A shame, really, after all this, that she couldn’t manage to finish the roll! After only a few bites, all her ravenous hunger was gone, and she felt quite bloated. She was just about to slip the remainder of the roll into her handbag, to eat later on—for tomorrow’s breakfast, perhaps—when a tray lurched into her field of vision. It swayed for a few seconds in front of her eyes, and then came to rest on the table. The owner of the tray, a middle-aged man with greying hair, settled himself comfortably in the seat opposite Milly, reached first for salt and then for vinegar, and then, having besprinkled his sausage and chips liberally with both, he proceeded to unfold an evening paper, prop it against the vinegar bottle, and thereafter seemed to bury himself in it, ladling forkfuls of chips into his mouth like an automaton.
At first, all that the little scene meant to Milly was that she could now, perhaps, slip the rest of the roll into her handbag unobserved. Surreptitiously, she pulled the handbag into her lap, and opened it in readiness behind the screen of the table: then, just before snatching at the roll, she gave a quick final glance across the table to make sure that her companion was still thoroughly engrossed in his paper.
He was. Why, then, did Milly not seize her chance, grab the piece of roll, and snap her handbag shut on it? Instead, she just sat, staring.
… FOUND IN FLAT was all she could see of the headline, but it was enough: enough to freeze her hovering hand; to drive all thought of food from her shocked consciousness. Vainly she screwed herself this way and that, trying to see the hidden portion of the page: vainly she tried to assure herself that it was too early … too soon … they couldn’t have discovered anything yet.
They could, though. It wasn’t too early at all. This was a London paper. Of course the news could be in it—this was just exactly the length of time you would expect the thing to take, allowing for the snail-like reactions of the inhabitants of that haunted street. Or was it? How long would Mrs Roach, on the floor above, have sat listening inertly to the strange sounds in the basement? How long would it be before her dulled senses became aware that something was amiss? And even after she was aware, how long would it have been before she dragged her bulk out of the ancient fusty chair in which she spent her days, and took herself, slip-slop in her downtrodden slippers, curlers twisted this way and that in her sparse hair, out of the front door and down the gusty street to the telephone box at the corner? For there was no telephone in the house—a deficiency which Gilbert had actually boasted of to Milly, in his gentle old voice, as if it was some rare and expensive luxury. “It’s the only way to get any peace, these days,” he’d said, that day when he took her to his home for the first time: and it was only afterwards, and gradually, that Milly had become aware of what it was that Gilbert meant by “peace”.
How long had it taken her to understand? How long was it before she began to guess what it was that she had let herself in for by marrying Gilbert?
Marrying him had seemed, at the time, the answer to all her problems: and so, in a way, it was, for at that time all her problems had been simply the variegated facets of the same problem: the problem of how to “show” Julian! Show him that “a woman in her forties” is not finished and done for: show him that she, the discarded wife, could still attract, still find herself another man. Show him that what he had thrown away like an outworn glove was a treasure for which other men came begging. Show him, in fact, that she didn’t care that for him and Cora, and for the divorce, and for all the humiliating publicity! Show him that she could still bounce up again, unquenched and unquenchable, ready to start life all over again. And to show him, above all, just what he could do with his alimony!
“I am returning your cheque,” she had written—and the composing of this letter had given her, perhaps, the most exquisite ten minutes of her whole life. It seemed, looking back, that it was just for this ten minutes that she had undertaken the whole thing: had bartered, knowingly, the whole of her future life, with no doubt at all that a lifetime of frustration and boredom was a small price to pay for ten minutes of triumph so perfect and so complete. “I am returning your cheque,” she wrote, “as I no longer have any need of—or indeed any right to—further support from you. You will be pleased to hear that I am getting married next week, and am happier than I have ever been in my life. Gilbert is a widower, just sixty, tall and most distinguished-looking, and has a pleasant home of his own in South London….”
She hadn’t known, of course, at the time of writing, how much of all this was lies: though she had known that some of it was, and she hadn’t cared. She knew, for example, that Gilbert wasn’t sixty, but a good many years older: his stiff gait, his feathering of snow-white hair, and above all his hands, tortoise-slow and spotted with old age—all this had made it quite clear, from the very beginning, that he was deceiving her about his age. But so what? All she had felt at the time was a mild gratitude towards him for taking upon himself the burden of telling the lies, instead of leaving it to her. For, if he had not done it for her, she would, of course, have subtracted the decade herself in boasting about her suitor to Julian.
What she hadn’t known, at that time, was what the “pleasant house in South London” was actually like. But even if she had known—even if she could have seen with her own eyes the boarded-up windows, the peeling, ancient paint, and could have heard the slip-slop of Mrs Roach’s slippers on the stairs—even then, it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. Because at that time she simply didn’t mind what the rest of her life was going to be like, any more than she minded what Gilbert was like. All that mattered was that Julian should think she had made a catch and was living happily ever after. Real life seemed a trivial thing compared with impressing Julian.
And anyway, what the hell? How could life with this harmless old man possibly be worse than hanging on in the awful, well-appointed Kensington flat, pitied by the neighbours, avoided by her and Julian’s former friends? Gilbert at least seemed to value her, in his mumbling, fumbling way. He was courteous and deferential to the point of incomprehensibility, and sometimes paid her stiff, complicated compliments, which she couldn’t but find pleasing, starved as she had been of any words of approval during recent years.
Besides, she supposed, vaguely, that she would grow fond of him as time went on. He seemed to have led a miserable life—nagged by his first wife into a nervous breakdown, swindled out of his proper pension by the now defunct Indian Civil Service: and Milly rather fancied herself in the rôle of little ray of sunshine to brighten his declining years. And if, in the process of brightening someone’s declining years, you can also administer a well-deserved kick in the backside to your ex-husband’s inflated ego—well, what normal woman would hesitate?
Milly wouldn’t, anyway. She promptly married Gilbert at a Brixton registry office, with two deaf old men captured from a nearby bowls club as witnesses: and she straightaway sent Julian a beautifully touched-up photograph of the wedding, with herself smiling a radiant smile that was quite unfeigned (and how should Julian guess that the joy irradiating her features was inspired not by love’s young dream, but by the thought of his and Cora’s faces as they received the news?)
Gilbert hadn’t come out quite so well: he had a vulpine look which she hadn’t noticed in real life, and his smile was glassy, and riddled with false teeth. Still, it wasn’t too bad: at least the lines on his face were blurred and softened, so that he looked, in the picture, as if he really could be only sixty. And he was standing well, too, tall and spare, almost military. You couldn’t say he looked handsome, exactly—and it was a pity that the fluffy whiteness of his hair was so in evidence—but at least he looked distinguished, in a bony, ghosty sort of a way.
*
The man opposite Milly suddenly lowered his newspaper, and it seemed, for one awful moment, that his glance rested on her face for just a little too long. Was her picture already in the paper, then?—that very same wedding photograph, perhaps, with the fixed, bridal smiles, now so eerily inappropriate
. Just the sort of ghoulish touch that newspapermen love….
The man’s glance had left Milly’s face now; he looked merely irritable as he twitched over one page after another, folding and re-folding the paper as he searched for some small haven of print on which his flickering interest might rest awhile.
… FOUND IN FLAT … FOUND IN FLAT—twice more the tantalising letters flashed in front of Milly’s eyes, until at last her luck was in, and the front page lay spread out before her in its totality:
STOLEN JEWELS FOUND IN FLAT, she read; and her whole body sagged in an ecstasy of relief.
Nothing to do with her at all! She was reprieved!
Because, whatever they were going to find in that basement flat in South London, it most certainly wasn’t going to be jewels.
CHAPTER V
“WELL, ACTUALLY, I was wondering if I could pay by cheque?”
A cheque, signed with her new false name, naturally wouldn’t be worth the paper it was written on, but Milly was calculating that, before it bounced back, she would have been able to pay the whole week’s rent in full, in cash. She had never dealt in dud cheques before, and she wasn’t sure how easy they were to laugh off—not to mention getting the landlady to laugh with you. But of one thing she was quite certain: a trendy little anecdote about the idiocies of the bank’s newly-installed computer would sound a lot funnier to a landlady’s ears if Milly was already holding out three real, actual pound notes when she laughingly embarked on it.
“Is that all right, then?—who shall I make it out to?” Milly drew the futile, obsolete cheque-book from her bag with quite a flourish, and flicked it open with all the solid assurance of one who really will have one pound forty tomorrow, and another one pound forty the next day, and therefore isn’t telling lies at all, not really. She was aware, though, as she stood, biro poised, and with an ingratiating smile on her lips, that the little woman who had advertised the vacant room upstairs was now watching her, sharp as a sparrow, from under her grey fringe: assessing her, totting her up: and wasting no time in coming up with the answer.
“I’m sorry. No, I don’t take cheques. I’m sorry.”
So she didn’t take cheques. Just like some people don’t take whisky. The tiny interlude of hope was over. Milly found herself being edged expertly back along the narrow entrance hall, past the bicycle, and the gum-boots, and the umbrella-stand, to where the front door still stood open, as if it had known, ever since Milly arrived, that she was one of the ones who would not be staying.
But on the threshold, Milly paused. When she had arrived here (attracted not only by the Rooms to Let sign, but also by the dirty curtains, which suggested that it might be cheap), it had still been afternoon, with faint gleams of sunlight on the tips of the slated roofs. Now, the air was full of dusk. The landlady shivered as she held the door open for Milly’s departure: you could see she was impatient, longing to get the door closed again. As for Milly, her mind was empty of further plans. It all seemed too difficult.
“Well, goodbye, then,” she said, vaguely, backing out of the little lighted hall. As she moved out of the shelter of the doorway, the icy chill of the coming night flicked at her: the first blades of the cold that was to come touched at her knees and at her throat: and straightaway her body remembered. Before any thought of hers could direct it, it was back through the already-closing door, back into the warm hallway, and fighting for its life.
She quite understood, she gabbled, that a person letting rooms has to be careful: she’d be just the same herself … the words rattled from Milly’s lips like ticker-tape, racing to get it all said before righteous fury took the place of stupefaction in the startled face in front of her. So how would it be, Milly babbled on—and here she smiled into the still-dazed blue eyes with a frank, phoney charm worthy of Julian himself—how would it be if she gave references? She had a job locally … her employer … a Mrs Graham …?
What on earth would happen if this suggestion was actually taken up, she had no time to consider. But at least Mrs Graham would have heard of her, and would have to say so: wasn’t it quite something to have been heard of by someone, in this big empty world?
As it happened, the matter was never put to test. At the word “references”, the indignant little body in front of her nearly exploded.
“References!” she spat. “What’s the good of references? Anyone can fake a reference! D’you think I was born yesterday?” She didn’t, of course, expect an answer to this question, least of all the answer “No, but I was!” which was what almost sprang to Milly’s lips, and had to be hastily suppressed.
“Some of the worst tenants I’ve ever had have come to me with a whole bag-load of posh references,” the woman continued. “I wouldn’t give tuppence for a reference from the Queen of England herself! And anyway,” she finished truculently, “Where’s your luggage? I never take anyone who arrives with no luggage!”
At this additional indictment, Milly’s hopes suddenly revived. As soon as someone gives two reasons for not doing what you want, instead of one, he has as good as lost the game already: unwittingly, he has put himself within range of argument on two fronts.
“My luggage? It’s at the station,” Milly said, with a dignity borne of having almost forgotten that everything she was saying was lies. “Naturally, I didn’t want to drag it around with me before I was settled, and so….”
A small burst of derisory clapping from up above made both women whirl round and peer up into the half-darkness of the stairs. There, just at the bend of the banisters, two grinning faces had appeared, gleaming indistinctly out of a shadowy framework of beards and hair.
“Attagirl! You’re winning!” called one cheery young voice: and the other: “Oh, come on, Mrs Mums, give her a chance! Remember the lies we had to tell before you’d let us in!”
The little woman thus addressed rushed like a small charging bull to the foot of the stairs.
“Off with you!” she yelled up into the darkness. “Both of you, off to your room! And I’ll thank you to call me Mrs Mumford, if you please! Whatever’s the lady going to think, hearing you go on like that? She’ll think we keep a madhouse here! So off! Off!”
A shuffle of laughter, a thumping of heavy feet, and then the banging of a door. Mrs Mumford now turned to Milly almost apologetically, just exactly as if Milly had a right to be standing there in the hallway and passing judgement on the establishment.
“My students,” she explained deprecatingly. “They’ll be the death of me, I swear they will! Never a minute’s peace….”
But Milly did not fail to notice the touch of pride in the sharp voice. “My students…” whatever she might say, you could tell already that Mrs Mumford loved having them there.
“I’ve been taking in students for twelve years come September,” Mrs. Mumford informed Milly, temporarily suspending hostilities for the sake (presumably) of a few minutes’ chat. “It’s the University, you see, it’s not more than twelve miles down the coast, they can get there in twenty minutes on the train. The money’s not much, though, not when you consider the Sunday dinners as well. I’ve always done the Sunday dinners for my students, but when you consider the price of meat these days…. And the way they eat, you wouldn’t believe it, Mrs … Mrs … Excuse me, what did you say your name was?”
“Barnes,” said Milly, who hadn’t said anything of the kind, and had indeed only just this moment decided on it. “Milly Barnes.”
“Ah. Yes, well, Mrs Barnes, like I was telling you, it’s a big problem, running a house like this, especially for a woman on her own. Like when I started, you see, my Leslie—that’s my son, you know—my Leslie was at home then, he wasn’t married…. Have you a son, Mrs Barnes?”
What a nice idea! Milly toyed with the thought of having a son—or even two sons. After all, they’d be past the troublesome stage by now, and out earning their own living. And what about a married daughter …?
Milly sighed.
“No,” she said. It was a
pity, but the complications would be too great. These three young people would be expected to come and see her now and again … unless of course they all had jobs abroad, in which case this little woman would be on the watch for airmail letters which never came. It was going to be difficult enough to explain why no letters came anyway, without that.
“No—” she enlarged on it cautiously. “I never had any children. Your son must be a great satisfaction to you,” she went on, giving the sort of deft about-turn to the conversation which was going to have to become second-nature to her from now on.
“Well.” Mrs Mumford paused heavily, pursing up her small mouth in thought. “Well. He’s married into a funny family, you see. That’s the trouble. It’s not that I didn’t warn him. I mean, it’s not that I want to interfere, or anything like that, I’m not the interfering kind….”
*
At what point in the conversation had it become no longer possible to throw Milly into the street? These things are impossible to gauge in retrospect; but certain it is that the realisation that the critical moment was already past came to them both, suddenly. Mrs Mumford’s voice abruptly trailed into silence, and she stared helplessly at Milly, almost as if appealing to her for advice. How, she seemed to be asking, are we to start quarrelling again now? By what route can we make our way back to the point when I was saying “No, I’m sorry,” and holding the front door open for you to disappear into the night? It was a problem in etiquette to which Mrs Mumford’s limited repertoire simply didn’t extend.
“Well.” She said at last: and then, when nothing came of the remark, she tried again: “Well, I suppose.”
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