A Tangled Web

by Nicholas Blake

  “I don’t want you proving things to me,” Daisy broke in. “I want to be able to believe what you tell me.”

  “You’re rather like her, you know. She never nagged me; but she never suffered me in silence, like a martyr. Funny, because she was just a doormat to my father. I hated him as a child—the way he treated her. Made me miserable. I used to run and hide under a table when he started bullying her.”

  Daisy undressed quickly, bathed her face, and got into bed. Hugo was still sitting on the edge of it, his arms hanging down between his knees.

  “Well, what happens now?” he asked, not looking at her.

  “That’s for you to say,” she wearily replied. “Can’t we leave it till to-morrow?”

  “You want to make conditions?”

  “Conditions?”

  His lips twisted. “If I reform, you’ll stay with me? That sort of thing?”

  “I never—”

  “No, but that’s what was in your mind, my pet. I’ll have another shot, if you like. But I warn you, it won’t work. I’ve tried before. I’m no good at anything else, and I’m rather keen on my present profession: it suits me. Besides, it’s hopeless trying to get a job once you’ve been in, stir. Can you see me, anyway, touting soap-flakes or sitting in some god-awful office? Why—”

  “Oh, Hugo, do listen to me. I don’t want to make conditions. I just want us to trust each other—never to have to wonder if you’re telling me the truth, or putting me off with some clever story. You could do that so easily, because I’m not clever and I love you. I’d hate to feel suspicious of everything you said. It’d be the end of our loving each other, don’t you see?”

  Hugo took her face between his hands, and gazed deep. At last he whispered:

  “You’re too good for me. I always knew it. I’ll try to be someone you can trust. But you ought to find someone better—”

  “I don’t care what else you do! I don’t mind your stealing!” she cried, in an abandonment of gratitude and relief. Her eyes shone with an unearthly, sacrificial light: then, as his hand moved on her breast, they misted over, and she was trembling, calling to him in a weak, harsh voice, “I want you. I want you. Quick. Kill me if you like.”

  Their love-making that night had a new sensuality of violence. They tore at each other, struggling, like animals in a net, as though each had something to take revenge for and something to expiate, or as if their bodies were an area unpacified, exasperated even, by the reconciliation just now of their minds. One way and another, it was the end of innocence between them.

  It left her pale and flaccid as a drowned corpse, her lips cold, her head hanging back over the edge of the bed.

  “Have you had enough?” he said; but she could make no sound.

  Later he was talking to her, gently and remotely. “I have to work alone. It’s safest. That’s why I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to drag you in. The less you know, the better: the police might come asking you questions.”

  “But Jacko knows, doesn’t he?”

  “Jacko knows as much as I tell him. Which is damned little. What he guesses is another matter. He gets a kick out of it, you see. Sort of vicarious excitement. Like respectable citizens pawing at some of the Sunday newspapers. Not that he’s such a respectable citizen himself.”

  “But isn’t it dangerous?”

  “Oh, well, it’s mutual. I know a bit about him, too: enough to keep him gummed up all right. So we both go our own ways, more or less regardless. Besides, he’s useful.”

  “Useful?”

  “He does illegal operations.” Hugo offered this in a purely factual tone. “He has rather a classy clientele. So old Jacko just mentions to me in passing, as it might be, that Lady Stinkeroo or Miss Gloxinia Can-Can owns some eligible sparklers; and we get talking; he knows where she keeps ’em, maybe, knows her goings-out and her comings-in. A nod’s as good as a wink. Oh yes, he slips me quite a bit of information behind his back. Nothing open, of course. Nothing ungentlemanly about it. You can’t pin anything on a chap for being—well, slightly indiscreet.”

  Daisy digested this in silence for a little. “But he said something about ‘a sweet alibi.’ I heard him. That means he must know—”

  “Ah, you don’t understand Jacko. A devious character. He likes a little game of cat-and-mouse. That’s his substitute for a bit of slap-and-tickle. He was saying that if I ever elected to embark on a life of crime, and if the bluebottles came buzzing round with awkward questions, you’d be able to give me a sweet alibi. By God, he’s right too! You’d have them eating out of your hand. You look so innocent and wholesome—they’d believe anything you told them. But I’m never going to put you in a position of having to tell lies for me. Be dumb, sweet maid, and let who will be clever. No, I’m not having you involved.”

  But I am involved, thought Daisy, lying awake beside him, after he had dropped suddenly, as was his way, into deep, unvexed slumber. She felt how totally she was now involved, not only with the Hugo who had said, “I’ll try to be someone you can trust,” but with that other Hugo who could prattle of wicked things as lightly and knowledgeably as a woman talking hats.

  The pattern of their life began to establish itself. First, there had been the feckless holiday, then the weeks in limbo at Maida Vale: now they were embarked on another gay fling into the world, buying clothes for Daisy, moving to the Ritz, theatre-going, all the fun of the fair. It was like living on a switchback, Daisy thought—a life of ups and down so dizzying that you could only hold tight and hope for the best. She felt that it corresponded with something in Hugo’s nature—the way he swung violently from wild high spirits to a sodden gloom. She put this, later, to Jacko, who congratulated her on being so clever, and said something about “manic-depressive”: this alarmed Daisy not a little, but Jacko assured her it did hot mean Hugo was mad—all the best people were manic-depressives.

  Daisy had always been a suggestible girl, and Hugo brought out a strain of wildness in her which almost equalled his own. Seeing the pair dining in a restaurant, one might have taken her at first for a fashion model, or perhaps a deb. with bohemian inclinations: closer scrutiny might discover a freshness, an unexpected lack of self-consciousness, behind the bloom and poise of her personality. But no one could have guessed that this exquisite apparition concealed a village girl whose heart was bubbling half the time with, “Oh, what a lark it all is! What a lark!” Still less would they have supposed that the dark, sleepy-eyed, athletic young man escorting her (a gentleman rider? a racing motorist? a cricketer?) was a hardened criminal, and that his glances were appraising, not the women, but the jewels they wore.

  At first Daisy had been apprehensive. She thought it was mad to be throwing money around like this and making themselves conspicuous so soon after the robbery. And indeed it was mad. But Hugo had, at this time, an ebullient belief in his own luck—the luck Daisy had brought him; and when he was on top of the world, his confidence was irresistible. After serving his first sentence, some years ago, he had changed his name, changed his sphere of operations from a Midland city to London, and changed his methods. Since he seldom entered the criminal underworld now, and always worked alone, he had little to fear from informers. The fence he dealt with was the only person in a position to give him away, apart from Jacko and Daisy herself; and each of these had good reasons for not doing so.

  Hugo, besides, lacked the criminal’s obsessive vanity. What vanity he had was satisfied by showing Daisy off, being seen with her, and by the mischievous pleasure he took in gulling the world at large. He would often talk to Daisy now about his past exploits—though he never talked about his future plans—and this gave him the safety-valve most criminals need, requiring both to confess and to be admired. Daisy received these confidences as a mother might receive a boy’s boasting about his audacities: she was shocked, but secretly excited: she felt she should disapprove, but she could not resist him.

  One thing became more and more evident to her—Hugo’s genuine con
tempt for society, his hatred of the settled, the hum-drum, the respectable. Jacko was to explain this to her one day; but she already associated it vaguely with Hugo’s childhood, his father’s treatment of him, and more particularly with the prison-term which still haunted him in his occasional terrible nightmares. As time went on, she gradually and unconsciously came to identify herself with this part of him, to feel that society was her enemy too. The first seed was sown when she got a letter from her mother, returning some money Daisy had sent her. Daisy’s aunt must have written to tell her sister that the girl was living with a man, and Mrs. Bland now announced that she would rather die in poverty than share the wages of her daughter’s sin. Daisy, after restraining an impulse to take the next train down to Gloucestershire, accepted this fatalistically: she had heard her mother say too often that those who make their bed must lie on it; and she did not want to lie on any other bed—not she.

  But the seed was sown. And, a week after they went to the Ritz, something occurred which was more forcibly to make her feel an outlaw, and in due course to affect their fortunes disastrously. At the theatre one night, looking round before the curtain went up, Hugo suddenly remarked:

  “Good God, there’s my brother!”

  “Oh, where? Shall we go and talk to him in the interval?”

  “Lord, no. I can’t stick him.”

  “But he’s your brother.”

  “That’s why. No, on second thoughts I couldn’t stick him even if he wasn’t my brother.” Hugo grinned at her amiably. Then, with his occasional capacity to read her thoughts, said, “You really want to meet the family? All right then. But don’t say you haven’t been warned.”

  7. An Intellectual Tea-Party

  From her brief meeting with Hugo’s brother in the foyer, Daisy derived no very clear impressions. Mark Amberley was evidently disconcerted at the encounter: his small eyes swivelled this way and that as though he might bolt off any moment into the crowd. Hugo, however, had a firm grip on his elbow and performed the introductions with mischievous aplomb.

  “Mark, let me introduce you to my fiancée, Miss Bland.”

  “Oh. How do you do. I didn’t know—er, congratulations, Hugh—Hugo, I should say.”

  “It was very sudden. I’m afraid we didn’t put it in The Times,” Hugo affably remarked. “Gertrude with you?”

  “Gertrude? Oh, er, yes. Yes. She should be somewhere about.” Mark looked round desperately. “No. Of course. She’s still in her seat. She didn’t come out with me. So crowded and noisy here in the foyer. Are you enjoying the play, Miss—er—Bland?”

  “Yes, it’s ever so funny, isn’t it.” Mark Amberley’s embarrassment, communicating itself to Daisy, made her revert to an idiom she had almost lost. She blushed a little.

  “Funny? Well now, I suppose from certain aspects one might—but the underlying feeling is hardly that of comedy, surely? Of course, they were playing that first act very broad; too broad, wouldn’t you say?”

  “My brother is an Extension Lecturer,” said Hugo, winking at Daisy over Mark’s shoulder.

  “An Extension Lecturer?” Daisy was hopelessly at sea.

  “Yes. His lectures extend indefinitely.”

  Mark gave his uneasy laugh. “My brother’s a great wag, as I expect you’ve discovered, Miss Bland. But I do in fact lecture. London University, you know.”

  “You must be very clever,” said Daisy, meaning it.

  His head shied away from her—he’s really rather like a horse, she thought, with that long face and that neighing voice—then turned back, and he seemed to be seeing her properly for the first time.

  “Why don’t you bring Hugo to tea with us one day?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “Do I smell fatted calf roasting?” inquired Hugo. “If fatted calf is the word.”

  “Bourbons,” Mark unexpectedly came out with. “You always used to like Bourbon biscuits. I’ll see if Gertrude can acquire some.”

  Hugo frowned and was silent. Shortly afterwards, the bell rang for the end of the intermission. As Daisy and Hugo went back to their seats, he said moodily:

  “Now you’ve done it.”

  “But it was very nice of him—”

  “Oh, there’s no vice in old Mark: he’s just a bore. But Gertrude’s a real stinker. Just you wait.”

  “He’ll probably forget.”

  “Not a hope. I know him. He thinks you’re going to reform me. A great chap for lost causes, Mark is.”

  And Hugo was right. An invitation duly arrived for the following Sunday afternoon. It had been difficult for the girl to see the desiccated and nervous Mark as Hugo’s younger brother: but their encounter had at least broken new ground, and Daisy looked forward to the next, feeling that the acquaintance would give her a fresh hold on normality. At this period, in bars, on race-courses, and at the club cricket matches to which he once or twice took her, she did meet other young men and women of Hugo’s acquaintance: but, though she was sociable enough and enjoyed such meetings, they were too brief and accidental to mean anything. With Mark it would be different. Daisy looked forward to cosy, womanly chats with Gertrude. Mark, and presumably Gertrude, knew about Hugo’s prison sentence: since then, so Hugo told her, his relationship with them had been confined to an occasional request for a loan when he was on his uppers: they had no knowledge, whatever they might suspect, of how he made a living now. “As far as I’m concerned, they keep their heads in the sand,” he said. “They’re just bloody intellectuals.”

  Daisy was not in the least alarmed at the prospect of entering this strange new world. She saw no reason to shrink from “intellectuals,” having met none. The complacence of the well-loved woman, superimposed on her own naturalness and zest for life, prevented any apprehension that the meeting would be an ordeal. She had held her own with Hugo’s smarter acquaintances: why should she worry about a harmless couple living respectably in the Vale of Health?

  Their “respectability” was what Hugo seemed most to resent. He fired off a number of satirical comments on it as the tube conveyed them northwards that Sunday afternoon. For Daisy, the word meant what it means to any village girl—lace curtains, chapel on Sundays, primmed lips, and scandalised whispers. So she was thrown off her balance, on entering the Amberleys’ drawing-room, to be confronted by a stark, staring nude on the wall above the mantelpiece.

  “She’s rather a pet, isn’t she?” said Gertrude Amberley, intercepting Daisy’s open-eyed gaze at the picture; and shaking hands briskly without any more formal greeting, she turned to give Hugo a peck on the cheek. Thoroughly rattled, Daisy stood derelict in the middle of the floor till Mark fussed her towards a chair.

  “Well, Hugo, how are the ungodly flourishing nowadays? Pretty well, judging from appearances.”

  Gertrude’s voice, light and rather girlish in tone, articulated her words with a precision which came near to pedantry. Her talk was like shelling peas—neat, efficient, automatic. Daisy wondered if she was a schoolmistress: that clicking, rapid talk, cleanly gutting each subject; the smack of the lips at the end of a sentence; the high, narrow forehead, with the hair drawn severely back to a meagre bun; the trick of conducting conversation through a series of questions.

  “And what’s your job, Miss Bland?”

  “I haven’t got a job. I used to work in a hat-shop.”

  “Did you like that? What sort of hours do they work you?”

  After this catechism had gone on for some time, Daisy felt she must show some reciprocal interest in her hostess.

  “Are you a school teacher, Mrs. Amberley?”

  “I teach, yes. W.E.A., actually,” came the brisk and, to Daisy, incomprehensible reply.

  “Enlightenment to the masses,” Hugo murmured. “T. S. Eliot for bank clerks.”

  “Rather suitable,” whinnied his brother, “when you come to think of it. In my end is my beginning.”

  “Eliot is finished,” Mrs. Amberley stated. “Nothing more to say. We must look to the neo-c
lassicists now. Don’t you agree, Miss Bland?”

  “Well, I—”

  “I simply can’t agree with you there,” said Mark. “I admit Harry Grutch is doing some quite promising work: but the rest of them—they’re just dogs returning to someone else’s vomit.”

  “Well, of course, if you really. see neo-classicism as a return to the Thirties, there’s nothing more to be said. Auden and that lot have been dismissed long ago—” Gertrude laughed shortly—“Scrutiny settled their hash all right. But the point I’m trying to make is that, although they haven’t produced any very remarkable work yet, the neo-classicists are on the right lines. They do at any rate understand what Leavis wants.”

  “The neo-parnassian group at Reading,” suggested Mark, “are on the same alignment, perhaps. I don’t know if they’ve come your way, Miss Bland?”

  “All that’s come Daisy’s way, from Reading, is biscuits,” said Hugo, smiling at her.

  The smile caused Daisy to make a valiant effort. The name of T. S. Eliot had been the one clue she could grasp in the otherwise unintelligible conversation.

  “You write poems yourself, Mrs. Amberley?” she timidly asked.

  “Those who can, do: those who can’t, teach,” murmured Hugo.

  “Gertrude is too severely self-critical,” said Mark hurriedly. “She is, er, concerned with the setting and maintaining of the highest standards. She could never be satisfied with anything she had written.”

  “I can imagine that,” Hugo ambiguously remarked.

  “No, I don’t write poems,” said Gertrude, her intonation picking out the last two words for inspection, distastefully, as it were in a pair of tongs. Daisy was made to feel as if she had insulted Gertrude by the suggestion. “Why should one?” Gertrude continued. “This is an age of criticism. All the best work is being done in criticism.” She continued for some time, tossing the ball to her husband over Daisy’s head, and catching it from him. Whether or no it was done to show her up, it made Daisy rather miserable and flustered: it was too like that childhood game of He-in-the-Middle. Mark, to give him credit, did try to draw her into the conversation, but his attempts only emphasised her ignorance. Hugo, as Daisy could see, was beginning to smoulder with rage.