The Odd Flamingo

by Nina Bawden

  But she had been sufficiently afraid to want to break with Callaghan. He had attacked her. She put her little hands to her throat.

  “I thought he would kill me,” she said. “He was so strong. But the landlady stopped him. There were terrible bruises on my throat and on my arms. I thought I should die.”

  Jennings said, “But you saw him again, didn’t you?”

  Her eyes were clear and wide and young. “Yes,” she said. “I had to see him.”

  I said suddenly, because I had to know, “But why? If you were so afraid of him, why did you go back to London?”

  Her thin hands moved to her face and dropped away. Her white arms lay still on the bed cover. She said, “Jasmine made me. She made me come to London.”

  I think, even then, that she would have tried to keep back the worst and final guilt. If indeed she thought of it as guilt. But the silence in the room was waiting for her.

  She said, “I told her about Mr. Menhennet. I thought she’d help me. But she didn’t. She said it was a terrible thing to have done and that she ought to go to the police. I begged her not to do that and she said she wouldn’t if I gave her money. I gave her what I had. Then she wrote to me and said she wanted twenty-five pounds. I hadn’t got it and when I told her so she wrote to me again and said I must come to London and ask Jimmie for it. She said he’d have to give it to me. Then, when I came to London, I said that I couldn’t see him alone and that she must come with me.”

  Jennings said, “But that was dangerous. Did you know how dangerous it would be for her?”

  There was a terrible blankness in her face. “I thought that Jimmie would know what to do about her,” she said.

  It was, suddenly, quite cold in the room. Even Jennings looked shocked and still. I think that although he knew a great deal about ordinary evil he had not expected anything like this.

  He said, in a dead voice, “But before you went to see Callaghan, you met Humphrey Stone?”

  “Yes,” she said, “we met Mr. Stone. I thought that if I could see him alone he might give me the money for Jasmine. I didn’t really want Jimmie to hurt her. But I couldn’t see him alone. Jasmine was there all the time.”

  “And so you went to see Callaghan?”

  She nodded. Her face was still and cold so that the life and the loveliness were driven out of it. For a little while she did not speak and there was silence in the stuffy room that was only broken by the tapping of a torn blind against the half-opened window.

  The blind went on tapping all the time that she was talking. I was aware of it constantly while I listened to the sharp little voice and its tale of betrayal and dismay.

  She had expected to find Callaghan alone; but when they opened his door, Piers was there. He was sitting in a wicker chair by the window and when the two girls came in he stared at them hard with his bright, boot-button eyes and said nothing.

  At first she said nothing about Jasmine or why she had brought her there. She had wanted to make her own position quite clear. This was to be a final meeting. She had prepared a set little speech. It was a novelettish affair intended to be very brave and very final. As they allowed her to speak, in silence, she gained in confidence and lost a little of her fear. Neither Piers nor the boy said anything while she produced her empty, careful little phrases about it all being for the best in the long run. Piers smiled gently in his wicker chair and Jimmie stood, with his back to the window, watching her. She did not look at him; she was afraid of the expression on his face.

  When she had said all that she had intended to say there was a long silence so that she became uneasy and unsure.

  At last Piers said, “That was very nicely said, Rose dear. Quite extraordinarily affecting. So there are to be no hard feelings between us then? I didn’t know you were such a clever little actress. But there! Of course I knew. Jimmie told me how cleverly you behaved at Ealing. Why don’t you both sit down?”

  He smiled at the girls as if he found them very funny and they sat together on the hard divan bed.

  Piers got up from his wicker chair and stood with his legs astride. He said, “We enjoyed listening to her, didn’t we, James? But it isn’t any good, my dear. How could James let you go? Think of how unhappy you have made him, dear. Have you the heart to leave him now?”

  The gentle voice hardened and became immensely threatening.

  He came across the room and stood above her, his eyes like small, wicked stones.

  He said, “Rose, my dear, we can’t let you go like this. You’re too deeply in. It wouldn’t be safe, now would it?”

  Even then Rose had been unable to believe that they meant her any real harm. She had lived for so long in a world of her own dreaming that it did not seem that this was any more than an extension of her fantasy.

  Then she told them about Jasmine. Jasmine who sat beside her, plucking at the sleeve of her coat with light, desperate fingers. Jasmine, who had been so completely without fear that she had not realised until now the extent of her own danger. It must have been a moment of extraordinary revelation and terror for her.

  If anyone spoke, Rose did not remember what they said. She was only conscious of Piers’s face coming closer and closer; of the wet mouth and the brilliant eyes. Then came the blow that knocked her, screaming, across the divan bed. For the moment the force of the impact drove the breath from her body, but when the moment had passed she screamed again with the full power of her young lungs until they held a cushion over her face. She could have screamed longer and louder in that neighbourhood and no one would have interfered.

  She was aware that Jasmine had gone. The door banged and she heard Piers swearing. She was drowsy with shock and pain and she fainted.

  When she came round again it was nearly dark in the room. There was a bundle of what tasted like wet flannel in her mouth and her lips felt stiff and bruised. They had gagged her roughly and tied her hands behind her back. Piers was in the room. He was smoking a cigar and the smell sickened her.

  She stirred on the hard bed and he came over to her. He looked enormous and terrifying in the half dark.

  Then the door opened and someone came in. Piers stood between the bed and the door; she did not know it was Jimmie until he said:

  “I’ve done for her.”

  Piers moved away and she could see Jimmie’s face. It was the colour of putty. He said, “She was screaming. She said she was going for the police. I had to shut the bitch’s mouth. Didn’t I? I had to do it.”

  His voice rose to a frightened shrillness. Piers went over to him and said something in a voice too low for Rose to hear. They both walked to the other end of the room, away from her.

  They talked for a long time. Piers’s voice was quick and angry. In the end he went away and she was alone with Jimmie. He came over to where she lay; his hair was lank with sweat and he breathed heavily into her face.

  “Look here,” he said. “I’ll do you if you make a sound. Like I done the other bitch. You lay low and you’ll be all right. See?”

  He took the gag out of her mouth and unbound her hands and helped her to her feet. She was sick and dizzy but he made her button her coat and he picked up a white handbag from the floor and put it into her hand. They went out of the room and down the stairs to Jimmie’s new car and she got in the seat beside him. They drove out of London; she did not dare to ask where they were going. She opened the handbag to make up her face and found that it was not her handbag, but Jasmine’s. She did not tell him this; she was too afraid.

  The pains began before they got to the boat. She was very sick. He helped her into the boat and on to the bunk and gave her water to drink. Then he went away and came back with a woman she had not seen before. After that she did not remember very much except that the woman was kind to her and helped her and when it was all over gave her some hot tea to drink which made her sick again.

  Then she was better for a day or two; she lay in the hot bunk in the rocking boat and Jimmie brought her food and stayed wit
h her sometimes. He had treated her gently. He told her that Jasmine was dead and that she must never tell anyone how it happened; that if she did they would arrest her and hang her. Slowly she began to realise the immensity of what she had done and her only fear became that they would find her and take her back. When she became ill again it was almost a relief. It would have been easier to die.

  When she had finished no one spoke for a little while. Then Jennings went to the head of the bed and began to talk to her. He was impersonal and not at all unkind. She lay, an ashen little ghost in the untidy bed and the soft voice went on and on with a terrible and monotonous clarity.

  They released Humphrey almost immediately and I did not see him again. He asked me to settle his affairs and gave me an address in Glasgow. After a while he sent for Celia and the boys. That was the end of it; I did not want to know what he was going to do. I felt only relief that I would not have to see him again.

  They caught Jimmie Callaghan. He had hidden in a lodging house in the East End and when they came for him he got out through a back window. They ran him to ground in a blind alley at the back of the grey, slum houses. It was a wet night, the first of the wet, autumn nights, and dark. The boy hid among the dustbins and would not come out. He had a gun. One of the policemen went out into the open after him and Callaghan shot him through the head.

  Then the fight was on. Jimmie Callaghan stood with his back against a wall and fired wildly at his inevitable end. He shouted all the time—disjointed, unreal sentences as if he saw himself, even now, as a character in a film. Then, when the cartridges ran out, he crumpled on the wet stones and cried for his mother. He was just nineteen.

  They hanged him by the neck until he was dead.

  I do not think they will hang Rose. They tried her, with Callaghan, for the murder of Menhennet. The jury disagreed and there is to be a re-trial some time in the New Year. The papers were very sentimental about her; they said she was more to be pitied than blamed. They do not know about Jasmine and it is easy to pity when you only know half of the truth.

  I do not want to know what happens to her. I shall go abroad and not take any English papers. I should like to forget that she ever lived and sometimes, for a little while, I do forget her.

  THE END

  Copyright

  First published in 1954 by Collins

  This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  www.curtisbrown.co.uk

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3595-8 EPUB

  ISBN 978-1-4472-3593-4 POD

  Copyright © Nina Bawden, 1954

  The right of Nina Bawden to be identified as the

  author of this work has been asserted in accordance

  with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of the material reproduced in this book. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publisher will be pleased to make restitution at the earliest opportunity.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  The Macmillan Group has no responsibility for the information provided by any author websites whose address you obtain from this book (‘author websites’).

  The inclusion of author website addresses in this book does not constitute an endorsement by or association with us of such sites or the content, products, advertising or other materials presented on such sites.

  This book remains true to the original in every way. Some aspects may appear out-of-date to modern-day readers. Bello makes no apology for this, as to retrospectively change any content would be anachronistic and undermine the authenticity of the original.

  Bello has no responsibility for the content of the material in this book. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not constitute an endorsement by, or association with, us of the characterization and content.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books

  and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and

  news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters

  so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.