“No, I don’t suppose you do, my dear. For an intelligent woman—even brilliant in your own field—you can be remarkably obtuse.”
“Thank you!”
“Neither compliment nor insult was intended, I assure you! Just a statement of fact.” He looked at her, and laughed softly. “Poor Harriet! Shall I spell it out for you? Make abundantly clear what it was I was trying to prove? And for what purpose?”
She looked back at him, sitting there with his legs crossed, his trouser legs carefully pulled up to reveal smooth black socks and gleaming shoes, and for one moment hated him; and even as the knowledge of her hate moved into her mind she knew it was part of his attraction for her. His hatefulness, his deviousness, the fear he could create in her, the need to cater to his whims and desires–all that was intensely exciting. It made her body move in response as no amount of mere tenderness could do. And she thought for a confused moment of her childhood and her father’s brusque voice, of her years tucked away in girls’ boarding schools and girls’ boarding houses in her student days, and knew why it was she felt so. And shut her eyes wearily and said, “Yes, tell me what it is.”
“You told me you wanted to go to Whyborne.”
“That I intend to go to Whyborne,” she said, snapping her eyes open, “I didn’t ask permission, Oscar. I told you of a decision.”
“Ah. Yes. That is what you think you told me. I am suggesting you think again.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you to go to Whyborne. Better perhaps to say I don’t want you to leave Brookbank.”
“Look, Oscar, I appreciate all you’ve done for me over the years. I know how you must feel about people leaving you—though I’m not doing a Ross-Craigie on you. You’ve never worked with me on my stuff, actively opposed it at the beginning, in fact—no, don’t interrupt. I do understand. But try to understand it from my point of view. I’ve got responsibilities of my own—to George, to my own children—”
“Children? Those large young adults?”
“There’s no need to be—however. Yes. To those large young adults. I must make the sort of provision for my own future, in a financial sense that will … relieve them of the burden of my care.” She made a small face. “I don’t intend ever to be to them what George is to me. So, I’m going to Whyborne. Please, try to understand and be civilized about it! We’ve been friends a long time, Oscar, very good friends, and I hope you can think about this in terms of friendship rather than as an employer.”
He raised his eyebrows at her with great urbanity. “But that is precisely what I am doing, my dear Harriet! I too want to ensure our … friendship survives and continues to … ah … give us both the satisfactions it already does. Though, of course, one must be honest about this. I might perhaps—how shall I put it? I suspect I might recover more quickly from the loss of your friendship than you would the loss of mine.”
She looked at him, feeling the chill of fear he could so easily arouse climbing into her throat. “I’m not sure I quite understand you,” she said carefully.
“Oh, I think you do, somewhat obtuse though you can be in your sweet feminine fashion about these matters. But let me be blunt, just in case. If you leave for Whyborne, then you and I–that is the end. Our friendship ceases. I can’t, in all conscience, go on with a—with such a close relationship with a member of another establishment’s staff. It would simply not be possible, since to do so would put me in a highly equivocal position. But I daresay I would soon be able to find a … um, shall we say, a substitute for you?”
He stood up, and placed himself tidily in front of the fire, and she looked up at him standing there with his hands in his pockets, his belly flat and muscular between them, his sleek gray head poised above neat shoulders, and she knew he was parading himself for her benefit.
“You, on the other hand, Harriet, are not perhaps in so happy a situation. I know I am over fifty, but a man of fifty, you must admit, is still very much a man. And in my experience quite an interesting one in the eyes of quite a number of women. Including even very young ones.”
He smiled down at her. “Nature is cruel to the female of the species, isn’t it, Harriet? You at forty-nine are not—well, handsome though you are, interesting though you are, sexually—ah—adventurous as I know you to be, you must admit that to find a new relationship would be for you a great deal more difficult than it would for me.”
She closed her eyes, and shook her head and said softly, “I don’t believe it. I don’t—not even you, Oscar. Not even you could do such a—”
He smiled again. “Come, my dear girl! You surely must know I can and, indeed, that I mean every word I say. Don’t you?”
She looked at him again and nodded slowly. “Yes. I know.”
There was a silence, and then Oscar threw his head back and laughed loudly. “So absurd, my dear, isn’t it? Lysistrata was a woman, isn’t that so? And here am I, a man, following that splendid example. There must be a message in there somewhere for the Women’s Liberation movement!”
17
“DR. BERRY!” John Caister said again. “There’s a man to talk to you. I really think you’d—”
“What is it?” she looked up, irritably, suddenly aware of the fact that she had been staring at the same graph quite unseeingly for a very long time, and that John had already spoken to her twice. “What did you say?”
“There’s a man to see you. They’ve sent him up from front gate, so he’s not one of those awful newspaper people. To tell you the truth—” he lowered his voice “—I think it’s the fuzz. Smell them anywhere.”
“Fuzz?”
“Plainclothes, but fuzz all the same. Will you see him?”
“Yes,” she said heavily. “I might as well,” and pushed the papers in front of her to the back of her desk. It was extraordinary how flat she felt, how drearily old, yet emotionally quite calm. I should be weeping, or howling for his blood, or being a woman scorned or something, she thought bleakly. I should be hating him.
But she knew she didn’t, and knew she never would. Oscar’s chilly deviousness, his selfish manipulation of others, even and especially herself, was one of the things about him that made him so intensely exciting a partner. There was nothing new, nothing surprising in what had happened last night; it was all of a piece with the man she had known and enjoyed all these years. Even used for my own selfish purposes, she thought. Maybe I’m as devious as he is, in my own way. But at that thought, she smiled a little wryly. Her own attempts at manipulation would bear as much comparison with Oscar’s as a child’s game of tiddlywinks would to a master’s chess ploy.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
She turned to look at the man standing just inside the door, a very ordinary-looking man with thinning red hair brushed neatly over his bumpy skull, a soft dark brown hat that almost exactly matched the color of his overcoat held in his hand.
“Oh—yes. Good morning,” she said. “You wanted me?”
He came toward her, holding out his hand, and almost automatically she held out her own to shake hands with him, and then saw the identity card held in the palm, and dropped her arm to her side.
“I would appreciate just a few words with you, Doctor. If you don’t mind. My name’s Sydenham. Mr. Sydenham.”
“I thought one usually addressed policemen by their rank. Even plainclothes ones.”
“Well, so they do, in some branches of the service. But me–well, I prefer not to. Keeps things friendlier, doesn’t it?”
“Then this is a friendly visit?”
“Of course! Shouldn’t it be?”
He looked at her with a huge waggishness, and she said sharply, “Do sit down. No, no reason.”
“You’d be surprised, Doctor,” he said with an air of great confidentiality, as he sat down in the chair she had indicated, and put his hat on the floor beside him before crossing his legs comfortably. “Even the most respectable of citizens these days tend to react very nervously when the
y meet policemen. It’s the motorcar, you know. Makes everyone feel like a criminal, doesn’t it?”
“What can I do for you, Mr. Sydenham?” she said with all the crispness she could muster. “I really have a great deal of work on hand, and I would like to—”
“But of course. Of course. Well, first of all, let me tell you how sorry I am that you were so unfortunately involved in that little fracas at your gates the other night. Very nasty experience it must have been. Very nasty.”
She made a small grimace, and unconsciously moved her shoulders, still a little stiff from the bruising. “Yes. It was rather. Though, I suppose, since it was my work they were complaining about—”
“Whatever their complaints, they should have put them through the proper channels,” Sydenham said very firmly. “They had no right to go interrupting people in the normal course of their business—exposing people to danger and trouble—not to mention themselves.” He looked at her sharply, with his eyes narrowed to a bright beadiness, and she flushed.
“I should have realized, of course,” she said stiffly. “You’ve come to see me about the man I—I injured? I can assure you that I had no intention of—I just thought, if I moved forward slowly they’d get out of the way, but they didn’t, and I got alarmed, and my foot slipped on the clutch and”—she bit her lip. “I didn’t try to hurt him.”
“Oh, we know that, Doctor, never fear! They set out to hurt you all right, but we know quite well that what happened to that bloke was his fault and no one else’s—apart from the rest of the mob, of course. And he’s doing all right, anyway. They’ll have him tidily tucked up at the District General for several weeks with his broken leg, and a very good thing too. Give him time to cool down, won’t it? No, it wasn’t that little problem I came to see you about. You’ll hear no more about what happened there—though I can’t hide from you the fact he talked a bit wildly about bringing charges against you. But we soon convinced him he hadn’t got a case.”
“Thank you,” she said, and felt the inadequacy of the words, and reddened again.
“No, I’m not here about that.” He sat silently for a while and she looked sideways at him, feeling uneasiness move in her chest. “I’m from a rather specialized department of the force, Doctor,” he said eventually. “I deal with what might be called immigration problems. Aliens and the like.”
She frowned. “Oh? I don’t see how—”
“No, I don’t suppose you do,” he smiled at her, his face creasing again into his schoolboy beam. “People never do think of—well, I ask you. When I say immigrant or alien, what’s the first thing comes into your mind? People with black faces, and funny little men all wrapped up in big black coats and talking wiz zee vairy theek accent, hein, achtung, jawohl? Yes, of course. But no one ever thinks of Australians or New Zealanders. Or Canadians. Do they?”
“Canadians? You want to talk about?… Oh. I—” she stopped sharply. “Perhaps you’d better explain a little more.”
“But you already understand a little, I think, don’t you? Well, I won’t beat about the bush, Doctor. I’m sorry to have to put you in any sort of invidious position, but—well,’ it’s to your interest as well as ours to do something fast about this young man, isn’t it? And since he’s your daughter’s, ah …” he paused delicately.
“Well?”
“I went to see him this morning.” Suddenly his voice lost its faintly jocular note and became very businesslike. “We got a call from the local police a few days ago, actually. They realized what was going on, and since we’d been—how shall I put it?—we’d been looking for a way to persuade him that he wasn’t precisely persona grata, as the lawbooks say, we’ve been keeping an eye on him. And this morning”—he shrugged—“he made no bones about it. Very straight he was, I must say. Told me exactly what he was up to, and listened to me very courteously. I’ll grant him that. But I’m not sure he really took in what I said to him. And it would be a great help to me—to the Government, to be more accurate, if you’d–well, maybe he’d pay some attention to his—er—to his girl’s mother, don’t you know? So, I thought—”
“I may be particularly dense, Mr. Sydenham, but I don’t really understand what it is you’re talking about,” she said sharply.
“Oh, now, Doctor Berry!” he said, looking a little hurt. “I thought you—well, I’m sorry. All right, I’ll start at the beginning. For several weeks, we’ve been watching Dr. Ben Shoeman, on account of suspecting he was a subversive type, who could cause trouble. For a while he behaved very well, in a legal sense, that is. He’s organized public meetings, used the papers to spread his efforts, but he’s kept inside the law. But now he’s been and gone and properly blotted his copybook, organizing those men into a wildcat strike, and he’s said, before a witness—the local sergeant was with me—he’s said that he intends to go on stirring up such strikes, so we’ve got him, haven’t we? I was empowered to warn him that unless he voluntarily left the U.K. within the next thirty-six hours we would be forced to take legal steps against him. He didn’t believe me at first—it’s funny how often people think they’ve got special status, being Commonwealth citizens and that. But I think I got it across to him. Certainly I got it across to Miss Berry. She seemed very eager to go. But just in case—I thought I’d ask you, quietly, you know, to have a little word with him. He’s not far away, after all, and if I could be sure he was booked onto a flight, I’d feel a lot better—”
“Ben’s here?” she said. “With Patty? Are you sure?”
He smiled again, almost pityingly. “Yes, Doctor. They’re staying in King’s Lynn, at the Old Crown. They’ve been here well over a week. I understood from what Miss Berry said that she’d—er—left her job. They didn’t like her—um—friendship with Dr. Shoeman, according to him, and gave her the push. Very sharp things he had to say about her ex-employers, I must say,” he smiled reminiscently. “Yes. Very sharp.”
There was a silence for a while, and then Harriet stirred and said stiffly, “Well, it was good of you to let me know. Thank you.”
“You’ll try to—er—persuade him of the wisdom of going home?” Sydenham said, and again his eyes were beadily bright. “For Miss Berry’s sake as well as his own. I would have thought—”
“Thank you, Mr. Sydenham. You’ve made your point.” She stood up, and moved over to the door to hold it open for him, but he sat still, and smiled at her, still looking comfortably relaxed in the hard straight-backed chair.
“Of course, once he has gone, you’ll have no more trouble here. Those boys from the power station—not the brightest in the world, you know. Without Shoeman around to jolly them up and keep the ginger going, they’ll be back to normal working in no time. Won’t be hanging around the gates any more, impeding you all.”
He stood up then, and came toward her, holding out one hand, and almost against her will, she held out her own, and touched his briefly.
“Thank you, Doctor. I know you’ll help the boy see sense. And I’ve no doubt he’ll settle down in time. It’s amazing how many of these young hotheads learn the errors of their ways, once they get a girl. That’s a lovely daughter you’ve got, Dr. Berry. If she doesn’t have him eating out of her hand in a cozy house somewhere in Toronto or wherever in a few months, I’ll be very surprised.”
He sat there, laughing hugely, and she wanted to smack him as though he were a silly child, yet still found a certain pleasure in watching his genuine enjoyment of the joke, even though she saw nothing particularly funny in it herself.
“But it is funny, Harriet!” he said when she told him as much. “Surely you can see that? Some greasy pig comes to tell you what a bad boy I am, and please will you trot along and tell me so, and make sure I do as I’m bid—and you go and do it! Come on, Harriet—you can’t say you don’t think it’s funny? Really sick funny?”
“I didn’t see it in those terms,” she said. “But maybe I’m old-fashioned. I was told that a—that someone I know is in trouble, and—” she shrug
ged. “I wanted to help. In however ineffective a fashion, I wanted to help. And to find out what was going on.”
“Ah, now, that’s better!” Ben said, and leaned back in his chair to call over his shoulder. “Isn’t that better, Patty?”
Patty was standing on the other side of the room, staring out of the bedroom window at the street below, and she didn’t turn when Ben spoke to her, only hunching her shoulders.
“She’s feeling a bit—” Ben grinned cheerfully at Harriet. “You should know. Your daughter!”
“Why was that better?”
“Eh? Oh, because you were honest! You wanted to find out what was going on. Great! What better than to want to know what’s happening around you? Only making it different, that’s all! Care for a beer, Harriet?”
He stood up and moved over to the stack of beer cans on the dressing table, seeming to fill the blank little room to stifling over-crowdedness with his bigness. “No? Patty, you sure will. Here.”
Patty came to take her tin of beer, and then sat on the bed, her legs pulled up under her, and she looked briefly at Harriet and said harshly, “I hear that George is ill. Gorden phoned and ranted some stuff at me. What’s the score?”
“It’s not important,” Harriet said. “I’ve sorted things out. He’s had a coronary, but he—I’ve arranged for his care.”
“That your old gramps, Patty?” Ben came and sat beside her on the bed, throwing one arm across her shoulders, and Patty immediately relaxed, and curled her shoulders toward him so that she was almost cowering against his chest, and looked at her mother with a slightly challenging lift of her chin.
“Yes, George is Patty’s grandfather. But you’ve nothing to worry about. He’s—it’s all under control.”
“I’m not worrying, Harriet, believe me I’m not worrying! I’m not about to start fretting over an old man when I’ve got plenty else to fill my time with. Patty feels the same way, hmm?” And he looked down at her and tightened his grip on her shoulders.
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