Read A Fragment of Fear Online
Authors: John Bingham
“What harm?” I said yet again. “I don’t understand—what’s the harm?”
The change from hostility to something akin to a plea had caught me by surprise.
“None, I suppose,” she muttered, and drew her handkerchief out of her cardigan pocket.
With a woman of her type it is difficult to know whether such an action is due to hayfever, catarrh, or tears.
As I closed the door, I could not help thinking of Signor Bardoni’s words, “Let her be, Mr. Compton, let her be!” In his case, the words had been accompanied by a remark about the dead hitting back, a blatant appeal to superstition. Constance Brett’s stumbling appeal had been to the heart.
Both were directed to the same end.
The following is a brief record of my interview with Mrs. (Caroline) Gray, as written on the evening of October 8th:
Interviewed Mrs. (Caroline) Gray this afternoon in hotel garden, on bench. After wet morning, warm and sunny. Dahlias, some tall some dwarf, made fine colour in borders….
Mrs. Gray is a dumpy woman in late sixties. Round podgy face, heavily powdered, muffin-like. Small brown eyes almost hidden by fat cheeks. Small slit for mouth. Lipstick. Sometimes seems to be sucking imaginary sweet in front of mouth. Has odd habit of repeating parts of sentences.
Myself:
The manageress tells me you were her closest friend in the hotel.
Mrs. G.:
I was, indeed I was. It is a great shock to me, a very great shock. She was a very remarkable woman. I said she was a very remarkable woman.
Myself:
Why was she remarkable?
Mrs. G.:
She just was. Everybody agreed about that.
What are you writing in that notebook?
Myself:
Just a few shorthand notes.
Mrs. G.:
Why?
Myself:
I have a bad memory.
Mrs. G.:
The ways of the Lord are strange.
Myself:
I beg your pardon?
Mrs. G.:
Her father lost a great deal of money to a crook. Her husband was in the Army. He was killed a couple of years after they were married.
Myself:
In what war?
Mrs. G.:
In no war. He was killed by a burglar. I said he was killed by a burglar.
Myself:
By a burglar?
Mrs. G.:
He went down and disturbed a burglar, and was killed. And now this awful tragedy. Strange, the ways of the Lord. Some families seem to attract trouble. I said they seem to attract trouble, some families.
Myself:
It sometimes looks like it. Who were these people called the Stepping Stones?
Mrs. G.:
What people called the Stepping Stones?
Myself:
Well, I don’t know. That’s why I am asking you.
Mrs. G.:
I don’t wish to go on talking to you, if you are going to be rude.
(N.B. It was certainly a rude remark. But she had begun to irritate me. She was twittery and nervous, her little currant eyes were fixed on my face to note the impression she was making. Her voice took on a tone like a schoolmistress or a prison wardress. Some of these cosy-looking, muffiny-faced old ladies can be proper Tartars.)
Myself:
I apologise, if I sounded rude. I did not mean to.
Mrs. G.:
Very well, then. Everybody can be misunderstood. I said everybody can be misunderstood.
Myself:
Quite.
(N.B. A fairly long silence. Decided to try again.)
About this Stepping Stones business, Mrs.
Gray, you were her best friend, surely you—?
Mrs. G.:
I didn’t say I was her best friend. I was her best friend in the hotel. That’s different, isn’t it?
Myself:
Well, do you know of any other close friends not in the hotel?
Mrs. G.:
No. No, I don’t.
Myself:
Had your friend Mrs. Dawson any eccentric habits?
Mrs. G.:
No, of course she hadn’t! She was a perfectly normal woman, perfectly normal.
Myself:
You said she was a very remarkable woman. So she was normal but remarkable, is that it?
(N.B. She was chewing imaginary sweet rapidly.)
Mrs. G.:
Why are you trying to trip me up? Like a lawyer or a detective or something?
Myself:
That’s what I am—a detective or something, as you call it. I am a writer. I am going to record her case. I need to know about her. I can’t just write, “Mrs. Dawson was murdered at Pompeii on September 11th and the Italian police have so far made no noticeable headway.” Presumably the Stepping Stones, whoever they are, knew her well, since they sent a wreath—the only wreath, incidentally “in memory of happier times,” as they put it.
Mrs. G.:
Well, I cannot help you further, I must go indoors, I said I must go indoors now.>
Myself:
You have helped me already, thank you. You have told me she suffered twice at the hands of criminals. Now she had suffered a third time. It is a remarkable story.
Mrs. G.:
No good is served by recalling tragedy. Why not let poor Mrs. Dawson rest in peace? I said, why not—
Myself:
I know what you said. Two people have said the same thing already.
Mrs. G.:
Then why not have the decency to heed them, Mr. Compton?
Myself:
I am not convinced that she is resting in peace. On the other hand I am conscious of deliberate obstruction. I do not know why, and I cannot describe it, but I feel it. I am an old newspaper man, and senseless obstruction makes me obstinate. I am going to do a most exhaustive study of her and her past life, the tragedies in it, and her own awful end.
(N.B. I thought, mistakenly, that I had nothing to lose by being outspoken; nor had I any scruples. The hard insulting voice issuing from the pale muffiny face made me feel that this dumpy old bag merited no more courtesy than she gave, which was little or none.)
Mrs. G.:
I shall now go indoors and rest for an hour before dinner, Mr. Compton, since your mind seems made up.
Myself:
Two points before you go. Had she any special interests? How did she spend her days?
Mrs. G.:
She spent her time like most of us do—going for short walks, talking, looking at television, and reading.
Myself:
Had she many friends outside those in this hotel?
Mrs. G.:
Hardly any. Probably none.
She got up and crossed the lawn to the hotel side entrance. Slow, deliberate steps. Thick ankles. Slightly bandylegged.
Illness is an operational hazard when seeking information in these hotels. I had to wait two days before a stomach upset which had befallen Mrs. Dacey allowed her to come down from her room. She was a very elegant old doll indeed. She looked about eighty, to judge from the texture of her skin. But she was slim, beautifully dressed in a plain black dress, with a simple patent leather belt, and wore elegant shoes, probably Italian. Her hair was dyed blonde, yet this, so blatantly artificial, looked decorative rather than incongruous.
She was the widow of a minor diplomat, and in the course of our conversation she told me quite frankly that she spent her time reading biographies and historical works, playing patience, and waiting for death. She was coolly philosophical.
I enjoyed talking to her, and in this sense the delay was worthwhile. It is always pleasing to meet somebody who is determined to be elegant, intelligent, and unperturbed, right to the end of the road. Such people think they are no longer of use to the world. They are wrong. They are no longer leaders, they are no longer even tillers of the soil, but they provide nourishment for those who come within their range, and thus, so long as their spirit holds firm, their life is worthwhile.
In all other ways, except one, Mrs. Dacey was a disappointment. She could fill in very little of the picture of Mrs. Dawson which I was trying to visualise. But she gave me four snippets of information which I noted as of possible use.
First, she said that, as in Italy, so at the Bower Hotel, Mrs. Dawson paid her hotel bill direct to the hotel manageress, an eccentricity which neither Miss Brett nor Mrs. Gray had mentioned.
Secondly, she said that Mrs. Dawson always spent a holiday abroad: not always in Italy, occasionally in France or Switzerland, or Holland, or some other country.
Third, her life, though aimless as described by Mrs. Gray, was not entirely so, since she was interested in the International Seamen’s Widows and Orphans Fund; in connection with this she wrote and received a fair amount of mail, and made occasional trips to London. She knew this because Mrs. Dawson had said so herself, though reluctantly, not wishing her charitable activities to be widely known.
Four, Mrs. Dawson’s friendship with Mrs. Gray was such that Mrs. Gray was to all intents and purposes her devoted slave. She helped her to undress at night, and dress in the morning, she brushed her hair, packed when Mrs. Dawson went away, unpacked when she returned, and waited on her hand and foot.
This I found extraordinary.
This fascinated me more than anything I had yet heard.
Caroline Gray was an unpleasant old bag, physically and mentally tough, unsentimental, unyielding, and self-sufficient.
If Mrs. Gray was like that, and Lucy Dawson could dominate her, what did that make Lucy Dawson beneath her gentle frail exterior?
I could find no answer to the question before I left the Bower Hotel.
O
n the evening of October 10th, I caught the 8.25 p.m. train back to London. It was cold, it had been bitterly cold all day. Suddenly, unexpectedly, the first touch of winter had descended, and with it a thick mist.
Either the heating on the train had gone wrong, or they had forgotten to switch it on, and I sat huddled in a corner of the carriage, sometimes thinking, sometimes trying to doze, waiting for the train to gather speed, which it never did.
Opposite me a woman sat, large and ungainly, her figure shrouded in a thick jersey and a short coat, topped off with a white mackintosh. She looked about fifty, and had a round face encased in a layer of wool, a cross between a skiing hat and a blue child’s bonnet, which tied under the chin. Myopic, naïve eyes looked through large horn-rimmed spectacles; mostly at the mist-covered night, sometimes at me.
I guessed she wanted to talk, and took no notice. I dislike talking on trains. And I was thinking about the Bower Hotel.
The visit had not been an entire success, but at least I had seen the place where Lucy Dawson had lived. I could write:
Old Mrs. Dawson, who was murdered in Pompeii, was a woman in her late seventies. A tall, thin, frail woman, she lived most of the year at the Bower Hotel, Burlington-on-Sea, a good class residential hotel. She liked to spend a few weeks on the continent each year.
For the rest of the time, her life appeared to be uneventful, mostly whiling away the days in the manner usual in such hotels, though she took some interest in a seamen’s charity.
Tragedy, however, was already known in her family. Apart from the fact that her father lost most of his money as a result of a business transaction with crooks, her husband had been murdered after only two years of marriage when he disturbed a burglar; and now she herself was destined to die a tragic death behind the sunbaked walls of an ancient Roman city.
I leaned my head against the train upholstery, eyes closed, forming the dull, uninspired sentences in my mind as the train ground its way through the mist.
As a background picture it was terribly thin, but it was the best I could do at the moment.
As to the Stepping Stones, who had sent a wreath, I was beginning to lose interest in them. The wording, “In memory of happier times,” was old fashioned and pedantic. They were possibly some amateur entertainment group with whom Lucy Dawson had once been associated, two or three of whom still survived in London or some provincial town. Perhaps they even met from time to time to play a piano and entertain each other in reedy voices with songs from their youth.
I was beginning to paint a sentimental picture of them, when suddenly, to my annoyance, the woman opposite me spoke.
“The fog service is always much worse on Sundays.”
“Yes,” I said, hating her, and opened my eyes, and closed them again.
“Still,” the voice went on, “I’m well wrapped up and I quite enjoyed a day in the country.”
The word “quite” sounded a sad little word, indicating that the speaker had not enjoyed her day in the country as much as she had expected. I sighed.
“Hardly a day to plod round the woods,” I said, since what had to be had to be. “It’s not exactly primrose weather.”
“No,” she said solemnly, “it’s not the right time of year for primroses. I missed Mass, too.”
“You are a Catholic, I suppose.”
“Yes, are you?” she asked eagerly.
I am not a Catholic, but Juliet is, and I know a good deal about the subject. Suddenly, I saw myself engaged in some ghastly Protestant v. Catholic argument, of the kind which invariably leads nowhere at all. This I could not contemplate.
“Yes,” I said, to forestall it.
“And I suppose you
practise?
”
“Oh, yes,” I said, in case she should start giving me a tolerant lecture about overcoming the Weaknesses of the Flesh. I need not have worried.
There was a pause. Then she said:
“I was brought up by the nuns. I would like to have gone to Mass today, but I couldn’t find a church. I remember when I made my first Communion. I wore a white veil and lilies of the valley.”
She seemed to droop. A dreadful feeling of nostalgia, as damp as the fog, emanated from her and I gave a mental groan. I was not in the mood for childhood reminiscences, and I didn’t want to feel sorry for her. There is a glutinous monotony about youthful innocence lost.
I said nothing.
She took a grubby handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose, and looked like a female counterpart of a schoolmaster who had taught me chemistry, and to whom we boys had been very cruel. I hoped, too, that the conversation was at an end, and to help its closure I shut my eyes again.
After a while I half opened them cautiously.
Her own eyes were swimming with tears, and she was wiping them with a grubby handkerchief.
I am a sucker for adult tears, because although they embarrass me they expose the helplessness and childishness which does not lie so very deep in people. She said:
“I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t stop crying.”
“Well, never mind,” I said, which must rank among the top, winning lines for fatuity. She began to sob now.
“I’ve lost a very great friend. Do you believe in life after death, do you think we survive?”
“Of course I believe in it,” I said stoutly.
“I don’t want the obvious answers,” she said, but with no echo of reproof. “I mean, do
you
believe it?”
“Yes, I do. If one doesn’t believe that, there is no point to life. You might as well put your head in a gas oven,” I added, and regretted the words as soon as I had spoken them.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she said flatly.
There is a horrid quiet grimness at suddenly looking at a human soul when it has reached the pit of darkness. You grope around tongue-tied. There’s the wind on the heath, brother, and grief passes in the end, and all the other hackneyed stuff, but you know it won’t do. She sat looking at me like a dog in an anti-vivisection advertisement.
The seconds passed.
“Despair is a terrible thing,” I said. God Almighty, one had to say something.
She began to wipe her eyes again.
“You should try not to give way,” I added hopelessly.
We went through a tunnel, and the lights, for some obscure reason known only to British Railways, promptly went out.
In the damp darkness I could hear muffled sniffs, and small movements like a rabbit in a hutch. When the train rattled its way out of the tunnel the lights came on, and I saw she had struggled out of her mackintosh and taken off her head covering. She wore a man’s collar and tie, and her grizzled hair was cut rather close to her head. She blinked and said:
“Of course, I do realise it’s partly my fault, but it’s terrible when you have two people in love with you.”
I gazed at the fantastic plainness of her face, noting a certain bun-faced honesty, and wished angrily that she had looked evil. She said:
“My friend who died was older than me, and the friend who is living with me is young. The young are hard. They don’t understand. I can’t even cry, except in the toilet.”
“Why won’t she let you cry?”
“She’s an atheist, she doesn’t want me to take up God again. She says it’s weak-minded. She won’t have a lot of mumbo-jumbo, she says. But it’s terribly hard, terribly hard.”
The tears began to drip from her eyes once more, but she did not mop at them. Her body did not move. She just apologised again.
“What about your work?” I muttered. “I suppose you do work?”
“Yes, I work for an Adoption society.”
I sighed with relief, glad of any straw to help me out of a feeling of utter inadequacy, and said:
“Well, there you are—there’s your scope for the future—helping to provide a happy future for—”
But she wouldn’t let me finish.
“I know all that, I was enthusiastic at one time, but some of those people are so cynical. Do you know what one of them said to me last week, rubbing her hands together? ‘Christmas will soon be here,’ she said, ‘they’ll all be having a drink or two too many, and then by September we shall have a good many new babies to place.’ I think it’s disgusting. I mean they’re not replacements, they’re people, small people, anyway,” she concluded awkwardly.
“That’s right,” I said, and glanced at my watch. “We’ll be in at Victoria Station in a few minutes,” I added, but it wasn’t any good.
“She was very good to me, my friend who died. I’d like to see her again. It would be nice to explain.”
“You’ll see her again,” I said dully.
People often think that explanations can change things, can soften the blow of adultery, smooth over the loss of love, pour oil on the surface of life; and the seas will abate, and all will be as it should be. It’s bunk.
“She was much older than me, I told you that. We still went on being friends after. She wasn’t bitter. I’m sure she understood.”
I nodded. There was nothing I could say which was worth saying.
“She said she’d leave me £100 in Premium Bonds. That shows she still cared, don’t you think? Do you think I ought to practise my religion again?”
“It’s something you’ve got to decide for yourself,” I replied, and knew she wanted me to go through the motion of deciding for her.
“I suppose so.” Her voice was grief stricken. “Do you know, her family didn’t even invite me to the funeral. You’d think they’d have had the decency to do that, wouldn’t you? Some people! They said it was because I was a Catholic.”
Her eyes took on an expression of stubborn indignation.
“That was just an excuse. They knew perfectly well I hadn’t been to church for years. What harm would it have done letting me go to church to pay my last respects? Still, I went, just to spite them. What is more I walked the way to the cemetery afterwards, carrying my wreath. I owed it to her. So it was all right in the end, wasn’t it?”
“You did the right thing,” I said, and my voice sounded like an echo of futility itself.
“That’s what I thought. It helps when you know you’ve done the right thing.”
“Oh, yes it does.”
The train was slowing down in Victoria Station. I could hardly wait for it to stop. She was heaving herself into her silly white mackintosh, adjusting her ludicrous head covering. I heard her murmur something about catching a No. 52 bus, and saw her open a big shabby handbag, and take out a buff-coloured envelope. Suddenly, impulsively, I blurted out:
“Don’t do anything foolish. Suicide is no solution.”
The train had almost stopped. She said:
“You may be right. But it’s hard to go on.”
“Try.”
She nodded. Then she swallowed, and sought the same old assurance.
“I shall see her again?”
“Of course, of course you will,” I said, and reached thankfully for the door handle as the train stopped.
We walked a little way along the station platform together.
“She left me a barometer, too. I do hope I get it. But the family are making a fuss.”
I indicated a side entrance, and said I’d have to take a taxi as I was late. I wasn’t. I had nothing to be late for, but I wanted to get back to normality and away from sadness. I felt I couldn’t stand it any longer. I could have given her a lift part of the way, but I couldn’t stand it, not any longer.
Yet at the last moment she detained me with a red, square, hand laid on my arm, and said:
“It’s been such a help talking to you. It’s not often you find somebody who understands. These days everyone is so hard. They don’t seem to understand the nice things in life.”
I felt ashamed by her simplicity, and appalled by the memory of my inability to offer real comfort. I shook my head and began to mutter something, but she interrupted me and said:
“Because you’ve been a help to me, here is something which may help
you.
I do hope it will. I really do. But don’t read it till you’re back home.”
She thrust into my hands the buff-coloured envelope she had taken from her handbag, and left me, and her squat figure hurried on in the direction of the main station entrance.
I have described the incident at some length because I believe that despite the hold which certain people had on her, her sorrow and grief were sincere.
I believe she thought the small role she played to be innocuous, as indeed it was. Whether she had performed less innocuous acts in the past must be a matter for speculation. On this occasion I am certain she was not play-acting, because it would have been pointless to go to such lengths.
Actually, I thought the buff envelope probably contained some extract from the Bible or something, and I put it in my pocket, had a couple of drinks at the Devonshire Arms near my flat and forgot all about it till I was undressing.
When I opened it, it contained an ordinary quarto sheet of white paper, on which was typed the following: