Who Calls the Tune

by Nina Bawden

  Brigid talked and I didn’t listen very much. She talked a great deal about Henry’s counsel, who was, she said, a wonderful, wonderful man. We had both been called as witnesses for the prosecution, and she said she had been unhappy about that at first, but Henry had explained that it didn’t matter because both sides examined you in court. And that the only important thing the defence would ask her would be whether she and Henry had ever thought they would be able to get married.

  “And that’s easy because we hadn’t,” she said indignantly. “How could we, when there was Venetia?”

  I thought that if she kept up that note of shocked surprise she would probably be a very good witness for Henry. Honesty and outrage fairly streamed from her.

  The tea-room was emptying fast, and outside the sun had gone in and everything looked very grey. I said, “Do you know what line the defence are taking?”

  “Line? That he didn’t do it.”

  “Of course, my dear, good girl,” I said. “I wondered whether they might hint that someone else … Adlesburg, for example … might be a likelier murderer than Henry.”

  She said, “Oh, I see what you mean. I don’t know. Henry did say they were going to call the man who had seen Tom Adlesburg outside the house on the night that Venetia died.”

  I thought for a moment. I couldn’t see there was much hope in that. I supposed they were going to rely on cross-examining the prosecution witnesses. I heard Brigid say something about Sebastian. I said, idly, “How is he? Still with Ethel and the dogs?”

  She nodded, and I thought she looked unhappy. “Ethel is bringing him down for the trial, though not till the second day. She says he didn’t want to come without her.” She played with the edge of the tablecloth and said in a subdued voice that it would be lovely to see him again.

  I hadn’t thought they would call Sebastian. I don’t know why. I said so, and she looked at me in shocked surprise.

  “Didn’t you know?” she said. “The prosecution didn’t call him, but Henry’s people are going to. Henry’s solicitor asked me whether I minded, and I said I didn’t mind anything that would help to show that Henry is innocent. Though I don’t know what Sebastian can do to help. His counsel went to see him at Ethel’s.”

  I said, “My God,” in a loud voice, and a fat woman in astrakhan gave me a dirty look from the next table. I pulled my voice down an octave, and said, “I should have thought it would be playing into the hands of the prosecution.”

  Brigid said, “I thought that too, at first, but Henry’s solicitor says he doesn’t think the prosecution will cross-examine Sebastian at all. I don’t know why he thought that; I don’t think he wanted to talk about it.” She looked upset, and I could see that she didn’t want to talk about it either.

  The waitress was clearing the tables; she was banging cups on to a metal tray in a very pointed manner. Everyone else had gone, and it was obvious that we were not wanted. We got our coats and I asked for the bill.

  Outside, the sky was heavy with thick grey cloud. We walked back to the hotel, and I asked Brigid if she would like a drink. It was a half-hearted invitation, and I was glad when she refused. Her car was parked at the back of the hotel, and we stood, shivering, beside it, and made complicated arrangements about meeting the next day. At last she drove away and I went back to the hotel.

  The lounge was badly lit, and the walls smelt of boiled cabbage. A few old ladies were sitting by the fire and they looked at me coldly as I went in. I went away and looked into the bar. It was a bit more cheerful, so I sat at a table and drank whisky and wondered whether it would be worth while having dinner. I wasn’t hungry, but I didn’t feel like going on a blind, either, and there didn’t seem to be any reasonable alternative.

  The bar began to fill up with horsy men and their women. All the women had thick ankles and wore skirts that fitted badly at the back. Most of them talked a great deal and laughed very loudly. It made me feel very lonely.

  I ordered my fourth whisky, and then I saw Rella. She was standing at the entrance to the bar, and looking rather lost, as though she had expected to see someone. She looked pretty and neat; she was wearing a red coat that I hadn’t seen before, and high-heeled shoes. Then she saw me, and smiled.

  I got up and went over to her. I felt very glad to see her. She said “Oh, Paul” in a breathless voice and put both her hands in mine. I took her back to the table and bought her a drink.

  She said, “Brigid told me you would be here. I would have come earlier, only I couldn’t leave my job.”

  “So you did get one,” I said, and she blushed a little, but prettily, not like Brigid.

  “Not the kind you were thinking of,” she said. “I am working in a shop. I sell corsets to fat ladies who come in from the country. There are thin ones, but not many of them. I think Englishwomen believe that you do not need corsets if you are thin.”

  I asked her where she lived, and she said, “In the Y.W.C.A. I do not like it very much. Everyone is very friendly, but we have to sleep in little boxes, and the walls are thin. And they have the wireless on very loud. I had thought that it would be nice to have a little flat, but they cost so much, and this place is cheap.”

  “It sounds extremely cosy,” I said. “But you don’t look as if you have been eating very well all the same. Will you have dinner with me?”

  She looked at me warily. Like a stray cat.

  She said, doubtfully, “Do you want me to?” and when I nodded her face brightened so that she looked young, and very pretty. I offered her another drink, but she didn’t want it, so we went out of the hotel to find somewhere to eat. She said that the big places were all bad and expensive, but that there was a snack bar near the station where we could have ham and eggs. It was a clean, garish place; we sat uncomfortably on high, hard stools, but the food was good, and cheap. Rella told me about her job; she talked a great deal in her high, foreign voice, and looked bright and happy. I saw a lot of people looking at her, especially the men, and that annoyed me, so I said that we wouldn’t have coffee in the snack bar because it was bound to be bad. She looked surprised, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  We went to a cinema and we saw the tail end of one film which looked as if it might have been good, and the whole of another which was almost unbelievably bad. But it was warm and stuffy and comfortable. The seats round us seemed to be full of couples who were paying more attention to each other than to the film. They sat with their arms round each other, and every now and again they kissed. I saw Rella watching them, and in the end I put my arms round her shoulders and cuddled her against me and kissed her hair. She put her head on my shoulder and we stayed like that until the film ended.

  Outside, it was colder than ever. The pubs were shut, and there didn’t seem anywhere else to go, so we went back to my hotel and ordered drinks in the lounge. They weren’t very pleased about it, but they brought the drinks, and turned out most of the lights, so that it was drearier than ever. Rella curled up in one of the leather chairs, and looked small and tired. We talked in whispers, because it was that kind of place.

  I suppose it was inevitable that we should talk about Henry. Rella said that she had been to see him. She said, “He was very kind. When I told him I was working in a shop, he wanted me to stay with Brigid until the trial was over. He said that working in a shop was not the kind of thing to do in England, and that after the trial he would help me to find a better kind of job. I don’t quite know what he meant, but it was kind of him to bother about me.” She looked at her glass and twisted it in her fingers. Then she said, “They will let him go free, won’t they, Paul? He is such a good man. I do not believe that he can have done this thing.”

  She looked at me almost accusingly, and her eyes were bright and angry. I said, “I don’t know what will happen. It’s impossible to know.”

  She went white, and then she said, “You know, Paul, I would rather they thought Tom had done it, than they should not let Mr. Sykes go free. If I thought it would do any
good, I would try to let them think Tom had done it.” She sounded hysterical, and for a moment I wondered whether she was in love with Henry. But then she said:

  “It is so hard to explain. Only he is such a good man, and he deserves to be happy with his nice Brigid.”

  I said, “Don’t be so bloody sentimental,” and she flinched as though I had hit her. “And moreover,” I went on, “if you start telling lies in court, they’ll arrest you for perjury.”

  She said in a low voice, “What’s that, please?”

  “Just telling lies,” I said, and then I felt mean because she obviously meant what she said about Henry, and he needed people to feel that way about him.

  Then she said, not looking at me, “I suppose it’s just as bad not to tell something that you know as to tell lies. Do they put you in prison for that too?”

  “It depends what it is, I suppose,” I said. She didn’t say any more and I didn’t think about it. I was much too busy worrying in case she was in love with Henry, and minding about it because I had just realised I was in love with her myself. As much as I could be in love with any woman except Venetia.

  It was getting cold in the lounge. The fire had gone out and Rella was shivering. I said, “I’d better take you home.”

  She hesitated, and then she said softly, “There isn’t any hurry. They lock the door at half-past eleven, and it is later than that, I think.”

  Our eyes met for a moment, and then she smiled, and I knew that I had been a fool to bother my head about Henry.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The witness box was high, on a level with the judge’s bench. Below was the well of the court, the floor checked in black and white marble, and the tables for the press and the solicitors, and beyond the tables were the tiered benches. It all looked sterile and impersonal.

  I had come into the witness box through the swing-doors at the back of it. After the dark corridor, the courtroom seemed very bright and I felt unreal in the witness box, like someone in a play. I took the oath and kissed the Bible, and my own voice sounded high and far away and faintly ridiculous, as it had always sounded at school when I had had to read the lesson at prayers.

  The bench was to the side of me and the judge looked small and insignificant under his great wig. He was turned round in his chair, reading a paper. His face was withered and dry, like a nut, and his hands, holding the paper, were the hands of an old man with blue, prominent veins.

  Across the court was the prisoner’s dock. Henry was sitting so that I could only see his head and shoulders. The light came from a window behind him and his face was shadowed by it, so that I could only recognise him by the shape of his head.

  Counsel for the prosecution had a young, anÊmic face with light eyes, and a wide, thin mouth with pale lips. He looked tired, and rather unhealthy, and his voice surprised me because it didn’t fit with his face. I had somehow expected it to be thin and sharp; instead it was a fruity, sonorous voice. He asked me questions smoothly and quickly, and in a more informal way than I had expected. They were much the same questions that I had been asked at the inquest; flat, ordinary, familiar questions that I had already answered a dozen times. I could hear my voice replying, and it didn’t seem to belong to me.

  No one seemed to be paying much attention to us; there was a low hum of talk round the court. I supposed that it was all familiar to them by now.

  Then counsel said, “You were, I believe, the last person to see Mrs. Sykes alive?”

  The court hushed suddenly, now all the jury were looking at me, a look of attention, almost excitement on their faces. I said, “So far as I know, yes.”

  “When was that? Will you tell the court, please?” I said, “It was after I had gone upstairs to bed. I thought I would like a drink. So I went along to her room.”

  “You were used to doing that?”

  “I had often done so before,” I said.

  The prosecuting counsel tipped back on his heels and smiled at me. Then he said, “Was her behaviour normal, while you were there?”

  I said, “Normal? I don’t know. She was very excited about something or other.” I meant to go on and say she had seemed to me like a woman who was going to meet her lover, but the counsel got in first.

  He said, “Was she naturally an excitable person?”

  “Very,” I said.

  He paused for a moment then. “By the time you went to her room, you were aware that she and Mr. Adlesburg were lovers?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She had told you so herself?”

  I said “yes” again, and wondered why he was looking so infernally pleased with himself.

  He said, “When you went to her room, did she seem as if she wanted to get rid of you?”

  I couldn’t see what he was getting at. I said, “Not particularly;”

  He smiled at me. Then he said, “In a statement to the police, you said that Mrs. Sykes behaved as if she were going to meet her lover. Did she tell you so?”

  I said, “No.”

  “Then you merely deduced it from the fact that she was in an excitable condition? She had told you, earlier in the evening, that she and Mr. Adlesburg were lovers?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “So that was in your mind when you went to see her?”

  I said “Yes, I suppose so.” I felt that there was something else I ought to say, but there didn’t seem to be the opportunity.

  Counsel said, “Mrs. Sykes did not tell you that she was going to meet Mr. Adlesburg?” He raised his voice as if he wanted it to be heard clearly all over the court.

  I said, “No, she didn’t say so.”

  Still looking pleased with himself, counsel thanked me, and went back to his seat. Henry’s counsel was in his place. He was a much older man, and more like the lay idea of a barrister. He was large and unctuous and impressive, and he looked rather worried.

  He said, “You have known Mrs. Sykes all your life?”

  I said, “Yes, of course.”

  “Would you have said, when you were with her for that brief time, from your long and intimate acquaintance with her, that she was going to meet her lover?”

  There was a little rustle through the court. I felt my heart beating uncomfortably. I said, “I think so, yes.”

  He went on quickly. “At the time … leaving aside anything you may have learnt later, did you think that Mr. Sykes was in love with his wife?”

  I said, “No, I don’t think he was.”

  Counsel said, “Or she in love with him?”

  There was a little breathless silence. I felt that it was an important question and I didn’t know why. The judge looked at the defence counsel, and said, “I do not think that is a very proper question.”

  Counsel inclined his head. He turned to me. “Did Mrs. Sykes say anything to you about her relations with her husband? If you like, her feelings for him?”

  I said, “Yes. She said that she did not love him.” It seemed to be all right this time. I answered loudly and clearly so that everyone would have heard me, even if the question were improper. But except for the silence in the court there was nothing to show that I had said anything unexpected.

  I left the witness box, and went down into the body of the court to the block of seats reserved for witnesses. Brigid had given evidence before me, and she was there, wearing her good black suit and a large black hat, and looking stuffy and overdressed like the bride’s mother at a wedding. She was very white, and there were puffy circles under her eyes.

  She whispered to me, although there was no need to whisper, because people round us were talking quite loudly, “Paul, do you know what they are trying to do? They are trying to make everyone think that Venetia wasn’t going to see Tom that night; that she was going to see Henry.”

  I said, “Don’t be absurd,” and then I knew that it wasn’t absurd at all. I saw what it was that the prosecution had been trying to get from my evidence and why it had been so important for the defence that I shou
ld say that Venetia was not in love with Henry any more.

  I said, “Oh, God,” very loudly, and some people in front of us, in the public seats, turned round and looked and nudged each other. Brigid went bright red, and looked ashamed. Then there was a lot of shuffling and stamping and when I looked at the bench the judge had risen and we were adjourned for luncheon. We left our seats and stampeded along with the rest. I said, “Your idea … that she was going to see Henry … it won’t hold water for a moment. They’ll never believe it.”

  “Not that Henry wanted to see her, but that she wanted to see Henry. They’re going to try and say that she wanted to get him back.”

  It was ludicrous, fantastic, and yet she said it with such conviction in her voice that I had to believe her.

  I said, “They won’t get away with it.”

  Brigid was looking frightened and ill. She said, “I don’t know, Paul. It sounds so different, here in court. It doesn’t seem to come clear, somehow. Facts are all right, but what people felt … that doesn’t seem to come out right at all. It’s all wrong … only there’s nothing in particular that you can point to, and say, ‘This isn’t true.’ I felt it when I was giving evidence. That dreadful man was trying to make it seem as if Henry and I were mean and underhand, that our being in love was wicked and dirty. I was so ashamed, I felt I was going to cry, up there in front of everyone. Oh, Paul, what is going to happen? What are we going to do?”

  She put her plump hands together and twisted them, forcing her nails into the soft palms, as if by self-inflicted pain she could find relief.

  I said, “But they haven’t got all the evidence. There’s Rella. She’ll tell them that Tom and Venetia were lovers; that they had arranged to meet that night.”

  She said, miserably, “I don’t know. They’ll twist it somehow. I don’t know what the prosecuting counsel said when he opened the case, but he must have made it seem that Venetia was quite different from what she was. I’ve been listening to the people talking. There was one woman in front of me who kept on saying that it must have been dreadful for Venetia, because she only had one leg, to know that her husband and her sister were in love with each other. And that if she’d taken a lover, that it was only natural. That she’d done it to get back her self-respect, poor soul. Then she said that all men were the same, and that she’d known Henry was a shifty type the moment she saw him in the dock.”