by John Burke
‘Where was she?’ said Laura.
Peter shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t let her come.’
‘She does as you tell her?’
‘Laura, I’m not going to have you —’
‘You must be quite a strong character in your own home,’ she said. ‘She’ll feel lost without you. I’ll go and see her, in case there’s anything she wants.’
‘You’re not to,’ he cried.
The impassive man in the corner stirred and looked at his watch.
‘I won’t have it,’ Peter went on desperately. ‘There’s no need for you to do anything, Laura — no need at all.’
‘I think I ought to.’
‘Please.’
‘Why are you so ashamed of her? Why didn’t you tell us you were married? Not a line from you.’
‘I’m not ashamed of her.’
‘Then why —’
‘Oh, stop badgering me.’
He sat quite still. Laura waited. She knew she had only to wait. It was to be hoped that the man in the corner would not cut their time short, before Peter had broken down.
At last Peter said: ‘You wouldn’t understand. We liked being on our own. We didn’t want anyone else. We were . . . free.’
‘Free to do what? Plan your petty swindles —’
‘She didn’t know about them,’ he burst out. ‘She never had any idea.’
‘I see. She isn’t very bright, I take it?’
‘She . . . doesn’t think about things. She never asks questions. I used to go out to work, and I brought money home, and that was that.’
‘Of course. The respectable housewife getting her weekly allowance from her hard-working husband. Just as it should be.’ Laura shook her head wearily. ‘Why couldn’t you have got an honest job?’
‘I had one. But I didn’t make enough —’
‘She wasn’t a good manager?’
The slyness crept back into his eyes. He looked at her with an expression that was meant to be — what? Philosophic, resigned, vaguely tragic?
‘I’m not blaming her,’ he said nobly.
‘I see.’
‘She used to like nice things, and I hated to worry her. When she wanted more money I — well, I just had to find ways of getting it. That’s all.’
He looked quietly pleased with himself. Perhaps he would soon be beginning to regret that he had not advanced this defence in court and thrown himself on the mercy of the judge and jury. But here and now, Laura was judge and jury.
‘She couldn’t help it,’ he added. ‘She never had any real idea of the meaning of money. I couldn’t ask her to economise.’
There was a pause. Then Laura said:
‘And her address?’
Peter shrugged. He might have been shrugging responsibility off his own shoulders and on to hers.
‘12 Bolingbroke Gardens, W.2,’ he said.
The man in blue stood up abruptly. Laura caught her breath. This meant that Peter would be going. He was caught now: he would be imprisoned . . .
And she would know where he was. For the first time in years she could be absolutely sure where he was.
For a second she felt almost capable of tears. Then she was almost ready to laugh, glad that their time was ended. There was nothing she could do here. She saw how Peter was studying her, wondering whether she was now prepared to stop criticising him. He had always longed for other people’s respect.
She said: ‘Well, I’ve got to go.’
‘You’ll write?’
‘You haven’t paid much attention to the letters I’ve been sending you the last couple of years.’
‘I shall have more time for reading now,’ he said boldly.
She put out her hands as though to make one last claim on him. Then she left, and went off in search of his wife.
Outside, she felt as a drunkard might on emerging into the fresh air. She swayed, and made an effort to walk very slowly and deliberately. Memories of Peter at home, Peter reading cheap magazines and smiling sly complicity at her when she caught him, Peter swimming at Tapton Harbour and sneering at a boy friend she had once had, Peter contemptuously describing his girl friends to her . . . all these and so many more surged up in her mind and blotted out the present reality of London.
She stopped, and stared with determination across the street until everything came clearly into focus.
This was — she must force herself to realise it — like all her previous visits to London: so much to be done in such a short time. She had to hurry from one place to the next without pause, doing things swiftly and systematically, not stopping to think until she was in the train going home.
It had always been like this, and today of all days it was better so.
Chapter Three
The house was on the corner of the square. The buildings enclosing the square were tall, so that the tattered grass plot and dingy flowerbeds in the centre were sunk in gloom. Each house had a massive portico with a number painted on the pillars. One or two had been recently painted, so that they stood out from the others with an elegance that was very nearly ostentatious. Most of the pillars were stained, and flakes peeled from them like sunburnt skin; but there had been very little sun here.
A polite little man with dark features opened the door just as Laura was about to press the button marked ‘Swanton’. He directed her to the first landing, and she went up. From behind the door he had specified came the urgent chattering of a radio.
Laura knocked. The radio continued, bursting into a flourish of music.
She knocked again.
This time the door opened, and it was as though the volume control of the set in the corner had been sharply turned up. She had difficulty in making herself heard; and added to that was the difficulty of forcing out those opening words:
‘Mrs. Swanton?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m Laura Swanton.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I said I’m Laura Swanton. Peter’s sister.’
‘Oh.’ The pale brown eyes widened. ‘Oh. Come in.’
Laura walked into the uproar. Peter’s wife looked at her blankly, and then at the radio, as though reluctant to switch it off even now. Then she gave a shrug, and went and flicked the knob.
The room was far more attractive than one would have guessed from the exterior of the house. A tall window opened on to a balcony — over the porch, Laura realised — and there was a surprising sensation of brightness in the room. The radio was large and new, almost certainly expensive. The furniture was badly chosen, but it was not cheap; or, rather, some of it was cheap but other items were very good and quite incongruous. One had the impression that things had been bought on impulse, taken from their setting in some decorous shop and set down here with blithe indifference to any clash of styles.
Newspapers and magazines were stuffed down the sides of chairs. A pair of stockings had been dropped in the middle of the carpet. A cup smeared with lipstick and coffee stains stood on the tiles before the gas fire.
‘I was just tidying up,’ said the girl vaguely.
Laura sat down, deciding that there was no point in waiting to be asked.
She said: ‘You’ve heard the verdict?’
‘The woman from downstairs went. She phoned me.’
There was a pause.
‘Peter didn’t tell me your name,’ said Laura.
‘Charlotte.’ Then she added defiantly: ‘Charlotte Swanton.’
‘You are married?’
The girl did not flare up. Indeed, a sort of distant amusement glowed for a second through her dazed expression. She might have been on the verge of a giggle. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said.
‘Sorry. But knowing Peter . . . Anyway, I’m Laura. I thought I’d better come and see you.’
‘Yes. Of course.’
Then Charlotte burst into tears and sat down.
She was, Laura judged, some seven or eight years younger than Peter. Twenty-five, say. The wide eyes made her loo
k childish and incredibly naive; but there were also little clusters of wrinkles in their corners, and at the corners of her mouth. As she cried she screwed up her face so that ridges creased her whole forehead. Obviously she used her features too much, too intensely: in ten years’ time she would look quite old, because she was so intense in every emotional outburst.
Laura said: ‘I just want to know what help you’re likely to need.’
Charlotte fumbled for a handkerchief. She could not find one. Her fingers groped blindly down the side of her chair, and still she did not find one.
‘Here you are,’ said Laura.
‘Thank you. Oh, I feel so dreadful.’
‘Because Peter’s gone to prison,’ said Laura quietly, ‘or because you had something to do with it?’
Charlotte dabbed at her eyes, blew her nose, and stared.
‘Whatever do you mean? I didn’t know anything about it.’
She was pretty. Jealousy bloomed more and more luxuriantly within Laura as she saw and admitted it. The girl was pretty. The sort of prettiness that would not last. It depended so much on that smooth plumpness of feature and fresh colouring to which time was so merciless — so swiftly and unexpectedly merciless. The brown hair, just brown and nothing more distinctive, was fluffy and attractive now. It was too long, but clearly the girl was vain, and for a few more years would have cause to be. After that, she would look very ordinary.
But at least she would have had those few years. She had already known years such as Laura had never known. And what use had she made of them?
Laura said: ‘How did Peter come to drift into this sort of trouble? Couldn’t you have looked after him better?’
‘But I didn’t know. I had no idea . . .’
‘You couldn’t have been very observant.’
‘He always seemed so cheerful. There was never anything —’
‘I always knew when he was up to something,’ said Laura. ‘I could always tell at once.’
‘Yes,’ said Charlotte with a wan little smile; ‘so he mentioned.’
‘We were very close. No one else could understand how close we were. It could never be the same with anyone else.’
Charlotte crumpled up the handkerchief Laura had given her and pushed it down behind her chair cushion.
‘I had no idea,’ she repeated. ‘He never told me what he was doing. He just brought money home every week and gave it to me —’
‘And you spent it.’
‘Of course. That’s what it was for. We liked having nice things. We liked having a nice time.’
Her eyes filled again with tears.
‘And what are you going to do now?’ Laura demanded bleakly.
‘I don’t know. Oh, it’s awful. I just can’t think. Why he had to go and do this . . . He oughtn’t to have let me in for this, it wasn’t right.’
‘You’ve got a job of your own?’
‘Not really.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well . . . I did a bit of typing for people every now and then, but nothing regular. I could never settle to hammering out page after page of stuff — I haven’t got the temperament for it. And Peter liked to find me here when he got home. You never knew when he’d come. Often in the middle of the day. And when he got here, often . . .’ The anguish of the sensual recollection seemed to broaden her features. Her lips parted. ‘Married women ought to stay at home anyway,’ she said despairingly.
Laura glanced round the disordered room. A door stood ajar, and through it she glimpsed dishes piled on a small drainboard. She said:
‘What do you do all day?’
‘Lots of things.’ Charlotte was defiant. ‘I read a lot. We always get lots of books every week.’
Books. She meant, of course, magazines.
‘This place must be quite expensive,’ said Laura.
‘It is.’ There was pride in her voice. ‘It’s an awful lot. But as soon as I saw it I said we simply had to have it —’
‘And that’s why Peter is where he is now.’
There were more tears. Laura sat back. She was a prosecuting counsel. Here was the real culprit, the one who ought to have been in the dock: here the criminal whose folly and extravagance had led Peter into trouble.
‘And I suppose,’ Laura went on, ‘you have a lavish wardrobe. You spend quite a fair amount on clothes, I imagine.’
‘He always liked to see me looking nice.’ Charlotte made a great effort to gain control of herself. ‘And what business is it of yours? What right have you to come here and blame me for all this? I don’t have to say anything to you.’
‘I’m his sister,’ said Laura. ‘He means a lot to me.’
‘Do you think he doesn’t mean anything to me?’
‘I really can’t imagine,’ said Laura with what she knew to be childish brutality. She took a deep breath. ‘What are you going to do now?’ she asked again.
The reply was the same. And Charlotte looked at a picture on the wall ahead of her as though she could not believe that she would have to leave here. It was plain that she would make no move of her own accord.
Laura said: ‘You’re Peter’s wife, so it’s up to us to do what we can for you.’
‘I’m not asking for charity.’
‘In that case, what exactly do you propose to do?’
Charlotte slowly said: ‘Why do you hate me?’
‘I suggest,’ said Laura, ‘that you move into a smaller place — a bed-sitting-room, or something — and try to get a job.’
‘Is it,’ said Charlotte, ‘because you know that I can give him . . . give him something that you never have and never will?’
Only from her eyes was it discernible that Laura had heard. She went on:
‘Whether you get a job or not, I’ll make sure you get some money each week.’
‘I don’t want —’
‘Just to keep you going until Peter comes out of prison and decides what he’s doing to do next.’
‘Peter,’ said Charlotte.
It was not an appeal, not even a cry of despair: it was only a sound without echo.
Laura got up. Her brisk, significant movement was known to many a patient who had stayed too long, or who had kept her at a bedside with garrulous lamentation.
‘You’ll have some tea?’ said Charlotte vaguely.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Next time you come, perhaps.’
Laura led the way to the door and opened it while Charlotte was making ineffectual lunges for the knob.
Laura said: ‘Well . . .’
With an effort she put out her hand.
‘Don’t think awful things about me,’ said Charlotte suddenly. ‘I don’t see why you have to. He’s to blame, if anyone is. But I don’t blame him. I’m not that sort. I loved him. And he loved me. And it’s still the same. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
There was no answer. There could be no answer.
‘No matter what’s happened,’ said Charlotte, her face twisted, ‘it was beautiful . . .’
She leaned on the door. Beyond her, Laura had a last glimpse of the bright, crumpled covers of magazines protruding from everywhere.
That last declaration remained with her like a sweet cloying taste in her mouth as she went out into the square.
Now she hated the creature more than ever.
To have that voice and that shoddiness and sentimentality always near one . . . It appalled her that Peter should have been able to endure it, and yet she knew too well that it was just the sort of thing he would find endearing. He would have coped happily with the swing between whining and ecstasy; he would have sunk comfortably into disorder, and would have aroused himself only when she nagged or insinuated or wept that she wanted more money, a new coat, an evening out. They must have fought a lot; but Charlotte’s skirmishes with him and the subsequent reconciliations had achieved more for her than anything Laura could ever have won from Peter. It was degrading to consider it.
If
I had that creature in the house, she thought, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. She’d drive me to distraction.
It was all of a piece. It was all characteristic of Peter, of his defection, his repudiation of Laura.
Yet still it was Peter who mattered. Somehow, some day, she would reclaim him. Sitting in the train, she knew that there must be a way and that she would in the end find it.
Chapter Four
A week later, Mrs. Swanton went up to London and fetched her daughter-in-law back to Brookchurch. She said nothing to Laura about it. She waited until Laura was out on a series of visits, and impulsively went.
Someone had to do something about that poor girl, all on her own. And besides, Mrs. Swanton wanted to see for herself what the child was like. It was all very well for Laura to say how impossible she was. That was just like Laura: she had been like that about every friend Peter had ever had. In fact, it was the way Laura had gone on about this girl that drove Mrs. Swanton herself to go and see her. And having seen her, she simply had to bring her back. She couldn’t not bring her, after seeing what a state she was in.
After all, she was Peter’s wife. A nice little thing, in her way. Mrs. Swanton thought she was going to like her. It was nice to do what was right — even Laura would have to admit it was right — and get something pleasant out of it as well. It would be someone to talk to. She could tell that Charlotte was the sort who would like talking and being talked to. Such a change from Laura.
Strangely, Laura made hardly any protest at all. When the two of them came apprehensively in, Laura looked almost as though she had been expecting this to happen. There was quite a strange expression on her face. Her mother had not known what reception to expect. She had certainly not anticipated this: not this queer resignation, this tranquillity.
Chapter Five
It had taken only that one week to reduce Charlotte to despair. Not savage despair, and not a crumpled tearfulness: rather was it a state of complete withdrawal, a refusal to believe that life would go on or that there was any point in its going on anyway.
She had been alive, surely, before she met Peter? She tried to remember what it had been like. Often in those eighteen months of their marriage she had told him that she couldn’t imagine why she had married him. And she had meant it; but now she could not imagine the days and nights without him.
