Dangerous Thoughts

by Celia Fremlin

  And Edwin? He stood a little aside contemplating them both, and I could tell, even at this distance, from the very set of his shoulders, that he was feeling pleased with himself; as if he had scored off something or somebody.

  I increased my pace. The shopping bags banged viciously against my thighs as I half-ran towards them.

  “Sally!” I cried, as soon as I judged I was within hearing, “what are you doing? Daphne’s terribly upset; you ought to …”

  I’d judged the distance wrongly.

  “What?” she answered, and before I was able to repeat my reprimand, Barnaby had broken away and was racing towards me, the spade swinging at all angles as he ran.

  It wasn’t as flattering as it looked. He was merely bored, and I was the nearest thing to a happening that had come his way for many a long minute.

  The flailing spade landed on my ankle, edgewise.

  “Ouch!” I said. “Didn’t mean to,” he perfunctorily apologised; and then, oppressed by the realisation that one grown-up is just as dull as another when they are intent on their own affairs, he turned and sauntered back to his former companions.

  Sally reached out and clutched Edwin’s hand, as if seeking moral support in the face of my reproaches, which she must have seen were justified.

  “Yes, well, I suppose I should have left her a note, but I took for granted she’d know where I’d gone. I mean, she knew Richard and I had been having a bit of a thing about it; I told her. He was being so funny about not letting me come with him, you see; I don’t know what got into him. I mean, it seemed such a wicked shame, a lovely seaside place like this, and not to take me and Barnaby … We never had a proper holiday this year, you know, with all the to-ings and fro-ings and terrorists and stuff, and so this seemed such a chance … And so in the end we just came!” she finished. “Didn’t we, Barnaby? On the train …”

  “Two trains,” Barnaby corrected her. “An Inter-city and then …”

  “And then of course we had to get a taxi,” Sally resumed the narrative, “and I found I hadn’t got enough money. The man wanted another three pounds forty, and so when we got to the hotel Richard had to come down and pay him … It was a pity it had to happen that way … I’d planned to give him a lovely surprise, bursting into his room and giving him a lovely great kiss. It’s difficult, that sort of thing, while you’re paying a taxi.”

  Her voice trailed away, and I gathered that the reunion hadn’t been a great success.

  “But it’s all right now,” she finished. “He’s as pleased as pleased to have me with him, I knew he would be, he always is in the end … Barnaby, why don’t you run on ahead and see if Daddy’s finished showing Jessica all those papers …?”

  We were nearing the top of the beach now, and Sally, still swinging Edwin’s hand light-heartedly in her own, was kicking with her bare feet at the dry, powdery sand, carefree as a child.

  “What a gorgeous morning!” she cried, tossing her bright head. “It’s like magic, isn’t it, all this sun and wind. Poor Richard! What a shame he’s spending the whole lovely morning indoors with all that silly work!”

  He wasn’t, though. By this time, Barnaby, scrambling, slipping and battling his way up the steep sand dune ahead of us, had let out a cry of delight and surprise.

  “Daddy!” he shrieked, “Daddy, what you doing? Daddy, get up!”

  And Daddy (I suppose by now there was no other option) got up. His tall spare figure rose with dignity from the clump of marram grass by which it had been concealed.

  Had he been watching us? Or merely resting, enjoying the view? He moved in our direction, awkwardly of course as he negotiated the steep slope of the dune, but when he reached the level surface of the beach, I noticed that his movements were still awkward. His limping was more noticeable than it had been in London, and as he drew near, I could see that his face was pale and strained. He looked almost ill.

  However, he said nothing about being in pain — well, he wouldn’t, would he? — and his perfect manners were still in place. He greeted both me and Edwin with punctilious correctness, and soon our ill-assorted little party were setting off together towards the house.

  “What those big ducks going to do?” enquired Barnaby, clutching his father’s hand and pulling back as we reached the meadow gate. “I don’t like those big ducks!”

  “Geese,” corrected his father, tightening his grip on the child’s hand and pulling him forward. “Come along, Barnaby, they won’t hurt you.”

  “They will hurt me!” Barnaby balked and pulled back harder than ever. “They’re cross! They’re saying that they’re cross!”

  And it did indeed sound like that. Ever-hopeful, even though it was hours before their normal feeding-time, the whole flock had gathered in force at our approach, and their greedy, reproachful hissing did indeed sound threatening — especially when it was head-high to the listener as it was to Barnaby.

  “No …! No …!” he wailed, but his father — shamed, I could see, by this public display of pusillanimity by his only son— dragged him forward.

  A light tap on the child’s leg from one of the roving beaks was the last straw. Barnaby burst into howls of fear and indignation, while his father, frowning, seemed to decide that the upholding of the family honour was not being best served by a continuance of the battle. He gave up, and allowed the boy to retreat a pace or two.

  He was not pleased, however, and reproved the child quite sharply:

  “Stop crying, Barnaby! Don’t be so silly! Stop it at once! Big boys don’t cry!”

  The large tear-filled blue eyes were raised to the father’s dark and stern ones:

  “Big boys do cry! I’m a big boy, and I’m crying!” he countered, with unassailable logic; and at this fraught moment of father-son relations, Edwin saw fit to intervene.

  “I’ll tell you what, Barnaby,” he said, holding out an encouraging hand, “All we have to do is to march slowly through them, saying, very loudly, ‘Geese, geese, let us through! Geese, geese, let us through!’ We have to say it both together while we march — Like this!”

  And lo and behold, chanting this mantra at the top of their voices, the two of them tramped through the concourse quite unscathed.

  “Again! Again!” shrieked Barnaby, tears dried, his face alight. “Let’s march through them again, Edwin!”

  And hand in hand, their faces aglow with triumph, the two of them paced back and forth through the flock twice more.

  Barnaby was in ecstasy: Edwin hardly less so, visibly preening himself on the fact that he had displayed child-handling skills far superior to those of the boy’s own father.

  And Richard? For a fraction of a second, I saw such hatred in his eyes as I have never before witnessed. But the look was gone almost before I had registered it, replaced by the usual cool, controlled and dignified demeanour.

  And within seconds, Sally had put things even further to rights — whether through loving insight into her husband’s feelings, or simply through a spontaneous overflow of exuberance from her own sunny nature, I could not guess. Whichever it was, she did exactly the right thing: nestling up against Richard as they walked, and changing the subject entirely with a bit of special pleading.

  “Darling,” she said, “you know what I’d simply love to do while we’re here? Oh, do say we can … You can’t be working all the time, now can you?”

  The light, the softness that came into the strained, stern face as he looked down at her was lovely to behold.

  “What is it, pet?” he asked. “Something within reason, I trust?” And you could tell from the smile in his voice that it would need to be something far outside reason indeed before he would find it in his heart to refuse.

  “That wreck,” Sally was explaining eagerly. “That wreck we saw from our hotel window — remember? And you were wondering how it had got there — why they hadn’t done something about it —?”

  “Well? And you’ve found out, have you, love?”

  “Sort of, yes
, at least what I have found out is that they run boat trips round it! That woman at our table at breakfast — she says the official trips are over for the season, but she thinks you can still hire a boat and row yourself out. Oh, Richard, do let’s! It would be such fun!”

  “Well …” Richard was still smiling, longing to please her, but nevertheless a little cautious. “I’ll have to find out about it. The currents may be very treacherous, you see, round a massive obstacle like that. For anyone who doesn’t know the coast … isn’t familiar with the tides …”

  “Oh, darling, don’t be such an old stick! Of course it’ll be all right! I mean, they wouldn’t hire out the boats, would they, unless …”

  “And another thing, Sally. A lot depends on when Leonard is due to arrive. That’s the main reason for our being here, to help Jessica with things like driving to the airport. He’ll still be a bit of an invalid, you know, and I’m rather anxious to …”

  “Oh, darling, of course.” Sally concurred. “Of course that must come first. But, I mean, he won’t be arriving all the time, will he? I mean, if he arrives today, then he won’t be arriving tomorrow, will he? And if he’s arriving tomorrow, then this afternoon we could …”

  She chattered on, happy and full of plans. Listening to her, I felt a surge of relief. So it would be Richard driving Jessica to the airport, not Edwin at all. My anxieties on this score had been quite superfluous.

  A few minutes later, we had reached the house, and Jessica, despite her throat (or had it perhaps stopped tickling now, cured by excitement?) was hurrying out to meet us.

  “I’ve heard!” she cried. “They’ve telephoned, and his plane should be getting in at 2.55! We’ll just have time for a very quick lunch … Oh, isn’t it exciting? … Oh dear, there’s so much I haven’t done! It’s all so difficult, and Phoebe hasn’t arrived today at all! She’s so unreliable, that girl, it’s really hardly worth … And I meant to have such a nice meal ready for him, his first evening …!”

  There followed a distracting few minutes of suggestions and counter-suggestions; arrangements about places, starting times, and whether the Barlows should or should not stay and have lunch here, despite there being only three small pork pies and some celery? And there was the further question; whether Barnaby should be allowed to share in the jaunt to the airport? He would be in the way, Richard maintained; on the other hand, said Sally, he would love to see the planes landing and taking off; and anyway, what else was to be done with him?

  This was my cue, I couldn’t help feeling, to offer to baby sit for the afternoon, though with no great enthusiasm. I had already undertaken to contrive some sort of celebration meal for the returning hero, which would almost certainly involve a further visit to the village shop; to do all this with Barnaby at my heels was a daunting prospect; and so I was greatly relieved when Sally changed tack, apparently quite willingly, and suggested that she herself should stay behind and look after her small son. It would leave more room for Leo, wouldn’t it, in case he needed to put his injured leg up on the back seat.

  It was while all this was being settled that I noticed, for the first time, that Edwin was no longer with us. Had he gone on indoors? Or lagged behind in the meadow? Or …?

  CHAPTER XXV

  I remembered exactly where I had found our car yesterday, and now, as I hurried along the coast road in the hazy afternoon warmth, I was no longer puzzled as to why Edwin had chosen to park it there, and bother to lie about its whereabouts as well. He had been scheming all the time to drive to the airport alone when the time came, to meet Leonard Coburn by himself, before anyone else had a chance to do so. Had he brought the car right up to the house, and parked it in the stable-yard, or in the road just outside, he would have had no chance whatever of driving off unnoticed. Inevitably, Jessica would have joined him; would have assumed, naturally, that giving her a lift was the whole purpose of the expedition.

  Exactly as I had expected. Deep tyre-marks were still visible on the sandy verge, but the car was gone.

  For a few moments I stood baffled, bathed in the weak sunshine, and trying to work out, from the data available, what Edwin might be planning to do?

  I let the scenario wash over me. Edwin, all smiles and handshakes, greeting his erstwhile colleague. What about a drink, old boy, before we set off? A beer? A double whisky? Or do you feel more like a coffee? No, no, you just sit here, I’ll get it …

  And then, on the way back from the bar, or from the tea and coffee counter, there would be a small detour past some inconspicuous table where he could set the drinks down and shake into one of them the ready-crushed Mogadons. Who, among the bustling, self-absorbed passengers was going to notice or care what a total stranger was doing with his tray of drinks?

  Not a fatal dose, of course. This is not possible with Mogadon anyway, as is surely well known: well known to Edwin, anyway, so assiduous had been his medical researches of late. Not a fatal dose, then, but enough to make his victim bemused and drowsy, possibly comatose, so that his state on arriving home would endorse one hundred percent Edwin’s carefully planted predictions about the dire effects of concussion. Leonard, of course, would begin to recover at some stage during the evening or night: but who would thereafter give total credence to the assertions of a man who could fall so easily and so unpredictably into a state of semi-consciousness?

  Something like that. And what in the world could I do to prevent it? Edwin had had already a good half-hour’s start: there was no way I could catch up with him now even if, miraculously, a hired car should be available at a moment’s notice in this out-of-the-way spot. I could, of course, go back to the house and beg to be taken along with the others in Richard’s car. No one would object, I felt sure.

  Here I was brought up short, my colourful scenario falling about my ears. Edwin might indeed reach the airport ahead of the others, but what would he gain by that? It would merely involve him in waiting an extra length of time in the Arrival bay until Leonard’s plane came in, by which time the others would be waiting too, probably standing alongside, and his early, furtive start would have achieved nothing.

  Surely, surely, Edwin would have thought of this?

  He had. When I reached the house some minutes later, I found an angry, chattering little crowd gathered round Richard’s car, which was parked in the cobbled yard. Our own party were all there, augmented by the freckle-faced Phoebe (who had evidently devised some way of missing school after all), and also by our local historian, Rhoda Fairbrother, of werewolf fame. Even My Woman was amongst the throng, apparently risen from her bed of sickness for the occasion.

  “It’s those lager louts from Milham Bridge!” Rhoda was angrily asserting. “None of our lads would do a thing like that! It’s the parents, you know; Milham Bridge is turning into one of those commuting villages, the parents working in London, out of the house till nine o’clock at night, the mothers too. No time for their kids at all. It’s no wonder …”

  In the midst of this sociological diagnosis, Richard, crimson-faced, was struggling to change the wheel, receiving minimal help from the surrounding company: not from lack of goodwill, or even of efficiency; rather from a multiplicity of good intentions, each tending to cancel out the other.

  “No, Jessica, more to the right. Sally, darling, move away! You’re preventing … Now, when I say ‘Three’ … All together …”

  The fixing of the spare wheel seemed to be presenting some unforeseen problem. The original one, ferociously slashed, lay in the dust. I watched, anxiously. Time was passing.

  “What about your car, Jessica?” I tentatively suggested. “Just this once …?”

  She shook her head, miserably. “It’s having its overhaul,” she explained. “Since I can’t drive at the moment, it seemed a good time to …

  At last, the wheel was fixed. I looked at my watch. They were bound to be late, but maybe the plane wouldn’t be on time.

  In another few minutes, they were on their way, the rest of us standing at t
he gate, waving, and watching them gather speed along the coast road.

  Why hadn’t I done anything? Why hadn’t I warned them of what Edwin was planning to do? Wasn’t this taking wifely loyalty altogether too far? How could I allow Leo’s mental stability to be so unjustly called into question? Well, I wouldn’t allow it, I told myself. Not if it actually happened.

  But would it? The scenario I’d conjured up did seem to be the only one which made sense of the purloining of the pills and of Edwin’s behaviour this afternoon. I felt little doubt that I had assessed his intentions more or less correctly — but would he, in fact, carry out his plan when it came to the point? Or would he ‘get cold feet’ as Richard had so scornfully predicted. Would he muddle it somehow? So far, watching from the side-lines, I had several times witnessed what appeared to be murder plans going off at half-cock. Two attempts to involve Richard in a motoring accident; and then the appropriating of Jason’s boletus to find out if it was poisonous. What, exactly, had he meant to do if it had turned out that this was the case? A lunch party of sorts? At home, or at the Barlows’? With fried mushrooms somehow inserted into the menu?

  None of these schemes had so far come to anything, nor (it seemed to me) had had any realistic chance of doing so. Was one not drawn to conclude that at some deep and perhaps unconscious level they hadn’t been meant to come to anything? Were they perhaps just as much fantasy as the original fantasy of his non-existent adventures? Just as he had lost his nerve when it came to actually embarking on the dangerous trip with his colleagues, did he also lose his nerve every time one of his murder plans looked as if it might actually work?

  Was this why I had been finding it so impossible either to challenge him myself or to warn his potential victims? It was because he hadn’t visibly done anything. He hadn’t even threatened anyone. How can you accuse a man of violent crime when no violent crime has been committed? The only crime I could accuse him of was the crime of Dangerous Thoughts, and this, surely, only counts as a criminal offence under the most tyrannous of dictatorships? Once again, I came to the conclusion that all I could do was to wait on events. If Leo seemed to be in any sort of a daze as he climbed from Edwin’s car, then of course I’d …