The Trouble-Makers

by Celia Fremlin

  The sheer misery in Mary’s voice frightened Katharine. She struggled to keep the conversation on a reassuring, gossippy level.

  “Do you mean Stella actually told you she thought that?” she asked, ready to be slightly scandalised at such brash tactlessness.

  “Oh no. Not point blank,” answered Mary quickly. “Haven’t you noticed about Stella, that with all her theories about being absolutely frank, and the healthiness of having a good row, and all the rest of it, she’s just as cunning as anybody else really. No. She started off by saying had the police got any detailed description out of Alan this morning? And when I told her no, he’d just said it was a dark man in a raincoat, and he hadn’t had time to notice anything else, then she began about how impossibly vague a description it was—how it would include practically all the men we know. Fair enough; but then she began listing all the men we know—sort of laughing, you know, just to show that she only meant it to illustrate how useless any speculating would be—but actually she was watching me carefully after each name, to see if I blushed. I did too—several times—so I hope she’s satisfied! I blush very easily, you know, and I was getting so fed-up with it. So fed-up! All these men in raincoats being lined up in front of me like an identity parade—she made me feel as if they were filing through the room then and there! She made me actually see them—she really did, Katharine! I could have screamed! At least, if it was possible to scream in this house…. In a house where Alan lives….” Her voice dropped again into the soft bitterness of a few minutes ago. Again Katharine was frightened.

  “Scream? Of course you should scream! The very next time Alan annoys you! It would do you both a world of good,” she declared bracingly—and cowered before the pitying glance from Mary’s unhappy eyes.

  “You sound just like Stella,” she commented wearily. “Both of you, standing safely outside the lion’s cage, and urging the person inside to poke the lion with a stick. That’s what half of psychology consists of, it seems to me,” she went on accusingly, and a little wildly. “Theories about how other people should poke lions with sticks….” She ran her hand through her untidy hair despairingly; then looked up at Katharine and spoke quite fiercely:

  “All right. So the next time Alan says one of those awful quiet, sarcastic things to me, then I scream. Right? So I scream. What happens next?”

  She looked at Katharine as if in genuine expectation of an answer; and of course Katharine could not give one. She could not imagine at all what would happen next. One simply could not conceive of someone screaming at Alan. It wasn’t in keeping with his character. A man’s character, she reflected with surprise, consists a good deal more of the way people feel and behave towards him than of the way he himself feels and behaves.

  “I don’t know,” she said feebly; and a look of unhappy triumph flickered for a moment across Mary’s face.

  “I want to show you something, Katharine,” she said, after a moment’s thought. “I’ve sometimes wondered whether to show it to you before, but—well, I don’t know…. Wait there. I have to fetch it….”

  Awkward, stumbling over the rug as she went, Mary got herself out of the room, and a moment later Katharine heard her moving about in Alan’s study.

  Left alone, Katharine sat very still, staring into the steady spears of whitish flame that murmured in the bleak grate before her. She felt herself tensed up, expectant—but it was not quite the pleasurable curiosity she would have expected to feel in such a situation. She was aware of a curious sense of misgiving—a growing certainty that whatever it was that Mary was about to show her, she would rather not see it.

  It was an envelope that Mary handed to her—a plain white envelope, with nothing written on it but a date—the tenth of August, Katharine, noticed, six years ago. She fingered the envelope rather helplessly, wondering what she was supposed to do. It was a little lumpy—uneven. Something other than a sheet of paper was inside it. Again she felt that inexplicable stirring of repugnance; but it was impossible, of course, at this stage, to withdraw from Mary’s confidence.

  “Open it,” said Mary impatiently. “Open it and look inside. It’s not stuck down.”

  Katharine obeyed, and found herself staring, bewildered, at a tuft of greyish-dark hair, lifeless, and very dry.

  She looked up at Mary in bewilderment.

  “What …? I mean, where …?” she began confusedly; and Mary gave her a twisted smile.

  “It’s Alan’s of course,” she answered, in tones matter-of-fact and yet somehow sounding strained to near breaking-point. “Alan’s very own hair. And where did I get it? I pulled it out, with my very own hands. Let me tell you about it, Katharine. Let me tell you about the time when I still dared scream at Alan….

  “It must have been six or seven years ago now, I suppose; and Alan and I were having one of our fearful rows—and at the height of it I got so furious that I not only screamed at him, but I grabbed him by the hair and pulled for all I was worth! Quite a handful must have come out, I suppose—I didn’t notice, of course, at the time, I was in an absolute rage—and naturally I never thought about it again after the row was over. I mean, I thought about having hurt him, of course, and I was very sorry, and I apologised, but I mean I never thought about the actual bit of hair that had come out. I mean, who would? Honestly, Katharine, who would?”

  “No, naturally not,” said Katharine, mystified. “So how…?”

  “I’m just telling you. We made it up in the end, as I was saying, and he accepted my apology quite amiably at the time—or seemed to. And really, you know, he wasn’t so badly hurt—only just for the minute. So of course I never thought about it again. Not for months. For years. Not until last winter, when I was looking through his desk for a bill he said I’d forgotten to give him, and I was sure I hadn’t, so I thought I’d have a good look while he wasn’t there. Well, so there I was, scrabbling through all the drawers in his desk, and right at the back of one of them I found—it!”

  She snatched the envelope back from Katharine, and stood staring down at it as if in a trance. Fear, like an infectious illness, seemed to creep from her across the room, towards Katharine.

  “You see what it means?” continued Mary. “After the row was all forgiven and done with—or so I thought—he must have gone quietly back to the room where we were … and collected up the bits of hair … all by himself … and put them carefully in an envelope to keep! And with the date written on it—the date of the quarrel—written in cold blood, to remind him for ever…. Do you see, Katharine? Do you see …?”

  Her voice grew shrill as she thrust the envelope once again under Katharine’s eyes, stabbing with her forefinger at the brief figures. Before Katharine could think of anything soothing to say, Mary was continuing: “All these years he’s kept it—without saying anything—hoarding it up against me. He means to use it somehow—some time. How can I know? It seems nearly mad to me, doesn’t it to you, Katharine? Nearly mad. So now do you see why I wouldn’t scream next time he’s angry with me? In ten years time I’d find that scream, in his desk … bottled somehow … in pickle….”

  Mary’s wild words dissolved now in floods of uncontrollable crying. Katharine tried to comfort her—to suggest soothing explanations—to assure her that she was making too much of it: but Mary’s tears continued for a long, long time. And afterwards, Katharine could scarcely recall whether it was Mary’s smothered voice or her own uneasy thoughts which had said to her, at some stage in the evening: And now here is Alan saying nothing about the stabbing … just as for six long years he has said nothing about the hair. What does it mean? What is he storing it up for? What will he use it for—and when?

  CHAPTER XII

  FOR THE NEXT few days Katharine did not see much of the Prescotts, and what little she did see was reassuring. She had even seen them, all three together, setting off on Sunday afternoon for some expedition or other, like any other family party. True, Alan’s arm was still in a sling, but he did not look ill, or particular
ly depressed; and Mary’s head was bent, looking down at the ground, but then she always walked like that, and with those three-inch heels she probably had to look where she was treading, too. Angela, it must be admitted, looked bored—as if she had been told she would enjoy it when she got there—and who knows, perhaps she would.

  Anyway, it seemed as if life next-door was back to normal; and it was not until the following Wednesday—the night of the firework party—that anything occurred to shake Katharine’s easy assumption that the whole business had blown over.

  Katharine managed to leave work a few minutes early that evening, hoping to avoid the worst of the rush hour; but alas, the queues seemed to be as long as ever. Perhaps everyone was trying to do the same as she was—get home early to scrub potatoes, prick sausages and slit chestnuts ready for cooking on the bonfire. A few for cooking on the bonfire, that is to say; the rest were destined to be actually eaten, and must be properly cooked indoors. As she stood in the familiar queue, Katharine ran over in her mind her share of the preparations. Mary, thank goodness, was doing the hot drinks and the toffee-apples; the children would already be combing the house and garden for burnable rubbish—would Jane, this year, allow the old rocking horse stand to count as burnable rubbish? That was the difficulty about rubbish, that there wasn’t really any such thing. That is to say, there was always someone who loved it, someone who thought that it would come in for something….

  Gradually Katharine became aware of an uneasy, somehow familiar sensation, but so preoccupied was she with her thoughts that it was several seconds before she recognised it for what it was. It was the sensation of being watched. Swiftly she looked up, and met once more a pair of dark, censorious eyes staring straight into hers.

  Auntie Pen again. In some confusion, Katharine collected her thoughts, smiled, and dropped back a couple of paces in the queue to join her. Auntie Pen was smiling now, the censoriousness gone, and, half laughing, she called Katharine’s attention to a dark, untidy bundle under her arm.

  “My old garden coat,” she explained ruefully. “Destined for Angela’s guy. I don’t know why I submit to it, I’m sure. It only leaves me my best one to wear. To tell the truth, I’d really rather have given the guy my best one and kept the other. An old coat is so useful, isn’t it, and so irreplaceable? It takes years and years to get another old coat, whereas a new one can be bought in five minutes. Oh, well. I suppose the guy’s need is greater than mine,” she concluded cheerfully.

  “That guy of Angela’s must be quite the dandy,” laughed Katharine. “He’s building up quite a wardrobe. He’s already got my husband’s old raincoat. Do you think he has to change for dinner, or something?”

  Mrs Quentin turned, and looked at Katharine a little oddly.

  “Your husband’s old raincoat?” she asked, frowning. “Oh. Then that explains—that is—I wonder——?”

  Katharine glanced at her companion enquiringly. The lined, strong face was no longer humorous. It looked calculating, almost defensive, in the sick light. Then Mrs Quentin laughed, not quite convincingly.

  “Poor Mary! She’s such a child, isn’t she? And of course, I let myself in for it, really—simply stuck my neck out. I rang up yesterday, you see, to ask them if they wanted me to bring anything. I have a lot of old hats, you know, and of course you can’t give that sort of thing to your charwoman any more—even the rag-man won’t take them. There aren’t the poor any more, you see. That’s the trouble with progress—it has abolished the poor without providing any substitute. Substitutes for coal, yes: and for tablecloths, and for soap, and for real pork sausages: but no substitute for the poor. Well, anyway, I thought it might amuse Angela to choose one of these hats for the guy, but she said no: the guy was already finished, and had all the clothes he needed. And just then there was a sort of clamour down the phone—a crashing and a clattering, though I expect it was just the receiver getting a little knock—you know how these sounds get magnified—and then there was Mary’s voice, asking me to bring an old coat for the guy, the one he had wasn’t suitable. Suitable!—I ask you—for a guy! I must say I was puzzled at the time. I’m afraid it made me laugh.”

  “I’m still puzzled now,” put in Katharine “I wonder what was wrong with the coat I gave her? It——”

  “Oh, my dear, don’t you see? Or perhaps you don’t know Mary as well as I do. She can be very childish in her outlook sometimes, and it’s my belief that she feels superstitious—sort of scared—about burning a figure in a raincoat after—what happened last week. Don’t you understand?”

  In a way, Katharine understood. But it seemed a bit silly. After all, it wasn’t even as if there had been a man with a raincoat. Still, Mrs Quentin wasn’t to know that. Naturally, she had been told, and had believed, the same story as everyone else.

  Or had she believed it? The older woman was looking at Katharine rather strangely now…. Not quite suspiciously, but—carefully … as if studying her reactions to this slightly far-fetched interpretation of Mary’s behaviour. Katharine thought quickly, and decided to brandish unshakeable belief in the Man with the Raincoat.

  “Yes, of course. It must have been such a shock for her,” she lied placatingly. “I mean, to feel that a stranger can come into the house and attack someone like that …”

  Had she sounded convincing? And convinced? Or had all this headlong guilelessness been a bit overdone? For Mrs Quentin was still looking at her in that speculative way.

  “You didn’t see anything of this man, did you?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, living next door, you might have noticed someone going in … or coming out … or hanging about in some way?”

  Was it Katharine’s fancy that the question was less a question than a veiled piece of prompting? Was Mrs Quentin hinting that it would have been a most convenient, a most neighbourly piece of observation on Katharine’s part to have seen a suspicious figure, and thus have backed up the Prescotts’ story? And were her next words the truth, or were they merely intended to make up for Katharine’s unneighbourly ommission?

  “Well, I saw him,” she declared, almost condescendingly, as one who knows the right thing to do even if the younger generation doesn’t. “As I came out of the house, after doing Angela’s tea, I saw a man of middle size, with the collar of his raincoat pulled up, hanging about under the lamp-post. Of course, I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but, looking back, I feel sure it must have been the same man.”

  “But surely that would have been much earlier?” began Katharine—and stopped. Why should she call the old woman’s well-meant bluff? It must be that Auntie Pen knew—or guessed—what had really happend, and for the sake of her young sister-in-law was trying to bolster up the official story with this clumsy but well-intentioned fabrication. It would be cruel to point out inconsistencies—and pointless, too, for Katharine was quite as determined as Auntie Pen could be to protect Mary’s secret. And anyway, here was the bus, goading the flaccid queue into frenzied life; pushing, struggling, crushing out all possibility of further communication.

  *

  The firework party had gone well, without a single disaster of any kind. No one had burnt their fingers, or got anything in their eye, or had been grossly unfairly treated in the matter of being allowed to light things. None of the food had got burnt—except the things cooked on the bonfire, of course, but that was different. Even the customary floods of tears at the poor guy being burnt passed off quite lightly, because this year, with Jack and Mavis away at boarding school, Stella wasn’t there to say that all this tender-hearted crying about the guy was really a sign of repressed sadism.

  And above all, the fathers had been wonderful. Watching Alan, competent and almost gay as he set up rockets with his one good arm, Katharine caught herself wondering whether Mary didn’t, after all, invent or imagine half her troubles. But then, anyone watching Stephen would have thought the same of Katharine. How bronzed and handsome he had looked in the bonfire light. He seemed to have forgotten all about
his strictures about Jane’s friendship with the Prescotts. Absorbed, happy, and efficient, he had explained to his daughters exactly how they should light this or that firework—how they should hold it—where they should stand. And the children, in their hearts a little frightened of the fireworks, had done exactly what he said: had treated his superior skill with the admiring deference for which in ordinary life he longed in vain. This was the sort of setting in which fathers could thrive, Katharine suddenly realised; a setting which really is a little dangerous, a little beyond the skill of the women-folk. Once upon a time nature provided just such a setting for every father everywhere, but this is something that civilisation has systematically destroyed, reducing every daily activity to something well within the powers of a woman, or even of a child.

  And now the fireworks were over, and everyone had gone surging indoors into the Prescotts’ kitchen, to drink cocoa and hot punch. Only Katharine lingered for a few moments outside, to savour the quietness of the November night. Well, partly to savour the quietness, and partly to avoid the argument about how much, if any, of the punch Flora should be allowed to drink. If she simply wasn’t there, then Stephen couldn’t complain afterwards that she’d said Yes when she ought to have said No, could he?

  But all the same, the darkness and the quiet out here in the narrow suburban garden were bewilderingly beautiful. Odd that one should feel that it was quiet, when voices and laughter were coming from the lighted house; when cars were still passing outside, and occasional rockets from other people’s gardens were still swooping up here and there into the empty sky. But the night has a quietness of its own that seems to have nothing to do with the presence or absence of sounds, as if the darkness pressed upon the ears as well as the eyes, shutting one off from the small, lighted world, and bringing one close to the surrounding emptiness.