The Pursued

by C. S. Forester

  Mrs Clair was speaking very clearly and incisively. Marjorie came to herself with a start, and realized that her mother was directing her voice at her just as much as at her husband. It would be bad tactics, bad policy, to dwell with too obvious an enthusiasm on the imminent delights of the holiday without displaying a proper appreciation of the sacrifice he was making and a proper concern at his approaching discomforts. He could quite possibly change his mind if he were not considerately handled. Marjorie did her best to respond to the call her mother was making on her.

  ‘I’ll leave you some nice cooked food, dear,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘That’ll last you for a day or two and will be better than nothing. That chocolate blancmange that you like. And you can have a good dinner every day at Mountain’s Café. Ted’s great at frying bacon and eggs, you know, Mother.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Mother. ‘We can trust Ted not to starve. He’s much too sensible, not like some men. Don’t worry yourself about that, dear. What I was worrying about, though, Ted, was in case you might be too lonely.’

  ‘Lonely?’ said Ted.

  He had not thought of the possibility of being lonely or rather, he had not thought that loneliness would trouble him. He was anticipating, vaguely, three weeks of freedom. Three weeks when he would not have to account for his movements to the small but irritating extent that prevailed normally; when he could come home when he liked, and go to bed when he liked – and bring a girl home with him too, that was a notion – and generally revel in the bachelor freedom whose delights he had almost forgotten.

  ‘Oh, if I’m lonely I’ll just have to put up with it, I suppose,’ he said, resignedly.

  ‘You are a good soul,’ said Mrs Clair, with appreciation. ‘We’re ever so grateful to you, aren’t we, Marjorie?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marjorie, ‘ever so.’

  Ted basked comfortably in their admiring gratitude. The friendless, imperilled feeling had disappeared altogether. He had not been in the least anxious to spend a dreary three weeks at the seaside with Madge and the kids, with the nearest pub two miles away. There was always a cold wind down there, and the women were all mothers of packs of yelling kids, nothing in a bathing costume worth looking at. He would far rather be at home here, even if it did mean making his own bed and cooking his own breakfast – the rest of the housework could go hang, of course. It was lucky that he’d thought of cancelling the holiday. Ted came, in the expansive moment, almost to believe that the whole new situation was the result of his own planning, and he felt pleased with himself in consequence. But he did his best not to show it, because it would never do for the women to guess that he was not making any special sacrifice. He was more pleased with himself, less jumpy and nervous, than he had been since the day after Dot’s death.

  ‘It’s Saturday week we’ll be going,’ said Mrs Clair. ‘Only ten days now. You haven’t got much time to see that all Ted’s things are mended up to date, Marjorie. We must leave him as comfortable as we possibly can. I’ll come round tomorrow and see if I can help.’

  The old exhilaration was creeping over Ted now; when his mother-in-law stood up to go he made no effort to detain her. Rather on the contrary he displayed by his whole attitude that he was not in the least unwilling to see the last of her that night. When Marjorie came back into the sitting room from the front door he clapped her on the haunches with the old gesture she had come to hate.

  ‘Bed time now, old girl,’ he said.

  She looked up at him, and then round the room, at the familiar two armchairs and settee which were beginning to show the results of nine years’ wear, the two pictures of woodland scenes which had been presented to them by the company from which they had bought their furniture, the little bookcase with seven books in it, the little table with the fern, the flowered hearth-rug, the radio set on the table against the wall, the curtains at the French windows. This was the home of which she had once been so intensely proud, and with which she had been so inordinately pleased. The mood of happy anticipation fell away from her like an unbuttoned cloak. The room was shabby, and so was life – dreary, ugly, impossible.

  ‘What’s the matter, lovey?’ asked Ted. Even he, and in his present mood, could see that something was amiss.

  The question opened Marjorie’s eyes to the bottomless gulf at her feet. This was the first time Ted had felt like this since the night of Dot’s death nearly three weeks ago – and Marjorie, shuddering, realized that the length of this interval was one more proof of his disquietude and his guilt – one more proof which would have no weight in a court of law. Weakly, she had not given a thought to the question of what she would do when this situation arose. That other question, the matter of leaving Ted altogether, could be fenced with, set aside, shelved, with the reassuring thought that she would deal with it later. When she had time to think. But this – this was urgent, imminent, frightening.

  ‘Come on, lovey, what are you mooning about?’ said Ted. ‘Give us a kiss, old girl.’

  A woman of colder or more cynical temperament might have told herself that as she had been weak enough to postpone the other decision she must of necessity give way in this matter; submitting to life with Ted meant submitting to everything else, so that all that was left to her was to make the best of a bad job and go through with it with resignation carefully concealed. But there was hot passion in Marjorie, the same hot passion which had led Dot to her death – a passion which Ted could no longer rouse. The imminent future was abhorrent to her. In the briefest interval of time a whole stream of thoughts poured through her mind. There had been a sort of edge to Ted’s last words, a veiled command, possibly. The holiday was by no means yet a settled and certain thing. A word from Ted and there would be no holiday, and she would never, never get away from him, but be doomed to drag on this existence with him always. That thought roused panic. At all costs she must get away for that holiday, so that in the placid seclusion of The Guardhouse she would have that period of peace for which she longed. At all costs. Only ten days till then, she told herself, as a salve to her conscience for this present weakness – the weakness which makes tragedy possible. She forced herself to turn her face and kiss him, forced herself to simulate passion, parting her lips for him as he seized upon her.

  She heard, that night, sleepless, the last train coming running down the gradient from the station past the house, and the first train grinding up it in the early morning.

  7

  Mrs Taylor, who lived at 79 Harrison Way, next door to Marjorie’s house, and Mrs Posket, who lived at No. 69, four doors down, were old friends. Childless both of them, and in their early thirties, with husbands who went to the City every morning and stayed there all day, they spent a good deal of time in each other’s company, went shopping together and to the cinema, and in the winter played bridge at each other’s houses alternately, one married couple against the other. Today they were coming back together from the summer sales, a little weary, and yet triumphant, with parcels under their arms. As they reached the gate of No. 79, they both of them looked up at the house of No. 77. Although it was three weeks now since Mrs Grainger’s sister’s suicide, and although the summer sales had begun, that event was still fresh enough in their memory to be recalled to them by the sight of the house.

  Little Mrs Taylor, blonde and vivacious, had acquired a story there which she had already told many times over, and would tell, interminably, to the day of her death – it was by no means everybody who had actually seen a suicide lying dead in the very attitude in which she had died. Mrs Posket, thinner and taller and darker, had missed that, and had to be content with the very minor distinction of having actually been in the house, talking to the dead girl’s married sister, the day after it happened. Mrs Posket was known as a gossip. Romance had passed her by – the husband who went to the City every day failed to supply that. Nor was the cinema a satisfactory substitute, nor were the summer sales, nor was the little house which provided her wi
th an hour or two’s daily work.

  Perhaps somewhere within Mrs Posket there were the instincts of a pioneer, the unsatisfied curiosity of an explorer, the logical faculty of a scientist, or the constructive urge of a novelist. The creative ability was alone wanting; it may never have existed, or it may not have survived the childhood among drab people, the faulty education at a bad school, the married life of bridge and shopping and concealed economies. So that Mrs Posket had become an observer, rather than an actor. The latent urges made her an enthusiastic, a fanatical, observer. It was to her a supreme example of the world’s irony that such a dramatic event should have been seen through the blind blue eyes of Mrs Taylor rather than through the dark farseeing eyes of Mrs Posket – it must be added in parenthesis that she loathed the name of Mrs Posket and always tried to think of herself by her maiden name. It was Mrs Posket’s ambition, which she had never progressed so far as to express in words even to herself, of which in fact she was quite unconscious, to see or hear something some day of vital and dramatic importance. This was the reason why Mrs Posket drew the milkman and the baker’s delivery man into conversation, and peered out through her bedroom window, and noted what her neighbours were buying when she met them in the shops.

  Derrick came running up the road in the opposite direction in advance of his mother, and stopped short at the gate at sight of the two women.

  ‘Good afternoon, Derrick,’ said Mrs Posket. Derrick smiled shyly at her and turned away to rattle the latch of the gate.

  Shy one moment and bold the next, in childlike fashion, he turned back to her.

  ‘I can’t open this old gate,’ he piped. ‘Silly old gate.’

  ‘Shall I do it?’ asked Mrs Posket helpfully, coming forward. ‘There! What do you say?’

  ‘’Hank you,’ said Derrick.

  ‘That’s a good boy. And are you going to have a nice holiday this year, Derrick?’

  ‘We’re going to the seaside,’ said Derrick, breathlessly.

  ‘Which seaside, now?’

  ‘The Guardhouse, of course,’ said Derrick. The only seaside he knew was that which lay near The Guardhouse. He condescended to explain further to this stupid adult. ‘We’re going in a moty car, in Mr Reely’s moty car, and Daddy’s going to stop at home!’

  ‘Oh!’ said Mrs Posket. This was a marvellous piece of advance information. That just showed, as Mrs Posket expressed it to herself, that you never knew – in other words no stone was too insignificant to leave unturned when information was being sought. She would have asked Derrick further questions if Marjorie had not come hurrying up the street. Marjorie was a little out of breath, for she had walked as fast as she could directly she had seen who was talking to Derrick – as fast as she could while making desperate efforts not to appear to be hurrying. Marjorie was a little pale as well as breathless, for an awful fear had come upon her when she had seen Derrick and Mrs Posket in conversation. With a little boy like that one never knew what fantastic or illogical thing he might blurt out. He might – there was undoubtedly the chance of it, small though the chance might be – even say something to Mrs Posket about what he had seen that night, about Auntie Dot and Daddy.

  She caught Derrick’s hand and held him to her side and a little behind her, half concealed by her dress, as she said good afternoon to Mrs Taylor and Mrs Posket.

  ‘Derrick was just telling us what a nice holiday you were going to have, Mrs Grainger,’ said Mrs Posket, smiling.

  Marjorie’s apprehension died away; truth to tell, she was nearly as excited as Derrick about this approaching holiday.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ecstatically, and then she forced herself to speak calmly, so that her audience would not guess that there was any connection between her ecstasy and what she was going to say next – it was better to come out with the latter boldly than to leave it to be discovered, as it inevitably would be. ‘My poor husband can’t get away from his office after all, and he’s having to stay at home. Isn’t it bad luck on him?’

  ‘Derrick told us that, too,’ said Mrs Taylor, rather to Mrs Posket’s annoyance – a source of information loses half its future value if it disclosed.

  ‘He’s a chatter box,’ smiled Marjorie.

  ‘Who’s going to look after Mr Grainger?’ asked Mrs Posket.

  ‘Oh, he’s going to look after himself. He says he can.’

  ‘My goodness!’ said Mrs Taylor. ‘I expect you’ll have to start your spring cleaning when you get back. You know what men are like alone in a house.’

  ‘I daresay,’ said Marjorie, still smiling.

  The secret knowledge that her husband was a murderer and an incestuous seducer compelled her to act the part of an indulgent wife far more vigorously than would have been otherwise the case.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Posket ‘as long as you have good weather on your holiday I don’t expect you’ll mind.’

  ‘No,’ said Marjorie. ‘I shan’t mind anything in that case.’

  When Marjorie had gone in with Derrick the two other women lingered for a moment longer outside Mrs Taylor’s gate.

  ‘H’m,’ said Mrs Posket. ‘Holidays apart, eh? D’you suppose it’s true that Mr Grainger can’t get way from his office? I don’t expect he’s as important as all that.’

  ‘Oh, I should think it was,’ said Mrs Taylor.

  ‘She didn’t want Derrick to talk to us,’ said Mrs Posket. ‘Did you see how she snatched him away from us?’

  ‘Yes, I thought she did, too.’

  A memory nearly thirty years old came up into Mrs Posket’s mind. As a child scarcely able to read she had had a coloured picture book which included a vivid jungle picture entitled ‘Tigress defending her Young.’ At this moment she could recall that picture with extraordinary clarity, the black and yellow markings, the bared white teeth, the cub thrust behind and to the side.

  ‘Like a tigress,’ she said, vaguely. ‘I wonder –’

  ‘You’re always wondering, Grace,’ said Mrs Taylor with a laugh.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t have to wonder about what my Dick would say if I wanted to leave him for a fortnight or three weeks or however long it is. I know already.’

  Indoors Marjorie was worrying about the problem of how to hint to Derrick not to speak about domestic affairs to anyone outside the family, and at the same time how not to destroy his charming trustfulness with strangers. It was the same old problem of how to eat her cake and have it, and yet she did not consider that she was being weak about it.

  ‘I don’t think,’ she began cautiously, as she cut the bread and butter for tea, ‘that Mrs Posket was interested in our holiday. You needn’t have told her about it.’

  ‘She asked me, mummy,’ countered Derrick.

  ‘Oh yes, but I don’t expect she really wanted to hear.’

  ‘But she asked you, too,’ said Derrick, with the exasperating logic of a four-year-old.

  ‘I expect she did, but you don’t have to tell Mrs Posket things.’

  ‘What things, mummy?’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean. Things about us.’

  ‘What things about us, mummy?’

  It was just like a child to be so sharp one minute and so exasperatingly stupid the next, and the discussion ended as one might have expected – as even Derrick, with his brief experience, had philosophically come to expect discussions to end.

  ‘Oh, don’t bother me now. Why don’t you run out into the garden and play until tea’s ready?’

  Soon after the children were in bed there was a knock at the front door. That puzzled Marjorie for a moment, because it was not Mother’s knock. When she opened the door she was surprised to find herself regarding Mr Ely’s shy good looks.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Grainger,’ said Mr Ely, quite pink with excitement. ‘I’ve brought the car!’

  ‘Really!’ said Marjorie. ‘Is it outside? Can I see it?’

  Mr Ely p
roudly led the way down the garden path to where the little car stood at the kerbside. It was only a tiny seven-horsepower saloon, long past its first youth, but it meant far more to Mr Ely than any Rolls-Royce did to its millionaire owner, and to Marjorie it was like Cinderella’s fairy coach.

  ‘It’s lovely!’ she said, and meant it. Loveliness in a vehicle to her mind began with the possession of four wheels, the ability to move under its own power, and the retention of sufficient roof to keep most of the rain out.

  ‘I wanted to show it to you,’ said Mr Ely, ‘so that you could see how much luggage space there’ll be. There won’t be much, you see, with five of us in the car.’

  ‘Derrick can sit on my knee, or Mother’s knee,’ said Marjorie. ‘And Anne’s not so very big.’

  ‘It’s not only that, though, I’m afraid. We mustn’t have too much weight for the old bus to take along.’

  ‘Oh, I see. I’ll be ever so careful then. We’ll only have a little.’

  Marjorie’s mind started working busily on the problem of how to cut down weight. There was a good deal she could manage without, she decided.

  ‘I suppose,’ said Ely, shyly again, ‘you wouldn’t care to come for a run in her tonight?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Marjorie, and then, her disappointment evident, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Ted’s out tonight, and won’t be back till late. I can’t leave the children alone.’

  Ely was disappointed too, and looked it. This was his first day of possession, and he longed to go out, driving about. To a man condemned to subordination there was a delicious thrill of mastery in putting down one’s foot and feeling the car surge forward obediently; in swinging accurately round corners; in leaving behind the buses and trams in which one had so often before crawled tediously along, subject to driver and conductor, and even subject to people on the pavement who could stop one with a single uplift of the hand. But at the same time he was chary of driving alone through the traffic of the suburban roads. He wanted someone beside him to tell him of vehicles on his near side, and to look behind for him when he had to make a right-hand turn. The tennis club girls were all too superior. They might laugh at his gear changing. Ely believed them to have all been familiar with motor cars since childhood.