‘Not if he stays where he is.’
‘I really can’t go yet, not till this is over.’
‘I don’t expect you to.’
‘Mr Ward will be fuming. He wanted the proof back by four.’
‘Let him wait. It won’t do him any harm to wait.’
There was another clatter of thunder as Mrs Leonard brought in the bottle and the glasses, but after that last crack ordinary thunder seemed nothing. He poured me something. ‘Swallow this down. And you too, Mrs Leonard.’
I swallowed some and coughed. It was as strong as paraffin. But I gulped at it and you could feel it like fire, burning as it went down. Mrs Leonard went out to see if there was any damage upstairs. I began to let go of my hands.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I wonder who won the three-thirty.’
‘Who was leading when you switched off?’
‘North Wind. But Gulley Jimson was the favourite.’
After about ten minutes the lights came on again, but by now you hardly wanted them. The rain had begun to ease. Water still dripped from the gutter and gurgled in the pipes. Mrs Leonard put her head in to say there was no damage upstairs. He rang Mr Ward to say what had happened.
I got up to go. I was still quivering like a drunk round the knees, but he couldn’t tell that. He gave me the proofs and hobbled with me to the door. He was friendly and easy. You’d hardly have known him. When we’d had tea after the rose show he’d been picking his way, not sure of himself or something. Now it was different. But there still didn’t seem much risk of him heading the way of his cousin.
When I got in the taxi I began to feel a bit cheap and ashamed of myself, which was something rather new for me. I thought at first I was developing a disease. It took a time to work out what was wrong; and then at last I pinned it to that conversation we had had about me losing my husband and him losing his wife.
CHAPTER FIVE
With Susan Clabon taking her holidays from 10 September until the 26th the best date to set my sights on was Thursday the 22nd.
The staff was paid from eleven o’clock onwards on a Friday morning. Making out the pay packets was quite a major operation. In calculating a journeyman’s wages – that is, a printer – you had all sorts of additions and subtractions to make. First you put down his basic wage – say £11 a week – then to that you added overtime, which might be £4 in a week. Then there was merit money which was a sort of bonus bribe to keep everyone happy, which might be £3. Then in some cases there was an agreed extra if the work was specially awkward. When all that was added up you began with deductions. First there was Lost Time – if anyone was late or absent – then each man had his PAYE number, which of course was usually the same over a period. Then there was National Health, and finally there was Voluntary Contributions which were not listed separately but which might be two or three small items for the annual dinner and the yearly summer outing, etc.
Susan Clabon and I operated together, one working the machine and the other putting the money in the pay envelope along with the slip showing how the wages were made up. Usually I did the second part, and then Susan would check the money before sealing the envelope and putting it in a flat tray against the number of the particular printer or binder. These were usually finished on Thursday evening before we left and locked in the safe until the following day; but sometimes we had to run the work over into Friday morning.
Luckily in August Susan was away with tonsilitis, and I told Mr Ward I could do the job all on my own and did. The one thing that would wreck everything would be an ‘assistant’ while she was on holiday; and I thought now with luck I wouldn’t get one.
In some ways I would be glad to go when the time came, even though it was by far the best and most interesting job I’d ever had.
All the time I was there, more or less, Dawn had been plaguing me to go out with her one night and I’d stalled, not wanting any more complications. She lived in Barnet and I’d been to tea with her and her mother one Sunday, but this didn’t satisfy her. So now, feeling it was near the end, I said all right, and we joined up with two young men she knew and went along to a road-house called the Double Six near Aylesbury.
It was only after meeting and speaking to people like Mark Rutland – and even Terry Holbrook and Alistair MacDonald – that you realized what awful drags most young men were. The one I had to deal with was a big clammy pink-faced type with close-set blue eyes and the skin peeling off his nose. He talked all the time about his TR3 and golf and a holiday he’d had in Spain. He never stopped talking and seemed to think it was part of his charm. Also he chain smoked, which isn’t particularly lovely for a non-smoker like me. I suppose I pretty well shared his cigarettes.
The road-house was the phoniest place with awful black beams and lampshades made out of old wills and tankards with glass bottoms; but I could see Dawn was enjoying it, so I didn’t really mind being there; and we’d had a couple of dances and were sitting talking while more records were put on, when a short man with a red bow-tie came across to me and said:
‘Pardon me, now, but aren’t you Peggy Nicholson?’
Well, I didn’t need to act, you see, because I wasn’t Peggy Nicholson, and was certain I never had been, so that my blankness was quite true and I’d shown it before the knife went in.
I looked round first to make sure that he was talking to me, and then I said: ‘I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake. My name is Mary Taylor. Mrs Taylor.’
He stared and pressed his spectacles on his nose.
‘You’re – not . . . Oh, I’m awfully sorry, but I thought a man called Don Weaver introduced us in Newcastle two years ago – I was certain you were . . .’
‘I’m not,’ I said and smiled. ‘I’m sorry I’ve never been to Newcastle.’
‘Not even with coals,’ said Dawn’s partner, and laughed.
The man looked very sheepish. ‘Then I beg your pardon. It must be just a resemblance. I’m awfully sorry.’
‘Not at all,’ I smiled. ‘I’m sorry I can’t oblige.’
‘That was a darn silly thing to say,’ muttered the young man I was with as the other man turned away. ‘You don’t want to oblige a cheapjack like that barging in and pretending he knows you, just to get on speaking terms.’
Obviously the man, whose name I honestly couldn’t remember, didn’t know anything about Peggy Nicholson being wanted by the police. Not that they could prove anything anyway. But it just showed. I saw him looking at me once or twice when I passed him dancing. And I saw Dawn looking at me too.
Later in the evening in the Ladies she said: ‘You are a dark horse, you know.’
‘Why, what have I done now?’
‘Nothing, only I thought you looked a bit peculiar when that man came up. Honest, you didn’t really know him?’
‘I’ve never seen him before in my life.’
She shook her head. ‘Of course I believe you. All the same I think you’ve got a past, dear.’
‘So has everybody who’s more than one day old.’
‘Too true.’ She said no more then while she traced out a new cupid’s bow. She didn’t draw it very well; she always did it like one of those men marking out a white line over the old one on the dangerous corner. But as we were going to leave I thought perhaps I could learn something about myself if I tackled her, so I said:
‘What d’you mean, you think I’ve got a past?’
‘Well,’ she narrowed her eyes and then laughed. ‘Don’t be mad with me, dear, I don’t want to pry, but you don’t ever talk about yourself, do you. Not like I do. Not like you expect a girl to do. It’s only that. Anyway I was only joking.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘joke.’
She put her arms round my shoulders. ‘Now don’t be cross. But honest, you’ve been with Rutland’s more than six months, yet I don’t feel I know you. I don’t feel I can get at you. I like you, of course, but I don’t know what you’re thinking at this very moment. You’re like somebody behind a glass wall
. There, now you can be as mad as you like!’
I laughed. ‘Look out; one of these days somebody might throw a stone!’
On 7 September Mark Rutland came into my office while Susan Clabon was out, and his hair was as if he’d been running his hand through it both ways for a change. He said abruptly: ‘I don’t know if you’re doing anything on Saturday but I’m going to Newmarket to the races. Would you like to come along?’
I had to think round that one pretty quickly. And a nice girl doesn’t ask questions.
‘Thank you very much, Mr Rutland. I’d love to.’
‘Good.’ His face had a flush on it for once. ‘I’ll pick you up here at twelve-thirty. Any clothes will do.’
‘Thank you very much.’ And that was that. Not another word.
In the last two months, since my visit to his house, we’d eyed each other every day at the firm but we’d hardly said more than the usual things. Of course I could tell there was interest by the way he was nice to me; and every now and then when we were alone in an office he wasn’t so much the business man; I noticed this specially when Terry wasn’t about, especially when Terry was away for three weeks in August.
But this was the first sign of heading for anything more. It was just cruel luck. I know I’ve the sort of face and figure that people call fashionable nowadays, but it could easily have happened I could have worked for ten firms with young directors and they would hardly have noticed me. It never rains but it pours, as Mother would have said, coining a phrase.
I’d have done better to have said no. Terry and Mark really were madly jealous of each other and ever willing to fight over anything; I’d be a new excuse; and if Terry knew I was going out with Mark after turning down an invitation from him he’d look on it as the deadliest insult.
However, I felt it was no good caring about that; in three weeks I should be away from it all. The other reason which I just couldn’t resist was that, because Rutland’s worked Saturday mornings, I had hardly seen a race meeting for three months. Mark had made the one suggestion I couldn’t bring myself to sabotage.
Saturday was wet in the morning but it cleared by ten and it looked as if the going would be just right. I had brought things to change at the office, and after I’d changed I hung about for a few minutes to let most of the staff go. I particularly wanted Dawn to go off, and I saw her away before I went down to the car park where Mark was waiting. But of course Mr Ward happened to be there getting into his car, and he raised a sarcastic eyebrow. Mark didn’t seem to care, and he handed me a package with some sandwiches in.
‘This is your lunch, I’m afraid. If we don’t stop on the way we may just make the first race.’
We made the first race, and we watched it from the enclosure. I hadn’t been in there before. I’d only been twice to Newmarket before, and once I’d watched it from the Silver Ring, and once from the opposite side of the course, where you didn’t have to pay.
I found I knew more about the runners than he did. For the three o’clock I told him Telepathy, a grey filly that I’d seen being trained as a one-year-old. I knew she’d come in second twice in the last month over longer distances, and each time she’d been passed near the post. The going wasn’t heavy today so over this distance she would surely win.
‘All right, I’ll put a fiver on her,’ Mark said good-humouredly. ‘Shall I put something on for you?’
‘Me? No, thank you. I don’t bet.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘I’m afraid of losing the money,’ I said straight out, and he stared at me and then we both laughed.
I said: ‘I just don’t have any cash I want to risk.’
‘Well, I won’t press you if you really feel like that.’
By the time he came back the horses were lining up in the distance, and I couldn’t have used his binoculars more eagerly if I’d had a hundred pounds at stake. Telepathy won by a head. Mark laughed and went to collect his winnings. He brought back six pounds for me.
‘I put a pound on for you for luck. She was second favourite anyhow.’
‘Well, I can’t take it, Mark. It was your money you put on. If you’d lost you’d have paid.’
It was the first time I’d used his Christian name. He pressed the notes on me, so I took them.
I had no fancy for the three-thirty. He backed his and lost.
‘Tell me something,’ he said. ‘I’m not a great gambler myself but if I didn’t have a few pounds on each race it would spoil the fun. If you don’t bet, why are you so fond of race meetings?’
‘I like the horses.’
‘Just the horses?’
‘Yes. I love to see them. I think there’s nothing more beautiful.’
He crumpled up his tote tickets and dropped them in a basket. ‘Do you ride?’
‘A bit.’
‘Not as much as you would like?’
‘Well, I haven’t the time. And it costs money.’
We began to look over the runners for the four o’clock. As it happened the favourite was called Glastonbury Thorn.
‘By the way,’ I said. ‘What is the Glastonbury Investment Trust?’
‘What?’ He looked at me sharply. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I can’t remember where I saw their name recently.’
‘You could see it anywhere. They’re a big investment trust with plenty of money behind them. They recently bought two publishing firms. Vaughans and Bartlett & Leak.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘well I shouldn’t back him, then. How about Lemon Curd? He won last week at Kempton Park.’
Mark stared at his card. ‘The small printer could be their target next – like Rutland’s. Of course they could swallow us tomorrow and not feel it, but fortunately they can’t because eighty per cent of our shares are still in the family.’
He backed Lemon Curd, but it was a photo finish and Lemon Curd was placed second.
We were standing by the rails at this time, and quite near to us, but of course in the Silver Ring, were seven or eight semi-Teddy boys of about eighteen.
They were dressed like usual and they were rowing with two fat men of about forty who might have been bookmakers or something. These two fat men were really scared, but it all died down when two policemen showed up. There were a lot of cat-calls and colourful language.
‘Unhealthy little rats,’ Mark said.
‘What else d’you expect from sewers?’
He looked at me, surprised, not quite sure how to take it. ‘D’you like Teddy boys?’
‘No . . . but they’re not true Teds, for one thing. They’re just ordinary rough types following a fashion.’
He rubbed his hand through his hair and looked at his race card.
I said: ‘It’s just a fashion, that’s all, the things they wear, just as it’s the fashion for you to wear a jacket – with – with slanting pockets or for me to cut six inches off my skirt.’
‘But we don’t gang together and become offensive nuisances in the street and the pub.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘and if you did you ought to be ashamed of yourself because you’ve been brought up in a decent home to know better. You should see some of their homes.’
‘Have you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and stopped there. I was going too far.
His eyes followed the eight boys. ‘It may be something rotten in the state of Denmark that breeds them, I agree. But they don’t all turn out like that . . . that sort, they’ve no brains and their physique is terrible. They couldn’t stand up to any decent man so they gang together and become bullies. Whether it’s all their fault or not, I still don’t like them.’
‘I don’t like bullies,’ I said.
When I didn’t go on he said: ‘And you think they’re not?’
‘Oh, the real Teds, yes. These are just fringe Teds. Pretty dumb characters, maybe, and not lovable. But nothing terribly wrong with them. Most are just – restless. You don’t understand. They’ve nearly all got jobs that bring them in good money
, but they’re caught on a sort of treadmill and they’ll not earn much more over the next forty years. They’ve brains enough to know that. You try it out and see if it wouldn’t make you restless. Maybe if they were all in the Navy they’d be better. But you can’t expect them to see that.’
‘Oh, the Navy,’ he said; ‘I’m not holding that up as a solution.’
‘Then what is the solution?’
He looked at me and suddenly smiled. ‘To put my shirt on Ballet Girl for the four-thirty.’
After the races we had dinner together in Cambridge. On the way he said: ‘You know, I know absolutely nothing about you, Mary. Every now and then you seem just about to catch fire. And then suddenly you withdraw yourself again.’
‘There’s nothing to know,’ I said. I think that was the moment when I realized I had really stayed on this job too long. He was the third character who had said I was a mystery, who had got interested enough to want to know more. It was nearly always the flaw in my schemes. In seven weeks you could up and away without anybody wanting to get to know. Seven months was too long.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I know you’re twenty-three, that you were married at twenty and are now a widow. Your father and mother are in Australia and you went to school in Norwich. That’s about all, isn’t it? Apart from that, I know you’ve a head for business and figures. Since you came to us you’ve never put a foot wrong. You’re terrified of thunderstorms, and you go to race meetings but don’t back horses. You know how to dress well – as now – but you don’t in office hours apparently care. You have generally good manners but now and then you don’t seem to understand simple bits of etiquette that most people take for granted.’
‘Such as?’ I said quickly.
‘Never mind. You say you went to a High School, and your accent’s right, but sometimes you seem to let it out that your childhood has been very tough. You’re never lacking in initiative so far as your work is concerned, but you seem to be in your play. I’ve never heard of you saying a catty thing about anyone, but you’re awfully tough about something inside and ready to fight the world. What’s the secret, Mary? Tell me.’