by Nina Bawden
He said, ‘Of course, if that’s what you would like,’ but he was being cautious, not grudging. His enthusiasm was stirring, confined only by his physical tiredness. He was perfectly willing to talk it over with Lester who was bluff, rather awkward, at dinner, and gave them both more than they wanted to drink.
Before he went to bed, he said, ‘Some of the chaps in my squadron went out to Australia. I heard from one of them about a year ago—a very decent chap called Duffy Jones. When we get back to the flat, I’ll look out his letter.’
Chapter Nineteen
The next morning they went to town with Lester, breakfasting on the train. The sun shone, rooted, through the greasy windows and the coffee spurted erratically out of the pot. The country was full of wind and sun and ripening corn.
Mary had been persuaded to take the morning off and was subdued by some conscientious worry and a slight resentment: neither Johnny nor Lester appeared to think her job of any importance. Johnny was clear-eyed and cheerful as if the journey were taking him further than a London main line station, into a new world of expanding, even romantic possibilities. Any reservations he may have had the evening before had comfortably receded. Action, even of a rather limited kind, always acted on him as a stimulant. Nothing could be arranged about his appointment today; Lester’s contact was in New York at a business conference, but they had decided to get rid of the flat and Johnny was going to see an estate agent. The house was Clara’s now but the lease of the flat, since Christine had intended Johnny should live there rent free, was presumably at his disposal. In Lester’s opinion, it should fetch some four or five thousand pounds. Mary thought this a large and quite unexpected sum of money but to Lester and Johnny it apparently seemed nothing out of the way and was, in fact, barely distinguishable from poverty. Johnny’s income, during his apprenticeship, would not be large and they would have to find accommodation in a university town.
‘Australia is expensive too,’ Lester said. ‘I believe there are company houses, but one imagines you would want something a little better.’
His emphatic tones depressed Mary. Nothing very new was happening after all. Johnny would naturally carry a certain amount of vested privilege into the new world.
She said, ‘But it’s Clara’s money, really. Naturally Christine didn’t want us to pay rent to her. But that isn’t the same thing as selling the flat and pocketing the money, is it?’
‘But of course, Clara wouldn’t hear of anything else,’ Lester said, surprised. He smiled at Mary benevolently. ‘My dear girl, don’t worry. Clara has enough. She’s not exactly a wildly extravagant girl.’
‘I’m not just concerned with her,’ Mary said stubbornly. She realized that she hated talking about money to Lester, partly because he had been so generous and partly because, on this occasion, her objections were in the region of superstition rather than reason.
‘I think we ought to start from scratch,’ she said. ‘A clean break. …’
Their raised eyebrows, Johnny’s amused, and Lester’s simply uncomprehending, angered her. She said, ‘Don’t you see—everything—all this dreadful mess and muddle has happened because, in a way, we’ve been hanging on to a sinking ship.’ She hesitated, not quite sure how to put it, not even sure what she wanted to say, but feeling that she was groping uncertainly after the hub of the matter. She said pleadingly, ‘If he takes this money, he’ll take a lot of other things with it. Isn’t the best thing just to leave everything—jump overboard and swim for the shore?’
It was a mistake to get carried away by a picturesque image. Johnny laughed at her. ‘Aren’t you being rather sentimental? Money isn’t a symbol of anything.’
Lester thought he understood her better. ‘Hair shirts aren’t necessary, Mary,’ he said, and lit a cigar. His gaze flickered over her flushed face with restless indifference and his voice was cold. She saw he had no intention of arguing with her. He was doing his best for Johnny and would enter dutifully into any discussion of practical arrangements but there his interest ended. Perhaps at the back of his mind was the thought that he would soon not only be rid of Johnny, but also of Johnny’s wife—rid of her boring, suburban squeamishness for ever.
He would only have one regret. He talked about Australia for the rest of the journey with the enthusiasm of someone who is not ever likely to go there; the weather was wonderful, the people were marvellously friendly, Johnny would be able to keep up his tennis. He laid these attractions before them like a bribe of sweets. The careful benevolence of his attitude cracked only once. As the train drew into the station he looked out of the window and said, ‘Of course—we shall miss the boy.’
The flat had a sour, unkempt smell and the sun shining through the windows made everything look dirty. Mary started to clean up a little and grew discouraged. She collected a couple of suitcases and began, slowly, to pack her things. There was less personal stuff than she had expected. She packed photographs of Martin and some of his remaining toys, but the clothes in his cupboard were outgrown. She found paper and string and made them into a parcel and then wondered what to do with it. A little later, she came across a pile of Charles’s vintage jazz records stuffed away under some dirty linen in a corner. He had brought them round one evening to play to her and forgotten them. Some of them were in a case but others were loose and one or two had been broken.
She moved them onto a bed where they would be safer, though she was aware of a deep, shrinking unwillingness to accept responsibility for them. After a while, she put them into a spare suitcase and kicked it under the bed with a sudden, sharp anger. It was hateful to be reminded of anything except the one thing she wanted to remember, her body’s pleasure; the memory of a cheap, animal satisfaction that could be divorced from everything else, from kindness and gentleness and silly, loving laughter, and used to bank up the fire of her self-hatred and bitter scorn.
Johnny came in suddenly and stood at the door of the bedroom.
He said, ‘It’s a mess, isn’t it?’ Though he spoke brightly, his eyes roamed with an almost affected sadness as though he felt he should be grieving for something. She tried to imagine how he must be feeling. ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing much to do, really.’
‘Don’t try to spare me things,’ he said with perfect good humour. ‘Hadn’t we better get a woman in to smarten things up a bit? We want to impress prospective customers.’
‘I suppose so. Or I could come back this evening. I’ll have to go to the office after lunch.’
‘Do you have to? As things are, wouldn’t it be more sensible to pack it in now? If we’re moving away from London, is there any point in carrying on?’
‘Eight pounds a week worth of point,’ she said obstinately.
‘That won’t buy much gin.’
She saw this was a remark in self-defence. ‘Perhaps not.’ She smiled at him. ‘How did you get on?’
‘I went to Harrods.’ He went into details with a brisk self-confidence. Selling property was a straightforward, gentlemanly business, as long as it was your own. ‘They think there shouldn’t be much delay. It’s a good address.’
‘Desirable home for exiled foreign nobility?’
He grinned briefly but his voice was serious. ‘I think we can afford to hold out for a good price. I left them my key.’
‘How did you get in, then?’
‘You left the door on the latch.’ He paused. ‘I wasn’t going to come. Then I remembered the gun. It can’t stay here. Might give some elderly dowager a fright.’
He dragged a gimcrack gilt chair over to the wall and climbed up, feeling in the dark, old-fashioned air vent where he had hidden it. It was a Mauser, a small, nasty little weapon that should have been handed over to the police years ago. Mary had never understood why Johnny had kept it and had always been nervous, not only because she was afraid Martin would find it but because she thought of guns as alien and frightening. She had always hated the shotguns at Fitchet, kept in a glass-fronted cas
e in the library.
Johnny jumped down from the chair, holding the gun wrapped in an oily rag. He undid it carefully and peered into the barrel. ‘It’s probably got damp,’ he said.
‘Don’t play with it. It might go off.’
‘Don’t be a blithering ass.’ He held it to his temple, laughing. ‘Russian roulette?’
‘Don’t.’
‘All right.’ He fondled it lovingly, his eyes teasing her. ‘I suppose I ought to dismantle it and chuck the pieces over a cliff or something. It’s hardly the sort of thing for an emigrant to take in his luggage.’
‘No.’
He sighed regretfully. ‘It seems a pity. It’s a pretty little thing.’
‘I wouldn’t say so. Do put it away.’
‘Sorry. I’m being foul. I know you hate the things.’ He put it on the bed and smiled affectionately at her. ‘How far have you got?’
‘Nearly finished. There wasn’t much, really. Only a few of my clothes and Martin’s. I took all your things down to Fitchet. What will you do with the furniture?’
‘Harrods think we should leave it here until we’ve made a sale. Then we can use some of it, I suppose? I daresay some of the pieces can be sold. Or do they belong to Clara? I don’t know.…’ He wandered round the room, glancing at the pictures. ‘There are one or two things that I’d like to keep. A couple of the Sickert drawings, anyway. And the Birkett Foster. Grandfather gave it to me when I was about Martin’s age. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ The purposeful gusto that enlivened him suddenly wearied her. ‘I don’t care really,’ she said honestly. ‘You decide.’
He looked surprised, faintly hurt. ‘All right then. But not now. You look tired.’ He was suddenly gentle. ‘Finish the packing and we’ll have an early lunch. Then you can go back to your office if you’re so keen to.’ He looked at the folded clothes on the bed. ‘Do you want another suitcase?’
He bent down and dragged the case out from under the bed.
‘Not that one,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s got records in it.’
‘Rum place to keep records,’ he said mildly. ‘Shouldn’t there be another case under the stairs?’
‘I’ll get it,’ she said. She felt stupidly confused. She went out of the bedroom into the drawing-room. The door to the tiny hall and the stairs that led up to the ground floor was open and the main street door must be open too, she thought, because she could hear the rumble of traffic. And someone was coming down the stairs.
It was Charles. He stood in the doorway, rather pale, smiling, his eyes warily uncertain of his welcome but brimming over with light.
‘I rang your office,’ he said. ‘I’m in town for the day. They said you were here.’
She stood staring at him; he felt nervous in a way he had not felt for a long time. ‘Darling,’ he said quickly, and held out his hand. Then he looked up, over her shoulder, and saw Johnny standing behind her.
Mary said stiffly, ‘I’ve just found your records. It’s lucky you came, in another ten minutes we’d have been gone.’
Ten minutes later, she thought, and the door would have been shut and Charles would have gone on to his lecture or his exhibition or to meet his new girl—to do whatever it was he did now, in the life he lived apart from her.
‘I’ll get them,’ she said. Her mouth felt harsh and dry.
‘Records?’ Johnny said.
‘Yes. Charles lent them to me. Jazz records.’
‘I didn’t know you liked jazz.’
She thought she had never taken part in such a meaningless conversation. She tried to smile. ‘Well, I do,’ she said. She turned at the door of the bedroom, the smile fixed as a mask,
They were both watching her. Johnny with his elliptical eyes narrowed, Charles, helpless and appalled—so guilty that he looked physically ill. She saw the deep gulf between them. Whatever had happened to him, Johnny still trod the ground in armour; not righteousness but a steady awareness of right, sheltered him like steel. Charles would have looked exactly as he did, as shocked and ashamed, if he had been in Johnny’s shoes. It was the anguish of the situation that tore him; he would feel guilty whether he was in the right or in the wrong.
Johnny followed her. He said, ‘So it was Charles, was it?’
There was no point in pretending to misunderstand him; he had only to look at Charles’s face.
‘Yes.’ She bent over the suitcase, pretending to have difficulty fastening the lock. She was more embarrassed than afraid. Johnny would not make a scene, his gentlemanly forbearance would protect them all. ‘I told you it was over,’ she whispered.
‘Johnny,’ Charles said from the drawing-room, ‘I’d like to …’
‘Keep out of this, Franks.’ Johnny had raised his voice no more than a fraction but it was as shocking as a bellow on the barrack square. He closed the door of the bedroom and said to Mary, coldly and softly, ‘You told me he was a gentleman.’
She looked up, frozen with astonishment. Johnny’s face, equally frozen, stared back at her. Hysterically, she began to laugh: she heard her own laughter as if it were muffled by deep, black water, like the laughter of a drunken sailor might sound to a drowning man just pitched out of the boat.
Then Johnny’s face changed. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Christ …’ He dragged the suitcase off the bed, tipped the contents onto the floor and stamped on them with the crude violence of an angry child. Briefly, it seemed that this was all it was, a child’s helpless rage at some tormenting inadequacy. But when he lifted his face, it was ravaged, his mouth distorted. He glared at her. ‘He’s a bloody Jew,’ he shouted.
She laughed again, wildly; it was the worst thing she could have done. He went white, swore under his breath, grabbed something off the bed and ran into the drawing-room, tearing the door open and slamming it shut behind him. She heard him shouting, caught her breath and cried out, ‘Johnny, for heaven’s sake.’ She wrenched at the door. It stuck, it always stuck when you slammed it tightly, she remembered. Someone cried out in the room beyond and she flung her weight backwards, clinging to the handle. The door came open with a burst, almost throwing her backwards.
Charles was lying on the floor by the fireplace and Johnny was kneeling beside him. What she saw first was the blood.
‘There’s always a lot of blood from a face wound,’ Johnny said.
The flesh was laid open on Charles’s cheekbone. She said, horrified, ‘Did you shoot him?’
Johnny made a queer sound in his throat that could almost have been a chuckle. ‘My dear girl—d’you think I’d keep a gun loaded? No—I chucked it at him. He lost his balance, hit his head on the fender.’
She took Johnny’s handkerchief from his breast pocket and tried to wipe Charles’s face. His eyes were closed. The blood was so dark and thick that it looked like sauce, pumping in thick, sticky spurts into his tangled hair. The sun, stretching across the carpet, almost reached his hair. Johnny was holding his limp wrist and feeling the pulse. Everything was very quiet and still. Nothing seemed real.
Johnny said, ‘King George the Fifth.’ She looked up, incredulous, and realized that he meant the nearest hospital. ‘I’ll get a taxi,’ he said. He looked drained and ill.
The whole thing couldn’t have taken much more than five minutes. Johnny was telephoning. She went on, dabbing at the blood with her handkerchief, not feeling anything, not daring to raise his head and the blood went on coming, soaking into the Persian rug. Johnny came back with a blanket and laid it carefully over him. He said, ‘They’re sending an ambulance. We’ve got to keep him warm.’
Charles’s breathing was light, his face pale and sweaty under the blood. Johnny fetched a towel and folded it into a pad and held it against his face. The blood ran underneath it in dark streaks down his cheek towards his ear.
Johnny said, ‘I could cut off my right hand.’
She said, ‘It was an accident. He fell. It’s just a flesh wound on his face. He hurt himself on the fender.’
> ‘Does it matter?’ His voice was anguished. ‘I knocked him over—he may have cracked his skull. I may have killed him.’
‘Don’t talk like that.’ She was astounded to find she was thinking quite clearly. They did not seem to be talking about Charles. ‘Don’t let anyone hear you say that,’ she said. ‘It’s important to say the right thing.’
‘For my sake?’ he said in a shocked voice. She looked at him and saw that he was shocked: his face was set and his mouth taut with angry pride.
‘Don’t be so bloody grand and noble,’ she said. ‘Do you want to finish yourself now? It wouldn’t do any good. What do you want to do? Go to the police and own up? Please, sir, it was me broke the window with my little tennis ball.’
‘Are you mad?’
‘No,’ she said desperately. ‘No. Listen … please, Johnny … there may not be much time. Leave it to me, I beg of you. I’ll tell them … you had a silly quarrel … he fell …’
He wasn’t listening. He wasn’t looking at her. It was as if she didn’t exist. He stood up, his face pinched, ‘Dear God, where is that ambulance?’ He ran up the stairs.
He was back almost at once. ‘They’re here. It’s going to be hell getting him up those stairs.’
Two men followed him with a stretcher. They laid it beside Charles and eased him carefully onto it. One of them lifted the soaked towel; the other felt his pulse.
‘Easy does it.’ The staircase was narrow. One of the men was fat and sweating like a bull. She took Johnny’s hand as they followed the stretcher and he let her hold it, though his fingers gave no answering pressure.
At the door he said, ‘You go. I’ll stay here.’
‘No.’
‘Go with him,’ he almost shouted, pushing her down the steps and towards the rear of the ambulance.