by Lorna Gray
I heard him give a short, dry laugh. There was a wealth of relief in it. I straightened a little more and went through the practical process of looking for that other car. It was long gone. I found it a little surprising that I was thinking so calmly instead of giving way to shock. Then I saw the way my hands were shaking and felt an overwhelming urge to be active, to get out of the car and walk about a little, perhaps under the guise of examining the tracks left by the black Ford. Only I couldn’t get out because that tree was there.
The Captain had no such trouble. His door was already open and he was coming around to examine the damage that the tree might have done to his car. I took the chance to slither across and out myself. I walked a jerky little turn, feeling the cool of the shade like ice on my fingers and finding no sign even of our skid that had saved us from colliding with that man. There were the trunks of tall trees here and the mottled shade of their canopy, just as innocent as it had been before we’d seen his car. The stillness of it all made me suddenly afraid that the burglar was a master at watching from the shaded places. I found that my turn abruptly ended just behind the Captain where he was bending by the wheel arch to peer at the flank of his car.
‘Any damage?’ My voice was rapid.
His voice was not. He straightened beside me. I was a touch close but he didn’t move away. He probably couldn’t with the tree roots just behind his feet. He told me, ‘I don’t think so. I hope not. Presumably you’ve heard by now some whisper of the state of the family finances.’
He had said that quite plainly and certainly without rancour but I flinched because it was true. It really was cold here. A turn of my head showed me the space behind scrubby undergrowth where the Ford had been concealed. I was a coward because I was protected on three sides by the car, this man’s presence and that tree and yet I was still finding it a struggle to speak slowly. I asked, ‘Do you think he was waiting there to do that?’
The Captain turned to me. His hand met my elbow, the one that wasn’t bruised, briefly in a gesture of reassurance. His skin was warm where mine was not. The hand dropped and then he moved past me back around the nose of the car to the open driver’s door. I stayed there, dithering by the tree as he said, ‘If you mean to ask whether he intended to run us into a tree, then no, I don’t think so. I think he was watching from afar and he got a nasty fright when our car burst out of the farmstead like that. I think we caught him at the end of a short sprint on foot and a panicked dive into his car. In a way this was my fault for driving like a fool.’
I said without thinking, ‘If you’d driven like a fool, we’d have hit him.’
He was standing now with one hand resting easily upon the rim of the open car door and the other upon the frame. Then he surprised me by drumming his thumb a little impatiently upon the car roof as a worry preyed on him and he asked seriously, ‘Did you get hurt back there?’
There was an intensity in his voice that shook almost more than the accident had. He was ready to feel responsible. Whereas for me, the question abruptly gave shock the excuse to work its way out of restraint and I didn’t want it. I blinked rapidly and mustered a smile, only to notice suddenly, unexpectedly, that he was looking as pale as I felt. Somehow the steady competence of his examination of the car had made me think he was impervious to such things as fright after a near miss.
My heart was suddenly beating and my own hand was flat upon the warm metal of the bonnet. The touch of that solid support was the only thing that was stopping the energy that was burning within me from finding release. If I had given way to it, I didn’t think I’d have ever stopped the mindless movement. ‘Are you hurt?’
The reflection of his concern back at him startled him, I think. I suppose it was a little strong. It betrayed how truly I was shaken and just how much I had been trying to hide it. It made him straighten from his easy stance in the open doorway as he absorbed it. He already knew I wasn’t particularly skilled at dealing with distress because I’d confessed it when I’d ranted about pacifism. Now I thought he was guessing that it wasn’t the risk of collision that was unnerving me here, but fear from the continued presence of that man. Because I knew that this was my third encounter with that other car now and it was inescapably frightening when the common theme was me. The grim thought was followed by the twist of suspecting that the Captain was thinking that too and moving on towards considering whether I might have known the man would be here and this ongoing unsteady attempt at concealing my fear was a mark of my guilt.
I couldn’t be sure what the Captain was thinking, but I could trace the thoughts running behind his eyes; the calculations and reassessments. There was certainly a glimpse of that deliberate restraint, the checking of a fuller honesty for a concealment of his own as he chose the simplest route towards managing this. He chose to diminish my part by ignoring my concern completely. He asked instead in a decidedly matter-of-fact voice, ‘Will you get in or do you want to wait while I bring the car forwards?’
As an act of declaring my self-control, I waited out there alone while he eased the car onto level ground. Then I climbed in. Back in the confines of the car, it brought a fresh shock to suddenly realise the body beside me was alive with the restrained intent that had driven him to set the car at just so much speed on this trackway in the first place. The vast engine added its own impatient throb to the tension, ready for the release of motion. It made me ask on a breathless note of intense disbelief, ‘Are you intending to go after him?’
My voice threatened to stray into plain revulsion. From him I got a brief flickering glance that felt like a challenge. And also amusement. ‘Do you want me to?’
He knew I didn’t. He was teasing me – not for the sake of argument but for the purpose of calming my alarm. He knew I wasn’t prepared for this. I had the sudden doubt of considering whether that small sympathy and that alone was the extent of his effort to exclude me. Not hateful suspicion, not allied to that man or the odd insinuations of Mrs Abbey; but purely because I was, in fact, too much of a coward to handle the rest. I said rather too firmly for such a small space within a car, ‘No! I think we need to go back down there and tell that woman that a known thief was spying on her.’
My fierce assertion at last of every idea I had of my own responsibility surprised him, I think. It also made the corner of his mouth curve a little again, like the amusement that went with a faint awakening of respect, only to be wiped away by the older unease that came from our recent departure from that house. And suddenly, absurdly, I was miserable. There really was guardedness here and the heavy sense of alienation.
I’d thought this had been set to be one of those moments where my unsteady but determined declaration of my mutual concern in this crisis would disperse the earlier tension – the tension where I felt trapped into worrying about the alarm this man seemed to have unleashed in that woman, and we both despised the part she seemed to be making me play in working to make this man feel his isolation. But now it was my turn to feel alone because I felt so small.
The car inched forwards, not to speed away down to the track but out into the sunshine where it settled, humming to itself, while the Captain beside me eased the gear into neutral and decided after all to broach the awful subject. He repeated himself by asking gently, ‘What did she say to you? She obviously frightened you.’
The real guilt jerked my head around again. I couldn’t bear to recount her unpleasant chatter to this man because surely it would be utterly idiotic to tell the Captain all that. And yet he was probing for something; forcing me to lurch into thinking again that he was perhaps waiting to see if I would explain my distress by confessing some connection to that man after all.
‘She didn’t frighten me,’ I said with a shade too much denial and perhaps that old irritation of injured pride. ‘She told me about the theft of your accounts ledgers. She told me that you will have to visit each and every one of your tenants to warn them that this fellow might turn up at their door. And for good reason, it seem
s, since presumably he’s lately attempted to do just that. Why didn’t you tell me this was your purpose from the start? Why did you bring me along on this? To act the part of camouflage while you found a quiet moment in which to frighten Mrs Abbey about your ledgers?’
It came out like a justification of the idea that he really should be treating me like a child. The sense of being utterly small felt infinitely worse when the Captain was only determinedly patient.
He replied reasonably, ‘It wasn’t me she was afraid of.’
The implication it was me made me give a bitter laugh. But he was right, though. There had been triumph on her face when she had teased the Captain by ignoring him, whereas her greeting of me had been very different. It steadied me. It told me why I was building up to railing at him – it was that timeworn defence of being ready to hurl blame at him, blame at anyone but myself.
Only what blame here was due to any of us anyway? I said rather more calmly, ‘I don’t think she was really afraid of me. I just surprised her by turning up on her doorstep with you when she’d thought I’d packed my bags to run away.’
After an uncomfortable silence, I asked tentatively in that more honest version of myself that was less wracked by nerves, ‘Why did you bring me along?’
‘Why do you think?’
I confessed unhappily, ‘Because you were never going to willingly leave me alone at the cottage after learning that your burglar had paid me a private visit.’
It was why he’d created a convenient excuse for both of us by asking me to come along to help. I knew he’d done it, but I’d still played along. And it was why, too, he’d kept the real purpose of his visit from me and why he’d capitalised on the chance of speaking to Mrs Abbey alone. It was because I’d made him think he had to protect me.
One of my hands had wrapped across my body, hugging myself defensively while my eyes roamed over the landscape outside the glass by my side. In this cramped, expensive car I felt my ridiculousness. The expanse out there of grassland before the distant treeline was huge and alien.
Very unexpectedly, the engine was suddenly, ominously, urged into motion. But we were only cruising gently back down the trackway into the farmyard. The wide hard-standing within that high boundary wall was empty and all the buildings were deserted. It didn’t need the sudden heat of climbing out to watch while he rapped on the house door to tell me that Mrs Abbey and her children had gone. I stayed by the car while he probed the depths of the dilapidated barn. It was open-fronted at this end and I could make out the navy gleam of a battered but beloved old Austin Seven, propped up on blocks like any number of other cars up and down the country whose owners couldn’t afford the petrol ration.
In the brief peace, the Captain appeared to come to a decision. He settled on direct delivery of everything that he had formerly tried to keep from me. Out of the gloom I heard him say, ‘Very well, Emily. I’m sorry if this now turns into a forced confrontation with everything you hate, but since the alternative seems to be just as upsetting, I really will have to simply tell you the rest. The truth is, I recovered some of the contents of your suitcase in my father’s library, where apparently they’d been tipped out to make room for the theft of the account ledgers. I have a bundle of your clothes in the boot of my car. I didn’t tell you before because it was impossible to do so without telling you all this when you’d quite clearly asked me not to. I’m sorry. I was going to return them to you later, when I thought we might have safely established that your part in this was over. Unfortunately, we’ve now had another run-in with that man and my belief that you were irrelevant lasted just as long as it took me to notice that for a newcomer to the area, you seem to have taken remarkably quickly to having whispered conversations with Mrs Abbey.’
I baulked. His apology had just been a foil for working in this insinuation. I was mortified and I was sickened by his idea of the need for a trap. Restless energy brought me away from the car and a step or two closer to him and the heart of the yard as I retorted angrily, ‘You still don’t believe me. I don’t know that man. I don’t remotely know that woman.’
‘Do you know,’ the Captain remarked, emerging from the gloom of that barn at last and dusting off his hands. He looked absolutely nothing like I thought he did. I’d braced myself to be confronted by a soldier who was focused and determinedly seizing this chance to pursue a few painful truths. The Captain was in fact a normal man in regular city clothes who was presently saying in quite an ordinary way, ‘I think it’s fairer to say that you don’t believe me.’
He drew off his jacket and moved past me to lay it over the hot metal roof of the car. The heat in this enclosed yard was painful after the cool of the trees. He returned to the bright blaze of the ground before me, stopping there to roll his shirtsleeves. He said, ‘I’m not accusing you of anything any more. I told you that. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of what that woman said to you. What is it that you don’t want to tell me?’
I saw, suddenly, the masquerade I was sustaining here. He wasn’t testing my involvement with any of these people. But I was working myself into the role of the frightened and fragile female so that I might rant and storm and now claim my clothes from his boot before leaving him there just so that I didn’t have to tell him any of the rest. I suppose, after all, it stemmed from protectiveness rather than defensiveness. From his point of view it must have seemed as though Mrs Abbey had said something to me that was very terrible indeed. Now all that remained for him was to gauge just how responsible he needed to feel for my welfare.
I was appalled and ashamed of myself. That and nothing else made me gasp out, ‘I don’t want to tell you because it’s silly and embarrassing. She hasn’t said anything to frighten me. She isn’t threatening me. She just talked about you and your brother and it’s nonsense and it doesn’t have any part in this, I swear.’
‘So she mentioned my brother.’
The calm observation shook me. I found that somehow I had scurried past him to the side of his car as if my subconscious intended to make its getaway even while my conscious mind dismissed the idea of retreat as ridiculous. As I dithered to a halt near the passenger door, still a long way from speaking, I heard him add on a quietly measured tone, ‘May I ask you a different question? I need an honest answer.’
I turned to face him properly. Grit crunched beneath my shoe. I was very close to the car and the black metal of its flank was radiating heat against my back.
‘Do you think anything about this – the attack on Bertie; this man; Mrs Abbey’s peculiar state of agitation – truly has anything to do with John?’
In the air around us was the shadow of that woman’s whisper of his name. Langton.
I took in an unhappy breath. With it I inhaled one compelling sense of his own need here. My feet took a step backwards and my body claimed the support of the overheated side of the car. I lifted my head.
I told him plainly, ‘Mrs Abbey has succeeded in bringing your brother’s name into every conversation we’ve had. But truly, if anything she says is a clue to what is happening here, I don’t believe it means John Langton’s recent … um, business activities have anything to do with the burglary of your house; or even the assault on Mr Winstone. My reason for thinking this is that I’ve noticed Mrs Abbey becomes strangely offensive just as soon as I attempt to ask her how she is and yet she’s absolutely delighted to dissect the apparently inexhaustible topic of your brother’s demise. Something is driving her to behave very strangely but I don’t believe it has any true connection to your brother. Speaking his name to me is her sanctuary, not her threat.’
I saw the Captain’s eyebrows rise a fraction. Suddenly, I suppose I’d been speaking as myself and not the frightened girl I’d tried to make him think I was.
I observed gently, ‘You think I’m mistaken?’
‘They were John’s ledgers that were stolen. Just as they list the names and addresses of his tenants, they also list every income and expenditure he’d made on b
ehalf of the Manor in the last few years of his life.’
Ah. I confirmed the suspicion by saying, ‘Yesterday, I was supposed to agree that Mr Winstone’s attacker was tall and dark with fearsomely blue eyes.’
‘Like John.’ He was very quick.
‘Like your brother. But today she introduced the subject by telling me that I was supposed to remember that Mr Winstone’s attacker was short and the opposite of athletic, like your burglar. Did you describe him to her when you told her about the accounts books?’
There was a faint tip of his head in confirmation. I drew a tentative breath. Then I confessed what had been haunting me since last night and had grown again when the Captain had irritated Mrs Abbey earlier by questioning her reasons for visiting the farthermost of two village shops at precisely the time that Mrs Winstone herself should have conveniently been near by. I told him, ‘Mrs Abbey is trying to steer me into adjusting my description of Mr Winstone’s attacker, but she doesn’t seem to have a particularly clear idea of the direction she should take. I honestly can’t quite tell if she really means to hint that our burglar today is connected to it, or connected to her, or if she’s even afraid of him. I’m beginning to suspect she’s actually just worried that we’ll discover her part in yesterday’s assault on your driver. Which, by the way, would explain her disappointment when she found I hadn’t left. Because you should know that, while I certainly don’t suspect her of actually doing the deed or even wishing it done, I am absolutely convinced beyond all shadow of a doubt that Mrs Abbey knew Bertie Winstone had been injured in an attack. And she cared so much that she went to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his wife was met and hurried home to find him.’
The hold his eyes had on mine was electric. I said quietly, ‘Before you ask, I haven’t any proof. I’m no threat to her and she will know that.’