“To what?”
“We’ve got a yacht. Daddy has, I mean. We always cruise in the summer. Mother didn’t like sailing. I adore it.”
“So you are a permanent crew?”
“Oh, yes. John never gets away now. Too tied up in the Navy. Do you ever sail?”
“Certainly not. I detest waves, even small ones. Crossing the Channel is a misery.”
Penelope felt this as an extra bar between them, but as Simon encouraged her to go on talking about herself and her family she forgot this. When they left the restaurant she was outwardly cheerful, happy, grateful for the meal he had given her, in fact thoroughly pleased with her evening. On parting he pressed her hand between both of his and turned away very content with his conduct of affairs. Penelope went home by bus in a mounting cloud of despair, to spend half the night in bitter tears and the rest in exhausted sleep from which she awoke with swollen eyelids and a raging headache. Mrs. Byrnes diagnosed the case correctly but did not think it merited any special treatment at Penelope’s age. Hubert Dane decided that his daughter was sickening for ’flu and ordered her to bed for the day, in spite of her protests, pointing out that she had no right to spread infection among the other students.
After leaving Penelope Simon walked slowly through the crowded streets to the flat of his friend George Clark in Hampstead. Simon himself had a flat in Kilburn.
George was in and welcomed his friend. A physicist, who had left teaching for industry because the pay was so much better and the laboratory equipment so much more modern, George always enjoyed Simon’s total ignorance of science and his acute, if superficial outlook on the world and its ways.
Simon described his evening in some detail.
“Another victim?” George asked, smiling.
Simon laughed.
“Is it my fault if they take me so seriously?”
“Isn’t it?”
“I protest.”
“You may protest, but you can’t deny it. You adore admiration.”
“Who doesn’t? I consider I’m very good for them. ‘L’éducation sentimentale.’ No fees in it, though God knows I sometimes have to work very hard.”
“And this poor girl? Was it the usual coup de grace? Did you trot out the beloved mistress, your own faithfulness, the great sacrifice?”
Simon laughed again, half from real amusement, half embarrassed.
“She exists, you know.”
“Does she?”
George had never quite believed in his friend’s grand passion. He never quite believed any of Simon’s stories, whether they were about himself, as they usually were, or of wider scope, about people he had known. George enjoyed Simon because he was different from everyone else he met in his daily round at the laboratory and because he presented to George’s very peaceable, highly intellectual personality no emotional problems of any kind whatever.
Chapter Two
Diana Allingham stood close to the big open window of her drawing room on the third floor of the house in Welmore Street.
A sunblind in the form of a canopy jutted out from the top of the window, shading the spot where she stood. But the hot June air, full of London dust and petrol fumes, seared her lungs at every breath. The sun bit at her through the canopy. She felt her thin dress stick to the naked skin of her back as she moved restlessly, trying to see down into the street far below, but not really caring whether she did so or not. It was a habit from the past, from the time when Bill, sweeping successfully to the top of his profession, had put up his plate on the door down there in the street, adding it to half a dozen others and therewith acquiring a small dark consulting room at the back of the house. He had also managed to secure this flat, three storeys up, where he and Diana had lived ever since.
She often wondered now why Bill had insisted upon staying in the flat. When the two children were young it had been far too small. Her objections of that period were over-ruled by the appearance of the country cottage. Now that the children were at boarding school, with the holidays spent at the cottage, except at Christmas, the flat was once more large enough, even too large. But on mid-summer days, such as this one, it was hell, Diana decided.
She pulled up the window at the bottom and the roar of the traffic grew louder than before. She pulled it down again and leaned her forehead on the cool glass. As she did so two hands took her from behind.
She swayed back with a little cry and Simon’s hard head came round her shoulder to kiss her neck and slide his lips down to her breast.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” she said stupidly, breathing deeply under his touch.
“Why should you? You were watching the street, though what you find there …”
She could not be bothered to explain the habit again. He knew it too well. Besides, it now had no meaning, or no worthy one. When they first lived here – no, longer – until she met Simon – her watching had been to discover if Bill had returned to the house. Now it was to discover if he were absent.
She released herself, to move away from him and sink into a chair.
“I didn’t expect you today,” she said, dully. The heat had drained her. It was not an afternoon for lovemaking.
“Isn’t it one of the safe days?”
She winced a little. His quite frank, deliberate deception of Bill always shocked her. He had never ceased to admire and respect Bill, to treat him as a friend and accept his friendship in return. He was the most a-moral being she had ever met.
“You aren’t expecting William back, are you?” he insisted. “That wasn’t why you were glued to the window so intently that you didn’t hear me come in?”
“No,” she said, lifting her arms from the chair and putting them down again on a different part of the cool chintz. “No. He won’t be back. I hope you didn’t meet anyone on the way up.”
“The lift was empty.”
She frowned.
“Did you have to wait for it?”
“No. It was there and the formidable Mrs. Stone was nowhere about and no one saw me and here I am and I want you.”
He had been standing near the window where she had left him when she moved away. He now came quickly to her, took her hands, pulled her to her feet, quickly and skilfully unfastened her dress and lifted her from the little heap of linen that had dropped to her feet.
She moaned softly as his hands moved over her. Even on a day like this her desire burned up her separate identity, her possible protests, even her anticipation of pleasure or her fear of spoiling it. She was in pain until he took her; her subjection was total.
Simon, bright-eyed, well pleased with himself and with her, watched her smilingly as she gradually came back from her ecstasy. When he saw that she looked at him with cool eyes he looked at his watch.
“Time to dress,” he said, patting her thigh in a kindly, indulgent manner. “Not one of the days I’ve just dropped in to see William. I’ve got a date.”
“Who with?” she asked, instantly jealous. There had been rumours, roundabout ones, but fairly definite, that he had been seen with Penelope Dane. She already deeply regretted having asked Simon to dinner on the same night as the Danes.
“Only George. And I hope you see nothing sinister in that.”
“Of course not.”
“There’s no of course about it. It has become quite dangerous for a man to have a man for his friend.”
“You exaggerate.”
“No, really. You should hear the common room gossip. Quite astonishing.”
They dressed and Diana fetched two long iced drinks. They sat well away from each other, sipping dreamily.
Diana said, “You won’t have to be so reckless from now on.”
“I’m never reckless. I’m most careful not even to risk compromising you. Isn’t that what it’s called?”
“I mean because Bill’s mother is coming here.”
“Oh.”
He looked across at her with a faintly malicious smile twitching the corners of his mouth.
“No, darling, I mean it. She’s having alterations done to her terrible old country house. Main drainage and main water have come at last to Little Fairing and she will benefit. But the whole place will be practically torn down and rebuilt or so I gather.”
“How astonishing. Has she lived all these years without a bath?”
“Of course not. There is a well and an old gardener who pumps every evening and a cart that comes every three months to deal with a cesspool.”
Simon began to look bored.
“All I meant,” persisted Diana, “was that you mustn’t simply barge in whenever you feel inclined. You’ll have to ring me up first and be very careful if she happens to get to the phone first. I’m afraid she’ll be here for weeks.”
Simon still looked bored. Diana was not sure if he had taken in what she had told him. He had a disconcerting habit of simply not hearing things that did not particularly interest him.
“Did you hear that?” she asked, sharply.
Simon frowned and then laughed.
“That we shall see much less of one another in the very near future? Yes, I heard that.”
“Oh, no!” She was breathless with fear. “Only that we must be more careful. At the moment you aren’t careful at all, really. If Bill wasn’t such a …”
“If William wasn’t William would you ever have become my mistress?”
The smile was on his face again. It hurt her to see how little he was impressed by her mother-in-law’s imminent intrusion.
“It had nothing to do with Bill,” she said, in a low voice. “I was lost the first time I met you.”
This was an expected answer and again he accepted her words easily, lightly. Far too lightly, her heart told her with a vaguely jealous pang. His looks, his infinite easy charm, had spoiled him. His life was a perpetual walk-over where other people were concerned. Walked over, trodden under foot, but so lightly, so laughingly that the treading did not damage, only the lifting of the pressure, the passing on.
“Cheer up,” he said, putting down his empty glass and getting to his feet. “I’ll manage.”
“To come?” she asked, aware that she was nagging, but unable to control it. “To come or to do without me?”
“A little bit of both,” said Simon, still smiling and moving now towards the door.
“Aren’t you going to kiss me before you go?”
He hated the acid note in her voice. Would she never learn?
He waited near the door for her to come to him.
“I’m not good at affectionate exchanges,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking into her eyes with a strange blank look in his own. “Passion I understand …”
“But love – no,” she answered, aware that all this had been said many times over.
She had no satisfaction from the meaningless embrace with which they parted, but she stood in the open door of the flat until she heard the lift arrive in the hall.
Simon was late in reaching George Clark’s house where he had been invited to dine that evening. He had considered walking there from Welmore Street but after leaving the shade between the high cliffs of the professional rabbit warren, he had come into the full blaze of the late afternoon sun and had promptly gone out of his course into Regent’s Park, where he had sat under a tree, forgetting the time until the lengthening shadows brought him unwillingly to his feet again. The buses now were crowded, with long queues of homing workers standing along the kerb. He took a taxi.
This was a move into which his nature often led him, though it was an extravagance he could not afford. On the whole he managed to compensate for it in a great variety of ways, from cadging lifts in other people’s cars to frank borrowing of small sums which he usually failed to pay back.
George was aware of this habit. He saw the taxi draw up as he was watching at his window for Simon’s arrival, so he went down at once to the foot of the steps, fumbling in his pocket for silver as he did so.
“You might …” began Simon, also fumbling as George came up. “He may not have change for a note.”
“Change, guv?” said the taxi driver, pulling out a mixed up mass of silver and paper.
“O.K.,” said George. He paid, his coins were added to the rest and thrust back into the man’s pocket. George took his friend by the elbow and walked him quickly into the house.
“Late, as usual,” he said when he had got his visitor across the hall.
“Later than that, I’m afraid,” said Simon, showing no signs of contrition.
George called to his housekeeper and took Simon at once to the dining table. From long experience and a miraculous judgment Mrs. Tranter produced a perfect meal, unspoiled by the long delay.
“You don’t deserve it,” George said. “One day I shall eat the lot at the stated time and you’ll starve.”
“It isn’t my fault I can’t live by the clock,” Simon argued. “Anyway, you have your meal so bloody early.”
“Mrs. Tranter doesn’t live in. She has to get away home. You have to be punctual at the college. Why victimise your friends?”
“It relieves the strain,” Simon answered, simply.
“It isn’t as if you had no watch,” George went on. He was still feeling cross with himself for paying the taxi fare, which had been quite unnecessary, since Simon, just too late, had pulled some silver from his pocket and then dropped it back again. “You have a very fine watch. I don’t know why your father gave it to you, knowing you never look at it. But you could make some attempt to do so.”
“I couldn’t just now,” said Simon, eating steadily and with relish, for he had denied himself any lunch that day. “It’s in pawn,” he explained.
“You’re hopeless.”
They both laughed.
“Tell me the latest scandal at your dump,” George suggested, seeing that his friend was in good form.
“The college has been conducting its affairs with unusual discretion,” Simon answered. “The usual couples go about together as before but nothing new has developed to astonish us. My own difficulties have ended virtuously.”
“And what exactly do you mean by that?”
“The character I told you about, the elderly goat who has been plying me with patronage came suddenly to the point the other night. He had given me an exceptionally good meal – almost as good as this – at his own house and then, when we were discussing – his own special subject – he said, without altering the level of his voice in any way, ‘Well, dear boy, and when do we go to bed?’”
“What exactly did you answer?”
“I said, in the same kind of voice, ‘We don’t, sir. Neither tonight or at any time.’ He seemed to be rather shocked, but I went on to tell him that my tastes did not lie that way at all. Then I left.”
“Good for you.”
“Not at all good for me. He was worth a great deal of excellent information, delightful talk and splendid food. I shall miss him a lot.”
George got up from the table and while Mrs. Tranter cleared it and brought coffee he got out brandy and poured a generous tot for Simon and a small one for himself.
Simon was leaning against the mantelpiece as George went up to him. He put out a sly foot to trip his host, but George was prepared. He managed to avoid the snare, got the brandy glass safely bestowed and turned to exact revenge.
“Like a pair of schoolboys,” Mrs. Tranter reported to her niece when she got home that night. “At their age, gone thirty the both of them. Scrapping on the floor like a pair of silly teenagers. No harm in it, of course. Mr. Clark’s a very nice gentleman and serious too, in the ordinary way. It never comes over him but when Mr. Fawcett’s in the house.”
A little breathless from their exertions both men soon gave up, scrambled to their feet and sat down, hot and breathless, to sip the scalding coffee. George, who never got over his surprise at Simon’s hidden strength, stared at his friend. His thoughts, less tolerant now, for he had suffered a mildly strained wrist, returne
d to Simon’s latest preposterous anecdote. Was it true? Quite possibly. Equally, it might be an invention. Simon’s vanity was immense and totally unselfconscious. It was constantly fed by these day-dreams, these scurrilous fantasies. And yet –
“So your latest doubtful friendship has gone the way of the rest?” he said. “I’m surprised at …”
“No names,” Simon interrupted, in a low voice, with a glance at the door.
“She can’t hear and wouldn’t take it in if she did.”
“I wouldn’t rely on that.”
“Anyway, the affair is over?”
“There was no affair, but yes, it is over. No damage on either side. Just a pity, from my point of view.”
“You’re very quick to brush off other people’s feelings, aren’t you?”
Simon frowned.
“I grant you this man is not likely to suffer much from your refusal,” George went on. “He must have other resources. He is experienced and wealthy. I’ve no sympathy for him, certainly no pity. But I think you should stop leading people up the garden. As much for your own sake as theirs.”
As Simon stared at him George saw the shutter come down. A moment before his friend was looking at him with an amused, boyish, slightly cynical expression. Now a stranger regarded him from eyes sullen, withdrawn and coldly hostile. The man behind these different eyes, behind the shutter, was a secret unknown being.
“I don’t mean to needle you,” George persisted, knowing he spoke against his own better judgment and quite uselessly. “I just can’t help remembering that boy a couple of years ago. The one who emigrated suddenly in his last year without taking his degree.”
“What of him?” asked Simon, the stranger, calmly.
“Well, you certainly did harm to him.”
“I refused to have sexual relations with him. Was that harmful? Was that immoral? Should I have indulged his unnatural feelings? Laid us both open to criminal proceedings? My dear George, where is your common sense?”
“You should have seen what he was like at the beginning. You should have put him off from the start.”
The Hunter and the Trapped Page 2
