The Treacherous Heart

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘On your own? You’re a funny girl,’ Dad said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about you and Joe?’

  ‘There was nothing to tell, really,’ Anne said. ‘And I didn’t want to upset you. I know how fond you are of Joe.’

  ‘Well I am, but I thought you were too.’

  ‘I am, but—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know Dad. I really don’t.’ She tried to change the subject. ‘Are you going for a spin on your bike later?’

  ‘I might do,’ he said, and cocked an eye at her. ‘You want to be on your own with Joe, is that it?’

  ‘Oh no, I didn’t mean that,’ she said hastily, but Dad only smiled.

  ‘Don’t you worry, I’m not offended. I know what it was like when I was courting your mother: time alone was a precious thing, hard to get.’

  ‘But I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Don’t you mind,’ Dad said. ‘I want to get out for a bit anyway. Might get some dandelions. Thought of making some dandelion wine this year. I’ll pop out for a spin after dinner.’

  Dinner was over and cleared away, and Dad had gone before Joe arrived.

  ‘I had one or two things to do up Haldane’s, so I couldn’t get away sooner,’ he said as Anne let him in. He seemed the same Joe as always, except perhaps a little more solemn.

  ‘That’s all right, Joe. Dad’s gone out for a bit on his bike. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Wouldn’t say no,’ Joe said. Normally he would have followed her into the kitchen and chatted to her while she made it, but this time he stayed where he was put, formally, in the sitting room, and Anne’s heart sank as she waited for the kettle to boil. It seemed to bode ill, though quite what she was afraid of she couldn’t be sure.

  She brought in the tea things and biscuits on a tray, and Joe jumped to his feet as soon as she appeared in the doorway and took the tray from her, all attentive good manners. It reminded her of the very first evening, when he had brought her a box of chocolates, though to be fair, his manners had always been perfect towards her. He had never failed in that.

  She sat down and poured the tea, and felt the constrained silence that was building up between them. For the first time in years she felt ill at ease with him, as if they were strangers to each other. Well, in a way, perhaps they were. How much of what Joe thought had she ever known? She remembered how, fleetingly, last night she had felt more at ease with a man whose first name she didn’t even know, than she did now with Joe, whom she had known for four years.

  ‘I came round to see you last night,’ he began after a while.

  ‘Yes, Dad told me. I was out.’ That was a silly thing to say, of course he knew she was out. He didn’t say anything, and she thought perhaps he was angry. He had his head down, staring at the pattern on the carpet between his feet. ‘I went to the pictures,’ she said. He still didn’t reply. ‘I didn’t know you were coming round.’ she said reasonably. ‘You didn’t say anything on Thursday when you left me, and you didn’t phone or call, so I couldn’t be expected to know you were coming round, could I?’ She was trying not to sound peeved, and he lifted his head at last and regarded her with his wide blue eyes.

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, you don’t have to explain to me,’ he said. She misunderstood, thinking he was speaking ironically, and began to justify herself again, but he broke in.

  ‘No, no, I quite understand. It was my fault for not ringing you up. It slipped my mind that I hadn’t said anything about it on Thursday.’

  She saw suddenly that he was being quite genuine in taking the blame to himself. He really was not resentful that she had gone out. She saw, too, that in normal circumstances she would have assumed that he would be calling round for her, even if he did not phone. It was the fact that she thought they had quarrelled that had made her think he would not come. She felt confused and ashamed, but at the same time, piqued. Did she really know so little about him after all this time that she could not judge his reactions to any given situation?

  He sat, quiet and calm, as relaxed and alert as a great golden lion. He held his teacup in one strong hand, and seemed to dwarf the room, the furniture, even the house, with his image of strength, as if he were some wild animal who had consented of his free will to be shut up in this cage with her. Anne wondered at how strange he seemed to her suddenly, though he was as familiar as her own heartbeat. She watched him, fascinated.

  ‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Anne,’ he said at last. As he spoke, she realised how rarely he used her name. ‘Those remarks you made on Thursday didn’t go unnoticed.’

  ‘Joe, I—’

  ‘No, no. I know I’m slow of speech, but I notice things, and I think about them.’ He grinned infectiously at her. ‘May take me a lot longer than you, but I get there in the end. Anyway, as I said, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the things you said.’

  ‘What things?’ she asked faintly.

  ‘Well, about spending money, and splashing out, and treats and so on. I’ve been saving hard, as you know, and I’ve not had much money to throw around. But there’s justice in what you said, too. There’s a time to spend and a time to save. And I knew what you were getting at.’

  ‘Did you?’ Anne asked, more faintly still. She hadn’t an idea of what he was talking about.

  ‘Of course, these things don’t matter so much to a man as to a woman. I don’t mean to say I don’t care about it – don’t get me wrong – I do, of course I do. But, you know, to a man, well, to me anyway, it’s the show, and what goes on inside means more than the show, do you know what I mean?’

  Anne shook her head, wordlessly, but Joe didn’t notice, carried away on the rare flood of his eloquence.

  ‘So I came up to town on Saturday,’ Joe went on, reaching into his pocket, ‘And I got you this. Of course, you can change it if it isn’t what you wanted, but I think I know the kind of thing you like.’

  It was, unmistakeably, a jeweller’s ring box. He held it out to her, and Anne stared, paralysed, unable to make any move or speak any word. When she did not take it, he opened it for her, and held it out again for her to take the contents – a diamond solitaire. An engagement ring. At last Anne wrenched her fascinated eyes away from it and looked up at Joe.

  ‘But, Joe—’ she began. Their eyes met, and he must have seen the distress in hers. His expression altered, the pleasure and expectation draining out of his face to be replaced by bewildered pain. It was what Anne had always dreaded to cause him, and she wanted to reach out to him.

  ‘You don’t want it,’ he whispered. His hand still held it out to her, as if he had not yet got control of his muscles. She burst out.

  ‘You didn’t ask me!’

  ‘I never thought,’ he whispered, his eyes still holding hers in fascination.

  ‘That’s just it,’ she said bitterly. ‘You didn’t think. The most important question in your life, and you forgot to ask it.’

  ‘I didn’t forget,’ he said, growing indignant in his turn. ‘I just never thought. I just assumed – well, I always thought that was what we went out for.’

  ‘You assumed!’

  ‘Well we’ve been going out for all these years. Going steady,’ he said defensively. ‘Naturally I thought … well, anyone would, wouldn’t they? I always thought in the end we’d get married. That was what we went out for.’

  ‘You never said so.’

  ‘I thought you knew. I thought you knew I loved you. Do you think I’d go out with you for four years if I didn’t love you?’

  He stared at her, and she saw the new thought as it entered his mind. ‘After all,’ he said, and his voice had sunk to a whisper again, ‘that was why you went out with me, wasn’t it?’

  She didn’t answer. She didn’t know what the truth was, and if she did, she didn’t think she’d be able to tell him.

  ‘I always thought you loved me,’ Joe said.

  ‘But I did!’ she cried, unable to bear the thought of her betrayal. �
�I do! At least, I’m very fond of you.’

  ‘Fond!’ He looked down at his hand still holding out the despised ring, and withdrew it slowly, closing the box as he did. He stared at it as it lay, white on his brown palm, and then closed his fist around it. ‘All right, fond, if you like. But you don’t want to marry me?’

  ‘I don’t want to marry you just yet. I don’t want to marry anyone yet,’ she temporised in anguish, but Joe shook his head. He was in control of himself again, and his dignity was more heartbreaking than his pain.

  ‘That won’t do, Anne. If you wanted to marry me, if you loved me enough to marry me, you’d know. It wouldn’t be a matter of yet.’

  ‘But you said—’

  ‘Yes, I know, but I always wanted to marry you. I always wanted to. It was only that I felt I couldn’t support you in the proper fashion until I’d saved up a bit.’

  ‘I always thought you loved your pigs more than me,’ Anne said, and at once could have bitten off her tongue. His dignity intensified.

  ‘I’d have thought I deserved better than that,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Oh Joe! Please don’t be like that! The last thing in the world I want is to hurt you, you must believe that. I’m very fond of you. I – I love you. In your own words, would I have gone out with you for all those years if I didn’t? But I don’t want to marry anyone, not yet.’

  ‘I believe you,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe there’s anyone else. But when you love someone enough, there won’t be any question of wanting to wait. You’ll know then, you’ll know you’re in love properly.’

  He stood up, and Anne said, foolishly, ‘But you haven’t finished your tea.’

  ‘I think I’d better go. I wish you all the very best, Anne. I hope you’ll find someone soon.’

  ‘But Joe!’ Anne cried. ‘You don’t mean to go altogether?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said firmly.

  ‘But I don’t want you to go out of my life,’ she said. ‘Surely we can still be friends? Surely we can still go out together as before, on a friendly basis?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said gravely. ‘You see, I don’t feel that way about you. A friendly basis wouldn’t be enough for me. I’d want a wife. I feel too much for you, Anne, and if you don’t feel that way about me, then I think the sooner we forget each other the better.’

  She followed him to the door, dazed, hardly believing that he meant it until she saw him climb into the ancient, tatty old van, and realised that it might be the last time she saw it.

  ‘Joe!’ she cried out, but he only lifted a hand to her in farewell, and drove away.

  All kinds of feeling flooded over her – distress and guilt at Joe’s unhappiness, surprise at the turn events had taken, anger that she should feel guilty, anger that Joe should take such an absolute view of things. She slammed the door to relieve her feelings, and then wandered back into the sitting room. There the sight of the tea-cups still filled with cooling tea made her realise that Joe had gone for ever. She began to wonder what life was going to be like without his sure, comforting presence in the background, and she sat down on the sofa with tears beginning to prickle her eyes.

  What would she ever say to Dad? He would accept the facts in wounded silence, he would shake his head sadly when he thought she wasn’t looking. Then Joe’s face came before her in a flash of memory, and she thought of the ring, the touching, pathetic, rejected ring, thought of him choosing it for her, and now having to take it back with all his hurt pride, and the tears burst through the flood gates and she flung herself down among the cushions, sobbing.

  Joe, so kind, so good, always so tender and courteous to her, loving her in his silent way all this time; she had never wanted to hurt him, and now she had hurt him in the worst possible way. And in a purely selfish way she had hurt herself, depriving herself of his company and support. What would she do without him? Her Saturdays would all be as desolate as yesterday from now on.

  She had just about got to the end of her tears and was in the process of mopping herself up when she remembered that she had not even told him the good news about the land. She wouldn’t be able to tell him now, it would have to be done by letter after all, and it would stir up his unhappiness again, knowing that now she would not be there to share it with him. Anne struggled for a moment, and then abandoned herself, on a once and for all basis, to a good howl.

  She had mopped herself up for the second time by the time Dad came home, but her eyes must have been red enough to tell him that something was wrong. However, he took it better than she would have expected.

  ‘Joe gone, love?’ he asked as he came in.

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ she said, and explained the situation, that Joe asked her to marry him, and that she had refused, and that he had decided it was best to break off once and for all. Dad nodded gravely, but said nothing until she had finished, and then, after looking at her penetratingly for a moment, he had closed the subject and said instead.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ which was his way of offering silent sympathy.

  She had expected a miserable weekend, but Monday turned out to be more bearable than she thought, and having had a long walk in the fields and woods nearby and come in hungry as a consequence, and having made a hearty tea, she found herself thinking cheerfully about going back to work the next day.

  ‘All I need,’ she thought, ‘is something to keep me occupied. It isn’t the end of the world by any means. It could, on the contrary, be the start of a whole new life.’

  And on that optimistic note, she went to bed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  On Monday at lunchtime Anne went up to Castle Street and had lunch with Wendy, at her insistence, in the cafeteria in Woolworths.

  ‘It’s the under-manager,’ Wendy explained as they took their trays to a table. ‘I’ve discovered that he has his lunch at this time. They rope off a bit of the canteen for the floorwalkers to have their lunch – look, over there.’

  Anne looked. ‘So he has his lunch. So what?’

  ‘He’s gorgeous, that’s what,’ Wendy said severely.

  ‘Oh Wendy,’ Anne said, laughing. ‘You’re impossible. What about Graham?’

  ‘Oh, Graham!’ Wendy made an expressive face. ‘He just doesn’t understand me.’

  ‘So Graham’s out on his ear?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘So you say. I’ll believe it when it happens.’

  Wendy smiled. ‘Well, perhaps you’re right. Anyway, what about you? Tell me your news.’

  Anne told her about breaking up with Joe, and about meeting the dark stranger again.

  ‘And you mean you still don’t know his name?’ Wendy asked, more impressed with the latter piece of news than the former. In her own chronic state of uncertainty, she could not regard such fluctuations of romance as either serious or permanent.

  ‘Not his first name,’ Anne admitted.

  ‘Some friend you are! Why didn’t you ask?’

  ‘It didn’t occur to me that you were burning to know. Anyway, it seems that he’s staying around for a while, so you’ll probably get the opportunity to ask for yourself.’

  ‘Not if he’s going to your firm for his business,’ Wendy said gloomily. ‘Why did he have to chose an old-fashioned, one-horse job like your firm when there’s a bright, modern, go-ahead place only a few minutes’ walk away? He needs his head examining.’ Then her face brightened. ‘But that’s a good opening, when I finally get to meet him! I can try to persuade him to change firms. Unless …’ Her face fell again.

  ‘Unless what?’ Anne asked.

  ‘Unless he chose your firm because you work there. After all,’ she went on in spite of Anne’s scoffing, ‘you seem to meet up with him with suspicious regularity. Are you sure you don’t know his first name? You wouldn’t hold out on me would you?’ she pleaded. ‘Not on your old friend Wendy?’

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Anne laughed, ‘but I suppose that’s the way I like you.’

  ‘Just pro
mise me one thing,’ Wendy said, straight-faced. ‘That I can be a bridesmaid at your wedding.’

  ‘Not only that,’ Anne said, equally serious, ‘you can be bride at my wedding.’

  A moment of silence, and then they both burst out laughing.

  Anne had not forgotten the problem of the good news she had not broken to Joe, and having toyed with the idea of telling Mr Cass that she was no longer friendly with Joe and having him write a letter, she decided that there was no need to be that unfriendly. It would almost be an insult, and she bore Joe no ill-will – on the contrary, she was still as fond of him as ever. So she rang through to Haldane’s Farm, and asked the girl who answered to pass on a message to Joe Halderthay, asking him to ring her when he had a moment. With anyone else, she wouldn’t have been able to leave such a message, for anyone else would think she was wanting to rouse up old problems and wouldn’t ring.

  Joe, however, whatever he thought she wanted to talk about, and however he felt about her, would never be so discourteous as not to ring when she had asked him to. He was that sort of person, and Anne had always known how to value his particular qualities. So she waited confidently for his call.

  In the meantime, she was interested to find out the details of Mr Conrad’s proposed buy, since the routine part of it came to her to deal with. He was interested in a building and forecourt on the corner of High Street and Beef Lane, a narrow alley that led down to the site of the old Shambles, on the corner of the market place.

  The building was a long, low warehouse with living accommodation on top, and the large forecourt held a derelict petrol pump. In the old days, most shops that sold general wares also sold petrol, for actual garages or service stations were confined to the main trunk roads. It was quite common to have two or three grocery-cum-general stores in each village, each with a petrol pump and a paraffin pump outside. The modern trend however was away from this, and the site in question had not sold petrol for some time.

  In fact, the site in question had not sold anything for some time. Anne discovered, in the course of her enquiries, that it had been empty for well over a year, the previous owner having gone out of business and having sold the property to cover some of his bad debts. It was owned by a saw-mills who were apparently happy enough to leave it ‘fallow’ as Joe might say. Anne wondered idly what the dark stranger wanted with the place, idly because of course she was bound to find out in the end. She was in the delightful position of having to do nothing to find out about him and his business – it would all come to her.