But they didn’t; and really it was just as well, because she didn’t as yet know what she was doing. She just had this feeling that if she poked around a bit, she would sooner or later come upon something which would reveal to her that this was what she had come for. There was no knowing in advance what sort of thing it would be, and it was partly this that made the whole escapade so exciting.
The house was very quiet: and it looked neglected, somehow. A film of dust was on the hall table, the flowers in Norah’s favourite Doulton vase were withered and drooping. On the ledge—also dusty—were a little pile of letters, and Janine stepped closer, with the intention of examining the postmarks. Not that they told you much these days—a couple of days this way or that on a first class letter meant nothing, but all the same…
Funny, this one! An airmail letter from India, posted in Calcutta less than a week ago, and addressed—so far as Janine could judge—in Sam’s own slapdash handwriting.
Funny!—because Sam had been back home several days now, and even if he’d travelled by air—which he hadn’t, because the trip was an overland one both ways—it would scarcely have been possible…
A slight noise behind her made her whirl round: and it would have been hard to guess, just by looking at them, whether it was she or Edwin Field, rightful owner of the house, who was the intruder: so guilty did they both look; so unmistakably caught-in-the-act.
Someone, sooner or later, had to say something; and since it didn’t seem as if it was going to be Edwin, it had to be Janine. With the telltale letter still clutched in her hand, there was no way of dissembling what she’d been at, and so making the best of a bad job, she held it out to him boldly:
“A letter for you both from Sam,” she announced brightly, “Norah’ll be pleased, won’t she? I know how she worries about him when he doesn’t write, the naughty boy!”
Just the right casual, slightly humourous tone, with just the right degree of diversionary content, drawing attention away from her own impertinent prying, and onto the letter itself. “Here!”—she almost thrust it upon the rightful addressee—“he’s got as far as Calcutta by the look of it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if…”
Thus she rattled on in an effort to fill the embarrassing moment with enough, but not too many, appropriate fibs. After all, Edwin Field couldn’t know that she knew perfectly well that Sam was back home: indeed, he might even assume that she didn’t, men being so abysmally ignorant of the tacit to-ings and fro-ings of female communication. Charlie had been the same. “But how do you know?” he would pettishly demand of some amusing little anecdote about the neighbour who had taken to keeping her earnings from her part-time job nailed down under the kitchen lino: and always it stopped Janine cold, in mid-story. Anyone who can ask such a question just isn’t the sort of person who is capable of understanding the answer.
Preoccupied as she was with reflections such as these, as well as with the necessity for carrying off the present awkward situation as gracefully as possible, it was several seconds before Janine noticed how strangely Edwin Field was behaving. Instead of reaching out gratefully for the letter that she was pressing on him, he was positively backing away from it, with a look of terror in his eyes.
She wasn’t to know, of course, that this was his normal reaction to any sort of missive from his son these days. A request for money, it would be; or trouble about some document to which he had, or hadn’t, appended his parental signature. Trouble, anyway: that was for sure.
“Yes … well … thank you,” he babbled, moving back and back from the danger zone as he spoke. “Norah … when she comes in … Norah will…”
Whatever it was, Norah would filter out the bad bits for him and present him with something tidied up and tolerable, as she always had.
*
After Edwin Field’s wary and back-stepping withdrawal into the room from which he had so briefly emerged, Janine stood for a few moments looking after him.
Something was up, that was plain. She’d suspected it all along, and now she was sure.
The possibility that nothing was up, and that this sort of strategic retreat was simply part of Mr Field’s chosen life style, never crossed her mind. Keeping his big foot out of things had never been one of Charlie’s failings—she often wished it had—and so it was not one which sprang readily to mind when assessing the husbands of her friends.
Once again, the house seemed very quiet. Whatever it was that its master was occupying himself with behind the closed door of his study, it wasn’t making any noise. Janine bestirred herself to lay the Calcutta letter back among the rest, and then stood, hesitating, uncertain where to go from here? The more she thought about it, the more peculiar it seemed about that letter. It was Sam’s handwriting, she felt sure of it, and yet how could it be, from all that way away, and so recently posted? The most obvious way of satisfying her curiosity, of course, would be to go up right now to that attic flat of Sam’s, to knock on the door and ask him about the letter, and about his mother’s whereabouts and everything. He might accuse her of being nosey, but so what? The young, having no manners themselves, cannot reasonably expect any of their elders—and anyway, what about all that pop music at all hours of the night? That was a splendid card to have up her sleeve—she could, indeed, pretend that that was what she’d come for, to complain that it kept her awake. It didn’t, but only because nothing did, which was no thanks to Sam and his friends.
Janine looked at her watch. Nearly lunch time. Surely the young men would be awake by now, even at their age? Indeed, she’d fancied only a moment ago that she’d heard some sort of murmur of sound from the upper floor. Not voices, exactly, but a sort of stirring of activity… Already, she had one foot on the lower stair, about to ascend, when she was struck, just in time, by a disagreeable thought.
The hepatitis! That tedious friend of Sam’s whose drinking vessels had to be swilled out with boiling water every time he used them—if she ventured up there, she’d be as likely as not to encounter him as well as Sam—indeed, it might be he who would answer the door to her, and that would be a fine state of affairs, and no mistake! That’s all she needed, a slap-up dose of hepatitis, on top of Charlie, and the solicitors’ letters, and everything!
Hurriedly, she retreated back into the hall, and after a perfunctory glance into kitchen and sitting room to make sure Norah wasn’t around, she beat a hasty retreat out through the front door, breathing in the fresh air in great gulps, and congratulating herself on her escape. What a mercy she’d remembered in time! Why, she might easily have encountered Sam and his plague-ridden friend on the stairs, or anywhere, because there was no doubt, now, that they were up and about. Already those first murmurs of awakening life had escalated to full-blown pop music, blaring impudently from those top floor windows and seeming to follow her down the garden path deliberately, like a rude noise.
CHAPTER XXI
THE MOGADONS TIM had given her last night seemed to be affecting Miranda still. All day she’d been drifting in and out of sleep, aware all the time of deep misery, but incapable of sustained thinking about it. Perhaps he had intended just this; or perhaps, totally unaccustomed as she was to this kind of drug, a very moderate dose could have had this effect on her. How much he’d given her, she had no idea, she hadn’t been counting. You don’t count any more, or weigh up the things people are doing for you, when you are sunk to this level of grief and guilt and humiliation.
Because he knew. Of course he knew. They all must know by now. Though no one had ventured on an open accusation, or even the mildest of interrogations, the new attitude of withdrawal and of shrinking embarrassment was unmistakable. With relief they’d taken her word for it that she’d “rather be alone”: thankfully they’d tiptoed away, silently, like a retreating army, under cover of darkness. She’d heard them moving furtively around the flat, whispering to one another, as wary of disturbing her as if she’d been planted here by terrorists. Soon, no doubt, the bomb disposal squad would be on its
way; but before she could know whether this was to be the case or not, she had been pushed by the mogadons down, down into impenetrable oblivion.
*
Miranda was wrong, actually, in assuming that they all knew of her disgrace. Alison, Belinda and Merve were still taking the situation at its face value, and innocently assuming that what their companion was suffering from was simple grief at losing her baby. Had she known this, she might have found it easier to rouse herself and speak to them when, one by one, they peered into her room next morning before leaving for work, and then tiptoed silently away.
But she could not have known, for she had hitherto had no experience of people’s reactions to grief, and the extent to which these can be almost indistinguishable from their reactions to the most heinous crime. Either way, the victim becomes for the time being an outcast, mercilessly debarred from normal society and its cheerful, healing interchanges.
Merciless in effect, that is: not merciless in intention, not at all. The trouble is, that there is no way of treating a grief-stricken person normally. To try to do so is like trying to play tennis with someone who has lost his racket and can’t return the balls. No matter how sympathetic you are, or how fully you understand his longing—his deperate need, even—for an ordinary, straightforward game such as you used to enjoy together, it is impossible to give it to him. Normality is a two-way thing, and not all the compassion and understanding in the world can cancel out that fact.
And thus it was that Alison and Belinda, full of sorrow and sympathy as they undoubtedly were, could still only creep around, embarrassed and furtive, exactly as they would have done had they known all about their friend’s guilty secret and were condemning her out of hand.
Only Merve, typing away as if nothing had happened, was unwittingly offering a crumb of comfort. As she dozed and woke, and dozed and woke again through the long day, it was dimly reassuring to hear the steady tap-tap-tap of something going on in the world which had nothing at all to do with her. For it is down there, in the very depths of despair, that one comes at last upon that ultimate, rock-bottom security which in happier times goes unrecognised: the simple fact that one’s own feelings are not, after all, co-extensive with the universe, and that for someone, somewhere, something else is going on.
It was a pity that Merve, castigating himself (every now and again) for heartlessness, did not realise that by thus carrying on as usual he was tapping a small message of comfort and reassurance to the grief-stricken victim on the other side of the dividing wall.
There was to be one other brief respite before the long, dreadful day darkened at last into night. Drowsing away the last hours of daylight, Miranda was suddenly shocked awake by a loud, unfamiliar voice, shouting, it almost seemed, right into her ear:
“There’s somebody in my bed!” it bellowed, like all the Three Bears rolled into one, and Miranda found herself staring into a large, sallow face surrounded by a mass of frizzy hair. “Who the hell…? Look, I do think, honestly—No, I did not say I was moving in permanently with Keith. Am I crazy?—I wouldn’t move in with that rat if I was…!”
Christine, of course. It was bound to happen sooner or later, and Miranda could only feel relief that it was happening now. A diversion. A happening. Someone who was furious with her at last, instead of pitying and embarrassed. At least it would bring to an end all this whispering and tiptoeing.
But it didn’t. Almost at once, the intruder—or, rather, the rightful owner—was hustled out of the room, and an absolute storm of anxious, explanatory whispering burst upon the evening air:
“… Move her at a time like this…!”
“… Well, the settee, then. Look, Chris, surely, just for one night…?”
And then, “Shush, she’ll hear!” someone hissed; and someone else softly closed the door. For a few minutes, Miranda could hear nothing more than the faint, electric whirr of charge and countercharge. At one point, someone must have been reminding Christine of the principles on which the Squat was founded, for her voice suddenly rose to shriek:
“That’s all bloody fine, but why do I always get the grotty end of Peace and Love?” she demanded, perhaps not unreasonably. And then, “Shush!” once again, and the dispute relapsed back into relative inaudibility.
Keith this. Keith that. Teaching a lesson to the bloody little swine… Lulled by such soothing evidences of the continued existence of troubles other than her own, Miranda felt herself growing drowsy once more.
But this time, she must fight it. Because now, if ever, was her chance to slip away unnoticed, while they were all in there arguing. She could creep softly along the passage and out through the front door, closing it gently behind her, and disappear for ever.
Disappear where? Where would she go? Back to the vast, anonymous air terminal, where all night long you could slump unnoticed, among other slumped figures from every corner of the globe; silent, when necessary, in a dozen languages? It had worked O.K. the first night, with an extended Cypriot family to her right and an even more extended Brazilian family to her left, each assuming that she was one of the uncountable cousins belonging to the other: but the second night had been hazardous in the extreme, and her physical exhaustion well-nigh unendurable. It had seemed to her, this time, that people had their eyes on her, puzzled, suspicious, and more than once, some kindly official or other had paused to question her. Was she on her own? Waiting for friends, then? Did she need any help? Was she sure she was all right? It was a policewoman this time, with a huge moon-face and frizzy hair just like Christine’s, leaning over her, grinning like a wolf, all teeth and glistening tongue, and hissing, “We know who you are … it’s no use lying! We have found you out…!”
Miranda’s scream of terror made no sound; her limbs, as she tried to leap up from the bench and run, seemed to be paralysed; and she woke, sweating, and gasping for breath, to find that it was already night. The little airless room was now quite dark. The tiptoeing and whispering had ceased. It must be pretty late. Even Merve’s typewriter had fallen silent, which rarely happened before one or two in the morning. Unless, of course, he was having Writers’ Block again.
Yes, that must be it. For the silence was not quite like an ordinary silence, it was shot through with the sense of someone being wide awake; alert and expectant, waiting…
Waiting for what? Struggling out of her nightmare, Miranda had had the feeling of having been woken by some sound, some movement? But as the silence continued, thick and unbroken, the sensation faded, and she was able to persuade herself that it was simply the nightmare itself that had roused her, as nightmares do. Gradually, the beating of her heart slowed down, and her breathing returned to normal.
But the sense of being not the only one awake in this silent house still clung about her: and somehow it wasn’t a companionable feeling, not at all. Rather, it was a feeling of being under observation.
And only gradually, over several minutes, did these vague sensations of unease begin to crystallise into something real and tangible.
She was under observation. There was someone in the room, right now, close by the bed, sitting absolutely still, and breathing so softly, so carefully, that the indrawn air was indistinguishable from the faint stirrings of the night air through the half-open window.
Christine, was it? Was the irate newcomer plotting some kind of silent takeover of her rights, now that the rest of them were safely asleep? Was she? The Christine of the loud voice, the pile of tatty footwear? It didn’t seem like her, somehow.
And, indeed, it wasn’t her.
“You’re awake, aren’t you Miranda?” came Iris’ voice softly out of the darkness. “You’ve been awake some time, haven’t you, planning how to get away? Only you don’t dare!”
For a moment, Miranda felt herself in the presence of witchcraft, so accurately did the cool, disembodied voice describe her state of mind. It was as if Iris had all this time been creeping around the inside of her skull, making notes of what she found.
; Silly! It didn’t actually need second sight to envisage the turmoil of fear and despair into which the events of the last few days would have thrown her! With the darkness between them like some great, soft barrier, Miranda strove to frame an answer.
“Of course I’m going away,” she began huskily. “Obviously, I can’t stay here any more, now that…”
“Obviously you can’t!”—Iris picked up the phrase with bitter glee,—“and you’re not going to be allowed to, either, so don’t worry! But you’re not just quitting the scene of the crime scot free, if that’s what you had in mind! Oh, no. You’re going to pay the penalty for what you’ve done. You’re going to pay, and pay, and pay…”
What I’ve done… She’s right. I’ve done a terrible thing. She’s known all along—and now the rest of them know, too. But do they know everything? How can they? How can even she know that…?
Leaning closer, as though to catch the last words of a dying friend, Iris set herself to answer each of these unspoken questions exactly as if she had heard them, dealing with each one systematically, and very, very softly.
“Of course, I knew from the start that you weren’t really pregnant, you were only pretending. It was just too obvious for words, if you don’t mind my saying so! And now Tim knows, too. Yes, I told him. Well, of course I did, I had to, it was only right that he should know. He could hardly believe it at first, but now—Oh, Miranda, I wish you could have seen his face! So disgusted…! So disillusioned…!”
The fact that this disgust, this disillusion, were mainly directed against herself, Iris did not see fit to reveal, for the injustice of it was almost beyond endurance.
With No Crying Page 14
