Cry for Kit

by Veronica Heley

  Jack used to bait Edward, which made me feel sick. I tried to stop Jack, explaining that Edward was very thin-skinned and felt it when his brother made fun of him. After all, I said, Edward could never retaliate physically because Jack was so much smaller than he. It did no good. I learned to leave the room when Jack started on his brother. Apart from that, Jack and I had a marvellous time that summer; dancing, laughing, going on car rallies, and making love in the back of his old banger. We even talked of marriage.

  When Jack went away to university and the date of Edward’s marriage drew near, I tried to drop out of the group, because I was only hurting myself by continuing to see him. Then Paul rang me one night to ask me to a party at his house. His parents were to be away and so, he told me, was Amy. She had gone up to London to choose her wedding dress. Perhaps I imagined it, but I thought at the time that Paul was deliberately throwing me in Edward’s way. I went, by myself.

  Edward was there. We looked at each other and as usual did nothing about it. I had plenty of offers to dance. Someone—I think it was Tinker—spilt his drink down my dress. I couldn’t afford to have it spoiled, so I rushed upstairs to see if I could sponge out the stain. The bathroom was engaged. I thought one of the bedrooms might have a washbasin in it, and tried doors until I found one which had.

  Edward followed me in, and closed the door.

  As usual, we stared at each other. It was the first time we’d been alone.

  ‘I’m sorry about your dress,’ he said. ‘Will you let me pay to have it cleaned?’

  ‘It will be all right, I think.’ I went on rubbing at the stain, thinking how marvellous it was that he should have noticed I was in trouble and tried to do something about it. I was very conscious of him.

  He waited until I had finished, but didn’t move from the door to let me out. He held out his hand, with a gold charm on his palm. A gold heart.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Is that right?’ His voice went high and low on him.

  ‘I don’t take presents for...I’m not that kind of girl.’

  ‘I d-didn’t mean...I know that you’re...Kit, please!’

  He was stammering, as pale as I was red. I couldn’t refuse him because he needed me so badly. He wasn’t particularly good in bed, but he was everything I’d ever wanted in a man, and I didn’t care that he wasn’t as practised as Tinker, or as his brother Jack. I thought of all the caresses I could teach him, and I felt dizzy with joy. It was quick and violent; we had been building up to it all that year, and we had to get it out of our systems. From the way he kissed me and held me, I thought he loved me as much as I loved him. Foolishly I laid myself open to rebuff.

  ‘You won’t marry Amy now?’

  ‘I must.’

  ‘But I love you!’

  He said it again. ‘I must.’ He put the gold heart on the coverlet and went to the door. I called his name. He looked back.

  I screamed, ‘You should take lessons from your younger brother!’

  My wicked tongue! If I’d thought for a month, I could not have devised a more damaging thing to say. He faltered. He tried to open the door the wrong way, then mastered the trick of it and left. By the time I re-joined the party he had gone, and after that I took care not to go anywhere he might be.

  When I discovered I was pregnant I telephoned his home. I was told he was away on his honeymoon. I spoke to his father and left a message asking Edward to call me on his return. He failed to do so.

  I wrote. He replied sending me five hundred pounds in fivers and asking me not to bother him again. He wrote that I probably had plenty of other men in tow who could be blackmailed into supporting me and my illegitimate child when the five hundred pounds ran out.

  At first I simply stared at the letter. I could not believe that Edward would act like that. Then I wanted to kill him. Then I wanted to kill myself.

  I told my family. They were furious. They demanded to know who the father was. I said I didn’t know. They said I must leave home, that they would never be able to hold up their heads again, that I was a wicked girl and they wished I’d never been born.

  So did I.

  The doctor said I was a Natural Mother and would have no trouble in breeding. He was right. If only I’d been allowed to keep the child, I think I’d have adjusted to the shock in time, but in those days you were expected to keep out of sight until after the birth, hand the baby over to be adopted, and move away to make a fresh start. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving my child away. I cried and cried. I lost my job. I had crazy dreams in which I forced my way into Edward and Amy’s beautiful new house and committed suicide on their carpet, but I still refused to divulge his name to anyone. If Edward felt that way about me, then I’d have nothing more to do with him.

  Then Con Birtwhistle, who was Jack’s best friend and an absolute poppet, met me in the street one day and carried me off for a pot of tea. He insisted on hearing the whole story and for the first time I was glad to tell it. Like Paul, Con cared about people. He was very distressed by my tale, and if I hadn’t shown him Edward’s letter, I don’t think I’d have been able to convince him that I was telling the truth. He wanted to go to see Edward straight away, but I stopped him. What was the use? Anyway, the fault was half mine.

  Con kept me sane through my last month of pregnancy, calling to see me most evenings for a chat. Although we were never lovers, he gave me the last of the charms I collected in England—a crown for the Queen of Hearts. He said that I had a great gift for loving which I must learn to use wisely.

  It was Con who suggested that my sister Mary might take the child when it was born. She was years older than I, a plain girl with whom I had never got on. Mary and Tom had long ceased to hope for a child of their own, and they agreed at once, provided that I left the country within a month of the child’s birth, and promised not to see him again. They didn’t trust me not to cause trouble if I stayed. I’m sure they were right.

  What ought I to have done? I wonder about it even now. Everyone said I was doing the right thing by going. I did as they wished. I handed over my baby and half the money Edward had sent me, and stepped on a plane to New York.

  I suppose things had worked out well enough. Mary and Tom had had a child to care for, Johnny had had a loving home, Edward had been left in peace to cherish Amy and their son Piers, and I had a seat on the plane next to a middle-aged, red-headed construction engineer named Pat Neely. Pat had just been through the divorce courts and was bitter about it; he was returning to America from a business trip to London, in order to face exploratory surgery for cancer. He was drinking heavily. By the time we got to New York he had stopped drinking and we had heard each other’s life stories. There and then Pat had taken my hands and said he wasn’t going to let me go.

  ‘Maybe it will only be for a few months,’ he’d said. ‘But I know when I’m on to a good thing, and I’m not letting go of you without a fight.’

  ‘Nor are you letting go of life without a fight, I hope!’

  ‘I’ll pay you a thousand dollars for every month you stay with me!’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said I. ‘I’ll come for my keep and a monthly cheque to send Mary for the baby.’

  So that was how Pat and I had come to meet and marry, and live happily until the cancer finally took over and Pat died, returning me to base.

  Returning me to Edward, who had just tried to kill me.

  There couldn’t be any doubt about it, could there?

  *

  I went over the sequence of events for that evening in my mind, just to make sure.

  First I had seen Paul and Joan. Paul Barnes, now M.P. for South Ward. He’d put on weight since I’d last seen him, but he looked well. He hadn’t seen me, and neither had Joan. She was wearing a severely cut brocade evening dress and a good mink stole; a far cry from the tousled, informal look she’d affected in the old days. I had always liked Joan. She had been the only one of the girls in the group who had been friendly with me, especially after I’d resi
gned Paul to her care. I grinned, thinking of the way Joan and I had been accustomed to stir things up. Joan knew all about my friendship with Paul, so even if I did still wear his bracelet and charm, why should he worry? I could rule out the notion that Paul might have attacked me.

  Besides, neither Paul nor Joan had seen me.

  Jack had, though. He came in through the hotel lobby, with a tall, dark woman who was a stranger to me. Jack was still ash-blond, bony, and middling-sized. And talkative.

  He’d rushed over and hugged me, half dragging me off my stool.

  ‘Kit! Great heavens, is it really you? You’re twice as lovely, and that’s saying something! I can’t believe it!’

  His companion looked annoyed. ‘Jack!’ she said, trying not to sound angry. He introduced us; Marge Lawrence, a clever interior designer who often worked with him. Marge, it was plain, wanted to do more than work with him; she wanted him for keeps. It was equally plain to me that Jack wasn’t interested in her that way. He held my hands and radiated pleasure, talking nineteen to the dozen, just like old times. For the first time since my return, I felt as if Pat’s advice had been sound.

  ‘Dear Jack!’ I said, when I could get a word in, ‘Con wrote to tell me about your wife’s death. I grieve for you.’ His wife had had one miscarriage after another until the doctor put her on the pill. It disagreed with her, she had had a thrombosis and dropped dead one morning while out shopping. Jack had found it very hard to carry on after that.

  His eyes went wide and blank for a second. Then he grinned.

  ‘Kit, I’m glad you’re back. We’ve missed you.’

  ‘For eighteen years?’ I laughed, but I felt he was sincere. Dear Jack, so sweet and so tough under that misleading air of fragility! Jack had had rheumatic fever and every other ailment you could think of in childhood, and yet had survived to marry a fellow student and become a successful architect. I hoped it was true that he and Edward were now on better terms.

  He pressed the rings on my left hand. ‘Why did you run away as soon as my back was turned? Going off to America without a word to your friends...’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Con, of course. I’m no good at letter-writing, never was. I told him to tell you how sorry I was to hear about your husband. Have you enough money for the time being? Do you want a job, because if so, I might be able to...’

  ‘I’m fine for the moment. Thanks, Jack, but I may only be here for a few days...’

  ‘Nonsense!’

  Marge put her hand on his arm, to remind him that he was her escort for the evening. With well-concealed annoyance he took her off to the ballroom, promising to phone me in the morning. No, Marge hadn’t liked me one little bit, but I was used to being disliked by other women. I’d always been a honeypot and if men preferred my company to that of their wives, I wasn’t going to discourage them; in my experience men were far more interesting to talk to than women. And I don’t mean to flirt with, either. I wouldn’t have played Pat false for anything.

  It hadn’t been Jack who had attacked me. He couldn’t have cared less who saw us embrace in the hotel bar and it would never have occurred to him to rob me of my charm bracelet for the sake of a tiny gold crown.

  Yet surely the only reason why anyone would take the bracelet was because they thought it might incriminate them. There were twenty-four charms on it, eighteen of them given to me by Pat as anniversary presents, and six given to me by the men who had squired me around in the year before I left.

  Paul had started my collection, Fred, Tinker and Jack had added to it, Edward had given me the heart and Con the crown. Fred...Tinker...Jack...Edward...their faces whirled round and round in my mind, mixing with the faces of other men and women from my past who had been reflected in the mirror that evening. A kaleidoscope of figures, fat, thin, tall, short...kind and unkind...ugly and handsome...Edward!

  Still handsome. At thirty-six, knowing all I did know about him, I ought to have been able to meet his eyes in a mirror and stand my ground. Edward and Amy had arrived in a clump of people through the door at the end of the corridor. I recognised at least one other member of the party, but couldn’t for the moment put a name to his face. I saw Amy first. She was wearing a superb bronze silk dress, but she looked discontented, her face more deeply lined than it ought to be at her age. She was frowning around, checking up on the members of her party, fidgeting with a fine diamond bracelet on her bare arm.

  Edward, head and shoulders over her, looked what he was; a successful business man who had long driven any spontaneity of feeling underground. His hair was paler in colour than it used to be, almost approximating to Jack’s ash-blond, but his jaw-line was as hard as ever, his eye as blue, and his shoulders even broader than I had remembered. He turned at his wife’s request to look for the missing member of their party, and saw me in the mirror.

  For a few seconds he relaxed his usual control over his facial muscles. I read puzzlement in his eye, succeeded briefly by a flash of triumph or joy. Then he looked stricken, and I guessed he was thinking of my last words to him. And then some other emotion took the place of grief, something I found difficult to read; his eye hardened into an expression which I felt I ought to recognise...decision? Decision to kill me?

  Edward had gone on staring at me even after Amy pulled on his arm. Apparently the missing member of their party had arrived. Still looking back at me, Edward disappeared with his party into the ballroom. I decided that he had tried to send me a wordless message to wait at the bar for him. I panicked. Picking up my purse, but forgetting to fetch a coat, I had fled into Market Square and wandered around trying to calm my nerves until I saw the lights of the shopping precinct through the alley.

  Then...clunk!

  It all fitted. I did represent a threat to Edward. It would harm his reputation if I broadcast my story. The gold heart he had given me dangled from my bracelet. He had seen me, recognised me, and must have followed me out of the hotel into the square. He had motive and opportunity, and he had incriminated himself by taking my bracelet. As to means, I didn’t know what he’d used to hit me with...some tool from his car, perhaps? It didn’t really matter.

  What did matter was that he had my bracelet, and I wanted it back, not only because of the charms he and his friends had given me, but because of the years of happiness which were represented on it by the charms Pat had given me.

  I considered sending a message into the ballroom that I wanted to speak to Edward, but decided against it. I was too shaken for a confrontation that night. I would telephone his house and leave a message. There was a public phone booth in the lobby. I went into the box and looked up Edward’s number; he lived at a place called White Wings, just outside the city. I dialled, but there was no reply. I told myself that I wasn’t thinking clearly. Naturally there was no reply, because all the Straker family would still be in the ballroom.

  I put the phone back on its hook, and decided to get slightly tiddly before turning in. The bar was less crowded now, and the barman could attend to me without being distracted.

  ‘Certainly, Mrs Neely,’ he said, taking my order. ‘Did Mr Straker catch up with you?’

  ‘I spoke to Mr Jack Straker, yes.’

  ‘Not Mr Jack. Mr Edward Straker, the one who’s managing director of Coulsters Mills. He came in just after you left and asked me if I knew where you’d gone. I said I thought you’d gone out for a walk. Was that all right?’ He gave me my drink. ‘You are Mrs Neely, aren’t you? I haven’t made a mistake?’

  ‘He asked for me by name? I’ve been away for many years. I don’t think many people know my married name.’

  ‘That’s right. “Mrs Neely”,’ he said. "Where’s she gone?" And when I looked blank, he said, “Red hair, white dress”. I felt sure he’d catch up with you.’

  He’d caught up with me all right, I thought. ‘Is he back in the ballroom now?’

  ‘I suppose so. We’ve been very busy this evening. Afraid I didn’t notice.’

 
Edward must have learned my married name from Con, because apart from Tom and Mary, no one else had kept in touch with me. Mary and Tom had their own small circle of friends which they did not seem to have enlarged much since the days I’d lived here. It was most unlikely that they would have come into contact with Edward socially, and even less likely that they would have spoken of me voluntarily. My parents were dead. I had no other contact with my past.

  As I undressed and got into bed, I reflected that I must be going soft in the head. Edward had assaulted me, threatened me and stolen my bracelet, yet instead of calling the police I had covered up for him. I supposed that meant that I still loved him.

  I wished I’d never returned.

  *

  In the morning I ate a good breakfast and felt my fighting self take charge. I would be damned if I let Mary and Tom come between me and an understanding with my son. I would also be damned if I would let Edward drive me out of town. I would call his bluff; I would announce that I was going to buy a house, I would make plans for settling down, visit all my old friends...give Edward a scare. I wasn’t really going to expose him, but I was going to make him think that I might do so. Then, when he had returned my bracelet and grovelled for a while, I would retire to America and make a new life for myself there. Perhaps I’d take Johnny back with me, if we got on together.

  The phone shrilled.

  Edward. Immediately my breakfast began to disagree with me.

  ‘Kit? I tried to catch up with you last night, but I must have missed you.’

  I thought, yes, missed killing me!

  ‘Kit, are you there? I want...that is, I would very much like ten minutes of your time.’

  ‘Certainly,’ I said, trying to think where it would be safe to meet him. There must be other people there, so that he couldn’t try anything. ‘Have coffee with me after lunch here in the hotel lounge. Two o’clock.’