The Unbaited Trap

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘I don’t want an affair.’ He was on his feet facing her. ‘Who’s talking about an affair?’

  ‘What else could you be talking about, we haven’t met more than half-a-dozen times? We know nothing about each other, only that we go for each other like cat and dog. I’ve never in my life argued and fought with anybody like I have with you…no, not even my husband, because he didn’t use words.’

  Into the significant pause he said quietly, ‘I’m asking you to marry me.’

  She was no more surprised than himself when he heard the words. This was jumping the gun with a vengeance. He’d had no idea of saying such a thing…well, not yet. He’d just got out of one trap, so to speak. But this was different. There was no bait in this trap, of sex, or money, or promotion, or family ties. Then what was attracting him? Her. Just her. All of her. He wanted to have her belong to him. Have her near him all the time. See that light in her face that would mean she wanted him, that she cared what happened to him, like the night he lay on the floor, with his head on her knees. He wanted to marry her. Yes, he wanted to marry her. As if he were the recipient of a revelation he felt himself uplifted by a great surge of feeling, and now he whispered softly, ‘Say something.’

  Slowly she sat down on the couch without taking her eyes from him. ‘You’re mad,’ she said.

  ‘Why? Tell me why.’ He brought his face down to the level of hers.

  ‘Oh,’ she twisted her body back and forwards from the waist, ‘there’s a thousand reasons, but the main one is it wouldn’t work…you in your position…’

  ‘I haven’t any position. I’m one of the unemployed, and likely to be…And look, don’t belittle yourself so much. About your name and everything. You’re doing it all the time in different ways. There’s no difference between us.’

  ‘No?’ She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Say that to your mother. I’m as low down the social scale in your mother’s eyes as a kitchen maid to the Colonel’s lady. As for my name, the likes of her wouldn’t give it to the cat.’

  ‘You’re talking rot…Anyway, this doesn’t concern my mother, because I know now that whatever happens I won’t live at home again. The ties between my mother and me are broken, finally, so let’s forget about her and her social status, which after all exists only in her own mind…Let’s forget about both of them, eh, and concentrate on us.’

  She now turned her eyes from him and ran the fingers of both hands through her hair, lifting it from the scalp.

  He sat slowly down on the couch again, his knees almost touching hers, and watched her as she repeatedly combed her hair with her fingers. And when she stopped she looked up at him and, her face now soft, as was her voice, she said, ‘I couldn’t. I’m sorry, I…I would have to care for somebody very much before I could marry him.’

  He could only see her face with one eye, but she looked to him at this moment like a picture set in a deep frame, all toned down, soft and tender. He asked quietly, ‘Could you like me?’

  Her lips parted, and her eyelashes sent shadows across her cheeks as she lowered them. ‘Oh, I could like you all right. I…I don’t find it hard to like people, it…it’s loving that’s difficult.’

  ‘Well, what about letting us start at the beginning: I’ll put up with the liking.’ He put out his hands and caught her fingers and, as if she were being burnt, she snatched them away and held her hand tightly pressed to her chest. Then pulling herself backwards and upwards away from him she said, ‘No, no, it’s no use, don’t let’s start anything. It’s madness and it’d come to no good.’

  ‘All right,’ he said quietly, looking up at her, ‘don’t be alarmed, I was just suggesting that we could be friends.’

  ‘It wouldn’t work. You know it wouldn’t.’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ He smiled wryly, sadly. ‘We could discuss music—Pat told me you played beautifully—or antique furniture, you definitely know about that, or the latest book, or we could…Oh, Cecilia, don’t, don’t cry like that, please. I’m sorry. I wasn’t meaning anything. What have I said?’ He rose and moved quietly to her, and he put his hands on her quivering shoulders and pleaded again, ‘Aw, don’t, don’t cry like that. I’m sorry.’ Gently now his arms went about her and for a second he held her pressed against him, and for a second her body relaxed against his, and while it did he buried his face in her tousled hair. And then it was over. By a thrust that nearly knocked him onto his back, they were apart, and she was standing half the length of the room from him. Her face streaming with tears, she was shaking her head violently, crying, ‘No! No! No!’

  ‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘Don’t distress yourself. I’ll go.’ He went slowly towards the chair and picked up his hat with a shaking hand. Then turning towards her, he asked quietly, ‘May I come and see you again?’ And immediately she answered with another violent shake of her head. ‘No. No. Don’t come back here…ever. I don’t want to see you, understand…I’ve had enough trouble. Don’t come again. I’m telling you.’

  When he went out of the flat and closed the door behind him she was still talking.

  He started the car up immediately and drove fast through the town. As he went up the avenue the Wilcoxes’ car was at the front of their drive, and from habit he almost tooted his horn.

  Strangely, it was Val he was thinking of as he entered the house and what she must have felt like when he turned her down. He had said to her he was sorry, and he had been sorry for her, but he hadn’t known what she felt like; he had a good idea now.

  He took off his outdoor things, then looked in the hall mirror. He stood straight staring at himself. She had thrown him off her as if he were a reptile, as if bodily he was offensive to her. But he was a man; he looked a man, whereas his father looked like a big flabby…He swung away from the mirror and went into the lounge. And there, her voice in his head seemed to reverberate through the room, crying, ‘It was as if God had given me another chance, and I promised myself never again, never, never again…And then I met your father. He was so kind, so good…’ And on that alone she would have taken him, knowing he had nothing else to give her, nothing, she would have been satisfied with that as long as it was from him.

  He thought again of the girls he had known before Val. How they had poured themselves over him and how he had tired of them, as he had tired of Val…Perhaps if things had gone as he wished tonight the pattern would have been repeated. Unconsciously, he flung his arm out in a wide sweep rejecting the idea, then began to pace about the room. She was different from anyone he had ever known. And the point was, she wasn’t a girl, she was a woman. She was older than him; he knew that, he worked it out from Pat’s age. She would be three, nearly four years older. What of it? The feeling he had for her was different, new; he had never experienced anything like it before. If it was love it was not blind love, for there were things about her that annoyed him, irritated him. Her silly name for instance, Cissie; and that hair, like tow flopping all around her face. And the way she dressed; no sign of taste. Stiletto heels and her skirts up to her knees; it might be all right for some but she was too tall. Had his father picked these points out of her? Damn his father. He had started all this, because of him he was losing the sight of his eye. ‘She’s a good woman. She’s worried about her boy. Go and see this Bolton chap.’ And the result: half vision, and a deep craving to touch, hold, and possess Mrs Cecilia Thorpe. Having seen her only half-a-dozen times, yet knowing from the start that she’d got into your blood like disease and you’d die of her.

  Did every man who met her feel like this? No, not like this; they couldn’t. Only two men felt about her this way; he and his father, because under the skin they were one.

  Two: The Search

  After almost two weeks of rain and high winds which made people say, ‘Well, we’ll soon have winter on us, and autumn hardly started,’ summer returned. For three days the sun shone. Women went back into sleeveless dresses. The leather jackets of youth were flung open, some showing bare chests.
It was hotter than it had been all summer; in fact, hotter than it had been for years.

  Cissie had been across the town to Holloway’s new office. Being such a lovely day she had decided to walk both ways, but before she reached the main gate she was regretting not having taken a bus, for she had developed a skinned heel.

  She was limping as she crossed the yard, and immediately she had passed into the small hall, from which a staircase led up to her office, she whipped off both her shoes and walked up the wooden stairway in her stockinged feet.

  The door to the office was open, as was the window, and she lowered herself gratefully into her chair and, letting her head drop back on her shoulders, sighed.

  The clatter of typewriters came to her from the other office, where the three typists worked. Her adjusted ear told her that only two of the typewriters were busy; then only one. She heard the girls chattering, and then the other machine stopped and she heard Susan’s voice saying, ‘That’s likely why she’s been off colour lately; it’s not like her to be snappy.’

  Then Jean’s voice. ‘I’ve been here six years and I’ve never known her like she’s been these past few weeks.’

  Then Susan’s voice again, low and disjointed: ‘Well, I suppose being saddled with someone blind’s no joke. Seems like retribution on him for doing the dirty on the Wilcox girl. Then she had Pat in that trouble, and although he got off she was worried to death. You remember?’

  Cissie was standing now looking towards the wooden partition and frosted glass door that divided the two offices; then after a moment she moved swiftly and noiselessly forward and, pulling open the door, looked at the three girls.

  Startled, they stared back at her.

  ‘You were talking about me?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Thorpe, we didn’t mean any…we…’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about that.’ She wagged her two hands. ‘It was me you were talking about, wasn’t it?’

  They glanced at one another now, and it was Susan who said sheepishly, ‘Yes. Yes, we were.’

  ‘About…about someone being blind?’

  ‘Well, we didn’t mean anything, Mrs…’

  Again she wagged her hands at them. ‘That doesn’t matter. Just tell me was it Mr Emmerson you were talking about being blind?’

  ‘Yes.’ Susan screwed her face up as she answered. ‘We thought you

  … well.’ Again the girls exchanged glances.

  ‘Jean.’ Cissie was bending over the middle desk, addressing herself pointedly to the eldest girl. ‘What…what do you know about Mr Emmerson being blind?’

  ‘Well, it was just what I heard, Mrs Thorpe. Well I thought you knew and that’s why…well you’ve been a bit upset lately. And we were just saying…’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Her tone was level and controlled as if she was talking to a child. ‘It doesn’t matter about that, only just tell me what you know.’

  ‘Well, just that he had to go to hospital because he was losing his sight.’

  Cissie straightened up and continued to stare at Jean; then she looked at the other two girls, and they looked back at her. They watched her turn slowly round and their eyes dropped to her stockinged feet as she went into her office and closed the door.

  ‘Oh no! Oh no! Oh, my God. No.’ She was sitting with her elbows on the desk now, her two hands pressing against her cheeks. ‘Why hadn’t he said? He must have known. That night he must have known; that’s why he had come. He said he was lonely. Yes, he would have felt lonely…and frightened. If he had told her, would it have made any difference to her attitude?’ As she read the answer in her mind she thought, ‘If only he hadn’t said that bit about discussing music and furniture, and books, and me thinking his father had said something and he was taking the mickey. But blind! Oh my God! Bolton…he should do time, he should, he should. But it was my fault, in the first place it was my fault. Ooh!…She thrust out her hand and grabbed the phone and dialled his number.

  Within the next half-hour she dialled the number countless times before finally getting through to the exchange and being told that that particular number was no longer in use.

  Hastily now she went to the first-aid box attached to the wall outside her office door, and, taking out a sticking plaster, applied it to her heel, Then, her shoes on again, she opened the communicating door, to be met immediately by three pairs of eyes, and, speaking to Jean, she said, ‘Take my calls, Jean, will you? And if Mr Holloway should come in tell him I had to go home, but I’ll be back in the morning.’

  ‘All right, Mrs Thorpe.’

  ‘Oh, and should he ask for the Williams contract it’s in my desk drawer, I’ve just brought it back from the bottom office. But I don’t suppose he’ll call in today; it’s just in case.’

  ‘All right, Mrs Thorpe, I’ll see to it. Don’t worry.’

  After the door had closed on Cissie the three girls listened to her heels clicking down the wooden stairs before they spoke again, and then it was the youngest member of the group who, laying her hands flat on top of her typewriter, said breathlessly, ‘Well, and would you believe that! I thought she was living with him. Everybody said they were, and that was why the Wilcox girl threw him over and he lost his job. And it must be all lies ’cos she didn’t know. What do you make of it?’

  For answer Jean contemplated her typewriter as she said, as if to herself, ‘It could be lies an’ all about her throwing his father over for him. Eeh! The stories that get about.’

  Lime Avenue looked detached and aloof, much more so in the hot sunshine than it had done in the dark. The houses resting behind their green façade had a disdainful look. Cissie kept her glance directed ahead away from them as one does from the passengers when passing through a Pullman to get to the second-class. These houses, like the occupants of the Pullman, spoke of money, position. They didn’t awe Cissie, but they were coupled in her mind with the cold white face of Ann Emmerson.

  When she came to number 74 she stood staring at the board above the gate. It was like something desecrating the road, bringing it down to the ordinary level of commerce. ‘For sale’, it said in large letters. ‘This desirable residence comprising…’ She did not finish the description but, quickly pushing open the gate, she went round the drive and looked at the gaping windows. Quietly she walked all round the house, then out into the avenue again and down the lane that looked as if it was in the country, and out into the main road. She had noticed a telephone kiosk as she got off the bus, and she now hurried to it almost at a run.

  He would be in the Newcastle Eye Infirmary.

  She got the number from the directory and picked up the phone. ‘Could you tell me which ward Mr Emmerson’s in, please?’

  ‘Has he just come in?’

  ‘I don’t know…No. Some time ago, a week or two.’

  ‘Just a moment.’

  As she waited she heard the familiar click of the switchboard and the murmur of two people talking.

  ‘Are you there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Emmerson’s left.’

  ‘Oh!’ She stared into the mouthpiece, wetted her lips, and then asked, ‘Could you tell me the extent of his trouble…his eye trouble?’

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t, but I can put you through to the sister.’

  ‘If you would, please.’

  After a moment a crisp tone said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was enquiring about a Mr Emmerson, but I find he has left. Could you tell me how…how bad his eyes are? Is…is he blind?’

  ‘No. Oh, no. He’s losing the sight of one eye, but the other is quite all right.’

  She drew in a long breath, then said, ‘Do you think you could give me his address?’

  There was a pause at the other end of the line, then the crisp voice said, ‘Well. Well, just a moment.’

  In her duty room Sister Price stood looking down at the telephone receiver lying on her desk. The request for a patient’s address was rather unusual, but then Mr Emmerson
himself had been rather unusual. He was the first patient she’d had for many a long year who hadn’t had one single visitor all during his stay, and people with eye troubles needed visitors. More than anyone else they needed human contacts. The last one in that position she seemed to remember had been an old tramp, and

  he had died in hospital. She had at times thought that Mr Emmerson wouldn’t have cared if he had died too, although there hadn’t been anything physically wrong with him except the sight of the one eye, and when it could have been both eyes he should have considered himself lucky. Flicking over the pages of her admittance book she picked up the phone again and said, ‘There are two addresses. The one on admittance was 74 Lime Avenue, Fellburn, but on his discharge he gave his address as Meadow Mere, Hill Lane, Bromford. Have you got that?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Cissie repeated the address, then said, ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’

  Bromford was on yon side of the town, quite a way out.

  She stood outside the box now considering what to do. She could likely get his number from the exchange as she had the name and address, but no, no, she would go there. But what would she say to him when she saw him? She walked slowly up the road towards the bus stop. She would know what to say when the time came. At present all she could think was: Thank God it’s only the one eye.

  In the market place she got on a bus that was going to Bromford. Half-an-hour later the conductor put her off at Hill Lane and, pointing up the steep winding path, he said, ‘You can’t miss it; there’s only one house up there.’

  Her heel was paining again and she felt inclined to limp, but she made herself walk straight. Then she reached the end of the lane and saw the house. It was a lovely house, small, low and white, with a verandah running along two sides of it.

  She was shaking with nervousness, and sweating too when, leaning forward, she knocked on the open door. When she heard a man’s heavy tread crossing bare boards in a room to the left of the hall, her heart began to pound against her ribs.