A Voice Like Velvet

by Donald Henderson

  Ernest, she knew, took the problem to Broadcasting House with him. She took it, with Lucas, to the pine woods and walked slowly along the canal staring at the barges. Things were better than they had been, admittedly. He was always kind, but, at first, life with him had been almost painful. He had often spoken of his father’s silences, yet he seemed, at times, to have inherited them. He would read and she would sew. Sometimes he would play the piano to her, but her presence seemed to embarrass him and he would stop. When he was in London, she would turn on the radio, waiting to hear him, and wishing, hysterically, he would say, for a change:

  ‘This is the six o’clock news, and this is Ernest Bisham reading it—but would you all excuse me a moment, I want to speak to my wife … Marjorie, are you there? Did I ever tell you I love you, my dear?’

  He never did! Naturally!

  A person in his position had to behave like a model machine. The slightest indiscretion and he was ruined. They would all be ruined. He knew that, and he would never hurt her. He was kindness itself. Wasn’t it awful that kindness wasn’t enough? Look how kind he could be to Bess, and she was very tiresome at times, though without meaning to be. Yet it would be nice if people went haywire sometimes; even Ernest.

  Was his personality really such a model one? Of course it was. And what a good thing it was. You only had to think of the antics of some husbands.

  Yes, she was very lucky. She was very lucky indeed and she was very wrong to complain.

  But …

  All the same, coming back from the pine woods one afternoon, in good time for the six o’clock news, she thought she felt happier. You had to be patient and give things a chance, didn’t you? She had had an afternoon off from her many wartime activities and she had spent it counting her blessings. Ernest was off duty after the six, and he was coming home to a cosy dinner. She had been dreading it in case he telephoned to say he was going off on one of his journeys. He still had a good deal of routine announcing to do, and he was liable to go off anywhere at any time of the day or night. Two days previously, he’d rung her up and disappointed her by saying: ‘I’m awfully sorry, my dear. I have to go on a little journey.’ She was a tactful wife and didn’t ask where, but she said: ‘Oh, Ernest, but it’s getting so late.’ He’d been sweetly apologetic about it, saying in a schoolboyish way that he would ‘try and make up for it’. Well, she supposed the coral beads were the making up.

  There was no disappointing telephone message, so she went upstairs to dress. When a knock came on her door she was terrified in case it was a message.

  But it was only Mrs Leeman with some worry about the dinner, and the difficulties of shopping, and to say the black-out had slipped in the master’s room, and to say she couldn’t very well be in two places at once. Mrs Leeman was not exactly the ideal servant, any more than Leeman was.

  ‘I’ll see to the black-out, Mrs Leeman,’ she told her.

  ‘Very well …’

  ‘Dinner is the important thing,’ she said pleasantly.

  Ernest adored his food.

  CHAPTER X

  SEEING to the black-out in Ernest’s room, she indulged in a few worried thoughts about the Leemans, who were their latest achievement. Though there was only his word for it, Leeman had been invalided out of the army since Dunkirk, where he had received what he called ‘a bang on the nut’. It had certainly affected him, or something had, for he was thin and his face was always ashy white. Both his temper and his presence at meals were distinctly uncertain, and he sometimes flung the front door open to visitors in the most startling manner. Mrs Leeman was fat and looked old enough to be his mother. She was sour, but good with the silver. Strange relatives were rather inclined to appear at the back door on Saturdays, the Tredgarth back gate being swung on by sundry children of obscure appearance, like the Dead End Kids. When Ernest protested against this, on account of the din they all made, the Leemans had looked black as thunder for several days. But the Dead End Kids vanished. The Leemans had comfortable quarters and more or less free access to the spirit and beer ration, and of course they had ‘the wireless’. They were not very flattering to Ernest, however, declaring a hatred of the news (sounding as if they meant announcers) and vastly preferring Enoch, yodelling, and Workers’ Playtime. When Ernest politely agreed that Tommy Handley was very amusing, they both shrugged and said, ‘Oh, yes, him.’

  Mrs Bisham frowned slightly about them, but she and Ernest were terrified of losing them. One had to be grateful for small mercies. She sat in Ernest’s room and looked idly round it.

  He’d made it as nearly like his Westminster flat as the shape of the crooked room permitted. The differences were the beams and corners and the log fire.

  He still had his books and his brandy glasses and his illustrated poem by Francis Thompson.

  There was a pile of letters and papers on his desk; it was in a mess as if he’d been having a turn-out at his leisure. Several things had fallen to the floor. There were some old brown snapshots of his public school, of himself as a boy in cricket clothes. There were a few up-to-date ones of him sitting, looking very distinguished—large and almost elderly—in a studio, before a hanging microphone.

  There was a cricket cap and an old boxing glove and a cricket bat with signatures on it.

  There were lots of little clues to him. He’d thrown two tennis rackets on his bed, and a dusty pile of music scores: ‘Bird Songs at Eventide’, ‘All Alone’, ‘Love’s Garden of Roses’, ‘When I Grow Too Old to Dream’, ‘When I Look at You’.

  She turned them over and thought: ‘But I still don’t really know him from Adam.’

  She was aware of the rather exotic sensation that she was looking for something: she was doing some detective work on him—she was searching for clues to him, the true him. She felt extraordinarily excited knowing afresh and for certain that she didn’t know the true him. There was a queer sensation of mystery in the room. His room.

  It was nonsense, of course. It was wishful thinking.

  Wishful thinking? That was a funny thing to think. When everybody else thought him so ideal.

  The three little lines appeared over the bridge of her nose. On the near chair was an illustrated advertisement of a safe. Was he going to buy a safe?

  Suddenly she saw something else.

  It was lying on an old brown volume of Shakespeare.

  As a child, she had been quite used to the sight and also the feel of a revolver. Her father had had an imposing armoury; it had been quite a hobby of his. She knew how to load and unload a pistol when she was ten.

  But to see a six-chambered, up-to-date little revolver in Ernest’s room was a considerable surprise. What was even more surprising was that it was fully loaded. It was extraordinary of him to leave it lying about. And what on earth would he want with it? It was true that the Leemans had instructions never to enter his room, and she looked after it herself, but it was very unwise, wasn’t it?

  Frowning slightly, she put it in a drawer of his desk. The drawer was a bit small, but the others were all locked.

  When she reached the hall, he was just coming in. He was smiling but looked a bit tired under the eyes.

  Greeting him affectionately, she thought: ‘Perhaps he’s in the Secret Service.’ A funny little current of pride and excitement touched her scalp. She knew that she wanted to think that.

  She decided it would be intelligent not to say a word about the loaded revolver. He was intelligent, too, and he would see it had been put in the drawer. He would be pleased with her for it.

  He kissed her and said at once: ‘How are you, my dear? You’re looking very nice. By the way, before I forget, tomorrow night I’ve got to go on a little journey. So don’t be worried if I miss the eleven-five.’

  She heard herself saying, ‘Another symphony concert in Manchester, dear?’ but she hardly heard his non-committal reply because by then she was thinking: ‘He is in the Secret Service …!’ She knew a little tremor of fear for him, mixed with the ne
w pride in him.

  When he was preoccupied during dinner, she was tactful and not at all talkative.

  Almost the only thing she said was:

  ‘When you have time, Ernest, would you do something for me? It will please Mrs Wintle, she’s so worried about Jonas.’

  She was sure he was in the Secret Service. He was not really going to announce any concert in Manchester or anywhere else. Tomorrow she would try and find out what the concert was and if he did in fact announce it from up there. That would be easy to find out. Then she would know.

  She thought of this with rising excitement all the time she talked about Jonas Wintle and asked Ernest if he could possibly get him into the BBC. Poor Mrs Wintle was so worried about him.

  He was aware of what she was saying, and he answered her attentively.

  But his mind was elsewhere.

  The spectre of Mrs Mansfield had arisen a little before he was ready for her. However, one had to be opportunist, and if he was as successful with her at her house in Mount Street, as he had been at Lady Stewker’s in Grosvenor Square, it was just as well that he had ordered himself a safe. One of his rules had always been to take sensible precautions, and locked drawers were not sensible. You never knew. And he wasn’t at all sure that he hadn’t now thought of an idea which would make these night adventures a little more interesting. What good were gems locked up in a safe, when he had gone to such pains to get them?

  Yes, the safe was an essential precaution meanwhile, while he considered this.

  He started to tell Marjorie about the safe. It was to go in his room, he had many private papers and so on.

  But she was on the telephone. She looked large and elegant, leaning over the Bechstein and saying:

  ‘I’ve spoken to Ernest, Mrs Wintle. He will be very glad to do anything he can for Jonas. But of course he’s only an announcer, he’s not …’ A bit later, she said into the telephone: ‘Ask Jonas to come round now for a few minutes, Mrs Wintle. And since he has been invalided out of the RAF, I’m quite sure the …’

  When the front doorbell rang Ernest was reading the evening paper. An article regretted that there was no reason to expect an early arrest in the Stewker necklace case. The press said unflatteringly:

  ‘The robbery presented the same curious features that have characterized a number of burglaries in recent years. The drawers in Lady Stewker’s dressing-table had been ransacked in a very casual manner. The thief appears deliberately to have ignored five hundred pounds in notes, for he—or she?—left the wad of notes sitting on an alabaster ash tray.’

  He thought: ‘I don’t like the word “thief” very much.’ It savoured somewhat of the chap who picked pockets in the school locker room.

  He sat frowning at it.

  The paper said:

  ‘Inspector Hood, of Scotland Yard, is in charge of the case. Beyond admitting that he had found no clues, he has no statement to make at present.’

  Jonas Wintle stood in the hall unwinding a large scarf from his neck. He was inclined to wear a permanent frown as if to indicate the serious extent to which life had by now browned him off. He had frowned his way through Harrow, which had browned him off somewhat, towards the finish, and the war arrived just in time to get him into the RAF. As a night fighter pilot, he had had to frown legitimately, but his frown stayed for good when he crash-landed on returning safely from a very hazardous trip. The irony of this crash, which was due to sudden mist obscuring the landing ground, browned him off completely long before he left hospital and returned to the bosom of a doting family who had browned him off almost as soon as he left the cradle. Life he now regarded as ‘complete hell’, and the only prospect at all appeared to be this pompous Bisham chap who might get him into the BBC or at any rate advise him how to get in. Oh, well, he thought, might as well explore every avenue, as the saying went. Life had years and years to run yet. And perhaps old Bisham wasn’t as bad as he looked (and sounded)—he couldn’t possibly be, could he? He unwound his scarf and told Leeman his name was, ‘Jonas Wintle, any objections?’ and stared at the fellow as if he was a ghost. The house was full of eerie shadows and the fellow looked ghastly. And did he have to pull open the door in that violent manner?

  Jonas strolled into the drawing-room fully prepared to be thoroughly browned off long before the interview was over.

  The Bishams were sitting over the fire, and their dog was curled up near the fender. A huge cat sat staring down at the dog’s tail from a high footstool. Fearfully family and drab, wasn’t it! In about three minutes he would fly from the place, screaming! But what could you expect from the BBC? He’d probably be exactly the same himself in a few years’ time. Bisham always looked just like his bally voice. He was superior and rather fat. Very well turned out, of course. Oh, he was probably all right if you could stand that sort of thing. Mrs Bisham looked sort of milkish and flowing. Her extraordinary clothes, no doubt. Well, she had the peach of a skin, so that was something.

  Jonas shoved on a fag and accepted a large whisky. ‘No soda and no water.’ He knocked it back in one and there was his empty glass again. His brown hair fell over his face and his flannel suit appeared quite shapeless. Marjorie felt it was incredible to think he was barely twenty-one but had already faced death a score of times.

  Ernest sat and listened to Jonas’s raucous voice and prayed that he wasn’t hoping to be an announcer.

  ‘Well, what else is there?’ said Jonas, startled.

  ‘There’s music, writing, or the technical side,’ suggested Ernest patiently. He kept thinking of Mrs Mansfield’s red hair. What an extraordinary woman she was, and so talkative. She really deserved it …

  ‘All three would brown me off in no time,’ Jonas announced. He frowned at his empty glass and suddenly helped himself.

  ‘A producer?’ suggested Marjorie.

  ‘Announcer or nothing,’ Jonas said, and had the thought of himself saying: ‘And this is Jonas Wintle reading it.’ He would certainly get some sort of kick out of it, if it wasn’t exactly flying.

  He got up, mid-conversation, and wandered about with his hands in his pockets, kicking the furniture. Finally he breezily accepted an invitation from Bisham to ‘come up and have a look round’. And since it was pretty decent of the old bird, and since he wasn’t giving himself the airs one had anticipated, Jonas was pleased to accept.

  ‘All right. Where do I come to?’

  ‘To the BBC,’ said Mr Bisham pleasantly.

  ‘Yes, I know, but what do I do, and all that sort of thing?’

  ‘You pass a lot of policemen and ask for me!’

  ‘But don’t you have to sign something? The pater had to do a broadcast once, water weasels or some such bilge, and he said what with passes and slips and coppers and one thing and another he was utterly browned off long before he even reached the microphone.’

  However, Jonas said the invitation was ‘pretty wizard’. He strolled home with his hands in his pockets and kicked his front door open and went up to his bedroom. He lay flat on his bed with his hands still in his pockets and his long scarf still wound round his neck. To say that he was browned off now through sheer reaction would have been, of course, an under-statement, and when his little mother came into his room to tell him anxiously not to ‘pose’ he really did feel thoroughly angry. His father came in too, rather heartily, but nervously, asking him what luck he had had. ‘Luck,’ he said in despair and turned his face to the wall. His father and mother sat on the bed and stared at him. Why did he have to wear a scarf, and wouldn’t it be better to get into bed properly, and had he been drinking, dear boy?

  As his mother and father knew, and as he secretly knew himself, his attitude to life was really a pose. It just meant that he was temporarily unhappy. His two elder brothers had been killed in the air, and his sister, of whom he was very fond, had been killed in one of the London blitzes. There remained his little mother, and his tall, animal-loving father who divided his time between the Air Ministry and t
he nearest river where he hunted for water weasels. Very much on his own, Jonas endured the effects of a bullet that teased his liver and tried not to think about how much his parents loved him and worried about him. He knew he behaved very badly to both of them, refusing to believe in God any more, or to go to church. He often watched himself hurting his parents, and wondered why he did so. He knew quite well he had been rude to the Bishams, who were probably quite decent old sticks; obviously they’d been married for donkeys’ years and lived a dull, placid life. All the same, there was no excuse for being rude to people who were trying to be kind; and how did one know what people were really like and how they really lived? Thinking of this and everything in general Jonas Wintle was human enough, but unmanly enough, to burst into tears. His mother and father were very tactful, and his father, who was old as well as tall, used a quavery voice to ask him if he would like to be taken to a theatre quite soon. His mother, hearing this rejected, timidly wished he would take Holy Communion again, ‘just to see, dear, and to please mother, it may have the most wonderful results’, but he blew his nose and tried not to hurt them when saying, no, thanks most awfully, he was going to the BBC to become an announcer. So mother was delighted and at once advised him to pray and not to spurn prayer. ‘I will pray for you,’ she said to him, like the song.