by Nina Bawden
She tossed her small head. She looked as proud as Lucifer but she was badly frightened. It showed in the way she stood, very straight and still with her arms pressed tightly against her sides.
I said gently, hating the thought of the things I had got to say to her, “There’s no question of getting rid of you. I’m here because Mrs. Stone is an old friend of mine. You mustn’t worry because I’m a solicitor. That doesn’t come into it.”
She said, “Oh, no?” but she sounded uncertain. Her skin was the skin of childhood still, soft and firm and unpuckered round the eyes. I thought that she wore no make-up.
I said, “Won’t you sit down? It might help if we could talk about this.”
She looked at me warily, her glance unexpectedly percipient. It made her look for the moment less young, but only in the way that a child will look suddenly un-innocent and old when it thinks of some special naughtiness.
Then she sat down obediently on the extreme edge of a chair. She was holding a large black handbag; she clutched it tightly to her as if it were a shield.
I sat down too and felt for my pipe, grateful for the business of filling the bowl and lighting up. I asked her if she minded my pipe but she stared blankly at me and did not answer. When it was alight I said unhappily, “This must be very distressing for you, Miss Blacker. Are you quite sure about the child?”
She said, “I’m going to have a baby and I know whose it is.” The words sounded as if she had rehearsed them. She looked away from me with a sudden, flouncing movement of her head which might have been embarrassment or deliberate rudeness, I could not tell which. Her face, in profile, was quite lovely. The nose was short and straight, the mouth and chin full and moulded with a childish roundness.
Looking at her, I felt a brute. I said, “Mrs. Stone says that her husband wrote you some letters. Have you got them with you?”
She nodded and I said, “I think you had better show them to me. You were going to let Mrs. Stone read them, weren’t you?”
She opened the black bag and took out a fat envelope. She handed it to me silently; the astonishing eyes stared at me without any expression at all.
Inside the envelope there were six letters, each of them addressed in the handwriting that I knew too well to be able to think that someone else might have addressed them. I felt panic, knowing that up to this moment I had half-believed that the whole thing was a mistake, that Humphrey could have had nothing to do with this girl. Now I knew that I did not want to read the letters, that I would give anything not to have to read them.
The postmarks were clear. The first five letters were dated in January and early February, the sixth had been posted in July. I opened the earliest letter.
It began, “My own beloved,” and it ended, “I adore you, Humphrey.” It was a love letter of a kind that I had never written nor ever felt the desire to write. It was, in parts, lyrical, in parts unashamedly carnal. It was entirely tender and sincere. It was Humphrey’s letter, not only because of the signature and the writing but because of the way the sentences were put together. It could not possibly have been a forgery.
When I had finished reading I felt that I had pried into something that was not for me to see. I read three more of the letters and they were as completely and utterly damning as the first had been. I felt both anger that Humphrey should have been such a fool as to have written the letters and also a kind of envy that he should have felt so deeply for any woman, in a way that I had never felt. I felt as dry as a stick and oddly old.
In the fourth letter Humphrey had quoted a seventeenth-century poet I had always found specially moving. “Thinke upon me as long as it is pleasant and convenient to you to doe so, and afterwards forget me …”
I put the letters down in my lap and stared at the girl with a kind of wonder. There was a nervous brittle smile on her mouth and it made her look pert and a little vulgar. I felt suddenly and absurdly angry that she should have been so little moved by the letters that had been written to her that she should, so easily, have given them to a stranger to read. I told myself that in the circumstances I was being more than unjust, but the anger did not go.
She said, “There’s another letter. The one he wrote after I’d told him about the baby.” She might have been offering me a cake at a tea party.
I said, “How long have you known about the child?”
“About two months. I didn’t tell him till I was sure.”
“These letters. The first ones. They were all written about eight months ago. At the beginning of the year.”
She said, with an expression that was completely innocent and without guile, “There wasn’t any need for him to write letters after that.”
The last letter was very short. Humphrey said that he would like to see her. He suggested that they should meet that week, on her afternoon off. There was no mention of the day on which she had her half-holiday; presumably they had met at that time before.
I put the letters back into the big envelope and gave them to her.
“Did you meet him?” I said.
She said, “I had to.” She was twisting the dark stuff of her skirt between her fingers. She said that she had met Humphrey and they had had tea. Then they had driven out of the town and he had stopped the car in a lane. She had told him about the baby. He suggested that she went to see a man in London. He was safe, he said, a good doctor. He made her write down the address. The fee would be fifty pounds and she must take it with her.
I said fighting my own horror and disbelief, “Did you go to London?”
She burst into tears. She cried violently, her hands shielding her face. I got up from my chair and walked about the room wondering if she were going to have hysterics and if I ought to give her a drink. Then she stopped crying and looked up, shaking the cropped dark hair from her face. The tears had barely marked her cheeks but her eyes were shimmering with them.
She said, “I went to see the man like he said. I don’t think he was a doctor at all. He had dirty hands. He told me to take my clothes off and lie on a couch. I said I wouldn’t, not while he was there, and he laughed and went out of the room. I ran away before he came back. I couldn’t stay. It would have been a mortal sin.”
She spoke so quietly that I could barely hear what she said. Her head was turned away from me.
I said, “Did you tell Mr. Stone what had happened? And where did you get the money for this visit? Do you say that Mr. Stone gave it to you?”
She sat very still. She said, “He did give it to me. He gave me fifty pounds.”
It was growing dark in the room and I turned on the light. In the harsh glare she looked tired and pale and young. She said, without anger, “He won’t get away with it. He needn’t think he will.”
I said, “You know, it doesn’t do any good, talking like that. It won’t help either of you if this thing is made public.”
“The baby’s going to be public, isn’t it? You mean it won’t do him any good, don’t you?”
She sounded slightly American as though she were seeing herself as a character in a Hollywood film.
“I quite understand how you must feel.” The words I had said seemed to be totally empty of meaning. I went on, “But you haven’t proved that the child is Mr. Stone’s. It isn’t as easy as all that.”
She stared at me and then she said in a dead sort of voice, “Don’t you believe me? I thought that if you read the letters you would believe me.”
Her bewilderment was honest and pathetic and I felt a swine.
I said, “You don’t understand me. I don’t disbelieve you but I haven’t heard what Mr. Stone has to say. Don’t you see?” I hoped that I didn’t sound as if I were pleading with her.
She did not speak for a moment. She looked wretched. She said, “What am I going to do? What will my mother say?”
I said, “Doesn’t your mother know?”
She shook her head. “She isn’t my real mother. She’ll kill me when she knows. She’s always expected me to turn out bad.�
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If the words had not been delivered so flatly I might have thought she was being consciously dramatic. But she seemed to mean them, to be without thought of their effect.
I said, with a kind of hollow briskness, “Come, come. You mustn’t talk like that. Though I’ve no doubt your mother will be angry with you. It wouldn’t be natural for her not to be. But I expect she’ll help you when she’s over the first shock.”
She looked at me as if she didn’t really see me. She seemed to shrink into herself. Her eyes were wide and bright and staring.
She said, “She adopted me. Gran brought me to Somer-hurst during the bombing. Then she died and Mother looked after me. She didn’t want to but the neighbours would have talked if she hadn’t. They all said how good she was to keep me and that I ought to be grateful to her. I am truly I am. But sometimes I think she really hates me. That’s an awful thing to say, isn’t it? And nobody guesses she’s like that. They all think she’s wonderful to have looked after me when my own mother didn’t want to. That’s what she tells everyone. That my own mother didn’t want me. But it isn’t true. She makes it all up.”
She was shivering although the room was hot. Her eyes were big and blacker than ever with fear and her hands, in her lap, were shaking violently.
She said, “Please, you must believe me. I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t had to.” She put her hands to her face for perhaps half a minute and when she took them away her voice was steadier.
“I shan’t be able to pay for the baby myself, shall I?” she said.
I said, “If Mr. Stone accepts responsibility for the child you won’t have to worry about that.”
There was a look of cupidity on her face. “He’d better. I’ve got his letters,” she said.
She gave me a quick look and added hurriedly, “I shouldn’t have said that, should I? But I’m so frightened. You’ve been ever so kind to me. I’m ever so grateful, really I am. But what’s going to happen to me?”
There was fear in her voice and in her eyes, her words were a cry from the depths of the terror that held her. I wondered why she was so very frightened. I was almost sure that it wasn’t entirely because of the baby. She turned her face away from me and I looked at the lovely line of her cheek and wished angrily that she seemed more of a slut. Less pitiable.
I said, speaking more harshly than I meant to because I was angry with myself, “There is nothing else we can do now. I’ll talk to Mr. Stone and we’ll get in touch with you.”
She smiled her meaningless, bright smile. She said, “Thank you,” like a polite child and got up from her chair. I opened the door for her and she went out. The front door was open and she crossed the hall and left the house without looking back. She went quickly across the quad. I could see her bright blouse against the dark stone of the archway and then she was gone.
I closed the hall door and went back into the drawing-room. I felt very tired. I wished I hadn’t got to see Celia and talk to her. As she came running down the stairs and into the room I almost resented her.
Breathless, she said, “Will, is it all right? I’ve been with the children. They’re awake. It’s so difficult to get them to sleep these light evenings. Robin wanted you to go up and see his fish but I told him you were going home. What happened? What did she say? Is it all a mistake?”
I said, “Celia, I’m dead tired. Have you got a drink?”
It wasn’t so much the drink I wanted as a respite in which I need not talk.
She said, instantly remorseful, “How stupid of me, Will. What would you like? We’ve got whisky but no soda. The children finished it this afternoon, so I know. I think there may be some gin, but not much.”
I wanted to tell her not to chatter so. I said, “Whisky, please. I don’t like soda. You get the whisky and I’ll get the water.”
She protested. She got out the bottle and two glasses and went to the kitchen for water. She poured out the drinks, putting in too much water so that the glasses were slopping over. She had always been rather clumsy and now, suddenly, it irritated me. Some of the whisky had spilled on to the carpet and I cleaned it up with my handkerchief.
She sat down in a chair with her thin legs curled beneath her. She looked anxious and unhappy and plain. She said, “Is it all right, Will?”
“No, of course it isn’t.” I wondered if I sounded snappish. “We shall have to hear what Humphrey has to say and find out a bit more about the girl. She comes from a respectable family. She’s not out of the gutter. And she’s not much more than a child. She’s got some damaging evidence. Those letters that she told you about.”
“They were really from Humphrey?” She sounded incredulous; she hadn’t believed it. “Are you quite sure, Will? What were they about?”
I looked hard at my glass. “They were from Humphrey all right. There isn’t any doubt. They were love letters.”
She said, “Oh, God!” and the bright colour flooded her face and throat. Then she said, “If this thing has to come out will Humphrey lose his job?”
I said, “Yes, I’m afraid so.” There was no point in saying anything else.
She said, without any expression in her voice, “You know a lot of people would like to see him go.”
I said, quickly, “Nonsense,” but I knew that it wasn’t nonsense. I realised, with some surprise, that I had always known that Humphrey was unpopular with a great many people. I had never admitted it to myself before.
She said, “The governors don’t like him. He’s never tactful, he doesn’t even try to be. Sometimes he’s almost rude. He seems to enjoy making himself disliked—in that way he’s like Piers. He behaved badly to old Purbright the other day. I know he’s a funny old boy but he’s important and he’s very interested in the School. He came to tea and he talked about classics. It wasn’t awfully interesting but he meant well. We haven’t had a classical scholarship for years now—he was much too polite to mention it outright but you could tell he was wondering why. Humphrey got impatient with him and in the end he was downright rude. He said he thought we had all grown out of respecting dead empires that hadn’t been able to keep themselves alive. It was a silly thing to say, worse than silly. The old man was upset but Humphrey went on baiting him for the fun of it and afterwards, when he got angry and went away, Humphrey said that it didn’t matter. That he was a foolish old man and a bore. But Humphrey is foolish too. If anything happens Purbright won’t stick up for him now and that’s important. He’ll need people to stick up for him.”
Her eyes were angry and bright. I had never heard her criticise Humphrey before and it gave me an uneasy feeling.
I said, “If this thing comes out Humphrey will have to go anyway. And he’s not been a bad Head. You know that.”
She said violently, almost with malice, “You could never see any wrong in him, could you?”
I felt a sudden shame as though I had been detected in something ridiculous, and mixed with the shame there was anger against her for making my feeling for Humphrey sound so undiscriminating.
I said, feeling hurt and dignified, “I think I could, Celia.”
She was swiftly contrite. “I’m sorry, Will. It was beastly of me.” She apologised like a schoolgirl and she was genuinely sorry. She was entirely feminine and as changeable as spring weather.
My anger died. I said gently, “There isn’t anything to be sorry about.”
Then she said, “Will, couldn’t we get hold of those letters? Pay her for them, or something?”
I was shocked, “Good God, of course not. What an immoral thing to say!” As soon as I had spoken the indignation sounded slightly ridiculous.
She said, pettishly, “You mean illegal, don’t you?” Then she looked as if she were hating herself and said, “Will everyone have to know?”
I told her. “We usually manage to arrange these things. It’s only if the arrangement doesn’t suit both parties that the thing goes to court. But even if that doesn’t happen it’ll probably get out. These thing
s do.”
She started to cry wearily. “Isn’t it awful? I ought to be feeling sorry for her but I can’t. I hate her and I hate Humphrey and I hate myself.” She ended in a wail, like a child.
I could not bear to watch her cry. Not that I was in love with her any more but I had been, once, half in love with her and that left a kind of legacy. I got up from my chair and gave her my handkerchief. I said, “Dear, don’t cry.” I had forgotten that my handkerchief was soaked in whisky; she held it to her eyes and handed it back to me. She was almost laughing now and the tears were still running down her face.
She said, “How beastly. I shouldn’t have let you use it as a floorcloth. Oh, Will, I’m so afraid of what Humphrey will say.”
I said, “There’s no need for you to be.” But I knew what she meant. I was afraid myself.
She looked at me with pink-rimmed eyes. “You won’t desert us, will you?”
I said, “This isn’t my line of country. I can find you a much better man.” That was true enough; this wasn’t the kind of nastiness I usually dealt with and I wanted nothing to do with it. But I think I was a little surprised to find how strongly I felt about it.
She clutched at my hand with hot fingers and held it tightly. “Will, you must promise me.”
I didn’t want her to touch me; it was with a conscious effort that I did not pull my hand away. I said, “I can’t promise anything.” There was swift accusation in her eyes.
“You’re sorry for her,” she said. “I ought to have known you would be. You’ve always copied Humphrey, haven’t you? Are you in love with her too?”
She was being unfair and absurd but all the same I felt treacherous and guilty, conscious that I had been, in some way, disloyal.
She said, with contempt, “You don’t want to soil your hands, do you, Will? You never have, have you? Things like this don’t happen to your kind of client. But Humphrey is your friend, Will. Have you condemned him already?”
I felt a fastidious fool. I said miserably, “Don’t be an idiot. I’ll look after the thing if you really want me to. I only meant that there are other people with more experience.”