‘Can’t think why she isn’t asleep!’ said Lewis. He tossed my handbag onto the bunk at my side.
‘Different people react differently to drugs,’ said Amy, who was standing on the steps, well above the water. ‘Come on, Lewis—two more to go yet, and that water’s coming in too fast for my liking. Are you sure you can clear the outlet when we need to rescue their bodies?’
‘Positive. But if it doesn’t work, I have my frogman’s outfit in the boot of the Mini, and I can dive in for them. It would take longer, but the result would be the same.’
‘I don’t want you catching cold. You know how susceptible you are.’
I turned my head to watch him wade out. The water swished around his waders, making progress slow. It was evil-looking, dark, surging water. Dirty. I was lying so that I had to watch it rise, gently submerging brick after brick in the wall beside my bunk.
I began to cry.
I dozed and woke, shivered, noted the new level of the water, and dozed again.
Suddenly I was wide awake. Someone was coming down the steps, treading heavily. I couldn’t see...No! A head of bright hair swung over Lewis’s shoulder. Johnny, fast asleep.
The water swirled around Lewis’s calves. He dumped Johnny on a crazily tilting chair, and tied him sitting upright to one of the brick pillars. Johnny’s head lay aslant the bright yellow of his shirt, his mouth open. They hadn’t bothered to gag him, I suppose because he had succumbed to the drug more quickly than I. Or maybe they’d given him more of it.
‘Two down and one to go,’ said Lewis, speaking not to me but to Amy, who was waiting for him on the steps as before. ‘But Edward’s going to be difficult. He hasn’t drunk anything at all yet. You know how little he drinks at the best of times. Does he suspect, do you think? Could we get him down here by telling him about the dog?’
‘Yes, that’s a possibility. No, I don’t think he suspects anything. Neither of these two went past the reception line, and as far as I know he is unaware of their presence here. Even if someone does tell him that the woman is here, we can rely on him not to make a scene at Piers’ party. He thinks he’s following her to New York next week, so why should he suspect anything?’
‘The Ferguson boy. Will he make trouble when the boy is found dead?’
‘No. I’ve already told him that his friend has disgraced himself and was told to leave. When the boy is found in the lake, they’ll think he had one too many and fell in, that’s all.’
‘Your father is feeling all right now? He’ll be able to last the course? It would cause comment if he had to go home now.’
‘I can’t spare him yet. He’s sitting down in my study. Anyway, who would drive him home? I can’t spare my chauffeur. No, he’ll have to wait until later. He’s had these attacks before...’
Lewis climbed the stairs and went out. The door slammed and was bolted.
They had left the light on. The sight of the water rising around Johnny’s legs drove me frantic. I wrestled with my bonds until sweat ran down my cheeks, but I could not shift them. The effects of the drug seemed to have worn off. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted Johnny to wake before the water drowned him or not. My bunk was not very high off the ground and the water was lapping at the base of my pallet before Johnny stirred.
He yawned, squeezed his eyelids, and dozed off again. I couldn’t speak to warn him. I could only watch him and the water alternatively as it rose around and soaked my pallet. The water was round his knees. Loose pieces of furniture and planks of wood had begun to float on the surface of the water.
Johnny’s eyes opened and he looked straight at me. He stared. He blinked. He absorbed the fact that I was tied up. He inspected our surroundings. He tried to speak, and then to smile. I saw him bunch his muscles in an attempt to rise. And fail.
‘It’s a nightmare!’ he said.
I shook my head.
‘If it’s not a nightmare, then you’re my mother.’ I nodded. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and inspected the cellar once more. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘For God’s sake, why?’ He knew I couldn’t reply, but he was like Jack, who also found relief in communication. ‘Likewise, who?’ he went on. Then he burst out laughing. There was shock and horror in his laughter, but also an appreciation of the funny side of the situation which had not occurred to me. ‘Here’s a how-de-do!’ said my son. ‘And you not even able to give your son a blessing as he falls to the earth, dying! Sorry, bad taste, that! Sorry about this afternoon, too. I behaved badly, running away like that instead of staying to be introduced. I could lay the blame on Sally, but that wouldn’t be fair—likewise, not true. Oh, she doesn’t want me to have anything to do with you or my real father, and she might well have been rude to you if I’d told her who you were, but it wasn’t worry about what she might say that made me run away. Nor was it worrying about Mum—sorry, my foster-mother. I’m afraid I’ve been brought up to call them Mum and Dad, and it’s too late to change that now. I’d never remember.’ He watched me intently as he spoke, his facial expression altering from moment to moment, as Jack’s did. I began to like him, as well as love him. ‘Forgive me if I get the names muddled?’ He grinned, all charm. ‘Well, it’s true that Mum has been trying to get me to promise not to see you, and what with her having had flu so badly early this year and the change of life and that, Dad—that’s my foster-father, of course—said he’d appreciate it if I held back for a while and not contact you, and of course I said I would. That was before you came. I only heard you were here, in this country, when I got back home last night, and, Brother! Was that some row! We had to get the old doc. back to calm her down, and...well, I ended up promising her I wouldn’t try to contact you yet, but wait for Christmas, when I’d settled in at the university. I’d waited so long, another couple of months wouldn’t matter...’ He looked grimly at the wall in front of him.
‘Mum and Dad think I don’t care about being illegitimate and not knowing who my real father is. That’s not true, of course. I thought I was their son until I was twelve. I knew I didn’t take after either of them, but they told me I took after my grandfather, and I accepted that. I was very badly shocked when I was told. I knew all about you, of course; my pretty aunt who sent me money from America at birthdays and Christmas...there was even a photograph of you in the family album. I could accept you as my mother and even be proud of you because you’d done well for yourself afterwards, and the Reverend told me many little things about you which made me like you. But not to know who my father was—that was bad! Mum and Dad said you didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell. The Reverend said that of course you knew and that it had been a sort of Romeo and Juliet affair, and that you’d been parted by bad luck and the fact that the man was already engaged to be married. He wouldn’t tell me any more, no matter how much I asked. I couldn’t leave it like that. I wanted to know! But there was no way of finding out, and gradually I accepted that I would never know, or perhaps only learn who my father was when I was grown up and it didn’t matter.
‘Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered so much if Dad hadn’t been such a...I was going to say “such a failure”, but he’s not a failure as a person. He’s good and kind and a bit dim. I’ve always been able to run rings around him mentally, and Mum,’ he shrugged, ‘she’s a darling, but she’s a terrible clinger. She doesn’t even read a newspaper or listen to the news or...I was lonely. I had nightmares in which I searched for my father down long corridors. I began to look at people in the streets, wondering if this man, or that, might be my real father. I knew he was a native of this town, and that he’d been in the playboy crowd, and that was all I knew. I’d look at the photographs of business men in the local paper and think to myself how it would be if that one or the other were my father, and what I’d feel about him. I used to cut them out and keep them in an envelope on top of my wardrobe and look at their faces every night before I went to bed. I liked one man’s face better than the others—I won’t tell you who it was but I got an enlarged photo from
the newspaper offices later on, and kept that for ages. I built up a fantasy in which I elected him as my father, and used to go to him for advice and a chat now and then. Daft, really. I grew out of all that, later on. I burned all the photos, including the one of Mr Barnes...’ He blinked, and shook his head.
‘Sorry, didn’t mean to tell you. Must be whatever it was that they used to drug me with, making me feel...Go ahead and laugh if you like, but our M.P. is a good sort and he wasn’t a bad model to take. He tided me over a bad patch, anyway, until I met this other man. I’m sorry if this upsets you, but I don’t really need to know my real father anymore. When you turned up with him this afternoon I recognised him; I don’t suppose he’d remember me, but I’ve seen him around at the club now and then. I mean, I’m sure he’s a very pleasant person, and I’ve never heard anything bad about him, but face to face with him like that I knew I couldn’t feel towards him as a son ought to feel towards his father...and that’s why I ran away.’
He was silent, his eyes on the shifting water. If he’d been looking in my direction he couldn’t have failed to see that I was trying to tell him he’d got it wrong, but he kept his eyes down. I could see by the movements of his shoulders that he was trying to rub through his bonds, but I knew they had bound him with bandages and wired his wrists together, and I didn’t think he’d manage to free himself.
The water flooded over my pallet and I reared my head in horror.
‘Steady!’ said Johnny. ‘Someone will come. Just keep your chin above water.’
The water was so cold. And dirty. I tried not to panic, but watched Johnny. He had failed in his efforts to release himself, and was now considering what he should do next. He started to call for help. His voice echoed in the cellar, but no one heard. I hadn’t heard a single sound from outside the cellar since I’d been brought down, even though I guessed we must be almost immediately under the terrace on which a band was playing. I shook my head at him.
He got the message, and stopped. He grinned at me. He was a brave lad.
‘Sorry, luv,’ he said. ‘What a way to end a party, eh? I wish...I wish I hadn’t run away this afternoon. I’d like to have shaken him by the hand. I think you and I would have got on all right, too...don’t you? I’m sorry about Mum and Dad—they’ll be frantic...and Sally! But maybe that’s all for the best, because I knew it wasn’t going to work out, even if she didn’t. He showed me that. I didn’t go complaining to him, you understand, but...he encourages you to talk, and he listens, and though he never gives advice unless you actually ask straight out for it, somehow the very act of putting your case to him makes it clear what you ought to do. The first Wednesday in every month. He goes to the club to play chess with anyone who wants a game, and that’s how it started. I run the chess section there now, but we still have a game when he comes down. We don’t talk much. He isn’t the interfering sort, but he’s always there. I’m going into the Mills when I qualify. He’s fixed a lot of the lads up with jobs, but he said he’d tell his personnel officer not to let me in the gates until I was qualified. He was going to advance me the money to go to university if I didn’t get a scholarship; got it all worked out how much I’d need and how much interest I’d have to pay him. Then Mum told me you’d been sending an allowance for me all those years and she could divert that from the housekeeping if I wanted to go to university, rather than borrow from an outsider. But I don’t think of him as an outsider. I’ve known him for five years now, and if I did elect him my substitute father, I didn’t see there was any harm in it. I think...I know that he will grieve, too...!’
My suspicion that Edward and Johnny had somehow managed to get together had become a certainty. Frantically I made noises to show Johnny I had something important to tell him.
He laughed at first. ‘Sorry, luv! Impossible to translate, and all that. Is it important?’ I nodded. He thought about it. The waters whispered as they clung to my neck, and my muscles began to ache with the strain of holding my head above water. My dress floated on the water around me.
‘About my father?’ he asked. I nodded and then shook my head. ‘Yes and no? Well, like I said—he’s all right. An architect, isn’t he? Makes them all laugh. I suppose I can understand what you saw in him...’ I shook my head. ‘Not about him but he is my father, isn’t he?’ I shook my head again.
Johnny’s expression was as transparent as Jack’s. I saw incredulous hope fight with disbelief, then joy won, to be replaced with doubt. I nodded.
‘Really?’ he asked. ‘It couldn’t really be him, could it?’ I nodded. He bowed his head and was silent. The water tickled my chin. It was high around Johnny’s chest. He would see me die, and then die himself. He didn’t speak again, or not to me, anyway. I thought I heard him whisper something about ‘not wanting to die’, but I couldn’t be sure.
The door at the head of the steps opened and Edward stepped in, calling for Crisp, his dog.
Johnny shouted, ‘Sir, down here! Help!’
‘What...?’ said Edward. He peered down at Johnny, but didn’t recognise him. The light was much dimmer in the cellar than in the larder from which he had come. He started down the steps, leaving the door open behind him. It slammed shut and we heard the bolts shoot home.
Edward threw himself back up the steps and hammered on the door. ‘No!’ He tried the handle, but it did not move the door. There was an appalled silence in the cellar, except for the rustle of planks shifting in the water.
‘Sir—my mother!’
Edward heard his son’s voice, but didn’t seem to understand. He was on his knees on the top step, with the palms of his hands flat against the door and his head drooping. With horror I realised that he, too, had been doped and that he was about to sink into sleep. If he did, then I would die within the next few minutes, for the water was creeping over my chin.
‘Sir! Father!’
Edward’s head jerked up. He rubbed his eyes and looked around him. He made his way down the stairs slowly, leaning against the wall to keep himself upright. He was finding it difficult to focus on Johnny, and he had not as yet seen me. I didn’t blame him. I was nearly submerged, and tiring fast.
‘My mother—in the bottom bunk!’
Edward looked around, dazedly. ‘Crisp?’ he called. ‘Where are you? Why are you hiding down here?’ Then he saw me. He stared, apparently unable to move, or perhaps merely puzzled as to why I was in such a strange position.
‘Cut her loose, or she’ll drown!’
Edward set himself in motion. I remembered how hard I had found it to move my heavy body when I had first drunk my doped brandy, and I knew how he felt. He fumbled in his pocket and produced a pen-knife. He stumbled. Clutching at a plank which slipped from under his hand, he fell full length into the water. Water surged into my mouth. I tried not to swallow, to hold my breath, to force my aching back to hold the muscles of my neck steady...Edward emerged, his suit blackened and his fair hair slicked close to his head. He had lost his knife.
He didn’t waste time groping for the knife, but reached me in one desperate lunge. He felt along my arms for my wrists. Great concentration was required of him to make any movement at all. He was fighting not only the water, but an almost overwhelming urge to lie down and sleep. He released my wrists, tore off my gag and helped me to kneel while he freed my ankles. Then he put my arms round his neck and lifted me on to the top bunk. As he did so, his head dropped to cradle in the angle of my neck and shoulder. He was muttering something about wanting to put me over his knee, and that I must promise never, ever to frighten him like that again...
‘Never, darling! We’ll sink or swim together from now on.’
‘Very apt,’ grinned my son, whose existence we had temporarily forgotten. ‘Anyone for a dip?’
Edward was asleep in my arms. I shook him awake and told him to go and rescue his son.
‘Who...?’ he asked. ‘Johnny’s in America. You said so.’
‘No, darling, you only assumed that he was.’
‘I’m here!’ grinned Johnny. ‘Come and get me. John Blake to you, Johnny Jeffries to my mother, and Lord knows what, legally. Come on! Or it will be a case of “Dead and never called me Father”!’
Edward was rocking on his feet, but he had managed to focus on Johnny. ‘You are my son? But...I wondered, once or twice, but you talked so easily of your background. I thought it was wishful thinking on my part...but if I could have chosen, from the whole city...’
‘Same here!’ said Johnny.
They didn’t grin at each other, or openly express delight, but Edward put his hand on his son’s shoulder and firmed it before dipping underwater to free him. Planks, chairs and wine racks had broken loose and were floating on the surface of the water, hindering him. But at last Johnny was freed. Explanations were exchanged while we sat in a row on the top bunk to recover. Edward had to hear why I’d left Johnny behind, and what had happened to him as a result. He also had to hear the story of my adventures since my arrival, and what plans Amy had made for our disposal. Johnny related how he’d been invited to the party by the Ferguson boy, and knowing that it was in honour of Edward’s son, had accepted out of curiosity to see the home and the son of his patron. Within ten minutes of his arrival, Amy had asked him into her study for a chat; this had puzzled him, as he thought he’d been asked to the party because the Strakers were short of young men. However, being naturally polite, he had fallen in with Amy’s invitation, accepted a drink and known no more till he woke up in the cellar.
Edward had gone back to the Mills for his meeting after he left me. He had been in a state of shock, hardly able to understand a word of what was being said around him. Then someone at the meeting had spoken of their seeing ‘eye to eye’, and Edward had recalled that I had not met his eye once while I’d been talking in the Square. He’d excused himself from the meeting and shut himself in his office until he thought he’d arrived at an explanation for my behaviour. A phone call to Con confirmed his guess. He’d drawn a blank when he tried to contact me at the hotel, but when the receptionist there told him I was checking out, he ordered his secretary to cancel his engagements for the following week and book him on the first available flight to New York. After that, he’d returned to White Wings to help with preparations for the party. When Amy told him I was leaving that day, he replied that he’d be following me—which had sealed his fate in Amy’s eyes. He had not seen me arrive at the party, but Jack had told him I was there. On demanding an explanation from Amy, she had told him that I had been invited by her to stifle a scandal, and that she was relying on him not to make a scene and spoil things for Piers on his birthday. To which Edward had agreed. After a while he had received a message that the Alderman had been taken faint and would like to speak with him in Amy’s study. He had gone in to him, and been pressed to take a drink. He found Amy’s father tired, but content to wait until later to be taken home. Edward sought for the chauffeur, but he had disappeared—to take the Rolls round to the other side of the lake, in fact, although we did not know that at the time. Then the Alderman had told Edward that Crisp appeared to have eaten something which had disagreed with him, and that he was being sick in the cellar. Edward was furious, because he had left the dog with the gardener with strict instructions that he was not to be let back into the house on account of Amy’s aversion to him. Edward had rushed down to the cellar. He had not seen anyone follow him, and did not know who had closed the door behind him. The result was the same, whether it was the Alderman, or Amy, or Lewis.
Cry for Kit Page 10
