by Marie Joseph
‘Come over and sit next to me,’ she invited, patting the moquette cover with her hand. ‘It’s quite safe, they’ll not be back for ages yet.’
And then, as he took her in his arms and held her close, as his lips searched for hers and closed over them with the familiar hard closed-mouth kiss, it was all right again.
‘Oh, Dorothy, you’re so beautiful, you’re the most beautiful girl in the world,’ he whispered. Then he kissed her again, and this time the kiss was deeper, and as they clung together she could feel his heart thudding like a sledge-hammer against his ribs. How thin he was! She ran her hands over his shoulders. And how young he was, how very young! And vulnerable. She held him closer still and felt him tremble.
This wasn’t the same as kissing in the park, or on the back row of the pictures, or in a darkened shop doorway. Then she hadn’t experienced this overwhelming sense of power, this knowing that in spite of his cleverness, his practical theories, she was the one in charge. It was wonderful and it was terrible. Terrible and sort of disappointing. She buried her head in his green woollen chest and caught the unmistakable whiff of moth-balls. How awful if she started to giggle! So far she was quite unmoved. Pleasured, but quite unmoved. She stretched her body out on the wide cushions and felt his body adapt itself to hers. Felt his chest, his loins, and a hardness that made her catch her breath with surprise.
His face was hot against her own, burning as if he had a fever. She made no move to stop him when his hand fumbled with the buttons of her blouse, caught her breath again then as she felt the feather-light touch of his fingers on her nipples, she felt them grow hard and whimpered as the heat rose in her own body.
‘Oh, Dorothy,’ he moaned, and she tangled her fingers in the springiness of his hair, and pulled his head down, and as his mouth closed over her breast, she jerked her head back with a low sound of delight.
Then, with a suddenness that left her limp and disbelieving, he sat up away from her, pulled the front of her blouse together, and in a voice that shook, begged her to forgive him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, looking away from her into the fire. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. Can you ever forgive me?’
Buttoning up her blouse, Dorothy refused to look at him.
‘I respect you,’ he insisted.
‘I know you do,’ she comforted.
Then he covered his face with his hands and groaned aloud.
What he could never tell her was that he might have gone further, might even have tried to . . . but that even as he caressed her he had suddenly been reminded of what had happened to Ruby. In another moment his self-control might have snapped and then he would have been no better, tarred with the same brush as that man, that unknown man who had forced himself on his sister and taken away her virginity. For she had been a virgin until then, just as Dorothy was a virgin. He knew it, and the knowledge of what he might have done filled him with a revulsion against his own sex.
‘I’ll never spoil thee, Dorothy,’ he said quietly, using the Lancashire dialect as he always did when moved.
Dorothy got up and going over to the mantelpiece, took down a silver cigarette box. Her face was flushed and her eyes as heavy as if she’d been crying. He thought she had never looked lovelier.
She held the box out to him. ‘Have a smoke. Go on, I can wash the ashtray before they come back.’
He stretched out his hand to the neatly layered cigarettes, marvelling at the length, their firmness. Already he could feel the tang of the smoke curling round his tongue, the steadying of his nerves as he inhaled. ‘They’ll smell it, won’t they?’ he said.
‘The whole house reeks of my father’s pipe, hadn’t you noticed? My mother’s tried everything, from a cut onion in a saucer to spraying the air with her precious lavender water.’ Then as he took one she placed a heavy cut-glass ashtray on the little table by his side.
‘I’ve decided to let Beryl in on it,’ she said.
He stopped in the act of lighting up. ‘Beryl?’ he repeated, his face a study in disbelief.
Dorothy sighed. ‘My cousin down the road. You know. I told you this afternoon. I told you that Gerald had sworn her to secrecy about losing the cuff-links, remember? He wants her on his side too. In case any awkward questions are asked, don’t you see?’ She took the spent match from his fingers and threw it impatiently into the fire. ‘Don’t look so . . . so affronted! We won’t mention your Ruby, we’ll just say that we suspect that Gerald is being unfaithful to Margaret, and we want her to help us to catch him out. She’s so romantic that if she thinks it’s all in the cause of true love, or untrue love, she’ll do anything she can to help. After Gerald confiding in her, then us, she’ll feel like a double agent, can’t you see? So when you’ve finished that cigarette we’ll go down to her house. It’s only down the road, and I know she’s in on her own because her mother and father have gone out with my parents, to the same place. Yes, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll talk to Beryl, then we’ll have a dekko in Gerald’s room.’
‘Now look, Dorothy.’ Stanley shook his head from side to side as if he couldn’t believe that the girl planning and scheming so coolly could possibly be the same girl who, not five minutes before, had lain in his arms, as carried away as he had been. He could have sworn it. Now she was tapping with her foot on the floor, waiting for him to pull himself together and finish his cigarette. He was learning about women, he was, aye by heck, he was learning fast.
He saw that his hand still trembled as he held the cigarette to his lips, and scorned his own weakness. ‘Now look, Dorothy,’ he said more firmly. ‘I’ve been thinking about what you said ever since you said it, and there’s nothing – not one shred of evidence that would stand up in any court in the land. I don’t know what’s come over you, and that’s a fact.’ He drew deeply on the cigarette. ‘He couldn’t have been meeting our Ruby on the sly and not told the police when this happened. He’d be bound to know they’ll find out. Somebody would have seen them together. Somebody always does. Look how many people have told your mother about seeing us.’
‘He has a car,’ Dorothy said slowly, emphasizing each word as if she were talking to a backward five-year-old. ‘And it was the winter when he was meeting Ruby, remember? Dark, Stanley Armstrong. Dark.’
She sat down and clasped her hands round her knees. ‘All right then, maybe I did get carried away this afternoon, but he knew her, Stanley. I’ve seen his eyes when it’s come up, and oh, he knew her all right. And if he knew her and had been seeing her then he could perhaps help the police to find out who murdered her.’ She lifted a knee with her clasped hands and rocked herself backwards and forwards. ‘Oh, my God, I feel it so strongly, can’t you see? I’ve never hated anyone in my life before, but I hate Gerald Tomlin so much I can actually feel my skin crawl when he’s near to me. Do you believe in spiritual perception, Stanley?’
‘Perception yes, but not necessarily spiritual.’
‘Well then. He’s scared half out of his wits, Stanley. He is. Honestly. And next month he’s going to marry my sister, who is about as perceptive as that standard lamp over there, and that doesn’t mean I don’t love her dearly because I do. And if you won’t come with me to Beryl’s, then I’ll go myself, and you can go home.’
‘Dorothy! Stop it. I don’t know you when you’re like this.’ His voice was filled with reproach.
She held her head high. ‘You know me a bit better after tonight though, don’t you, Stanley Armstrong?’
‘Come here,’ he said softly, crushing the cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘I promise I’ll be good this time.’ Then as he wrapped her in his arms, he whispered into her hair. ‘I need you so much. I just want to hold you like this, and close my eyes and pretend nothing awful has happened. I want to pretend this is our house, and you are my wife, and I want to forget I’ve left me mum crying by the fire waiting till Monday when they’ll be burying our Ruby on top of me dad in the cemetery.’ He stroked her cheek gently. ‘There’s so much that’s
good in the world, Dorothy, so much of it right here in this room, and I want a part of it . . . I’m selfish and cruel because I don’t want to go back down the hill to Inkerman Street. I’m dreading Monday, and having to be brave for me mum’s sake. I want it all to go away, Dorothy. I want to pretend just for a little while that it never happened. You don’t know how awful it is in that house. I feel I’m breathing now for the first time since it happened.’
She held his hand to her cheek and turned her lips to it, then froze into instant watchful silence as she heard the grating of a key in the lock of the big front door.
‘Oh, my God, they’ve come back! Pretend you’ve come about the funeral. Just act normal. They can’t do anything.’
She was moving with the speed of light, emptying the ashtray into the fire, tucking her blouse into her skirt, moving to sit as far away from him as she could, so that when the door opened they were sitting there stiffly as if arranged, like dummies in a shop window.
And it wasn’t, as she had thought it would be, her mother and father returning early from their bridge party, but Margaret, radiant with happiness, followed into the room by Gerald Tomlin.
Thirteen
‘WELL? WHAT DID I tell you?’ Dorothy said as soon as the big front door closed behind them. She was pulling at Stanley’s hand urging him on, and he felt he’d had enough, more than enough. His mind, still dazed with grief, his academic mind, geared to study, to the assimilation of facts, to the light relief of what he realized now had been merely surface conversations with the girl at his side, reeled dizzily from what had just happened.
He hardly recognized the determined set of Dorothy’s face, saw nothing of the former quiet acceptance of her devotion. She was obsessed, he told himself, totally obsessed.
‘Did you see the way his face changed when he saw you?’ she demanded. ‘What did you think about him? Don’t you think his eyes are strange? Could you even bear to look at them knowing . . .?’
‘We know nothing,’ Stanley said. ‘You must be crazy. Do you realize what you’re saying?’ He shook his head wearily from side to side. ‘Folks have been hung for less.’
He took her by the elbows and forced her to stand still. ‘Give me a chance to think, to breathe for heaven’s sake.’ She was dancing with impatience, but still he held her fast. ‘Dorothy. Dorothy. Calm down, please. What they must think of us rushing out like that, I don’t know. You should have stayed and let me talk to him, given me a chance to weigh him up. I felt a fool, an utter fool.’ He looked back over his shoulder to the house. ‘I should have stood my ground, not allowed you to rush me out of the room; they’re probably laughing their heads off at us now. And if there is anything in what you say, if he did know Ruby, then by our very behaviour he’s bound to know that we suspect.’
A man walking his dog went by and glanced at them with curiosity, and Stanley waited until he was well out of earshot.
‘And as for saying that Gerald’s face changed, well, of course it changed. He came into that room and saw us sitting there, both looking as guilty as hell, then without a hallo or a goodbye, you grab me by the hand and drag me out of the room, as if I were a naughty child, snatching up our coats in the hall and banging the front door behind us. Of course his face changed. He’ll think we’re mad, completely out of our minds. That’s what he’ll think and that’s all.’
Dorothy wriggled impatiently out of his grasp and started to walk quickly ahead of him, so that even with his long loping stride he had difficulty in keeping up with her. She talked furiously to him over her shoulder.
‘Gerald Tomlin knew who you were. There was no need to say anything, because he knew.’ She pulled savagely at a privet hedge, then scattered the leaves on the ground as if leaving a paper-chase for Stanley to follow. ‘He knew who you were because you look like your sister. You told me how alike you were.’ Her voice rang with triumph. ‘If he hadn’t known that I was friendly with you, he would have known who you were. And it was a shock. A terrible shock. I saw his face go white. His face went white and those funny wet eyes of his dilated; I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d dropped down on the floor in a dead faint.’
She turned into the wide driveway of a detached house, the gates and the garage door left open for a returning car. ‘This is where my cousin Beryl lives. You can come in with me, Stanley, or you can go home. You can go back down Inkerman Street, and you can tell your mother that you’ve met the man who I believe got your Ruby into trouble, even if he didn’t kill her. You can tell her that and you can say that you quite liked the look of him, actually.’
‘Dorothy!’ Stanley’s voice was more of a groan. ‘What did you expect me to do, then? Knock him down when I can’t think of a single reason for doing so? Dorothy. Please listen to me. I’m listening to you, honestly I am. I’m listening and I’m thinking, and as soon as you tell me one single fact that makes me even slightly suspicious, then I’ll tell the police, whether he’s your future brother-in-law, or not. But it’s dangerous talk. Can’t you see? Do you ever stop to think that you could be turning your dislike of Gerald into a reason for all this wild talk? Do you mean that you expected me to accuse him, then and there?’
As Dorothy put her finger on the door-bell, a chime of bells ding-donged up and down the scale, and Stanley leant against the door-post, feeling in need of its solid support.
Dorothy pressed the bell again. ‘Surely Beryl’s not in bed at this time? She’s probably been told not to answer the door. I’ll shout through the letter-box if she doesn’t come in a minute.’
Stanley kicked at a loose piece of gravel. ‘I suppose they’ll tell your mother and father that I was there? I’d much rather have come openly the first time and met them properly, like a civilized being.’
Just for a fleeting moment Dorothy was caught off guard. The thought that her mother did not regard this tall troubled boy as a civilized being flashed through her mind. His mother took in washing, and his sister worked in a cotton mill and had been ill-bred enough to get herself pregnant, and murdered. And yet his code of honour, his innate sense of what was right and proper was far greater than her own . . . There was something wrong somewhere.
‘They won’t tell,’ she said, ‘that’s the last thing they’ll do. Sisters don’t sneak on each other, and Gerald certainly won’t mention meeting you.’
‘Seeing me, not meeting me.’
‘Well, seeing you then. Oh no, Gerald won’t want to start a discussion about you or anything to do with you. He can’t bear your family to be mentioned, Margaret told me. Something to do with his sensitive disposition. He makes me sick. Can’t you see?’
‘There’s someone coming,’ Stanley said miserably. He felt ill, and the hammering in his head was starting up again. The tension of the past few days was taking its inevitable toll, and the cool logic he prided himself on was deserting him with every passing minute. He was behaving totally out of character, and Dorothy had changed out of all recognition from the girl he thought he knew. The Dorothy he knew had been content to listen to his views for hours at a time, her pretty face aglow with admiration as he expounded his views on life in general, and Stanley Armstrong and his ambitions in particular.
Ruby was dead, gone for ever, and something in him had died with her. What had happened to her that night in the park so filled his mind with animal loathing that in some strange inexplicable way he had transferred some of that emotion to the girl now tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for the door to open. And if he had done what he’d wanted to do he would have been no better than that unknown man who had squeezed Ruby’s breath out of her, then left her with her black hair tangled with mud and leaves. The enormity of what had almost happened caught at his own throat as surely as if fingers pressed on his windpipe.
And all he really wanted to do was to mourn. To scream and yell his grief aloud; to stop trying to be a man with a stiff upper lip, as stiff as the collars his mother dipped into her bowl of starch. All he wanted to do
was to put his head down somewhere and cleanse himself with tears.
But somebody was calling out from the other side of the big ornate front door.
‘Yes? Who is it, please?’
Dorothy raised exasperated blue eyes skywards. ‘It’s Dorothy. Open the door, Beryl. It’s not Jack the Ripper.’
And if Cousin Beryl had not been already tucked up in bed, it was obvious that she was on her way there. The dark brown woollen dressing-gown, its cord pulled tightly round her thick waist, did less than nothing for her sallow complexion, and the side pieces of her lank brown hair were rolled up in steel curlers. As she saw Stanley standing beside Dorothy, her hands went straight to them, pulling at them in an attempt to wrench them out. Two spots, chalky with calamine lotion, disfigured her rounded chin.
‘Oh, Dorothy.’ Her eyebrows were sending a message to her cousin, and Stanley read it correctly.
‘How could you come and bring him without letting me know? Now he’s seen me looking like this, and I’ll feel awful every time I see him.’
Once, a long time ago, he had let Eddie Marsden in when Ruby was sitting by the fire with a towel round her newly washed hair, and she had given him what for afterwards. ‘You could have left him on the door-step till I’d had time to run upstairs,’ she’d stormed. And Ruby had been exactly the same age as this fat girl, stiff with embarrassment, dithering in the porch, tearing at the steel curlers in her hair.
‘You’d better come in then,’ she said ungraciously, and miserably Stanley stepped behind Dorothy into a square hall, an almost exact replica of the one he’d recently stepped out of, apart from the fact that the walls were papered in a bottle-green geometric design instead of being wood-panelled.