The Odd Flamingo

by Nina Bawden

  She said, “I don’t. I picked him up outside. He dropped his card on the pavement and I helped him look for it. He’s tight.”

  She smiled at me in the way I remembered. She said,

  “Do you want to talk to your Humphrey? I won’t stay if you do.”

  I shook my head a moment too late. She said, “There are some people that I know over there.” She jerked her head in the direction of the dance floor. She turned to go and then she stopped a moment and said in a voice that was wholly serious, “It’s nice to see you again, Willy dear.”

  She sounded as though she meant it and she left me shaken by an almost forgotten emotion so that when Humphrey came back with the drinks I did not notice him until he said,

  “Penny for them, Will? Where’s the girl? You’d better have her drink.”

  He put a whisky in front of me and drank his own quickly, as if he had needed it. His movements were quick and nervous, his grey eyes unnaturally clear and bright. When he spoke the vowels were slurred a little as though he had been drinking a good deal.

  He said, “D’you know that girl? Not your type at all, Will. Nasty little bit of goods, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  I didn’t want to talk to him about Kate. I said, as casually as I could, “I knew her once. Do you?”

  He frowned. “I don’t think so. The face is familiar. I suppose I must have seen her about. I picked her up outside.” Then he gave me a sober look. “Everything all right, Will? Nothing wrong at home?”

  My mouth was dry. I said, “There is something. A girl. Her name’s Rose Blacker.” I gulped at my drink and finished it. “She went to see Celia last night. Celia rang me up and asked me to go down to the School.”

  I had been prepared for surprise and perhaps indignation. He did, in fact, go white and the lines round his mouth tightened angrily but it did not seem, somehow, that he was more than annoyed. Indeed, after a moment, his face relaxed and he looked almost relieved as though he had been expecting something worse. I did not understand why he should look like this; at first I thought that he was taking the news too lightly and it angered me. He said, “Damn her. Why did she have to do that? What good did she think it would do?”

  I said coldly, “Don’t you know why she went? She’s going to have your child. She went to see Celia because she couldn’t see you.”

  He said, “My child? And you believed her, Will?”

  I said, “It was difficult not to believe her. She had some letters you had written to her.”

  That went home. He said, “She gave them to you to read?” He put his hands across his eyes; his anger and humiliation were almost tangible. He said, “We can’t talk in here. Let’s get out of it.”

  He got up abruptly and pushed his way through the room which was crowded now, to the doorway. He left a book and some papers behind on the table. I picked them up and followed him.

  I passed by the table where Kate was sitting next to a little, drunken man who clutched at her arm with tiny fingers. He was saying, “You remind me of a great, big, beautiful lioness.” His mouth was wet, his eyes narrow and bright. Kate looked up at me with comic despair.

  She said, “He’s a soak, Willy. Like to take him with you?” I thought she was unhappy in spite of the smile. I wanted to ask her where she was living and if I could see her, but I didn’t. I think I was afraid that she would laugh at me and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to see her badly enough to risk that.

  Humphrey was in the street; I had been half-afraid that he would not wait. He was pacing up and down. In the dusk he looked very young, his flaxen hair tumbled over his forehead. When I joined him he started to walk very fast, his limp very noticeable, his eagle nose enormous against the lamplight.

  After a bit, he said, “I’ve been a fool, Will. A perfect bloody fool.”

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. Perhaps if I had tried to find the right words he might have told me then, more than he did tell me. Although it might not have helped him or altered anything.

  He said, “Did you believe her, Will? When she told you about the child?”

  I told him that I didn’t know. I could not say to him that I had believed her, that there had been no doubt in my mind.

  He swore softly and savagely. Then he said, “If you, of all people, believed her, then there isn’t any hope for me.”

  At the time I thought he was being dramatic. I said, impatiently, “Is it your child?” knowing that I was afraid of what he might answer.

  He shook his head. “It can’t be. I don’t know whose it is but it isn’t mine.”

  I said, “The letters? I didn’t want to read them, you know, but I had to know what proof she had.”

  He stood still and the light from the street lamp fell on his pale and narrow face. He said, “I was in love with her when I wrote those letters. Maybe I still am. Anyway, I was then. I may be a swine and a middle-aged fool but I loved her. For a little while there wasn’t anyone who was so completely real to me. I don’t think I expected her to understand how I felt about her or that I minded very much because she didn’t. I meant those letters, Will.”

  He started to walk again so quickly that I could barely keep up with him. Then he stopped and swivelled round to face me. He said, “But she isn’t going to have my child. I swear it, Will.”

  I said, “When did she tell you about it?”

  “About a month ago. Earlier, perhaps. She wrote to me and we met. She said she was in trouble and the man had refused to help her. She didn’t say who he was and I didn’t ask. I gave her fifty pounds. Then she wrote again and I didn’t answer her letters. How could I?”

  I thought of what Rose had told me about the fifty pounds. I couldn’t tell Humphrey about that. Not yet.

  I said, “If she applies for an order against you she’ll get it on the strength of those letters. There’s no sure way of getting at the truth in these things.”

  Humphrey said, “You don’t believe me, then.” It was a statement, not a question. He sounded both incredulous and resentful, two emotions so natural in the circumstances that I felt a little gentler towards him. I wished that we had not been so honest with each other always—although it was beginning to appear that the honesty had been mostly on my side—so that now it would be easier to lie.

  He said, with a sudden outburst of anger, “I don’t know why I care about your bloody self-righteous opinion, but I do. I don’t know why this thing happened. I should have thought about a hell of a lot of things I didn’t think about. I’d never been unfaithful to Celia before, you know. Piers thinks that’s damn funny. I’m not sure that I don’t agree with him. Anyway, there you have it. For a little while she was the most precious thing in my life and in the end I put a stop to it. I’m not sure, now, that I know why. Maybe I was just scared because she’d come to mean so much to me. I didn’t see her again until after she’d written and told me she was pregnant. I was sorry for her, then. I wanted to help her. I didn’t think she would do anything like this. It’s a kind of blackmail, isn’t it?”

  He stopped short and seemed, suddenly, confused as though he had intended to say something else and decided against it. Then he said in an astonished voice, “It’s so unlikely. So unlike her.“

  We walked in silence. Humphrey was dragging his lame foot; it always tired if he walked fast, even for a little way.

  I was exhausted and depressed. It was an effort to talk. I said, “We’ll get you out of it somehow. I’ll go and see her, offer her maintenance for the child. We must keep her quiet.”

  Perhaps it wasn’t very tactful of me but I wasn’t trying to be tactful. Humphrey said explosively, “Will, you’re a cold fish. I’ll be damned if I’ll pay.”

  I said, “Don’t be a fool. You’ve a family and a job.”?

  He said in his grand manner, “There are other jobs.” Then he laughed suddenly and loudly as if he were really amused. “That sounds damn stupid, doesn’t it? I’ll say it and save you the trouble. I’ve alread
y given her money. That’ll count against me, won’t it? Call it conscience money if you like. That’s what it was.”

  I told him what Rose had said about the fifty pounds. He took it with an odd sort of calm. He said, “That’s a pretty touch. It got you, didn’t it, Will?”

  He did not deny it and at the time, God forgive me, I thought this was odd. Later I wondered whether it might not have been the last edge of despair.

  I said, “Where did you meet her?” not because it mattered but because I had to say something. It was no longer comfortable for there to be silence between us.

  “I’d seen her in Somerhurst. Then, one night, she was in the Flamingo.” He gave me a shamed, little-boy look and said, “You think I’m a fool to go there? I suppose I am. But I get so damn bored with all the nice people I meet. The Flamingo makes a change.”

  I said, “I don’t give a damn why you go there.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “All right. Anyway, she was there. She was with a friend. Another girl.”

  “What was she doing there?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. She said she’d never been there before. I should think that was true, she wasn’t the sort of girl you usually see there. She was in London visiting her father. He’s an old drunkard apparently, but she feels she ought to see him sometimes. He has two other children and she’s fond of them. They have a flat in Kilburn.”

  “Does Piers know about her?”

  He looked at me sharply. “He may. He was with me when I met her. I take him to the club sometimes—it’s a nice cheap way of repaying his hospitality.”

  I said idly, “Do you have to stay there? With Piers?”

  He laughed. “Where else would I get free board? Besides, I’m fond of him and he amuses me. You could never understand that, could you, Will? Or him? My precious half-brother who supports himself through his bookie and in other, less honest ways. Who speaks like an old Etonian, likes to be thought a blue-blooded Tory and lives rather less honestly than a barrow boy. It’s a charming combination, Will.”

  For a moment he sounded unpleasantly like Piers himself. I said, partly to change the subject and partly because it was something that needed to be said, “You know I’m sorry about this. I hated having to tell you.”

  He grinned in the shadows. He sounded affectionate.

  “Yes, Will. I believe you. Nothing would stop you from doing your duty, would it?”

  He came with me to the station. We talked very little and we were both unhappy in each other’s presence but he did not seem to want to go. He stood by the open carriage door, his face haggard in the dusty yellow light.

  He said, at last, “Celia had lunch with me to-day. I thought there was something up. She kept starting to say something that sounded as if it was going to be important and each time she went as red as a turkey cock and stopped.”

  I said, “I didn’t know she was coming. I told her I’d tell you about it.”

  “Thanks for that. She said was going to stay the night with her Aunt Milly. I thought it was a bit sudden; she usually plans these things months ahead with no end of fuss and bother.”

  Then the whistle blew and the train started to jerk. It moved a yard or two and stopped again. Humphrey shouted, above the noises of departure, “This is something I’ll have to manage myself, Will. Don’t you poke your lawyer’s nose into it until I tell you to. It’s my affair.”

  He sounded grim and his face had a fixed, white look about it that made me, for the moment, uneasy. But it didn’t last long; 1 was beginning to have the edge of worry blunted by the thought of the long journey in the empty lighted train, and as it left the station my first and immediate desire was for sleep.

  Chapter Three

  I rang Celia the next day, at about noon. When I got the number it was answered by the maid. She said that Mrs. Stone had just telephoned to say that she was staying in London until after the weekend. No, she had left no message for Mr. Hunt.

  Putting the receiver down I felt flat and more than a little angry. She might have told me what she was going to do; I had, after all, undertaken a peculiarly unpleasant job for her the day before. I told myself that it was foolish to be affronted. That there was no particular urgency about the business and if I had seen myself, sentimentally, as a knight errant, it was no fault of hers.

  The days went by slowly with long, flat stretches of boredom. There was nothing that I wanted particularly to do and yet I was possessed by a curious and unfamiliar restlessness. My mother was returning from her annual visit to Scotland at the beginning of the weekend; I persuaded myself that I was lonely and missing her.

  But when she did come I knew that I was wrong. After we had dined on Sunday night I was already regretting the month I had spent on my own and the lazy comfort of meals, eaten when I had wanted them, in the kitchen. Thinking like that gave me an uncomfortable sense of disloyalty; I reminded myself how pleasant the house was when she was there.

  And yet the feeling did not go. I sat opposite her, watching her handsome, unlined face smiling at me as she drank coffee and smoked a cigarette and felt a quick constriction round the heart. We had sat together like this, evening after evening, for the last ten years. I wondered suddenly and with panic whether it would be the same for the rest of my life. I remembered that I had felt like this quite often lately. There was nothing specific that. I wanted; it was just that I was aware of missing something. It gave me an odd, unhappy sense of waste.

  She talked, in her calm and pretty Scots voice, about her holiday in Edinburgh, and how, after standing in the sun for two hours, she had seen the Queen. She was an amusing talker and usually I enjoyed listening to her but to-night, somehow, I was bored. Her voice went on and on with bland assurance like the voice of an announcer on someone else’s wireless and with the same deadly irritation.

  I think I must have yawned because she looked at me with a small, reproachful frown.

  “Are you tired, William dear?” she said.

  The telephone rang and I got up to answer it. It was Humphrey. He sounded as if he were unsure of his welcome and it made him over-jovial.

  “Is that you, Will? What are you thinking of us? I meant to ring you up but I moved in with Celia at Aunt Milly’s flat and there never seemed to be a moment to do anything. You can guess what it’s been like.”

  He sounded rueful. I said quickly, “It doesn’t matter.”

  He cleared his throat loudly. “Look, Will. You are acting for us in this, aren’t you? I mean you don’t have to believe that your client is in the right before you act for him, do you?”

  I said, “No, I don’t.” And then I hesitated. If I wanted to back out I could do so now. But I said, “Of course I’ll act for you.”

  Humphrey said, “Thank you, Will. I wondered if you would see the girl. Go to her home, I mean.”

  I said, “I don’t know what good it will do.”

  “Just to talk to her. For God’s sake, Will, she knows I’m not the father of her child. If you tell her you’ve talked to me she might tell the truth. She must.“

  There was appeal in his voice. I said, “And suppose she won’t? If she gets an order against you, are you going to fight it?”

  He said nothing for a moment. Then—” I meant it when I said I wouldn’t give her any money but I’ve changed my mind. I talked to Piers. Oh, I know what you think of Piers. But he’s nobody’s fool. He said if she wouldn’t come clean it would be better to pay her hush money to keep her quiet.”

  I said, “I told you that myself. Only not so vulgarly.”

  He laughed. Then he said, “We’re treating you a bit rough, aren’t we? Asking you to run our dirty errands and not even taking your advice?”

  I said, “Don’t worry. The advice will be on the bill.” I didn’t feel very friendly. I didn’t try to pretend that I did.

  I heard the door-bell ring and my mother, who had carried the coffee cups out to the kitchen while I was answering the telephone, walk along the hall.
/>
  I said, “I’ll see the girl to-morrow. Shall I come in during the evening?”

  Humphrey tried to persuade me to dine with them but I refused. I felt I had got the thing on to a strictly business basis and I wanted it to stay that way.

  When I put the receiver down I heard my mother talking to someone in the hall. Then she came into the drawing-room, closing the door gently behind her.

  She said, “I’m sorry, William. She says she must see you. Her name is Blacker—at least I think that’s what she said.”

  I wasn’t bored any longer. I went out of the drawing-room and into the study.

  But it wasn’t Rose. It was someone much older, a little, skinny woman in a coat of so dead and dull a brown that it was impossible to imagine anyone choosing it for any purpose other than camouflage. She wore a joyless hat and black, pointed shoes with cuban heels. Her eyes were watery and pale and stupid.

  She said, “Mr. Hunt, is it? I’m dreadfully sorry. This is an imposition—on a Sunday night too—but I had to come and see you.”

  Her voice was carefully refined. She went on, “I’m Irma Blacker. I’ve come about my daughter.”

  Her mouth was set grimly but more with nervousness than anger.

  It wasn’t naturally a hard mouth. It was shapeless and a little silly; the mouth of a woman who is easily sentimental.

  I said, “Rose?”

  She nodded and then burst into speech, gabbling at me with worry. “Yes, Mr. Hunt. She’s gone away and she hasn’t come home. I couldn’t believe there was anything wrong at first but it’s five days now.”

  I remember that I felt quite cold. I said, “Did she leave home without telling you where she was going?”

  She shook her head. There were little wisps of grey hair sticking out from under her hat.

  “No. She went to London last Monday to stay with her father. She’s my adopted daughter, you see, and she goes to see her father sometimes. Her real father, that is. My hubby’s dead. She said she’d be back on the Thursday. When she didn’t come and there was no letter or anything, I sent a wire to her father. He hadn’t seen her. She’d walked out of the flat the night she got there and she hadn’t come back. I thought she must come home—I waited till this evening and then I was so worried I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to go to the police—it’s the disgrace and all the neighbours knowing about it. You can’t keep these things quiet, you know. Not in a little town like this. And then I thought of you. I thought you might be able to help.”