Dorothy Eden (32 page)

He knew that she was looking at him in amazement. Her voice was low with astonishment.

“But, Flynn, what an extraordinary request! I’m really much too busy. I have the children, and rehearsals every day, and when the play opens—”

“You will have two matinees and six evening shows a week, leaving you all the rest of the day. You have a good girl to look after the children, you told me so yourself, and judging by the bumps overheard Mrs. Blunt must scour your flat three times a day. So how else do you plan to fill in time?”

“But I have outside appointments, hairdressers, lunches. I may be doing some television work later. And I like to see something of my children. Anyway, what about that sheaf of applications you had for the job?”

“Useless. They bore me. They all spell their names with an ‘e’ on the end. Harriet, you are the only person who can read those letters. You read them beautifully.”

“Oh!”

He knew, by the sudden softness in her voice, that she was remembering the letter she had read, “you might be any small anonymous woman…” And so she might, standing there, with her low voice, and the deep brown hair Jones had described, and the not pretty face, and her controlled sympathy for him that did not jar…

She was the person he could work with over those precious letters. He was not used to being denied things, and he did not mean to be denied this. It was a brilliant inspiration.

“Harriet, please do this for me,” he said, not wheedlingly, but with simple sincerity.

She was hesitating, he knew. He could hear her move uncertainly.

“Even if you can’t see,” she said, “you’ve got to stop being such an autocrat. Do this, do that, as if everybody exists to look after you.”

“Even when you’re scathing, my sweet, your voice is charming.”

“Oh, yes, you can say nice things when you want your own way. If I do this for you, it will be in my own time. A couple of hours in the morning, or the evening. And only until the book is done.”

“We don’t need to hurry over the book. Harriet, you are unbelievably good to me.”

“Don’t be a hypocrite. And what will Zoe say?”

“It’s none of Zoe’s business. If she could read like you do, I’d have offered the job to her.”

“Have you always gone through life getting what you want?”

Automatically he touched the dark glasses that hid his injured eyes. His voice was at its most flippant.

“Trying to. But even I can’t always succeed.”

His flippancy, alternating with his moods of anger and impatience and arrogance, were all one ever saw of him, Harriet thought, as she left the flat. What sort of a young man had Joe seen at that Boston party two years ago? Joe had been quick to make friends. It would not have worried him had the visiting Englishman had more than his share of arrogance so long as he was amusing. And Joe must have found him amusing to have gone driving with him. But what had he been like before he had, had to build up this prickly and at times maddening facade to hide the hurt of his blindness? She would never see his face as Joe had seen it, lit with the intelligence of observing eyes.

But then neither would he ever see her. Ever at all. She was as anonymous to him as that woman in his great-grandfather’s letters…

She opened the door of her flat to see Millie springing away from the telephone, her face pink and guilty.

“What is it, Millie? Another wrong number?”

“No, Mrs. Lacey. Just Fred.”

“Oh!”

“He hopes I’ll have more free evenings,” Millie blurted out.

“Within reason, Millie. We’ll have to go into that. I will be working at nights myself occasionally, even before the play opens.”

Millie’s eyes were all curiosity. Her mouth hung open slightly. She looked stupid and gullible. Harriet wondered momentarily why Fred found her so attractive.

“But we’ll arrange things to suit us both,” she added, and as Millie’s face cleared she suddenly felt happy herself, happy and lighthearted, as she had when she had had the impulse to buy a new hat yesterday.

It must be the spring morning…

Just after Harriet left the flat that afternoon the telephone rang again.

Fred’s call that morning had had the effect of making Millie recover from her temporary nervousness of the telephone. After all, that wrong number last night need have had nothing at all to do with the strange blonde woman. She had been tired and frightened, and had begun imagining things. If it came to that, the woman hadn’t necessarily been staring at Millie at all as she had scrabbled on the ground in the gardens for the lost-ear-ring. She was probably someone who was odd, anyway, and wandered about the streets like a lost soul. If she had been watching Millie, she would have seen her come out of Manchester Court, and guess that she lived there, but how could she possibly know which flat she lived in, or the name of the owner of the flat? Even though it might have been she who had rung the doorbell yesterday afternoon, and then so strangely run away. (But it was Jamie who had done that. She had got the truth out of him this morning, by a little judicious cajoling and pinching.)

No, that beer Fred had bought for her must have been too strong. It had made her see ghosts!

Millie giggled to herself as she went blithely to answer the telephone. This might be Fred again, she told herself. He would have seen Mrs. Lacey leave, and guess that it was an opportunity to have a long talk. She would tell him she was about to take the children for their daily walk. Perhaps he could get an hour off and come along…

“Hello,” she said, in what she hoped was a deep provocative voice. She waited a moment, and when no answer came, she said sharply in her natural tones, “Hello! Who’s there?”

It was then that she heard the breathing. It seemed alarmingly close, almost as if the breather were at her shoulder, fanning his hot breath against her cheek.

“Are you alone in the flat?”

Surely she hadn’t really heard those sinister half-whispered words. It was as if she was in the cinema and the husky voice came from the villain, dramatically only half visible in a dark room, his face a pale threatening blur.

She could hear Jamie in the living room, pounding about in one of his noisy games, while Arabella, watching from her rug on the floor, gave a succession of her throaty gurgles. With one ear all was normal. With the other…

“Are you alone, I said?”

“Y-yes. No, the children—I mean, Mrs. Lacey, too—”

Too late she had floundered. She knew she should have said firmly that Mrs. Lacey and Mrs. Blunt were both there. But Harriet had left fifteen minutes ago, and Mrs. Blunt, her shapeless brown felt hat pulled securely on her head, her sturdy figure wrapped in her working coat that had seen many a winter’s day, had gone just before noon.

“So you’re alone except for the children.”

“Who are you? What is it you want?”

Millie tried desperately to make her voice firm and abrupt, but it ended in a woeful squeak. The worst thing now was that she couldn’t be sure whether it were a man or a woman speaking. At first she had thought it was a man, but now the husky whisper could have been that of a woman, deepening her voice deliberately. The blonde woman, with the strange nocturnal habits.

“The first question you ask is none of your business. The second is. Now listen carefully. You are to do something for me. Quite a small thing, quite easy.”

“W-what is it? And how do you know I will do it?” There was a faint, throaty chuckle, indescribably sinister.

“You will do it, my dear. Because if you don’t I will make it my business to let your mistress know that last night you stole her diamond earrings, one of which you lost, and the other you buried in the square gardens. I can take her exactly to the spot where you buried it.”

So it was that awful woman! Millie felt her scalp prickling. She could scarcely speak.

“D-diamond!” she heard herself repeating foolishly.

“Yes, real diamonds, my dear. Quite valuable. Mrs. Lacey wouldn’t like to lose them nor to hear that you had stolen them.”

“But I didn’t!” Millie screamed. “I only borrowed them. You can’t prove I stole them.”

“I can prove you lost them, because I have both of them now, here in my hand.”

“O-ooh!” Helplessly Millie began to sob.

“Don’t cry, my dear.” The hateful voice was almost kind. It was unbearable. “Mrs. Lacey shall hear nothing about this if you do as I say. Now listen. You are planning to take the children for a walk in a few minutes.”

“How do you know?”

“I have ways. Are you listening?”

Millie wanted to shout. “No, no, no! Go away!” and put down the receiver. But some awful compulsion made her hang onto it with her perspiring hands, and whisper helplessly, “Yes.”

“You won’t take the little boy with you this afternoon.”

“B-but-”

“I’m telling you you won’t take the boy. You’ll leave him with one of the neighbors. You’ll just take the baby.”

“But Mrs. Lacey—”

“You will take the baby alone.”

There was no denying that implacable order. Fragments of thought went through Millie’s frantic head. Jamie was always naughty. She could say he had refused to come, run away to Mr. Palmer when she was ready to go, anything…

“Yes,” she whispered again.

“Good. You will wheel her in her pram to Woolworth’s in High Street. There you will leave her for a few minutes while you go in to buy something, nylons, hair clips, anything. When you come out—But that’s all. It’s very simple.”

Millie had her free hand pressed to her face.

“No!” She screamed.

The faint ghostly chuckle came.

“It’s only for twenty-four hours, my dear. Nothing will happen to the baby. Nothing at all.”

“No! You can’t!”

“Better than six months in prison for stealing.” The telephone clicked. The woman, the man, whoever it was with the blonde witchlocks, had hung up. Had deliberately gone, leaving her on this precipice. There was no way to turn because on one side was prison, Fred, whom she had fallen in love with, lost, and on the other side an empty pram, Arabella, plump little smiling Arabella gone.

But the voice had promised it would be only for twenty-four hours. It had promised the baby would be all right. And babies of fifteen months didn’t remember. Not like Fred would remember, if she went to jail. She couldn’t go to jail. That was absolutely out of the question. Think of Mum’s shock, apart from Fred.

If only she hadn’t lost that wretched earring. If only she hadn’t panicked. It was Fred’s fault for messing about with her in the gardens. He had knocked it off her ear, so that that awful woman had found it.

But she had told him the earrings were lent to her. He had particularly noticed them. Perhaps he had known they were diamonds. In that case, he’d never believe she hadn’t stolen them. If he found out… He mustn’t find out. That was all there was to it. So really there was no alternative…

J
AMIE WASN’T PARTICULARLY INTERESTED
in going for long walks with Millie, holding on to Arabella’s pram all the time, as she insisted on his doing. It was very dull, especially since Millie liked staring in shop windows at silly blouses and things, and when she got to the park kept on calling to him to be careful, not to fall in the water, not to go too far away. She was as bad as Nannie Brown. Although she was nice sometimes and played games. But this morning she had pinched him hard and made him tell about yesterday’s prank, borrowing the wig and pretending to be a lady. Yet she didn’t seem to believe him when he did tell her, and said he was making it up. He didn’t care, silly old Millie.

Then all at once, when he was ready for a walk, and only waiting for her to stop talking on the telephone, she came in and said he wasn’t to come.

He didn’t care about the walk, but it wasn’t fair being suddenly told that he wasn’t wanted.

“Why can’t I come? It isn’t raining.”

“I know it isn’t raining. You just can’t come. I’m in a hurry and want to walk fast.”

“I can walk fast,” Jamie said in a hurt voice.

“Not fast enough. Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t argue. As if I haven’t enough on my mind. Here, put Arabella’s gloves on while I get the pram ready.”

Millie’s face was red and she looked as if she were going to cry. Jamie stared at her in hurt bewilderment.

“Why can’t I come? Mummy said I had to have walks.”

“Look, I told you not to argue, didn’t I?” Millie’s hand was raised ready to strike him. Then she refrained, and instead bundled Arabella onto her lap and began pulling on her gloves. “I’ll only be gone fifteen minutes. You can go down and see your precious Mrs. Helps, the way you’re always sneaking off when you’re told not to. Well, go on, then. Don’t just stand there.”

Jamie’s lower lip was thrust out mutinously. Arabella, he thought, was going to be bought ice cream and he wasn’t. That was what it was. Mean old Millie didn’t want him to see.

Well, he would just see. He’d show her.

“Go along,” said Millie more kindly. “Arabella and I will come and get you on our—I mean, I’ll get you later. I don’t know what it is you see down in that old woman’s room, but you’re welcome to it.”

Jamie knew why he liked Mrs. Helps’s dim basement room. It had the quality of a fairy story. This was enhanced by the old lady’s gift as a teller of tales. As she combed and curled silver, golden or black hair, turning it around her skillful fingers, shaping it into a realistic head, she would tell long involved stories about people who had come to her, heads she had made hair for. Half of it did not make sense to a fascinated five-year-old, but biscuits and chocolate fingers and kindness did. Escaping from Nannie Brown’s crossness and hysteria, Jamie had found the dim room and the talkative old woman a refuge.

But today he was ashamed to go down because of what he had done to the pale golden wig yesterday. He hadn’t meant to throw it in the coal bin, but he had thought Millie was chasing him. It had been such a splendid joke, until then, and he had collapsed, giggling wildly, at the foot of the basement stairs, waiting for Millie wrathfully to appear.

But no one had come. No one had seemed to miss him. So he need not have thrown that lovely wig into the dirty coal after all. And now it was awkward visiting Mrs. Helps because she would be cross with him. Which made him all the more determined not to obey Millie this afternoon.