The Stratton Story

by Elizabeth Cadell

  Mrs. Westerby stared at him in the utmost astonishment.

  “Round a notice, did you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “My scarf—this scarf—was wrapped round it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then that explains everything,” Mrs. Westerby said. “That’s where it went. It was obviously whipped from round my neck—being of such soft material, I wouldn’t feel it go —and it was carried by the wind until it reached an obstacle, and then became entangled round it. Have you ever heard anything so extraordinary?”

  “Never,” Gail said.

  “And when you think” — Mrs. Westerby spoke in an awed tone — “when you think what might have happened if the notice had warned of some real danger! Thank Heaven it was only a temporarily blocked road, and nothing worse. How horrible it would have been . . .” She shuddered-a tremor that shook her enormous frame. Gail, staring at her, felt a kind of fascination creeping over her. Her thoughts, usually so clear, so easy to marshal, blurred before the combination of the known and the feared; Mrs. Westerby’s face, by now so familiar, was a face on which she could read no more than its owner cared to write. She could tell herself that Mrs. Westerby was nothing but what she appeared to be — ugly, kindly, awkward and blundering . .. harmless. But she could not make herself believe it — not when Julian’s white, set face made her certain that he was struggling against suspicions far more serious than her own.

  They watched Mrs. Westerby going into the inn. “Satisfied?” Julian asked, as she disappeared into the dark entrance.

  “I’m sorry I mentioned the scarf. I spoke before I could stop myself.”

  “It’s a dangerous habit. Are you still convinced she’s crazy?”

  “No.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “If she’d suddenly gone crazy and wrapped her scarf round the notice, she wouldn’t have been able to talk about it so reasonably. And if for some mysterious reason of her own she did do it, she would have asked us—wouldn’t she?—to say nothing to the others.”

  “Are you going to say anything about it to the others?”

  ‘‘Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “I don’t want you to. All I want you to do is forget the whole thing.”

  “I won’t do that. If you want to know what I think—”

  She hesitated.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “If I were you, I’d . . . I’d keep an eye on her.” She stopped and turned slowly to face him. “Is that why you came out with her? Is that why you agreed to drive her out to the cottage? To ... to keep an eye on her? To watch her, to see that she didn’t . . . that she . . . Well, just to keep an eye on her?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Yes,” he said at last. “That’s why.”

  Chapter 6

  Nothing could have looked more peaceful than the countryside as dusk fell and the Cotters, with Mark and Susie and the children, came strolling over the quiet hillside towards the inn for dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Cotter went into the house in search of drinks. Mark Stevens followed them, leaving Susie with Gail at one of the small round tin tables. Sharon and Tag Junior sat at the one next to them.

  “Awful hole to be stuck in,” Susie commented sulkily. “I told Mark not to come down that road. I told him twice, but he wouldn’t listen.” She frowned at the children, who were executing a rhythmic drumming on the table top. “Hey, you two; shut up.” She resumed her complaints to Gail. “This village gives me the creeps. You wouldn’t think there was a main road not far from it, leading out to civilisation. I don’t suppose any of these characters ever got as far as the main road. When do we eat?”

  “Soon,” Gail assured her.

  “I’ll be glad when we get out of here.”

  “Well, I won’t,” said Tag. “I’d like to stay here. I wish we could go on being stuck. I’m sick of moving around. We do it all the time. I wanna go home, but we never will.” He sounded bitter. “I bet we never will.”

  “Holidays come to an end,” Gail offered as comfort.

  “Holidays? Who said holidays?” he demanded. “This is work—my dad’s work. Don’t ask me anything about what he does. All I know is he has to do it in a lotta places. We’re supposed to have a place to stay in Paris, but do we ever get to stay in it? No, we don’t. We just move around all the time. I’m glad we’re stuck, for once. But tomorrow morning, goodbye, nice to have met you.”

  “Oh, you’re always grinding away at something,” his sister said in disgust.

  “I know how he feels,” Gail said.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Tag answered. “Nobody knows how I feel. Everybody’s always giving off that junk about travel’s-good-for-you. Travel’s ed-u-ca-ting. Why didn’t they leave me in school back in the States, and let me get educated there? I wanna stay some place; just stay, that’s all.”

  “I used to feel that way,” Gail told him.

  “You did?” He came to her table and gave her his full attention. “Did you get dragged around when you were little?”

  “My brother and sister and I—yes.”

  “All round France, like me?”

  “Worse. Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Chile. Until I was about ten.”

  “And then what?”

  “My parents died and we were sent to live with my grandmother. After that it was just home and school.”

  Tag Junior sat gazing into this bright future. He was about to say something when Mark came out carrying a tray of drinks.

  “I had to guess what Julian wanted,” he told Gail. “Where’s he got to?”

  Tag Junior pointed towards the hillside.

  “Here he comes.”

  Julian, joining them, took the drink gratefully.

  “Sorry to leave you to do it all,” he said. “You all looked so clean that I got out of my jeans into trousers. And I had a phone call to make.”

  “Lovely London?” Susie asked wistfully.

  “No. Paris. The only place I ever saw a phone like this one was in an old western.”

  Mrs. Cotter strolled outside.

  “Kind of a flood upstairs,” she remarked.

  “What kind of flood?” asked Tag Junior.

  “Bath water,” his mother said. “It’s on its way to your room,” she told Gail. “I guess you’d better go on up.”

  Tag Junior had already gone to investigate. He returned at high speed and addressed Julian.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s that old lady—your aunt or something. She’s burst one of the pipes, it looks like.”

  Julian put down his glass and followed Gail, who was already hurrying up the stairs. As they went, they had to keep close to the wall in order to avoid the channels of water coursing down into the hall.

  They reached the landing to find the landlord on his knees helping the maid to mop the floor. Both were protesting loudly. The bathroom door was wide open; in the doorway, wearing a long, green cotton dressing- gown and a mob cap made of towelling, stood Mrs. Westerby. She was protesting as loudly as the landlord and brandishing a piece of metal which Julian, picking his way through the rivers of water, took from her and identified as part of a brass tap.

  “Now look, Julian.” She continued without pause her stream of explanations. “Now you can see! Am I to blame if the tap comes away in my hand? Because that is precisely what happened. I could hardly get the thing to turn on. Having turned it on, I found the water coming out with far too great a force, and so I attempted to turn the tap the other way. I couldn’t. You can see for yourself how small the bathtub is; the water filled it in no time, but before I could come out and call for assistance, I had naturally to put on my robe. By that time, everything had overflowed.” She waved a hand. “As you see.”

  The water had rushed below the ill-fitting door of the bathroom and spread out into three divergent streams. One had made its way under the door of Sir Hugo’s room; Sir Hugo, in shirt-sleeves in his doorway, was holding up a pair of shoes and a pair of
slippers which had been soaked before he noticed the flood, and addressing Mrs. Westerby in a voice choked with anger. Mr. Guzzman, uttering loud cries of distress, was flinging garments out of a canvas hold-all that had become saturated with water. The Cotters were downstairs in the hall, clearing everything from the path of the descending streams.

  Julian snatched a mop and diverted a tributary that was snaking its way into Gail’s bedroom. Going to his assistance, Gail glanced across the landing. Mrs. Stratton was standing outside her room, saying nothing, her eyes going slowly round the scene. They came to rest at last on the still-protesting Mrs. Westerby. There was a look in them that Gail would have given much to be able to identify. Mrs. Westerby met the look and fell abruptly silent. For a few moments the two women stared at one another; then Mrs. Stratton turned and went into her room and closed the door.

  “She blames me,” Mrs. Westerby said angrily. “You can see she blames me. Everybody blames me. Why can’t you explain, Julian, that accidents of this kind can happen to anybody? It might have been Sir Hugo who was having a bath just as the tap chose to give trouble. He would have been just as helpless as I was to stop the flow. He would have had to wait, as I had to, for the landlord to fetch a tool of some kind. I am sorry, my dear Sir Hugo, about your wet shoes, but I cannot really understand why you should direct all your annoyance at me. You might remind yourself that—”

  There was no point in going on; Sir Hugo had gone into his room and closed the door with a crash that raised the landlord’s irritation to frenzy. For a moment it looked as if he would attack Mrs. Westerby—and then Julian and Mr. Guzzman between them turned him towards the stairs and succeeded in persuading him to go down them. Then Julian addressed his godmother.

  “If I were you,” he suggested quietly, “I’d leave the maid to clear up, and finish dressing.”

  “Dressing! My dear boy, you don’t realise that I didn’t succeed in getting a bath.”

  “No tap, no water; no water, no bath,” Mr. Guzzman pointed out. “Best is dress and have dinner.”

  “Dinner? This girl”—Mrs. Guzzman, in the doorway of her room, pointed angrily to the maid—“she cook. No tap, no water, no bath, no cook, no dinner.”

  “Here—let me.” Gail took over the mopping operations, and the maid hurried downstairs. Mrs. Westerby came forward to help, but Mr. Guzzman led her to her room, pushed her inside, and closed the door.

  Dinner was considerably delayed. There was nowhere to wait except on the terrace, but the sun had gone down and there was now a cold wind. Huddled in sweaters, the Guzzmans, Mark and Susie and the Cotters waited with Julian and Gail. When the landlord at last came out to announce that the meal was ready there was a cheer, and everybody but Gail and Julian surged towards the dining-room.

  Gail saw Mrs. Stratton and Sir Hugo coming slowly down the stairs. Julian spoke as they came out on to the terrace.

  “I’m sorry about the flood,” he said.

  Mrs. Stratton said nothing for a moment; Sir Hugo, with rather overdone solicitude, was settling her into a chair. Then she spoke with a kind of weary contempt.

  “The flood didn’t matter,” she said. “All I minded was the scene.”

  “I’m sorry about that too,” Julian said.

  Sir Hugo took a step closer to Julian and spoke in a low tone designed not to carry to the ears of the diners.

  “Look here, Meredith, I realise that Mrs. Westerby is your godmother,” he said, “and you can’t very well discuss her, but ... is she quite normal?”

  “She’s quite sane, if that’s what you mean,” Julian said angrily.

  “Well, I’m sorry, but from what I’ve seen in the last few hours,” Sir Hugo went on, “I really think there’s room for doubt. Does she behave like this when she’s in her own home? Or don’t you know?”

  “You can’t blame her for the fact that the tap was faulty.”

  “My dear fellow,” Sir Hugo said in exasperation, “that’s just the point. That’s just what I’m driving at. I used the tap. The Germans used the tap. Mrs. Stratton used the tap. It worked perfectly well. It was not in the least stiff.”

  “You’re not suggesting that—”

  “Yes, I am. You must really allow me to speak frankly—after all, she’s ruined an expensive pair of shoes of mine, and my bedroom floor is flooded. I heard her go into the bathroom, and I’m quite certain that I heard a kind of hammering. She was in there long enough to—”

  “Look,” Julian broke in. “There’s no point in going on with this. I don’t think you really know what you’re saying.”

  “I know exactly what I’m saying and I mean every word of it,” Sir Hugo informed him. “I’m saying that there are certain types of people—not normal people—who have to make themselves the centre of attention. If they feel they’re getting less than their share, they do something outrageous to force people’s attention back to them.”

  Julian looked at Mrs. Stratton.

  “I’m sure you don’t agree with that,” he said.

  She hesitated.

  “I’m afraid I do,” she said at last, and her tone was not friendly. “I can’t believe that you don’t agree with it too. I can see that you must protect her, but you’re not stupid; you’ve got eyes, and I’m sure you use them.”

  “Certainly you must have seen,” said Sir Hugo, “that from the moment you drove up to the village square earlier today, Mrs. Westerby has gone out of her way to pester Mrs. Stratton. Why can’t she leave her alone?”

  “Mrs. Stratton is her sister-in-law,” Julian reminded him. “If she left her alone, it would seem far more odd than trying—as I think she’s trying—to get to know Mrs. Stratton better.”

  Mrs. Stratton gave a faint smile.

  “Mrs. Westerby and I,” she said slowly, “took one another’s measure many years ago. We decided that we didn’t want to know one another any better. Her present behaviour is not a clumsy attempt at friendliness, but simply an effort to make me appear as ridiculous as she is. Whatever you may say, I refuse to believe that she behaves like this when she’s at home. If she did, people would be justified in putting her under some kind of restraint. As soon as she saw me, she gave an effusive display of affection which I know, and I’m sure you know, she doesn’t in the least feel.”

  “When Mrs. Stratton and I went for a walk earlier this evening,” Sir Hugo said, “Mrs. Westerby joined us, gave us a detailed history of herself and assured me that now her brother was no longer here to look after Mrs. Stratton, she was determined to undertake the task herself. It really seems to me to border on a kind of persecution.”

  “It certainly isn’t prompted by friendliness,” said Mrs. Stratton in a calm, expressionless voice, “because—” She stopped. There was a long silence.

  “Because what?” Julian asked at last.

  “Because she hates me.” Mrs. Stratton spoke quietly, but with a repressed force that frightened Gail. Before she could stop herself, she heard her own voice raised in defence of Mrs. Westerby.

  “Oh no!” she protested, and saw Sir Hugo’s eyes resting on her coldly. “I’m sorry—I know this is absolutely nothing to do with me, but I honestly think Julian’s right, and that Mrs. Westerby is trying to be friendly. Every time she has mentioned your name, Mrs. Stratton, she has—”

  “— said something complimentary about me? I don’t doubt it.”

  “What I do think”—Gail, to her own surprise, found herself persisting in spite of the other woman’s obvious snub—“what I think is that Mrs. Westerby ... I mean you have a strange effect on her. I think you make her try too hard. Away from you, she’s absolutely natural and . . . and like-able. With you, she’s completely different. I saw her at her own house, and she wasn’t any different from any other rather eccentric old lady who lives alone—my grandmother, for instance. Then I saw her with you at the Flamingo, and she was . . . well, just as she is here.”

  “If I have this unfortunate effect on her, why can’t she leave me al
one?”

  “Because ... I know it’s not my business, but I can’t help liking her; she told me that while her brother . . . while your . . . while Mr. Stratton was alive, she hadn’t succeeded in getting close to you.”

  “No. I saw to that.”

  “She wanted to leave you alone with him; she didn’t want to risk being thought interfering. Now she wants to become a friend, because you both loved her brother and she feels that makes a link between you. I can see anybody can see—how awkwardly she’s going about it, but she’s only trying, as Julian said, to—to—”

  “Nothing Mrs. Westerby can do,” Mrs. Stratton said, “will ever make us friends. I saw that as soon as I married her brother. I’m afraid he saw it too. I feel as Sir Hugo does—that she must—”

  She stopped. Mrs. Westerby, in a long black dress, the beads once more about her neck, was coming out on to the terrace. She threw out her arms in a dramatic gesture.

  “I am in black,” she announced, “because I am a penitent. Sir Hugo”—she held out a hand—“I must hear you say that you forgive me.”

  Sir Hugo took the hand and bowed coldly over it; he said nothing.

  “And Anita, my dear, you too? Your room, I’m happy to say, was the driest of all after my silly scrape. Let us say that all is forgotten, all forgiven.”

  She leaned forward and placed a kiss on Mrs. Stratton’s cheek. Mrs. Stratton sat unmoving. Then she got to her feet and without a word turned to Sir Hugo. He took her hand and placed it protectively under his arm.

  “Lead the way!” Mrs. Westerby commanded. “Lead the way! I have asked the landlord to do his best.”

  The landlord appeared, no longer red-faced and angry, but bowing and smiling and directing them to the dining-room. Gail wondered how much his change of front had cost Mrs. Westerby.

  She looked at Julian as he took his place at table and read on his face his fear of what his godmother might do or say during the meal. He need not have worried; Mrs. Westerby was at her best. She talked a good deal, but she talked well and on subjects calculated to interest her companions. She spoke of her long friendship with Julian’s parents, and described her garden at Shern and her mother’s old home at Chandon. Her orders to the landlord and the maid during the meal were clear, sensible and authoritative. She reminded her audience that she was in country she knew well; she told them of the excursions she had made in her youth to the high passes of the Pyrenees; she recounted anecdotes of smugglers, famous pelota players and a retired Spanish bullfighter who had come to live on the French side of the mountains. She mentioned her visits to France with her brother when they were young and described their walks or rides about the beautiful countryside.