Dorothy Eden (28 page)

“I may come,” Millie admitted, tossing her head off-handedly. But she knew now that she would. No power on earth would stop her. Those brown eyes of his, so honest, and yet with that gleam…

“If I do, you’ll be able to help me in and out with the baby’s pram,” she said.

“It will be a pleasure, miss.”

After Millie had gone, Fred went off duty for an hour. This was when he had the supper his mother had prepared down in the basement flat, which would have been cozy enough had his mother not filled it with her bizarre collection of wigs and faceless heads.

But Fred was used to his mother’s background, and also to her gray, spider appearance. In fact he scarcely noticed it. It suited him well enough her being here. She cooked and made his bed for him, and didn’t get in the way. Now and again, of course, when she suspected he might be getting into trouble, she was a bit of a bore, the way her imploring eyes were fixed on him. But you could understand it, really. He had been a worry to the poor old girl, and, although that was all in the past now, she seemed to expect him to break out again.

But he wouldn’t. At least, he didn’t think so. It was the straight and narrow for him now, and perhaps, before long, a wife. Not those easy-come, easy-go types, but someone soft and fresh and attractive. Young…

“What are you thinking about, Fred?” he heard his mother asking.

She had set his place at one end of the table, and was sitting at the other end, combing a switch of long, dark, silken hair. Her sensitive fingers moved gently over it, her lined old face was absorbed. But he knew how watchful her eyes were beneath the downbent lids. In a moment they would fly open to stare fully at him.

But her appearance was deceptive. She was an artist. It was almost a state secret, the people she had made wigs for.

He grinned suddenly, and because he wanted to shock her, said in answer to her question, “Girls.”

The heavy lids lifted and the faded eyes, like a lizard’s, flew open.

“Fred!”

“What’s wrong with that, Ma? I met a nice one tonight. She’s coming to work for Mrs. Lacey in number 14. She’ll manage young Jamie a lot better than the old one did.”

“Jamie only needs love,” Mrs. Helps said, folding the strands of black hair over her fingers.

“Well, let’s hope the new girl doesn’t give all hers to the kid. I might want a bit of it.”

“I know you and your wanting. When are you going to take a girl seriously?”

“I might be doing just that”

“Humph! Well, let the girl give some attention to her job first. Don’t addle her brains with your attentions. She’ll need all her wits to cope with Jamie. I’m so afraid that child will get into trouble.”

“A five-year-old!”

“I don’t mean your sort of trouble,” Mrs. Helps said contemptuously. “There are other things that can happen to a child.”

A mile away, in a flat in one of the poorer Bayswater streets, Jones, the immaculate man-servant, stood beside his wife’s bed.

“Aw, love, look now at what you’ve gone and done!” he was exclaiming in despair.

He had put a carefully prepared tray of toast, biscuits, and hot milk on his wife’s bed, only to have her move clumsily and upset the milk. It spilled over the edge of the tray onto the sheets and the floor. One wouldn’t have thought one tumbler could hold so much.

“I didn’t do it!” Nell declared petulantly. “You put it down crooked. Of course it spilled. Oh, get a cloth, quick. I’m wet and sticky.”

Jones went swiftly to the kitchen of the small flat and came back with a cloth. His long, patient face was tired. His momentary anger had gone and he was all concern.

“Did it burn you, love? I’m sorry. We’ll have to change your nightgown, I’m afraid. Not that it didn’t need changing. I noticed it’s the same one you had on yesterday. That Miss Lane doesn’t look after you very well.”

“Of course she doesn’t. What can you expect? She isn’t interested in me, a poor sick woman. She goes out for hours and leaves me. And she isn’t kind. I don’t like her. I don’t like her at all.”

The fretful voice went on in its monotone that was now a so-familiar sound. Jones looked down at his wife. He saw that her hair, once so curled and neat, had gone straggly, as if it hadn’t been brushed for several days, that there was a faint distasteful smear of food on her chin. And that the nightgown was spotted not only with spilled milk, but with the vague spillings of other meals, which Nell’s hands were too unsteady to manage skillfully.

A hot anger rose in him. Really, this was too much. He paid the woman to be here all day and to look after his wife properly. It was intolerable that she should be neglected. It was humiliating. She might have been tied to her bed for the last ten years, growing all the time a little weaker, a little less certain both mentally and physically, so that she forgot what day of the week it was or whether the next meal was tea or supper, or even where he now worked. But none of this was her fault. She hadn’t deserved the very long dreary illness, an obscure form of paralysis which very slowly encroached on her body like the sea eating away at a chalk cliff. Once she had been so sweet and lively and gay. He had adored her. Strangely enough, her illness had made him adore her more than ever, but in a different way. Now she was his very precious possession, wholly dependent on him, to be petted and pampered, humored and teased and amused.

He was not cross that she had clumsily and, he suspected, deliberately spilled the milk, like a naughty child. But he was furiously angry that Miss Lane should neglect her the moment his back was turned.

“Don’t worry about the milk.” Nell’s fingers, dry and fragile, plucked at his arm. “Talk to me. Tell me a story.”

He knew her wandering attention would not follow the story through; she would fall asleep before he finished. But he sat down obediently and began.

“Shall I tell you about Jamie?”

“The bad boy!” she cried with pleasure, her face suddenly as empty as a child’s.

Jamie, Harriet Lacey’s ugly, attractive, stubborn five-year-old, was not really as bad as all that. But it pleased Nell to exaggerate his pranks into something enormously wicked. It amused her, so Jones enlarged on the subject.

“Yes, indeed, we all say we don’t know what will become of him. He came down to Mr. Palmer again this evening. Strictly forbidden, you know, but he never obeys. There had been a ruckus upstairs before that. I’d heard. Of course, his mother is away at the theater and doesn’t know half of what goes on. Zoe was with Mr. Palmer, and she doesn’t like the boy. If it were up to her she wouldn’t let him in, and then he’d probably go and wander in the streets and get lost. As he will one day…”

The light breathing of his wife and her tousled head fallen sideways told Jones that she was already asleep. She wouldn’t wake again that night. Gently he smoothed the sheets across the double bed into which, later, he would climb. Because there was not space in the one-roomed flat for two beds, and anyway he had never minded lying beside Nell’s sick inert body. Though more often than not he lay awake worrying, or got up to walk about.

That Miss Lane! Nell was being neglected. Her hair needed a shampoo and a good brushing. Her face had been dirty. She was being humiliated.

If only he could afford—but one managed, somehow. One crossed from one shaky bridge to the next…

The fire had burned low. Flynn knew that because the heat had gone, and there was no longer a healthy crackle, but only the slight hiss of dying flames and the falling of ash. He could hear Zoe moving about, in the kitchen. There was a clink of glass, and the jingle of her arm bracelet.

Zoe had not always been domesticated like this. He remembered the days when he had used to call for her, to find her flat always in a muddle, clothes lying about, dishes littering the kitchen. There was no time to stop for dull chores, she had said. Her Mrs. Mopp would do them in the morning. Where were they dining? Whose party were they going to?

But now all her spare time was spent here in his flat because he still could not face going out to eat or to dance, or to meet the people they had used to know. She had learned to cook, and she was even, Jones reported, reasonably tidy in the kitchen. She was loving and kind and thoughtful and she suffocated him.

The fire was almost out, and abruptly he shivered, although the room was still warm.

He wanted to be alone, to fumble his own way to bed, and there to lie silent, no kind or helpful or too possessive voices intruding into his darkness.

A dish clattered in the kitchen. The sharp sound stung him beyond endurance.

“What on earth are you doing out there?” he called, with the quick unpredictable irritation that he could not control. “Crashing about like an elephant.”

“Oh, darling! That was only a teeny sound. I was just tidying up for Jones in the morning. He’s such a sweetie. I hate him to find a mess. But I’ll come and sit down now.”

“No, you won’t. You’ll go home.”

“At ten o’clock! Flynn, darling!”

Flynn moved irritably.

“I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”

“But how can you be tired? I mean, you haven’t had a strenuous day. Not like me, standing hours for fittings. Oh, darling, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Flynn was standing, gripping his stick. But somehow he controlled his voice.

“If you’ve had a strenuous day, you shouldn’t come here at night.”

“And leave you to the tender mercies of Jones, and that actress upstairs?”

“Actress? Oh, you mean Harriet.” Suddenly he was remembering Harriet’s voice, low, warm, charming, stirred with some deep emotion as she had read his great-grandfather’s letter.

“Who else would I mean?” Zoe was acid. “I didn’t imagine you cultivated that child for his irresistible company.”

Flynn’s anger blazed. “Don’t be completely idiotic!”

“You are in a bloody mood, aren’t you? I’d better leave you to it.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you to do.”

“You’ll feel better in the morning.” The acrimony had gone out of her voice. She patted his cheek. “I shouldn’t let myself get annoyed with you. Poor sweet!”

He was rigid, the blackness sweeping through him.

“Don’t do that,” he whispered. “I’m not completely decrepit.”

“No, but you’re damned touchy.” She was cheerful again, her bracelet jingling, her perfume trailing behind her as she went to get her coat. “And don’t take any notice of what I said about Harriet. I’m not jealous of her. She may be an actress, but her looks wouldn’t set the Thames on fire.”

“I’ve never seen her,” Flynn said in a curiously low voice.

“You haven’t missed a great deal. Oh, she’s attractive enough. But people wouldn’t turn to look at her. Darling, don’t you remember how we used to be stared at?”

She had come to kiss him lightly.

“You’re just as good-looking with your dark glasses. More, actually. Mysterious. People still stare at us when we go out.”

“And suddenly you were anonymous,”
the words were running through Flynn’s head,
“you were any small anonymous women hastening to what?”

He was aware that Zoe had gone, and he was still standing there in the chilling room in the dark…

The house was old and tumbledown and very tiny, a mere slit between its larger, stronger neighbors. It was also damp, and permeated with a smell of river mist and mud. But she would soon get it in order, Eve thought optimistically. A bit of paint and some new floor coverings, the damp-stained paper stripped off and some bright new design put up. Oh, yes, she would show him she could make an attractive home out of the most unlikely material. And loneliness was what they wanted, wasn’t it? No prying landladies, no rules and regulations about late visitors. And there was the telephone. That was the important thing.

Although one got into the habit of waiting all evening for it to ring.

She had been wandering restlessly about, waiting for the preliminary ping of its bell, for the last hour. Now it was after ten o’clock. He didn’t often ring much later than that.

But one never knew. That was the absorbing thing.

All at once, as she walked up and down, her arms folded tightly across her thin breast, the bell pinged and began to shrill. Eve hurried to the telephone, her face alight…

Harriet couldn’t sleep. That was not unusual nowadays. The nights were times of longing, and, blurred and distorted by half-sleep, a sad despair.

Usually during these restless nights a glass of hot milk soothed her, and she was able to go back to bed to sleep. But tonight her wakefulness was stubborn. She kept thinking of the new girl coming tomorrow, and wondering how she would get on. And there was that other disturbing thing, the way she had broken down over Flynn’s letter. Of all people, he was the last one in front of whom she wanted to break down.

Harriet walked about the flat sipping her hot milk, then put down the empty glass, switched off the light and went to draw back the curtains.

The night was quiet now. The distant swish and roar of traffic down High Street was intermittent and far off. The square was almost deserted. A few parked cars, an occasional stroller… The air with its smell of winter and fog was refreshing on her face. She leaned a little out of the open window.

Someone had moved beneath a tree across the street. Someone loitering there, not a couple locked in an embrace so close that it might have been their despairing last one, but a single figure in a long coat. It was too dark to see whether it was a woman or a man. Whoever it was seemed, in an uneasy way, to be staring directly at her flat.

But that surely must be her imagination.

B
Y THE MORNING HARRIET
had forgotten that slight incident. It wasn’t that she had dismissed it as not worth thinking about, but she had genuinely forgotten it. It was not until a week later that she had an uneasy memory of it, but that, too, was fleeting at the time, and didn’t seem worth worrying about.

Millie had settled down nicely. She was not perfect, perhaps. She had untidy, lazy ways and her voice and her giggle jarred. But she was young and lively, and good-tempered, and already Arabella adored her. Jamie was more cautious. He obviously in his secret mind had several tests yet to make. He had tried being disobedient and obstinate and very, very noisy. But finding this could not produce helpless, red-faced anger or tears, as with Nannie Brown, it palled, and he alternated by showing a heavenly innocence and basking in Millie’s approval. This, too, however, was beginning to pall. So he was planning shortly to do something very naughty, something much worse than running off to Flynn or Mrs. Helps. He didn’t know yet what his great naughtiness would be, but an opportunity to invent something would occur.