Bargain Wife

by Mary Burchell

  ‘Is this,’ asked Tina dryly, ‘the “little talk” to which you referred the other day?’

  But he was evidently not going to allow any pulling of the chain.

  ‘God bless my soul, no, my dear! We shouldn’t have that over the telephone, you know. You’ve got such a lot to tell me. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone that.’ Her heart leapt with hope. But his next words dashed any sanguine thoughts. ‘I have to go up North on a story. I may not be back for a week or two, but I’ll look you up at the nursing-home when I do come back. You’ll be Mrs. Linton by then, won’t you?’

  She knew what that pleasant-toned inquiry meant. That he realised perfectly well she would have even more to lose by the time he really put the screw on.

  ‘How much do you want?’ she repeated abruptly, without replying to his other question.

  ‘Oh, I think a hundred would see me through nicely,’ he told her casually.

  A hundred? The impertinence of it! If she agreed to this demand, which was preposterous as a loan from a casual acquaintance, then she tacitly admitted that he had the grounds for blackmailing her. She would be admitting fear, and doubling his power. He had arranged it all with superb cunning,

  And yet if she didn’t agree—

  ‘I suppose you don’t want it as a cheque?’ she said.

  ‘No, no.’ He laughed. ‘Cheques can be terribly inconvenient things. Cash—not too large amounts. And you might meet me with it tomorrow at King’s Cross. I’m catching the two-fifteen. Be there at two near the departure indicator.’

  The cool effrontery with which he gave his orders nearly made her smash down the receiver there and then. Instead she said between tight lips:

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  ‘Good girl!’

  Tina felt in that moment that she hated him almost more for his insolence than the danger he represented. But she was powerless to exercise either anger or hate.

  ‘Is that all?’ she asked curtly.

  ‘Yes, that’s all.’

  She thought he added some laughing remark to that, but she didn’t wait to hear it, and she was ringing off before he had completed his sentence.

  And now she must go back and face Charles, with her mind in a whirl and her head aching with the strain of fear and anger that had been put upon her. He would be sure to ask some question about the call and what was she to say?

  No inspiration came to her as she made her way slowly back. And it was not until Charles’ casual, ‘Well, what did our Canadian want?’ gave nervous stimulation to her invention that she felt something click into place, and heard herself answering quite calmly:

  ‘Oh, he was stuck for the address of someone he wanted to get in touch with in the States. He thought I might know it. Someone who used to come to the club quite a lot.’

  ‘And could you give it to him?’

  ‘No,’ she said coolly, ‘I didn’t know it.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ He grinned at her.

  ‘Are you?’ she said in some surprise. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I should hate to think you were able to oblige him in any way,’ Charles told her.

  ‘Oh!’ She managed to laugh at that. But she wondered what Charles would have said if he had known in what way she was going to have to oblige Philip Collier. ‘He doesn’t matter, in any case,’ she said, with an impatient sigh.

  ‘Yes, he does.’ Charles got up from the settee where he had still been lounging. ‘He’s taken nearly all the time I had, confound the fellow! He and those stupid girls between them. My dear, I only had about half an hour. I meant to tell you before, but we were talking of something else.’

  Something else! Yes, indeed they had been talking of something else. And now, thanks to Collier, the magic moment had gone. One couldn’t go back to a discussion like that. It only came unexpectedly and of its own accord on rare occasions. If that thrice-cursed telephone call had not come just when it did, Charles might have said so much so much of the way their relationship had changed. He had been going to. He had meant to put something into words which had not been said between them before. Now it might never be said. Because, with the ever-present menace of Collier not far away, life could crash at any moment.

  Charles was reaching for his coat, which he had flung over the back of a chair, and now he was shrugging himself into it, talking to her all the time absolutely unaware that she was still wondering desperately if there were any way of recapturing the moment that had fled.

  ‘Can you manage dinner tomorrow, Sonia?’ (How she hated that name particularly from him!) ‘Lateish. Say quarter-past eight. Earle wants us both to join him then if we can. I can manage it, so long as neither of you mind waiting until then.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ She had recovered entirely now, and smiled at him. ‘I’d like to see Earle. Where does he want us to meet?’

  He named a nearby hotel. ‘If you get there about eight, I’ll be along the first moment I can.’ He bent his head to give her a hasty and perhaps rather perfunctory kiss. He was himself again busy, good-tempered, but without much time for the purely romantic.

  She let him go, with a casual little kiss in her turn. No need to embarrass them both by a display of feeling he was not willing to second.

  When he had gone she went slowly to her room. The idea had come to her once again as it had in the early days—that perhaps the only (though desperate) solution to the whole problem was for her to slip away, and try to arrange that none of the actors in this drama should ever see her again.

  She would have to leave some sort of explanation for Charles, of course one of those silly notes of explanation that the heroines of fiction always seemed to leave behind them.

  But how much could she explain—and how much leave untold? And what would Charles’ position be then? Suppose it created some dispute about his title to the money? That would mean the end of his cherished nursing-home idea, and he would find himself personally responsible for a great deal of expense which had already been incurred.

  A restless and unhappy night did nothing to help her make up her mind, and she went to her rendezvous with Philip Collier next day with her thoughts as confused as they were unhappy.

  It was unexpectedly cold, and as she was early she had the added misery of waiting about in the chilly and dreary approach to the station, before going to take up her stand by the indicator. Just as she had decided to go, someone beside her exclaimed:

  ‘Hello, Miss Frayne! How odd that we should meet again like this.’

  And, turning reluctantly. Tina found herself meeting the smiling, curious gaze of Eileen Unsworth.

  There was no one in London whom she could have seen with less pleasure at that moment, but there was nothing to do about it but accept the situation with as good a grace as possible.

  She returned Eileen’s greeting as cordially as she could manage, and said something conventional about being surprised that she was off duty again so soon.

  ‘Oh, but I’m having two or three days’ break, you know,’ Eileen explained. ‘I’ve really finished up at the hospital and am not due to start at the nursing-home until the end of the week.’

  ‘I see.’ Then the whole thing was already arranged. It would have been useless to make any protest to Charles yesterday, even if she could have thought of one to make.

  She remembered now how completely they had been sidetracked from the question. She must accept things as they were. And again Eileen seemed only a small irritant compared with the menace of Philip Collier.

  But she was a rather dreadfully knowing irritant! And Tina realised with dismay that the place where she was to meet Collier was plainly visible from where she and Eileen were standing. Already she could see him approaching, looking round among the crowd as though he expected her to be punctual.

  ‘I’m seeing someone off on the two-fifteen,’ she explained quickly. ‘I must go, I’m afraid.’

  Eileen said goodbye immediately, but as Tina left her, she had the distinct impr
ession that Eileen didn’t turn away at once. That she watched, in fact, surreptitiously but effectually, to see whom Tina was meeting.

  It was ridiculous to mind, of course. The girl was nothing more than uncharitably curious, and there was not the slightest reason in the world why she shouldn’t see Tina greet some male acquaintance.

  But the habit of fear, Tina had already discovered, was one that grew with dreadful rapidity. And as she came up to Philip Collier, she felt that there was danger behind as well as in front.

  He grinned as soon as he set eyes on her, and Tina found herself hoping that it was not obvious to Eileen, if she were , still watching, how familiar and confident that grin was.

  ‘Good girl! You’re just on time. I thought for a moment that you were going to be late, or even that you weren’t coming. And that would have been just too bad for one of us.’

  Tina said nothing. There was really nothing to say. And after a moment he went on:

  ‘Have you got that letter you were going to have for me?’

  Without a word she produced the thick envelope from her handbag, and with hardly a glance at it, he took it and thrust it into his breast-pocket. Evidently he was sure enough of his hold on her not to have any fears that she would try to cheat him.

  ‘Well, I won’t stay. My train is already in. Let me give you my good wishes on the approaching marriage and, as I said, I’ll look you up some time soon when you’re Mrs. Linton.’

  She spoke then coldly and on the impulse of the moment.

  ‘There may not be a wedding but that’s hardly your business.’

  She was not quite sure why she said that. Whether it was an expression of the confusion and doubt in her own mind as to what she should do, or whether it was for the sheer satisfaction of seeing something like dismay on his hated face.

  ‘Not be a wedding? Don’t be a fool,’ he said roughly ‘Why shouldn’t there be a wedding?’

  ‘If I decided not to not to involve Charles in this—’she began. But he laughed in an unpleasant but relieved way.

  Don’t tell me any of that stuff. I’ve watched you when you’re with him, and you’re not going to give up your glamour-doc without a struggle, believe me! He mayn’t be specially sweet on you, but there’s not much you aren’t prepared to do to keep him. I don’t blame you, my dear. He’s the kind the women always like. If you don’t grab him, someone else’ll be mighty pleased to get him. I bet half his nurses think they’re in love with him, and some of the patients too.’ And Collier laughed contemptuously.

  ‘I think you’re loathsome,’ Tina said with a sort of despairing hate. But there was no real satisfaction in saying that sort of thing, of course, and it seemed to her that his mocking laughter followed her all the way out of the station.

  It was impossible to go straight back to her hotel and sit in ghastly inaction while her thoughts tormented her.

  And it would be very little better to be seized upon by Audrey and have her thoughts distracted by trifles, while all the time the heavy weight of her unsolved problem pressed upon her mind.

  Suppose she told Charles when she saw him tonight? Waited until their dinner with Earle was over, of course, and then confessed to him on the way home. Wouldn’t it be worth almost anything to be free from the pressure of her growing fear of Collier?

  For a moment the idea of being able to defy Collier of not having to dread his return to London, his next telephone call, his next demand seemed to her the most heavenly thing that could happen, and worth almost any sacrifice.

  But the next moment she faced the thought that she would lose Charles. Unquestionably she would lose him.

  One had to love someone a very great deal to forgive the tangle of cheating of which she had been guilty. And he didn’t love her a very great deal. That was the crux of the matter. He liked her, thought well of her (since he didn’t know the truth), and was distinctly fond of her in a smiling light-hearted way. But that wasn’t enough. Oh, not nearly enough.

  And what that odious man had said was true. There would be many other women ‘mighty pleased to get him.’ He wouldn’t need to suffer any heartbreak over a cheap little fraud whom he had mistakenly thought charming. Now that he’d begun to think about women in the marrying sense, instead of just something amusing and charming in between periods of hard work, he would turn fairly easily to someone else.

  ‘It’s unspeakably small-minded to let a thought like that affect my decision,’ thought Tina wretchedly, ‘but it does it does! I can’t bear the thought of him with someone else. With Eileen or oh, anyone.’

  And yet, if that were the best thing for him, perhaps one could do it. Loving a person meant wanting the best thing for them, and could she pretend that, considering everything, she was the best woman for Charles?

  ‘I could do everything, I think, except the actual telling,’ Tina thought with a shiver. ‘How could I face him and see astonishment and contempt growing in his face? Besides, I’ve never seen Charles angry yet, and I think it can’t be very nice to do so. Especially if one is the cause of it oneself.’

  She was no nearer any real decision by the time she went out that evening, but at lease she had established it as a possibility in her own mind that she would tell Charles everything tonight.

  He had not yet come when she arrived at the hotel, and as Earle came forward smilingly to greet her, she could not help thinking of that other time not so long ago when the roles were reversed. When she and Charles had waited for Earle, and she had begun to get to know her so-called cousin for the first time.

  Earle was in very good spirits and greeted her with:

  ‘Hello! Well, what does it feel like to be nearly a married woman?’

  ‘Earle, I’m not sure that sounds quite respectable,’ she said with a smile. ‘But it feels very nice in any case.’

  ‘I’m glad.’ He settled her comfortably on a settee in the lounge and ordered drinks for them. ‘So you’ve decided to wash out those unkind little criticisms you used to make about friend Charles?’ And he grinned at her teasingly.

  ‘Used I to criticise him?’ She sipped her gin and tonic, and relaxed for the first time that day. Earle was such soothing, good-natured company and he had no vital part in this tragic problem of hers. One could just be comfortable with him and enjoy his nonsense.

  ‘Criticise? Say, what do you call it when a girl accuses a man of blowing his own trumpet too much, of being a mercenary fellow, and of not being very tolerant?’

  ‘Did I really say all that about Charles?’

  ‘At one time or another,’ Earle assured her with enjoyment.

  ‘Well, I take it back now.’ Tina smiled. ‘I think—’ She hesitated, and then said with a little sigh, ‘I think he’s a darling, and that any woman who gets him is lucky.’

  ‘Yourself, in fact,’ Earle said.

  ‘Yes,’ Tina agreed slowly, ‘myself.’

  There was a slight pause, and then, rather as though he sensed she needed some sort of reassurance, he said:

  ‘Well, no one deserved the luck more, my dear. You are the ideal match for Charles.’

  ‘I am? Do you think so?’ She flushed slightly, extremely gratified by the remark and forgetting that surprise on her part must seem somewhat out of place.

  ‘Why, surely!’ Earle laughed. ‘Did you doubt it?’

  ‘No not in a way, of course. That is I think—I hope we shall be happy together. But sometimes I don’t want to sound too Victorian and doormat-ish but sometimes I wonder if I’m good enough for him.’

  ‘Then don’t wonder a moment longer,’ Earle assured her warmly. ‘I see a great difference in Charles since he knew you and it’s all to the good. A man doesn’t change that particular way unless he’s darned happy. And I for one think Charles has found his happiness all right.’

  ‘Earle, you do say the nicest things.’ She smiled at him. ‘And sometimes you really mean them, don’t you?’ she added mischievously.

  ‘Mean them? I always mea
n every word I say,’ he declared with a grin.

  ‘You do not. You say just the nicest things that come into your head because you simply can’t help trying to make the next person feel good.’

  ‘Sounds a bit simple-minded, put that way.’

  ‘Oh no. It’s very comforting sometimes, Earle.’

  ‘Well, you shouldn’t need comforting,’ he protested. ‘Not at this junction. But anyway, I meant what I said about you and Charles. It’s not just my own observation, either. He said as much himself.’

  ‘Said as much as what?’ She sat up very straight suddenly, the flush much deeper this time.

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ He grinned again.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh, we were talking a few nights ago—the way one does very occasionally, you know,’ he explained vaguely. ‘And Charles said, “It’s strange to find suddenly that so much of one’s happiness depends upon one person.”

  ‘He said that!’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘And he meant me?’

  ‘We-ell, I should say so,’ drawled Earle amusedly. ‘Who else could he mean, I should like to know? He said also that it was a little alarming to find oneself in that state.’

  ‘Oh dear Charles!’ She laughed. ‘How silly of him!’

  ‘Very silly, I should say,’ agreed Earle comfortably. ‘I should imagine his happiness would be remarkably safe in your hands.’

  She didn’t answer that, because she was suddenly remembering by what a slender thread her own happiness hung, and that, in view of what Earle said, Charles’ happiness, too, could not be so secure.

  What would it mean to him now if she insisted on telling him that she had lied and cheated and taken his money? That was what it amounted to, if one liked to be ruthless about it. It would be the most terrible disillusionment, the most cynical shock.

  She must not let him know, if she could help it. She must take up the burden of her secret again and carry on somehow, even if it meant living for heaven knew how long under the menace of Philip Collier’s demands.