IT occurred to me that Maxwell, for reasons of his own, would be in favour of my paying a visit to the jail. So, back at the Residence, I rang him up. Passant wanted me to talk to his niece, I said: he wasn’t in a fit state to do it himself: it wasn’t a job I welcomed, but what was the drill? Maxwell said that he would speak to the governor. If she wouldn’t see me, they couldn’t force her, that was the end of it.
Later in the evening, the telephone rang, and Vicky, who was sitting with me, went into the hall to answer it. In a moment she returned and told me: “It’s for you. Police headquarters.”
I heard Maxwell’s voice, brisk, sounding higher-pitched than when one met him in the flesh. All fixed. I could go to the jail at four o’clock the following afternoon. She hadn’t shown any interest. They had asked if she objected, and she said she didn’t mind whether I went or not.
When I got back to the drawing-room, Vicky enquired: “All right?”
“I suppose so,” I said.
She knew why I was staying in the town, but she hadn’t asked about any of the details. She assumed that I was trying to help old friends. She might have noticed that I was unusually silent. Perhaps not: she had her own concerns, she didn’t think there could be anything wrong with me. In any case, she was not inquisitive.
Instead she was talking in high spirits about her father’s dinner party next day. Her spirits were high because she had heard from Pat (who, I thought, either got fond of her in absence or was keeping her in reserve) that week. She was also pleased because her father, instead of resisting the advice which I relayed from Francis Getliffe, had, contrary to all expectation, taken it. He had actually invited Leonard and his other young academic critics to dinner. It was to be an intimate dinner so that he could put his “cards on the table”, as he had told both of us euphorically, implying that we should have to keep out of the house. Vicky was herself euphoric. She couldn’t help but think of Leonard and her father as clever, silly, squabbling men, and now perhaps they would take the opportunity to stop making idiots of themselves.
Next afternoon, just before four, I was outside the main gate of the jail. Above me the walls stretched up, red brick, castellated, a monument of early nineteenth-century prison architecture – and a familiar landmark to me all through my childhood, for I passed it on the route between home and school. Passed it without emotion, of course: it just stood there, the gates were never open. And yet, even before the inset door did open that afternoon, let me in, closed behind me, I felt the nerves at my elbows tight with angst – the sort of tightness one felt visiting a hospital, perhaps, as though one were never going to escape? No, more shameful than that.
A policeman met me, gave me the governor’s compliments, told me the governor was called away to a meeting but hoped that next time I would have a glass of sherry with him. The policeman led me up flights of stone stairs, right up to the top of the building, along a corridor, white-painted, to a door marked CONFERENCE ROOM.
“Will you wait here, sir?” said the policeman. “We’ll get her along.”
The room was spacious, with a long table: it was dark here, but through the window I could see the russet wall of the prison, and over the wall the bright evening sky.
After a time there were footsteps outside, and two women entered. One was in police uniform: in the twilight she seemed buxom and prettyish. Should she switch on the light? she asked. Yes, it might be better, I replied. Her voice sounded as uneasy as mine.
The exchange of domesticities went on. Should she send for a cup of tea? I hesitated. I heard her ask her companion – though with the room now lit up, I had glanced away – whether she would like a cup of tea. Some sort of affirmation. You can sit down, said the policewoman to her companion. I took the chair on the other side of the table: and then, for the first time, I had to look at her.
“May I give her a cigarette?” I called to the policewoman, who had gone right to the end of the room.
“Yes, sir, that’s allowed.”
I leant over the table, as wide as in a boardroom, and offered a packet. The fingers which took the cigarette were square-tipped, nails short, not painted but neatly varnished. I had not really looked at her before, not in the few minutes in the Patemans’ living-room; her eyes met mine just before I held out a match, and then were half-averted.
Her face was good-looking, in a strong-boned, slightly acromegalic fashion, more like her uncle’s than I had thought, though unlike him she did not have a weight of flesh to hide her jaw. Her hair, side-parted, cut in a thick short bob, was the same full blond. But it was her eyes, quite different from his, from which I could not keep my own away. George’s were a light, almost unpigmented blue, the kind of colour one sees only in Nordic countries: hers were a deep umber brown, so heavily charged that, though they stayed steady while averted from me, they seemed to be swimming in oil.
“What have you come here for?” she asked.
“George asked me to.”
“What for?”
I didn’t answer until two cups of tea had been placed on the table. I sipped mine, weak, metallic-tasting, like Whitehall tea.
I had to submerge or discipline what I felt. Going into the jail, preparing for this visit, I had been nervous. In her presence, I still was. It might have been anxiety. It might have been distaste, or hatred. But it was none of those things. It was something more like fear.
“He wanted me to see if there was anything I could do for you.”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
She had been wearing a half-smile ever since I looked at her. It bore a family resemblance to the expression with which George, at our last meeting and often before that, asked me for a favour, but on her the half-smile gave an air, not of diffidence, but of condescension.
“He asked me to come,” I repeated.
“Did he?”
“He wanted me to see if you needed anything.”
My remarks sounded, in my own ears, as flat as though I were utterly uninterested: and yet I was longing to break out and make her respond. (
What have you done? What did you say to each other? When did that child know?
)
“I like George,” she said.
“Did you see much of him?”
“I used to. How is he?”
“He’s not too well.”
“He doesn’t look after himself.”
The flat words faded away. Silence. The other questions were making my pulses throb (
Who suggested it? Didn’t you ever want to stop? Are you thinking of it now?
) as, after a time, I asked, in the stiff mechanical tone I couldn’t alter: “How are they treating you?”
“All right, I suppose.”
“Have you any complaints?”
A pause. Her glance moved, not towards me, but down to her lap.
“This dress they’ve given me is filthy.”
It was a neat blue cotton dress, with a pattern of white flowers and a pocket. I could see nothing wrong with it.
“I’ll mention that,” I said.
Another pause. “Anything else?” I asked.
“I shouldn’t mind seeing a doctor.”
“What’s the matter?”
She wouldn’t reply. Was she being modest? I looked at her body, which, contradicting her face, was heavy, deep-breasted, feminine. (
Did you ever feel any pity? Will you admit anything you felt?
)
“I’ll tell them.”
Flat silence. Forcing myself, I said: “I used to be a lawyer. I’m not sure if you know that.”
She gave the slightest shake of her head.
“If I can be any help–” (
Did you do everything they say? What have you done?
)
“We’ve got our lawyers,” she answered, with what sounded like contempt.
“Have you talked to them?”
“They’ve asked me a lot of questions.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“It didn’t get them very far,” she said.
Silence again. I was trying to make another effort, when she said: “Why have we got different lawyers?”
For an instant I thought she was confused between solicitors and barristers, and started to explain; but she shrugged me aside and went on: “Why have Kitty and me got different lawyers?”
“Well, the defence for one of you mightn’t be the same as for the other.”
“They’re trying to split us up, are they?”
“It’s common practice–”
“I thought they were. You can tell them they’re wasting their time.”
She went on, bitter and scornful: “You can go and tell the Patemans so.”
I began, this must have been the solicitors’ decision, but she interrupted: “Yes, those Patemans have always wanted to come between me and Kitty. That’s all they’re good for, the whole crowd of them.”
Her anger was grating. She went on: “You wanted to know if there was anything you could do for me, didn’t you? Well, you can do this. You can tell that crowd they’re wasting their time.”
She went on, nothing was going to split her and Kitty. With bitter suspicion, she said: “I suppose you’ll get out of it, won’t you? You won’t go and tell them so.”
I said, if it was any comfort to her, I would.
“I should like to see their faces when you did.”
Once more, angrily, she said that I should slip out of it. I said without expression that I would tell them.
“I hate the whole crowd of them,” she said.
After that, she seemed either exhausted or more indifferent.
My attempts to question her (the internal questions were dulled by now) became stiffer still. I gave her a cigarette and then another. To eke out the minutes, I kept raising the cup to my lips, saving the last drops of near-cold tea.
At last I heard the policewoman moving at the far end of the room (for some time we had been left alone). “Afraid your time is up, sir.” I heard it with intense relief. I said to Cora that I would come again, if she wanted me.
She didn’t say a word: her half-smile remained. Outside the jail, in the fresh night air, I still felt the same intense relief, mixed with shame and lack of understanding. The great walls, which dominated the road in daytime, were now themselves dominated by the neon lights. I didn’t clearly remember, five minutes afterwards, what it was like inside.
Some time later, when I met Vicky in the town – I was taking her out for dinner in order to leave the Residence free for Arnold Shaw’s private party – she did not so much as ask me what I had been doing. Some young women would have noticed that I was behaving with a kind of bravado, but Vicky took me for granted. Which was soothing, just as it was to see her happy. The small talk of happiness, merely the glow, still undamped, of a letter from Pat. The pleasure of sitting at a restaurant table opposite a man. The pleasure, incidentally, of a very good meal. She had nominated an Italian restaurant which had not existed in my time, and she tucked into hearty Bolognese food with a young and robust appetite. When I lived in the town, we couldn’t have eaten like this, even if we had had the money, but since the war people had learned to eat. Restaurants had sprung up: there was even good English cooking, which I had never tasted as a boy. Other things might go wrong, but food got better.
The pink-shaded lamp made her face look more delicate, as faces look when the light is softening after a sunny day. She was talking more than usual, and more excitedly. Once I wondered if she was wishing – as a good many have wished in the lucky lulls in a love affair – that time could stand still. No, I thought. She was too brave, too positive, not apprehensive enough for that.
We had to spin the evening out. Arnold Shaw’s dinner party had started early, but we were not to arrive back until eleven. “Anyway,” said Vicky, “it’ll be nice to have them stop nattering at each other, won’t it? He ought to have patched it up months ago.” Although I was dawdling over our bottle of wine, I couldn’t do so for another hour and more.
“What shall we do?” I said.
“I know,” said Vicky with decision.
“What?”
“Don’t you worry. Leave it to me.”
After we left the restaurant, she led me down a couple of side streets past a window which was darkened but, as in the wartime blackout, had a strip of light visible along the top edge. On the door, also in dimmed light, was the simple inscription HENRY’S.
“We go in here,” said Vicky.
Inside it was as dark as in a smart New York restaurant. If it hadn’t been so dark, Vicky and I might have looked more incongruous, for her skirt was much too long and my hair much too short. But the young people, lolling about at crowded tables drinking coffee, were too polite or good-natured to notice. They pushed along, made room for us, settled us down. It was not only dark, the noise was deafening: a record player was on full blast, couples were twisting on a few square yards of floor. It was so noisy that some young man, hair down to his shoulders, had to point to a coffee cup to inquire what we wanted.
Soon afterwards the same young man patted Vicky’s knee and jerked his thumb towards the floor. To my surprise, she gave an enthusiastic nod. When she started to dance, she appeared much older than anyone there: she wasn’t dressed for the occasion, she was as out of place as someone arriving in a lounge suit at a function with all the others in white tie and tails. But, again to my surprise, she danced as one who loved it: she had rhythm from the balls of her feet up to her pulled-back hair: she had more animal energy than the boys and girls round her. It was a strange fashion to end that day, watching Vicky enjoy herself.
“Nice,” she said in the taxi going home. It occurred to me that all this was a legacy of Pat’s, and that she might be thinking of him.
It was not, however, quite the end of that day. When we arrived at the Residence, the windows were shining but there were no cars standing in the drive. We seemed to have timed it right, said Vicky efficiently. As we went into the hall, Arnold Shaw came out of the drawing-room to greet us. His colour was high, his melon lips were pursed and smiling. They’ve gone? she asked. He nodded with vigour, and said, expansively, come in and get warm.
In the bright drawing-room, used glasses on the coffee tables, Shaw stood on the hearthrug, braced and grinning.