“Poor Grade.” Georgie slid an arm round her neck. “What a time you had. I’ll try to make up for it.”
She leaned against him, and rubbed his cheek with her hair.
“It’s nice here,” she said. “There’s lots wants doing, though.”
Georgie fought to keep off the feeling of chill.
“Well: we’ve lots of time to do it, and make everything nice for you.”
“Yes,” she said. “I like it here.”
And with that he had to be satisfied. It was not in her to feel much, he told himself.
He was in for a surprise. When they were in bed, and the light out, she turned to him with animal violence.
“Love me, love me,” she whispered, and bit his neck.
Stunned, realizing with a shock that his one display of manhood had made her desire another, Georgie did his best, but he could in no way match her passion; and so, as he sadly understood later, an episode that might have brought them closer together pushed them farther apart, and inflicted on Grace a disappointment she would not forgive.
Grace not only made money at a prodigious rate, she saved it. She went to the bank each day. The bulk of their trade was done in the late afternoon and evening, a circumstance which caused her much worry. She would not leave the money in the till, for fear of burglars, but slept with it in a special hollow under the mattress. Georgie pointed out to her that, if burglars came and found the till empty, they would be the more likely to ransack the house, and attack him and Grace in the process. Not until a small shopkeeper on the other side of the town was so attacked, being first hit over the head, then gagged and bound, did Grace very reluctantly compromise. Even then she would never leave more than twenty shillings in the till, checking the amount to a penny, so that there was no question of Georgie helping himself to any of it, even if he got the chance.
Her zeal for making money did not however make her take her eye off Georgie. As time went on, her strange passion realized itself in isolating him from his friends. Her possessive energies, disappointed in their natural field, became a jealousy which gnawed at anything that linked him to the world outside the house. He was cut off now from nearly all Ms favourite customers; and their surreptitious greetings, at moments when she was out of hearing, hurt his pride. He was hurt top by their sympathy, even though it warmed his heart, for he felt that they looked down on him. A fragment of conversation which he overheard left no doubt that some of the women, at any rate, despised him for his submission to Grace; but their remedy was outside his nature.
“One o’ these days ‘e’ll take a hammer to ‘er. ‘E’d a done it already if ‘e’d been a man.”
“A strap’d do just as well.”
“That’d ‘ave to be reg’lar, then.”
But Georgie shivered at the thought of a strap. For a man to hit a woman was still inconceivable to him.
So Grace pursued her course unchecked. She especially resented the fortnightly visits of Sergeant Meadows, because they seemed to do Georgie so much good. After the Sergeant had gone, he would go about the shop with squared shoulders and a brighter eye. He would even whistle. Once or twice, when Grace snapped at him, he remained composed and even answered back.
She concentrated therefore on the Sergeant as her natural enemy. Next time he came, she interrupted the short chat which always followed his purchase by peremptorily sending Georgie on some unnecessary errand. Georgie smiled, said, “Excuse me a minute, Sergeant,” and went off. The Sergeant, who had long ago taken her measure, waited.
Grace eyed him vindictively.
“Is there anything else?”
“Nothing, ma’am, thank you.”
“Then…?”
For a couple of seconds the two glances were locked: then Grace’s fell. She could not meet the steady hostility of those hard grey eyes. Furious in her defeat, she banged about at the back of the shop: and Georgie had to listen to a raging diatribe once the shutters were up.
Next time, she insisted on serving the Sergeant herself. Unperturbed, he sat on the one chair in the shop, telling her he had something to say to her husband. With a retort seething like bile at the back of her throat, Grace had to leave him and serve two woman customers. He lit his pipe, and sat puffing.
As soon as the customers were satisfied, Grace came back to him.
“I’d have you to know this isn’t a public house.” Her voice cracked. “Take that filthy pipe outside.”
The two women stopped in the doorway, pleasantly appalled.
“Certainly, ma’am.” The Sergeant rose. “You won’t be troubled again.”
He gave her a formal bow, and stalked out, the two women shrinking back against the counter to let him pass. Georgie’s ears were battered with abuse when he returned, for Grace, knowing she had gone too far, tried to drown her misgivings in attack. A day later Georgie received a stiff, injured letter explaining why the Sergeant must take his custom elsewhere. The good man’s hurt feelings smouldered in every stilted phrase. Georgie winced in anguish, not least at the implied rebuke to himself. Turning the sheet over, he found an extra line.
P.S. I am sorry. J.M.
Remonstrance to Grace would be useless, he knew. Should he seek the Sergeant out, and explain? What could he say?
“I’m sorry, but my wife runs everything now.” How could one say that, to a man like Sergeant Meadows? What sort of a look would he get in return? Georgie sighed, and with heavy heart went on arranging tins of biscuits on one of the new shelves.
But the last and fiercest battle was fought over Eddie. Georgie had many times asked him to a meal, but Eddie made excuses. Since she had barely met him, Grace could not refuse to have him in the house. She merely looked disparagingly each time Georgie mentioned his name, and presently went further.
“That immoral man. I can’t see why you want to bring him here.”
Georgie stared at her. “What, dear?”
“He isn’t fit to ask into any decent house. Everyone knows he lives with that Exworthy woman.”
An uneasy feeling stirred in Georgie’s breast, but he answered her, warmly.
“What are you talking about? I’ve known Uncle Eddie all my life, and my aunt was his friend too. Do you think she wouldn’t have known, if such a thing had been true?”
Grace lowered her head. He noted with sudden distaste that her eyes were too close together.
“I’m only telling you what people say.”
“People say a good deal. They say things about us, I expect.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that.”
“Nothing in particular. I——”
“Well then, why say it?”
“I only mean that people will talk, whatever you do.”
“That’s right. Try and put it on to me. Go on.”
“My dear Grace. I’m doing nothing of the kind. I only——”
“You and your common friends.”
And she worked herself up into one of the rages which were increasingly her refuge from criticism or challenge.
A day came, however, when the issue could no longer be dodged. The date was fixed, and Eddie was bidden to supper. Both parties treated the occasion as important Eddie arrived, newly shaved, wearing a neat blue suit and a stiff collar. Both were too large for him, and gave Georgie a measure of the degree to which he had fallen away. With his long skinny neck soaring from the severe oval of the collar, and nowhere touching it, he had the look of an ostrich sticking its head out of a manhole.
The evening gave Georgie a series of surprises. Dreading a head-on collision, he found each opponent endeavouring to conciliate the other. Eddie was polite to the point of effusiveness, judged by his standards; and Grace, who began at her most genteel, with an accent so affected it made Georgie shudder, was so mollified by her guest’s correctness that she relaxed into a sort of ghastly skittish-ness. Possibly because Eddie was unmarried, she became fulsomely conjugal, stopping behind Georgie’s chair to put a thin arm about his neck, and mak
ing coy but unmistakable allusions to the side of their marriage to which the Reverend Sylvester Tuckett, in his address, had clamped an extra horror for Georgie by references to “nuptial tenderness.”
Eddie received these manifestations in silence. Shamed to the soul, Georgie dared not look at him. He could all too accurately guess at the sort of comment Uncle Eddie must be making in his mind; and he was horrified, not only at the want of delicacy revealed by Grace’s remarks, but by their hypocrisy. To allude before a stranger to the domain in which their marriage was most a failure, and misrepresent it; to make him, Georgie, sound as if he pursued insatiably what he shunned and blamed himself for shunning; it was a double blow, and it left him sick and breathless. A more mature man might have felt sympathy for Grace, as she tried pitiably to compensate herself for the failure at the centre of her marriage, and proclaim that she was irresistibly attractive. Georgie felt only disgust.
Yet Eddie did not seem to be repelled. He continued to listen courteously, and to eat his food. Encouraged, Grace chattered on: and when presently, in a lull, he drily complimented her on the development of the business, Grace came as near to beaming on him as her features would allow. Whether in relief at her success, or because she underestimated its powers, she took rather too much of the Australian burgundy which accompanied the tinned salmon and the Cornish pasty, with the result that she talked a great deal, satirizing the neighbours and customers and laughing rather wildly at her own remarks, until a belch pulled her up short.
Georgie sat aghast. How would she react to an explosion of nature for which she had often shrilly abused him?
Grace looked from one to the other, put two fingers to her lips, said “Pardon me” very gravely, and giggled.
She gave herself several more occasions to giggle during the next quarter of an hour, then showed a tendency to doze. After an expressive interchange of glances with Georgie, Eddie rose to his feet.
“Well, good night, Mrs. Bagshawe. And thank you very much for your hospitality.”
Grace came back from a vague smiling dream.
“Must you go?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. I got to be up early. Good night.”
“Goo’ni’.”
They left her staring at the wall, her face loose and slack, a glitter of saliva on her chin. Silently Georgie helped Eddie on with his coat.
“Well. Good night, Uncle Eddie.”
Eddie grasped his hand with such strength that he winced.
“Night, Georgie, pal of me ‘eart.”
Eddie never came to the house again. Next morning Grace, her stomach soured by the wine and her head aching, declared him to have been odious. She accused him of sneering at her, looking down his nose—“and God knows it’s long enough”—being rude, and not knowing how to behave.
Georgie should have known better, but this reversal of the truth was too much for him.
“I like that! If anyone behaved badly, it was you.”
“Oh.” She sat still. Her eyes glittered like a snake’s. “And how was that, pray?”
“You drank too much wine, and belched and hiccuped at us.”
He ducked—only just in time—as a plate skimmed past his ear. Grace flew into a full-sized fit of hysterics. The words seemed to have let loose a demon within her. Her violence and her screaming terrified Georgie. Her face went dark, the colour of milk chocolate: her features were convulsed with hatred and rage. Minutes passed before she was quiet, and then it was from exhaustion rather than from anything Georgie could say or do.
Eddie, for his part, affirmed that nothing should make him meet her again. He shuddered and turned his eyes upwards.
“Georgie boy. You and I are old pals, and so I’ll speak to you as no man should speak to another about the woman he’s married.” He gulped and swallowed. “What I went through for your sake, not to give that bloodsucking bitch a clip on the earhole——”
“Uncle Eddie!”
“Sorry, boy, I told you it was no thing to say to a man about his wife, but there it is, might so well say it as think it. Georgie, pal of me ‘eart, I’ve spoken amiss, and I know it, but it’s true, and I can’t say otherwise. Don’t ask me to your house again as long as that woman is in it. And don’t let her be a cause of strife betwixt us.”
“No one in the world could be that, Uncle Eddie. Ever.”
“She’ll try. I’ll lay she’s tried already. No need to deny it, boy. You can save your breath.”
There was a further consequence of that ill-starred evening, which surprised Georgie no less than the others. The wine had made Grace feel so ill that he took for granted she would be put off. On the contrary, she began to develop a taste for it, particularly when Georgie was away. Three or four times in the next few weeks he returned from errands, or from work in the shed, to find her quietly tipsy. He knew better than to remonstrate; and, as the indulgence made her placid, almost amiable, he came to welcome it.
Extra care was needed next morning, to avoid annoying her, especially as on the first few occasions she was angrily on the look-out for some sign of disapproval. Getting none, she relaxed, and soon was no more disagreeable than on other mornings. On these mornings Georgie brewed her tea a little stronger than usual, popped it down on the bed, and kept out of her way until it had done its work.
By degrees, whether for this reason or because she felt she had reduced him to a proper position of servitude, Grace eased up, and Georgie’s day to day existence became a little more tolerable. Now that she had cut the thread that bound him to his customers, or thought she had, she changed her policy, and took to doing less in the shop. It may have caused her some slight degree of conflict on Georgie’s account, but there was a reason for it. Grace had fatter fish to fry. She went off to interview big wholesalers, and to meet travellers from the larger, grander firms who did not come to the shop. Georgie had begun to do a little of this, but she took it right out of his hands, and added to it.
After a year of this Georgie knew very little of what she was doing. He gave up trying to find out. In fact, he thought to himself, as he toiled away, what on earth do men get married for? And what was all this blather about love? There was no end of it, in the novelettes for girls which Grace had added to Dick Turpin and Co. (She had wanted to get rid of that side of the business, but Georgie pleaded hard for it, and the figures over a month convinced her.) Georgie lacked the arrogance to decide that this love stuff was all poppy-cock. He sighed, concluded that he had neither the physique nor the inclination for married life, and wondered how he had managed to land himself in such a mess. Oh well: there had been one brief interval of happiness, between the inheritance of the shop and his wedding.
Grace kept all the books, including the bank book. One morning, called suddenly into the shop to supply a lady with some specific not fit for a gentleman’s ear, she left the bank book on the living room table. Georgie took a quick look, and saw there was a deposit, in Grace’s name, of £375 12s. 6d.
This was a shock, even to Georgie. Somehow he managed to conceal from her the fact that he had seen the book. Indeed, he was almost scared by the ease with which he found he could dissimulate. He took care to be out of the room by the time Grace came back from the shop. When he returned, there was no sign of the bank book. Six months earlier, Georgie would have directed a guileless glance towards it, and given himself away. Now he muttered in a preoccupied fashion, and, as soon as he saw that he had attracted Grace’s attention, asked her a question to which he knew the answer.
“Where are the brass-headed screws, dear? The long ones?”
“In their proper place, M drawer. Why, you put them there yourself, last Friday.”
“To be sure. Thank you, dear. I’d quite forgotten.”
“You’d forget your head, if it weren’t stuck on. Not much loss, either.”
Georgie shook the maligned member from side to side, with a smile at this witticism, and went his way in a dim glow of contentment. That was good. She couldn’t fin
d out everything. It was an especial comfort to know this, for he had embarked on keeping one precarious, important secret from her already.
It concerned the mantelpiece. One early closing day, a week or so before, Grace had gone off on some ambitious business errand of which she confided nothing to her spouse but the name of the firm concerned. Left on his own, with instructions to do some small repairs and carpentry jobs, Georgie had noticed a crack in the plaster of the wall, about a third of the way down the right-hand side of the mantelpiece. He tested it with a fingernail, and found that a section of plaster, shaped like a small stalactite, had worked loose. He prised up one end with his penknife until he was able to catch it between finger and thumb, and, after a little delicate wiggling, draw the piece away.
“I’ll soon put that back again,” Georgie told himself. “That’ll be easy.”
It was a longstanding habit to talk to himself out loud, but he didn’t dare exercise it unguardedly. Grace disliked it, saying it was a sign of madness. “Normal people don’t,” she told him. It was a regular phrase of hers.
Starting to potter off for the mixture he was going to make in order to bed the stalactite of plaster back in its place, Georgie gave a casual glance at the section of mantelpiece which was now revealed to a depth of an inch or more. Then he looked closer. There was a faint rectangular marking on the grain of the wood. Next moment he was on his knees, running his fingernail along the marking. There was—not a doubt of it—a piece inlaid, a slot or something like it.
How was he to get at it, without making a mess of the remaining plaster? Georgie tested the plaster, and found that it was loose and cracked, like the piece that had come away in his hand. Ten minutes’ careful work with the blade of his penknife worked it out, piece by piece, enough to uncover the whole of the rectangular inlay, a piece like the lid of one of the child’s pencil cases on sale in the shop window. Sergeant Meadows’s teaching had come in useful.
Georgie laid the loose pieces of plaster carefully in order on a piece of paper, so that he could replace them. He then made another, highly suggestive discovery. The plaster which he had removed was of a different texture and quality from that above and below it. The inference was clear, it was of a later date, and was meant to be easily removed, so that whoever put it there could get at the slot, or inlay, or whatever it was.
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