“What on earth’s wrong with you? Lost your voice?”
Somehow he forced his muscles to work.
“This——? What’s happened?”
“Oh, that old mantelpiece.” She was looking at her paper again. “Yes, well, not much of an ornament, was it? I’ve been meaning to get rid of it this long time. Then a dealer came in and actually offered to buy it. Said it was an antique, or something. He’s welcome. It looks a bit untidy now, but I’m getting a proper one put in on Friday.”
Hide it, hide it, hide it! Georgie heard a voice saying the words in his ear. He sat for several minutes, winded by the blow, slowly collecting his wits. There were things he had to know.
As soon as he could trust himself to speak, he reopened the subject.
“Who on earth bought it?”
“Bought what?”
“Why, the mantelpiece.”
Grace hesitated, then said: “Tylors’. Why?”
“I was wondering, with a thing as old as that, whether it mightn’t have been better to go to someone in the city.”
“Oh, you were, were you?”
“Yes, I was.”
“A fat lot you know about it.”
Georgie’s voice suddenly refused his control. It rose to a choking shout.
“I know one thing about it, anyway. That mantelpiece belonged to my aunt. She left it to me. Me, do you hear? You had no right to sell it without my leave.”
The scene that followed was short and hideous. Grace’s face went plum colour, almost violet. She screamed and howled. Where before he would have flinched from her fury, Creorgie faced it, unshaken and cold. He saw it now for what it was, the voice of a bad conscience. Grace knew she had done wrong, and, as she could never bear any form of criticism, least of all from him, she screamed herself hoarse, and was so convulsed he thought, quite dispassionately, that she would have a seizure.
He did not soften. As soon as she stopped screaming, he attacked again.
“I suppose that’s where my Waterford glass decanter has gone, is it? You stole that too.”
She glared, fighting for breath.
“What good was it to you? You never used it.”
“It was mine.”
“You promised to give me all your worldly goods. When we were married,” she told him sullenly.
Lying awake that night, implacable towards her, his soul cold with hate, Georgie for the first time let his thoughts intend ill to Grace. She lay beside him, snoring and oblivious. On going to bed she had swallowed a couple of her sleeping tablets, and begun snoring inside five minutes. But there was no sleep for Georgie. The voice that had spoken in his ear when he first made the discovery spoke again, and what it said was fantastic. It went further; it called in the help of his eyes. Not content with whispering the words in his ear, it wrote them up on posters, on hoardings, on the first page of every book his mind opened in its efforts to escape the glaring, terrible iteration.
The words formed three legends, one turning into another, then both combined. They came sometimes without preamble, sometimes indirectly, as he screwed his eyes tight shut against their insistence. Before Georgie’s aching vision would deploy a landscape as though he were looking from the window of a train. No sooner would he accept it with relief than in the fields would appear enormous hoardings. The first two or three would be blank. Then would spring; up in red letters:
M IS FOR MANTELPIECE
Two or three hoardings would repeat this legend, until it turned sharply into the next:
M IS FOR MURDER
And then, shaken into sound, like hideous laughter,
MM. MANTELPIECE MURDER
MM. MANTELPIECE MURDER
Georgie was horrified, not so much by the realization that the thought of murder had come into his heart as by the way in which a waking nightmare now proclaimed it. The thought was written up independently of him. He seemed to have nothing to do with it. Was this the way one went mad? Was he mad? No longer in control of his own mind? Vision, he saw, had two sides to it. The faculty which had showed him his identity with Ruth was not the blessed gift it had seemed to be, but a neutral doorway, ready to let in evil as well as good.
For hours he lay, weary, bludgeoned, wide awake, with the relentless sequence repeating itself endlessly before him:
MM. MANTELPIECE MURDER
MM. MANTELPIECE MURDER
There is however a long, long distance between wishing a person dead and actually plotting to kill him, and an even longer one between planning the blow and striking it. In any case, Georgie had more immediate things to think about. He desperately needed to know whether Grace had found the money or whether it was still in the mantelpiece. The tea money, Georgie’s money, had been in a stout manilla envelope, the guineas in their original wrapping. There was no real reason why, in removing the mantelpiece, Tylors’ men should have discovered the cache. Or was there? Georgie remembered how he had first spotted it. There was a risk, a real risk. What could have happened? Would Grace have been in the room? If the men found the hiding place, would they tell her? Or would they whisper, wink at one another, hide the packages, and share the spoils?
In any event what could he do? The urgency of this problem by degrees gave it precedence over the sinister spelling lesson on the posters, and, long after dawn, before he fell into an exhausted sleep, Georgie had decided on a plan.
It was a bold plan: for Georgie, it was astonishingly bold. He was going to walk into Tylors’ yard, ask to see the manager, and explain that he had only that morning found a note left by his dead aunt saying that two packages, his property, had been stored in a panel of the mantelpiece. Would the manager come with him and watch while he tested the truth of this message? Or get a carpenter to test it for him?
It was late afternoon before Georgie got his chance. As he walked into the yard and asked for the manager, he was quite calm. A sort of desperate courage held him. It was like being immersed up to the throat in cold water.
A workman took him to the manager’s office. Georgie began his tale. The manager interrupted.
“Sold, old boy. Gone. Tell you the truth, we had an order for it before we bought. Customer who collects period stuff. Spent all morning nailing the thing up in a crate. It went by the two o’clock train. Cigarette? No? Mind if I do?”
The manager blew out a cloud of smoke, and beamed on the stricken Georgie.
“Had a hell of a time with it. Customer insisted on it going exactly as it was. When the chaps cut away the plaster yesterday, they found it all in one piece. Hell of a job. Had to go away, fetch a third man, and bring a van instead of a barrow. They’d reckoned on carting it in three pieces, see?”
Georgie forced a smile. Defeat sat on his heart, cold and solid as a toad.
“Yes, well, thanks so much, Mr Williams.”
“Nothing wrong, I hope?”
“Oh no. Just some sort of message my aunt left, some rigmarole about a movable panel. All nonsense, I expect. She was a fanciful old party. I thought, if the thing was still here, it was just worth a look to make sure.”
“Yes, well, sorry, old boy. Nothing we can do. Might give you the customer’s name. But they don’t like it, you know, not as a rule.”
“Oh, good heavens, no. It’s not worth that amount of trouble.”
Georgie marvelled at the false voice which seemed able to issue from him without any trouble, now, and went his dazed defrauded way. He found himself apologizing mentally to his Aunt Butters for traducing her, and taking her name in vain.
Half-way home, he stopped still. He saw what could have happened. After chipping the plaster away and exposing the mantelpiece, the men had gone off, as the manager said, leaving the job for maybe an hour or more. Grace, if they had told her the reason, might take no notice and carry on in the shop. If on the other hand the men went off without any explanation, or made their departure chime with the lunch hour, when she went into the living room she might well be surprised to find the mantelpiec
e in its denuded state, and so might have inspected it and found the panel.
No, he told himself, that’s most unlikely. You know how short-sighted she is. Only if her head was close to the place, and she had her glasses on, would she be at all likely to see the slight though definite markings on the woodwork.
No sooner had this thought come than another threw it out. Grace hated a mess. If the men had left a mess—and how could they chip away all that plaster without there being a lot on the floor?—the odds were that Grace would clear it up. Even though the men were coming back, and would be sure to make more, Georgie could see her fussing and clicking her tongue and going down on her knees with dustpan and brush.
“If that’s what happened,” he muttered to himself, “I’m done for.”
And the voice that seemed to have moved in and taken charge of him intoned, with accents like the blades of knives,
… Yes. That’s what she did, the bitch. That’s what she did.
There was a way of finding out if Grace had got the money. Not an easy way, but a sure one. To look at her bank book.
It took Georgie five days to compass this; five days, and a deal of stratagem and manoeuvre and false starts which it would be pointless to relate. He managed it at last, while Grace was busy nagging at the men who were putting in the new, hideous, mock marble mantelpiece she had ordered; and was in doubt no longer.
On the day of the sale, she had paid in a cheque for £57 10s., from Tylors’. This, he realized in dull amazement, must be the price of the mantelpiece. On the same day, she had paid in thirty pounds in notes: two days later, forty-five pounds in notes; the following day, another thirty, plus a cheque for £153 from one of her shadier wholesalers, and another for £29 odd, from a firm of jewellers. All these were paid direct into her deposit account, and were distinct from the daily shop payments.
Coldly, with a singing in his ears, Georgie added up the notes and the big cheque. As he knew before he began, the total was the same as his tea money: £258. He saw, with icy clearness, what she had done. Afraid to pay in all the notes at once, lest she be suspected of a black market deal, she had made smaller deposits, of a size she felt she could explain if necessary, and changed the rest for a cheque from a firm with which she had regular dealings.
But the real clincher, the final, irrefutable piece of evidence, was the £29 cheque from the jeweller. She had got that sum for the George III guineas.
That was it, then. Grace had found the panel. Grace had stolen his money. Georgie stood quite still. His mind was calm and steady. That moment, that discovery decided him.
Georgie did not tell Ruth of his plans; at least, not the part of them that concerned Grace. For some days they remained inchoate. He now had no money at all. This fact gave a sharp focus to his intention, if not to the precise way to realize it. The first thing was to discover whether Ruth would go away with him.
One still evening, when he was supposed to be at an auction of bankrupt stock, he took Ruth to the old fort where Eddie used to bring him when he was little. His choice of it was almost unconscious, a wish maybe to join the promise of a new life to what was best in the old. The air was still: twilight lingered in the sky, lending a gentleness to the bare wind-bent trees.
He put the question to her starkly and without artifice. He confessed to her about the tea, the money in the mantelpiece, his loss. To his astonishment, she made little of the deal with Bernstein’s envoy.
“It was your tea, and you had every right to sell it. No one would have been better off if you’d left it sitting there. Do you mean to say you’ve been worrying all this time? Why didn’t you tell me before, you silly creature?”
She couldn’t see why he hadn’t tackled Grace about her theft of the money. She pursed up her lips. Faced with opposition of any kind, she had a way of tightening them until they all but disappeared.
“I’d have had it out with her,” she declared grimly.
“Even though you’d deceived her? Hidden it so she wouldn’t know?”
“That’s what she’s been doing to you, with her bank account. Exactly that. And with your money.”
Georgie stared at her admiringly, this small passionate vibrating creature, and shook his head. If he’d been anything like Ruth, the situation would never have arisen. It was no use speculating what one person would do to clear up another’s difficulty.
“You could have the law on her,” Ruth went on.
Georgie shook his head again, this time for a different motive. He had decided to take the law into his own hands.
“That would do no good, darling. What we need is a way to get at some of the money. Not only of that money, but of all she’s put away.”
“And how do you propose to do that, if I may ask?”
“There may be a way,” he told her gently. “But before I try, I must know if it’s going to be worth while.”
Ruth looked up at him. Georgie cleared his throat. Now that he had come to them, the words stuck.
“Will you come away with me, Ruth?”
Her eyes grew large and dark. Still she did not speak. He leaned forward, and took her hand between both of his.
“Ruth darling, I honour you more than anyone in the whole world. I love you. I belong to you. If I can’t have you with me, and keep you, my life’s no good to me. I’d—I’d rather be dead.”
She shook her head a little, and whispered “No. No.”
“Yes,” he cried. “Yes. It’s not just words. I mean it.”
She was staring at him now with vague, speculative eyes, as if she had learned something entirely new about him. Then she looked past him, over his shoulder.
“I promised,” she said to herself, “I promised I would never go anywhere with a man until I was married to him.”
Georgie heard her with despair. For some reason the words, spoken in a soft, wondering voice, hit him like a cold fist, knocking his hope flat. His mouth twitched uncontrollably; and his voice, when after a pause it came back to him, was hoarse and strange.
“Marriages are made in heaven,” he jerked out bitterly. She looked at him in a flash of anger.
“Yours wasn’t.”
He shrugged. “Where God hath joined…”
“That’s just it,” she said, frowning. “God didn’t join you and Grace. She did.”
Georgie stared, licking his dry lips. She made a gesture of exasperation.
“Oh, don’t look so stupid! What had God to do with her walking in and taking advantage of you and grabbing you so that she could have the shop and be safe? You don’t belong to her. You never have.”
“I didn’t want her, I never wanted to be married to her, Ruth, I promise you. I hated it. I hated it.” He was gabbling helplessly now. “I didn’t know what loving anyone meant. It was all a horrible mistake. As soon as I was with her, I saw it was. And now that I love you, now that I do know…”
“Hush.” She held his head against her breast. “I must think,” she muttered. “I must think.”
He looked up, presently. “I won’t stay with her. I can’t.”
They talked for a long time. Ruth showed a strength, a hardness even, which astonished him, yet gave him comfort. He did not see that she was hiding from him her own indecision, her own struggle. His resolve to leave Grace she read as a compulsive, almost hysterical move on the part of a gentle and easy-going man goaded past bearing. All her protective instinct, all her impassioned love for Georgie made her long to fling her arms around him and never let go: but the longing had to fight with powers almost as strong, a fierce conscience, a closed religious upbringing, and a promise. These could have withstood a long siege and eloquent persuasions. What weakened them was Georgie’s instant acceptance of their authority, his blank face of despair when she told him of the promise she had made.
This collapse of his, stronger than any prayer, threw the girl into an extraordinary turmoil of feeling. Like many of her kind, whatever their upbringing, Ruth was chaste because she was pass
ionate. Her passion guarded itself instinctively against misuse, so that it be lavished once and for all upon the man who should arouse it. Given time, she would know, through the sovereignty and the sanity of her instinct, what was right for her; and, once the choice was made, she would abide by it. But she had had no time. Georgie was her man: she knew that: but whether to throw over all she had been taught, how to be sure that this was not just the very temptation with which the devil bated his trap…. Didn’t all girls believe that they had found their man? Didn’t each think she was the one exception to the rule?
A hard struggle for a girl always, it was even harder then, in those first years of the century, when the rules of society were strict and its decisions merciless. Ruth could have raged against Georgie for thrusting this dilemma on her. So far, with no need for action, they had been able to drift along, with no more than misgiving to offset the joy of companionship. Now he was saying they must do something. She considered him again with those speculative eyes. Why, now, so suddenly? Oh yes. His money. The mantelpiece. Grace had robbed him. Yet why should that make him decide to leave her? She had been robbing him all the time.
With an effort, she shut her mind to whys and wherefores, and tried to concentrate on the immediate issue. As if reading her mind, Georgie put a question.
“If I divorced Grace, would you marry me?”
She took time to answer.
“I don’t believe in divorce. But, in a case like this, where you should never have got married, it’s—it’s different.”
“You would, then?”
She nodded. “Only you can’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve no grounds to divorce her.”
Georgie’s lower lip stuck out. “She’ll have grounds to divorce me.”
Ruth felt panic leap in her breast. The thought of actually being involved in a divorce, her name dragged out in court, and all the hideous panoply of shame, so stifled her that for some seconds she could not speak. Then, holding on with her common sense, as if she was clinging to a ledge with her fingertips, she managed a wan smile.
“She’ll never do it, Georgie.”
Deliverance Page 19