‘Listen, there was something that I forgot to ask you yesterday,’ he said. ‘It’s about those men who attacked me on Friday.’
Suddenly she was all attention. ‘The drunks? What about them?’
He chose his words with care: ‘There was a cufflink on the ground which might have come from one of the men who attacked me. It had the badge of the British Union of Fascists on it.’
‘It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Everybody knows they’re brutes. Why, Julian says—’
‘The point is,’ he interrupted, ‘do you think it’s possible they might have attacked me because of you?’
She frowned. ‘Why?’
Now he had said the words aloud to her, the possibility seemed even less likely than it had before. ‘It’s just that you go to these socialist meetings and – and a lot of your friends are that way inclined, or more so, like that chap Dawlish. And now your new job with – what’s it called?’
‘ASAF. The Alliance of Socialists Against Fascism. You make it sound like some – some deviation.’
‘I don’t mean to. It’s just that I wondered whether someone might have seen you and me together and assumed I was a communist or something too. In other words, they attacked me for political reasons. After all, if the chap was wearing cufflinks, you’d think that he was at least halfway respectable.’
‘Respectable? And he goes around beating up strangers on Friday nights?’
‘Not on the breadline, then.’
Fenella shook her head. ‘I can’t see it. Those Fascists are capable of almost anything, but the idea of them lying in wait for you in Bleeding Heart Square and then beating you up – well, it’s too ridiculous. You came to that meeting in Albion Lane, I know, but you didn’t exactly play an active part in the proceedings.’
‘But I know you. And I’ve met Dawlish.’
She shook her head. ‘If the target were Julian or me, they would just chuck a stone through my window or perhaps beat him up. Anyway, from what you say you can’t even be sure that the cufflink came from them.’ She paused and added in quite a different voice, ‘Rory?’
‘What?’
‘Are you all right? I know this isn’t easy for you.’
The gentleness in her voice took him by surprise. ‘I’m fine. It will be better when I find a job, of course.’
‘You’re not going to waste any more time on this business about Aunt Philippa, are you?’
‘You think it’s a wild-goose chase.’
‘It’s a distraction,’ Fenella said. ‘But you should be concentrating on finding a job, not chasing shadows.’
‘But I thought—’
‘Even if you found her, it wouldn’t be any use. Aunt Philippa went to the States to make a fresh start. Why should she give me any money? She owes me absolutely nothing.’
‘I want to help. That’s all. You won’t let me in any other way.’
‘I can help myself, thank you.’
‘You mean that fellow Dawlish can.’
Fenella shook her head briskly. ‘It’s not like that.’
‘Of course it is. I’ve seen how he looks at you.’
‘I’m not saying he doesn’t like me. But it’s not reciprocated, or not in that way. The thing is, we think the same about things and this job is a splendid opportunity. It’s perfect.’
Rory thought it was perfect for Dawlish because it would give him unlimited access to Fenella. He said, ‘It really is over, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
‘You and me.’
She stood up. ‘Look, we talked about this. We were very young when we got engaged, especially me. Then you went off to India for years and years. We can’t expect to just take things up where we left off. People change. I know I have. And I think you have too. Now you’re just in love with a sort of idea of me, something you dreamed up while we were apart. As far as you’re concerned I’m like a bad habit. You need to give me up and then you’ll be fine.’
‘So that’s it?’
‘Of course it’s not. We can be friends. I hope we always shall be. And who knows what might happen?’
‘I’m a bloody fool,’ Rory said.
‘No you’re not. You’re a dear good man. And I’m truly grateful for all you’ve done. Now, while the tea’s brewing, will you help me clear a space in the hall? There’s so much rubbish I can’t get into the dining room.’
Rory took the Tube back to Holborn. He smoked two cigarettes on the way and glowered at anyone who he thought might be looking at him. Until now, despite the evidence to the contrary, he had taken it for granted that he and Fenella were destined eventually to spend most of their lives together. His assumptions about the future had been based on that proposition. He scowled at his reflection in the window on the other side of the carriage. All that wasted time and emotion. Narton be damned. If Fenella didn’t care what had happened to Miss Penhow, why should he? What was the point? What was the point of anything?
When he left the Tube, it was almost dark. The thick, heavy air tasted of coal dust and chemicals; fog was on its way again. He hurried along the north side of Holborn. As he was passing the long, dark facade of the Prudential building, he drew level with a woman walking more slowly in the same direction. He glanced at her face. In the same moment she turned her head towards him.
He touched his hat. ‘Mrs Langstone. Good afternoon.’
She frowned as though she had been accosted by a stranger. Then she recognized him. ‘Oh hello.’
‘Beastly weather.’ He peered through the gloom at her. ‘I say, you feeling all right?’
‘Yes – no. I mean, I think I might be going down with something. A chill, perhaps.’
They fell into step and returned to the square by way of Rosington Place. A furious yapping came from the lodge. Howlett’s face appeared at the little window. He raised his hand in a half salute. Faster and faster, as though someone were pursuing them, they walked towards the chapel and the gates at the end.
‘Are you enjoying the job?’ Rory asked as they passed Shires and Trimble’s office.
‘Not particularly.’ She did not look at him. ‘But then that’s not really the point, is it?’
They reached the gates that led to the square. He opened the wicket and stood to one side so that she could precede him.
She hesitated, and looked suddenly up at him. ‘Have you ever felt you’d be better off dead, Mr Wentwood?’
‘I imagine most of us have.’ In fact the thought had crossed his mind not twenty minutes earlier. ‘But think of the mess it would make.’
Her blue-grey eyes stared up at him. There wasn’t an answering smile on her face. ‘Life’s messy enough anyway. What’s a little more here or there?’
‘What’s wrong?’ There was nothing like misery for making one blunt. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘It’s very kind of you, but no. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry.’
She stepped into Bleeding Heart Square. He followed, closing the wicket. She stopped suddenly, so sharply that he almost cannoned into her. He heard her mutter something under her breath.
Serridge was walking from the direction of the garage towards the house. His loud check overcoat was open and flapped on either side of him like the wings of a brash and enormous bird. One hand was in his trouser pocket, and the other held a cigar. He caught sight of them at the gate and waved.
‘Mrs Langstone. Good afternoon.’ He added, clearly as an afterthought, ‘Mr Wentwood. Have you been out for a walk?’
He was looking at Lydia but she didn’t answer, so Rory said, ‘No, we met by chance in Holborn.’
Lydia moved towards the house and the two men followed.
‘I don’t suppose you’re putting the kettle on, Mrs Lang-stone?’ Serridge said.
‘No. I’m not feeling well.’ She pushed her latchkey into the lock.
Serridge joined her on the doorstep. ‘You do look a bit under the weather if you don’t mind my saying so. A
cold or something?’
‘Something like that.’ She got the door open at last and almost ran into the house. She murmured goodbye and set off up the stairs.
‘Let me know if there’s anything you need, eh?’ Serridge called after her.
‘Thank you,’ she said without turning her head.
Serridge stood in the hall and watched her on the stairs. Rory was surprised to see an expression of what might have been tenderness on the other man’s face, as incongruous as an oasis in a desert. For the first time, he was struck by the absolutely revolting possibility that Serridge was sweet on Lydia Langstone.
13
Saturday, 8 March 1930
Well, I’ve done it! I took Joseph to meet John and Agnes. It was fortunate that Fenella was there, which made things a little easier than they might have been, but it was pretty ghastly. I must admit I’d been dreading this, and I was right. It’s one thing Joseph coming to the Rushmere, where frankly anyone in trousers is likely to be lionized, but it’s quite another to take him to Cornwallis Grove. My brother is such an awful snob! Not that he’s got very much to be snobbish about, if the truth were known. And I’ve always felt that he begrudged Aunt’s money coming to me, though heaven knows there was no reason why any of it should have gone to him. She was MY father’s sister, not his. He wasn’t even related to her.
Agnes wrote and asked me to tea, which was the first I had heard from them since Christmas. I know one shouldn’t think badly of people but I can’t help suspecting that John put her up to writing to me for mercenary reasons. (Even as a little boy, he was very greedy.) I asked if I might bring a friend, and you should have seen their faces when they opened the door and realized that I meant a man friend!
I had warned Joseph they might be a little stuffy, which turned out to be just as well. They had got out the silver tea service and the Crown Derby. Old Mary, who has never been more than a maid of all work and not a very good one at that, had been forced to come in on Saturday afternoon and drilled so hard in the duties of a parlourmaid that she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. John took one look at Joseph, and clearly decided that he wasn’t enough of a gentleman for him, though anyone can see that Joseph’s more of a man than John could ever be.
Anyway, John, who can talk the hind leg off a donkey, went on and on about this and that, trying to make Joseph look small. At one point he asked him what he thought of young John Gielgud’s Hamlet and later he pretended to be very surprised when he learned that Joseph had not been to a public school. I was never so ashamed of my relations in my life, but dear Joseph rose above it splendidly. He spent a lot of time talking very nicely to Agnes about her work with the Girl Guides and to dear little Fenella, asking her about her studies and so forth and what she plans to do with her life. She’s such a sweet little thing – she takes after my side of the family. I told her I had been using the diary she gave me at Christmas.
And then we had the row!! Beforehand, I had thought about telling John and Agnes about our engagement while we were there – not the full story, of course, because that concerns only Joseph and me – but decided it might be better to break the news when we next met. But John was so beastly I changed my mind. I slipped out of the room, put on my engagement ring and went back and said, cool as can be, ‘By the way, Joseph and I have some news.’
Well, you should have seen their faces drop. John began to splutter – he was so angry and surprised he could hardly get his words out. If looks could kill!! At least Agnes and Fenella managed to congratulate us. I couldn’t wait to get away. I made our excuses as soon as I decently could.
We walked to the Tube station. I was still seething with indignation on Joseph’s behalf. But he said that it was quite all right and he understood why they had been like that.
‘I know I’m a bit rough round the edges, my darling,’ he said. ‘But the heart’s as true as oak, I promise you that. And you were so brave in there. Like a lioness.’
I suppose that was what made me do it – not John and Agnes’s despicable behaviour but Joseph’s truly manly generosity and the loving tone of his voice to me despite the insults he had received. I told him that I felt we were now married in the eyes of God. I was trembling in every limb. ‘I want to be your wife in every way, dearest.’ I repeated it: ‘In every way, Joseph. Do you understand?’
Philippa Penhow saw a chance of happiness and she took it. She gave more than she took. You have to admire that, don’t you?
His wife had taken to sleeping in the kitchen. At bedtime Narton watched her pulling the mattress out from the scullery and unrolling it in the corner by the range, which had been banked up for the night. Margaret lived in the kitchen, which made sense in this weather because it was the warmest room. If you were going to spend your days there, Narton supposed, you might as well spend your nights there too.
Margaret had once been house-proud to the point of mania. She had kept the floor so clean you could eat off it, and she used to give the Vicar tea with newly baked scones in the parlour. On more than one occasion, Mrs Alforde herself had come with him.
Without looking at him, Margaret made the bed with blankets from the dresser drawer. Narton wondered whether he should stay with her in the kitchen, but only for a second. Anyway it was only a little single mattress of lumpy horsehair. It had gone on the bed they had given Amy when she was ten years old. All in all, he preferred to lie upstairs in the big double bedstead that sagged in the middle, turning restlessly to and fro between the dirty sheets, weighed down by too many memories and a mound of frowsty bedding.
He drifted into unconsciousness at about five o’clock in the morning. The bang of the back door roused him abruptly from a deep sleep at a quarter past seven. His limbs were aching and his mind was as misty and full of foulness as a London fog. Margaret had gone to work. He rolled slowly out of bed and painfully forced his body back to life. It was still almost dark outside. He had slept in shirt and underclothes. He urinated in the pot and pulled on his trousers and socks, noticing without much interest that the hole in one of the sock heels seemed to have grown larger overnight. He stumbled down the narrow stairs into the kitchen. As he had feared, the range was out. Margaret would get a cup of tea and perhaps a slice of toast at the Hall. She worked there for the loonies, whose souls were far above such mundane matters as keeping the kitchen clean.
It took him well over an hour to light the range, boil a kettle, shave and make tea. Afterwards he put on his overcoat and walked into the village. It was a grey morning, raining slightly, and he met no one until he was nearing the shop by the church. Robbie Proctor was standing under the lych gate, with his mouth open as usual and his nose in need of wiping. Had a screw loose, that one. When the boy saw Narton, he turned tail and ran off among the gravestones.
Things weren’t much more welcoming in the village shop. Rebecca, the Vicarage parlourmaid, was there, and a couple of labourers’ wives from Home Farm. They nodded a greeting but sidled away from him, re-forming in a whispering huddle on the other side of the shop. What were they afraid of? That he’d contaminate them like a cloud of poison gas?
He bought five gaspers and a loaf of bread. No one wished him goodbye. He knew that as soon as the door closed behind him the conversation would begin again. Margaret told him that everyone in the village thought he was mad. Perhaps they weren’t so far wrong.
At the cottage, he put the kettle on again and ate some of the bread. Afterwards he lit one of the cigarettes and wandered from room to room. It already had the feeling of an abandoned house. He came to a halt at last in the parlour, where he studied the cupboard beside the fireplace. He threw the butt of the cigarette into the empty grate and fished out a key from his waistcoat pocket. The door creaked as he opened it. There were three shelves. The upper two held toys, one or two books, some clothes. On the bottom one was a flat, soft parcel loosely wrapped in brown paper. Narton took articles at random from the top two shelves – a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlan
d, a woolly hat with a bobble on the top, a tiny china pony that he had won for Amy with an air rifle at a fairground stall in Saffron Walden.
There was a hammering on the back door. Narton closed the cupboard, locked it and went unhurriedly back to the kitchen. The knocking continued. He opened the door and found Joseph Serridge standing outside and leaning on a stick. He wore a heavy raincoat and galoshes thick with mud.
‘I reckon it’s about time you and I had a man-to-man chat,’ Serridge said in a flat voice.
‘I thought you were in London.’
‘You going to let me in?’
‘No point. You won’t be here long.’
Serridge came a few inches closer. He towered over Narton, even though the latter was standing on the doorstep. ‘Suit yourself. I think this fun and games has gone on a bit too long. Don’t you?’
‘Fun and games? Is that what you call it?’
‘You can call it whatever you want,’ Serridge said. ‘But it’s going to stop. You are making a laughing stock of yourself. And I’m getting tired of having you hanging around.’
Narton said nothing.
‘I could write to the Chief Constable. Or I could try something more straightforward.’
Serridge’s right hand shot out and caught Narton by the throat. Narton’s head slammed into the doorpost. Serridge tightened the grip round Narton’s neck. Narton tried to pull Serridge’s arm away. Serridge was too strong. He tried to kick Serridge’s shins. He couldn’t reach them. When Narton realized there was nothing he could do, he did nothing. He stared at Serridge, and Serridge stared back.
‘So,’ Serridge said at last, as though the silence had been filled with a conversation and he were now summing up its conclusion. ‘You’re too much of a fool even to be frightened. I wonder if your wife feels the same.’
Narton tried to speak but Serridge’s hand over his throat wouldn’t let him.
‘Yes,’ Serridge said thoughtfully. ‘Your dear lady wife, Margaret. Skivvying up at the Hall. Works all hours, I’m told. No choice, eh? This time of year, she must be walking there and back in the dark. Not like London here, is it? Night really means something. Easy to trip over something in the dark, you know. Might have a nasty fall one day if she’s not careful. Or she might bump into some tramp or other. There’s a lot of funny customers around, you know – you know that better than I do. Too lazy to get a job. Work-shy. Call themselves ex-servicemen but if you ask me most of them are blackguards who’d cut their grandmothers’ throats for sixpence. Or maybe there might be a fire while you’re up in the Smoke making a bloody ass of yourself. Easy to knock over a candle, ain’t it? An old place like this would burn like a torch.’ The hand tightened, and Narton gargled deep in his throat. ‘Yes, old man. If I were you I’d be worried about your Margaret.’
Bleeding Heart Square Page 19
