Sue for Mercy

by Veronica Heley

  His hand was cool in mine, tonight. A movement from the next bed caught my eye, and I glanced up to see the girl visiting there was in tears.

  “Industrial injury,” explained Charles. “They hoped they wouldn’t have to amputate, but it doesn’t look as if he’s going to get away with it.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said, clasping his hand as if to make sure nobody whipped him away to operate while I was there.

  “Yes,” said Charles, watching my face in a way I couldn’t interpret. The bell for the end of Visiting Hour rang, and the girl next door flung her arms round her boyfriend, sobbing. I met Charles’ eye, and coloured up. The urge to bend over and kiss him was strong, but I made myself step away as I stood up. Did his face betray disappointment? Had he pulled — just slightly — on my hand as I rose?

  I hesitated. “That first day why did you send me to Mrs. Burroughs’s to look for your shaving things, when you knew they weren’t there?”

  “I was confused,” he said, looking innocent. “The knock on my head — I didn’t know how much or how little I could say to you.”

  “And your luggage? Why did you tell me not to come again, but forgot to ask for my address?”

  “You know perfectly well why. I wanted you to have an excuse to come back.”

  I had suspected it, but hadn’t allowed myself to believe in it. I turned and walked out of the ward without another word, on the heels of the girl from the next bed. She was crying. I felt immensely sorry for her, and offered her a lift home. She lived the other side of town, but I didn’t mind, I was feeling so elated.

  “Do you go every night?” I asked idly. “It’s a long way.”

  “Every night that I can. He just sits there watching the door if I don’t go; even when he knows that I can’t possibly make it. Like your chap did last night.”

  “Did he?” I couldn’t have been more gratified. “But he had another visitor last night.”

  “Three. The first two didn’t stay long. They were more like business acquaintances, if you know what I mean. He had longish fair hair — fairer than your chap’s, and was very tall, and thin with dark glasses. He brought some clothes in a bag, talked a while, and then left. His wife was odd, though. She didn’t say a word all the time they were there — just sat there smiling at nothing. She was wearing a super trouser suit.”

  “Was she wearing a red scarf?”

  “No. Do you know them?”

  “I don’t think so. Did the man limp?”

  “No, but I thought he was hiding a black eye behind those glasses. Did your chap give it to him? I thought they acted a bit cool. But the other fellow who came was ever so nice; he gave my Tom some cigarettes and wanted to fetch some beer in for us all, but of course Sister wouldn’t have allowed that.”

  I had no difficulty in identifying Mr. Bessiter as the second visitor.

  “Your man still looked for you, though. All the time the second chap was talking — and he hardly stopped — your man was checking to see who came in, every time the door opened. Tom said he knew just how he was feeling, and we were ever so glad to see you come again tonight.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” I said. The news was worth the inconvenience of giving her a lift.

  *

  By the time I got Charles home, he was shivering. A big man, he was half a head taller than me; I’m well built with it, and he was far too thin.

  “Where’s your overcoat?” I asked, for he wasn’t wearing one.

  “I left it at Whitestones. That’s how J.B. knew I was in trouble. He knew I might walk out on him, but I wouldn’t go off without my overcoat in this weather.”

  I’d unpacked for him. He didn’t have many clothes, and hardly any personal effects; no photographs, old theatre bills, bank statements or letters. Just a few receipted bills from his garage. He didn’t even blink at the barely furnished room, but expressed himself more than satisfied. I thought of the meagre bed coverings, and wondered how he’d manage at night, if he felt the cold.

  “Have a cup of coffee on me to start with?” I said, and showed him across the landing into my flat, which was warm and well-furnished. I’d gone without a holiday the previous year in order to lay down a good quality yellow carpet from wall to wall, I’d put up new curtains to match, and covered the bed-settee and armchairs in, gay-patterned material. He liked it, I could tell. He wandered around, fingering things, taking books out of place, glancing through them, and putting them back, shifting things. I laughed aloud, thinking of my mother’s dictum that men were perfectly all right in the abstract, but when they were underfoot, they were inclined to make nuisances of themselves.

  “Yes?” he asked, and then, seriously, “It’s only a very slight risk, you know. They don’t need to see me again until J.B. gets back.”

  I very nearly told him that I thought he was worth more than a slight risk, but offered coffee instead. He sat down, switched on the telly, and asked if I’d get him a Financial Times when I went shopping. He’d moved in.

  He hardly moved from my best armchair all day, except when I dragged him out for a short walk in the afternoon. He made no attempt to return to his own room, and I certainly wasn’t pushing him out. I cooked, he washed up as to the manner born, we chatted of this and that, I sewed a button on his shirt, and he cleaned my shoes. I found myself singing, twice.

  Then Rita came in to borrow some mugs for a party they were having that night in the ground floor flat, and for a moment I thought I’d lost him. Rita had long legs, a model figure, false eyelashes and although she had plenty of money, didn’t appear to hold any job for long. I didn’t like her, and she usually ignored me unless she wanted something. This time she saw Charles and wanted him to appear at her party. He declined, saying he was only just out of hospital and couldn’t manage the stairs. She said he could put his arm round her shoulders and she’d help him down, and as she said it, she wiggled her hips suggestively.

  “Broken collarbone,” said Charles, not moving. “But why don’t you go, Sue? No need for you to stay to look after me.”

  That wasn’t what Rita had had in mind at all. I put her out of her misery, saying I wanted an early night, and as she left Charles treated me to a grin to show that he was pleased that I’d refused.

  “That type bores me,” he explained, adjusting the picture on the television set. I wondered exactly how much wool it would take to knit him a sweater.

  *

  I woke with a start, and sat upright, shivering. It was two o’clock of a dark winter’s night, and very cold. I pulled the bedclothes around me, and wondered how Charles was faring.

  “No!” There it came again, that cry. I switched on my light, and listened. Another few minutes and I thought I must have been mistaken. Then it came again; a cry of protest, or possibly of despair.

  I slipped across the landing and knocked on Charles’ door. The big house lay quiet below — even the party in Rita’s flat had subsided to a grumble. Charles hadn’t locked the door. I slipped in. He had left the reading lamp on, with a shirt thrown across it to dim the light. He was in the grip of a nightmare, with half the bedclothes on the floor. He was turning his head from side to side, obviously in pain. He wasn’t wearing pyjamas, and now I could see exactly how much strapping they had needed to hold broken and cracked bones into place. Sweat stood out on his forehead, in spite of the cold.

  I caught his hand and spoke his name. He started awake, breathing shallowly. I held his hand until I was sure he was fully out of his nightmare, and when I released it, he put it to his forehead. I guessed at a headache. I pulled the bedclothes up over him; he’d put a couple of sweaters on top of the clothes, but he was by no means warm. At this rate he’d get pneumonia and end back in hospital.

  “Aspirins?” I asked. “You’ve got some painkillers from the hospital?”

  He shook his head, screwing up his eyes.

  “I’ve got some,” I said, and made my way back to my room. I lit the gas-fire and thought I’d bett
er light his, too. He’d probably been reliving the experiences of the previous weekend in his nightmare. When I turned round, he was in the doorway, a short towelling bathrobe round him, blinking.

  “I’ll sit up for a while,” he said. “I don’t want another nightmare like that.”

  I watched him take the aspirins. I knew he wouldn’t step over the threshold of my room unless I invited him to do so, not at night. I told myself to be careful, and that I knew nothing good of him. On the other hand, if I did invite him in, and we did get to sleep together, he would be more likely to give me his company during the coming week.

  “Come on in,” I said, pulling at his sleeve. “I’ll see you don’t have bad dreams in here. Besides, it’s too cold for you in that room.” I pushed him towards my bed and surprisingly enough he went without argument. I turned out the light, but left the gas-fire on. I slid in beside him and pulled up the covers; he hadn’t taken his kimono off, and he was very tense.

  “Come,” I said. “Let me get you warm again.”

  His response delighted me. He unbuttoned my pyjamas and laid his cheek first against one breast and then the other. “Sweet Sue!” he said. “Sweet Sue!” It seemed to be enough for him. I lay there smiling into the half dark and felt the rhythm of his breathing slow into sleep.

  I woke in the morning only when he placed a cup of coffee at my bedside and called my name.

  “Sugar? I can’t remember how many.” He had shaved, washed and dressed in casual clothes. His eyes were now warm and now chill.

  “What is it?” He had drawn back the curtains and tidied the room. It was nearly ten o’clock of a dark Sunday morning.

  “I must find somewhere else. I can’t stay now.” He put out a hand to touch my cheek. “Don’t cry, Sue. You must see I can’t stay now.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Because I want you — all the way.”

  “Is that all? Well, what do you think I brought you home for?”

  He shouted with laughter, and I grinned up at him, almost sure of myself for once.

  “No, but... darling Sue! You know I’m in the middle of something...”

  “Just for one week, until you have to join your boss?”

  “One week.” His eyes were hungry. I started to fold back my pyjama tops, knowing that he did at least appreciate some part of me. “Sue, stop it!” His voice was as shaky as his hands as he tried to pull the material back over my breasts. “You’re trying to seduce me!”

  “I think I’m succeeding,” I said, giggling. In the struggle that followed he ended up lying on the bed with me.

  “Let’s be sensible,” he begged. “Drink your coffee, and we’ll talk about it.”

  “Afterwards,” I said, pulling his sweater over his head. “Let’s get our priorities in the right order.”

  *

  So he stayed. He put on weight, and I lost it. He mended everything in the flat that was broken, overhauled the engine on my car and replaced the door handle. He would have redecorated the kitchen if I’d let him. He was autocratic, jealous, and demanding. Towards the end of the week he began to show flashes of hard-driving energy which left me standing.

  We talked of our “need” for each other, but never of “love”, even though I knew I was hard hit by Sunday night. We watched each other, probing to see what each was made of. We talked about ourselves — mostly about childhood and our families. We talked of books and films and cabbages and kings. We talked, and ate, and slept in each other’s arms. He used the room he’d rented only to keep his clothes in, and I sponged him down in the bathroom morning and night because he couldn’t have a bath until all his strapping had been removed.

  I told him all about my father, who was an electrical contractor with his own small business, and about my mother, who baked her own bread. I even told him, by way of a joke against me, about my first love affair. His only comment about that was to ask me if I were on the pill now. I said I wasn’t, and blushed. He looked thoughtful, but didn’t start taking precautions, which made me thoughtful in turn.

  He talked freely about his life until he’d qualified, but little about his present job. He talked a lot about his brothers. Fair-headed, steady, short-sighted Ronald was only a year older than Charles and had acted as a brake on his younger brother’s wilder impulses. Mechanically-minded David, the eldest of the three Ashton boys, was a genius with his hands and lyrically content with his flaxen Inge and three tiny daughters. He talked of his father, a gentle-mannered, kindly man, devoted to his beautiful wife Mary. He had been a butter-fingered, easy-going father, who couldn’t teach his sons to play cricket because he dropped the ball all the time, but who knew the names of all the wild flowers and birds in the county. Oliver Ashton had had an operation for cancer of the lung a couple of years ago, and been a part-timer at the office since then.

  As for his mother, Mary Collett Ashton sounded the sort of woman you would not want for a mother-in-law; interfering, managing, spending a fortune on clothes, autocratic... I guessed the reason Charles didn’t get on with her was because they were so much alike.

  “So which of you,” I asked, “worked in your father’s office? Ronald or you?”

  “Me? For Christ’s sake! Can you imagine me stuck in that office with...? No, neither Dad nor Ronald would have stood for that. I’d have driven them mad, and I want more out of life than a career in a country...”

  “So you’re the brilliant son with the Double First and a job in London?”

  “I worked for a Merchant Bank in London until just after the trial, yes.”

  “So why give that up to come back here and work for John Brenner?”

  “I fancied a change.”

  He’d lied there. I charged him with lying, and he shrugged. Later, I asked him what he actually did at Whitestones. He smiled, employing charm. He said he licked stamps, took messages, and pasted cuttings in scrapbooks. He drove his boss when the chauffeur was off duty, filed letters and made excuses if J.B. didn’t want to do anything he’d promised to do.

  I gave him an old-fashioned look. Charles was no office boy.

  “Does this sound any better?” he asked. “I act as nursemaid. I see he takes exercise, but doesn’t overdo it. I am in charge of the insulin bottles — he’s a diabetic but hates to give his own injections. I chivvy him out of the house to social functions. I see he keeps in contact with his old friends, even when he curses me for doing so. I argue with him, to keep his brain keen. I go round the golf course with him, and he fines me £10 if I lose too obviously. I take him to Point to Points and place bets of 50p a time for him; I see that we celebrate if he wins. I buy him Christmas presents.”

  “You really care about him, then?”

  He didn’t want to admit it. He tried to excuse his weakness.

  “J.B.’s had a raw deal in life. He and my father were at school together; my father had a happy marriage, his three sons are off his hands, and we all speak well of him both behind his back and to his face. J.B. made a disastrous marriage, his only son would spit in his face if he dared, and he was pretty much of an invalid, and a recluse by the time I got to him. He’s been a power in the world, has had everything that money can buy, and there’s no one but me to care if he gets indigestion or makes a killing on the Stock Market. He fears senility, incontinence; old age in the hands of servants. His son has given him no grandchildren yet. I doubt if he ever will. J.B. was more or less all right while he was able to work full time, dashing around the place — lunch in Rome and dinner in Paris. Then he developed angina and was advised to retire. Inaction showed him the loneliness of his life. He degenerated physically and mentally. Twice he went into a coma because he’d neglected his injections; he’s been a diabetic for years but never managed to come to terms with it. He knows perfectly well that if he doesn’t take his injections on time, or if he forgets to eat, he’ll be ill. But he had nothing to live for. He quarrelled with everyone; with his son, his friends... he couldn’t keep a personal as
sistant longer than a month, and his servants only stay because of the fabulous salaries he pays them.”

  I had never seen him so moved before. He stalked around the room, his eyes flickering this way and that, his right hand chaffing that ill-treated left hand. I felt he was on the verge of telling me something important. I kept very quiet until he went on.

  “We’ve always seen a lot of the Brenners. David is J.B.’s godson. He’s always wanted me to work for him. Ever since I was a child...”

  He stopped abruptly, looking down at his scarred left hand. His face went blank, indicating that he was about to have a headache. I reached for the aspirins, and risked a prompt.

  “Then he asked you to work for him? You were sorry for him. That’s why you left your job in London to work for him?”

  “No,” he said slowly, still looking at his hand. “I could lie to you and say that that was the way it was, but it wasn’t so. He didn’t ask me to work for him this time. I went to him for a job. I said I wanted to study his methods so that I could learn how to make money quickly. I told him I needed a lot of money in a hurry. That was true, too, in a way. And that’s as much of the truth as I can tell you, Sue.”

  He took the aspirins and went to lie down. He didn’t refer to the subject again.

  *

  Bessie was horrified on Monday, when I told her I’d left the Mini with Charles for the day. She was sure he’d disappear with the car, and that I’d never see it or him again. I defended him, saying he was going to pick me up at half past five from work. She waited with me in the hall, and tried not to crow as the minutes ticked by. Charles was five minutes late — I was to learn that he was always five minutes late for everything. Just as Bessie was urging me to phone the police, he swept in through the front door and claimed me. Wearing dark-rimmed glasses and in a huge sheepskin-lined leather coat, he looked extremely presentable. I could see Bessie revise her opinion of him as I introduced them to each other. She even winked at me as he took my shopping basket and urged me to the door with one arm round my shoulder. His attitude was quite clear; I was his girl for the week, and I wasn’t to waste time on anybody else while he was around.