A Fragment of Fear (9 page)

“Somebody’s pulling your leg, old boy.”

“Probably.”

“Of course they are, old boy!”

“Why?”

“Why? I don’t know why, old boy. Why does anybody play a practical joke. Damn silly, if you ask me, old boy.”

I nodded.

“You’re probably right. It’s a bit elaborate, it’s spread over a wide area, and I don’t see the point of it, but—”

“There never is much point in a practical joke, old boy.”

I felt that at any moment he was going to tell me stories of practical jokers who had dug up holes in main thoroughfares, of undergraduates who had dressed up as visiting Indian potentates and inspected guards of honour, and other tales from the hoary old repertoire of practical jokers.

“There’s no end to some people’s childishness,” said Elaine Bristow brightly. “Even Stanley, when we were first married, used to tinker about with people’s cars when they came to dinner, and remove some bit of the engine, and then while they were ringing up for help he used to sneak out and put it back again, didn’t you Stanley?”

“I expect you’re both right,” I said quickly. “I expect it’s something like that.”

I felt instinctively that I had to tell them about it, in case it went on. I suppose I knew instinctively that it would go on. Now I had told them. Now I could change the subject.

“What’s going to win the November Handicap?” I asked.

He looked pleased. He began to tell me, at some length, going through the merits of the main equine contenders one by one, almost leg by leg. I lit a cigarette and settled back, nodding from time to time. His wife sat back, too, bored but resigned.

Juliet was fiddling about with her coffee cup. Her skin and dark hair looked paler and more exciting, in the subdued lighting of even that mediocre Soho restaurant. She wasn’t wearing her glasses.

Once or twice she looked at me without moving her head, moving her eyes only, using the shy secretive glance which hitherto had always excited me. Tonight her glance didn’t excite me. Her eyes were worried. She had caught my true mood.

Juliet said she would go straight to bed when we got back to her parents’ flat. The fatigue caused by the work of the Washington conference and the Atlantic flight had finally caught up with her. I would have been content to take the taxi on, back to my own flat, but Stanley insisted that I should come in for a final drink and paid off the driver.

One of Juliet’s two pieces of luggage still stood in the hall, and I followed her along the passage, carrying it for her. In her bedroom, I put it down, and saw she was staggering with exhaustion and although we had hardly had a moment to ourselves since her return, I just murmured a few words and kissed her, and gave her a warm hug, and said I would see her at lunchtime next day, and made for the bedroom door.

But as I drew away from her, she caught hold of me and I turned round. I thought she wanted me to kiss her again, and was rather touched, and I did, and she didn’t object, but it wasn’t why she had detained me. After I had kissed her again, she looked at me, and then away, in the withdrawn manner peculiar to her, and said quietly:

“You are worried. I mean, you really are a bit, aren’t you?”

“No, not really. No, I’m not worried. It’s a bit bewildering, and it’s all rather childish and melodramatic, and I don’t understand why they don’t want me to go on with this story, whoever they are. But I’m not worried, because I don’t see what there is to be worried about.”

“Isn’t that a reason to be worried?”

I laughed and said:

“Now don’t you try and scare me, darling.”

“I’m not trying to scare you.”

“Good.”

“It’s just that—these times we live in.”

“What about these times?”

“One feels there’s so much evil around one. So much hidden danger. You know? Bits and pieces appear in the papers. Killings and kidnappings, and inexplicable scandals, and treachery, and cold, cold hate, and those are only the bits you see, you never know where it’s going to erupt next, or why it happens.”

“There always have been these things.”

Suddenly she started to cry. I put my arm round her. I had never seen her cry before and I didn’t like it.

“Come along, darling, pop into bed, and forget these things.”

“How can I forget them, when they may be touching you and me? Clawing at what may be our only chance of happiness in this life, threatening our marriage.”

She dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief I offered her.

“Why not drop it, darling?” she said.

“Drop what?”

“Drop the story of Lucy Dawson.”

I stared at her, feeling the obstinacy which has done me so much good and harm in life almost literally congealing my mind.

“Good God, whose side are you on?” I muttered.

She began to sob in earnest now.

“Whose side are you on?” I said again.

“Yours, darling. Ours,” she whispered. “I just want to be happy, that’s all.”

“If I knew the reason why they want me to drop it, I might—or I might not. But I don’t. So I won’t.”

She turned away and murmured, “Men, men.”

From down the passage Stanley’s snuffly voice called me. He said something about, come on you two lovebirds, it’s time Juliet was in bed. Something nauseating, anyway.

I kissed her again. She did her best to respond, but her heart was not in it. I went along to the sitting room, and found Stanley alone. He said Elaine had gone to bed. I wanted to go to bed, too, but he was standing by the drinks tray, fiddling about with his cutglass whisky decanter, and tumblers, and soda syphon. I thought he was going to say, “Well, what about a nightcap, old boy?” but he didn’t. He said, “What about one for the road, old boy?” To make it worse, he said, “If you drink, don’t drive—if you drive, don’t drink. Well, you aren’t driving, old boy.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m walking back. I’ll have a small one.”

I lit a cigarette and sighed. He handed me a whisky.

“Tired, old boy?”

“No, not really.”

I wasn’t feeling particularly tired. I was just dismayed, once again, at the prospect of endless periodic drinks with Stanley, of being pinned in corners by him, of looking up at him and into his protruding watery grey eyes with their touch of ex-ophthalmic goitre, while he smoothed his sparse hair with one hand, held a glass in the other, and told me yet another feeble, smutty story.

“Well, drink up, old boy—all the best!”

I drank half the tumbler of whisky and soda without a pause.

The sooner it was finished, the sooner I could go. He was standing by the mantelpiece, his back to me, and without looking round he said:

“Look, old boy, there’s something I think you should know.”

His voice was as snuffly as ever, but lacked the normal lighthearted overtones.

“It’s about Juliet, old boy.”

W
hat about Juliet?”

“I expect she’d tell you herself, if she hasn’t done so already. I suppose she hasn’t?”

“Hasn’t told me
what,
for heaven’s sake? How do I know?” I asked, and couldn’t keep the irritation out of my voice.

It was late, and I know now that subconsciously I was beginning to worry about Juliet’s attitude.

“I can’t tell you whether she has or whether she hasn’t, unless you tell what she might or might not have told me, or be about to tell me, can I? Well, can I?”

He turned round from the mantelpiece and gawked down at me, tall and spindly, and I noticed that his tow-coloured moustache had not turned as grey as his thin hair. He looked, as he sometimes implied to other people that he was, like a former member of a crack cavalry regiment officered by rich young men, though I knew from Elaine Bristow that in fact he had been in the Pay Corps during the last war.

“Well, it’s only fair you should know, old boy—in point of fact, Juliet is not really our daughter. She’s an adopted child.”

He looked anxiously at me, swirling his whisky in his glass. He looked really worried. I could have laughed in his face.

So far from feeling dismay, I was aware of a surge of relief that Juliet was not the result of the marriage of this uninteresting couple; and mingled with the relief, piercing through it, here and there, I began to ponder certain things, such as her dark, withdrawn attractiveness, her mixture of gaiety and seriousness, the touch of mystery about her, the occasional secretive look. Were they due to her blood or to the knowledge she had of herself? Had she, in fact, suspected the truth long before they confirmed it? An overheard remark, a hastily broken off conversation, can reveal more to a child than adults realise. Children are no fools.

None of her characteristics could have stemmed from the Bristows, and I should have known it; and even if, as I had thought, she had had some more interesting ancestor, the dull Bristow blood would have thinned it beyond hope.

“My dear Stanley, what on earth does that matter?” I said lightly, and realised that in my relief that Juliet was a full-blooded non-Bristow I had for the first time called him by his Christian name.

“I hoped you’d say that, old boy. I’d have said the same myself. I’ll tell you about her parents, I’ll tell you something she doesn’t know herself.”

“You don’t need to.”

“It’s only fair, old boy.”

He went ostentatiously to the door, opened it quietly, an inch or two, as if to make sure that nobody was coming along the passage, then closed it and walked back to the fireplace.

“Actually, I’d rather not know,” I said quickly. “I’d rather not have that sort of secret between Juliet and me.”

“I think you should, old boy—you see she’s only half English.”

He spoke in a half whisper, and looked at me as if he expected me to fall down in a dead faint.

“Half English–half Italian,” he muttered. “Remember that hotel I recommended near Sorrento? Remember Signor Bardoni? That’s her father. Good fellow, eh? Don’t know her mother, old boy. English, but just a name—Smith, or Brown or something. Disappeared. Got it?”

I nodded. I’d got it all right. But I couldn’t speak.

“And she doesn’t know?”

“She knows she’s an adopted child, old boy. But she doesn’t know who her parents are, she doesn’t know Bardoni is her father. And her father doesn’t know who adopted her. That’s the way these adoptions go, of course, and quite right, too, old boy, saves a lot of trouble and heartache in later years. But I found out—through a friend of a friend. You know? Made inquiries. Can’t be too careful.”

“And you went and stayed at the hotel a couple of years ago? You and Elaine and Juliet?”

I stared at him in amazement.

“There was no danger, old boy—Elaine knew of the relationship of course, but nobody else. Wanted to go to Italy anyway. Thought it would be an interesting experiment—you know, see what happened, call of the blood and all that stuff, see if they were attracted to each other. Do you know what happened, old boy?”

I was stuck with him for years and years. It was no good showing disapproval, no good saying that in an indefinable way I felt the whole idea repellent. He wanted me to ask, “What happened?” but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to give him the satisfaction. I took a sip of whisky and fumbled for a cigarette.

“Do you know what happened?” he asked again. So I had to say something in the end.

“What happened?” I said.

“Nothing! Nothing at all, old boy! We all talked to Bardoni now and again. But they didn’t take any interest in each other at all. Fascinating, old boy.”

“How did you know he was managing the hotel?”

“Through this adoption society chap—indirectly. They keep in touch, you know, sometimes. Just in case. You know?”

I sat looking into my whisky glass, wondering why Juliet hadn’t told me herself that she was an adopted child. She must have known it would make no difference. I wondered again if it accounted for her withdrawn manner, her secretiveness. I was aware of a feeling of hurt. I said:

“At what age did you tell her that she was an adopted child?”

“At what age? Well, at the age of twenty-two, old boy! We told her tonight—after you dropped her here in your car. While she was changing to go out. Elaine went in and told her.”

“Just like that—a sort of ‘Welcome home’ greeting?”

I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. I thought if anything was typical of this dull and unimaginative pair it was to spring this news on her just when she had arrived back tired and exhausted. I was angry, and he saw it.

He went all stiff and more snuffly than ever:

“There was no need for us to tell her—or you, old boy. I trust you realise that? In these days the birth certificate merely gives the name, date, and place of birth. But Elaine and I talked it over, old boy, and at first we were against telling her—or you—and then we said no it was not fair to you, old boy. So we told her. And very reasonable she was about the whole thing. Very reasonable.”

He sounded aggrieved.

I finished my whisky and got up. It is useless to be angry with stupid people, and pointless to argue with them.

“No wonder she looked pale at dinner. I thought she was just tired.”

“I think she really was just tired, old boy.”

He looked at me with his protruding grey eyes, leaning droopily against the mantelpiece, stroking his thin hair, a worried expression still on his face.

It was a hopeless situation. I gave up.

“Maybe she was just tired. I expect that was mostly it.”

I forced myself to smile. He brightened at once.

“Good! So now we’re all in the clear, old boy?”

“That’s right.”

“Good-o!”

“Good-o!” I repeated, and was nearly sick. “I must be off. I’ll just pop along and see if she’s asleep.”

Her bedside light was on, but she was asleep, and did not stir when I put my head round the door. Thus I knew that she did indeed realise that the evening’s revelation would make no difference to me, and was not worried.

It could also have meant that she did not care one way or the other.

The news about Juliet had driven other things from my mind. Within a quarter of an hour there occurred something which shook me considerably, because it gave a warning of the violence which lay ahead.

It has to be remembered that I was too young to have fought in the war, and that I had lived in a peaceful and well-ordered society. I was not prepared for hazards other than the normal perils of accidents or ill health.

I had read about peasants who were observed, threatened, stalked, and finally clawed down by the jungle carnivores, but it always seemed to me that if one stuck to the safer paths one could, apart from Acts of God, reckon on physical security in this twentieth century.

I had no conception, until the very end, of what I was up against.

What happened after I had finally said good night to Stanley Bristow and closed his front door can as well be told by the statement I made to the police, at about fifteen minutes past midnight, which ran approximately as follows:

“That’s about it,” I said, and signed the stilted, jerky statement. The bored young detective watched me. He stubbed out a cheap tipped cigarette, and leaned back in his chair.

I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking the same thing: when you got it down on paper it looked pretty thin on its own. And there was nothing anybody could do about it now.

The trouble was we had got off on the wrong footing. I went into the police station and said I wanted to report an incident which seemed to link up with something I had already reported to one of their sergeants, and the station sergeant said, “I see, sir,” and showed me into an interview room. Then the young detective came in, but he wouldn’t listen to me.

That was the point, he wouldn’t listen.

He said, “Well, all right, sir, but first let’s get an idea of the present trouble, and then we’ll see, we’ll see about the rest of it. Now what’s the present trouble, sir?”

The point is, it sounded thin, unless you had some idea of the build-up. But he cut me short when I tried to explain. He wanted the hard facts of my present “complaint,” as he called it.

So when he read through what I had written, I knew he was going to be niggly.

“What you saw in his hand might have been a torch,” he said.

“That’s right. It might have been.”

“You say he approached you. He might have been trying to pass between the buildings and you and the other chap—on the inside of the pavement, as it were.”

“He might have been. But we were well over on the inside. The easier way would have been to pass us on the outside.”