by John Burke
Somewhere far away a car snarled on a bend, spitting its sound across the evening. He thought of the car that had pursued him; and then of the fact that his father had very nearly been drowned. The urgency of it all seemed to be clamouring in his ears. He said tensely:
‘You’ve got to work fast. He accepts you by now. I want action. We made a bargain —’
‘I shall keep it,’ said Paula flatly.
‘Then keep it quickly. I want results before it’s too late.’
‘Too late?’
He was not going to tell anyone about the pursuit this evening — if a pursuit it had been. ‘Just get busy, that’s all,’ he said.
‘Your father will have to spend tomorrow in bed. Maybe longer.’
‘All right. Give him till the next day, then. When he’s up and about . . . But why not get a word in tomorrow? You pretty well saved his life, didn’t you? Get him while he’s in a grateful mood. I’m going to spend the day here anyway, so if I can help at all . . .’
‘I don’t think you’ll be much help,’ said Paula.
‘You see,’ his mother burst out: ‘she’s up to something on her own. I don’t like it. You should never have started this.’
‘It’s started,’ said Roger, ‘and we’re going to go through with it. Just as planned. But I want some action. Understand?’
Again Paula did not trouble to reply.
He said: ‘If not tomorrow, then the next day. After I’ve gone back to London. But when I drive down again next weekend, I want it all settled — the whole thing. See?’
‘Yes,’ said Paula, ‘I see. And now’ — slowly she raised her head — ‘don’t you think you ought to go up and see how your father is?’
Chapter Nine
Sam Westwood spent the next day in bed. He was not suffering from any serious after-effects of his near-drowning: he just did not insist on getting up, but lay there.
‘Always the same nowadays,’ said his wife. She looked at Roger as though measuring him up as a scapegoat; as though he might be the one on whom to vent her irritable perplexity. ‘Whatever happens, he just . . . just takes it.’
Paula saw the justice of this. She sat with Sam for a large part of the morning, and saw that he was making no effort. He accepted this escape from death with the same philosophy as he had apparently accepted everything in recent years — prison, release from prison, a different life from the one he had known before the disaster. Even philosophy was not the right description; nor resignation. It was as though he had no standards, no way of telling what was important and what was not. He had been put to bed after his soaking in the bitter sea, and he saw no reason not to stay there, savouring the experience in that strangely abstracted way of his. Things happened, and he let them happen.
Yet he was not dull. Paula liked being with him, even sitting tranquilly in his room with him. The pallid November sunlight fell across the end of the bed and struck out at an angle over the floor.
Suddenly he said: ‘Who are you?’
She did not move. Her whole body seemed to freeze.
The rescue had given her away. That must be what it was. He had known, somehow, that Barbara could never have achieved that. But he would surely not be too angry: she had saved his life, and at least he could only tell her to leave. Perhaps he was even prepared to laugh about it — she felt sure that in the end he would laugh, or at any rate smile, and she would even be able to share in his amusement. That was how close she felt to him.
She did not speak. She could not. Let him finish it off in his own way.
‘I mean,’ he said, ‘what goes on behind that melancholy face of yours? I thought you were a queer little creature when you were a kid . . . now you’re even more alien!’
He reached out and took her hand as though to show that he did not mean it.
Absurdly she felt the sting of disappointment; she would almost have been glad to face his challenge and tell him the truth and go away. But he had not destroyed the pretence: the game was not yet ended.
‘There’s nothing so very odd about me,’ she forced herself to say.
‘No?’
She got up. ‘I suppose I’d better go and do my share of the household duties.’
It sounded contrived and pompous. His expression did not change. As his hand fell away from hers he merely turned his head on the pillow and looked towards the window.
‘You’ll come back later?’
‘Of course. Now have a doze.’
‘I don’t feel drowsy.’
‘It’ll do you good.’
‘I’ve been sleeping,’ he said, ‘for ten years.’ Then, as she reached the door and opened it, he said: ‘What’s it like to be awake, Barbie? Really awake, I mean.’
She faltered. Her hand moved over the smooth surface of the door-knob. The question was unanswerable. Then she saw that he did not expect an answer. She went out of the room, closing the door quietly, and stepped quietly down the stairs as though he were an invalid who might be disturbed by the slightest sound.
Mrs. Westwood was waiting at the foot of the stairs. She said: ‘Well?’
Paula turned slowly to pass her. The woman’s hostility came out like a hot, sour breath.
‘He seems comfortable enough,’ Paula said.
‘Comfortable? He’s not the only one in this house who’s comfortable. When are you going to produce some results? Haven’t you got it out of him yet?’
‘Today’s the wrong time.’
Mrs. Westwood’s face worked painfully. ‘How much longer do you think you’re going to be here? How many more meals are you going to eat in this house before —’
‘Shut up,’ said Roger. He came out of the sitting-room. But, although he had defended Paula against his mother, there was no trust in his face when he sat opposite her at lunch. He might not be counting the cost of her stay here, as Mrs. Westwood was; but he was certainly counting the days and the hours, waiting for the truth to be laid in his lap and trembling with the frustration of it.
Paula found it difficult to eat. She was sure that after lunch he would want her to tackle his father. He would drive her into making the attempt today, before he once more went back to London.
Towards the end of the meal he said: ‘Just as a matter of interest’ — his voice was plaintively malicious — ‘what are you waiting for? Everything’s going fine. You’ve got him where you want him. He’s all over you. All right. What’s holding you up?’
‘You told me to take it easy. You told me —’
‘I didn’t say you were to do nothing at all.’
‘I’ve been telling you,’ cried Mrs. Westwood, ‘she’s up to something. You’ve only got to look at that sly face of hers —’
‘Shut up,’ said Roger again. ‘I’m handling this.’
It was Adam Collier who saved her. Soon after lunch had been cleared away he arrived to see how Sam was getting on. They talked for ten minutes. Paula sat downstairs with Roger, who stared meaningly at her. The moment Adam had gone, she would be sent up to Sam. In the back of the house Mrs. Westwood was rattling things and moving things — a ceaseless, clattering activity that was devoid of either purpose or pleasure.
Adam’s deep voice and his rich, rather pontifical laugh were audible from time to time. Paula, with a magazine open on her knees, filled in the intermittent silences, imagining the rustle of Sam’s whisper.
When she heard the bedroom door open she closed the magazine. Roger leaned forward. They both turned their heads, hearing Adam’s footsteps on the stairs. A moment later there was a tap at the door and he came in.
‘Seems to be coming on fine,’ he said. ‘None the worse for his wetting.’
He seemed unreasonably large in that room. The place had been closing in on Paula, but now Adam had thrust his way in and was pushing the walls back, his head reaching up domineeringly towards the ceiling. He looked superbly confident, cheerful . . . and free. She would have guessed that he was an athlete rather than a writer.
>
‘Thanks for dropping in,’ said Roger ungraciously.
Adam loomed over Paula. ‘Doing anything special right now?’
‘Well —’
‘A good walk would do you good. What about it?’
In any other circumstances she would have shrugged the invitation away. The man was nothing to her, and she did not particularly want their brief acquaintanceship to develop. But in any other circumstances she would not have been here, and these things would not be happening.
Roger was coiled in the chair opposite, willing her to refuse. He wanted her to stay here; she had her part to play.
She looked as bland and innocent as possible, getting up with a vague smile.
‘Perhaps you’re right. I’ll walk up the road with you.’
Roger followed them to the door as though he might, at the last second, think of some way of stopping her. She waited for the stroke — for the comment that his father would need her, that she ought to be here in case he called. But Adam overshadowed Roger. Something in the presence of this other man robbed him of the power to act: he followed, and scowled, and his fingers were twitching all the time, but he made no move to restrain Paula.
Walking along the road, turning her face gladly towards the rising wind, she felt that she had got away from a prison to which she would never have to return.
The feeling did not last. She knew she must go back. Sam Westwood was there, waiting for her.
*
Adam said: ‘After yesterday’s excitement you must long for the calm of London. Oxford Street traffic apart, it’s a lot safer.’
He was smiling quizzically in a way that indicated that he did not mean her to take his remark too earnestly: it was a light, deliberately banal opening to a conversation. But there was more than that in the smile. It remained questioningly in his eyes after it had drawn away from the corners of his mouth. She was all at once sure that he was recalling her as she had been yesterday: beneath the warm winter coat she was wearing he was sketching in the outlines of her body.
‘I thought all writers had to live in London if they wanted to make any sort of success at all,’ she said.
‘The most successful writers never show their faces in London if they can help it.’
‘You’re successful?’ she asked.
‘In my own particular line, I don’t do too badly.’
She glanced up at him. His blunt profile looked, she thought, unfinished: it had been roughly hacked out and then left.
She said: ‘It can’t be a very active life, yours.’
‘It’s more exciting than you think.’
‘You don’t look like a . . . well, a desk worker. Sitting and writing.’
‘No?’ He grinned over some private joke. ‘You’d be surprised how much field work I have to do.’
She knew every step along this road. Two or three times along it with Sam, and she had come to regard it as part of her life. There were no other roads but this bumpy surface linking up straggling houses, dividing on the edge of the town and leading you in to the shops or up to the hill. Adam Collier was a stranger on her own special territory.
‘My father was in good shape, wasn’t he?’ she said.
‘He looks frail,’ said Adam, ‘but he’s tough all right. One of the toughest men I’ve met, I think.’ She sensed that he was studying her, waiting for her to turn and look at him again. She put her head back slightly, touched her hair, and concentrated on the squat church tower lifting itself out of the roofs of Easterdyke. ‘It must be quite a thing, having him for a father.’
‘Yes,’ she said; ‘it is.’
‘Today’s the first time I’ve met your brother.’
‘He spends most of his time in London.’
‘Like you used to. Perhaps you’ll be going back there soon — running up and down with your brother every now and then?’
‘We’ve never been together a lot,’ she said.
‘For a chap of his age, London’s got a lot to offer — he must have plenty of girl friends.’
She detected the note of mockery, and was puzzled by it. She said: ‘I don’t know anything about his girl friends. I’ve never met any of them.’
‘Never? Not one?’
‘We’ve never been together a lot,’ she said again. ‘I don’t know all that much about him.’
‘Not know about your own brother? No, I suppose one never does know much about one’s nearest and dearest.’
She began to be sorry that she had come out with him. His airy, spasmodic way of talking unsettled her. With his erratic comments and questions he was like a fisherman making careless, impatient casts one after the other, hoping to provoke one strong bite. But what sort of bite?
They left the road and crossed a gently sloping field. It brought them to the top end of the town. They could pass Easterdyke then and go on across country.
Paula said: ‘Let’s go into the town. There are one or two things I want to buy.’
‘Oh. I was thinking . . . oh, all right . . . certainly.’
His disappointment restored her balance. It was normal, male and flattering. She felt amused and faintly contemptuous.
His hand fell firmly on her arm. A car swept in close to the kerb. He was still holding her arm as they crossed from the green field to the pavement where the red brick houses of Easterdyke abruptly began.
‘I shall have to be going back to London myself, sooner or later,’ he was saying. ‘If you do get back there . . .’
Normal, male. She had a flash of revelation, realizing what his remarks about Roger had perhaps been leading up to. But there was no reason to imagine . . . and anyway it was nothing to do with him . . .
‘I haven’t made any plans,’ she said. ‘My father needs me here in Easterdyke. For a while, anyway.’
They walked down a street that was probably colourful and crowded in summer. There were shops that sold buckets, spades, postcards, newspapers, and tobacco. Wind was funnelled up from the sea, smelling of the sea: an invitation in summer, but a cold deterrent today. The line of shops broke, chopped up by a group of yellow-faced boarding-houses with wrought-iron curlicues around every window, and then began again, continuing down to the sea front.
Adam’s voice boomed on. He was gauche and apparently purposeless in his wandering remarks; but behind it all she sensed something else, and wished she knew what it was. He was not as young and clumsy as he tried to make out. Yet that might be his own particular affectation: every man who had wanted her in the past had become something different from himself as he advanced — cautious or blatant, coaxing or assertive. The true Adam Collier was perhaps hidden as deeply as the true Paula Hastings. Perhaps unwillingly.
They walked. He spoke, and she answered. At the same time she was thinking of other things. She was involved in more complicated thoughts that she had ever had in her life before. Contact with the Westwoods had twisted everything. She had moved from her parents’ black-and-white life through her own confusions into this complexity. She felt herself asking too many questions: she could not believe that any of these people really existed as she saw them.
Roger. Were Adam’s hints justified — were they even hints? Belonging to the Westwoods as she did, and yet not belonging, she saw what none of them could have seen or faced up to: that Roger’s hatred of Barbara had bitten deep into him, so that now he hated all women. She remembered now the days at the studio. Stan Morrison had not been like Roger. His father pawed women with his eyes; Stan used his hands. Roger Westwood, with his nervous movements and quick decisions, his brusqueness and little twitches of revulsion, dealt with the girls in the studio only as a commodity. Perhaps it even gave him pleasure to organize their degradation so smoothly. But he did not want to touch them.
She wondered — knowing that she would never know — what emotional satisfaction he was getting out of paying her for her part in this present scheme of his. The result apart, the pot of gold waiting at the end apart, what did her impersonatio
n of Barbara do for him?
‘I wish I hadn’t met you,’ said Adam Collier.
It jolted her out of her trance of perplexity. She had answered his other remarks automatically, without having to concentrate, but this one had been thrown at her with sudden force.
She said: ‘I’m sorry. I don’t see —’
‘You’re too disturbing,’ he said. At once he was smiling and making a joke out of it — clumsy yet calculated flattery. ‘I find it difficult to get on with my writing since you came down here.’
‘You’d prefer me to go back to London?’
‘I’m going back myself,’ he reminded her, ‘soon.’
She could not respond as she supposed he wanted her to. It was all too futile. It had to be kept light, casual . . . meaningless.
‘Sorry you’ve been disturbed,’ she laughed; and he laughed too, with exaggerated appreciativeness.
For the first time she was conscious of a pang of regret. She wished they could talk naturally. His nearness and strength could have meant something to her — she would have let it become something — if they had been somewhere else; in another time and another place.
If, she thought wearily, they had been two different people. That was what it amounted to.
*
There was a certain vindictive relish in Stan Morrison’s face as Roger entered the office the following morning.
‘Somebody was here asking for you yesterday.’
‘Anybody special?’
‘Depends what you mean by special.’ Stan peeled the wrapping from a packet of cigarettes. ‘He was very keen to get in touch with you, I can tell you that. Asked for your home address.’
Roger stiffened. ‘You didn’t —’
‘No,’ said Stan, ‘I didn’t give it to him. But he looked the sort of guy who’d get what he wanted in the end.’
There was no sympathy in the warning. Stan was enjoying the implications of the threat.
Roger managed to say: ‘I can’t imagine who it was. Did he leave any name? Or anything?’