Even boiling a kettle had done very little to eat up the empty time of waiting. She remembered how, long ago in a different life, she had learned French because it was regarded as an accomplishment suitable for young ladies, like playing the piano or embroidery or watercolours. Each and all of them made a girl more marriageable, and Miss Ann Myfanwy was highly accomplished in each and all. But she was stubbornly unmarried. The French for ‘waiting room’ was ‘salle des pas perdues’ – the room of lost steps. It was a lovely thought. She stood in front of the hall stand, where the umbrellas and the walking sticks were kept, where the coats and the hats hung, and she looked at herself in the big round mirror and at the backwards clock behind her. “Il est neuf heures moins cinq,” she said. There were bruised shadows under her eyes. A night of broken sleep – that was all. She leaned forward and looked close in the mirror. Two or three red threads of broken veins across her cheekbones. That was what came of spending so much time on the promenade. Soon she would be as weather-beaten as a sailor. She pointed her chin to the ceiling and rubbed at her throat. The flesh was still quite firm. It was. Truly. But Mother had developed a dreadful turkey wattle in her last years. She dreaded that. “Tu n’est pas jeune mais tu est vraiment de rigolade.”
She resolved not to waste a single lost step. She would stand there in one spot, never moving, watching the clock moving backwards until it reached the hour. She stood waiting, watching, breathing calmly, but then the glass in the door darkened, the sound of a key in the lock, the doorknob rattled, and Tetty came in, scattering raindrops everywhere.
“Miss Nancy! You near gave me a heart attack standing there!”
“Tetty! Oh.” She felt she had been caught out in something wicked and her only thought was to flee. “I was just going out,” she said. “Must dash. Goodbye.”
She was already beyond the gate when Tetty said: “Will you be home for dinner?” She was already at the corner when the clock in the hall struck nine, and he was already waiting under the turrets of the old gate.
She stopped running. It was unseemly that he should see her running like a girl and unbecoming that he might think she was running to him, but when he saw her, he ran to her so she stopped stopping running and started again and they met in the middle of the street. In the middle of the street, in the rain.
“Nancy!”
“Hello, Boxer. You’re all wet.”
“I had to walk a mile along the shore to get here and I’ve been waiting half an hour at least.”
“I’ve been waiting too, but I was indoors, afraid to come out.”
“I was afraid too. Horribly afraid. Nancy, I’ve wrangled some mighty big animals, but none of them ever gave me the terrors like you.”
“I’m not terrifying.”
“No, but not seeing you is.”
She took his arm and folded herself close to him and turned her face up to be kissed, but he did not kiss her, which was disappointing.
“Do you think we might find somewhere out of this weather?” he said.
No. 102 Magazine Lane was just around the corner. She could see the top of it from where she stood, but it was impossible. “Yes,” she said. “I know exactly the place. Let’s run!”
So they ran off together through the rain, Miss Ann Myfanwy kicking along in half a dozen short steps to each of his long-legged strides, her long coat and the wet hem of her dress binding round her ankles as she went, and then, when they reached Seabank Road, they could see the tram coming. They hurried to jump on board, shaking raindrops off their clothes in glittering circles like spaniels emerging from a ditch, and they sat down together in the privacy of the rearmost bench.
“It’s a circular route,” she said. “We can pay our fares and then, so long as we don’t get off, we never have to pay again. We can stay here all day for tuppence each.”
When the conductor had left again and gone back to standing at the front of the car with the driver, he said: “That’s a strange thing to say, Nancy. What made you think of that?”
She looked at his face, at his eyes and his nose and his mouth, and settled her gaze on his chin. “I was thinking – I was up half the night with thinking . . .”
“Oh so was I, Nancy my dear, so was I.” He gave her hand a squeeze and she hurried to pull off her damp glove and squeeze his hand in return.
“Yes, but I was thinking about when you took me to tea and there was no cake for you, only for me.”
“I told you. I simply wasn’t hungry.”
“Is that all? You’re not the tiniest bit strapped for cash?”
“Oh, Nancy. You mustn’t say such things.” He lit a cigarette from a silver case – he asked her permission first, of course – and drew deeply on it, but when she dared to look up into his eyes, when she kept her gaze fixed on his, at last he crumbled. “Oh, there’s no point lying to you. I may as well try to deceive myself.”
“So you are in difficulties?” She was delighted, not because of his troubles but because she was right and, more than anything, because she had forced it out of him.
“It’s all so stupid. Simple bureaucratic nonsense.” He took another long drag on his cigarette, and when he lifted it from his lips, she reached up and took it from his fingers. He had never kissed her, but now her mouth was on the cigarette, still a little damp from where his mouth had been. He watched as she puffed on it, almost shocked.
“You are very daring, Miss Nancy Jones.”
“My brother taught me.”
“Arthur? Well, I’ll be! He turned his back on the evil weed. Gives me the most awful rollicking if he ever sees me smoke.”
“Never mind that. Tell me about the money.”
“Oh, I hate to talk of it.”
“Please, dear Boxer. Aren’t we friends? Friends share their troubles.”
The tramcar rattled and jolted its way round a long bend. “You mustn’t give it a thought,” he said. “I’m sure things will sort themselves out tomorrow. Or in a day or two at most.”
“What things? Please tell me.”
“It’s just a mix-up with the banks, that’s all. I have three and a half thousand pounds coming to me, more or less. The profits from that cargo of horses I sold over in Flanders, but there’s some hold-up with the bank. They are quick enough to take the money out of my customers’ accounts, but they are taking their own sweet time about transferring the funds to me.”
“How long has it been?”
“Nearly two weeks. I write them every day, but I can’t get any sense out of them.”
“You don’t think you might have been swindled out of your horses?”
“Nancy!” He was offended. “I’ve known Anton for years. This is not the first time we’ve done business. No, I don’t believe that of him for two reasons: he’s an honest man, and he knows I’d come back and kill him where he stood.”
She looked at his gold teeth glinting and she believed it.
“Then I’m sure you are right. Just another day and it will be sorted out.”
“Yes. Just another day.”
They spoke of other things. Life in America, horses, horses, horses, the endless rolling fields of fine grass, the sweet, floral smell of hay in a stable, what it feels like to run a brush over a horse’s back, Arthur, only half a day away from the horse farm, what the house was like, square and low and sheltered by trees with a dusty road running by it but lonely and empty and, above all, lonely. She told him about Bodyngharad and she told him about Boxer again, but she did not tell him about Mr Pryce the corn merchant or their understanding. She told him about her tower and its view across the park to the river and the Lady of Shallot and the Prisoner of Chillon and how her room in the tower was like his house on the stud farm: lonely and empty and, above all, lonely.
“You have your father,” he said.
“Or he has me.”
“Nancy, I have no one at all.”
They had returned again to Seabank Road and the thought of the money came back to her. “How
much do you need? Just to see you right?”
“Nancy, please don’t.”
“Stop being so stubborn. Let me help you. Wouldn’t Arthur want me to help?”
“If needs be, I can cable for money. I’m just grateful I paid old Mrs Graham in advance. Ten shillings for two rooms and a shilling a day for breakfast, so I won’t starve.”
“But you need more than that.”
“That’s the worst of it. I do need more than that and I haven’t a bean. Not one red cent. And if my bankers don’t come through, well, I don’t know what I will do.”
“Yes you do. You’ll let me help you.”
He said nothing.
“Let me help you.”
He lit another cigarette.
“I can put my hands on twenty pounds.”
“Twenty pounds?”
“Isn’t it enough?”
“It’s an enormous amount of money.”
“Good, then it’s settled.”
“I cannot. My pride would not allow it. I cannot take money from a lady I have known for only a day.”
“Boxer! Please.”
“No. It’s impossible. But, on the other hand, I would be proud to accept assistance from one whose life and fortune were forever linked to my own, from my fiancée. Marry me, Nancy.” That was the first time he kissed her.
22
MISS ANN MYFANWY JONES astonished herself by her own composure. She was completely calm. Utterly dry-eyed. Perhaps a little disappointed, but that was only to be expected. She had never seen a police station before – not on the inside. This one was as bad as she had feared. It was so bad it made her long for her room in No. 102 Magazine Lane, where, though the walls were thin, it did not stink.
There were two policemen. An inspector and a constable. The constable read aloud to her from a piece of paper which the inspector said she would have to sign.
The constable said: “In September this year – I cannot say the exact date – I was walking along Victoria Street when a man, resembling very much the photograph you show me, approached me and said: ‘Excuse me; are you not Miss Nancy Jones?’ I said: ‘I am afraid you have the advantage of me.’ He then said: ‘You have a brother Arthur in Detroit, America.’ I asked him how he knew me, and he said: ‘Oh, I’ve seen your photo at your brother’s in Detroit.’ I asked him when he had seen my brother, and he said: ‘Only a few weeks ago.’ I was quite satisfied in myself that he really knew my brother. He explained to me he was over here on business, that he had brought some horses over from the States to Holland, and that he had come to Liverpool from Antwerp. He said he was being delayed here owing to a cheque which he had been expecting going astray.”
It was so strange to hear her own words coming from beneath the constable’s huge moustache. They were all quite true of course. Absolutely true. But not the whole truth. So many things had been left out.
“We had this conversation in the Royal Ferry Hotel, New Brighton, where we had adjourned, as it was raining.”
That was all true. Perfectly true.
“We took the car to Wallasey Village. We simply talked about Detroit and my brother and different parts of America. Nothing of importance occurred.”
Oh, what a dreadful, black lie. He asked for her hand. That was a matter of great importance. He asked for her hand and he insisted it must be as quickly as possible. They were not young, he said, yes, yes, she would forever be his girl, even when they were old and bent and silver, but they had no time to waste and Father would not wish to give her up. He would forbid her. He would try to prevent her and keep her for himself. She must be strong, she must be his brave girl, his Nancy. If only she would come away, they could be married on the ship – the captain had the power to do it – and they could send for Father at once. The very day and hour they landed at New York, they would send a cable and summon him to a place of honour on the ranch, where they would love him and comfort him for the rest of his days and he would live and die with both his children at his side.
The constable kept reading: “ ‘Before we parted we arranged for me to meet him for lunch at 1.30 the following day at the hotel in question. The following day I reached the hotel about 2.30 and found him waiting.’ ”
No word of a lie. She could swear to all of that with her hand on the Bible. But it said nothing to explain why she was late and nothing at all to explain why he had waited. Why would he have waited for an hour?
It was the money, of course. She did not have enough money. She had the twenty pounds she had promised and: “Yes, of course, my dear, we will manage with that. It’s only to see us through. Just to tide us over although, my own one, I will have to pay extra to book a passage for you or perhaps they would allow me to change my cabin for two steerage places – but we would be separated, my dear. What? Another ten pounds? That would be ample – more than ample. I will wait here at the hotel until you come.”
And he did wait. He waited while she took the ferry to Liverpool and rode the car into town and closed her account entirely, all twenty pounds, four shillings and thruppence farthing. What would be the point of leaving four shillings and thruppence farthing gathering interest in a bank in Liverpool when she was raising horses on the other side of the wild Atlantic? So she took it all and signed the forms and came back to No. 102 Magazine Lane because there was money there. She knew where there was a little knitted purse of gold sovereigns in Father’s desk. She knew the exact drawer. She knew exactly where the secret knobs were and how to pull them so the hidden compartment would fly open. Hadn’t Father shown her often enough? Hadn’t she delighted in it? Hadn’t he warned her, over and over, that she must never sell his desk when he was gone – not at least until she had looked in the secret place? Of course taking Father’s money was wrong – of course it was – but it had to be done. She was making a better life for him in America, where he could rest at last, where he could see Arthur and not work himself to death in the business. It was for his sake. He wouldn’t have to go on until he dropped. He would see that and forgive. Boxer had explained all that and she could see – anyone could see – he was right. But Tetty was there, fussing about the place with her mop and duster, looking over her shoulder, snooping, and it wasn’t her house, it was none of her business, why couldn’t she just go? She had mislaid her spectacles. She found her spectacles. She had to adjust her hat. Now, where were her keys?
At last she was gone and Miss Ann Myfanwy turned the lock behind her and went into Father’s study. It only took a moment, only a moment, and then it was done and she put everything back, exactly as it had been, and comforted herself with the notion that he may not even notice the money was gone before the cable came to invite him to America.
She hurried along the street, terrified that she might have missed him, so terribly afraid that he may have given up hope. What if he thought her courage had failed her? What if he doubted her love? Oh, the pain he would feel. She could not bear it.
But he was still there, still waiting by the fire in the hotel parlour, hunched over at the fireside, worried and tense, but he looked up when he saw her at the door and bounded to her and embraced her. And he took the money.
The constable read on: “ ‘It was arranged that I should meet him early in the afternoon or evening at the top of our road the following day. He seemed very anxious that I should meet him the following day.’ ”
Yes, he had seemed anxious. He was frantic. How he pleaded with her to be strong. Pack a bag. Only enough for the voyage. Just a few things. Everything else that she wanted could come on by ship with Father. And she mustn’t be silly and worry about clothes; he would dress her in silks and furs as soon as they arrived in New York.
The policeman read on. His moustache bobbed as he spoke the words. “ ‘That was the last time I saw him, and I have not heard from him since.’ ”
No, she had not heard from him since. The last time. The very last time.
The policeman. What an accent he had. Coarse. Saying her words.
“ ‘The next morning I wrote a letter to him at 10 Riversdale Road, Seacombe, the address he had given me, saying I was afraid I would not be able to keep the appointment in the afternoon, but I would be sure to be there in the evening.’ ”
She could not keep the appointment in the afternoon. How could she? Not after that morning, when she had wiped Father’s whiskers from the sink and rubbed away his trail of tooth-powder spit. She could not leave without seeing him again. But in the evening, there would be time for a proper goodbye, one last kiss before she left. He might not know what it meant – not until later – but she would know. She packed her bag and laid it in the coal shed, on a copy of the Daily Telegraph, to save it from the dust, and she sent her letter by the first post. She poured out her love in that letter. So much wasted time, so much loneliness and sorrow, but now she could see that it was all worth it, that Heaven had placed those obstacles in her way only that she might now enjoy true, deep, lasting love and happiness with the man she had been destined for from the day the stars were made. She licked down the envelope, kissed it and marked it with an X.
The policeman mumbled on: “ ‘I kept the appointment in the evening, and after waiting about a quarter of an hour and he not putting in an appearance, and being afraid he had not obtained my letter, I went to 10 Riversdale Road and inquired for Mr Walker.’ ”
That poor old lady. Poor Mrs Graham. She hardly knew what to say. Yes, Mr Walker had been staying there, but he was gone. He left, my dear. The day before. Quite suddenly. About four o’clock in the afternoon. No, not an American gentleman, a Canadian gentleman. No, not a horse trader, a manager with the Cunard line, transferred suddenly and unexpectedly to Antwerp. Yes, dear, a letter had come for him. Yes, about noon. Why, yes, dear, it was in a blue envelope. Yes, with an X on the back. From you, dear? Well, you may as well. If you’re sure.
The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne Page 14