by A. L. Barker
“When you’re really close you can’t see the wood for the trees.”
He said flatly, “This is a silly conversation.”
“Do you think so? I was asking if you know whether your wife is honest.”
“I don’t see what business it is of yours, but she is.” He found suddenly that it was true, it was a fact, and the relief was immense, as if an aching bone had clicked into place. His stomach and his shoulders lightened, his whole body benefited. He had reason to believe, he had better than reason, he had his instinct back and somehow Debbie Winegarden had restored it. “Yes, thank you,” he said, he really was grateful. “My wife is honest.”
“Then I can’t tell you anything.”
The edge of malice was it, or humour?—had got round the mask but he was no longer concerned. He sat down at his desk and pulled a scribbling pad towards him. “We’ll have to advertise the vacancy right away. Let’s see: ‘Canteen cook required, must be thoroughly experienced and of British nationality’—we don’t want any more foreigners.”
“If you’re right, she’ll tell you herself.”
“Who’ll tell me what?”
“‘Little Mrs Bulow’, he calls her. She may be, but she’s got a damn great sauce ringing him up to go and see her in the middle of the afternoon.”
“Go and see her? Esther?”
She mimicked viciously, “Oh Mr Dollomore, could you come at once? Oh, Mr Dollomore, you remember what you said last night? I’m in such trouble and I’ve no one to turn to.’ That was half-past four and he’s not back yet.”
“In trouble?”
Debbie made a face. “Or she’d like to be.”
*
Bulow sat at his desk with the start of the draft advertisement for the cook vacancy on the pad in front of him. He drew rings round it, rings round the rings, he shaded in the space between, and Debbie Winegarden waited for him to ask what she meant.
When he did not, she stood up, plastering her skirt over her hips with both hands.
“You asked for it; you’ve got bad words for everyone else, now you’ve got one for your wife.”
Bulow waited for the door to close behind her, then he got up and put on his hat and coat. Trouble, he was thinking, what trouble? She was happy enough that morning. Enough for what? He could not remember anything she had said or done, except her usual things which he could take or leave, and he had left them.
Someone shouted to him as he went out that there was a delivery of conserves to check over but he walked on without lifting his head. Streetfield had the car or he would have taken it to get him home sooner.
What trouble was Dollomore good for, what had he said last night, why no one to turn to but him? She had done more than turn, she’d cleaved to him like a needle to a magnet. Bulow recalled how she had worked at selling him to Dollomore. She thought it could be done and that she was the one to do it. Nothing could have stopped her except an earthquake or a shout. It would have been cruel to shout. Afterwards she couldn’t see that she had failed, she still cleaved to her notion of Dollomore as patron, promoter, benefactor. And if she was still cleaving she was still working at it. What he had to dread was not the trouble she was in but the trouble she was at.
When he reached the house he was breathless. He started excusing her to Dollomore’s car standing in the kerb: ‘She doesn’t understand, she reads magazines, she keeps illusions—you have to see the funny side of it—too much faith in her own husband—I’ll have to cut it down to size—people don’t want to know, Mr Dollomore doesn’t want to.’
He let himself in by the back way and stood in the kitchen getting his breath. He could hear it sawing in his throat, drowning the sound of his own trumpet—a tin toot here and a tin toot there. ‘I had to stop her wasting any more of your time—you see, Esther, if anything went wrong at the factory while Mr Dollomore was away they’d have to wait manhours for a decision and one manhour can be a thousand minutes long—’
He had a vision of Dollomore’s unseeing eye on him. There was no hurry, it was too late to fog over, let alone undo or put out of Dollomore’s mind anything she had said. His was the sort of memory that would retain and be able to reproduce the tin toots of the trumpet in twenty years’ time.
They were in the front room. Bulow stood in the doorway looking at them. The domesticity of the scene gave him his breath back and dried up his excuses. Dollomore sat in the armchair and Esther knelt on the floor. She held his knee with both hands cupped like paws. Only the table lamp had been lit: it stood at Dollomore’s side, shedding orange light on his waistcoat and her upturned face. The fire had burned to a warm heart and the cosy shadows wrapped them round and Dollomore who should have been saying, “Once upon a time,” and keeping it all in tune, was smiling short and letting her lay her cheek on his knee with the same ardent gesture—it looked to Bulow—as when she had fondled the plastic dimples of the cocktail bar.
He opened his mouth to speak, but Dollomore held up a peaceable hand, palm forward, above Esther’s head. There was no other reason to think he had seen, he went on smiling at the same point midway between himself and Bulow. “You must forgive an old man’s old-fashioned ideas, Mrs Bulow, but why haven’t you told your husband about your money troubles?”
“Arthur couldn’t help me.”
“It would have been kinder to tell him.”
She said, with her cheek on his knee, “Money is his religion.”
“Because he’s careful with it?”
“He doesn’t spend it, he dedicates it.”
Bulow could not speak, Dollomore lowered his warning hand. “If I do as you ask and settle your debts, little Mrs Bulow, you must do as I ask and tell your husband.”
“Oh, but I can’t! He’d kill me.”
Dollomore said, twinkling at nothing, “Of course he may be a little put out.”
She knelt upright, she didn’t see Bulow in the doorway, she was like a little dog begging, seeing only the hand to beg from. “I tell you he’ll kill me!”
“My dear, we’re agreed Bulow is a prudent man. I think you can rest assured he will only half kill you.”
She cried, “Why is it a joke?” but there was no getting by Dollomore’s cosy wall and she bowed her head, holding herself in her arms as if she were cold. “I’m afraid of him.”
“You needn’t be. Bulow knows his own strength.”
“There’s blood on his hands already. Why should he mind about shedding more? I can never forget it, never—” She was pulling her fingers down her cheeks, the light was too dim to see the marks from where Bulow stood. He saw them just the same and he knew before he heard it what she was going to say. But he did not need to believe, he would not—yet, there was no evidence yet.
“I dream about it—it always starts the same, driving along that road in the dark—I’ve never told anyone before—”
“Are you sure you should be telling me now?” said Dollomore.
“You think you know him, you think he’s what you see, like other men—”
“My dear, you mustn’t tell me the secrets of your marriage bed.”
“You’ve never seen him lose his temper, his eyes go red like a dog’s—”
Dollomore looked over her head at Bulow and for once they were in direct communication. It was wordless, but it was not unfriendly and Dollomore was the last person Bulow wanted as a friend.
“He wanted everything from me, you see—we weren’t married then—I’m going to tell you because it was my fault, I drove him to it, I drove him mad. If I’d given in to him it would never have happened. But women can’t be expected to know how men feel, can they?”
Her hands were back on Dollomore’s knee, spread now as if they were playing soft chords on the piano. “One night he stole a car and drove us to a lonely place—”
Bulow went back into the hall, opened the front door, slammed it and called out loudly, “Anybody home?”
Copyright
This ebook edition first pub
lished in 2014
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© A. L. Barker, 1963
Preface © Kate Jones, 2014
The right of A. L. Barker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–30562–9