‘Then in future she’ll be Linda Chatterton,’ Rowley commented. ‘What shall we say about her education?’
‘I leave that to you, chum. You could look up a school guide and pick some respectable but not too posh place in Lincolnshire. As Linda is only eighteen, she wouldn’t have got off the hockey field until fairly recently; only long enough to take a course in bashing the old typewriter and mastering the pothooks and hangers.’
‘I’ve been able to bash for quite a while,’ Linda told him, ‘but shorthand proved beyond me.’
‘No need to let on about that. In fact, the less you say about yourself, the less likely you are to be shot down. Now, how about hols? As you have never been abroad, you’d better have dipped in the briny at somewhere like Scarborough. You could say that your papa has a bungalow there, and that you went there every summer. Get all the leaflets about Scarborough that you can, and do a recce on them.’
‘Her parents would have had a car,’ said Rowley. ‘I suggest a Jaguar.’
Eric nodded. ‘What did she do in her spare time?’
‘Reading,’ said Linda. ‘I’ve read scores of books in the past three months.’
‘Not enough for an Amazon like you, duckie.’
She laughed. ‘You can add gardening. God knows I’ve done enough of that—and flower arrangements. I’ve never done much arranging, but I know a lot about flowers.’
‘Right. Now, why did you come to the great big wicked city?’
‘To get a job.’
‘No dice, chum. You could have got one nearer home. Tell you what, though. A broken romance. The feller jilted you. And, if I may say so, the more fool him.’
For another half-hour they talked on, settling other details about Linda’s supposed past. Then, before Dutton left, he said to her, ‘I’ll jot down all the gen I can think of on the Chattertons and let you have it with the photographs. If you learn it all parrot fashion, there won’t be much risk of you landing in the drink.’
Turning to Rowley he added with a grin: ‘When I got back from Persia, I asked you to put me up for a couple of nights, and you made an excuse not to. I’ve a hunch that Linda’s being here was the reason. Now the cards are all on the table, how about the future?’
Rowley laughed. ‘Of course, my dear chap. Linda now has the best spare room, but you can have the smaller one at the back on the first floor, and share my bathroom. We’ll be delighted to see you.’
‘Thanks, chum.’ Dutton winked a merry blue eye. ‘ “Roger” to that.’
When Linda went to bed that night her mind was entirely occupied by Eric. He was so obviously a man of the world: elegantly but not ostentatiously dressed, completely at his ease and sure of himself, with charming manners, a delightful sense of humour and knowledgeable on every subject they had talked about. She had never before met anyone remotely like him.
For the greater part of the past twenty years Eric had lived in British Embassies or Consulates, with the constant companionship of widely-travelled, university-educated men, and had enjoyed the friendship of diplomats of other nations and upper-class families in the countries in which he had been stationed. Rowley alone, of all the people to whom Linda had ever talked, equalled Eric mentally; physically, of course, poor Rowley could not be compared to his younger friend.
It remained only for Linda to have a word next day with the Luchenis. At Rowley’s suggestion she told them that she had inherited some money from an uncle on condition that she changed her name to Chatterton. Accepting her statement without question, they smilingly congratulated her.
The following Tuesday evening proved by no means so enjoyable. Although smooth politeness was maintained throughout, Linda was conscious that beneath the surface lay troubled waters. Elsie Spilkin was a short, stout woman, with small, pale-blue eyes and reddish hair. Her husband, Arthur, was considerably older. His dark hair was thinning and long strands of it were brushed sideways across a balding scalp. His eyes were black and slightly hooded, but his most remarkable feature was his nose. It was a veritable beak: arched, and so thin that it ended in a downward-curving point. Linda was so intrigued that she could hardly keep her eyes off it.
She was feeling decidedly nervous and was comforted only by the knowledge that she had learned by heart the particulars about the Chattertons that Eric had sent her, so was equipped as well as possible for her role as his niece.
The Spilkins greeted her pleasantly enough, and asked her only a few casual questions about herself, which she had no difficulty in answering. But almost from the beginning the conversation was stilted. Rowley was also evidently nervous. Having welcomed the couple effusively and gone into an unnecessarily long explanation as to why he now needed a living-in secretary, he seemed to become almost tongue-tied. Frequently there fell brief, awkward silences, and how they would have got through the evening Linda could not think, had not Eric adroitly produced new topics of conversation.
Toward the end of dinner, Elsie said to Linda with a patronising air, ‘I would not dream of questioning your abilities as a secretary, Miss Chatterton; but I imagine you have had little experience of housekeeping. So it might be best if I continued to come up every Tuesday to arrange about the meals and so on.’
Linda took this fast ball admirably. ‘It’s most kind of you to suggest doing that, Mrs. Spilkin; but it really isn’t necessary. My mother always hated housekeeping, so she made me take a cookery course and, as soon as I left school, turned the running of the house over to me. So I’ve had quite a bit of experience.’
‘Oh well, in that case…’ Elsie gave a little shrug of evident annoyance. Then Rowley broke in quickly:
‘You really needn’t worry, Elsie dear. Owing to your admirable training, Bella has become quite competent as a Number Two, and she will brief Linda on my likes and dislikes. But, of course, I should be most distressed if you and Arthur stopped coming to see me on Tuesdays.’
When the Spilkins took their departure there were mutual expressions of goodwill, but Linda felt certain that Elsie intensely resented her having come to live in Rowley’s house.
Once they had gone the atmosphere became distinctly more cheerful. Both Eric and Rowley congratulated Linda on the way she had played her role, and the latter declared with delight that no-one could now possibly guess that she was not a member of a county family.
During the few days between Eric’s first meeting with Linda and his second, she had not thought much about him, because her mind had been mainly preoccupied with apprehension about meeting the Spilkins; but, on the night they had come to dinner, she had been much impressed by the skill with which, using apparently casual remarks, he had given her leads that had enabled her to pose convincingly as his niece, and his urbane cheerfulness that had saved the party from becoming remarkably frigid.
She felt, too, that there was something about Eric that not only made him an unusually pleasant companion, but also stimulated her in a way that brought out the most attractive side of her own personality; so, now that he was stationed in London, she hoped they would see a lot of him.
When Rowley was in bed with her, two nights after the Spilkins’ visit, he produced a letter from Elsie over which they laughed a lot. It was a delightful demonstration of his stepdaughter’s prudish mind. She said she thought Linda charming, but went on to ask if he was really wise to have engaged such a young and attractive girl as a living-in secretary. She, of course, would not dream of doubting Rowley’s faithfulness to her poor mother, but other people might jump to most distressing conclusions, and that would be painful to him, Arthur and herself. Surely, if he had to have a secretary living in his house, it should be someone much older and less likely to provide cause for gossip? Arthur would be able to find such a woman for him without difficulty.
Bubbling with merriment, they decided that the reply should be that, while Rowley saw the good sense of her suggestion, he could not now make a change without giving serious offence to Linda’s uncle, his dear friend the Wing Comm
ander.
Linda was strong, abundantly healthy, passionate by nature and, that spring, had been fully aroused by Jim. During the past three months she had missed being made love to; so, on the first night that Rowley had gone to bed with her, she had felt no reluctance in giving herself to him. When younger he had had his full share of affairs, so, although he was now a ‘once-a-night’ man, he was a sufficiently accomplished lover to ensure that she enjoyed it. As with Jim it had never been more than once at the end of each meeting, she had expected no more from Rowley. Moreover, he came to her two or three nights a week, which was much more frequently than she and Jim had been able to meet, so, physically, her new sex life satisfied her completely.
Yet there developed an aesthetic side to the affaire. On the first few occasions Rowley put the light out before taking off his dressing gown, and she was too keyed up with anticipation deliberately to visualise him in the nude. But there soon came a time when he wanted to add to his enjoyment by contemplating her beautiful figure, then leave the light on during their passionate embrace. To her dismay, she found the sight of his squat body, bulging tummy, lean shanks and knobbly knees, as he stripped before getting into bed with her, distinctly off-putting, and was vaguely repelled until her sensations enabled her to forget his defects.
It was, therefore, not altogether surprising that, to hide from him the lack of desire that seized her when she saw him naked, she took to shutting her eyes and making herself imagine that she was about to be made love to by Eric, to whom she had become so strongly attracted.
Chapter 5
Disaster
A few days after the Spilkins had dined with them, Rowley told Linda that he had opened an account for her, as Linda Chatterton, at his bank, and paid into it the first quarter of an allowance which was four times the amount he had previously been giving her to cover her lunches and other minor expenses. She was greatly touched by his generosity and, never before having had anything like so much money in her life, was more than ever happy.
Since writing her mother a brief note shortly after arriving in London, Linda had not written again. She had then determined to regard her grim past as though it had been a bad dream from which she had woken to her real and promising new life; and she had since been so fully occupied that memories of it came to her only infrequently. But now she was able to look back on it dispassionately, and realise that there had been at least some bright spots in her otherwise hateful existence.
Apart from her affair with Jim during her last few months at home, those few bright spots had been almost entirely due to her mother, who had skimped to buy her a new frock or a pair of nylons now and then. She had been as good a parent as she could be under the circumstances and must, Linda felt sure, have been greatly worried at the thought of her being on her own in London.
In consequence, she decided that she ought both to reassure her mother about her well-being, and make some gesture to show her appreciation of the love she had received from her.
This resulted in her writing a letter to say that she had been very fortunate in getting a job as a companion—although, naturally, she did not disclose the sex of her employer—and that she lived in a very pleasant house where she was well fed and well cared for. Then, knowing how terribly short of money her mother always was, she enclosed in the letter five one-pound notes and said that, as long as her good luck lasted, she hoped to send a similar sum every month or six weeks. Against the rather remote possibility that, if she gave her address, her mother or Jim might come up to London to see her—which was the last thing she wanted—she said that any reply should be sent poste restante to the Great Portland Street Post Office.
A week later she went there and collected a reply. It proved a strange mixture of relief, gratitude for the money and bitter reproaches. Pa had been furious about her running away, got drunk and taken it out of her mother by beating her and blacking an eye. Jim had come to the house, told them that he had been ‘walking out’ with Linda, and been terribly cut up at her having left home without a word to him. He was a fine young man, earning good money in a steady job, and as nice a fellow as any girl could wish for. He was willing to make an honest woman of her, so why couldn’t she come back and marry him? If she remained in London, she might meet some city slicker who would get her into trouble. The letter went on:
What have I done to deserve all this? First Sid clears out. He writes now and then, though your Pa don’t know that. He’s married and has two little ones, both girls. He’s in a good job, to do with the City authorities in Montreal. But he don’t send me any money, or his address. And now you. Two children that I’ve slaved to bring up decent, and neither of them here to be a bit of comfort as I get old. It’s enough to give you the heartbreak. If you are going with a fellow on your evenings off, do watch your periods, dear. And write again soon.
Up in her bedroom, Linda laughed herself silly over the expression ‘city slicker.” Her mother must have picked it up in her girlhood when reading some cheap novelette. Then it occurred to Linda that she had met one, or at least, if her mother knew about dear, plump, rosy-cheeked Rowley, she would regard him in that light. But ‘trouble’—no. Linda had no intention of letting him put her in the family way. By now she knew quite well how to look after herself.
About brother Sid having also withheld his address she was not at all surprised. After all, he had made off with the best part of two hundred pounds of Pa’s money. And Pa could be vicious mentally as well as physically. He might quite well have demanded it back and, if Sid failed to pay up, put the police on to him. She wondered what sort of job Sid could have got with the Municipality of Montreal. It sounded quite important, which was surprising, as his education had been no better than her own. Still, he had a streak of their father’s hard forcefulness in him, and he might have struck lucky.
As for ‘writing again soon’—definitely not. She could tell her mother nothing about the life she was really leading, so what was there to write about? She would send her another five pounds now and again, in a plain envelope, but she had no intention whatsoever of entering on even an occasional exchange of letters.
Within a fortnight Linda had both taken over the household and had insisted on being run in by Miss Adams, to replace her as Rowley’s secretary. Although she had failed to master shorthand, she was a competent touch-typist, and took his letters straight on to the machine. Naturally, the strange symbols and fantastic calculations Rowley used to work out his problems on nuclear energy were as meaningless to her as they had been to Miss Adams; but she typed out very neatly the essays he wrote in longhand, and filed all his papers efficiently.
During August Rowley gave several small dinner parties to introduce Linda to his friends. She slipped easily into her new role as his hostess and they all soon accepted her as a pleasant new acquaintance.
Eric twice stayed the night and plainly showed his liking for his new ‘niece’. Each time he came he brought her flowers and gave her an avuncular kiss on the cheek. The more she saw of him the more attracted to him she became, and there were times when she had difficulty in putting out of her mind that it was of him she thought every time Rowley made love to her. Several times she decided that she must try to break herself of this habit; but by then it had become such an essential part to her giving herself unrestrainedly to Rowley that she found she could not do so without imagining herself to be in the younger man’s arms.
In September Rowley took her to Venice. For Linda their stay at Cipriani’s was another revelation. They spent their mornings either in or by the splendid swimming pool, and lunched and dined on the garden terrace looking out toward the Lido. In the afternoons they went ashore to visit the galleries and the many beautiful churches, then listened to the bands in St. Mark’s Square, outside Florian’s and Quardi’s, while drinking Camparis before returning for dinner.
In January they went for three weeks to Nice, where Rowley hired a car to take them for expeditions up to St. Paul de Vence or to
Cannes, Beaulieu, St. Tropez and Monte Carlo. Walking along the Promenade des Anglais in the winter sunshine, she became more radiant than ever, and wherever they went heads turned to look at her.
In May they went to Paris. The chestnut trees were in blossom, the girls gay in their new summer dresses. They lunched and dined in the best restaurants, went to night clubs, visited the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette had been imprisoned, the Sacré Cœur, the Invalides, and drove out to Versailles and Fontainebleau.
Between their stays on the Continent, their life in London continued happily. They regularly gave little dinner parties and were asked back in return. Rowley’s friends became hers too, and now and then she went shopping or to a cinema with their wives.
The only jarring note in their existence was Tuesday nights when the Spilkins still always came to dinner. As Elsie had lived in the house most of the years while she had been growing up, Rowley still behaved like a father to her. For his sake Linda endeavoured to get closer to her, but in vain. They had nothing whatever in common; Linda was a born enjoyer, Elsie a dyed-in-the-wool do-gooder. Her husband was obviously subservient to her and eagerly endorsed all her opinions.
Eric continued to come to the house on average about twice a month, to dine and sleep. Sometimes there were other people dining, but more frequently Rowley and Linda were alone with him. Owing to these evenings, when the two men talked of old times, she had long since come to know all about Eric’s past.
She learned from Rowley that Eric had lost his parents tragically while still in his teens. They had both been burned to death in a fire and he had no other relative than the sister whose daughter Linda was supposed to be. The shock of his parents’ death had caused him to have fits of depression, to become introspective and unable to make friends easily. It was on account of his being such a lonely young man that Rowley had taken him under his wing and acted as an affectionate older brother to him.
The Strange Story of Linda Lee Page 5
