The Treacherous Heart

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Hello, can I come in?’ Michael said, having waited for her to speak first. Anne still could not speak. He cocked his head on one side and said, ‘Am I intruding? Say at once if you’d rather I didn’t interrupt.’ Was he suggesting she had someone else in there? she thought, outraged. She shook her head.

  ‘I’m alone,’ she said. He smiled pleasantly and nudged her gently out of the way, since she didn’t look as though she was going to move. She turned her head to follow him, and the light struck her face.

  ‘I say, you don’t look very bright,’ he said with concern. ‘Are you ill?’

  That was pretty cool, coming from him, she thought. But then coolness was to be expected from the expert.

  ‘I’ve had laryngitis,’ she said coldly. He drew his hands out from behind him and presented her with a beautiful bunch of flowers.

  ‘In that case, my present is doubly appropriate. I do hope you’re better.’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she said. She took the flowers with an automatic gesture. They were roses, pink roses, three shades of pink, tied up in a florist’s wrapper. Hothouse roses, of course, this early in the year – or imported. Expensive anyway. ‘I should have thought you’d know I was ill,’ she said.

  He walked ahead of her into the sitting room, and she followed him, wondering why she didn’t just tell him to go. But of course her turncoat heart knew the answer to that. At the sight and sound of him, her heart had resumed its stupid, blind, pigheaded love of him, despite anything her mind could say.

  ‘How could I know?’ he said easily. ‘I’ve been away. Or didn’t you notice?’ he regarded her with his bright, level gaze. ‘Ah, is that the reason for the Big Frost? You didn’t know I’d gone away, and you thought I was neglecting you on your sickbed?’

  ‘How could I know you were away?’ she echoed him. ‘You didn’t tell me.’ She half wanted him to explain, was half afraid that he would tell a lie she’d see through.

  ‘I was going to send you a note,’ he said, settling himself with charming ease on the sofa and patting the seat beside him. She seated herself, as a compromise, on the nearest armchair to him. ‘To tell you I’d be away. But then I thought, why waste words? She’ll know I’m away when she doesn’t see me. And if she doesn’t notice that she hasn’t seen me for a while, it will prove she doesn’t care a jot for me and then I can throw myself off the nearest bridge.’

  Anne turned her face away to hide her feelings. It was too bad of him to sound as if he cared whether or not she cared. He saw the gesture, but misread it.

  ‘But I wasn’t to know that while I was away, my beloved would be struck down with – whatever was it?’

  ‘Laryngitis,’ she said, and it sounded foolish.

  ‘Very nasty,’ he said solemnly. ‘Laryngitis, anyway, and be cut to the quick that I had left her to die alone. My very humblest apologies,’ he finished, contriving to bow from the waist while remaining seated. ‘Had I known I’d have been making use of the opportunity to bring you hothouse grapes and nectarines and wild strawberries and bottles of rare oriental cordial. I always wanted to buy you things.’

  Instead, thought Anne, you made use of the opportunity to fix yourself up with someone germ-free.

  ‘Where did you go, then?’ she asked, trying not to sound interested.

  ‘Up to Birmingham,’ he said easily. ‘Mecca of the motor car. The home of the internal combustion engine. I had various people I had to let know about my new enterprise here. I hope to be agent for one or two firms; that pays the rent quite nicely while other bits and pieces provide the profit.’

  ‘And when did you go?’

  ‘This is beginning to sound like the Grand Inquisition—’ When did you last see your father?’ he clowned. ‘On Monday night, star of my East, on Monday night.’

  Anne turned her face towards him then, and all her bitterness must have been in her eyes as she said, quietly but firmly, ‘Yet you were in a restaurant here in Winton on Tuesday night with a dark-haired lady.’

  There was quite a long silence, while Michael stared at her. His expression was one of surprise, but that might be surprise that she knew. And was he, in that long silence, working out what to say? At last he said, quietly,

  ‘Who tells you so.’

  ‘You were seen,’ she said flatly. There was another pause while he stared at her again, and a strange expression flickered across his face. She didn’t quite know what it was. Could it be disappointment in her? Then he got up and walked across to the window and stood there with his back to her. She saw that his hands were clenched into fists. Guilt? Or anger?

  ‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘aren’t you going to try and justify yourself?’

  ‘Do you consider being in a restaurant with a dark-haired lady something that needs justification? Is it a crime?’ he asked. Anne looked at his back and was glad that he could not see her face.

  ‘No, not at all. I have no right to say who you should dine with. But what I think needs justifying is that you should lie about it to me. If you have to lie, then it means it must be something you’re ashamed of.’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ he said, turning round. His face was dark with some emotion she did not understand, and his eyes were bright and dangerous. ‘I can think of many reasons why I might not tell you I dined with a dark-haired lady. A secret is not, of itself, a guilty thing.’

  ‘Then why did you keep it secret?’

  ‘Keep what secret?’ he asked.

  ‘Dining with the dark-haired lady,’ she said angrily. ‘Don’t prevaricate.’

  ‘My dear Miss Symons, wherever I was on Tuesday night, it was not in Winton dining at a restaurant with a dark-haired lady.’

  ‘You deny it?’

  ‘I certainly don’t deny it. It isn’t a matter for denial,’ he said with a spark of anger. ‘I simply tell you that I was not there.’

  ‘Why should I believe that?’ she asked bitterly. ‘I was told you were there by someone who saw you.’

  ‘What you believe is your own affair,’ he said calmly. ‘As I see it you have two alternatives. You can believe this – friend, for want of a better word – who tells you she saw me. Or you can believe me, when I tell you I wasn’t there. And before you ask me for proof,’ he said, anticipating her opened mouth, ‘let me tell you that I have no intention of attempting to prove anything. Your belief or disbelief must come from yourself. I wouldn’t stoop to try to prove it.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to ask for proof,’ Anne said more mildly. ‘I was just going to ask you how you know the person who told me was a she.’

  ‘Intuition, my dear Watson,’ he said grinning infectiously, just as if they weren’t having a bitter quarrel. ‘Only a she would bring tales like that to you.’

  ‘Oh,’ Anne said. She paused to try and sort out her thoughts, and could not, and looked up at Michael for his help. Make it easy for me, her eyes pleaded, make up my mind for me.

  ‘You’re on your own, kid,’ he said, but he said it gently, looking down at her almost as if he felt sorry for her. ‘Belief comes from inside. You’ve only got to show me the door if you want me to go.’

  Wendy had seemed to be telling the truth. Why would she lie? How could she be mistaken? On the other hand, Michael seemed to be telling the truth too. The very fact that he would not argue with her had a ring of truth about it. Belief comes from inside. Which of them did she believe? The stranger she knew so little about? Or the friend she had known for so long? Which did she care more about – the casual friend she had coffee with, or the man she had fallen in love with, whom, even now, she ached to kiss.

  And while she wondered, her eyes remained fixed on his face, and after a moment he took a step towards her, and without her even knowing it her arms went out to him, and in a second he had crossed the rest of the space to her and she was in his arms, strained against his chest, her head buried against his shoulder.

  ‘Oh Michael,’ she said, ‘people have been saying such awful things about you ev
er since you came here, and everyone seems to want to arm me against you and warn me off, as if you were some kind of white-slaver, or drug-peddler, or something.’

  ‘Oh, but I’m worse, far worse,’ he said, and she felt him laughing. ‘I’m like the marauding. Dane who plunders the town and snatches away the womenfolk. I can understand them of course. Any town that had a jewel like you would naturally be jealous of any stranger taking it away. They’re jealous, that’s all. Take no notice of them. Here, here, don’t cry, don’t cry Anne darling – not on my best suit.’

  ‘Oh don’t!’ she laughed in the midst of a sob.

  ‘There, you don’t know if you’re laughing or crying. Here, sit down with me, that’s right, dry your eyes. I’ve got another present for you. In my pocket. Stop crying and I’ll give it to you.’

  He was like a man with a child, but then she’d been behaving pretty much like a child. She dried her eyes and blew her nose, sitting on the sofa with his arm round her, a strong arm, and the one she wanted to be there. Then, when he judged she had stopped sniffing, he dug his had into his pocket for the present. She was reminded of that terrible moment when Joe had put his hand in his pocket and brought out the unwanted engagement ring.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘Some lovely expensive Swiss chocolate. You can’t buy it in Winton, so that proves I’ve been away.’

  She took it and laughed shakily. ‘I thought you weren’t going to offer me proof,’ she said. Although it only proved he’d been away, not when.

  ‘That was when you wanted proof. But you don’t want it now, do you? You’ve made your mind up without it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I have.’

  ‘I learned a long time ago, Anne,’ he said, suddenly serious, ‘that there’s no use in arguing against suspicion. It only makes it more suspicious. If someone accuses you of something they think is wrong, they’ll make up their minds whether you’re guilty or not without any help from you. Anything you say only adds fuel to the fire.’

  That expression of disappointment that had crossed his face – had she reminded him then of that other person who had failed him in this way?

  ‘Who was it who taught you?’ she asked shyly. He gave her a hug and looked down into her face with affection.

  ‘I’ll tell you some time. Not now.’ Then he smiled and attempted to lighten the atmosphere. ‘You can’t expect me to give away all my secrets in one go.’

  ‘No. I can wait,’ she said. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I can put the kettle on while I put these in water.’

  ‘I thought you’d never ask,’ he said. ‘I think your other flowers need removing, poor things.’

  The bluebells Joe had brought her. Typical of him, as the roses were typical of Michael. But the bluebells were dead now, wizened into brown ghosts in the vase. She picked up the vase and took it with her to the kitchen, thinking as she did so that he did not ask her who had brought her those flowers. He didn’t ask those sorts of question – he was stronger than she. When she came back with the roses arranged in the vase she thanked him for them again and kissed him; she had forgotten the bluebells and had almost forgotten the quarrel.

  When Dad came across from the station they were sitting on the sofa reading the paper together and talking in low, relaxed voices. They made a pretty picture, sitting there with their heads together in complete harmony, and had Dad not had his heart set on Joe, he might have taken courage from the sight and worried less about his only daughter being left on the shelf. As it was he only said,

  Oh, you’ve got a visitor. I’ll make myself scarce.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Dad, Anne said, jumping up and kissing him on the cheek. ‘You sit down and I’ll make another cup of tea for us all. Do you want a sandwich as well?’

  ‘Hm. Could do with one, I suppose.’

  ‘All right. You sit and talk to Michael. I won’t be long.’

  She said that, but she was as long as she could reasonably be, to give them the best chance of getting into conversation, and when she came back with the tray she found that, as she had expected, Michael’s charm had worked on Dad and he was telling the younger man all about rabbits and the glorious days of steam, his two greatest passions.

  It was quite late when Michael eventually took his departure, promising to pick Anne up on Saturday night and take her to the dance at the Villiers Hotel in Winton Magna. Anne went with him to the front door to see him out and to get another breathtaking kiss.

  ‘Well at least I’ve convinced your father I’m not a white-slaver,’ Michael said when he finally released her.

  ‘Oh, Dad’s all right. He’s just a bit suspicious of strangers.’

  ‘Strangers! How long before I stop being considered a stranger?’

  ‘In Winton it generally takes about forty years.’

  ‘Thank heaven I don’t have to wait that long. I wasn’t talking about Winton, foolish,’ he said, giving her a final kiss. ‘I was talking about you.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The dance at the Villiers Hotel was held every year, and was a large and well-attended affair, and Anne was privately glad that Michael had returned in time to take here there. She was also, even more secretly, glad that Fate had arranged it so that she went with Michael rather than with Joe, for she had already discovered that Michael was as competent a dancer as he was everything else, whereas Joe could only do the walk-round to slow music, known locally as ‘the smooch’. When he had taken her to dances, they seemed to spend most of their time standing around in groups chatting, while Anne watched the whirling dancers with distant envy.

  All in all, she decided, the occasion called for a new dress, and having dispatched such household chores as her father allowed her to do, she got out her bike and cycled into Market Winton. The town was always full on a Saturday, with a different kind of crowd from Thursdays. Now it was women out for their big shop of the week, with pushchairs and sweet-sucking kids, while Dad carried the smallest on his back and sometimes held the lead of a straining mongrel dog. It was odd how all the townspeople’s dogs were ill-trained like that, and whatever speed their owners were walking, they would pull so hard against the lead that they would progress on two feet only and make an unearthly gargling noise as the collar choked them.

  There was also a lot of local young lads, roaring aimlessly up and down the narrow High Street on motorbikes, or leaning in groups against their push-bikes on the car park behind Woolworths. The young girls went about in pairs, looking in the dress shops, standing outside the record-mart listening to the latest tunes, and pretending not to notice when the youths called out to them. The old folk toiled very slowly up the side streets looking for bargains, or laboured even more slowly up the stairs to the coffee bar on the first floor of Hiblett’s for a cup of milky coffee and a rock-cake and their weekly natter to their fellow-pensioners.

  Anne loved it all, of course, and made the most of her slow cycle through the town. She always felt that there were three Wintons – the ordinary weekday one, the Thursday one, and the Saturday one. It compensated a little for living in the same place for so long, and such a small place at that. Her destination that morning was the cobbled street known as Gobs Alley, which led off the High Street and was lined with shops which, by chance or design, had all been turned into clothes shops, shoe shops, record shops, and similar places of interest to young people. It had once tried to style itself the Carnaby Street of Winton. It said in the local guide book that the name was originally God’s Alley, because it had led up to the long-defunct monastery; Anne remembered from her school days a ruder explanation the boys had thought up.

  There was in Gobs Alley, however, a very good little boutique which Anne had patronised before, and having chained her bike to one of the bollards at the foot of the street she walked towards it. She hadn’t gone more than a few yards, however, when Wendy came out of the record shop at the bottom and joined her with a cheerful greeting.

  ‘Hello! Are you better? Of course you
are, or you wouldn’t be here. Going to the dance tonight?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anne. ‘Are you?’ She was rather cool, not knowing quite how to take Wendy after that business about the restaurant.

  ‘But of course. That’s why I’m here – to buy a new dress, something that will shake Winton to its Roman foundations and write my name in the town’s history. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to buy a new dress too,’ Anne admitted. Wendy nodded happily.

  ‘Good, then we’ll look together, and you can tell me if things suit me or not, and I’ll do the same for you.’ And she tucked her arm through Anne’s as they walked on. ‘Who are you going with tonight?’ she asked next.

  ‘Michael,’ Anne said, watching her sideways for a reaction. Wendy did not seem at all surprised. She merely nodded with polite interest. ‘Who are you going with?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Wendy said. ‘I’m going there with Roberto, but I have a kind of feeling I agreed to meet Graham there, so there might be an almighty blow up. I wish I could remember. I’d ask him only he’s been on his week’s holiday, and he doesn’t get back until this afternoon. Oh well, I suppose it doesn’t matter too much. Shall we go in here?’

  ‘I was intending to,’ Anne said as they reached her favourite shop. They went in and sifted through the rack of dresses, hovered over by a minute fourteen-year-old with a habitual sniff who helped out on Saturdays. Wendy gathered up three or four things and hared off to the changing room, and Anne went on sifting more slowly until she found what she was looking for. It was flame-red chiffon with drooping sleeves, and a skirt in two layers, with jagged ends, like the party dresses of the nineteen-thirties. It was her size, too, and she followed Wendy with it happily.

  When she tried it on, it was just right, as she had known it would be. The vivid colour set off the darkness of her hair and the clear pallor of her skin, and the style, of course, was exactly hers. Wearing it still and taking sideways glances at her reflection, she waited for Wendy to decide on what she wanted. It was one of those communal changing rooms, so she could stand and talk while Wendy tried on one thing after another.