Deliverance

by L. A. G. Strong

  Then, all of a sudden, the woman jerked herself out of her trance, seized up her shopping bag, and began to look round indignantly for the waitress. Thankful, Georgie signalled. The waitress came, and made out the bill. For more than a minute the woman scrutinized it, bending her head down over the table, as if in a ferocious search for error. She looked up at last, and Georgie held his breath, fearing that she was going to recall the waitress and dispute the amount. A few seconds passed, the woman, her mouth pursed up, staring straight in front of her. Then she got up, jolting the table so as to spill Ruth’s and Georgie’s coffee, and charged in short-sighted haste for the cash desk.

  Georgie leaned forward.

  “Thank goodness. I thought she’d never go.”

  Ruth’s eyes came back to him. She smiled absently.

  “Poor old thing.”

  “Ruthie. Listen.”

  Stammering in his urgency, he poured out all that he had to say. Her face did not change, even when he told her of the fifty-three pounds he had got from Smithers. She was looking past him, with an expression he could not read.

  “And don’t you see, Ruthie, there may be more at Exeter. They may pay over money too. I’ll hang on to it. It’s mine. The shop’s still in my name.”

  Ruth looked at him.

  “Whatever you get, it won’t be enough for us to live on.”

  “Yes it will. Till I get more out of Grace.”

  “Why do you keep on saying that? You know she’ll never give you any.”

  “I’ll get it all right. I know a way.”

  Ruth shook her head. In sudden exasperation, Georgie hit the table.

  “I tell you, I will You see if I don’t.”

  “Don’t. You’re upsetting the coffee. People will look.”

  “Ruth.” He leaned forward, his hands clasped. “You promised to come with me. Well, here’s our chance.” Fear struck him, making his mouth dry. “You are coming, aren’t you?”

  Her face contracted. “I—I don’t know, Georgie,” she said faintly. “I must think.”

  Suddenly Georgie was very angry indeed. Resolution gripped him. He signalled the waitress, paid the bill, steered Ruth out, then seized her arm.

  “Let go, Georgie. Please, I must get back.”

  “No you don’t. Oh no you don’t. I’m not going to be treated like this.”

  “Georgie! People are looking.”

  “Let’em.”

  He drew her down a side turning, a narrow lane between the back yards of two parallel terraces, empty except for a few dustbins and, at one end, a tiny paintshop.

  After a few steps, he stopped, and pulled her round to face him. “Listen to me. I’m not going to be treated like this, by you or anyone else.”

  “Georgie—please——”

  “It’s not like you, Ruth. It’s not like you.”

  “What isn’t like me?”

  “Shilly-shallying. Blowing hot and cold. Leading me up the garden path.”

  “Georgie!”

  “Well, what else is it? You say you love me. You promise to come away with me. And now, when a perfect chance comes, the chance of a lifetime, you back out.”

  “But, Georgie—”

  “If that’s your sort of love …” A sob cut him short. “I’d do anything for you,” he cried. “Anything.”

  Her eyes drooped. “You’re hurting my arm,” she said at last: then, when he loosed his grip, “I must get back to work. I’ll be late.”

  “No.” Tucking her arm under his, he began to walk her down the lane. “You don’t go till you’ve made up your mind.”

  Ignoring her protests, which grew more and more halfhearted, he took her briskly round a network of similar small lanes, until at last she confessed what was troubling her. She would come away with him, she said, she had always meant to, but the old old promise rankled still in her mind. It went against her conscience to live with him while he was married to Grace. As long as the idea was in prospect only, she could bear it, but to be confronted with it, to have it suddenly loom over her as a fact…

  Georgie threw his head up. “Is that all! We’ll soon settle that. You shall have a separate room, until I’m free from Grace.” He added, with a glint in his eyes, “You won’t have to wait long.”

  Ruth looked at him doubtfully. “Divorce takes a very long time.”

  Georgie showed his teeth in a grin. “This one won’t.”

  Ruth opened her mouth to answer, but thought better of it. Georgie’s face had an expression she had never seen on it before. This unexpected hardness and decision, the glint of cunning and secrecy in eyes that had always looked at her with transparent gentleness, disturbed her, yet something in her welcomed it. Her reaction was wholly feminine. She agreed to go away with Georgie, at the same time protesting that to have separate rooms would be more expensive, and they must save every penny.

  Georgie shouted so loudly at that that she gripped his arm and looked anxiously about.

  “Georgie! People will hear!”

  “You’re just like Grace,” he told her, but in a quieter voice. “She’s always saying ‘people will look,’ or ‘what will people say’.”

  “I’m not like Grace.” Angry tears came to her eyes.

  “Darling Ruth. Of course you’re not. That’s why I don’t like to hear you talk like her, even for a second. What I was going to say is, if you’re worrying about separate rooms being expensive, well—you can easily put that right. I didn’t ask for them.”

  The logic was invulnerable, but it did not help Ruth. Her features seemed to have gone small. She looked at a point in the gutter, a little way in front of them, where a child’s burst balloon lay, squalid and shrivelled.

  “It’s not very considerate, running off from the office and leaving them in the lurch.”

  “You’ll forfeit your week’s money. That’ll help to console them.”

  “We need the money. Can’t you wait till Saturday?”

  “I’ve told you, Thursday’s the day.”

  “Well then, can’t you go, and I’ll join you on Saturday?”

  “Now who’s being inconsiderate to the office? Wanting to leave and get your money? Darling—must we go over all this again? We settled it days ago.”

  She protested that he was driving her into a corner. He stopped, and shook her arm.

  “Ruth. Listen——”

  “I can’t. I’m late for work. Let me go.”

  She pulled her arm free, and ran. After a few steps, she turnéd, her face working.

  “I’ve told you. I’ll be there.”

  Georgie stood, looking after her. A deep, helpless sigh came from him. Women: how was one to understand them?

  Grace was cantankerous that evening. Apparently there was a lot of business going on in the back room. She hated Georgie to take any notice of her comings and goings: he was not supposed to know anything about this side of her life, and had found it best to pretend that it did not exist. The fiction was challenged that evening, when a client came at a later hour than usual. Grace had gone only a short time, and Georgie was tidying up in the shop, when he heard a coarse female voice screaming angrily. Arguments were not unusual on these occasions, but they were mostly low-toned and tearful, and in the passage by the back door. More than once Georgie had heard a woman’s voice raised in desperate appeal; Grace’s clients were all women, so far as he knew; but this loud outcry sounded like a prelude to violence. Remembering Grace’s so-called stepfather, Georgie took a few steps towards the passage, then stopped. Grace would not thank him for interfering. She’d call out all right, if she wanted help. His mouth twisted in a smile, as he realized that instinct had moved him to protect the woman whom he planned to destroy.

  The shouting grew louder. Grace had opened the door, and was showing her visitor out.

  “All right, you blood-sucker. I’ll learn you. You’ll be sorry….”

  “Get out. Or I’ll call my husband, to throw you out.”

  “What!
him! that poor bloody little runt….”

  A door banged viciously, muffling the stream of abuse to indistinctness. Georgie smiled again. He knew well enough the opinion held of him in the district: another of the injuries Grace had done him. Well, they would soon be quits.

  A good ten minutes passed before Grace appeared. She was humming to herself, and affecting unconcern, but he saw that she was white, and her hand was shaking as she picked up a cup. He turned his eye away quickly as hers caught it.

  “Anything the matter?” she asked aggressively.

  “Matter? No.”

  “The way you were staring, a person might have two heads.”

  “Two heads are better than one. Or so people say.”

  He did not look up, but could feel her glare.

  “Clever,” she said at last: and eased her feelings by banging and clattering the supper things.

  Georgie listened almost with pleasure. Only for one more night would he hear that familiar expression of Grace’s ill-temper.

  The next morning was leaden-paced and full of torment. It was an agony not to be with Ruth, not to know how she was feeling or be able to comfort her. Yet, with a new realism, Georgie saw that it was maybe just as well he could not be with her. In his presence she was bound to let all her misgivings come to the surface. Without him, she had to make the balance between the old life and the new, and decide, with faculties sharpened by his absence, where the least unhappiness lay. In fact, he might be anything but a comfort to her now. Once they were well away, things would be better. They must—or there would be no point in living. And when, later, they came back, to resume ownership of the shop, to do away with all the hateful changes Grace had brought, the shady deals, the Smithers and the Bernsteins, and restore the old happy state of things, the contented friendly customers, the smiling service, the warm glow of goodwill that had made the little shop a social centre, almost a sort of club—

  Yes, that was what must happen. That was how life should be. That was all that quiet people like Ruth and he wanted. Why should it be too much to ask for? Why should they not have it? Why should the Graces of this world have power to spoil it?

  So Georgie reasoned, with the part of his mind that was still working reasonably. The other part, which was concerned with the immediate barrier between the present and that ideal future, and the means to remove it, kept a dark furtive silence. It dared not look at what it had inflexibly resolved to do.

  Preoccupied with his designs, Georgie was in no mood to observe Grace’s state of mind: but she banged about the room so viciously, setting the table for lunch, that he looked up, startled, and caught a sideways glare, lurid with hate. Then at lunch, sudden and deadly, like a blow to the solar plexus, came disaster. Still unsuspicious of her grievance, he braced himself to endure. After slamming his plate before him, she sat down, picked up her knife and fork, then shot her head forward.

  “So that’s the way of it!”

  The jet of venom took him by surprise. This was something worse than usual. He blinked in genuine ignorance.

  “The way of what?”

  Her thin lips twisted into a sneer. She looked like a furious weasel.

  “Don’t try and come the innocent. You know damn well.” As he still stared, she spat out, “Carrying on when my back’s turned.”

  Dismay stopped his throat. He could not speak.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he managed at last.

  “Oh no! Oh no!” She dashed down her knife and fork, and her voice rose to a scream. “You and that soap-faced bitch that works in Crawford’s. I’ll——”

  The abuse of Ruth steadied him. He saw the overwhelming need to play Grace, to loosen her fingers from the hold they were seizing.

  “And when, may I ask, have I had time for carryings-on, as you call them?”

  “You admit it, then,” she yelled. “You admit you’ve been seeing her; feeding her with my money, you——”

  His prudence shrivelled in a blaze of rage.

  “Oh. The shop is in your name, is it? First I’ve heard of it.”

  It was a mad thing to say. Demented with rage, she picked up a glass to throw at him, but he had foreseen the attack, and was too quick for her. With a speed which half surprised himself he grabbed her wrist, and twisted it till the glass fell.

  “Sit down and control yourself.”

  His roughness silenced her screams. As soon as she got her breath she began to abuse him again, but with less fire, perfunctorily almost. In a rush of cold disgust he saw that, whatever protests she might make, violence was not distasteful to her, and that, if he had used it earlier in their marriage, things might have gone differently. But the corner of his mind that noted this was not influenced by it. His only concern was to ward off the danger to his plans.

  “Don’t be absurd,” he said, as soon as the tirade broke off. “I have met a young lady who works in Crawford’s——”

  “Lady! huh!”

  “—I don’t deny I’ve met her.”

  “You can’t, Mister Clever. You’ve been seen. More than once.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t I? D’you expect me to go mumping about the place with my mouth shut?”

  “Anyway,” Grace said viciously, picking up her knife and fork again, “you shan’t go again, mouth shut or no.

  Georgie eyed her hands.

  “Well,” he said, “I’ll be out of her way to-morrow, at Exeter.”

  A series of unprintable expressions exploded from a corner of Grace’s full mouth. For the hundredth time Georgie wondered where on earth she could have heard them.

  “You’re not going to Exeter,” she concluded, “so you needn’t think it.”

  Georgie cocked an eye at the far corner of the ceiling. A cobweb was waving faintly in the draught.

  “I should have thought that’s the one place I’d be safe.”

  “And have her go with you,” Grace said, pursuing her own thought. “No damn fear.”

  “I didn’t know Crawford’s had their half-day on a Thursday.”

  “Sarcastic.” She seized the mustard, and streaked a long vivid daub on her plate. “You think you’re too bloody clever, that’s what’s the matter with you. Among other things.”

  Suddenly, with an odious avidity, she began to taunt him with his shortcomings as a husband. The mixture of vulgarity and malice was so hideous that it all but made him retch. Looking at her with hatred, telling himself that she was vile and that nothing she said had value, he felt an unacknowledgeable fear begin to crawl like a cold worm in his heart. For all her stupidity, she knew where to hit him, how to make him writhe.

  “A fat lot of good you’d be to her, if she only knew. Or to any woman, you——”

  That’s a lie, you devil, you bitch, he thought, bracing himself, that’s a lie and I’ll prove it. Don’t be a fool, man. Pull yourself together. This is her last fling. Let her make the most of it.

  Putting forth all his will, he summoned a contempt which he felt must pierce even her crass front, then deliberately let his face relax. It wouldn’t do to enrage her any further. The point about his being safe out of range in Exeter had gone home, he could see that. Some time would have to pass before she would admit it, but, if he did nothing more to torment her, there was a chance she might give way. He sat silent, getting on with his food, not even looking at her.

  He did not see her again till much later in the afternoon, and realized at once that she had been drinking. Her speech was muddled, and she was inclined to be tearful.

  “I can’t trust you out of my sight. That’s the size of it. A nice thing, when a man can’t be trusted on an errand.”

  Georgie made no reply. She grumbled to herself, sucking in her cheeks. He welcomed the familiar signs of indecision.

  “I’ll go myself,” she said presently. “You can look after the shop.”

  “That’d be very silly,” Georgie said. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”

  “Eh?
” She focused her eyes on him. “What d’you mean?”

  “Why, if you’re right in what you think, you’ll be playing into my hands.”

  “Eh?”

  “That’ll suit me fine.”

  “What d’you mean, suit you fine?”

  “Why, the moment your back’s turned, I put up the shutters, go and meet the young lady you refer to, and spend the day with her. We might go for a river-trip——”

  “You’d never dare! I’d—I’d——”

  “Or, of course, I could bring her here. While you were safely out of the way. Maybe you’d prefer that”

  For all his control he winced, expecting her outburst. To his amazement, she was silent. She seemed to be speaking more to herself than to him. He did not dare look at her when at last she opened her mouth.

  “I don’t know what’s got into you. Really I don’t.”

  Likely enough, he thought. Soon you won’t know what’s got into you.

  Even so, the thought gave little satisfaction. However confident he might be of the ultimate success, Grace would seriously hamper his plans. The arrangement was that, after completing the job in Exeter, he should meet Ruth there, and they would go on together to a small seaside town on the borders of Devon and Dorset, where no one would be likely to trace them. Ruth was to book to a station just beyond Exeter, and Georgie would have with him two tickets from Exeter to the Dorset town.

  If Grace did not let him go, or delayed his trip, he could see no way of getting a message to Ruth. If Grace went herself to Exeter, he would be able to escape by simply shutting the shop; but it would mean a change in their plans, since there would then be no point in stopping at Exeter. They would have to run the risk of travelling by the same train, and perhaps being seen, so that their disappearances would be connected, and Grace might on some pretext or other set the police after them.

  Georgie did not reason very closely where the police were concerned. His early experience had led him to associate them with interference and humiliation; he set them always on the side of the pursuer. Even if his other secret plan worked, there would be plenty of time for Grace to complain to the police. And, whatever else happened, he and Ruth must lose whatever money the Exeter trip might yield.