Dangerous Thoughts

by Celia Fremlin

  Here he looked from one to another of us, and spoke with yet greater emphasis: “We must all be careful, when he gets home, not to ask him one single thing about the hours leading up to the attack. And if he himself starts talking about what he thinks he remembers, we must firmly discourage him. All of us. Is that understood?”

  “Look, Edwin —” I began, but he flapped his hand to silence me.

  “No, Clare, don’t interrupt. What I’m saying is important. I’ve known no end of chaps in Leonard’s situation, recovering from concussion, and if they’re cross-questioned about what they remember, they can simply go round the bend, and start to hallucinate. They fancy they remember all sorts of things that didn’t happen, and forget all sorts of things that did. They know that something’s wrong, but they don’t know what. It can be very frightening for them, to be forced to confront their own delusions. I’ve seen it happen. I do know what I’m talking about.”

  He did, too. He’d been reading it up in a big way, and not just in our Home Doctor’s ABC. He must have been scouring the libraries as well, and had picked out just those case histories which corresponded most closely to his requirements.

  It’s not difficult. Shut your eyes and think of something awful, and if you search through enough weighty medical tomes, you’ll find an example of it.

  You may ask — and indeed I have asked myself the same question many times — why I didn’t challenge him the moment we found ourselves alone, and stop once and for all this dangerous lying? It would have been easy. All these chaps he had known recovering from concussion. Which chaps? When? On what occasion? I could have cornered him with the greatest of ease, and he must have known I could.

  He trusted me not to, I’m not quite sure why. But in fact his trust — if that’s what it was — was well-founded. I wasn’t going to show him up because I didn’t dare. This edifice of falsehood he was setting up as a bulwark against exposure and disgrace, it was a terrifyingly precarious structure, and growing more top-heavy day by day. If it collapsed, then what? To what desperate measures might he then resort?

  For, in a way, the lies he had chosen to tell this morning had left me feeling slightly reassured. He was not, after all, planning to murder Leonard, but simply to rubbish his story in advance by all this talk of amnesia. It might work, it might not. Surely it would be wise to wait and see what actually happened before showing him up?

  For one thing was certain: Edwin was a frightened man. By making a frightened man more frightened, you don’t make him less dangerous: quite the reverse.

  CHAPTER XXI

  “I’ve put you in our room,” Jessica was saying, showing me into a large, low-ceilinged room dominated by a huge four-poster bed, complete with cretonne curtains looped back against the ornately carved posts. Matching cretonne draped the lattice window through which the pale afternoon sunshine gleamed and leaped off polished oak; a dressing-table, a rocking chair, and a Victorian tallboy reaching almost to the beamed ceiling.

  “You see, Leo’s leg is going to be in plaster for some time yet, and so it’ll be much easier for him to be downstairs. We’ve fixed up a spare bed in his study — Edwin helped Phoebe bring it downstairs, and the mattress too. Oh, Clare, he’s been such a help, I can’t tell you! I’m so glad I thought of writing to you — I almost didn’t, you know, it seemed such cheek, but I was at my wits’ end, and Edwin has been so reassuring. He says he’d never have forgiven me if I hadn’t turned to him for help in this crisis, Leo being such a close friend, and a colleague and everything. And Leo will be thrilled to find him here, I know he will; they’ll have so much to talk about after all they’ve been through together. And do you know, Clare, Edwin has even offered to type up Leo’s reports for him, and cope with all the correspondence — Leo won’t be able to type just yet, with his collar-bone and everything. He’s our angel of mercy, your Edwin, he really is! And on top of all this, he’s going to drive me to the airport when the time comes. I expect he told you, didn’t he? Of course, the car is in the garage at the moment, having the new wheel fixed, but it’ll be ready in plenty of time, he says …”

  “Whose car?” The Coburns’ car? Or ours?

  “Oh, yours, of course,” said Jessica lightly. “Well naturally Edwin would be happier driving his own car, wouldn’t he? Besides, I don’t suppose he could drive ours anyway, all the fuss with third-party insurance and things. Anyway, it’s going to be OK, they’ve promised it will be ready first thing in the morning, and Leo won’t be arriving before Thursday or Friday at the earliest.”

  In a garage. A new wheel being fixed. The wheels had looked all right to me, and it certainly hadn’t been in a garage.

  Oh, well. What this latest bout of fibbing was in aid of I couldn’t guess, but did I have to? The essential thing was for me to keep an eye on Edwin’s every movement after Leo’s arrival, starting by going with him and Jessica to the airport. On this I would have to insist. The possessive-wife image wasn’t one which I relished: it would look as if I couldn’t trust my husband alone in a car with the elegant Jessica and her shining pony-tail, whereas the truth was that I couldn’t trust him anywhere, doing anything. But it couldn’t be helped. In a crisis, one’s self-image is often the first thing that has to go.

  Jessica’s relief at having us here was gratifyingly evident, though my role was not quite as clear as Edwin’s. So far, all I had done was to wash up after lunch — not a very onerous task, the meal having consisted of corned beef, tomatoes, and sticks of celery. For the plainness of this meal Jessica had apologised fulsomely, despite our (mine, anyway) assurances that this was exactly the sort of lunch we had at home.

  “It’s all so difficult,” she said, “my woman going sick at a time like this, it’s most upsetting. Phoebe isn’t the same at all. She’s a nice enough girl and she means well, I daresay, but she’s supposed to be still at school really; she won’t be sixteen till the end of the month, and I have to show her everything! She doesn’t even know that the small knife has to go outside the large knife when she’s laying the table! I ask you! And she can’t stay after four, because that’s when her mother expects her home — her mother thinks she’s been to school you see — and so I’m left with the whole evening on my hands. The evening meal. Feeding the geese. Everything!

  “Look, Clare, I’ve cleared a drawer for you — here —” She pulled open the middle drawer of a bow-fronted chest of drawers. “I hope that’ll be enough … I hope I’ve thought of everything …” Her eyes roved anxiously round the room, while I assured her as emphatically as I could that everything was absolutely fine, what a lovely room it was; I just love those old beams — and a real old-fashioned patchwork bedspread, too! — and what a gorgeous view!

  As indeed it was. Moving beside me to the lattice window, Jessica raised the latch and pushed it open on to the wide, bare landscape of dunes and sea and sky, The salty air, already laced with the chill of evening, swept past us into the room, and I drew deep breaths of a larger, clearer world, away and beyond the turmoil of my present life. Whatever happened, whatever Edwin was plotting, was tiny compared with the vastness of this sky.

  “It’s the draughts that are the problem,” Jessica was gently complaining. “It’s not so bad at the moment, because the wind’s more from the south east, but when it’s in this direction, straight off the sea … Oh dear! Of course, if we had proper, modern windows fitted, then it would … but Leo won’t hear of it. He was born here, you know, and that always makes a person sentimental about discomforts, haven’t you noticed? And of course he’s not here half the time — off on assignments, or spending nights in our pied-à-terre in Ealing. That’s one good thing, you know, that might come out of this accident of his. He’s going to be stuck here for weeks by the look of things, until the plaster’s off, anyway, and with winter coming on, he’ll really find out for himself … Perhaps after this he won’t be so keen on preserving all the draughts as family heirlooms. What do you think?”

  As a marital problem
, this one concerning family heirlooms was so different from any of mine and Edwin’s that I was at a loss for any very helpful response. So I made a few sympathetic noises, and then sought to change the subject.

  “That wreck,” I said, pointing. “What happened? Is it quite recent?”

  “Recent? Oh no. Before my time, anyway. Well before. Every now and then there’s a fuss about it, letters in the local paper, that sort of thing. They want it salvaged, you see, or somehow cleared away, it’s a maritime hazard, but all the authorities say it’s some other authority that ought to pay for it, and so it looks like staying there for ever. Actually, it’s becoming a tourist attraction of sorts, an enterprising chap in the village runs boat trips out to it in the season. The visitors love it, they tear off bits of rotten wood to take home and put on their sideboards. ‘From a real wreck.’ You know. Trippers. They love that sort of thing.”

  “It hardly looks far enough out for a boat trip,” I remarked. “From here, it looks as if you could just about paddle out to it.”

  Jessica laughed (the first time, incidentally, I had heard her laugh). “Oh no! It’s deceptive, you know, the distance. It’s the best part of half a mile, I believe, at high tide. Not that I’ve ever been out there, but my woman knows all about it — of course it’s her cousin that runs the trips. It’s a bit of lark, she says …”

  “I hope she’s getting better,” I interposed, feeling that I should have asked after the lady earlier, but somehow there hadn’t been an opportunity. “I hope it isn’t anything serious?”

  “Serious? Oh no. Just her back. She’s got to take things easy, the doctor says, which is all very well, but what about me? I can’t take things easy! One thing on top of another, and Leo coming home any day now … My back will be playing up if I’m not careful, and then how will we manage …?”

  Thus it came about that by the end of the afternoon I had acquired myself a substantial role in the Coburn ménage. I undertook, for a start, to produce an evening meal for the three of us — no, four, Jessica hastily corrected me, because Rhoda Fairbrother would be dropping in again about the Pageant. That’s what she’d come about this morning, actually, but had been side-tracked by finding Edwin here, and him so interested in medieval history. The pageant wasn’t till June, actually, but Rhoda was like that, and meantime could I — could I possibly? — see to the geese? She, Jessica, was feeling the beginnings of a tickle in her throat, and it would be just too awful if she was laid up with one of her chests just when Leo was arriving …

  Geese. Well, there has to be a first time. Under my hostess’ instructions, I mixed up a porridgy concoction of coarse meal and kitchen scraps, and carried it out through the old stable-yard beyond the disused wash-house.

  The wind hit me as I opened the door and I could scarcely close it behind me against the force of the rising gale.

  “They’ll be in the top meadow,” Jessica had said, with an explanatory wave of the hand in the required direction, and so thither I made my way, almost losing my breath as I battled against the wind.

  The meadow was large and neglected, overgrown with tall thistles, but as to locating the geese, there was no problem: they were already gathered in a tight phalanx athwart the gate, and at the sight of me and my bucket they set up that hysterical whispering which is the goose equivalent of a rousing cheer.

  I had been instructed not to feed them until they were inside the untidy structure of chicken-wire and corrugated iron which protected them at night from foxes, rats, and the sheer force of rain and wind; and so with some trepidation I pushed and waded my way through the hissing, frantic concourse, surprised — townswoman as I am — at the gentleness of the soft little pecks which came my way as the snake-like heads tried to thrust themselves into my bucket.

  I won through in the end; when it came to the crunch, I was bigger than they were — and within a very few minutes my charges were safely inside, guzzling, gulping and gasping in rapture, while with chilled fingers I was fastening the complicated contraption of wire, staples and metal hooks which secured the door.

  The journey back across the field was a whole lot easier; no geese going spare around my ankles, and the wind behind me. Jauntily, I swung my empty bucket, the wind catching it like a sail on every up-swing; and it wasn’t until I reached the gate that I realised I was being watched.

  “Where have you been? What the hell are you doing?”

  Edwin’s voice was sharp with outrage — or was it fear? — and I was startled, naturally. But the hugeness of the wind, the sky, the vast spaces, was still with me, and I simply laughed. Yes, I laughed; he looked so furtive, so guilty, and — yes — so trivial, somehow. What did I care? He was up to something, obviously, but it couldn’t be anything very dire, because Leonard wasn’t even in England yet … And just look at that sky, the huge, galloping clouds …!

  And so I laughed. His face, already pinched with cold (had he been lurking here for some time?) darkened.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny. Where have you been? What have you got in there?”

  I swung the empty bucket almost into his face, and laughed again.

  “Nothing! Look for yourself! I’ve been feeding the geese, if you want to know. Jessica asked me to. I don’t know why she didn’t ask you, if it comes to that. It’s a man’s job, this sort of thing.”

  Not true, of course. It’s goose-girls that crop up in the fairy stories, not goose-boys. And what about the goose that laid the golden egg? Wasn’t it the old woman who killed it, which of course is the final stage of looking after a goose. However, the remark sufficed to annoy Edwin. Why I wanted to do this I cannot say; I think it was something to do with the wind whistling into my buzzing, aching ears.

  We made our way back to the house in silence, each of us, I suppose, filled to overflowing with thoughts that must be kept hidden from the other.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Risotto, I decided, was the best solution. One thing Jessica had got plenty of was long grain, unpolished rice, though of most other foodstuffs she was running lamentably short. It was impossible to get to the shops, she’d explained, without a car, and since she couldn’t drive because of her tranquilisers, and Edwin couldn’t because of his car being at this garage, there was nothing, literally nothing, to eat. She had spread her hands despairingly: what should she do? So I had taken up the challenge — well, I could hardly do less, and so now here I was, rooting round her kitchen and into the deepest recesses of her refrigerator. No deep freeze, I noted — was this also due to Leo’s having been born here?

  Remains of the corned beef. Half a dozen slightly dried-up olives. A heel of cheddar cheese. Oh, but I mustn’t use that on account of her anti-depressants. A large Spanish onion, though, and several smaller ones, already sprouting. Tomatoes, too, set to ripen on a window-ledge, some already yellowish, and just about usable if fried. Dandelion leaves for the picking, while the light lasted. Oh, and eggs. Goose eggs, naturally, but also half a dozen hens’ eggs in a carton. Which, I asked, would she like me to use?

  “Oh.” She paused, indecision creasing her white brow. “That’s a problem, Clare. You see, the goose eggs want eating, no doubt about that, but there’s been all this about salmonella: goose eggs and duck eggs are supposed to be the worst. They were on about it again last night, in Panorama; did you watch it?”

  I didn’t as it happened, and as she could have worked out for herself if she’d thought about it for a moment, because by nine thirty that evening I was already on the train. But it didn’t matter, because Jessica was ready and willing to tell me all about the programme: the symptoms, the special danger for the old, the young, the victims of this or that disability, which included — did it? didn’t it? — one or more of Jessica’s own complaints? Nervous tension? Headaches? Delayed-shock syndrome? What did I think?

  I thought (for my own culinary convenience, largely) that these ailments would be of no significance in relation to salmonella poisoning. Jessica seemed to accept this off-
the-cuff verdict contentedly enough, warning me, however, that it took fifteen minutes, not seven, to hard-boil a goose egg, and be sure to do them thoroughly because if you don’t they tend to taste of fish.

  The eggs — I hadn’t quite realised how huge they were — had had half their allocated time when the telephone rang. Through the open door I had been listening to Jessica and Edwin chatting companionably about the symptoms of salmonella poisioning. The voices suddenly ceased, and a moment later Jessica’s head came round the kitchen door.

  “It’s for you, Clare,” she said. “She seems to want to speak to you, not me. Mrs Barlow — you know, Richard’s mother. You can take it in here, if you like, on the extension, so you can watch the eggs at the same time.”

  “Clare! Oh, thank goodness I’ve got you. I’ve been ringing and ringing you at home, I had no idea … What are you doing up there, if you don’t mind my asking? Has something happened to Leonard? — What is going on?”

  What indeed? Should I tell her — well, you see, my husband is planning to murder your son as soon as he can think up some way of doing it that actually works. He’s made some half-baked attempts already; twice trying to cause a motoring accident — then toying with ideas about poisonous fungi; and right now he’s learning all he can about salmonella poisoning. This morning he was into ergot, too, but I guess he’s given that up as a non-starter. Oh, and why he’s here is because he has similar intentions towards Leonard Coburn. The point is, you see, that the story he’s been telling on TV and to the world’s press is all lies from beginning to end; he never went on the trip at all, as your Richard well knows, and Leonard does too. They are the only two people in the world who know for certain that he is lying, and so he’s hell-bent on silencing them before they can get together and show him up. So you see, Daphne …

  “So you see, Daphne,” I heard myself saying aloud, “we got this rather desperate letter from Jessica; she’s been ill, and didn’t know how she could cope with Leonard’s return single handed, and so we felt — well, we both felt — that …”