A Penknife in My Heart

by Nicholas Blake

  Ned found he had stopped his car in the lane beside the wood. He was nearly home, he thought; and then—so I still call it home. He obscurely felt a need to pause, to rally himself for the interview with dead Helena. But it seemed she had come out to meet him. As he walked slowly up the ride, smelling the mushroomy autumn smells, he suddenly remembered with extraordinary vividness the first time he and Helena had come here. It was soon after their move to Crump End. They were exploring a new country together, feeling as if they themselves were being renewed. They had lit a fire of twigs and leaves in the heart of the wood and eaten their picnic lunch, with the leaves yellowing overhead as they were now. It was a moment of innocence and hope. Helena stretched her hands over the little fire, in a movement that looked like a vow or a blessing. When she glanced up at him, her eyes were wet. He thought they were smarting from the smoke, till she said, “I will try to do better.”

  Something was released in him by the memory, as it had been by the event. Of course nothing had come of Helena’s wish for amendment: but remembering it now, Ned felt a strange melting of the heart and a closeness to her which he had not felt for years.

  His reverie was broken by the sound of a horn. Looking toward the lane, he saw a car drawn up behind his—the van which the Holmeses used for bringing their produce to Marksfield. Mrs. Holmes was beckoning to him.

  “I thought I recognized your car,” she said when he had walked down to her.

  “How is Brian?” he asked.

  “Better, thank you. He got over the crisis three days ago.”

  “I’m glad.”

  Mrs. Holmes, usually so calm, so much in control, looked nervous. Her hair straggled from beneath the felt hat, and she had buttoned her coat unevenly. She was unable to keep her eyes on Ned as she went on in a hurried voice, “I stopped to ask if you would—I’m in great trouble—could I have a talk with you?”

  “Well, of course. But—”

  “I know it’s a most unreasonable—as if you hadn’t far worse troubles yourself. But I don’t know anyone else who could help me.”

  “It’s about your son?”

  “Yes.” She gave him a grateful look for helping her out. “I’m at my wit’s end, you see. The most dreadful stories are going round the village, about Brian. And our nurserymen have started not turning up—I’ve been coping with the market garden almost single-handed for two days. Look, I’m on my way to the hospital now. Could you possibly come and have supper with me when I get back?”

  Ned agreed to do so. He had a pretty shrewd idea what the trouble was at the Holmeses’. No doubt, too, Mrs. Holmes thought it might be alleviated once the village gossips discovered that he had visited her house in a friendly way. Ned could feel no objection to being exploited by a mother desperately anxious about her son. Besides, he liked Mrs. Holmes; he remembered the sympathy for him in her gray eyes when Helena had been bitchy at the cocktail party.

  His first act, on entering his house, was to ring up Robert Avening and explain Mrs. Holmes’s predicament. Sir Robert was shocked to hear of it: he promised to say a word at once to her defaulting nurserymen, and if they proved recalcitrant, to lend her one of his own gardeners.

  Ned lit the boiler, and a fire in the living room, for Mrs. Marle had not been warned of his return and the house had a stuffy chill on it. He settled down to deal with his accumulated correspondence. It was still only just after midday, and the rest of the day gaped before him like an enormous hole that must somehow, however uselessly, be filled in.

  Presently, taking a grip upon himself, Ned went upstairs to the bedroom he and Helena had occupied. The door was no longer sealed. Entering, he threw open a window, then forced himself to look steadily at the bed where she had been murdered. His mind felt quite numb, unresponsive, stripped. Someone—the police, he supposed—had removed pillows and bedclothes: there were only the mattress and the frame of the bed. A thrush sang in the garden, and children’s voices floated up from the road beyond. A breeze fluttered the window curtains. Ned became aware that he was trying to re-create the terrible last scene he had had with Helena here on the Sunday night, and that he was unable to do so. Another scene interposed—Helena in bed with pleurisy years ago, docile and pathetic as a sick child, and himself nursing her. Physical illness always smoothed out, as it were, the kinks in her mind, quietening her, making her passive and unexacting: at such times the illusion had been created that there could be a new beginning, a relationship in which he would take the lead and gently dominate her.

  Now, as though the recent past had given way beneath him, Ned found himself fallen through into older memories. It was a kind of trap—the last he had expected. The Helena who had so nearly destroyed him, and whose destruction had seemed an act of desperate self-defense, was not here: her place had been taken by a more equivocal, more disturbing figure—an anthology, as he bitterly put it to himself, of the best extracts from Helena. But this figure, or figment, could not be dismissed with a phrase. He could only harden his heart against it. And, as the days passed, he was to learn that his old defenses against the living Helena were of little avail against this more insidious creature.

  For the present, however, there was a respite. Looking through papers in his desk, destroying everything he was not going to take away, Ned came upon the manuscript of his unfinished play. He was about to tear this up too when his eye caught a passage of dialogue in the opening scene, and with an extraordinary sense of clairvoyance he instantly perceived how the play had taken a wrong turning there and how it could be put back on the right road. Clearing a space on the desk, he set to work and soon became absorbed in an imagined world. He felt a new clarity, an incredible mastery. After four hours he had entirely rewritten the first act, and knew he could do the rest.

  He rose excitedly from his chair, and the next moment realized that he had done so in order to call Helena and show her what he had written. The real world came down on him like a fog. It was nearly 6:30—time to go across to Mrs. Holmes’s cottage. He remembered, but without resentment, how Helena had contrived to nag him about the play, to deaden her encouragement with a kind of pervasive skepticism. Poor old girl, he thought, she couldn’t help it, she was so miserable at the failure of her own talent.

  Walking through the Holmeses’ market garden, he noticed that several greenhouses had panes of glass shattered: there was a heap of broken cloches, too, on a rubbish dump. Mrs. Holmes came to the door of Field Cottage—it was, in fact, a jerry-built bungalow—looking distressed.

  “They did that this afternoon, while I was away. Children or youths. I know I oughtn’t to be so upset, but—”

  “It’s a damned shame,” Ned put in hotly. “I suppose their bloody-minded parents egged them on.” For this too I am responsible, he thought.

  Mrs. Holmes laid her hand on his for a moment. “There are good people. Sir Robert rang up—he’s going to help.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “Thank you for telling him. I do appreciate it.”

  Coals of fire, thought Ned. His cheek began twitching. There was nothing he could say that would not deepen the falsity of it all. In his extreme embarrassment he was unable to feel hers, till over a glass of cheap sherry in the poky little “lounge” she came out with “Brian admired your wife very much,” and then, as though realizing she had said too much or too little, “He was with her that night, you know.”

  She stared into the fire, her head averted, the brown cheek flushed.

  Ned swallowed. “Yes, I know,” he soothingly answered, feeling an immense and impotent desire to help her out, and at the same time a dread of the complications which lay between them. To gain time, he asked her about her own life. She had been left a widow ten years ago, Mrs. Holmes told him, while Brian was at school. She had a small income, which with the rising cost of living became ever more inadequate to support them. Brian had showed some talent for music; but he developed lung trouble, and the doctor said he should live an open-air life. Gardening h
ad always been a hobby of Mrs. Holmes’: Brian was interested in it too: so, after Brian had worked for two years, learning the job, in a friend’s market garden, she sank most of her capital into acquiring Field Cottage and its surrounding acres, taking them over as a going concern from a man who had established a good connection in Marksfield and its neighborhood.

  Ned saw Mrs. Holmes as a woman whom circumstances had driven off her natural course—a woman meant to be supported and cherished, who had been compelled to take command, take risks, get things done, and in the process had discovered unsuspected powers. Married to a provincial solicitor, she had no doubt followed the usual pattern—bridge, golf, pottering in the garden, membership in a local music or literary society, being “a good wife.” But now, transplanted into poorer soil, she had shown a hardiness which might well have surprised the late Mr. Holmes. She was still extremely feminine; but she bore the marks of a strong self-discipline, and it was clear from the way she talked about her son that one purpose of this self-discipline had been to avoid the classical dangers of the widowed-mother-only-son relationship.

  “So you see, it’s rather worrying,” she was saying. “Apart from Brian’s trouble, this cloud hanging over our heads is bad for business. You know what a country district is like. One retailer in Marksfield has canceled his orders already.”

  She said it without querulousness or self-pity, but there was a faint quaver of anxiety in her voice.

  “You mustn’t worry too much. These things blow over.”

  “As long as they don’t blow us over in the process,” she said, smiling bravely. “Well, I’ll go and finish my cooking. Make yourself at home, please. Can you drink beer?”

  “Yes, rather. But don’t—”

  “I’ll bring you some now. This sherry is rather foul, isn’t it?” For a moment Ned saw what she had been twenty years ago—light and loved and easy. It was odd that such a woman could have produced a wet like Brian.

  Ned glanced round the cramped, ill-proportioned room, to which Mrs. Holmes had somehow given charm and character. There were touches of color relieving the shabbiness of the furniture, and one or two exquisite pieces—relics of her more prosperous days. The bookshelves on either side of the hideous little fireplace contained reading matter very different from that usually found in bungalows.

  “This is what the agent called a ‘dinette,’” Mrs. Holmes was presently saying. “The names they think up!”

  The meal was simple, but excellendy cooked. Helena would have kept on apologizing for it, thought Ned, ashamed of the thought. Mrs. Holmes expected him to enjoy it, and he did. He noticed she was getting through quite a lot of beer.

  “I’m trying to get to like the stuff,” she said, reading his mind. Then, flushing a little, “I wish it was Hollands, though.”

  “Hollands?”

  “Dutch courage. I need it,” The gray eyes regarded him steadily now. “Well, it’s an awkward situation, isn’t it? You and me.”

  “You manage to make it not awkward.”

  “You were her husband. Brian was—was her lover.” She said it with a precarious firmness, forcing herself to state the situation in its ugly, basic terms.

  “I didn’t—I wasn’t on the best of terms with Helena,” he replied, unable to meet her eyes.

  “I know. I saw that at your party. But she was murdered, and Brian—the police suspect him.”

  “Still?”

  “I’m afraid so. They took a statement from him yesterday; he was well enough.”

  “But surely—”

  “He admits he was—was with your wife that night. It was the first time, he says. He’s very young and loyal, you know. Oh dear, I don’t know how to put this, without hurting you. He’d never tell the police, but he hinted it to me—they let me see him alone this afternoon—the advances came from your wife. There, I’ve said it. Can you forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” Ned answered gloomily. “It must have been my fault. I can’t understand it.” And he still could not. “But I gathered from Colonel Gracely last week that the police hadn’t enough evidence. You said your son made a statement. Do you mean—?”

  “Oh, not a confession. You see, he honestly doesn’t remember anything that happened after—after he went to sleep. That’s the dreadful thing.”

  “The dreadful thing?” Ned echoed dully.

  Mrs. Holmes was staring at him, with a wild, horrified look. All the anguish she had been suppressing broke through, making her tone shrill. “Yes. He doesn’t know—he’s afraid he did kill her and doesn’t remember it.”

  “What? In a brainstorm?”

  “Yes.” Her voice became almost inaudible as she drove herself on. “He said, ‘Mother, I remember hating her for it—being utterly disgusted—wanting to hit her.’”

  “But the blow he received—”

  “He doesn’t remember. He could have got it falling against the edge of that kerosene container, where we found him.” Mrs. Holmes bit her lower lip to steady it. “Even if he’s not arrested, he’ll have to live the rest of his life under this terrible shadow—not knowing whether he’s a murderer, whether he mightn’t do it again—never able to trust himself.”

  Ned had the sensation of standing on a very high dive. Shutting his eyes, he took the plunge, saying in a loud voice he hardly recognized as his own:

  “I know Brian didn’t do it.”

  “You know?”

  There was a quivering silence.

  “I mean, I’m absolutely certain he couldn’t have. From what you have told me of him.” Ned was floundering. He had not jumped off that high dive; he had been pushed—by some force within, which had at once deserted him. He saw Mrs. Holmes’s face, irradiated by hope for a moment, settle back into anxiety. Twice with Laura, and now again with Mrs. Holmes, he had refused the moment of truth, betraying his own conscience. Humiliated by his cowardice, he failed to notice the changed, speculative expression on his companion’s face.

  Well, good God, he was thinking, am I expected to come out with the whole story of Stuart Hammer? Why the hell should I put my head into a noose?

  “Let’s move back to the other room,” said Mrs. Holmes wearily.

  When they were sitting on either side of the fire, and he had lit her cigarette, Ned began:

  “I wish I could do something. Perhaps your—Brian will remember more details when he gets better.”

  “In a way, I hope he doesn’t.”

  “But after all—”

  “They would be pretty unpleasant to remember.”

  Ned gave her a startled glance. There was something neutral in her tone and veiled in her eyes now, which he found disquieting.

  “Well, of course, if he did kill Helena—”

  “I meant, it would be unpleasant for him to remember what happened after your wife had been killed. Can you imagine waking up to find that the woman you have just gone to sleep with has been murdered? It’d be enough to make you doubt your sanity. Not to speak of the mere physical horror of it all.”

  “Yes indeed,” Ned began uncertainly. “But it may not have happened that way. Helena might have been killed after Brian left her. If he doesn’t remember anything—”

  “He does remember your wife locking the front door when he went in that evening.” Mrs. Holmes brushed back the gray hair from her temple. “Nobody could have got into the house without a front-door key, the inspector told me.”

  “But he might have left it on the latch when he went out—that’s what I was suggesting—and someone else came in.”

  “If your wife was unharmed when he left her, Brian would have come straight home to bed. The only explanation of his wandering into the outbuilding is that he was concussed or else in a state of extreme emotional shock. When he was a child and in disgrace, he used to go and hide in an outbuilding at home.” A tear ran down Mrs. Holmes’s cheek.

  “Look, you mustn’t upset yourself any more. I’m sure it will all come right.”

&n
bsp; She seemed not to hear this. She stared down at her fingers locked firmly in her lap. “You wouldn’t go and visit Brian, would you?” she asked, not looking at Ned.

  “Yes, of course,” he replied uneasily. “But surely he wouldn’t want me to—just at present, I mean?”

  “It might relieve his mind a little, if he felt you didn’t—didn’t hold anything against him.”

  Now what is she up to? thought Ned. There had been something cryptic, equivocal, in her manner these last few minutes. He was conscious, as he had so often been with Helena, of the feminine mind tortuously maneuvering toward some objective, trying out his defenses for the weak spot.

  “I don’t hold it against him that he was Helena’s lover,” he said with a touch of aggressiveness.

  Mrs. Holmes’s gray eyes rested full upon him now, as she said in her pleasant, low voice, “Would you hate Brian if you knew he had murdered her?”

  Ned felt as if he was frozen to his chair. The question hit him like a paralytic stroke, making it physically impossible to get out a word for ten seconds. At last he managed to speak. “You mean, am I really glad she’s dead?”

  Still gazing at him, Mrs. Holmes made the slightest inclination of her head.

  “It’s true I sometimes wished her dead,” he said very slowly, more to himself than to his companion. Then, after another pause, “But now it’s happened, I’m not—I think I do hate the man who did it.”

  It sounded like a confession to him, when he had said it, and he was unable to look Mrs. Holmes in the face. There was something too contagious in her directness, her honesty.

  “So you’d rather not go and see Brian?” she asked.

  Ned knew he was cornered and the knowledge made his voice sound childishly querulous. “But I told you, I’m certain he’s innocent.”