by Gwen Moffat
“How do you propose we suggest to him that his wife doesn’t return?” Miss Pink asked. She was starting to feel very tired.
“What’s that? Oh, you can’t, of course. But I think his present attitude is the right one; I mean, we can all guess what’s happened, can’t we? It would be in our interests if he doesn’t look for her too enthusiastically, not till after tomorrow anyway.”
“You aren’t coming back?”
“I was coming to that. I had a call from young Michael: my nephew, you know, he’s by way of being a senior director now. Was to have gone to New York on Tuesday: the annual visit, and there’s Abigail Hertz to see in New Jersey; she’s under contract to us . . .” Miss Pink shifted her weight as he droned on; she knew what was coming. “. . . Michael’s always been bronchial, and with this tendency towards pleurisy —”
“You’re taking his place and going to New York on Tuesday.”
“To London tonight, I’m afraid. Janet’s upstairs packing at this moment. But I have complete confidence in you, my dear, you and Ted. I’m empowered to appoint you joint acting deputies since the Board meeting, if you remember. I’ll let Thomas know and I’ll see that the Minute Book is sent on to you, then you can act officially for the Board if anything untoward comes up while I’m in the States.”
“It appears to have come.”
“What? Now, my dear, I should be there, in an official capacity, I know, but considering the way things have developed since yesterday, there’s no one more competent to deal with the situation than yourself. With due respect you have more experience of — er — human frailty than anyone else on the Board —”
“Excepting Ted.”
“Ted? He’s been more concerned with criminal cases — but I see your point. A quibble. Then” (triumphantly) “you make the ideal team. I’ve complete confidence in you both and I’m sure that goes for Thomas. I may be a competent chairman when it’s dealing with matters of organisation and architects’ plans,” he chuckled deprecatingly, “but when it comes to human problems I feel I can happily put three thousand miles between me and the Centre and not lose a moment’s sleep. By this time tomorrow everything will be solved. You’ll be rid of Charles Martin (you’re already rid of his wife), the Lithgows will be in comfortable quarters — and I’ll see to it that my secretary gets the advertisement for a new warden out this week. We’re paying generously. One insert in the Daily Telegraph should be sufficient. By tomorrow evening you and Ted will be trying to remember what all the fuss was about.”
*
Miss Pink was alone in the dining room and since Olwen was the only person in the hotel with whom she had more than fleeting contact, there was a certain intimacy between them. They murmured pleasantly over the serving of the meal and Olwen lingered as Miss Pink started to eat.
“Queer thing, that one going off, like,” she observed.
Miss Pink paused over her sole bonne femme.
“That one?”
“Her at the Plas: Mrs Martin.”
“Are you related to someone in the kitchen?” Miss Pink asked, not irrelevantly.
“Sassie Owen is my brother’s second wife. Assistant cook she is. Emma Jones is cook; I don’t have nothing to do with her. My brother’s wife has a temper. She thought it very kind of you to send them home in your motor car.”
Miss Pink acknowledged this gracefully, knowing that it was intended as Sassie Owen’s apology for the incident that afternoon when the kitchen staff were near mutiny. She finished her sole thoughtfully and said:
“Mrs. Martin couldn’t drive very well.”
“She drove well enough.” Olwen had been waiting for her cue.
“She’d never driven her husband’s car,” Miss Pink said idly, straightening her place mat.
“Maybe so. She drove it last evening.”
“How far?”
“Now that I can’t say,” Olwen’s eyes clouded with disappointment, “but she drove it away from the house. Sassie heard the motor start and that noise — made her look out the window, see. My brother is teaching her to drive and he gets wild when she makes that noise.”
Having sorted out the pronouns Miss Pink deduced that Mr Owen was teaching his wife to drive and that Bett Martin had crashed the gears on her husband’s Jaguar.
“She drove away?”
“Jumping,” Olwen said succinctly, “like an old rabbit.”
“I wonder how far she got,” Miss Pink said quietly, “that’s a bad road coming down the valley from Plas Mawr.”
“That one’s gone out of the valley. The poliss is related to my husband distantly.” Although widowed for many years, Olwen never referred to her husband as ‘late’.
“You mean the car has left the district,” Miss Pink queried.
“Her too. They all know her.”
*
“So she drove herself away,” Miss Pink told Ted after he had telephoned and reported that no blue Jaguar had been involved in an accident, neither had Bett Martin nor any unidentified woman been admitted to hospital in the area since six o’clock on Saturday.
“It looks as if she picked someone up,” he said, “did she take any luggage?”
“I didn’t ask Martin. If neither she nor the car is found, you must be right. She’s gone off with someone. It’s Martin’s concern now.”
She told him they were to be acting deputies and he chuckled.
“My visit tomorrow will be official then. We can see the warden off together. Would you like me to telephone him now?”
But she felt that she should carry through the matter which she had started. Telling Ted she would expect him after breakfast, she rang off and dialled the warden’s number.
He showed no surprise when he heard that there was no question of the Board’s relenting, indeed he seemed surprised that she should have troubled to confirm the earlier decision. However, when she told him that his wife had been seen to drive herself away and that she was alone at the time, there was silence at the other end of the line.
“Are you still there?” she asked, thinking that he seemed more coherent than he had been over the last two days.
“Yes,” he said, “I was wondering how far she’d got.”
She felt he had a right to know that neither his wife nor his car appeared to be in the area and she told him so, stressing that inquiries had been discreet and unofficial.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said heavily, “so she’s left . . .”
She was about to ask him when he would report the matter but reflected that, as Ted had reminded her, it was now the man’s own affair as, of course, was the question whether his wife had taken any luggage. She said goodnight with some embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she added sincerely.
“It’s all right,” he said and the receiver was replaced too hard as if it had been dropped.
Chapter Five
It often happens after days of rain in the western hills that a dawn will come sparkling fresh with all the wet colours shining in the sun: bronze oaks, pale flames of larches, tawny bracken; and above, the delight of the first snow, with the peaks white against a pale blue sky — which made her think immediately of the missing Jaguar.
It was nine o’clock on Monday morning and she was on the second cup of coffee when Olwen came in quickly to give only a ritual glance at the table before saying: “He phoned my brother this morning and told him to be there at half past eight to take him to the station: Bangor!”
She stopped, watching Miss Pink who, well aware of the taboo against the word ‘why’, repeated: “To Bangor!”
“Don’t say I told you but my brother’s got a big car. A good heart too. Takes people to functions and weddings, to the station if they want . . .”
An unlicensed taxi driver. Hadn’t Olwen mentioned his working in the mines and being on benefit now? Those of the old miners with pneumoconiosis would occasionally supplement their pensions with the odd bit of cash income. She felt honoured by the trust invest
ed in her.
“Your brother drove him to Bangor this morning,” she repeated, necessarily, to keep Olwen going.
“Gone bag and baggage. Left his furniture though. There’ll be a message for you at the Plas, shouldn’t wonder.”
Ted Roberts came into the dining room and Miss Pink sent Olwen for another pot of coffee. She told him the news.
“I passed Owen about a mile outside the village,” he said, “but I didn’t think to notice his passenger. He’s gone to London, has he?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Gone to catch a Holyhead train.”
She smiled ruefully. “John won’t be pleased. I’ve committed the Board to paying the cost of his removals.”
*
Sally Hughes fingered the envelope addressed to Miss Pink. She turned it over and studied the flap, poking at it with a finger nail.
“No, don’t do that!” her husband exclaimed, “I told you: they’re both gone now — cleared off. We’re finished with them.”
“But she couldn’t drive that car. That’s the point, isn’t it?”
“Look, there are witnesses: Sassie Owen. After all, why shouldn’t she drive it? She’d had enough instruction. The reason you fail your test so many times is a psychological block. Once you get rid of that, you’re away. That car’s in London now — and she drove it there.”
“You think she’d learn to drive it as she was driving, as it were? Could that happen?”
“Of course it can. Remember that film, what was it called? Where the woman had never driven before and she had to drive along a cliff road in the dark and it rains and she doesn’t know which knob is the windscreen wipers?”
“That was a film, Rowland. And, anyway, did Bett know which knob was the windscreen wipers? It was pouring.”
“Of course she did, She must have done. She left anyway, so what’s it matter?” He glared at her belligerently.
“Only that I’d like to be sure she left,” Sally said quietly.
They stared at each other. In the silence they could hear the muffled, institutional noises of the Centre, and the sound of tyres on gravel.
“That’ll be the directors,” he said, “I’m off. Get them to tell you what’s in that note.”
He went out quickly. She put the envelope on her desk, sat down, drew a paper towards her and started checking a list.
Miss Pink knocked and came in with Ted Roberts. Sally showed no surprise to hear that they knew the warden had left. She handed his note to Miss Pink who read it and passed it to Ted.
“He’s gone to London and left a forwarding address,” Miss Pink said, “he asks us to store his furniture until he sends for it. You’d better have the address so that you can forward mail.”
Ted handed Sally the note and she laid it aside.
“Shall I try to find a firm to store his furniture?”
“As soon as possible,” Miss Pink said, “I’d like to get Linda out of that cottage today.”
Sally looked surprised.
“That place is getting her down,” Miss Pink added. The secretary said that yes, she’d noticed the girl looking rather peaky lately but that she was sensitive and, well, she looked at Ted with a polite smile to include him, things would right themselves now, particularly with Jim and Linda moving in to the building. Ted said that he wanted a word with Lithgow about the safety boat and went out.
Sally smiled more naturally at Miss Pink. “You can’t imagine the relief now they’ve gone,” she said, “but we have to restrain our feelings because if we did let go it would imply disloyalty to the Board.”
Miss Pink followed her reasoning with ease.
“Neither Ted nor I was on the selection committee that chose Martin as warden,” she pointed out.
Sally nodded. “I’d always wondered how he got past you and Ted, although he wasn’t nearly so bad when he first came. It became worse as she got more blatant. She was drinking heavily too.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I haven’t seen you for six months, and it was obvious that something had to snap. I felt that, given enough rope, she must surely hang herself in the end —” She stopped short and Miss Pink, looking at her quickly, thought she saw her eyes change focus, but it could have been a trick of the light. She went on in exactly the same tone: “I don’t think the Centre suffered; they’re grand kids. They held it together. If I say it as shouldn’t, you have a very good staff.”
“I know. And if this episode has done nothing else that’s positive, it’s demonstrated that.”
“What do you intend to do now? I mean, immediately?”
“I’ll leave you to find a removal firm. Meanwhile I shall go to see Linda and tell her she can start packing. After that Ted and I would like to sit in on some of the activities for a while: show the flag a bit. You’ve been carrying too big a load, all of you.”
*
The fire had been lit when Linda showed her into the dim living room. The table was cleared and the door leading to the back kitchen was shut. Miss Pink felt that she was expected. She guessed that Sally had telephoned ahead. Merely to warn Linda to clean her living room?
She told the girl that the Martins had left and that the Lithgows could move to the flat once the furniture had gone. It had occurred to her as she drove down the valley that Linda might find it uncomfortable at first living in the flat of the woman with whom Jim had been having an affair, so she added: “If you’d rather not move into the flat, we might try to arrange something else temporarily until the new cottages are built.”
“I don’t mind,” Linda said earnestly.
“Good.” Miss Pink hesitated, momentarily at a loss. Linda rushed into the pause.
“I was terribly stupid yesterday,” she began breathlessly, “for years I’ve been reading about sexual psychology and all that and when I get involved in an extra-marital affair myself I act like a moron. It was unpardonable and so subjective.” She smiled but her eyes stared anxiously from behind the huge spectacles. “I’m terribly sorry, and you must have been — you were very kind.”
“Not at all,” murmured Miss Pink, “but I’m delighted that you can be so objective today. Of course, you have the advantage of knowing it’s all over.”
“Oh yes, definitely.” The girl looked out of the window and shifted a cactus on the sill. “He’s going to stay; I mean, if you wanted his resignation he’d give it to you. I don’t know about her, of course. But after you said yesterday that he was a good instructor, even when you knew — I told him that, when he came home — he promised me it’s all over, so you see, it will be all right”.
“Of course it will.” Miss Pink was fighting to hide, not surprise but astonishment. A suspicion crossed her mind. “Have you any idea where Bett Martin went?” she asked.
“I’ve no idea at all,” Linda said coldly.
“You’re not interested?”
“Why should I be?”
“Let me get this clear. Jim has been seeing too much of a woman. Which one?”
“Why,” Linda appeared taken aback, “I told you yesterday!”
“You thought you did. So did I. But you never mentioned a name. I thought you were referring to Bett Martin.”
“Good grief, no! That —! Oh, Miss Pink, how could you?”
“Who was it then?”
“Why, Nell Harvey, of course.” She went on quickly: “It started soon after we came. It was quite innocent at first, they spent all their evenings climbing but then, in the autumn, they stopped climbing . . . Of course, I knew there was something because he didn’t come home till long after dark and he couldn’t pretend he was climbing in the dark. He said he’d been drinking but he couldn’t have been, I mean, he doesn’t drink much and he’d have been incapable if he’d been in a pub all those hours. It was my fault. I had the evenings alone to write my book, you see. I liked being alone. I drove him to her.”
“I thought Joe was her climbing partner, not Jim.”
“Oh, it was Joe at weekends and holidays, but Jim in the evenings.”
Miss Pink drove away from the Lithgow cottage slowly and thoughtfully and she arrived back at the Centre still puzzling over Linda’s careful revelations which were so different from her faltering but spontaneous disclosures of yesterday.
*
The common room was the old morning room at Plas Mawr and, at eleven o’clock, the sun had just topped the long spur of Craig Wen. The room was at the south-east corner of the building with windows on two sides. Through these the brilliant light streamed in on a wide red carpet, on a huge shabby sofa where Ted lounged, relaxed, on easy chairs, a roaring fire. There was a smell of hot wood from logs steaming on the hearth, and of coffee. Miss Pink accepted a cup from Nell Harvey and studied the girl keenly. She looked, as always, neat and competent, but definitely not a femme fatale. This morning she wore tailored beige slacks and an ivory sweater. It appeared that she had been lecturing her own and Lithgow’s patrols while he accompanied Hughes canoe-ing on the estuary.
“What was your subject?” Miss Pink asked.
“Erosion.”
The older woman smiled with sympathy.
“How do you cover that in one period?”
“Yes,” Nell said with emphasis, “we must have more time for the environment.”
“Specifically? Do you mean at the Centre?”
“Yes. We have three periods. What can you teach them about world problems in three periods?”
“They aren’t your concern,” Ted put in, “today it was erosion.”
Nell turned to him. “The Sahara advances ten miles in a year in places,” she said, “if you cut down tropical forests the soil erodes because it won’t grow crops. In Vietnam —”
“Not Vietnam,” Miss Pink said firmly, “you can’t carry the world on your shoulders, Nell. You must be satisfied with doing a worthwhile job in your own particular corner. I’m sure you make all the students aware of their immediate environment, and you’re helping to equip them —”
“I wasn’t going to mention napalm and burning babies,” Nell said, turning her cool eyes on Miss Pink, “we were talking about erosion. After defoliation there will be no soil left in Vietnam. It’s a world problem — erosion.”
