Unsuspected

by Charlotte Armstrong

  9

  Never afterward was Mathilda able to put the finger of her memory on the moment that changed everything. It was like the tides on the beach. The sea would be coming up on the sand. Later, one was aware that it had begun to go down instead. But the moment of change escaped, couldn’t be remembered, was not noticed at the time. So it was about Oliver.

  There was a familiar hubbub. Grandy thought she was too thin. “My poor baby, your eyes are bigger than your face!”

  Althea said, “That suit, Tyl!” with shocked disgust.

  They introduced her to Jane Moynihan. Grandy had a visitor in his study who must be dismissed. He trotted off down the long room again. She saw Francis follow, saw him stop, halfway down, to speak to that pretty little girl named Jane. She saw Althea, watching.

  Mathilda remembered later that she was able to turn easily and look Oliver square in the face, finding it the same friendly face, the same sandy eyebrows. Suddenly she could see the white walls of the African town in the sun. The waters of the oceans of the world were crisscrossed with the vanished tracks of the ships of men. She thought, I’ve been away.

  He said, “Gosh, Tyl, you’ll never know how I felt!”

  Sne thought, I’ll never care.

  The tide had turned. It was going out. The strange thing was that it must have turned before this, and she hadn’t known. But it was true; she didn’t care any more how he felt, how he had felt or how he would feel tomorrow. The agony of caring was gone. Maybe she’d beaten it out of herself by caring so much and so hard. She felt very tired, as if all the sleep she’d lost over her emotions about him had accumulated in a reproachful cloud. It hadn’t really been necessary.

  Something must have gone out of her face, because Oliver could tell. She could see him persuading himself that he was, on the whole, relieved and glad. She saw right through. It was like watching the wheels go around in an insignificant toy. It was fascinating, but not important. Then the weariness lifted and Tyl felt free and lively. Her body felt light.

  She said gaily, “Where are my things? Where do I go?”

  “You’re in the gray room.” Althea was approaching with her mannequin’s walk. “I’m afraid we took your old room, darling. Naturally, since it was always the nicest.”

  “Yes, I know,” Tyl murmured. She was amused. It seemed to her that Althea was suddenly transparent too. Oliver picked up her suitcase. There was a little silence among the three of them, because Francis’ two bags with his initials on them were there on the floor.

  It came into Mathilda’s head to tell them, then and there, and yet she didn’t. She ought to have said, “I’m not married to Francis.” But something was wrong with her mood. She couldn’t have said it without giggling.

  “Fran’s been down in the guest house,” Althea was saying.

  “Oh, leave them,” said Tyl carelessly. She was too much amused, too tickled, too giddy with inner mirth to tell them now. She ran upstairs. Her feet felt like flying. Althea came pelting after.

  “Lord, Tyl, you are a skinny little rat.”

  Mathilda was burrowing into the gray room’s clothes closet. She found a green wool dress. In the eye of the beholder, she thought. In a pig’s eye.

  “I’ve got good ankles,” she said, muffled among the clothes. The knowledge that Althea couldn’t hurt her made her dizzy.

  Althea had sat down on the foot of the bed and her shining eyes that caught and reflected the light as if they had been metal, like silver buttons with black centers, were fixed on Tyl as if to read her very soul.

  “What on earth happened to your hair?” she cried.

  Althea’s own hair was a soft silvery cloud of curls, cut short, swept up, every tendril blending charmingly with the whole effect. Mathilda shook her brown mane, which hung free to her shoulders. “I washed it myself,” she said defiantly.

  Althea’s delicate eyebrows trembled with pitying comment. She touched the nape of her own neck with a polished finger tip. “I’ve been down with the grippe,” she said, and sighed. “I’ve been miserable.”

  “Too bad.” Tyl bit her lip. Laughter bubbled inside. She could hardly keep it under. And I’ve been shipwrecked and rescued and half around the world, she thought, and it’s eating you. Oh, it’s eating you.

  Althea said, with grudging admiration, “You’re a sly one.” She sloped gracefully back on one elbow. “Where did you find this Francis of yours?”

  Mathilda, in her slip, let her bare shoulders fall a little.

  “A millionaire,” complained Althea. Her voice verged on a whine. “Really, Tyl, you scarcely needed a millionaire. It doesn’t seem just and fair. Look at Oliver and me, poor as church mice, both of us.”

  And it’s eating you, thought Tyl. “I know what you mean,” she said aloud, flippantly. “Maybe we ought to shuffle and deal again.”

  She saw, in the mirror, Althea’s dainty body stiffen, saw the painted lashes draw down to narrow those gleaming eyes. What ails me? she wondered. She was treating Althea to a taste of sauce, as she had never dared before. She thought, It’s true. She is envious. She always has been. She thought, But I ought not to let her go on thinking I’m married. I mustn’t be childish.

  She said aloud, “There’s something you don’t know about—”

  “Is there, indeed?” said Althea acidly. “About true love, I suppose?”

  Tyl picked up her own turquoise-handled hairbrush and made her mane fly. She thought, Just for that, you can wait. And again, suddenly, she wanted to laugh. Her mouth began to curve. She had to control it. The whole situation was so totally turned about. So ridiculously altered from what she had feared. For it wasn’t Althea who had the husband Tyl had wanted. No. It was Althea who wanted the husband she thought Tyl had. Althea had her silver eyes on Francis.

  10

  Inside the study, the man named Press waited. He stood looking down at the floor.

  “Now, as I said,” purred Grandy, “I don’t intend to repeat such a broadcast. They came around, you know, and I had to claim a good deal of poetic license. But you needn’t worry. You are still unsuspected. As I said. And don’t come here. I’ll be in touch with you from time to time.”

  The man had a very round head and wide-spaced dark eyes. He looked up. The eyes had no hope in them.

  “Don’t you know,” said Grandy ever so softly, “I rather enjoy playing God?”

  The man named Press barely nodded. His eyes were still hopeless.

  Outside, in the living room, Francis smiled politely at the blond secretary. “Had to tell her the yarn,” he said, as if he were saying, “Hello, how are you?”

  Jane’s pretty baby face was a perfect mask. “Oh, no,” she moaned.

  “Something’s going to bust any minute. Pray I get hold of Althea before it does. Who’s in there?”

  “That man Press. The same one.”

  “I’m going to tell Grandy the duckling’s lost her memory.”

  “Why?” Her pleasant smile might have been sculped on.

  “For time,” he said “To tempt him. Be ready to get out of here,” he murmured, brushing by.

  “Oh, Fran,” moaned Jane.

  Grandy’s study door had a little whimsical knocker on the living-room side. It knocked back at you if the word was to come in. This was because the study had been completely soundproofed, so that Grandy’s genius could work in quiet. Francis opened the door when the signal came.

  “I thought you had company, sir,” he said.

  The visitor must have left by way of the kitchen. Grandy was sitting at his big light wood desk. He touched his pince-nez with his long-fingered, knot-knuckled hand. “No, no. Come in.”

  Francis walked across and sat down in the visitor’s chair. He followed the precepts of good acting. He tried to think only of and within the frame of mind he was to seem to be in. He was a hurt, bewildered, rebuffed, humiliated and worried lover. At the same time, he mustn’t miss anything he could glean from that face, that somewhat birdlike cou
ntenance, with its beak, its thin mouth, its black, brisk, bright and clever eyes.

  “What is the matter?” asked Grandy, reacting promptly.

  Francis looked up, surprised, looked down. “I don’t know how to tell you,” he mumbled. “I’m afraid I’m—” He rubbed his hand over his face, hoping it wasn’t too theatrical a gesture.

  Grandy stirred. He fitted a cigarette into his longish holder and slipped the holder into the side of his thin mouth. “Don’t be tantalizing,” he said. “What happened?”

  Francis looked at him stupidly for a moment “I don’t know,” he said at last, roughly. “Mathilda doesn’t—She says—”

  “D’ya mean she’s … out of love?” Grandy inquired.

  “She was never in!” he flung back. “No. Worse. She doesn’t know me.”

  “What do you mean?” Grandy didn’t show any shock, except that the gray hairs on his head seemed to rise quietly, and stand straighter, at attention.

  “I don’t know,” insisted Francis, “I suppose it’s—I don’t know what it is. She just plain doesn’t, or can’t, or won’t remember me.”

  “How very extraordinary,” said Grandy in a moment.

  Francis was able to watch, somehow, without looking at him directly. He kept his own eyes down, and yet he knew that the expression on that face was alert and tentative. It was more plain curiosity and excitement than anything else yet.

  Francis said, “I’m sorry. It just hits me, now. What am I going to do? I don’t understand things like that.”

  “Do you mean you believe she is the victim of amnesia?” purred Grandy.

  “Must be,” said Francis. “Or whatever you call it. I don’t know, sir. I don’t know anything about anything. All I know is, I went to find her, and there she was and she didn’t know me. She says she hasn’t been hurt, or sick, or anything like that. I don’t know what to think. I’m not thinking.”

  The hell I’m not, thought Francis. He got up and walked over to stare out of the window. It was a good thing to do, he’d found, when you were trying to think while being watched.

  What did it matter any more how desperate this throw was? He was close. He knew nearly enough. There was such a little way to go. And if Althea hadn’t taken to her bed with the grippe and if Oliver, with his ridiculous fuss, hadn’t made it so plain that Francis was not admissible to the sickroom; if he hadn’t been thwarted, delayed—why, he might have been finished by now, and able to come out into the open and let things burst. And if that little mutton-headed heiress hadn’t jumped down his throat at the first word about her precious guardian, if he’d had the least hope that she wouldn’t go blabbing immediately, if he’d been able to talk to her, tell her what he was doing, how much he knew, explain, ask her to help—

  He saw now how foolish he’d been to think he could explain to her. To think that any perfect stranger could shake her deep-rooted faith in a man she obviously loved and adored. He might have known. Althea was the same. Bright-eyed Althea was blinded by Grandy. He knew better than to try to approach her with such frank and open tactics.

  He wondered why he’d been led to think that Mathilda might be more approachable. Just hope. Just wishful thinking. Well, he’d seen quickly enough that it wouldn’t work. And he hadn’t wanted things to burst.

  There was Jane for one thing. He’d made a mistake to mention her name. He hoped Mathilda wouldn’t begin to wonder about that. No, he couldn’t have confessed the whole crazy device then and there, and risked Mathilda rushing to a phone and risked Grandy finding out that Jane was … Jane. Not when Jane was here alone. Not when he had been too far away to stand between. Grandy was too smart. He could put two and two together too fast.

  Well, it would burst now. Any minute. Unless, by this stubborn acting, he could muddle them enough. It was a nasty trick, a mean, cruel trick on the poor kid. Geoffrey had said so. Geoffrey hadn’t wanted to go on with it. He’d been ready to balk. But when he saw how close it was, how sure Francis was now, and when he was reminded of Rosaleen—

  Besides, sooner or later, the silly kid was going to be in danger herself. Blindly devoted to this evil old creature, she would never see what he was up to until too late. Wasn’t it up to Francis, then, who knew all about it, to guard her, even from herself? Fancy thinking, maybe. A fine, high-minded excuse. There was some truth in it, although he didn’t like it, didn’t like any part of it.

  But he had to make this desperate try. And at the back of his mind was the thought of the trap it set, the temptation. Grandy just might—just might pretend to be taken in long enough— After all, it would be very convenient for Grandy, in many ways, if there turned out to be something a little wrong with Mathilda’s mind.

  Grandy was being rather unnaturally silent. Francis turned around. He said, “What do you think? Ought I to fade out of the picture? Just to go away somewhere?”

  Grandy was gnawing thoughtfully on his holder. His eyes were veiled. Francis thought, He must be pretty sure I’m a fraud.

  Grandy said gently. “We certainly must do nothing at all in a hurry.”

  Francis fell a faint ripple of relief.

  “She doesn’t remember? She really doesn’t remember?” Grandy crooned in his wondering way. “It’s all gone out of her mind, you say? She feels she never saw you?”

  Francis shook his head. He hoped he looked miserable.

  “How very extraordinary,” said Grandy again. “Poor duckling. Poor Tyl. You must have frightened her this morning. She’s timid, you know, and shy, the little thing.”

  Francis thought, Nonsense. He’d fallen into the habit of checking this man’s statements against his own evidence. It was very easy to let yourself go along with Grandy. You had to resist him. He thought, I saw her spit fire. She’s got plenty of guts. Thai yarn I told was well told. She might have gone to pieces. She isn’t even little. She’s a good-sized young woman. Even so, the picture of Tyl, little, forlorn, pitiable, lingered in his mind.

  He said aloud, “I tried not to frighten her. I will do exactly what you say, sir. Believe me, whatever you want me to do for Tyl’s sake will be done, sir. Anything. Divorce?”

  Grandy flicked him with a glance. Then he began to speak in his mellow, rich, butter-smooth voice: “How curiously we are made. Is it possible? The needle writes in the wax. The needle of life writes in the wax of the brain, and the record is our memories. Does the needle lift from the wax and leave no record? Or does a fog come down? What can we say? Do you know, I think the miracle is not that we sometimes can forget, but that we remember so much, so well.”

  Francis thought, And I’ve got to get the record out of Althea’s brain and play it back. He shook himself away from the hypnosis of Grandy’s image. What is this? Is the old bird nibbling?

  “I do think,” murmured Grandy, and Francis braced himself for the verdict—“I do think, dear boy, the wisest thing—” The soundproof room had a dead atmosphere. Sound behaved queerly. Silence closed in fast here. Grandy let a little hunk of silence fall. “—wisest thing to do is wait,” he said.

  Francis sighed. He couldn’t help it. He hoped it would pass in character.

  “Yes,” said Grandy. “Let time pass. Let us wait and see. We will not inundate her with proofs or with evidence.”

  O.K. We won’t, thought Francis. But will you be checking on me some more? He knew there had been some checking. Jane had been sent; Oliver had gone. Maybe others. Would Grandy check the story further or was he already sure that the whole fantastic untruth that Francis was telling was untrue? Francis thought, I’m not fooling him. Can’t be. Why does he bide his time, then? Because he doesn’t know my motive? He wants to find out? The one thing he can’t know is that I care about Rosaleen. He thought, Never mind why. Time is what I want. He hardened his heart. Mathilda would have to suffer.

  “Yes, let her rest,” said Grandy. “Let her realize that she is safe at home.”

  Francis stood up. Safety wasn’t a thing for him to think about. “Right,�
�� he said.

  Grandy called him back with a motion of the cigarette holder. “Your marriage, as I understand it, was merely … legal?”

  Francis said, “That’s quite true, sir.”

  “You will stay on … in the guest house?”

  “Naturally,” said Francis.

  11

  Grandy’s house stood on its own acre. It faced the westernmost street of the small city, a street that was almost like a country road, and its gardens spilled down a slope back of the house. Grandy said he had managed to have all the advantages of open country and yet escaped the need to do without city services. He claimed that his house was poised on the exact hairline of geographical wisdom. Grandy was full of theories about everything.

  The house was not large. It was adapted to him. To the left of the hall ran his long living room, where he held court. On the south wall, a blister of glass was used for plants and porch furniture, and continued to the second story, where it became Grandy’s exquisite and rather famous bathroom. His kitchen—another famous room—was directly at the back of the house. His study was not large—a one-story piece of the house tucked in between the kitchen and the living room. The dining room lay north.

  He ran the entire establishment without servants. In the kitchen, he would preside over a collection of quaint copper pots, garlands of gourds, strings of onions, mixed in among all the latest gadgets in chromium and glass. He kept there a chef’s hat which he wore seriously. Meals in his house were rituals in which the preparation of the food was just as important as the eating of it He would bustle about and illuminate the proceedings with lectures in his fascinating voice. His lore, his stock of old wives’ tales, was inexhaustible.

  Mathilda came down in the green dress, and there he was in his cap, doing delicate last-minute things to the sauce. Oliver lounged against the wall. Francis was dusting glasses with a towel. Jane was setting the table.

  Althea, on a high stool, was timing the spaghetti with Grandy’s big round silver kitchen watch. She was still in her yellow gown—some soft silk with a wide skirt. She wore a lot of yellow. It was odd and striking on her. It gave a gold-and-silver effect and was arresting when black velvet would have been obvious.