It was only the matter-of-fact tone of voice with no hint of reproach in it that prevented me from answering very sharply.
She went on. ‘The only positive thing I can see so far is that they can’t make me give evidence that our marriage was breaking up. But that’s not much.’
‘Go through it again, Harry,’ said Will.
I did so and this time he laboriously noted down in his round board-school hand times and places. He sat then and looked for some minutes at the piece of wrapping paper on which he had made his annotations.
Finally I said, ‘Well?’
He looked up. ‘Don’t be in such a bloody hurry, lad. If it was easy, don’t you think that some little bobby would have done it? Any road, there’s no need to bother your head about where to go next. You’ll stay here tonight and as long as you need.’
‘No.’
It was Mary. We had forgotten about her again, perched like a little bird in her corner.
‘No,’ she repeated when we all turned and looked at her.
‘What do you mean, “no”?’ asked Will more in puzzlement than in anger.
She stood up.
‘You can stay tonight and welcome,’ she said to me. ‘You’re Jan’s husband, and I like you yourself as far as that goes. But I’ll not let Will be caught as an accessory.’
She had some difficulty with the word, but got it out correct in the end.
‘What are you saying, woman?’ roared Will.
But his wife was unimpressed.
‘I’ve asked. I thought this might happen, so I asked. Not openly, but just in passing. They say you can get five years as an accessory. It’s not worth five years of Will’s life.’
Will bellowed at her so loudly that I had to make him be quiet before the neighbours, distant though they were, heard him. But Mary was adamant.
‘You’ll have more sense than him, Harry. You understand these things.’
‘He stays in my house as long as I want, woman!’ roared Will.
Mary took the clock off the mantelpiece, her inevitable preliminary to going to bed. At the door she turned and looked her husband in the face.
‘If he doesn’t go tomorrow, I’ll tell the constable he’s here. Then we wouldn’t be accessories. Goodnight, Jan, goodnight, Harry, goodnight, miss.’
With this she left us to listen to Will’s rantings which went on some time before they died down.
‘It’s not you, Harry,’ he said, ‘it’s me. The silly woman’s thinking of me.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘And she’s right. In any case, I couldn’t have stopped here long. They’re bound to get a line on you sooner or later. It’s a wonder someone in the village hasn’t spoken up already.’
‘Oh, they’re close folk round here,’ said Will. ‘But you could be right. Still, you’re all right tonight.’
‘Harry,’ said Annie, ‘I’d better go. It’s very late and Father will be worried. Can I help you tomorrow?’
I stood up with her.
‘No,’ I said, ‘you’ve done enough already. I’m very grateful.’
She turned to Will and Jan.
‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘I know everything will turn out all right.’
‘Goodbye, lass,’ said Will. Jan merely nodded.
I went with Annie into the kitchen and opened the door for her. It was very dark outside.
‘I’ll come with you to the car,’ I said, but she put her hand on my chest and restrained.
‘No, it’s silly taking the risk when you’re here. I’ll be all right.’
I reached up and took her hand.
‘Thanks again.’
She looked at me then brought her other hand up to my face.
‘Get a shave,’ she said, pulled away and was gone.
‘What did that mean?’ said Jan from the open door behind me.
‘Nothing, I don’t know,’ which was just about the truth. I passed back into the living-room where Will was studying his piece of paper again. He looked up.
‘It’s late for talk. You two will be ready for bed, I reckon.’
I could not tell from his face how deliberately ambiguous his remark was but in the surface sense at least he was right. Even three hours’ relaxation in a potting shed is no substitute for sleep in a bed. I looked at Jan a bit uncertainly, however. There were only two bedrooms in the place as I recalled, Will and Mary’s and a narrow boxroom of a place. Jan and I had not slept together since the night I told her of my plan to go on holiday with Peter. That had been a fortnight before the holiday started, but we had been nowhere nearer a reconciliation before I left.
She said, ‘You go on up. I’ll be up in a minute.’
I went carefully up the narrow creaking stairs and let myself into the bedroom which, though I had only seen it once on a brief tour of the cottage (we’d never actually stayed there, of course), was exactly as I had pictured it. Very small, with a single bed pushed against the wall.
At least this aspect of our feud would end here, I thought with half a smile. In these conditions, togetherness was a must.
How far the togetherness might have gone I never found out. Jan came in when I was half undressed. She stood and stared at me, then said, ‘Harry, you never said where you’d been for the past five days. What were you doing?’
There was a keener note than curiosity in her voice and the reason was not far to seek. I realized that I was standing there wearing a pair of yellow knickers and round my feet were the remnants of three pairs of nylons. I didn’t even attempt to explain, not then, not there. I felt I looked ludicrous. I also felt so tired I didn’t give a damn.
‘Not now, Jan,’ I said. ‘Not now. Come to bed.’
I pulled back the coverlet and started to clamber in.
‘I’ll sit up for a while with my father,’ she said, and turned and left.
I stood with one foot still on the floor then shrugged and burrowed down beneath the sheets. The pillow smelt of Jan’s hair lacquer and my last waking thought was to wonder why she used hair lacquer in a place like this.
I was awoken by a pressure on my shoulder. I grunted, thinking that Jan had at last come to bed and was not being very considerate about waking me, and pressed up against the wall. But the pressure only increased and became a shaking. I turned round and peered blearily up.
It was indeed Jan, but she was fully dressed.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Time to go.’
I stopped myself from saying ‘Go where?’ or something equally pointless, and climbed sleepily out of bed. It was just first light so I couldn’t have had more than four hours’ sleep. A cock crew in the distance.
‘Sound effects, too,’ I muttered, scratching my itchy face noisily.
‘Take your girl-friend’s advice and get that off. And here. Put these on.’
She flung a pair of almost knee-length underpants, obviously Will’s, on the bed. I picked them up and looked at them incredulously.
‘Suit yourself,’ she said. ‘If they catch you in those things’ (pointing to the yellow pants I was still wearing), ‘they’ll lock you up without a trial.’
It seemed a case of Hobson’s choice to me, but I stood up and removed the knickers and pulled on the semi-long Johns. Jan stirred the yellow pants with her toe; spreading them out so that their full size was apparent.
‘You’re right,’ I said, feeling the viciousness of early-rising, ‘they’re too big to be Annie’s.’
‘So I see. Then they must belong to that woman in Ennerdale.’
She had also brought me a shirt of Will’s as a substitute for Moira Jane’s pullover, and I stopped with this half over my head then slowly pulled it down as she went on.
‘That’s where you stayed the last five days, isn’t it?’
I had wondered why no one had mentioned the news report of my ‘rape’ of Moira Jane the previous night and had decided that for some reason they could not have had their radio on that day. To mention it myself had seemed a needless comp
lication.
‘How do you work that out?’ I asked.
‘Well, we presumed your innocence on the same grounds as before, that is, my wifely instinct.’
She showed her protruding teeth in a faint smile – or sneer – and began spraying her hair with an aerosol hair-lacquer tube. I coughed as the thin haze drifted my way. She knew I hated the stuff.
‘Therefore,’ she went on, ‘as you were obviously in such good health when you got here, and as obviously you had only recently came under the aegis of Miss Ferguson – whose volte-face from bashing you on the head was never fully explained – it seemed likely that someone else had been looking after you indoors. You must have some connection with this woman – apart from the one she alleges of course – or you wouldn’t be wearing her husband’s suit.’
She picked up the jacket I had hung on the door knob and showed me the name tag stitched in the collar.
‘Therefore, it seems likely you stayed with her, she gave you food, shelter, comfort, and her knickers. But when you left, for some reason she decided to turn you in. Right?’
It was quite remarkably right, of course. But all I did was to applaud ironically and say, ‘And have the famous loving father/daughter team had any success with their major investigation of the moment? Can we expect an early answer?’
She did not like what I said, and I instantly regretted it. Just how permanent this rapprochement with her father was I had still to find out, but now was not the time. But she answered my question as though it had been straightforward.
‘No. I’m sorry. Nothing yet. There are too many intangibles. We’d need to see everybody’s statements and all we’ve got is what you can tell us and what has been printed in the papers. Someone must be lying, but it’s probably someone we’ve never even heard of. And the trouble is that you yourself cannot deny the things which make up the bulk of the police case.’
‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ I growled, and went downstairs to the kitchen to have a wash. The house had no bathroom, only a large tin tub for use in front of the living-room fire. I could imagine the agonies which Jan must have suffered in her early teens.
Will was downstairs, obviously having sat up all night. He was surrounded by newspapers and had bits of paper marked with his own round scribble all over the table.
I asked if he had a razor I could borrow and received with some trepidation a formidable-looking cut-throat. It almost lived up to its name several times, but finally I was satisfied I had removed my whiskers but left a narrow military moustache which, with the aid of Ferguson’s hat and coat, I felt would make me difficult to recognize from either of my two current descriptions. I smiled at the thought that with the general public now looking for me with beard whilst still used to the picture of me clean-shaven, twice the normally large number of ‘sightings’ would probably be reported.
Jan came into the kitchen while I was shaving and made some coffee and toast.
‘What’s the master-plan?’ I asked jocularly. She turned on me with a ferocity which took me by surprise.
‘Listen, Harry, we’re sticking our necks out for you, so drop the superiority act.’
This was Jan getting back to her best bitchiness form. I replied in kind.
‘I didn’t ask you to help me. I didn’t even know you were here. And I’ve managed pretty well on my own so far.’
‘You mean your women have managed pretty well for you. And you came here of your own choice to try to get my father’s help, didn’t you? You’re really lost without all the little men in the office to run around after you, so you just latch on to the nearest possible support. Face up to yourself, Harry.’
I surprised myself by roaring with genuine laughter, not the artificial sort I sometimes used when Jan got under my guard. I suppose inherited power is always a subject for self-doubt and guilt-feelings, but the little bit of commercial power I had been left by my father had just recently come to appear a rather infantile game.
‘Pow!’ I said to Jan, waving the razor threateningly. ‘You have obviously not yet met Superboy. Wham! Kerzoink!’
She backed away as I approached, but the kitchen table stopped her retreat. She was obviously uncertain what to make of my outburst and I laughed again, then put my arms around her and kissed her with an exaggerated passion. But the feel of those protruding teeth pressing into my lip and the grip of her hand tightening round my shoulders soon had me overtaking my exaggeration.
‘The toast’s burning,’ said Will. ‘And folk get up early round here, so you’d better save that. You should try getting a wife who goes to bed at night.’
I disengaged myself reluctantly.
‘It’s such a big table too,’ I whispered to Jan, whose eyes were shining as I had not seen them shine for a long time. She giggled and rescued the toast and we had a quick breakfast in the living-room, while she told me the ‘master-plan.’
It was quite simple, really. She had gone out earlier and got her car out of the old barn. It was now parked a quarter of a mile along the road, hidden in a field entrance and, unlike the barn, quite out of sight of any habitation. We were to cut along the fields at the back of the cottage and reach the road (which was the continuation of the one Annie and I had been on the previous night, but on the other side of the village) without going near the houses. Then we were going to make our way across to the A6, the main north-south trunk road and head down to London.
‘Or anywhere else we decide. The thing is to get a start,’ said Jan.
‘Well, Will, it’s been no use then?’ I said to the old man, who was still studying his bits of paper.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I hoped I could get at something just by a comparison of what you said with what the papers say these others said. But there isn’t much. Can’t print it, I daresay. You have a look.’
I took the bits of paper, but Jan rose and said, ‘Come on. We’d better get moving before they start milking the cows over at the big farm.’
She’d taken her own case with her in the night so we’d nothing to encumber us.
‘Goodbye, Will,’ I said. ‘Thanks for your help.’
‘It was nought,’ he said. ‘I hoped I could do more.’
Strangely, I now realized, so had I despite my scoffing. I shook his hand with real gratitude, however, and turned to find Mary in the doorway. Jan kissed her.
‘Goodbye, Mam,’ she said.
‘Goodbye, love,’ said Mary, then, taking my hand, she said, ‘Don’t think I mean you harm, Harry.’
‘I know you don’t. Goodbye, Mary.’
I kissed her cheek. She squeezed my hand.
‘There may be good come of all this yet,’ she said.
‘Goodbye, Dad,’ said Jan. I looked at her in surprise. This was the first time I had heard her call her father (always referred to indirectly as ‘my father’) anything at all to his face. She pulled my sleeve.
‘Come on, hurry up,’ she said, and after the back door had been unbarred, unbolted and unlocked, we set out into the early morning.
There was a light mist rising from the field and we were soon out of sight of the cottage and the village. Our real isolation was increased tenfold by this flimsy haze which hung about us like breathing in a frosty air. Our initial stealth soon disappeared and we walked side by side, our arms round each other, not speaking. It was almost too early for the birds but a few were singing, merry and clear.
‘How far?’ I asked.
‘Nearly there,’ she said.
The grass beneath our feet was beaded with dew and we shook a little spray into the air with each step.
‘Over there,’ she said, and ahead through the mist I saw the black line of the hedge which marked the road. As we approached we had to pass through a small clump of four or five beech trees. Their leafy branches linked overhead and the ground here was mossy and untouched by dew. I paused and looked at Jan.
‘Yes?’ I said interrogatively.
‘Oh yes,’ she said.
&
nbsp; It was half an hour later and the mist had risen when we reached the car.
TWELVE
Neither of us spoke as we drove along the empty lanes. I had offered to drive, thinking Jan might need the sleep after her wakeful night, but she had refused. I smiled at this. I had bought the Mini for her on the day she passed her driving test a couple of years earlier and she had been incredibly possessive about it from the start. I had been delighted by her jealous pleasure.
So now she was concentrating on the road and I could relax and think. We could have talked, of course, but I think we were both a little afraid. Thirty minutes under the beech trees had told us what neither of us had ever doubted, that physically nothing had changed between us. But quarrels had ended in bed before, and we knew from experience that this was the dangerous time when, lulled by a sense of universal well-being, old wounds could be probed to new inflammation. We were both too old to believe that change was ever sudden. It was enough for the moment to believe again that it was possible.
Jan broke the silence with a note of resolution in her voice.
‘Listen, Harry. I’m going to tell you something. Perhaps I shouldn’t. Perhaps I should wait. But it can’t wait, I think. I’ve got to tell you now. Now at least at this moment you won’t think I’m malicious. Or at least just malicious, because I don’t deny malice. I can’t. It would be a lie if I did.’
I lit a cigarette and recognized my need to get the props out when the emotional atmosphere became heavy. A few drops of rain curled over the windscreen but came to nothing.
‘Peter came round to see me one afternoon just before you went away. He said they let him come and go as he wished at the hospital. He said he was just waiting for you to finish work so you could go on holiday.’
‘He never told me this,’ I said stupidly.
‘No. He said he’d come to explain, to apologize. He seemed quite reasonable. I wasn’t rude, not very welcoming. But not rude. Then he said that he knew from what you said that I was worried, but I needn’t be. He said he was very fond of you, but just in friendship, just as a good friend. I said I was pleased to hear it, perhaps a bit sarcastically. He just laughed and said that I shouldn’t believe everything I heard about him. He was quite normal really. In fact, he said, he quite fancied me.’
Fell of Dark Page 14
