‘Oh,’ said Rain, closing her eyes, ‘I was so frightened!’
‘So was I!’ said Mor. He was still laughing, almost hysterically, and holding her.
‘Mor,’ said Rain, ‘did you give him any money?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘of course not! I was very cross with him.’
Rain released herself from him. ‘Please, please,’ she said, ‘you should have given him money. If we had given him money the last time he wouldn’t have come this time!’ She looked at him, her eyes still strained with terror.
Mor felt a chill at his back. ‘My dear one,’ he said, ‘if you wish it I’ll go after him now and give him some money. He can’t have gone far.’ They looked at each other.
‘Go, please,’ said Rain. ‘I know I’m stupid, but please go.’
Mor went into the hall and drew on a coat over his pyjamas and put on a pair of shoes. He found some silver. He left the house at a run.
The sudden chill silence of the morning appalled him. The rain was falling steadily from a white sky. It must be nearly six o‘clock. He looked both ways along the road. There was no sign of the gipsy. He ran a little way and turned into the lane that led towards the fields. His damp footsteps resounded strangely. As he turned the corner he saw the man some thirty paces ahead. Mor ran after him, and as he came up to him he touched him on the shoulder. The gipsy stopped and turned to face him.
‘Excuse me,’ said Mor. He suddenly felt very apologetic to the man and a little nervous. ‘I do hope you will accept this. I’m sorry I turned you away so harshly.’ He held out the money.
The man looked at him silently. He was wearing an old mackintosh which reached well below his knees. From out of the upturned collar his streaming head, carved by the rain into something more unmistakably Oriental, was turned in Mor’s direction. There was no comprehension in his face; but neither was there questioning or any alarm. He looked at Mor as one might look at a momentary obstruction. In that instant it occurred to Mor that the man might be deaf. That would explain this strange stare and why he hadn’t heard the bell ringing. When he had thought this he was certain that he was right, and with the thought came a certain awe and distress.
The man turned away, ignoring Mor’s outstretched hand, and continued to walk at the same steady pace towards the fields. His soaking mackintosh flapped at his heels as he walked.
Mor stood still and watched him till he was out of sight. Then he began to walk slowly back. He was very shaken, both by the ringing of the bell, the horror of which was still with him, and by the gipsy’s silence. He decided that he would not reveal what had happened. He walked back through the abominable rain and stillness. The light was increasing, but always with the same dead pallor. The rain fell steadily, steadily. But for his footsteps there was no other sound. The sleeping houses lay about him. He turned into the garden and came through the door to find Rain waiting in the hall.
‘Did you give it to him?’ she asked anxiously.
‘Yes,’ said Mor. ‘I did.’
‘What did he say?’ said Rain.
‘Oh, he mumbled some sort of thanks,’ said Mor, ‘and walked on.’
Rain sighed with relief and let him embrace her.
He took her into the drawing-room, pulled back the curtains, and poured out a glass of brandy. ‘Dear child,’ he said, ‘you’ve had a terrible hour. I’m deeply sorry. It was somehow my fault. Drink this.’
Rain sat on the sofa, holding the glass, while Mor sat on the floor and laid his head upon her knees. They stayed in this way for a long time.
So that this was the spectacle which greeted the eyes of Nan when twenty minutes later she came in through the drawing-room door. She had entered by the front door, which Mor had left unbolted after his return. The patter of the rain had prevented the lovers from hearing the sound of her approach. The first they knew of her presence was when they looked up and saw her standing in the doorway and looking at them.
Mor was the first to recover. He gently and quite slowly disengaged himself from Rain and stood up. He was about to say something when Nan turned, and rushing away across the hall ran out of the front door.
Mor was about to follow her when Rain said, ‘Do not go.’ She had risen too. Now that the real horror had come she was much calmer. Her hand upon his arm was chill but only slightly trembling.
‘I must go,’ said Mor. ‘You wait here for me. Do not go away. Wait here.’ He spoke with authority.
Then for the second time that morning he ran out of the door in pursuit. He looked up and down. There was no sign of Nan. He began to run towards the main road, looking down all the side roads as he passed them. She was not to be seen. The rain fell, blinding him, and making a grey curtain through which it was impossible to see where Nan had gone. He came up to the main road. Already a few cars were passing and a man on a bicycle was doggedly pedalling up the hill. Mor looked and looked. He could not see Nan. He turned back into the maze of suburban roads, and for a long time he ran to and fro searching for her. But he did not find her. She had disappeared into the rain and the whiteness of the morning.
Chapter Twelve
NAN had had her first shock of discovery when she overheard Felicity talking by long-distance telephone with her brother. The villa which the Mors rented every year near Swanage was equipped with two telephones, one in the drawing-room and one in the main bedroom. Donald had rung up; and imagining that her mother, who had not hastened to answer the call, was still out shopping, Felicity had spoken frankly with him. Nan, who did not think that children should have secrets from their parents, had lifted the receiver in the bedroom and was disquieted indeed at what she heard.
Nothing emerged very clearly from the conversation, but enough emerged to make Nan suspect that more must lie behind. She sat for some time in the bedroom, thinking hard. Nan’s first emotion was extreme surprise. What followed it was anger. This was mingled with what was almost a feeling of satisfaction at the prospect of being able to find her husband so palpably in the wrong. After the quarrel which preceded her departure Nan had had a small twinge of conscience. She was quite sure that she was right to oppose Bill’s foolish and unsuitable plan; but she felt that perhaps she had been unduly unpleasant in her manner of doing so. The information which she had gained from Felicity, vague as it was, was sufficient to dispel her sense of guilt, and also to put her in possession of a weapon which it was certainly at this time convenient to have. Not that Nan imagined that Bill would persist much longer with his Labour Party scheme. She had never in the past, in any major issue, failed to persuade him eventually to see things as she did. But deep in her heart she was pleased all the same to have this unexpected access of strength, although the source of it was so extremely disagreeable.
Very soon, however, the disagreeable aspect predominated. Nan found herself exceedingly disturbed. She was deeply certain both of her husband’s correctness and of his common sense, and it was a measure of this certainty that the matter had appeared to her at first sight in terms of a momentary lapse on his part which gave her, in her struggle with him, a momentary advantage. But now her mind began to dwell on Miss Carter. Running over every meeting she had had with the girl, she now saw her as the sly insinuating creature that she was. How could she have thought her naive? Yet in a way she was naive. That sort of girl was able to mature the most infamous plans behind a mask of naivety which deceived even herself, living in an atmosphere of hypocrisy so total that she was unable any more to distinguish the true from the false. Was it possible that Bill really liked her? Presumably this soft cat-like nature must appeal to some desire to be soothed and comforted which existed in all men, especially middle-aged ones.
Nan had never reflected on this sort of matter before. She had never in her life for a single second doubted of Bill’s absolute fidelity to her. She did not propose to start doubting it now. Surely the children must have exaggerated or misunderstood. At the very most, all that was involved was some moment of infatuation, somethi
ng which even by now was over, dissolved into the air. There was almost certainly nothing to it.
Or was there? Nan continued to be extremely uneasy and restless. What ought she to do? She thought of writing a letter to Miss Carter, and even began in her mind to compose one whose venom amazed her. But that was foolish. She had no vestige of evidence, and with that sort of girl one never knew, she might have the insolence to invoke legal proceedings. Nan had extremely vague ideas about libel and slander, and a corresponding nervousness at the idea of putting anything down on paper. And in any case, as she kept telling herself, it was all probably a misunderstanding, there was surely nothing to it.
She wandered about the house and got through the afternoon somehow. She managed to conceal her distress from Felicity. By six o‘clock in the evening she had reduced herself to a condition of mental turmoil such as she never remembered having experienced before. She decided that the only thing to be done was to go home at once, explain the whole thing to Bill, and get it definitely once and for all cleared up. Then she would be able to enjoy her holiday in peace. She was surprised at her inability to behave with normal calmness. She decided to go on the following morning. Then she tried to settle down to a book. It was impossible. She told a story to Felicity about having to go to London to see someone who was ill; she packed a bag and boarded the night train.
What Nan beheld when she entered her house surprised her very much indeed. She had arrived home at this hour, not with any intention of discovering a guilty pair, but simply because of her own impatience and the working of the train timetable. It had never occurred to Nan to imagine Bill capable of bringing the girl into the house. In a second she saw that she had been wrong throughout. Things had certainly gone very far. She turned and ran, partly as an effect of sheer shock, and partly because she needed to think again before she confronted her husband.
As she ran away through the rain she could hear his steps pursuing her in the gloomy stillness of the early morning, and she ran down a side road and into an alley that led to some garages. There she stood quite still for some time after the sound of his footsteps had disappeared. She leaned back against the fence, clutching her small handbag, her feet deep in a dump of weeds which was growing out of the gravel. She stared fixedly at the side of the house opposite. The curtains were drawn. The people in the houses all about were still sleeping. By now the rain had soaked through the scarf which she was wearing about her head and was beginning to trickle down her neck inside the collar of her raincoat.
As she stood there Nan felt, for the first time since she had found out that something was wrong, overwhelmed with sheer misery. She had felt amazement, fury, and extreme disquiet, she had even experienced a curious exhilaration, something of the instinct of the hunter. But it had not occurred to her to feel exactly unhappy. She had never in her life allowed Bill to cause her real unhappiness. There had been, there could be, no occasion for this. In her situation, that of a successfully married woman, unhappiness of that sort would have been merely neurotic. Nan despised the neurotic. But now she felt real grief- which her husband had caused. Gradually the conception that he was interested in another woman began to reach not only her mind but her emotions. As she stood there, her back against the fence, chilled and soaked by the rain, she felt that she had suddenly been dragged into some awful nightmare: she had been driven out of her own house. Her hand went to her mouth. She shook with the grief and the horror of it. The hot tears warmed her cheek, mingling with the rain.
After a while Nan began to walk along the road. She walked through the housing estate and out at the other end, through the shopping centre. The shops were not open yet, but the day was beginning. People were passing on their way to work. The rain was abating a little. Nan went into a public lavatory and adjusted her appearance as best she could. Then she went out and boarded a bus that would take her to Marsington. She wanted to see Tim Burke.
Nan’s relations with Tim Burke were curious. She had known Tim for more than ten years, ever since her husband, who was teaching at that time in a Grammar School in south London, had first made his acquaintance through the Labour Party. She had always liked him. He had, it seemed to her, a sort of absurd grace and elegance of character which had occasionally, on particular evenings which she still remembered, shown her husband to her by contrast as a rather dour, rather dull and clumsy man. Nan had not, however, made much of these thoughts, and would not even have kept them in her mind had it not been that, at a certain moment, she noticed that Tim Burke’s attentions to her were becoming very marked.
Tim had always treated her with a slightly ludicrous sort of gallantry which Nan had put down to his racial origin, and which she had often laughed at with Bill, but which had pleased her very much all the same. Her husband was never gallant. But now she began to feel, with a mixture of distress and pleasure, that it was possible that Tim Burke was the tiniest bit in love with her. She had said nothing to Bill about it, had made no effort either to see or to avoid Tim, but had watched him closely. One evening about nine o‘clock she had been alone with him in the shop. Bill had gone down the street to make a phone call, since Tim kept no telephone. Tim had been putting a necklace round Nan’s neck, something which he often did when Bill was there. He was facing her and his hands met behind her head to fasten the clasp. The clasp was fastened. But Tim did not withdraw his hands. Then he kissed her on the lips.
Nan had been shocked and upset; yet in the very same instant she had been delighted. She had pushed him away from her. Bill came back almost at once and cut off any possible discussion between them of what had taken place. Nor did either of them ever refer to it again. For some time after this Nan avoided Tim, and saw him, if it were inevitable, only in the company of Bill. Tim behaved in what seemed to Nan a very transparent manner, trying by his whole bearing to indicate to her his regret for what had passed, combined with his continued respect and affection. But Bill noticed nothing, and Nan said nothing. That was four years ago. Gradually relations between them became more natural, and Nan began to remember the incident not with any pain but with a sort of sad gratification. She could not help hoping that Tim Burke remembered it in this way too. It was packed away forever. But the distant thought of it gave a special fragrance to the infrequent occasions on which, always in the company of her husband, Nan permitted herself to see the Irishman.
As Nan sat on the bus, her tearful face turned towards the glass of the window, she did not experience any doubts or hesitations concerning the propriety of visiting Tim in this crisis. She was in extremis. She must have help. She did not know what to do. The idea of confiding in one of her women friends, such as Mrs Prewett, was inconceivable. Her need to see Tim, once the notion had occurred to her, was extreme. She sat there and suffered — and more and more the feeling that bit into her, appearing as a physical pang, was something which she began to recognize as pure jealousy. She breathed in quickly through her mouth and found that she had uttered an audible sob. She buried her mouth in her handkerchief.
Nan got off the bus and hurried down the street towards Tim’s shop. She saw him far off, outside on the pavement. He was taking down the wooden shutters, although it was not yet nine o‘clock. Nan ran up to him, touched him on the shoulder, and went at once into the shop. Tim followed her in. He had seen her face. He shut the shop door and locked it. The room was darkened, as half the shutters were still up.
‘What is it?’ said Tim Burke.
Nan said, ‘I’m sorry, Tim, to come like this. Something awful has happened.’ She kept her handkerchief pressed to her mouth.
‘Is Mor all right?’ he said. ‘Or is it the boy?’
‘No, not an accident,’ said Nan. ‘I’ve found out that Bill is having a love affair with that girl Miss Carter. I came back and found them in our house embracing at six o’clock in the morning!‘ Her voice trailed away into a wail, and she sobbed without restraint into the handkerchief.
‘Oh God!’ said Tim. He led her back through t
he shop and into his workshop. The rain had stopped, and the sun was shining into the tiny whitewashed yard where the small sycamore tree was growing. Nan went through into the yard. Here they were in private. The yard was not overlooked. She put her hand on the slim trunk of the tree.
‘Let me take away your coat,’ said Tim; ‘it’s drenched you are.’
Nan gave up her coat and accepted a towel to rub her hair with. She sat down on a little bench beside the tree, her back against the wet white wall. She felt the dampness through her dress, but it didn’t matter now. The world had exploded into a lot of little senseless pieces. Sensations of the body and small pictures of her surroundings moved around by themselves, now blurred and now extremely clear. She saw with immense clarity the leaves of the sycamore tree, still drooping with water. She reached out and plucked one off. She had almost forgotten Tim Burke by the time he came to sit beside her.
‘When did this happen,’ he said, ‘that you found the pair of them?’
‘What? Oh, this morning about six,’ said Nan. As she saw again in her mind the scene with Bill sitting beside the girl on the floor, his head resting on her knee, her tears were renewed, and she reached out and plucked another leaf from the tree.