The Jealous One

by Celia Fremlin

  The coat was just where she had left it; and so were the shoes; but the bag was gone.

  Frantically she groped and grovelled in the dark interior flinging out shoes and garments pell-mell onto the floor. It must be here, she told herself, knowing already that it wasn’t. It must have got pushed to the back…. Under this … behind that….

  It was fully five minutes before she gave up the pretence of searching—five minutes whose real purpose was not to find the handbag—for this, she knew, was already hopeless—but to protect herself from facing too rapidly the alternative to finding it—the knowledge that Geoffrey must have found it first.

  Found it, and taken it away without a word.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  But Geoffrey would never behave in such a way! Before the shock of her discovery had properly sunk in, Rosamund had already counteracted it by a thousand certainties concerning her husband’s character. Geoffrey was not a secretive man, nor even a reserved one. If he had come across the bag in the wardrobe, he would instantly have called out to Rosamund. ‘What on earth…?’ he would have asked her … and how had it got here? … and did she know about it …? All his bewilderment would have been laid immediately before her. He would never have sneaked off with it like this, without telling her, without offering her any chance of explaining.

  But suppose he was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to explain—afraid, as he had been this morning about the telephone call to Mother’s? Might he not then, from sheer horror, have avoided asking her, and instead have thought up some explanation for himself—quickly, quickly, before it had time to hurt, like dipping your finger in boiling water; and then, driven by an ostrich-like impulse as powerful as her own, he might simply have got rid of the bag….

  No. Even in fear for her, this wouldn’t be like Geoffrey … not the Geoffrey she knew, anyway. Someone else must have taken it, then. Someone…. Anyone … and at this point the whole puzzle spread out so vague, so vast, that really it hardly seemed worth investigating at all. Rosamund did not hope any longer to find an explanation. The bag was gone, that was the main thing, and the only thing she found herself hoping now was that it might be gone for good. She did not want to have to think of it ever again. Nor about any others of the clues…. Briskly she gathered up the shoes and coat, took them down to the garden, and proceeded swiftly and competently to brush away the mud. It was dry and brittle now, easy to remove. It tapped and pattered in little hard flakes onto the path, and soon it would be quite gone, merged for ever into the mud of a London garden. One more fall of rain, or even the heavy weight of dampness from one more winter’s night, and the whole thing would never have happened, practically. She put away the well-polished shoes, hung up the clean, dry coat on its usual peg, and felt an absurd sense of achievement, as if by these trivial actions she had indeed reversed the course of time; made it flow backwards to the day before any of this had happened; ensured that Lindy should turn out never to have disappeared at all.

  So vivid was this feeling that when the telephone rang she felt quite certain that she would hear Lindy’s voice; and when she didn’t, it took her quite a few seconds to recognise first whose voice it was, and then that the voice wasn’t talking about the problem uppermost in her mind at all, but—as voices so often do—entirely about its own affairs.

  ‘So could I possibly come, then, about five?’ Norah’s tiny voice was pleading, far away down the wires, while Rosamund was still trying to switch her thoughts into focus, away from her own problems and on to Norah’s. ‘I’m so desperately worried about all this,’ the voice went on. ‘I must see you before William gets in.’

  ‘Of course. Yes. Yes, I’d love to see you … yes, come as early as you like … no, of course I’m not too busy.’

  All the while she was reassuring Norah, Rosamund was trying to recollect what ‘all this’ might refer to: Not the Lindy affair, of course. For Norah, ‘all this’ must presumably refer to Ned—but what in particular had the boy been doing lately? Should she know?

  Apparently she should. When Norah arrived that afternoon she seemed disconcerted—as well as a tiny bit offended—that Rosamund didn’t seem to have heard the latest instalment of the Ned saga. But all hurt was swiftly obliterated by the pleasure and relief she evidently found in telling the story all over again, sitting forward in her chair, and cradling her cup of tea between both hands in nervous abstraction.

  Ned had left home, it seemed—for about the sixth time, to Rosamund’s recollection—without consulting his parents, and since then they had had no news of him.

  ‘Well, but he’s done it before, hasn’t he,’ Rosamund pointed out, in an attempt at consolation. ‘He never seems to come to any harm. And as to writing, boys never do write—they’re all perfectly dreadful about letters. Really, I think you should stop worrying about it, Norah; let him go his own way.’

  Futile advice, really; just as if Norah had any conceivable means of not letting Ned go his own way. But nevertheless she seemed to derive some sort of comfort from the suggestion, for her clutch on the cup of tea relaxed a little, and she allowed herself to take a few spasmodic sips.

  ‘Yes, I know. I’m sure you’re right, Rosamund, and I try to feel like that—I do feel like that really. But this time there’s more to it than just him going away. I don’t know how to tell you really….’ She glanced nervously around the room, as if in fear of hidden microphones, then dropped her voice a little. ‘You see, the dreadful thing is, when he went this time, I found he’d taken eight pounds out of my bag! I don’t know what would happen if William were to find out….’

  ‘Oh, Norah! How dreadful for you!’ Rosamund raked her mind for words of comfort. ‘But can you be sure he took it? … Couldn’t you have lost it in some other way?’

  Norah shook her head.

  ‘No. I just know it was there before lunch … and an hour later it was gone, and he was gone! I discovered it was missing immediately, you see; don’t think that because I didn’t tell you about it before, I didn’t know about it before. I knew about it the very day he went, but I didn’t like to tell you right there on the platform, it seemed so public; and with your friend there, and everything…. I don’t want people to know, you see Rosamund. I’m only telling you because I know you won’t let it go any further—I feel I can trust you. After all, you have a son of your own, you can understand how I feel.’

  Rosamund did not quite like the implication that the possession of Peter should necessarily make her familiar with all the sensations of having money stolen from her handbag; but poor Norah was in such distress, you couldn’t expect her to worry about being tactful. Besides, there was something else in her little speech which Rosamund really must take her up on, it was so puzzling.

  ‘How do you mean, you didn’t want to tell me “right there on the platform”? What platform? When do you mean?’

  Norah stared at her, bewilderment for a moment relaxing the anxious lines on her face.

  ‘Why—on the station platform. Surely you remember? When I was finding out about the trains to Brighton, the very day Ned left. You must remember.’

  ‘But when was it? Which day?’ Rosamund threshed about in her mind for some recollection, but could find none. ‘Which day?’

  ‘Why, the day Ned left—I’ve just told you,’ Norah repeated, a little impatiently. ‘I knew already, while I was talking to you both, that he’d taken the money, but as I say, I didn’t like——’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know!’ interrupted Rosamund desperately. ‘But when was it? This week…. Last week …?’

  ‘Oh, do you feel like that too?’ exclaimed Norah, in tones of relief, as if she had at last found a fellow-sufferer. ‘It’s incredible, isn’t it to realise that it’s only three days since he left! It seems like months and months…. I’m still afraid he’s gone to Brighton, you know. I can’t get it out of my mind.’

  ‘But what’s so awful about Brighton?’ Rosamund allowed herself to be deflected for a moment. ‘Why shouldn
’t he have gone to Brighton?’

  ‘Oh, well. You know. Purple Hearts. Drink. That sort of thing. And all those sort of girls——’ Norah explained delicately. ‘Isn’t it Brighton where all that’s supposed to go on?’

  ‘I should think it might go on anywhere,’ remarked Rosamund. ‘I’d be surprised if Brighton was any worse than London. It depends what set you get in with——’

  ‘Yes, but that’s the whole point!’ Norah broke in desperately. ‘He does know a set in Brighton—I know he does! That’s why I was so anxious to find out if the booking office man remembered him buying a ticket…. I’m so afraid that if he goes there he’ll get into bad company!’

  It occurred to Rosamund that if Ned had really stolen eight pounds from his mother’s handbag, then it was the set in Brighton who were in danger of getting into bad company; but you could hardly say this to Ned’s mother. Besides, she wanted to get the conversation back to the question that was puzzling her.

  ‘So it was on Tuesday that you met me at the station?’ she hazarded. ‘Was I catching a train, or something?’

  She realised too late how idiotic the question must sound; but the blessed self-absorption of human beings in trouble saved her from looking foolish.

  ‘Catching a train?’ Norah repeated vaguely. ‘I don’t know—I wasn’t thinking about catching trains. I’d no intention of following Ned to Brighton, even if he is there. I think that would be most unwise, don’t you? To make him feel pursued—persecuted? They do say, don’t they,’ she continued, with the painstaking pride of one who has come rather late to this sort of thing, ‘that when a boy steals, it’s love that he’s really stealing; not money at all.’

  Rosamund could not help feeling that in Ned’s case it was more likely to be money, especially if he intended living it up in Brighton without having to work; but she did not say so, since Norah seemed to be deriving some sort of comfort from the hypothesis.

  ‘You may find,’ she suggested instead, ‘that he really feels he’s only borrowed the money, and means to pay it back later. That wouldn’t be stealing, would it, not in the ordinary sense.’

  For a minute Norah’s face brightened.

  ‘That’s right! It wouldn’t, would it! And even if, in the end, he didn’t actually manage to pay me back, it still wouldn’t have been meant as stealing, at the time….’ You could see Norah, like a little blind frantic mole, desperately flinging up her defences in advance against absolutely anything that might happen. She was well-insulated, now, against the probability that Ned would never pay back the money.

  Or was she? To her dismay, Rosamund noticed that while Norah still sipped at her cooling tea with grim intensity, tears were quietly welling into her eyes. She had never known Norah to cry before; like many anxious, timorous people, always talking about their troubles, Norah was yet deeply reticent about her real feelings.

  ‘Oh, Norah, don’t, I’m sure it’ll be all right!’ cried Rosamund, distressed. ‘Really I’m sure! Ned’s a good boy at heart, I’m certain he is … this is all just a phase … lots of boys go through it…. He’ll come back!’

  She poured forth, in sincere attempt at consolation, all the optimistic platitudes that she always despised Norah herself for expressing: but now Norah seemed to find no solace in them.

  ‘Oh, he’ll come back all right!’ she agreed bitterly. ‘You needn’t tell me that! But don’t you understand—that’s the whole thing! I’m not really frightened of what he’ll do in Brighton—not the purple hearts, nor the girls, nor the driving about in borrowed cars—none of it. I’ve reached the point when I don’t even care! All I’m frightened of now is that in three days he’ll be back—right there in the house again, still bored, still with nothing he wants to do…. He’ll lounge about the place again, all day long, asking for money, being rude to his father, making us quarrel about him all the time…. William and I can never be happy again, never! That boy’s round our necks like a load of lead, we’re chained to him for the rest of our lives, it’s a life-sentence! He’ll never go away, I know he won’t, he’ll never find anything he wants to do. He’ll stay at home making us miserable for the rest of our lives…. And then they talk about parents being possessive! Oh, it’s hopeless … hopeless….’

  Norah relapsed at last into unrestrained weeping, setting her cup blindly on the floor the better to concentrate. ‘He’s probably back home already!’ she gulped, muffled behind the huge handkerchief. ‘If you knew how I dread the sight of that suitcase in the hall, and the rucksack, and the tape recorder—he always takes every blessed thing, as if he’d gone for ever, and every time there they all are back again before the week is out…. And William in a rage again, just when we’d been getting on a bit better … and all that washing to do … and never being able to get breakfast cleared away …!’

  A sharp ring at the front door brought Norah’s plaints to a panic-stricken standstill. She jerked her tear-stained face out of the handkerchief, and stared at Rosamund in horror.

  ‘It can’t be six o’clock, can it?’ she gasped, in a sort of cracked whisper.

  ‘Yes. Just about.’ Rosamund glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece as she got up. ‘Don’t worry, Norah; I won’t bring them in here, whoever it is….’

  ‘But it’ll be William!’ protested Norah, in the same stricken whisper. ‘He’s calling for me at six…. I’d no idea … it seemed like only a few minutes …!’

  ‘Oh. Well——’

  The bell rang again, more urgently. With her mind a blank as to what course of action she had best follow, Rosamund answered it, and sure enough it was William, morose and gloomy as ever.

  ‘Norah ready?’ he asked briefly, and stepped into the hall, naturally assuming that he was to be invited in. And indeed there was nothing else that Rosamund could do, in spite of knowing that Norah was cowering there in horror. And perhaps, after all, it would do William no harm to find his wife in tears for once, instead of eternally looking on the bright side. The bright side is all very well, but you don’t want to absolutely rub a man’s nose in it.

  So Rosamund led William—as slowly as she could, for Norah’s sake—through the hall, and when further delay was impossible, she flung open the sitting room door to reveal to him his weeping wife.

  ‘Oh, hullo, William. You’re just on time.’

  To Rosamund’s astonishment—almost to her horror—all traces of tears had left Norah’s cheeks. Her bright, tight little smile was in place as usual, and her red-rimmed eyes had been hidden by the hasty donning of a pair of reading glasses, which she so flashed about by little nervous movements of her head that they kept catching the light, and preventing any observer having a sustained view of the tell-tale eyes behind them.

  ‘I’ll come right away, William,’ she continued, getting up in nervous haste, stooping for her handkerchief … pretending to look for something on the mantelpiece … anything to keep her face averted.

  William watched her grimly.

  ‘That boy written yet?’ he enquired brusquely, standing just inside the door. Norah looked away from him … plunged after her gloves.

  ‘No—not just this afternoon,’ she replied brightly, for all the world as if they had been getting an affectionate letter by every post until this one. ‘But I’m sure we’ll hear tomorrow…. I expect he’s tried to phone, you know, several times, but of course I’ve been out rather a lot….’

  ‘You must be crazy,’ commented her husband briefly. ‘Do you really believe that that boy’d waste one and twopence of his precious cash on setting his parents’ minds at rest? Where’s he got the money from, anyway, for this lark?’ he enquired sharply. ‘I thought he hadn’t a bean left?’

  ‘Oh, well, you know, Ned is very frugal!’ gabbled Norah, the smile growing brighter with every word until it quite distorted her small, gentle mouth. ‘I expect he’s living rough, you know … economising … just until he gets a job. I expect that’s why he went off so suddenly, because he’d heard of some job….�
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  ‘I’ll bet it was!’ said William grimly. ‘Some job around here, I’d say, that he’s scared someone might make him take! Oh, yes, you’re dead right, Norah; hearing of a job is enough to get that lad on the run, I don’t doubt it!’

  ‘Oh, but William, that’s not fair!’ wailed Norah. ‘I’m sure Ned wants to work really! It’s just it’s so difficult around here to get the right kind of job. That’s why he’s gone to try somewhere else, of course … the wisest thing, really….’

  Suddenly Rosamund couldn’t bear the agony of that bright smile any longer, nor the thunderous misery that was growing minute by minute in William’s face. Reckless of consequences, she broke in:

  ‘Norah’s terribly worried about Ned really,’ she said to William, clearly and firmly. ‘She’s afraid that he’ll never get a job—never achieve anything—never stand on his own feet. She’s been crying her heart out about it for over an hour—right up till the very moment you came in. Take those glasses off, Norah. Let him see.’

  For a moment she thought her treachery would never be forgiven. The embattled pair stood for a moment staring at her as if she had hit them.

  Then William took three strides across the room and whipped the glasses off his wife’s face.

  ‘Good God!’ he said, staring at her red-rimmed eyes, her blotchy cheeks. ‘Norah—you are worried? You really are.’

  He spoke wonderingly, like a man who has seen a new vision of hope. Then, with unwonted gentleness, he carefully gathered up his wife’s scattered possessions for her, and took her by the elbow.

  ‘C’mon then. Mustn’t be late, that won’t help anything,’ he said gruffly, and steered her across the room; but from where she stood Rosamund could see that the expression of wonder was still in his eyes as he looked down at the little anxious woman on his arm: as if a worried, tearful, haggard wife was some priceless blessing that he had never thought to win.