”
Her face grey with hostility, Mrs Blount rose stiffly. Beneath her eyes there were tender blue marks like new bruises.
“You know nothing about my—Victoria,” she said, “and this is hardly the time to start criticising the poor little thing. If you won’t call in the Police, I shall do so myself at once; and if they must question us, then they must. For my part I shall withhold nothing—nothing at all. I shall tell them everything they want to know.”
George Harkess’s moustache lowered itself suddenly over his long teeth.
“Now look here! There’s no point in crossing our bridges—Good Lord! This is the twentieth century and I’ve got to think of my standing in the neighbourhood—a little thing like this—”
“Look after John,” she said, “while I go to the telephone.” And she began to cross the linoleum towards the bathroom-door. She was as wooden as the White Queen in Alice’s game of chess; she still walked carefully, her narrow skirt gleaming and stiff in the bright light. She had reached the door before he caught up with her.
“My dear, you don’t know what you’re doing; you’re behaving like a mad-woman. What on earth’s the matter with you? Now just consider the facts afresh: barely an hour ago, Victoria took a lift from a fellow with a motor-car to post a letter in a lively little village—”
He was blocking the doorway and she was too cold and upright to struggle with him or to try to pass him; but the pace she took backwards, as though she had stepped farther into her most private self, dismayed him more than any battle would have done.
“I don’t want to examine the facts,” she said coldly. “Not those facts. There are others which I as a woman can see at once.” She turned to John, looking at him as though something significant towered above his chair. “You heard what John said about him? That should be enough for anyone. It is certainly enough for me, after—after—”
In the doorway George Harkess felt for the thick hair at the back of his neck. He smiled kindly.
“All right my dear, let us waste no more time in arguing. I know when I’m beaten and when a woman’s in this state a man has to present her with a fact; after that, he will exact his apology!” He looked at his watch. “I’ll be back in a quarter of an hour. In the meantime, pull yourself together! You might pass the time, or some of it, in getting yourself and that boy a cup of tea in the kitchen.”
They heard his hasty descent of the stairs, the closure of the front door, and the excited salutations of the dogs as he stepped out into the night.
Mrs Blount shivered. “I’m sorry John that you should have—” she broke off. “He’s quite right; I should never have let you go off like that. I felt uneasy about it from the very first. All the time at Redcar I was worrying. That’s why I took something to drink. This isn’t my normal self John; you know that, don’t you? You know that Victoria’s mother—usually I’m very careful; I have to be; but today—”
“That’s all right Mrs Blount.”
She didn’t hear him; or if she did her eyes gave him only a fleeting acknowledgment. “I allowed myself to be persuaded against my better judgment. I knew this was going to be a difficult week. I warned Victoria; in a way, I tried to tell George; but, of course, you wouldn’t understand how difficult it is to tell him things. Really! I very nearly put off the whole idea of the holiday because of something that happened one Sunday. And now, how I wish I had. Oh! How I wish—”
John stood up unsteadily.
“I’d love a cup of tea,” he said. “It will be warm in the kitchen. Let’s go and sit in the kitchen and make some tea—my shoulder’s hurting.”
“You poor boy! Of course it is. How selfish I am—let me dry your neck for you.”
She took the towel from him and with rapid abstracted movements dabbed it round his ears and neck.
“Are you sure you can walk down the stairs?”
“Yes thank you. It’s just that I can’t feel my arm properly. Do you think I might have broken something? Melanie fell off a Shetland pony once, and her arm went dead and they took an X-ray photograph of it and found that it was broken. It was in plaster for weeks and my brothers used to strike matches on it.”
“Oh dear I don’t know! We’ll have to see about it in the morning. I know nothing about nursing I’m afraid; I’m useless, quite useless. I can’t even look after myself let alone after anyone else. If I’d done what my instincts had told me, and not only my instincts, none of this would ever have happened, simply because we would none of us ever have come here. On that Sunday I mentioned, there was a distinct warning; but I chose to ignore it.”
She took his arm and side by side they made their way slowly down the stairs through the empty creaking hall to the kitchen.
Mrs Blount filled the kettle and searched the dresser cupboard for the tea-things. All her movements were ineffectual as she prepared the tray and put the kettle on the hob. She seemed to be unused to anything ever exactly fulfilling its function. Her hands themselves, as though they were unaccustomed to her control of them, fluttered and hesitated as they performed their duties; even the kettle lid was awry, and the kettle itself when she transferred it from the hob to the black range, was not in the centre of the opening over the grate. She was quite unable to find the tea-caddy and ultimately, she sat down in Annie’s rocking-chair and started to rock herself backwards and forwards rhythmically; but she did not weep; and though she did not weep it would have been much more comfortable if she had. John had seen people rocking themselves in the Vicarage hammock, and other children see-sawing under the trees in summer, strangely abstracted from the world in which they rocked or swayed. But this rocking of Mrs Blount’s, though it implied a detachment as complete as that of the people he remembered,
was a movement which came out of a dreadful dry-eyed grief, as if she rocked in the dark.
He went into the larder, found the milk, tea-caddy, and sugar and made the tea. Then, glad of the opportunity of disturbing the cycle of her sorrow, he handed her a cup which she took gratefully, starting immediately to sip from its hot rim.
“He knows I don’t mean it of course,” she said. “If only I did, if only I could mean it and go on meaning it, not just now but in the future too; then, I suppose, things would be different for us both. Oh! If only we could change things without changing ourselves—but we can’t and he knows it. Men are all the same—” She looked up at him. “How old are you?” she asked. “I always forget John, whether you are older or younger than—Oh my darling, darling little Victoria. Whatever came over me? How could I have let you go off like that in a lonely, horrible place like this? He was right, I must have been mad.”
“I’m younger,” said John, “but only a little. I’m twelve-and-a-half and she’s just over thirteen; but please Mrs Blount, don’t go on worrying like this. Mr Harkess will bring her back—he’d bring anyone back! In the morning everything will be all right, you’ll see; it always is.”
She smiled at him wanly, and for a moment he saw Victoria staring out of her tired face. Before he could stop himself, he sobbed, once; loudly. Mrs Blount stopped rocking.
“I’m sorry,” he said, improvising swiftly, “it was only my shoulder—I think it’s coming back to life and it’s jolly unpleasant.”
“John—?”
“Yes.”
“There’s something I want to ask you, but it’s very difficult for me.” The difficulty took shape under the hand of her silence. “You remember what I said in the bathroom to George—to Mr Harkess?”
“Not very well. I don’t remember much at all I’m afraid.”
“It was about the police,” she said.
“Oh yes! You mean about not telling them everything?”
“Yes, you see John, I’ve been thinking—and I think, yes I’m sure, that if it should be necessary to call them in, we must help them, we must do everything in our power to help them; but on the other hand—” Her lips ceased to move but her eyelids opened and closed eloquently.
“You mean about my shoulder?” he said brightly. “Please don’t worry about that! I’ve thought of it already and I’ve decided I’ll just say that one of the dogs knocked me over in the drive. Don’t you think that’s good?”
“Yes dear, I do. You’re a brave boy, very brave!” She put her cup on the table as though it had never contained anything and smiled at him painfully. “But it wasn’t only that. You see, they might want to know how it was we were so long in notifying them; they might ask us why it was that when you returned alone—What time was it by the way when you did return?”
“Five past seven by the kitchen clock.”
“Well they might want to know, they might wonder what Mr Harkess and I were doing at that time not to have—telephoned them or something.”
“Oh I see! You mean about being in bed together?” He looked directly into her face and she looked down at her dainty bedroom-slipper.
“Yes you see John, Mr Harkess and I were, that is to say we are thinking of getting married and—I’m sure you understand what I mean; don’t you? Because I haven’t any sons of my own, and it’s very difficult for me to know exactly how to say what I feel I ought to say before the police come.”
“Yes,” he said. “I understand, you just don’t want me to tell them that bit, that’s all; and I won’t We can easily think of something else between us, if it’s necessary; but I don’t think it will be, I’m sure they’ll be back any minute, Mr Harkess and Victoria, I mean.” He looked up at the clock; but her eyes did not follow his.
“It’s not that there’s anything for us to be ashamed of, or anything like that John,” she said, “though I expect at your age, with the sort of ideas you’ve been brought up on—your mother, Mrs Blaydon—”
“No,” he said, “of course not! Everybody does it. I mean grown-ups; they always make love in bed, don’t they? I know all about it. In the Parish we have terrible things happening, even brothers and sisters; there was a girl called—”
Mrs Blount sighed uncomfortably and John hurried on, “But yours wasn’t like that. After all, you’re going to marry Mr Harkess, aren’t you? And Victoria said that after the races he’d almost certainly be drunk. My grandfather drank sometimes, and Mother says that when he was like that he wasn’t responsible for his actions, he didn’t know what he was doing; and I’m sure Mr Harkess was too, or he’d probably never have—”
“No dear! He wasn’t drunk.” She seemed to be very alive again and sat upright on the rocking-chair. “Mr Harkess is very lonely, and when men are lonely—Good Heavens! If I thought that he drank! You see he has no Faith, John, nothing to live by and that is what makes him so terribly lonely in a way which we might find it difficult to understand. You and I—”
“Do you go to Church?” he asked. “I never knew that. Victoria never told me.”
“Not your sort of Church, dear, and not services like your father’s; but I have my religion, I could never have lived without it, and I worship the same God; but in a different way.”
She was very calm, almost happy, and even began to rock herself again peacefully, as though she were nursing a pleasant secret.
“Oh,” he said. “Well what is your religion?”
“I’m a Christian Scientist, John.”
“I see. Yes, I think I’ve heard of them; but it’s awfully funny that Victoria never talks about it. Is she one too?”
“No dear, not yet. I’ve always tried to let her make her own mind up about everything; and for the most important thing, I think it’s most important of all to let one’s children decide for themselves.”
“You are different from my mother. She says that it is the one thing that parents must decide for their children; she—”
The kitchen door opened and they both turned towards it.
Annie Moses, her red cheeks shining, her dark hair and navy mackintosh black with rain, bustled into the light and warmth. She blinked at them and blew out her cheeks. Mrs Blount stood up.
“Oh it’s you mum,” said Annie. “Eeh! what a night, and all that way for nowt, not so much as a tizzy in a beggar’s ’at, for ’e turned me up at t’end of it.”
“Have you seen Miss Victoria, Annie?”
“Why naw Mrs Bloont, not sin’ she passed us in t’car when I was waiting to meet him off t’Scarboro’ bus. In’t she coom back yet?”
“You saw her? In the car?” Mrs Blount stumbled forwards. “Which way were they going? When was it?”
“This way mum, towards t’farm, ’bout five or ten past seven. Looked as though they was in a tearin’ hurry too. Miss Victoria waäved at us as they passed.”
“But that’s over an hour ago!” Mrs Blount’s voice soughed under the low ceiling. “And she waved at you, she waved! (Oh my brave little darling. Where was he taking her?)”
Annie took off her mackintosh slowly and hung it on the back of the kitchen door. She shook her wet hair with deliberate movements and circled the kitchen-table to the range.
“Did she look happy?” asked John suddenly. “Did she wave as though she was happy?”
“Happy? I never thought. She joost waäved to us, that wer all.” She closed her eyes. “Coom to think of it Miss Victoria did look kind of freeted—white-like, as I said. ‘’Ees going too faist for Miss Victoria,’ I thought to myself, and then I thought it weren’t that at all but ’er broken promise about helping me mak t’supper! But bless ’er, she needn’t have fretted, I’d finished t’salad and spuds even before you and t’master coom in at quarter to six.”
“Who else was with her?” asked Mrs Blount.
“Only t’ driver; saw’m quite sharp, I did, under the light by t’bus stop. Never see him before. There weren’t no one in t’back of car, it was black empty. But what’s
oop Master John?”
She gazed at him placidly a moment and then taking a large black comb from her handbag started to rake through her wet hair.
“We think Victoria’s been kidnapped by that man she met this morning. He said he’d give her a lift into the village to post a letter but they’ve never come back and now it’s over an hour and a half since they left.”
Annie put her comb on the mantelpiece and went over to the kitchen door. She shook her mackintosh loudly like a carpet and then put it on.
“Then it’s Police we want,” she said, looking at the clock. “I’ve got me bike in t’stable and I’ll go and get Sergeant Sanders before that wastes any more time.”
“No Annie,” said Mrs Blount, “it’s very good of you, but you needn’t trouble; Mr Harkess has gone into the village already and he’ll be back any minute, so I think we’d better wait for him.”
“Is he fetchin’ Police?” asked Annie squarely by the door.
“No. Well yes—at least I’m sure he will when he realises—”
“He’s not,” said John.
“Reet!” said Annie, “Well if he ain’t, then I am. I know them tourists in their motor-cars. He weren’t up to no good the way he went rummagin’ through Corby and Miss Victoria as white as—”
She broke off at the sound of George Harkess’s car passing the kitchen door on its way to the stables; and without looking at one another or making the smallest movement, they waited in the silence which succeeded his passing. Before the fire crouching behind its black bars, the cat sat safely in its warm world the tip of its tongue protruding beneath its nose. In the hall the clock struck and their eyes went up to the white face over the kitchen dresser: the minute hand stood at twenty-five minutes to eight.
“Grandfaither’s slow,” said Annie flatly and Mrs Blount looked at her wrist-watch. Behind them the door opened and George Harkess came storming in and went straight over to Mrs Blount. His large cheeks were mottled by the cold and he rubbed his hands with unnecessary vigour. They knew at once that he had accomplished nothing.
“The Police’ll be up here in a few minutes, Enid,” he said. “They were seen all right at the Post Office. Victoria posted the letter whilst the fellow turned round the car by the Church—told Mrs Lawler that she was getting a lift back to Nettlebed and seemed perfectly happy, and—” he blew out his cheeks, “there’s nothing more to tell you.”
In the Time of Greenbloom Page 17