by Nina Bawden
“You look younger. Did you know your husband at the time of his trial?”
“No.”
“You hadn’t read about him in the newspapers?”
“No.” I pleaded with him although I knew it was no use. “Nobody wants to read about him now. There’s no real interest. Only what you create. Can’t you leave us alone?”
“It’s my job.” He sighed. “And I don’t even do it because I have a wife or an old mother to keep. Not a shred of justification. Even when I was a little boy, I was fascinated by other people’s lives—I used to long to know whether the King went to the lavatory like me. I’m just curious. It’s like a disease.”
“I know.”
“Do you now?” He took off his glasses and wiped them, peering at me short-sightedly. He put them back and twitched his nose. “Yes,” he said slowly. “I believe you do. How much do you know?”
My lips felt cracked and dry. “Nothing. Or almost nothing.”
“May I sit down?”
“Of course.”
He sat down on the edge of a chair and his short thighs strained against the flannel of his trousers. He looked at me and I thought: I need not listen to him, I could send him away now and forget he ever came. But the temptation was too great.
He said, “Look at it for a while as if it were someone else’s problem. Otherwise you’ll be too involved.… Take the case for the prosecution. A man is accused of murdering his wife. She’s given him every cause for anger, she’s difficult, neurotic, unfaithful. For a long time he pretends that the unfaithfulness doesn’t matter; it’s the nerves, the hysteria, that worry him. Then, one afternoon, he sees her lover leaving the house, and the thing he’s ignored so long rises up and chokes him. You can’t ignore things for ever. It’s like damming a stream. You build your careful little barricade and suddenly the river rises and it is destroyed in a moment. The muds and sticks of reason swirl away in the torrent. The lover drives away in his sports car, he passes the husband on the road. The husband is carrying a shotgun. He meets his wife as he goes into the house. She is wearing the dress she put on for her lover; she smiles at her husband and says she is going to feed the chickens. He watches her go across the fields—or, perhaps he goes with her. Then the river bursts its dam, he sees the magnitude of her sin. He shoots her at close range, through the head.… It sounds an open and shut case, doesn’t it? But it’s not quite strong enough. The man is acquitted. He runs like a rabbit, hides himself away in his country house. The murderer is never found. And after a couple of years the husband marries again, someone young, pretty, who knows nothing about him. She still knows nothing. Why did she marry him? Was she fascinated by his position? Did she love him or was she just angry with her mother? Is his marriage proof of his innocence? What does his new wife think?”
I tried to keep my voice steady. “That this is a pack of cruel, atrocious lies. He was acquitted. She was always threatening to kill herself.”
“How often do people who say they are going to kill themselves actually do so? What is the case for the defence? Mr. Random said he had gone into the house to change his boots and left his shot-gun leaning against the wall by the front door. When he came out it was gone. He ran across the field after his wife. He found her lying dead, the gun beside her. He picked it up and went back to the house to telephone the police. Of course he shouldn’t have moved the gun, but not everyone is an amateur detective. Nor should he have wiped it. He wiped it, he said, because there was blood on the barrel. An understandable action—and it wouldn’t have made any difference if he hadn’t cleaned it. His wife was wearing gloves, canvas gardening gloves as if she hadn’t wanted to soil her hands with the bucket of chicken feed. Would a suicide have been so fussy?”
“She would have put the gloves on before she left the house. Before she knew the gun was standing by the door.”
“Yes.” His eyes were clear and impersonal. “It’s not easy to kill yourself with a shot-gun. It’s a clumsy instrument. You would have to hold it between your knees and put your head over the muzzle.… But there was no cartridge case anywhere near the body. If she had killed herself, there would have been…”
I said carefully, “Without the cartridge case, they couldn’t be sure, could they, that she was shot with James’s gun?”
“No. The hammer leaves its mark on the brass. It’s like a fingerprint.”
“Then someone else might have shot her?”
“Who? A tramp with a gun? The labourer’s wife, Mrs. Evans, said she thought she’d seen a car in the lane. But she wasn’t sure when, or what kind of car. The owner was never found. There’s always a red herring like that, it doesn’t mean anything. All the men on the farm were accounted for. They were harvesting, all together, at the other end of the farm. Mrs. Evans was in her cottage, laid up with a bad leg. The child wasn’t there. She’d been sent on an errand early in the afternoon by her mother—got out of the way before the lover arrived, I imagine.…” He stared at the floor. “There was no one. Why should there be? Why should anyone else have shot her, except her husband? In England the police don’t often make mistakes, you know.”
He sounded weary. I said, “There might be someone with a grudge against her, who shot her and then picked up the cartridge case so it couldn’t be traced to his gun?”
“And then fetched the other gun and put it beside her? If he wasn’t guilty, we must believe Mr. Random’s evidence. The murderer would have had to think very fast.”
The enormity of what he was saying struck me like a blow. I stood up. “What are you trying to prove? That my husband is a murderer?”
He looked up, startled. “Here, steady on.” He got up and helped me back to my seat, a hand under my elbow. “I’m sorry. I’ve overdone it a bit, haven’t I? You should have stopped me.” He sounded unhappy. “I got too interested in the wretched business. I forgot you.…” He looked down at me, embarrassed, pulling at the lobe of his ear.
I leaned back against the cold leather. “It’s not your fault. I wanted to know.”
He bent over me, his eyes bright and keen. “Would you have married him if you had believed him guilty?”
“No,” I said loudly. “No. How could I? No one would.”
He watched me thoughtfully. I was suddenly terrified by the extent of my disloyalty. There was nothing I could do to make amends but in common with every betrayer, I tried, now it was too late, to mitigate my guilt.
“Please go,” I said. “I should never have talked to you.”
“I’ve upset you, haven’t I? But I’m on your side. Otherwise I shouldn’t have come. I’ve got that much decency.” I wondered what he meant.
“I know.” I would have said anything to get him to go.
For some of the time we had been talking I had felt interested and quite calm as if we had been discussing someone we both knew but for whom we felt no particular concern. In the chill room we were shut away from reality, listening to his voice I had been cradled in a dream.
Now the illusion ended, as it had to end, in shame and fear. I was only anxious for him to go as if by the removal of his face and voice the constantly sought miracle could be achieved; the clock put back, innocence recovered, the last hour forgotten. As if you could shut out memory by closing a door.
He showed no surprise at being dismissed so abruptly. For him it was probably an occupational hazard, the sudden revulsion after the apparently calm acceptance. Indeed, he must have been interested in the timing of each phase: the shock, the bewildered co-operation, the agonised self-disgust.
For he smiled knowledgeably and looked at his watch.
“Yes, I thought so. I must be going.”
After he had gone I went upstairs and changed into a woollen frock, washed my face and combed my hair. I stood by the window and looked out at the still valley, wondering how long it would be before James came home. After the cold room, the sun, shining through the glass on to my cramped fingers, held almost the warmth of summer; the day seem
ed incongruously bright.
Maggie said, “God is like the B.B.C.”
We had been eating lunch in silence; I had barely looked at James.
She produced her theory. “We’re all like wireless sets. Full of electricity and valves and things. That’s so we can get messages when He sends them. Just like a broadcasting station, you see. When He sends us a message we don’t hear it with our ears, but inside.”
She pressed her small hand to her breast and smiled her lovely, shallow smile. Her eyes were shining. She spoke with simple conviction as if stating a known fact, not at all like a clever little girl showing off before the grown-ups. James stopped eating and looked at her. She went on. The lightning, she said, was important, though what part it played in her childish fantasy I did not know, because James said abruptly, “That’s enough nonsense, Maggie. Get on with your lunch.”
He spoke sharply, his eyes looked at her with uneasy watchfulness. She stared at him remotely and said, as if surprised that he should not understand her, “You know it isn’t nonsense, don’t you?”
And she went on placidly eating her tinned ham, her face innocent of deception.
James continued harshly, as if she had released some private spring of anger. “You are too old for this childish behaviour. Finish your lunch and go to your room.”
I was too appalled by the unfairness of it to protest. Maggie put her knife and fork together and left the room. She went quite calmly but her face was pale; the skin looked paper thin and tightly drawn.
I said reproachfully, “She was only trying to amuse us. It was a clever idea.”
He said coldly, “I don’t like liars.”
“But she isn’t a liar.” He didn’t answer. I saw from his face the uselessness of argument and got up to make the coffee. He was so anxious, I told myself, that Maggie should not deviate in any way from the normal that he could not see that fantasy was as much a part of life as anything else.
Since William Ross had gone, I had been afraid, and I was new to fear. The physical signs of it: the faintness, the sweating, the cold feeling that life had suddenly become sluggish in me while, by contrast, the things around me seemed to have a more intense reality, these things shocked and alarmed me almost more than the cause of my fear.
Now I reacted against fear by an excess of anger. I was angry with James for taking Maggie so seriously and angry with Maggie herself. I knew she was fascinated by wireless and intrigued by its symbolism (we had talked about it before), but she should not have expected James to know that and she should have made it clear that it was only a game.
So, after lunch, when Janet and I were busy cleaning the drawing-room and Charlie was being a nuisance, whining and toddling into the furniture, I was disproportionately annoyed to find Maggie sitting on the edge of her bed, reading.
I said, “Could you look after Charlie? Just for a little while?”
She looked up with a faint frown. “Must I? I want to finish my book.”
“Couldn’t you leave it for a bit?”
She watched me thoughtfully for a moment; her eyes looked as if they weren’t focusing properly.
She repeated, “I want to finish it.”
“Surely you could finish it later?” I glanced at the book over her shoulder. It was a Beatrix Potter book Mr. Jeremy Fisher.
“It’s a bit babyish, isn’t it?”
“Oh, no. I like it.”
My anger fiared. “It’s a ridiculous book for you to read. Your father is right. You should go to school.”
She said gently, “But I don’t want to go to school.”
I lost my temper completely. “It’s not what you want that matters. You’re a spoiled brat.”
She stared at me, her head a little on one side. The muscles of her face twitched faintly as if with pain. Suddenly I remembered, with sympathy, a phase of my own girlhood when I had re-read all my old nursery books. The child had been upset at lunch-time, perhaps more badly than I had realised.
I said gently, “I’m sorry. Finish your book if you want to. I didn’t mean to be cross.”
She made no answer and when I left the room she was still sitting on the edge of the bed, her face turned towards the window as if she were listening for some sound outside the room. She looked, with her straight, fair hair and lifted, listening face like a sentimental picture of Joan of Arc that hung on my play-room wall between a coloured litho of Queen Victoria and a reproduction of the Light of the World. There was the same air of patient waiting, as if for revelation.
The day clouded over. I drew the curtains and lit the fire. The flames reflected in the polished furniture, winked in the shining glasses standing on a silver tray.
Mrs. Evans said grudgingly, “It looks nice in an old-fashioned sort of way, I suppose. Not but what I don’t think a little modern house would be nicer. Parquet flooring and all that sort of thing. …”
Janet had gone home to put Charlie down for a rest, and her mother had returned in her place. She was a great deal more efficient than Janet but touchy about her status, and inclined to remind me that she was a farmer’s wife and not a servant. I was nervous of asking her to do anything that she might consider even remotely degrading. Much of the time, unsolicited, she lectured me on how to run a house. She suggested that I should turn the curtains round so that the pattern faced the outside world and not the room. “Then everyone will know you’ve got nice curtains,” she said.
She moved an ornament, dusted unnecessarily beneath it and put it back.
“Nothing but work, work, work, that’s all your life in a house like this. You work your fingers to the bone and get no thanks for it.” Pale eyes gleamed in her fleshy face. “Where’s Maggie, Mrs. Random? You ought to make her help you.”
“In her room. She’s tired. I don’t think she’s very well.”
She sniffed. “You don’t want to pay too much attention to her, Mrs. Random.” She gathered up her brushes and stood in the doorway. “She’s lazy, that’s all that’s the matter with her. Don’t you fuss over her too much—her mother made that mistake. She made herself sick with worry over that child—towards the end she was so thin that there was nothing to her face at all except those great eyes of hers. They stuck out in her face like lamps.”
I pretended to be busy with the candlestick in my lap; I rubbed it with the leather and my face stared at me from the silver surface, thin and distorted like a reflection in a comic mirror at a fair.
I said casually, “Why was she so worried about her?”
“Only the good lord knows. The child was delicate, she said. But she made too much fuss about her, and Mr. Random thought so too. Mary, he said to me, there’s nothing wrong with Maggie that fresh air and good food won’t cure. But her mother wouldn’t have it. Up to London they went regular, once a week at one time, trail, trail, trail round doctors and hospitals. It’s my belief that Mr. Random didn’t know where they were going, half the time. She kept him in the dark—knew he wouldn’t approve, I suppose. Maggie never looked any the better for it—or any worse, for that matter. But her mother, now, was a different kettle of fish. Each time they came back from London she looked like a corpse. She used to come straight in from the car and go up to her room and rest. Then she’d paint her face and doll herself up so that Mr. Random wouldn’t see how ill she looked—Evans used to say she was downright scared that he’d stop her taking Maggie up to London.”
“But if Maggie were ill—I’m sure he would have done anything …”
“He didn’t believe she was ill, Mrs. Random, that’s the root of the matter, and no more did any of us. It was a sickness in her mother’s mind, more like. She wasn’t normal herself and she couldn’t treat her child in a normal way. If Maggie was naughty, her daddy was never allowed to punish her. She used to break things, glass and china, quite deliberately and her mother would sweep up the bits and hide them from Mr. Random as if he were an ogre—when all he wanted was to bring her up in a decent, Christian fashion. It wasn’
t right, I always thought it wasn’t right.”
She sighed, twisted the lid off the tin of polish in her hand and snapped it back on again.
“Mind you, I’m not saying that she was anyway as bad as they made out after she was dead, poor soul. Once she was dead, there were no end of people who came forward and said she was wicked, that she’d had a lot of men friends and behaved badly with them. But I didn’t believe that, and I never shall, not to my dying day. Speak as you find, I say.” She made an ugly grimace with her mouth. Her voice was self-righteous. “She always seemed to me, even when she was scared out of her wits, a lady and nice, if you know what I mean. Not a farmer’s wife, of course, she’d never done a day’s work in her life. Not like Miss Ann.” Her face softened surprisingly. “Now she’d have made a good farmer. Evans always said that she’d got the right stuff in her. Always willing to learn and so sweet and loving. I always thought it was a crying shame, the way old Mrs. Random pushed her aside and favoured her brother. It’s not right, Mrs. Random, to think more of one child than another. If it wasn’t that she got so angry with the young Mrs. Random, the old lady would never have left Miss Ann a penny. And as it is, she’s not seen much of her rights, has she? Evans said to me, only the other day, things would be a lot different if the proper people were in the proper place.… We all think it’s a pity she didn’t marry that nice Mr. Sully.”
She paused. “You know we’d not expected Mr. Random to marry anyone like you. You were quite a surprise.”
I said helplessly, “Well—I don’t think there is much more we can do now. Everything’s ready for the party.”
We looked at each other. Her stout body was quivering. She said, with a trace of unease, “Well, now, I must be getting on, the day goes before you know where you are, doesn’t it?”
She went, her heels flapped sharply away along the passage. I pushed the hair away from my forehead with the back of my hand. What had she said? Eva hadn’t been a bitch. She was a gentle creature, scared out of her wits. What would happen if I said to James, why was your wife afraid of you?
