Nothing Venture

by Patricia Wentworth

  Having settled this to her satisfaction, Nan got out of the bus. If she was going to dine at the Luxe with Mr Ferdinand Fazackerley in a clawhammer, it was quite certain that she must buy herself a dress for the occasion, and she knew just what dress she was going to buy. Cynthia had not been married without a modest trousseau. To buy pretty frocks for Cynthia had been balm to Nan’s own heartache. She had bought for Cynthia, and had resisted the tempetation to buy for herself; but there had been one temptation which it had been very difficult to resist. She had got as far as trying the pretty filmy thing on. It had given her a delicious sense of being somebody else, someone who hadn’t a care in the world.

  She opened the door of the shop. Suppose it was gone..… The pleasant dark girl who had been so interested in Cynthia came forward.

  Nan had a sudden brilliant idea.

  “May I telephone?”

  “Oh, certainly.”

  She gave Mr Page’s number, and then had a nervous reaction. Suppose Villiers didn’t answer the telephone. Mr Watson must be back from his holiday. Suppose it was he who answered. It was so difficult to realize that Mr Watson no longer mattered. She heard the click of the receiver, and the voice of Miss Villiers.

  “Hello!”

  Nan felt a difficulty about giving her name. She said quickly,

  “Oh, Villiers—don’t tell anyone I rang up. I only wanted to know if Mr Weare had arrived.”

  “Just come, dear.…. Yes, that’s all right.”

  “Oh, thank you!” said Nan. A feeling of happy relief bubbled up in her. Even to her own ears her voice sounded warm and soft. She hoped it didn’t sound like that to Villiers.

  She rang off and turned to the now all-absorbing question of the grey dress.

  Grey—any dull thing can be grey—hodden grey, field grey—grey sky, grey water, grey cloud. There ought to be a different word to give to beautiful things. Nan’s dress was beautiful, and it had that last subtlest quality of beauty—it made her feel beautiful too.

  She put it on and looked, half frightened, at her own reflection.

  “I’m going to rather a special party tonight,” she said to the nice dark girl.

  The nice dark girl smiled.

  “Well, you couldn’t have anything that suited you better,” she said.

  Nan looked at herself rather solemnly. The dress gave her a slim elegance. There was just a hint of silver about it. She must have silver shoes to go with it, and she must have her hair cut and waved.

  She bought the dress, and the coat that went with it, heard the amount of the bill without a tremor, and wrote her first cheque on the account which Mr Page had opened in her name. It was not only the first cheque on the new account, it was also the first cheque she had ever written. The dress wasn’t a dress at all; it was a symbol. It meant that she was Nan Weare, and not Nan Forsyth any more. It stood for a plunge into the unknown.

  This was all rather solemn; but under the solemnity there were little warm currents of excitement and anticipation. Would Jervis like the dress? Would he like her?

  At half past seven she was ready and waiting. Her hair had been cut and done in loose waves. It was so becoming that she had arranged then and there to have it permanently waved next day. She had silver shoes. Her dress was like a silver mist. It darkened her eyes and hair, and brought out the fine quality of her skin. The excitement put a rose in each cheek. She knelt in front of the low dressing-table to see her head in the very small mirror, and then mounted insecurely upon the bed to catch a glimpse of her silver feet. She practised a dance-step, and then stopped for fear of getting hot. It would be dreadful if the wave didn’t last through the evening. She wondered if they would dance. No, of course they wouldn’t. It would be marvellous to dance with Jervis.

  She looked at her watch. Twenty to eight. She made up her mind to sit quite still and peaceful. Jervis would probably allow a quarter of an hour to get to the Luxe. He ought really to allow a little longer—you simply couldn’t count on not getting into a traffic block.

  The church of St Tryphenius round the corner in Lasham Street chimed three times for a quarter to eight. Nan jumped up and went to the window. The entrance to the house was in Lasham Street, but her window looked into a narrow alley called Cutting’s Way. Taxis sometimes used it to avoid the corner where Lasham Street ran into the main road.

  A boy went past on a bicycle. Three or four foot-passengers followed him. A cart went slowly and noisily by.

  It was ten minutes to eight.

  Nan ran down into the hall. It was narrow and dark, and it smelt strongly of the kippers which the Warren family had been having for tea. She opened the door, went out on to the step, and stood looking up and down the street. Something was beginning to say horrible things to her in a whisper. The whisper came from deep down in her own consciousness. She couldn’t really hear what it was saying; she only knew that it was something horrible. She stood on the step in her grey coat and her grey dress; and suddenly they were grey, not silver any more, and a shadow which she could not see came over the face of the sky and darkened her heart. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it. Everything in her darkened and shrank.

  She watched a dozen cars go by. Not one of them stopped. A girl and a man came out of No. 31 and walked away arm in arm. The thing that was whispering to Nan came nearer and spoke louder, “Jervis—they’ve got him. He wouldn’t take your warning. He wouldn’t believe you—they’ve got him.” It got louder and louder. The words rang in her ears, clanging and echoing back upon themselves. The clock of St. Tryphenius whirred, groaned, chimed four times for the hour, and began to strike eight.

  XI

  The last stroke of eight died away and left Nan shivering. She couldn’t go on standing here on the doorstep. She must do something, but she didn’t know what.

  She moved, and just as if her movement had broken into a set pause, a car turned out of Cutting’s Way and drew up at the kerb. Jervis jumped out, and at the sight of him Nan knew how frightened she had been.

  “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. I’m frightfully late, but I had to go back—”

  She said something—she had no idea of what it was—and then they were in the taxi, and she was staring out of the window and trying to quiet the beating of her heart. Just for an instant she caught sight of the edge of a bandage where his left cuff slipped back. She was ready to swear that it had not been there this afternoon.

  She got herself quiet, and turned round on him.

  “What made you so late? I thought something had happened.”

  “Well, something did happen.” She took a breath. “My tie wouldn’t tie.”

  Nan looked at the tie. It had a very ordinary appearance. Her eyes, suddenly bright, gave him the lie.

  “What has been happening?”

  “Happening?” His eyes met hers with a hint of distance and a hint of mockery.

  “Yes.”

  The distance went; the mockery remained.

  “First new bulletin, copyright reserved?”

  “Yes.”

  “Barometric pressure—” said Jervis.

  “Is your wrist broken?”

  “Certainly not. Why should it be?”

  “Barometric pressure,” suggested Nan.

  “Nothing so original.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “How did you hurt your wrist?”

  Jervis leaned back into his corner of the taxi.

  “You might say I had bumped it up against a coincidence.”

  “What sort of coincidence?” said Nan in a whisper.

  She too leaned back. If she were too near him now, he might see or feel what she was feeling. She leaned back, but she could not take her eyes from his.

  “A very neat one,” said Jervis—“very neat and pat. You warn me against a villain in a taxi. I proceed to old Page’s by tube—not, I’m afraid, on account of the warning, but because our agreeable conversation
didn’t leave me time to walk. I see Page. I walk uneventfully to Carrington Square and put on my best clawhammer. I then stroll across the square to the cab-rack, and just as I’m turning the corner a car swerves to avoid a dog and sends me spinning. If I hadn’t seen him out of the tail of my eye and jumped for it, I’m afraid you’d have had to dine tête-à-tête with F.F.”

  “Are you hurt?” said Nan quickly and irrepressibly.

  “The clawhammer is a wreck. That’s what made me late. I had to fall back on my reserve, which won’t really stand daylight.”

  “Your arm—” said Nan.

  “A messy cut, efficiently bandaged by Jenks, who would be perfectly happy if I would arrange to have a minor accident once or twice a week to keep his hand in. He was a great performer with a first field dressing during the war, and complains that he’s getting rusty. He buttles rather under protest.”

  Nan swept Jenks away with an impulsive movement.

  “Did you see the driver of the car that knocked you over?”

  “I did not,” said Jervis. “I saw nothing except a lot of very fine coloured stars, and when I stopped seeing them, there was no driver to see.”

  “He didn’t wait?”

  “He did not.”

  “And you call that a coincidence!” There was a fine scorn in her voice.

  “I think we will both call it a coincidence,” said Jervis. His tone was light, cool, and even.

  Nan took a breath and sat back. She felt easily, coolly, airily put in her place. Her place was a long way off. It certainly didn’t entitle her to make suggestions about Miss Carew and Mr Leonard.

  By the time they reached the Luxe she had herself in hand. Jervis talked pleasantly and lightly all the way; she had only to sit in her corner and listen.

  Mr Ferdinand Fazackerley was waiting for them in the lounge. He looked very odd in evening dress. The clawhammer was not only an archaic model, but it looked as if he had made a habit of sleeping in it for years. His white tie was an obvious jemima. Beneath the electric light his hair was like a newly scraped carrot. His bright darting eyes welcomed Nan, and dwelt affectionately on Jervis. A prolonged handshaking attested his enthusiasm.

  “This is great!” he said, and went on saying it at intervals whist he piloted them to a reserved table in the famous Gold Room.

  He had an eager, affectionate manner that was pure balm to Nan. For the first time, she could see herself as Jervis’ wife. F.F.’s admiring gaze approved her. It darted from her to Jervis, and told Jervis that he was a lucky man. It came back to Nan with a twinkling appreciation of just how delightful a thing it must be to be Jervis’ wife.

  “If you folks aren’t hungry, you can go home. My last meal is way back so far that I’ve lost touch with it so to speak. I’m going right through this menu—and I won’t say that I mightn’t have a second helping here and there, just to fill up the corners. I’ve felt hungrier, but I’ve never felt greedier. It’s a good menu.” He skidded off into the story of how he once walked from Vienna to Berlin without a cent.

  Nan enjoyed her dinner very much. With her first mouthful of food she realized that, like Ferdinand, she had rather lost touch with her last meal—it had not been much of a meal either. When you are tired and unhappy, you are apt not to notice how little you are eating—and Mrs Warren’s cooking was not calculated to tempt a halting appetite. It was rather like a dream to be wearing a pretty frock and dining at the Luxe. In a dream there is no past and no future. She gave herself up to the dream, and a reviving tide of happiness rose in her and blotted out everything except the present.

  She watched a new Jervis. She had never seen just that amused sparkle in his eyes or heard that warm, bantering note in his voice. She listened in a smiling silence whilst they capped stories and reminded one another of ridiculous or strenuous adventures shared. She learned by piecing scraps of their talk together that they had knocked about Europe and the Near East for the best part of a year in one another’s company.

  “I was doing hot articles on Great Men’s Hats, and Politicians’ Pyjamas, and Brigands’ Boots—that’s where we bumped up against it in Anatolia—and What Criminals Like for Breakfast. Now what do you suppose the biggest rip of the lot began the day on? You don’t know—you can’t guess? No—I’ll bet my life you can’t! Bread and milk—in a bowl with pink rosebuds round the edge. I tell you, I sat there and saw him putting it away—but you needn’t believe me if you don’t want to.”

  “You were writing articles. And what was Jervis doing?” said Nan. In this pleasant dream it was quite easy to say Jervis. It warmed and comforted her to say his name like that, as if it were her daily, familiar use.

  “What was Jervis doing?” Her colour rose and her eyes shone as she said it.

  “Jervis was mending a hole in his head,” said Ferdinand Fazackerley.

  Was it fancy, or did he hold her eyes with his for a moment? She repeated his words mechanically.

  “A hole in his head?”

  With a wrenching sensation she looked away and saw Jervis frowning.

  “I’d had a fall,” he said. “I came down on some slippery rocks and broke my head. I was just down from Oxford, so I got a year’s holiday and went racketing round with F.F. He picked me up just as the tide was going to finish me off, and has stuck to me like a burr ever since.”

  “Do burrs pick people up?” said Nan. “I thought it was the other way around.” She laughed to cover the faint tremor in her voice, and was aware of Ferdinand Fazackerley’s eyes upon her.

  “Mrs Weare, don’t you take any notice of him. He’s no hand at telling a yarn, and I’m a whale at it. Besides, he was dead to the world, and if the tide had drowned him, he wouldn’t have known a thing about it. No—if you want the goods, I’m your man.” His restless, curious eyes thrust questions at her: “Am I going to tell this story? Do you want me to tell it? If not—why not? Yes—why, why, why?” The high light in the brown eyes was like a bright elusive question mark.

  Jervis’ voice broke in on them.

  “There’s nothing to tell. F.F.’s a professional yarn-spinner.”

  “Don’t you want the story, Mrs Weare—exclusive tale of eye-witness? Or—do you know it already?”

  Panic knocked at Nan’s heart.

  She said, “Please tell me,” and heard her voice hurry and stumble. He couldn’t know—he couldn’t know anything. And if he did—no, he couldn’t—she couldn’t face it—not here, not now, with Jervis looking at her. No, he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking with a half-frowning tolerance at F.F.; and F.F. was saying,

  “Don’t look so scared—he got out of it all right, thanks to the pluckiest kid I’ve ever run across.” He flung round on Jervis. “Did you ever find out who she was?”

  Jervis said, “No.”

  Nan leaned forward with her elbows on the table and her chin in her cupped hands. The movement was purely instinctive. Her heart was beating and her lips trembling. She pressed hard with one of her fingers against the corner of her mouth.

  “Well then, Mrs Weare, you shall hear the story.”

  “It won’t interest her,” said Jervis.

  “Mrs Weare—you hear him. What do you say to that?”

  Nan lifted her chin for a moment.

  “Oh, please tell me,” she said quite steadily. Her grey eyes were dark. They met F.F.’s dancing question marks with a certain soft dignity.

  He knew—he knew her—and he knew that Jervis didn’t know.

  She dropped her chin on her hand again, and waited for what he was going to do with his knowledge.

  “You shall have the exclusive story. If Jervis don’t want to listen to it, he can light out and leave us to it. Now, let me see..… nine—ten—it’ll be ten years ago. Yes, exactly ten, because it was August and I’d gone down to Croyston—well, I can’t remember just why I had gone down, but there I was, and being there, I went for a hike along the beach and as near as possible got cut off by the tide round Croyde Head.”
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br />   “How many thousand words does this run to, F.F.?” said Jervis.

  Mr Fazackerley took no notice.

  “I was scrambling along pretty high up, when I saw something that gave me a jolt. You don’t expect to see heads lying about on a British beach—and there, about a hundred yards away on the edge of a pool, was a gruesome looking head with a grey face and black hair and bloodstains all complete. Well, it gave me a jolt, and by the time my brain got to work on the probability that the head had got a body attached to it, and that the body wanted yanking out of that pool p.d.q., there wasn’t much time to waste. The tide had fairly got going, and was coming in with nasty greenish rollers one on top of the other. I did a record over that hundred yards of beach, and I didn’t get there any too soon. And when I did get there, I got another jolt and a much bigger one. The head was lying clear of the water, but only just, and the reason that it was clear was because there was a girl crouched down in the pool propping it up. She’d got her shoulders under his shoulders. The water helped with the weight, or she couldn’t have done it, but every time a wave flooded the pool it came over her, and every time it ebbed she had to brace herself against the cutting edge of the rock to save him from being sucked down into the pool. The last wave broke clean over her head, and the return of it cut her arm to the bone against the rock. I should say she’d a scar there she’d never lose. And all she said when I pulled her out was, ‘Is he alive?’ Well—can you beat it?”

  The scar was on Nan’s left arm, three inches below the elbow. She moved naturally as F.F.’s bright eyes swept her face. The movement took her back, turned her towards Jervis, dropped her hands into her lap, and hid the small white scar against the cloudy grey of her frock. She caught a queer remembering look on Jervis’ face.