A Voice Like Velvet

by Donald Henderson

  The news room, even at half past six in the morning, was a hive of industry. The walls were lined with huge maps, and at desks and tables writers and typists worked with an eye on the clock. Being so early it was all rather sour. The clatter of tape machines coming from a door at the far end was permanent background music, and at intervals cables and tape were brought in and handed to the editor. He scanned each succeeding piece of news as it reached him, and if it concerned the situation in Russia, he threw it to whoever was covering Russia; if it concerned Italy, submarines, Fortresses or the price of potatoes, he threw the items in the appropriate directions. A waitress came in with a large tray of teas and coffees.

  There was no news of Ernest Bisham at twenty to seven. He could not be found in his customary bunk, or in any other bunk. He could not be found anywhere.

  The Duty Editor put through a call to Mr Bisham’s home in Woking, just in case by an unusual oversight he had returned home last evening. He had never gone home under such circumstances because of the difficulty of getting back in time for the seven, and moreover, he knew that on this particular occasion there was nobody here to take his place. Mr Bisham had promised most faithfully to read the seven and knew his colleagues would not be available. The Duty Editor, who suffered from duodenal ulcers caused by years of emotional strain, started to look unusually haggard even for him as he heard Mrs Bisham say:

  ‘He isn’t here. He hasn’t been home at all …’

  It was a quarter to seven. Ought he to telephone the police? Perhaps something had happened to Mr Bisham …

  When he had rung off, Marjorie sat up in bed and stared at the little blue clock on her bed-table. She switched on her radio. Somebody was singing something out of Gilbert & Sullivan, ‘Patience’, wasn’t it? But she was thinking, not of ‘Patience’, but of the British Secret Service. Suddenly, in a feminine way, and though ashamed of the thought, she wondered if Ernest was, well, having an affair with another woman. It was a dreadful thing to think, but the idea just slipped into her head. She knew he wasn’t that sort—yet …! Her heart beat a little more quickly. She didn’t really think such a thing at all but, well, was it really likely he would be in the Secret Service, tied up as he was with his announcing? He would surely have let her have some little hint of any such activity? Of course he would. Wasn’t it just a childish idea of hers? She had wanted to think it.

  She knew a mild panic.

  Ernest to miss a broadcast? He prided himself that he never had missed one, and she just couldn’t imagine such a thing. Had anything happened to him? Had he been run over and been taken to hospital? Ought the police to be telephoned?

  Her thoughts travelled this way and that; forwards and backwards. She thought of the Ernest she now knew (or thought she knew), and the Ernest she had known before; they were slightly different, weren’t they? There was a touch of mystery, wasn’t there? That loaded revolver. Not being in Manchester that night. Being somewhere last night. Where had he been all last night, if he hadn’t been run over?

  She leaned back on the pillows and felt afraid. She tried to think of nice reasons for these little mysteries; nice answers. She thought of the nice memories, their memories, for they would be clues to him, as the clock hand crept round towards seven. It was getting nearer. To the sound of the Leemans moving about upstairs, she thought of the nice memories of the wedding, and the quiet honeymoon at Tredgarth. The nicest moments at their wedding had been when she entered the church on Sir Tom’s arm, and the old man had taken the wrong turning and led her down the side aisle by mistake, away from the direction of the altar. Ernest said he had craned anxiously and nervously round only to see the future Mrs Bisham heading away downstream, so to speak. The vicar started up a bit of whispering, and the verger went scurrying after their retreating figures, and they presently arrived looking rather flushed from their little expedition. She had chosen brown, for her costume, and she wore the orchids he had sent her, and she wore a blue and white hat. She felt very large and tall, kneeling beside him on the cream footstool, and she heard herself saying the responses in an extraordinarily loud voice. It was nerves and he did the same. They must both have seemed rather defiant, as if they were both saying: ‘We made a hash of it before, but there are no flies on either of us this time!’ Another nice moment was getting the ring onto her finger; he’d had to shove and shove, and finally the vicar whispered to leave it. Ernest had finished the job in the vestry. On the honeymoon, the nicest time was when they arrived home. They wandered all over the house, and talked about the new bathroom and having some sailing boats and crystals for the bath, and they’d wandered arm-in-arm all round the large garden which was full of winding little paths and weeping willow trees. There was the rusty sun-dial which said all the world was a stage, but appeared to end with some other ending than Shakespeare’s. The evening had been loverlike in an elderly sort of way, both of them being a little reserved, deciding to have a ‘den’ each of their own, with a bed in it, but speaking in praise of her double bed too, which he said he admired; he had a quaint hatred for beds with brass knobs. When she put on her rather large lace nightdress, he said he admired her little mauve shoulder jacket with red and green ribbon, and he’d sat on the blue eiderdown and made her feel a little self-conscious until he started discussing men’s clubs. He said he wasn’t much of a club person, and she said she hated women’s clubs; yet, if she hadn’t belonged to one she would never have met Bess, and therefore she would never have met him. Life was amusing like that. Then he asked her about her toes. They were very long and square, he didn’t think he had ever seen such square toes. They compared toes and wondered if toes were as interesting a study as hands. They were very polite.

  ‘I wonder if there are toeprints,’ she had remarked self-consciously. Would he get into her bed, or would he go off to his own? She was far from sure, for they weren’t exactly young.

  When they compared hands, she said:

  ‘Mine aren’t very feminine, I’m afraid! But people say that the woman who has really beautiful hands is usually rather stupid. And I should hate to be thought stupid!’

  Memories!

  And then he had said he was relieved to see she powdered her face before she went to sleep. He said, ‘My other wife always plastered herself with grease, last thing—and then expected me to kiss her!’ He said she had had beautiful hands, now he came to think of it. But he said these things in a kindly way—it was conversation. He hadn’t asked her anything about Captain Bud, because he had already said he ‘couldn’t bear to think about it’. Men were odd like that. Women didn’t seem to mind very much what a man had been up to, providing it was a genuine error. But men went green when they thought about the reverse process, whether it was genuine or not!

  Her mind overflowed with memories of him. She’d woken up next morning to find him asleep beside her with his mouth wide open. And she’d laughed, imagining what the public would have thought, had they seen him.

  Had she really loved him then, without quite knowing it? He was so kind. If anything had happened to him, she would die.

  She looked at the clock again.

  It was a minute to seven.

  Mr Ernest Bisham was running. He had never before been quite so acutely conscious of the time, and he was a time-conscious man. It was saying something. His wrist-watch was difficult to see in the early morning light. But he thought he heard a clock striking six. He supposed it was six. It certainly wasn’t seven; he knew the feel of seven without having to look at his watch or hear a clock strike in the distance. One thing, he thought—running would help his figure.

  He raced heavily up a side street.

  But there was another policeman at the other end.

  He doubled back and went boldly through a courtyard and found himself in a mews. There was the unpleasant sound of the men chasing him, like in a nightmare, so on an impulse he plunged through an open door. He found himself in a mews flat and he shot up some stairs looking for a window on the
other side. He saw a door.

  It was locked, so he dashed up another flight of narrow twisting stairs. A large lady was coming down with a towel over her arm. Mr Bisham hesitated only for a fraction of a second, then he said: ‘Good morning’, and brushed past her. She was a florid blonde and she was singing ‘Welcome, Stranger, to Samoa’. She stopped singing and started to say: ‘Good …’ then she broke off and screamed. A door opened somewhere and a man’s voice shouted: ‘What’s up, Ethel?’ She cried: ‘There’s a strange man in the house …!’

  ‘Man …?’

  ‘He’s gone up the stairs! A man!’

  Mr Bisham discovered another door and he opened it. It seemed to be madam’s bedroom. It was empty, which was a relief, but on the other hand madam was still letting out catcalls and heavier footsteps than hers were even now thundering up the stairs. Mr Bisham hurried to the window. He couldn’t open it, so he dashed back and locked the bedroom door. Then he dashed back to the window and tried to get the catch undone again. A fearful kicking started on the bedroom door. The window catch seemed rusted; didn’t they have any air here? The bed was thrown back and a lot of shoes lay about the floor. Sordid clothes hung from a chair, making a splash of colour: red, yellow, black. Mr Bisham picked up a small stool and shoved it through the window pane. There was a shattering of glass, like in the blitzes, but he got the catch undone from outside and slid the window up. He got quickly out of the window and hung by his fingers from the sill. Then he dropped. It wasn’t too bad a drop. He landed in another mews and ran for it. There was the sound of the milkman and his horse and bottles, and there was the sound of madam yelling from the window, ‘Police, police—George, why didn’t you stop him, silly idiot …!’

  He ran the length of the mews at a steady pace, and slowed into a walk at the top. To his relief, there wasn’t a soul in sight in the main road.

  He moved quickly, hoping to find an early taxi. He had been chased a long way and in the wrong direction from Broadcasting House.

  CHAPTER XVII

  HE was fortunate enough to find a taxi and he sat back in it feeling relieved but rather exhausted. It had been an unusually strenuous ordeal. Those hours with the man Bardner, and then the simple and dull solution. But then, he had known the only solution was to shoot out the lock; it was obviously the only thing to do. But—the flattened bullets just might provide a clue for the hunters. It was why he had hesitated for so long, hoping to think of a better solution, or, rather, hoping Bardner was lying about the door not opening until six, and about Sudbury getting up at five. And a little before five he had made up his mind to shoot his way out. Bardner, with his hands tied behind his back with a bit of string, and with his eyes still bandaged, had been asleep on his side on the divan bed. The three revolver shots had been deafening. The door swung open easily and he hadn’t stopped to search for the flattened bullets, there was no time for dawdling. Indeed, it was touch and go as it was, for there was some hidden complication with the front door too, and he’d had to dash back across the hall and down the basement stairs there. There was the sound of old Sudbury yelling upstairs, and Bardner shouting, and then a scream from Gracie, who evidently slept in the kitchen. Why did people scream so? It was unnerving. At the back door he took off his mask and turned up his coat collar. He slipped out into the grey misty light—straight into a covey of police approaching at the double. Sudbury must have had a private line to a police-box or -station. He doubled back and ran for his life, heavy feet thudding after him and twice a tearing at his shoulder. But he outstripped them and felt grateful for something learned at his public school—cross country running. He got over a blitzed wall, raced through a gutted church and found a lane. Unfortunately, police whistles were sounding from the far end of it. He chose another direction and carried the chase towards the world of Belgravia mewses and mews flats. It had been touch and go.

  And it was still touch and go.

  He entered Broadcasting House at a minute to seven. Dashing to the new news studio, he wondered who they had chosen to read the news in his place, and what the papers would have to say about the new name. He also wondered what explanation he would give, and whether, if he was now in time to read the seven, there would be any stinkers to pronounce like Dnepropetrovsk. The Duty Editor, Mr Wintle and an understudy were standing looking green as he walked briskly into the studio with his hat and coat on. They stood staring as he sat down and almost at once the red light came on, and he said brightly to Marjorie: ‘Good morning, everybody! This is the seven o’clock news for Wednesday, April 26th—and this is Ernest Bisham reading it!’ After all, he thought, even announcers were entitled to their occasional little lapses. Pressing engagements were apt to make anyone late—and it was for the war effort. His pockets were heavy with the night’s highly successful haul.

  Hearing him, Marjorie felt an inexpressible relief. Her anxiety had been for nothing. He sounded so bright, there couldn’t be anything wrong. She would have to say about the telephone call from the Duty Editor, and no doubt Ernest would offer an explanation. It would be something perfectly simple. The explanation of the loaded revolver was probably simplicity itself too. Why, of course, the Home Guard! How absolutely ridiculous of her not to have thought of it before. He hadn’t bothered to tell her, and he kept his uniform, if he had a uniform yet, up in London. More than half satisfied with this new idea, she felt much happier as Mrs Leeman came in with the early tea. Ernest was talking about sugar beet, he had told her the farming news was always in the seven, and the eight, before the farmers went off into the fields.

  As Mrs Leeman came in with the tea she thought once again what vast haunches madam had got. She made quite a mound in the bed. She’d be like an elephant when she was fifty. There wasn’t any news about children, you noticed. Didn’t they want any, or what was it? An odd pair, weren’t they? Still, as people went, they weren’t so bad, not really. They weren’t mean, anyhow. And so long as that sister of his kept her face out of sight, things weren’t too bad, and so long as Leeman kept reasonably off the drink. ‘Good morning, madam,’ she said in her sharp way, and thumped down the tray with a clatter. ‘Sh, please!’ exclaimed madam. ‘I’m listening to the master’s voice.’ Her Master’s Voice, thought Mrs Leeman! It was quite a case, wasn’t it! She was nuts about him. The master knocked off while she drew the curtains and said something or other about a little Wren talking about sergeants or something or other. The first two words of the little Wren’s remarks could not be heard at all. Atmospherics, no doubt? Madam apologized for being sharp. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Mrs Leeman said. She drew back the pink curtains and looked down into the garden. There was dew on the grass and a huge blackbird was having swigs out of the rockery pond, and two pigeons were having larks on the garden seat. Madam put on her bed jacket and started tidying her hair. She said it was a marvellous morning. Mrs Leeman said yes it was, and she was about to go when madam started talking about the master’s approaching birthday. ‘It’s next week,’ she said to Mrs Leeman. She looked just like a girl, didn’t she, when she spoke about him?

  ‘Next week,’ said Mrs Leeman.

  ‘May the third. I was wondering if we could get hold of a pheasant. It would be a luxury, but the master does so like a nice dinner, and I will cook it myself.’ She turned rather red.

  Mrs Leeman stood with her hands on her hips hoping she was looking expressionless. Cook it herself! Well, if the pheasant turned out anything like the last effort, which had been a duck, Heaven help the master’s digestion!

  ‘It’s whatever you say, madam,’ she said, cold.

  ‘And I will make a sherry trifle.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Then we will have the Australian cheese Mr Bisham’s Admiralty friend brought—Mr Leveson, d’you remember—who is soon going to Russia.’

  Mrs Leeman thought: ‘Well, that will be something, to get rid of that. It’s been stinking the larder out for nearly a fortnight.’

  ‘That will be all, then,’
madam told her, and poured herself out a cup of tea.

  ‘May the third,’ thought Mrs Leeman as she went out. And it was to be supposed that life at Tredgarth would now revolve round that date. She was certainly in love with him; she was carrying on like a schoolgirl; it was a case.

  She went to the back door to give Shorter his tea and she warned him:

  ‘You’d better start growing plenty of vegetables for May the third! Cupid’s coming to town!’

  She went cackling back to Leeman. Leeman was sitting looking yellow and rolling a fag for himself. He’d been having a bit of a think. This kind of life was all very well for a bit, it was all right for a woman; but after a bit it made you think. He put a drop of rum in his tea to cheer things up.

  She moved about the kitchen, chattering about May the third. ‘I suppose Miss Bisham will come up for it, and I suppose the Miss de Freeces will be asked, and the Wintles,’ she said, and he sat looking thin and sipping at his rum and tea. He stared out of the window at the laurel bushes and the back gate.

  ‘I’ve been having a bit of a think,’ he said thoughtfully. He sucked his teeth and gave a drag at his fag. ‘I’m getting kind of tired of this place.’

  She swung round at him, as he knew she would.

  ‘Now, then,’ she began in alarm.

  ‘Shut up!’ he told her flatly. ‘Oh, shut your face!’ he said more loudly as she started a crescendo.

  She stood with her arms akimbo and her face flushed, staring down at him. He sat with his sleeves rolled up, and his thin face all yellow, and his weak chin wanting a good shave, and his thick lips pushed down into his teacup.

  He finished his tea, eyed her significantly, and went out of the kitchen. He went thoughtfully up the back staircase and shut himself in his room.