Buffet for Unwelcome Guests(105)

Marilyn was nursing the baby when he got home. ‘You’ve got the place all cleared up,’ he said, astonished at the change in it. ‘You must have been slaving.’

‘It kept my mind off things,’ she said. But still she did not ask what must be uppermost in her mind. ‘Without Mrs. Vaughan here, I must say there’s more room. Not as much as we had at Mrs. Mace’s—’

‘We couldn’t stay at Mrs. Mace’s once the nephew was coming home.’

‘No, I know. I was only saying.’ And now she did ask at last: ‘Did it go all right?’

‘Yes, not a murmur. A bit surprised when we got there, of course, but I kept urging her on, saying she’d be with Mrs. Mace.’

‘You found the place again, no trouble?’

‘Yes, I found it. A lovely spot, perfect, in the middle of all those woods.’

‘And Mrs. Mace?’

‘Still there, quite O.K. A bit lonely, I daresay. She’ll be glad of company.’

‘They should get on fine.’ She smiled her own cool, quiet impersonal little smile, shifting the baby on her shoulder so that its fluffy head pressed, warm and sweet, against her cheek. ‘Well, she got her wish. You couldn’t call that a common grave.’

‘No, just her and Mrs. Mace; and right in the middle of them lovely woods like I told her, and all them flowers and the stream and all.’ He came across and ran a bent forefinger up the little channel at the back of the baby’s tender neck. ‘A shame to have to bash her,’ he said. ‘She was a kind old thing. But there you are, it’s so hard to find anywhere. We had to have the place.’





Such a Nice Man


WHAT A FOOL SHE HAD been to let him! Why must she be always so trusting?—so stupefied by her own too ready social instinct, never giving herself time to think. ‘At thirty-five years of age,’ her husband used to say to her, ‘surely you might have some sense?’ And hadn’t there been warning enough? Suppose this was the man…

But it couldn’t be. Such a nice man! Such a nice man, he’d seemed, standing out there on the doorstep, so quiet and solid looking; middle-aged, respectable and behind him in the semi-darkness, the middle-aged, respectable car. On an impulse… Just passing… So many happy holidays in this old house when he’d been a boy…‘I ought not to trouble you.’ He glanced round him. ‘I hope the gentleman’s in, is he? If not, I won’t bother you, it wouldn’t be right, I’ll go away.’ But he didn’t come to that until he was well into the hall and the front door closed behind him.

‘No, he’s not, actually. But he—he’ll be back any minute…’ Helpless in the toils of her own convent-bred good manners, she led the way into the huge old farmhouse kitchen which to them was the centre of the house; moving away from him, however, backing away to the Welsh dresser against the far wall, leaving him standing uncertainly in the doorway. ‘This room you’ll remember if you were here as a child? And the grandfather clock?’ She felt that she sounded like a house-agent, showing him round.

‘Not too sure about the clock,’ he said—cagily? ‘But I was only a little lad then.’

‘But the dresser?—you remember this old dresser? They say it’s been here since the house was built.’ In fact they had brought it with them, two years ago.

If he knew that it was a test, that no longer disturbed him. He seemed to abandon himself to discovery. ‘Oh, well, yes—the dresser I remember,’ he said.

So now she knew. Her heart lurched, sick terror seemed to rise in her throat, thick as a vomit, choking her. She faltered: ‘My husband can show you the rest of the house—if you want to wait for him. He’ll be back any minute; any second. He never leaves me alone here after dark.’ And she blurted out: ‘There’s a man… He rings me up…’ She felt his eyes upon her, direct, appraising. ‘He says filthy things. Obscene.’

He stood very quiet. He said at last: ‘Yes, I thought you’d rumbled me. Well—you’re right: it’s me. And about your husband—that isn’t true, is it? He won’t be back till late. I was outside the window, I heard you talking to him oh the ’phone.’ He had gone very pale, his broad, solid, pleasant face wore suddenly a grey, dead look. He explained, almost apologetically: ‘I’ve been spying on your house, you see. Waiting for the chance.’

‘The chance?’ she stammered. ‘The chance?’

He stood there with that dreadful grey look, a sort of blank look as though he spoke from another world; motionless, except when now and again his thick white hands gave a sudden little twitch. ‘I can’t help myself,’ he said. ‘This ringing up and all. It’s disgusting, I know; afterwards I feel ashamed. But I can’t help it. It’s a sort of sickness, I suppose.’ He moved in a little from the doorway, came to the end of the big, scrubbed wooden kitchen table; stood there with it between them. She protested, as though with words she might stem his advance, might fend off for a little while longer the horror to come: ‘But why me? Why me? I’m not some young, pretty girl.’