That was it! The diary! Amelia’s silly, pathetic, love-lorn diary that he’d put away safely for her three—no, four—Sundays ago—the last Sunday before the accident. Had put it away here, just underneath this yellow folder—and now it was gone!
Had the child come and fetched it? No, of course she hadn’t, she hadn’t been here at all since that day—and anyway, she wouldn’t know where to look. Hadn’t she missed it, though, in all this time? Why hadn’t she rung up and asked him about it? Naturally, she wouldn’t have used the word “diary”, and neither would he. An “exercise book with a red marbled cover” would have been the subject of their conversation throughout. They could trust each other, he and Amelia.
But she hadn’t rung. She hadn’t asked what had become of it. She couldn’t have fetched it, because she didn’t know where it was.
So who was there, besides himself, who did know where it was …?
An icy chill went through him, right down his spine and trickling into every limb.
“It’s my opinion you should report it to the headmistress immediately” … Rita’s sharp, accusing voice was once more in his ears; it seemed to echo all about him in the empty flat, whispering from the walls, repeating and repeating itself in a jumbled medley as though from invisible loudspeakers everywhere: “The headmistress … the headmistress immediately….” and he now knew suddenly, and without the smallest doubt, exactly what it was that had happened.
*
So Amelia had got a motive, just as Rita had kept telling him. Many a crime has been committed for a motive far less compelling.
But the crime, by now, meant nothing to him. It was the agony of humiliation, the insupportable shame that his little girl must have gone through beforehand, that held him rigid. Crouched over the open drawer, he literally could not move.
Not even when he heard footsteps crossing the room behind him —two sets of them, quite firm and distinct … no furtive tiptoeing this time.
*
It seemed like minutes, but could actually only have been a second or two before, from his ungainly crouching position, he managed to turn his head, and look at the two young people staring down at him. He had never seen either of them before…. Yes, he had; the sallow, overweight boy with the bad posture was the one Dorothy had hopefully pointed out to him as a possible new suitor for Kathy.
The girl spoke first. She was slim, and stood very straight, and with her blue eyes and waist-length fairish hair would have been very pretty if she hadn’t been so angry.
“I’m Myra Owen,” she announced herself fiercely; “and this is my husband. I’m not having him persecuted any longer! He’s a marvellous teacher, and absolutely innocent, and we’re not having him hounded out of his very first job and his whole career ruined by a pack of wicked lies! We’ve come to have it out with you, Mr Langley, once and for all!”
CHAPTER XXIV
“BUT MUMMY, I don’t want to go out with them,” protested Amelia. “And anyway, it’s a horrible day.”
It was, too. Outside the windows of the comfortable hotel lounge a thin, drizzling rain fell. The parade was gleaming with wet, and almost deserted; and beyond it the grey sea and the grey sky merged at the horizon into an off-putting expanse of nothingness.
Peggy, too, thought that Rita’s invitation had been a tactless one. To telephone out of the blue like that, and—as Amelia had pointed out—on such a nasty day, to announce that she and Derek had arrived in Seaford and would very much like to take Amelia out—well, it put everyone in a spot. If Peggy refused on her daughter’s behalf, it would simply look like mean-spirited jealousy: and if there was one thing that Peggy had kept clearly in mind throughout these four years of vicissitudes, it was her original resolution that she would not—absolutely would not, in any circumstances whatsoever display mean-spirited jealousy towards her ex-husband’s mistress. She had seen other deserted wives behaving in such ways, and it never hurt the mistress the least little bit, whereas the cost of it to the wives in dignity, self-respect and pride was beyond all measuring.
So Amelia had got to go. Anything else would look like Peggy having dissuaded her.
“Please, darling—” she began; and then stopped, seeing the familiar, mulish look coming over her daughter’s features for the first time this holiday. It was a shame; she’d so wanted this fortnight to be a happy, amicable time for the two of them, and so far it had been. She hated to introduce this note of discord; and yet it didn’t seem such a very big thing to ask of the child—just one afternoon?
Of course, Peggy still had no inkling of Amelia’s special reason for hating Rita—Amelia would never have dreamed of telling her mother about it—or, indeed, anyone else. Actually, that first white-hot agony of rage and humiliation had cooled considerably since Daphne had brought her back the diary, safe and sound, on the very day after the accident. Apparently it had been picked up by a fifth-former from the floor some feet away from where Rita had fallen, and from her, via various friends and sisters of friends, it had found its way into Daphne’s hands, and she had brought it straight over. Since it looked from the outside so like an ordinary boring exercise book, there was every chance that no one in the motley chain of messengers would have read it; and if they had, they would never, ever dare admit to it, which comes to almost the same thing.
With the diary safe in her possession once more, Amelia naturally began to feel better; and when, as the days went by, no rumours came to her ears of a summons for Amelia Summers to go to the headmistress; no letter arrived for Mummy announcing that Amelia was to be expelled … well, bit by bit, naturally, her fears began to subside, and she came to the comfortable conclusion that Rita’s accident must have occurred before she’d had a chance to show the thing to anybody, not after: a strange and marvellous mercy of Providence indeed.
But all the same, Amelia did not at all want to go out with Rita and Derek. Why should she? It was much nicer sitting here by the electric fire reading, or talking to Mummy. For some reason, she and Mummy had been getting on much better since they’d come down here; maybe it was because of having all these fellow-guests to giggle about? Real oddities some of them were, Mummy had been drawing caricatures of them, just like the old days at the dentist’s, and Amelia had had a try, too, and discovered that she was really rather good. In secret, delicious intimacy behind one of the palms, they had whispered, and compared notes, leaning over one another’s shoulders in fits of suppressed mirth, Mrs Oh-No-Darling vying for pride of place with Colonel That-Clock’s-Slow.
It was fun, especially on a rainy afternoon like this. Why was Mummy going out of her way to spoil it all?
“You might at least have asked me,” Amelia grumbled, with considerable show of justice. “How would you like it if someone accepted frightful invitations on your behalf, and then only told you when it was too late to get out of it? I know, though!”—her voice changed, became suddenly eager and animated. “I know! I’ll run out to the car as soon as they arrived and explain to them that I’m terribly sorry, but I’ve already been invited to tea with the Oh-No-Darlings. It’s not even a lie, you know, really; they are always inviting me because of Felicity Oh-No-Darling being such a wet, and they’re trying to get her to make some nice friends….”
Peggy shook her head despairingly. It wouldn’t do. She couldn’t possibly have sympathised more, but all the same, it just wouldn’t. In no time at all it would be all round the neighbourhood that she, Peggy, had grudged her daughter a pleasant little outing with her future stepmother.
“Oh, Amelia, it’s such a little thing,” she pleaded. “Just one afternoon! Why must you be so obstinate …?”
Dear oh dear! Real acrimony was creeping into the thing! And just when everything had been going so well between the two of them—and now it was all going to be spoiled!
Actual tears were welling up in Peggy’s eyes; and in her despair she suddenly gave up, abandoned all her reasoned arguments, and threw her cards on the table.
“Don’t you see, darling?” she wailed. “If you don’t go, it’ll look as if I’ve stopped you … that I’m jealous! Everyone’ll think…”
And of course Amelia understood instantly. She knew all about humiliation, and pride, and having to keep your end up. She threw her arms round her mother’s neck in instant, loving capitulation.
“Oh, Mummy, why didn’t you say that before? Of course I’ll go! I’ll go up and get ready at once….”
And a few minutes later, dressed in anorak, trousers, and old Wellington boots, she was climbing into the back seat of Derek’s car. She hadn’t really known what to wear, because Rita hadn’t said what they were going to do, so she had prepared for the worst; and it appeared that she had been right. Rita, too, was wearing Wellingtons, and was all bundled up in a heavy fisherman-knit jersey, from the bulky collar of which her neck-brace protruded awkwardly. With this tough, out-doors sort of outfit she was wearing, rather incongruously, a glittering chain-belt of a bright gold colour, and she still had to carry a stick to lean on as she walked.
During the few minutes of polite conversation in the lounge, the afternoon’s plans were divulged. They would be taking Amelia out to tea, of course, but first Rita was anxious for “a nice blow on the Downs” in her company. Derek would drive them up to a suitable spot, and pick them up afterwards, but he himself had set his heart on strolling along under the cliffs this afternoon looking for specimens of the Something-or-Other Seaweed. At this boring and specialised bit of information, Colonel That-Clock’s-Slow woke suddenly and very surprisingly from his afternoon nap to reveal himself as a fellow seaweed enthusiast, and argumentative with it; and if it hadn’t been for the fact that both the Langleys seemed quite inordinately keen on getting started with their dismal afternoon’s programme, there is no knowing how boring the conversation would have become, or how long it would have gone on.
*
It was still drizzling, though perhaps not quite so hard, by the time Derek left them on the cliff-top; and though she had no special fondness for Derek—indeed she only knew him slightly—Amelia watched with longing as the car grew smaller and smaller in the distance, winding away down the steep, zig-zag road by which they had come.
Because the embarrassment of being left all on her own with Rita was awful. Why Rita had arranged—or allowed Derek to arrange—that this was the way it should be, Amelia could not imagine. Surely the whole thing was at least as embarrassing for Rita as it was for her? More so, if anything, Rita being as it were the guilty party in the case, the perpetrator of the original injuries.
*
For some minutes, they walked almost in silence, and very, very slowly because of Rita’s lameness. She was leaning heavily on her stick at every step, and their Wellingtons squelched in the short, soaked turf. It was almost the only sound there was; on such an afternoon as this, there was no one to be seen for miles, and even the gulls seemed to have been silenced by the grey depressingness of the day.
Walking along like this, so very slowly, so very cautiously, through the soft, enveloping drizzle, was chilly work, and despite her lined anorak, Amelia began to shiver a little. There was no wind, but the all-pervading wetness of the salt-laden air had a curiously penetrating quality; it seeped through and past every garment you could pile on and got into your very bones. Amelia would have liked to have asked Rita to hurry up a bit, but of course you couldn’t say such a thing to a person who was limping. She thought of offering her arm—but simultaneously with this came the thought of the physical contact involved, and she shrank away from it.
On they trailed, still with scarcely a word spoken. Amelia looked from the dim wastes of sea on their left to the bare, rain-swept curve of the Downs on their right, and wondered yet again what they were here for. Nothing but sporadic patches of leafless brambles broke the desolation of the view, and for someone in Rita’s condition, with every step an obvious effort, the whole expedition seemed just plain crazy. And to choose as a companion Amelia, of all people, when the two of them had so much reason to hate each other!
An awful possibility crossed Amelia’s mind. Had Rita brought her out here on her own in order to apologise to her? To try and make amends for the awful thing she had done, or tried to do? Was this why it had been arranged that Derek should tactfully take himself off—so that Rita and Amelia could have some hideous sort of tête-à-tête, with Rita apologising, and begging Amelia’s forgiveness? Amelia’s very soul squirmed at the thought of such a confrontation.
“… as we forgive those that trespass against us …”
Yes, but what do the words actually mean? The thing that stands between an injured party and the one who has done the injuring is not something to which forgiveness can be applied like some sort of ointment. Forgiveness really doesn’t come into it, for what stands between such a pair in actual fact is embarrassment: an embarrassment, in this case so vast, so intractable, that the words “I forgive you” or “I don’t forgive you” would simply have no relevance.
A small, sharp cry from a little behind her roused Amelia to the fact that she had unwittingly outdistanced her slower-moving companion. She stopped at once, and turned to retrace her steps. Rita, she saw through the thick damp air, was now right on the cliff-edge, peering anxiously over.
Amelia quickened her pace.
“What is it?” she called; and Rita, gesturing down towards the cliff-face, replied:
“My belt! My chain-belt! Look, it’s gone over the edge. It must have come undone somehow. Look!”
By now, Amelia had come alongside, and was looking over. Sure enough, on a ledge only about seven or eight feet below, lay the belt, coiled like a glittering snake against the chalk.
Amelia was an agile and enthusiastic climber. She could see that the ledge was fairly wide and solid-looking, that the distance was not great, and that there were convenient hand-and foot-holds at a variety of points. And the cliff, here near the top, was not even quite sheer.
“Don’t worry; I’ll get it for you,” she said confidently, thankful to have something definite to do, to talk about, at last. “If you’ll just stand back a bit, Rita, so I can get over….”
The descent, as she had judged, was an easy one, though of course she had to be a bit careful about her rubber-soled boots on the wet, slippery chalk surfaces. In a matter of seconds, she was clutching the glittering gold links in triumph, and preparing for the return climb.
Above her, Rita’s face was peering over anxiously. She seemed to be leaning over, in a crouching position, in a way that struck Amelia as slightly perilous, especially when you considered that heavy, clumsy contraption round her neck.
“It’s all right. I’ve got it. You get back from the edge,” she called; but Rita only leaned over yet further, still in that tense, purposeful attitude. And now Amelia noticed that the figure above had the walking-stick dangling from one hand; she was reaching over with it, poking and prodding vaguely in Amelia’s direction.
“Take hold of it,” she suggested fatuously, “I’ll help pull you up.”
“No, thanks,” called back Amelia decisively. “I’m perfectly all right: it’s easy.”
And so it was—or would have been—if it hadn’t been for that stick swaying and teetering about so annoyingly just above her face.
“I don’t need it, Rita, honestly,” Amelia called; and then, when Rita didn’t seem to hear her, she shouted, with quite an edge on her voice:
“Please, Rita! Take it away, and get right back. It’s only getting in my way—” as indeed it was, wobbling and wavering within an inch of her face, prodding and jabbing vaguely at every ledge and hand-hold as it came within reach.
“It’s in my way, Rita!” she called again, loudly, and with just the beginnings of panic in her voice; but still the stick prodded and jabbed. Each time she reached her hand towards any convenient protuberance on the cliff-side, the stick would be there first, making it impossible for her to get a firm grip.
“Rita!” she shri
eked, “Rita, stop it!” and above her, silhouetted against the grey, waterlogged sky, the head and the neck-brace, like a strange and uncouth bit of mediaeval machinery, leaned yet nearer….
*
The “Mr Langley” hardly registered with Adrian at first. He was staring, dumbfounded, not at his blonde accuser with the flashing eyes, but at the round-shouldered youth who cringed nervously at her side.
So this was the wonderful, the incomparable “Mr Owen”! This shy, stooping, bespectacled youth without a word of say for himself, and who could not have been more than twenty-two! This was the being who had filled Amelia’s dreams for all these months, the sun and moon around which her whole existence had revolved…! Adrian shook his head in a sort of bemused wonderment. What a thing is love!
“And it’s no good shaking your head like that, Mr Langley!” the girl stormed on. “We know that you and your wife …”
*
It took till well after midnight to get it all sorted out, first in a stand-up row, and then, more calmly, over coffee; and finally, in a quite unforeseeable kind of intimacy, over white Cinzano. Gradually, between the three of them, they worked out what must have happened.
It had gone something like this.
Rita, true to her threats, had brought the diary to the school that afternoon and had presented herself at the headmistress’s office, giving (as a general precaution against consequences to herself) a name that was neither her own nor Adrian’s. But the subterfuge, as it turned out, defeated her whole purpose: the school secretary informed her, coldly, that in no circumstances could the headmistress discuss any child with anyone other than its own parent or guardian. Boiling over with frustration and anger, Rita had had to retire.
But there was still the unfortunate teacher himself. Maybe to confront him, personally, with the accusations would be an even better revenge, even more humiliating for the child whose very existence was wrecking Rita’s partnership with Adrian, and against whom, in his doting paternal blindness, he would hear no evil word spoken?
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