Someone Lying, Someone Dying

by Burke, John

  “Darling, you know there’s no legal responsibility in this. We’ve already been told that. If you want to throw him out and say to hell with the gossip, we’ll stand by you. You know that. Even if there’s a lawsuit. Even if we lose…”

  “Yes,” he said, “I know. But you’ll have to leave it to me.”

  “Make him wait!” said Nell savagely. “Why is he so afraid of publicity? That’s what has triggered him off today. If he’s got something to hide, make him wait until it comes out into the open. Check with Rome, check with Palermo … and if there is something wrong, and there’s a chance of his nerve cracking…”

  “He’s Walter Blythe’s grandson,” said Arthur. “I’m sure of that. So are we all. So even if he’s been in prison or is wanted for pinching a tourist’s purse or raping someone’s daughter, it doesn’t affect the main issue. In fact, you could say that if in some ways he’s an undesirable character, it’s my father’s fault. The Johnsons are to blame for depriving him of the advantages he ought to have had. I’m sorry, love — you married into a bad family.”

  “I won’t let you say that.”

  “It’s my responsibility. I’ve got to try and do what’s right.” He said again: “You’ll have to leave it to me.”

  *

  Easter weekend was upon them with squalls and sunshine, cars and coaches and crowded trains. A Royal Marine band from Chatham played on the pier. From the promenade one got the impression that the band was striking pinched, tinny little echoes from the shore, but these were in fact the spluttering voices of a hundred transistor radios. At one point between the old town and the promenade the gusts of wind across the bay gave victory first to the smell of fresh fish, then to that of fried fish and chips.

  Brigid and Martin spent Friday in their new flat. The carpets had been delivered and the curtains were ready for hanging.

  There was a constraint between them which neither would admit. Brigid could not tell him of Peter’s accusation that someone in the hotel had for some reason gone through his luggage, yet everything else seemed trivial. She knew it was not true; but until the matter was brought out and settled it was not enough to know that it was not true, because in fact she didn’t know it wasn’t true. Her head ached.

  They manoeuvred the carpets into position. A few weeks ago they had been laughing delightedly at the prospect of these jobs and the eventual result. Now they worked in silence.

  Brigid was frightened. Even with the carpets down the place seemed hollow. It was empty, and it would never be filled. Martin had brought two margarine boxes filled with books and he set these out on the shelves built into the alcove where the room turned. But they did not belong.

  She and Martin would never live here.

  Her stomach turned over.

  “It’s all going to fall down.” She was startled to hear that she had cried it aloud.

  Martin patted two books into position. “You’re not accusing your father of being a jerry-builder?”

  “All of it,” she said. “Our life. It’s going to come to bits.”

  He came swiftly away from the bookshelves as though intent on striking her.

  He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. His hands were hard and firm but his voice was gentle.

  “Brigid … darling Brigid … what on earth are you talking about?”

  “It’s not going to work out.”

  “You’re raving, love. You’ve got to stop.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “You can help it.” His hands and voice tightened. “What’s all this about? If it’s something to do with that slimy little rat from Rome, or wherever…”

  “He’s not slimy.”

  “Isn’t he? You like him?”

  “I didn’t say…”

  “He’s been feeding you with some of his precious ideas, I suppose. He wants everything he can get out of the Johnson family — you included. And you don’t find him unattractive? Are you making excuses to yourself because you find him attractive — getting upset because you’re wondering how to break it to me, when you haven’t even got round to breaking it to yourself yet? Come on, be honest.”

  “Is that what you think?” she blazed at him.

  “What do you expect me to think?”

  For the first time, staggeringly, he shook her. She could not twist her shoulders away from him. He held on and shook her violently, possessively to and fro.

  “Martin…”

  “I don’t believe it,” he said. “I know I’m talking rubbish — but not nearly as much rubbish as you.” He wasn’t shouting at her. He was just steady and deliberate and utterly determined. “I don’t believe this Peter or Pietro can get anywhere near you — but I don’t want even a whisper of it. You belong to me.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “And you’ll stop talking nonsense.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know you’re upset, and this whole business is a pain in the neck. But it’s nothing to do with us. Not really with us — you and me. It’s not going to stop us getting married and living happily ever after.”

  Nuts to the prince coming back to claim his own, she thought.

  “Martin,” she said, “I do love you.”

  “Good.” At last he released her. “And now you can get on with those curtains.”

  “Yes, sir. Anything you say, sir.”

  The rest of the day was as it ought to be. If every now and then she felt that it wasn’t so simple to dismiss Peter Blythe and that he wasn’t as trivial as Martin would like him to be, she suppressed these doubts. And as to Peter’s luggage having been searched — no, that was a mistake. He had imagined it.

  Saturday dawned bright. The main road was a funnel decanting more and more visitors into Lurgate. It was impossible that the town should hold any more, yet still they poured in. The sensible thing was to stay indoors, but Bank Holiday weekends had a maddening lure — the awful drawing power of a really repulsive horror film.

  Brigid and Martin walked along the promenade, jostled against the rail or into the gutter. Lurgate was their home; they could stroll here more comfortably on any other Sunday during the year; but like so many of the local inhabitants they were sucked into the whirlpool of strangers.

  As they reached the entrance to the pier, Peter Blythe forced his way through the crowds to join them.

  “A friendly face!” he said. “Two friendly faces!”

  Martin looked stonily at him.

  Peter managed to insinuate himself between them, linking arms with Brigid and putting a conspiratorial hand on Martin’s shoulder.

  “We English must stick together!”

  He was drawing them off the promenade on to the wooden slats of the pier, with the dull yellow of sand and pebbles glinting up through the cracks. Martin came to a halt.

  “We don’t want to go along there.”

  “We try our skill, yes?”

  “It’s not a matter of skill,” said Martin. “All the games are loaded against you.”

  “Then we find a way of shifting the load. Come, I show you. We have the contest.”

  “Not for me.”

  “You do not enjoy losing?” said Peter gently.

  Brigid found that they were continuing along the pier, until the colour between the planks changed to a flickering bluish-green.

  Peter stopped to examine a fruit machine. He put in a penny and lost it. The next time, he won two pence. His progress was as slow as a child’s. He wanted to study everything. When they came to a rifle range, Martin said:

  “They’re badly balanced. You can’t work out the compensation.”

  Peter took a gun and fired three shots at random. Then he nodded. He spent a shilling, and won a plastic teddy-bear which he thrust into Brigid’s arms.

  Martin grimly took out some money. He lost.

  They began to play in ludicrous earnest. They rolled pennies, pulled levers, aimed wooden balls at crockery cats. Peter played with a wealth of flam
boyant gestures and sounds. He leaned over pennies and crooned at them in Italian, coaxed them, waved spells. His imprecations when he missed a shot or lost a coin might have been designed to cow the boards and machines into submission next time. He sang out in joy when he won. And it had to be admitted that he won — often.

  Martin was dogged and pessimistic. He did not abandon himself as Peter did. It was not that he was surly in defeat: he simply did not have Peter’s faith in luck and invocations, and so he lost more often. Brigid felt very fond of him because he was so completely and consistently Martin.

  At the same time she felt uneasy when she realised how much her acute awareness of him was due to Peter’s presence. When Peter went away — if he went away — perhaps everything would be dulled again; everything would return comfortably to normal.

  “No flea circus?” Peter was asking. His head bobbed inquiringly at Martin. “Not so much fun for you if there is no flea circus, I think. Brigid has told me how you love insects.”

  “Love?” said Martin gruffly. “I don’t know about that. They’re my job, that’s all. I spend my time finding ways of getting rid of them.”

  “Ah. A love-hate relationship. That is what the trick-cyclists say. We English” — he grimaced with his plump, sensual, very un-English lower lip — “are so strange, don’t you think? Animal lovers and animal killers.”

  They stopped, again prompted by Peter, at a fortune-telling machine. Martin drew the line at this, but Peter put in a penny and cheerfully watched the pointer spinning. A purple-printed card dropped into the tray. He picked it up and read it greedily.

  “I will meet a beautiful girl and be fortunate in a financial investment. But the tense is wrong.” He bowed to Brigid. “I have already met the beautiful girl.”

  “Let’s hope you’re luckier with your financial investment,” said Martin.

  “There is no reason why I should not have success with both.”

  “One very good reason,” said Martin: “me.”

  “You, too — you desire both?”

  “I’m marrying Brigid. That’s all that matters to me. Is that clear?”

  “Then why,” said Peter with the swiftness of a knife thrust into the ribs, “did you wish to find out about my claim — to learn what evidence I had? You or your mother, or both of you — so interested in my papers.”

  “I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.”

  “My room. You search my room.”

  “Now, just a minute…”

  “You go through my papers.”

  “Are you trying to be funny?”

  “I do not think it is funny.”

  Martin took a step towards him. Brigid gasped and tried to catch his arm but he shook her off. Peter laughed without mirth. Martin grabbed at him and, as he tried to dodge, got a grip on his tie. They lurched against a weighing machine. Its platform rattled.

  “Hey, you two…”

  A pink, plump woman with a moustache stamped along the echoing boarding. Over her shoulder was a leather satchel full of coppers which thumped and jangled against her as she walked.

  “Martin,” Brigid implored him. “Please. We’ve had enough publicity as it is.” This seemed to have more effect on Peter than on Martin. The two of them parted, and Peter turned resolutely away in the direction of the promenade.

  A middle-aged married couple wagged disapproving heads.

  “Some of them can’t keep off it. A couple of drinks and they’re away.”

  “It’s worse in Margate.”

  The sea bubbled and seethed in a spasm of skittish energy around the girders of the pier. The wood beneath Brigid’s feet trembled. She took Martin’s hand. They gave Peter a good start and then made their own way landwards.

  *

  On Sunday there was the usual teatime session. Mrs Hemming was taciturn. Martin tried to persuade her to bring out the wedding cake and show it to Brigid. When Brigid added her pleas, Mrs Hemming lashed out:

  “Are you sure you still need it?” Suppose, thought Brigid, I were to pick up her best teapot and throw it through the window and then run amok through the hotel and scare the daylights out of her guests: Oh, to horrify Mrs Hemming, who loved her hotel to be so quiet, who had fitted padded doors to the television lounge so that its mumble should not disturb guests who thought and felt and suffered as she did, and who took every precaution to muffle kitchen noises, the sound of lavatories flushing, and the chatter of staff in the corridors.

  Suppose I were to stamp and have tantrums, say I’ve had just about enough…

  No. She must stay calm. They would have their wedding and their two weeks in Malta far from these petty irritations, and could come back and close their own front door on other people’s moods and tempers and twitches.

  It was just a matter of holding on and not snapping.

  “I can’t stand it,” said Mrs Hemming abruptly. “It’s no good. I’ve got to speak out.”

  Brigid’s good resolves splintered. “If you’re still fretting about my grandfather … look, the murder wasn’t my idea. Nor the publicity we’ve been getting. Surely you’re not still holding that against me? And as for Peter Blythe, it’s not my doing that he came to Lurgate.”

  “You seem very partial to him. Going out for drives, and fixing things behind Martin’s back, I don’t doubt.”

  “Fixing things?”

  “Martin’s not going to be robbed.” Mrs Hemming choked on a hysterical sob. “I won’t have it.”

  “Mum.” Martin was terribly calm, with a warning anger just below the surface. “There’s never been any question of robbing me. I’m not marrying Brigid for her money. Just because this chap rolls up out of the blue and says he’s old Walter’s grandson, or Serafina’s, or whoever…”

  “Oh, he’s Serafina’s grandson all right, I reckon. Not much mistake about that.”

  Brigid gasped. “But I thought you didn’t believe…”

  “Not at first. Just couldn’t let myself. But it’s no good blinking it, is it? Only that’s not the point.”

  “Mum, you’ve got to stop this. I won’t have you carrying on in this way.” Martin’s anger reached the surface.

  “I don’t believe Walter Blythe ever did marry Serafina,” said his mother. “Not properly.” She pointed at him. “You’re Walter Blythe’s grandson — his proper one! You’re the one who was let down … you’re the one who ought to inherit.”

  To Nell the whole thing appeared to be moving rapidly into the realm of farce. Hastily summoned to Mrs Hemming’s neat, cramped sitting room, she found her attention straying from this new extravagance to the sober reality of the darkly patterned wallpaper, the lumpy old radio set and the glass-fronted corner cupboard. She had to make an effort to concentrate. Arthur would expect a coherent report from her.

  He had been called away an hour earlier by the vicar of a village four miles inland who had asked if there was a chance of a chat with him before or after evensong. Or, if not today, tomorrow. The subject was a Georgian house threatened by what the vicar considered to be an unnecessary safety measure mooted by the R.D.C. They wanted to pull the house down because it was a danger to traffic on a sharp corner and was liable to collapse. The vicar thought the danger lay in the traffic and the corner itself, not in the house. He sought expert advice with which to confound the Philistines.

  Even in a time of stress like the present one, such an appeal could not fail to bring Arthur galloping to the rescue. He had set out before this fresh development in the Blythe saga was reported by Brigid. Nell had to stand in for him.

  Concentrate. She must concentrate. Mrs Hemming was saying: “I’ve already told you that I accept him being Serafina’s grandson. I’m not arguing that. But Peter Blythe — I don’t reckon he’s got the right to call himself that. Serafina didn’t come to this country till five years after Walter Blythe married my mother.”

  “You mean” — Nell was still incapable of formulating the relevant questions, and Brigid was doing it
for her — “Walter Blythe was your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were alive, then, when he came to Lurgate and went into partnership with Victor Johnson?”

  “No.”

  “No, of course not.” Brigid thought this over. “Everyone would have known about you. We’d have heard before this. But if he had one wife, and then brought Serafina here, didn’t people…”

  “My mother didn’t come to Lurgate with him,” said Mrs Hemming stiffly. “He … he’d left her before he set up in business here. She didn’t know where he’d gone.”

  Nell shook herself into alertness. She said: “Then how could he be your father?”

  “She found him again. And he’d had enough of Serafina by then, and between them he and my mother started to make plans. And when he knew I was on the way,” she said with a defiant jerk of the head, “he decided to leave.”

  Nell found herself looking at Martin’s white, incredulous face.

  He said: “Mum, are you sure you know what you’re saying? You’ve never told me a word of this.”

  “Any more than my mother told me, till she felt it was right I ought to know. Oh, I’m sure of what I’m saying, all right.”

  Now that she was launched, Mrs Hemming wasted no words. There were no frills, no embellishments. Not like the sideboard runner with its tassels, not like her lace doilies, not like the bobbles on her cushions and the blue chenille tablecloth which, she had once told Nell, had been her mother’s favourite.

  “My mother,” she said, “married Walter Blythe when he hadn’t a penny to his name. It was in North Wales, some way inland from Pwllheli. Lonely in those days, and they didn’t have much contact with the outside world. If someone went off into England, it could be the last you’d ever hear of them. The country’s shrunk a lot since then.”

  Walter Blythe had worked in the slate quarries and then set up in a small way as a jobbing builder. He was shrewd and energetic, and he had a flair — he was a cocky man, more ambitious and more inventive than most of the folk among whom he had been brought up. The valley wouldn’t hold him. He grew restless. He made one or two forays out of Wales into the English Midlands in search of brighter opportunities. His wife was not anxious to move. They had belonged to this one community for ages, and she disliked the idea of change. People who went away tended to get lost. Awful things could happen to them. Men who went off to Liverpool promised they’d be back rolling in money; but a lot of them were never seen again, and very few of them ever brought any money back to their parents or sent as much as a letter to say they were all right. And as for those who went off to London — well, it wasn’t much better than going to sea and off to the ends of the earth.