The Trouble-Makers (5 page)

“… Any more of this sort of thing, and I’ll have the brute got rid of!”

Fatalistically, Katharine waited for the rest of it. Jane in tears. “It’s not
fair,
Daddy! Oh, Daddy, you
can’t
…!” and now here was Clare plunging recklessly, ineptly, to the rescue, like a non-swimmer whose courage in plunging into the stormy sea is only equalled by his nuisance-value in having to be rescued himself.

“Jane doesn’t mean it’s not fair that she should be punished,” explained Clare heavily. “She means it’s not fair to
Curfew.
I mean, it’s not
his
fault about the mop, is it? It’s not even his fault that Jane has him at all.”

“Well—for God’s sake—! is it
my
fault, then?” exploded Stephen. “Wasn’t I against having the beastly creature right from the start? The damned animal has caused nothing but trouble ever since she had it! One fuss after another … day after day….”

“He doesn’t! It’s not!” screamed Jane, beside herself with the injustice. “It’s
you
who causes all the fuss, Daddy, not Curfew! There’s never any fuss about Curfew when you’re not there!”

This was so devastatingly true that for a second everyone was silenced. But of course Jane mustn’t be allowed to speak to her father like that.

“Jane! Be quiet!” cried Katharine despairingly. “And you too, Clare,” she added, seeing her elder daughter already
opening her mouth with her disastrous “But Daddy, Jane only meant …” “Be quiet, all of you!” Katharine continued scolding. “And go and get ready for school. Just look at the time!”

And as she began to clear the abandoned breakfast table, Katharine found herself reflecting that not Eve, but Cassandra, should be counted the prototype of womankind. For wasn’t this the hardest part of a woman’s lot—to know in advance, and in every detail, the exact course of every family row, and yet to be unable to deflect it one milimetre from its preordained course?

K
ATHARINE DIDN’T HAVE
to be at her job till mid-day, and she had long ago worked out a timetable by which all the chores could be finished before she left the house at eleven-thirty. On an ordinary morning, that is to say, when nothing out of the way occurred to interrupt her. But it so happened that during the whole of the twelve months since she had begun working, there had never once been an ordinary morning in this sense. Not once; and Katharine was gradually coming to the conclusion that the sort of morning presupposed by the timetable simply didn’t exist in the housewife’s world. Take this week, for instance. On Monday the coal-man had rung up to say he was coming, and Katharine had had to clear the seaside spades out of the cellar; and the broken birdcage, and the sodden cardboard boxes, and the wet leaves and bits of paper. And then he hadn’t come. He hadn’t come on Tuesday either, but on Tuesday she had had to take Jane for her last polio injection, and take her on to school afterwards as she didn’t know the way from the clinic by herself. On Wednesday the coal-man
did
come, just after she had washed the kitchen floor, so that on Thursday the kitchen floor had to be washed again, and also the geraniums had to be potted and brought indoors in a hurry because the paper said it was going to be frosty. It hadn’t been frosty, in fact it had rained all day and all night, and they could just as well have been left till the week-end, but anyway, here was Friday, and she must—she simply must—pop in next-door and see how Mary was—whether she’d got home all right last night and everything. And hear the end of the story, too, she admitted to herself, as she dried her hands and took off her apron. The kitchen was finished, and she would only stay at Mary’s a few minutes, and do the bedrooms when she got back.

There were already three other visitors sitting round Mary’s kitchen table when Katharine arrived, and Mary herself, looking a little withdrawn, was standing by the gas cooker refilling a large earthenware teapot. Evidently she accepted unquestioningly the unwritten law of the neighbourhood that the first duty of anyone in trouble or distress is to make endless pots of tea for the people who drop in to hear all about it.

Katharine glanced quickly at her fellow guests. Stella was there of course; she sat leaning her elbows on the table and clasping her teacup in both hands, flamboyantly, somehow managing to give the impression that it was a pint of beer. Beside her, like a bright well-chosen little accessory, sat Esmé, her niece—or was it cousin?—who lived on the top floor of Stella’s house. Esmé was small and blonde and recently married, and as she helped herself to three small spoonfuls of sugar she was glancing round a little nervously. As well she may, thought Katharine ruefully, among us skilled and seasoned gossips. And with Mrs Forsyth here, too, to ensure that the conversation should hinge largely on the shortcomings of the whole male sex, epitomised as they were in the otherwise insignificant person of the absent Mr Forsyth. Mrs Forsyth was already wearing that aggrieved yet curiously satisfied look of a woman modestly aware of the prestige conferred by the ownership of a husband with more faults and failings than any other in the whole neighbourhood; and as she stirred her tea with small, jabbing movements she was watching Mary with a sort of eager, prompting look, as if willing her to make some damaging disclosure about Alan which she, Mrs Forsyth, could then cap with one even more damaging about her Douglas.

But Mary was just now absorbed in pouring Katharine a cup of tea, an in answering once again the questions that she must already have answered three times this morning. Yes, Alan was as well as could be expected. Yes, he was out of hospital already; he was upstairs in bed right now.

“
In
bed?
”
Mrs Forsyth had evidently found the required opening. “In
bed,
with just a cut on his arm? You’d think a
bandage, or a sling, or something, would be all that was necessary, and he could go about his work as usual. But men are all the same, aren’t they. The tiniest thing, and they take to their beds as if they were dying! Goodness, don’t I know! Last week-end Douglas had a cold. Just an ordinary cold in the head, like we all get, you know—but he was absolutely convinced that he’d got ’flu!
Determined
to have it, that’s what I say; it nearly drove me potty, having him drooping about trying to get me to make a fuss of him. All Sunday he went about with a thermometer in his mouth, like a baby with a dummy, trying to make it go up to 99. But it never did; I had to laugh, really!”

She laughed again now; and little, fair Esmé laughed, too, nervously. She was too young, too sweet, too newly married for this sort of thing, thought Katharine; the poor child seemed to be trying desperately to find a foothold in this harsh and alien conversation:

“
My
husband was ill too, last week,” Esmé ventured bravely; and then, as four pairs of eyes fastened on her with instant greedy expectancy, she sought frantically for a sequel to this rather barren bit of information.

“The doctor thought at first it was laryngitis,” she battled on: but still the eight eyes demanded some luscious climax, and at last poor Esmé panicked. “But it wasn’t!” she finished helplessly, and hid as much of her confusion as she could behind her cup of tea. Katharine felt terribly sorry for her—and momentarily ashamed for the rest of them—but before she could think of some pleasant, interested remark to make about the girl’s abortive anecdote, Mary broke in rather brusquely:

“Alan’s not like that at all,” she asserted, speaking to Mrs Forsyth. “In fact, he’s rather the opposite, really. He despises any kind of weakness in anybody, including himself. But the doctor insisted that he should stay in bed. There was the shock, you see, as well.”

“Of course there was!” agreed Stella enthusiastically. “And of course it’s always much worse with that reserved type, who won’t let themselves go. If only he’d screamed, or snatched
the knife back and stabbed the fellow back—but of course Katharine doesn’t know about all this, do you Katharine? Alan was
stabbed
last night. It wasn’t an accident at all.”

“Then who——? How——?” exclaimed Katharine, and Stella plunged readily into the story on Mary’s behalf:

“It was an intruder,” she began importantly “A burglar, presumably, and he walked into the study where Alan was sitting at his desk, and when Alan turned round, the fellow got in a panic, stabbed him, and ran away.”

Katharine felt dazed.

“But why on earth should a burglar walk into the study when Alan was there?” she objected. “It sounds quite mad.”

“Oh, well, you see,” Stella explained—and she seemed as eager to gloss over the discrepancies in the story as if she was herself its author—“you see, Alan always sits there so quietly, I suppose, with that reading lamp with a black shade shining just on to his work…. Why, even Angela didn’t know he was in that evening, and nor did Auntie What’s-her-name. You know, Mrs Thingummyjig. Anyway, however it was, this man walked in—a dark man, Alan says, doesn’t he, Mary? A dark man wearing a raincoat. He walked in, and he stabbed Alan, and then he ran off——What is it, Mary?” For Mary had got hastily to her feet. She was glancing from one to another of her visitors with a curious, trapped look; her hands fumbled nervously with the kettleholder she was clutching as if it was a weapon of defence.

“I—it’s all right. Do please stay, all of you—and carry on with the tea. I must go up to Alan for a minute…. I think I heard him calling….”

She backed out of the door, facing them all the time, as if they were royalty; and then she either didn’t go up to Alan or else she went up very, very quietly; for Katharine, straining her ears, did not hear another sound from outside the room.

But no one else seemed to have noticed anything odd; and Stella was now leaning across the table in an intimate, conspiratorial manner, steering her story into deeper labyrinths than had been possible in Mary’s presence:

“When I say it was a ‘burglar’ I’m only speaking very generally, you understand. There is a burglar in all of us, after all, isn’t there, just as there is a sadist and a murderer?”

Sipping their tea, her companions accepted these charges contentedly enough, as people do nowadays. Besides, they guessed that her speech was only a prelude to further exciting revelations, and listened eagerly as she continued:

“It does make you wonder—doesn’t it?—whether Alan had any enemies. That reserved, silent type of man—his own repressed hostility tends to become externalised in the form of antagonism among those around him.”

“You mean he annoys people by being so disagreeable?” hazarded Mrs Forsyth, after a few moments’ pondering on the translation. “But you wouldn’t think, would you,” she added, after further thought, “that any friend of Alan’s could be so
crude.
I mean actually attacking him
physically
——”

“Stella said ‘enemy’ actually, not friend,” pointed out Katharine mildly; but Stella did not seem at all grateful for the support.

“Friend—enemy—it’s all the same,” she declared
pugnaciously
. “Mrs Forsyth is quite right. A man’s enemies
do
have to be in keeping with his character, just as much as his friends have to. After all, love is a form of hate, really, isn’t it?”

Stella always made this sort of statement with such a placid, proprietory air as to make contradiction—or even query—impossible. You felt that, to her, an opinion like this was a valuable possession, like a mink coat. If you didn’t possess one too, well, it was just too bad, but not a matter for argument.

“And another thing,” Mrs Forsyth broke in, tugging the conversation back within reach as if it was an escaping balloon. “Didn’t you notice that Mary seemed—well—a little
odd
just now—when Stella was talking about this man with the raincoat. It occurred to me that perhaps she knew—or guessed—who it might be. Didn’t you feel that?”

“Yes, and another thing,” responded Stella eagerly. “Doesn’t it strike you as queer that she should go off and leave Angela alone in the house like that, knowing that this character with
the knife was still around? It only makes sense if—as you say—she
did
know who he was. Knew that although he had stabbed Alan, he still wouldn’t harm Angela——”

“Which means she must have known his motive!” squeaked Mrs Forsyth excitedly. “Yes, it all fits in, doesn’t it? For all we know,
she
may have been his motive! I mean, it’s not so unlikely, is it? Young—well, fairly young—wife: elderly jealous husband…. My goodness! …” Mrs Forsyth began to giggle shrilly as all the interesting implications took hold on her imagination. “My goodness! We’re going to see some fun now, aren’t we, when all the dark husbands with raincoats who were ‘working late’ last night are going to have to produce alibis? My! What a joke!”

Her laugh was spiteful rather then amused; but all the same, for poor Esmé’s sake, Katharine made an effort to treat the suggestion as really a joke.

“Goodness, yes,” she said, smiling. “I hope you had your Douglas tied to the kitchen table all evening, for a start!”

Mrs Forsyth laughed more spitefully than ever.

“Oh,
him
!
The poor fish can’t even tell the plumber off for bungling the immersion-heater, let alone stab anybody! He’d expect
me
to do anything like that that needed doing, believe you me! And as to carrying on with Mary—heavens, I’d know soon enough if he was carrying on with another woman; he’d be borrowing the housekeeping money all the time, and getting me to look up the times of week-end trains to Brighton. And she’d always be ringing up asking where he was because of the muddles he’d make about meeting her. I’d have to nurse him through it like an illness, be terribly sympathetic, and at the same time pretend I didn’t know anything about it. In any case, he’d be no damn’ use to another woman. Why——”

Mr Forsyth’s inadequacies in bed were followed (with equal vehemence) by his inadequacies at finding parking space for the car when he took Mrs Forsyth shopping on Saturday mornings. And Katharine listened, both enjoying it all and gently priding herself on the fact that
she
wasn’t disloyal
enough to expose all her husband’s weaknesses like this. But paradoxically, as well as priding herself on this loyalty, she also felt guilty about it. If you were prepared to take part in and enjoy these husband-belittling sessions, then you really ought to contribute something—some complaint, some grievance—for the others’ delectation. To come merely as a listener like this might be loyal, but it was also mean—like coming
empty-handed
to a bottle-party.

It was past eleven when Mary reappeared, and by then Katharine was just leaving. Mary said goodbye to her quietly, and with a lack of warmth which yet somehow was not hurtful; on the contrary, it seemed to hold some secret, intimate message which Katharine could not read.

So she was not really surprised when, a few minutes later, as she set off down the road, she heard quick, awkward footsteps behind her; awkward because Mary’s supple figure was crippled by a tight skirt and high heels, but quick with a despairing, pattering urgency.

“Wait, Katharine!” panted Mary, like a small child left behind. “Wait! Wait for me!” She drew level; and now Katharine noticed that her face was childishly streaked with tears. “Katharine I must talk to you—
now
!
You’re the only person who will understand.”

Few people can resist the flattery of this sort of appeal; but all the same, Katharine had to catch her bus.

“Mary—of course!” she said warmly. “But I’ve got to go to work now. Could I come in this evening, on my way home?”

“No, I must tell you—
now
!”
insisted Mary with a little gasp. “I’ll walk along with you—I’ll get on the bus wherever you’re going—
anything.
You see, Katharine, I’ve been telling lies the whole morning. At least—not quite. That is, actually, I haven’t been telling lies at all—Alan
did
say it was a dark man in a raincoat who stabbed him. He told the doctors—the police—everybody. But it wasn’t, Katharine. It was me.”