An Accidental Man (52 page)

Such precious things had been granted to him, sources of happiness, sources of good. Was it that he was unworthy of them, since he now conceived of surrendering them out of what seemed at moments a stupid guilt-ridden petulance? For any good that lay beyond, elsewhere, his eyes were dim. It seemed unthinkable that he should sacrifice his whole career now because of some idle nervous intuition. Or because his father thought that he was evading the truth. Or because he imagined this or that about his future self on no evidence at all. And meanwhile he had given one of the gravest of all promises to a young girl. And he loved her. And he wanted now more than anything else in the world to be in her arms. He groaned, darkening his face, hiding it from the golden time-ridden light of the leafy window. If only delay itself could have no consequences. If only all could stand still and the relentless procession of the hours be checked so that he could rest quietly in a real interim. Oh was it not even now somehow possible that everything could be well?

‘Excuse me, sir,' said the police officer. ‘I am looking for a Mr Gibson Grey.'

‘That's me,' said Garth, who had opened the door.

The sudden sight of the policeman made Garth flush with fear and a whirling sense of guilt. What had he done, or what had happened? Immediately he thought, my father is dead. Then he thought, my father has commited some terrible crime.

‘Could I come in, sir, and talk to you for a moment?' said the policeman. He followed Garth in and up the stairs.

Garth's room had a large square uncurtained window opaque with dirt through which the sun mercilessly shone to reveal a dance of moving dust particles, bare gritty floorboards, Garth's grey sheetless unmade bed, a chest of drawers with all the drawers open, a rucksack, a toppled pile of books, and a vague sea of underwear. There was a sweaty smell of old socks and a darker smell of filth and rats.

Garth went every morning to the emergency housing centre. What he did there was beginning to feel a little bit more like a profession and a little bit less like doing odd jobs. There was a certain primitive satisfaction in the evident importance of the work. And it was nice, sometimes, to occasion a look of relief in the eyes of those who were at their wits' end. All the same Garth felt dissatisfied and unhappy and even, to his surprise, lonely. He had never, in what now seemed his tougher and more hopeful days, imagined that solitude would be other than a welcome friend. Now he yearned vaguely for more mundane relationships.

That he had saved Charlotte's life, which he had undoubtedly done, had given him an almost childish sort of pleasure, it was like an unexpected present or a treat. Oh
good,
he felt whenever he thought of it. He did not expect Charlotte to be grateful and he did not even think that it was likely to constitute any sort of bond between them, he felt it rather as a little private achievement of his own, something he had felicitously pulled off. Also he wondered if he should perhaps regard it as a sign that he was after all upon the right road. But then Dorina had died.

When his mother was drowned Garth had been ten. He was away at school at the time. The shock of it sliced several years out of his life. He could remember his earlier childhood, his jumbled home, his gipsy mother's sweetness, his father's emotions. Austin had been a tempestuous father, affectionate, permissive, suddenly harsh, often lacrimose. There was a good deal of quarrelling and shouting. Children can manage storms of emotion provided there is love. A sturdy precocious little figure, he fought his father and bossed his mother. He was the centre of the world. Then suddenly there was no mother and no father and no world, only a blackness covering years now inaccessible to memory. And when he emerged his father was much older and a stranger.

The shock of Dorina's death produced a phantasm of being in love with her. Had there really been a pent-up passion behind that taboo? A woman paced his dreams who was half Betty and half Dorina. And he began to remember. He remembered his mother's funeral, Austin crying, Austin jerking his hand away. He remembered that appalling distress, his own defeated grief, the beginning of estrangement, the beginning of real fear. So in those years, which he could now dimly see, his emotional loving bullying young father had become the changeling of today. Dorina had somehow been a product of those years of misery, a sort of alleviation and yet a sort of embodiment of all those awful thoughts, a wounded grounded angel, a piece of spirit lost and crazed, no longer connected with its source and centre, but spirit still. Garth now saw a little into the mystery of his father's passion, and her death had this use for him, that a stream flowed again between himself and the past and after being dry-eyed for many years he was able to weep again.

After this, so swift is spirit, though still in sadness, he began to feel a new interest in himself.

Garth stood in the dusty sunlight in the stained room and faced the officer of the law. If it should be his father's death, or worse. Love for his father possessed his body like memory.

‘Well now, sir,' said the policeman, ‘I wonder if you recognize this bag here?'

Garth looked down at a black leather suitcase which the officer was carrying and which he now dumped on the bed. It looked familiar. Then Garth recognized it as the bag which had been stolen from him at the Air Terminal when he returned from America.

‘Why, yes, it's mine! So it's turned up!'

‘Perhaps for identification purposes you would be so kind as to name some items which might be found inside it?'

‘I'm glad to hear there's anything inside it!' said Garth. ‘Well — there is — or was — a dark green sponge bag, with a sort of silver-coloured toothbrush in it —'

‘Yes, sir?'

‘And — I hope — there's a — er — novel — called — er —
The Life Blood of the Night
.' Garth blushed.

‘That's right, sir. What have we here? A novel entitled
The Life Blood of the Night.
Not much doubt about that, is there, I mean there can't be many of them knocking around! Here we find also a few articles of clothing and toilet articles. What else was in the bag, sir?'

‘Oh an electric shaver, a camera, they're gone, and some of the clothes. Nothing that matters, really. How did you find it?'

‘We found it abandoned, sir, on a building site. Lucky you put your London address inside. The ladies who now occupy the flat told us where to find you.'

‘The ladies — ? Oh yes, well, I'm so glad. I never thought I'd see it again.'

‘Never give up hope, sir. Now perhaps you would just sign here? That'll be all then, good day. And may I express the hope that your novel will be a best seller?'

When the policeman had gone Garth eagerly pulled the novel out. He leafed it through. It was all there. He pulled the bed together and settled down. He was soon absorbed, spell-bound. The novel really was rather good.

‘I should think it over if I were you, Charlotte,' said Matthew wearily. He unfolded a clean handkerchief and drew it down the side of his face and inspected the dirty damp smear. The weather was stupidly hot again.

‘Really, Matthew,' said Charlotte, ‘how can you imagine that I need to reflect? Why ever should I consent to be the grateful pensioner of such a ghastly band of wellwishers? Even if it is your idea. Which I doubt, actually. Now be honest, wasn't it really Clara's idea?'

‘Yes,' said Matthew, ‘it was Clara's idea.'

‘And you were to be the front. I thought so. It has the Clara stamp.'

‘Clara is a very kind woman. It's a very kind idea. There's no need to swear at me about it.'

‘I'm not swearing at you. Dear me, you do look hot. You also, if I may say so, need a shave.'

‘But you are short of money, Charlotte.'

‘If I'm desperate I'll borrow from you. As it is, I propose to get a job.'

‘Oh. What kind?'

‘I'm not sure yet. After all, I'm not a dolt.'

Charlotte, looking radiant and full of vitality, was striding up and down the drawing-room at the Villa. Matthew lay stretched out in an easy chair. Charlotte was wearing a rather long dress of coarse linen with wide blue and white stripes and a wide belt. She had a very good figure. Her grey hair had been newly set and slightly tinted with mauve. Her blue eyes blazed with life and purpose. Matthew watched her puzzled, exhausted.

‘Well, all right,' he said. ‘I'll tell Clara. Have another drink.'

‘Thank you. There's something I wanted to tell you.'

‘Oh yes, you said in a letter —'

‘Need you look so bloody limp? When I was young, men didn't loll about like that in the presence of a woman.'

‘Sorry —'

‘I'm sorry to be so abrupt, but as I hardly ever have the pleasure of seeing you I have to make the best of my time. It's about Austin.'

‘Austin —' Matthew rocked his bulk in the chair in an attempt to lean forward.

‘Austin and Betty.'

‘Oh no, not that.'

‘You mean you know?'

‘I don't know what you're going to say. I just don't feel in the mood for Austin and Betty just now. Could you shove the decanter along?'

‘Matthew, please. How did Betty die?'

‘What are you talking about?' said Matthew.

‘How did Betty die?'

‘She fell into a deep lock on the river near my cottage. She couldn't swim. She was drowned. What are you at, Charlotte?'

‘She could swim,' said Charlotte. ‘I found a swimming certificate of hers at Austin's flat. She could swim very well.'

‘All right,' said Matthew, wiping his face with his hand. He was somehow sitting on the handkerchief. ‘She could swim. Swimmers can drown too. She knocked her head on something.'

‘But Austin said she couldn't swim. He said so at the inquest.'

‘Did he? I can't remember.'

‘You
must
remember, you're lying, I can see you are. And another thing. You were meeting Betty secretly.'

‘How do you know?' said Matthew. He rocked himself again to try to extract the handkerchief.

‘I've seen a letter of Betty's to you, making a secret appointment. Austin must have found it. It was torn and stuck together again.'

‘That's right,' said Matthew. ‘I was meeting Betty secretly so as to help her buy a tennis racket for Austin's birthday. It was to be a surprise. I've told Austin this since. So there's no drama there, Charlotte, sorry.'

‘But why did Austin say she couldn't swim? And why did he go round later on hinting that she'd committed suicide? You know he did that. He can't work it both ways. If she could swim she was unlikely to get drowned by accident in a river on a summer's day. And if she could swim she was even more unlikely to have chosen drowning as a method of suicide. Nor would she have been able to kill herself by drowning unless she'd tied on weights or something. And nothing of that sort came up at the inquest. And if it really was an accident and she fell and hit her head and so drowned why was this never said, and what were Austin's motives for saying that she couldn't swim and then for hinting later that she killed herself?'

‘Well, what do you think happened?' said Matthew. He hauled out the handkerchief, now a stringy rag. He noticed that the seat of the chair was damp with his perspiration. Perhaps it would make a permanent stain.

‘I think Austin killed her,' said Charlotte, ‘and I think he did it because he believed rightly or wrongly that she was carrying on with you.'

‘I've explained,' said Matthew, ‘that we were going to buy a tennis racket for Austin's birthday. That was the only secret meeting I ever had with Betty.'

‘Well, never mind that. I'm not accusing you. I'm accusing Austin.'

‘Oh, let it go, Charlotte,' said Matthew. ‘Austin never killed or tried to kill anybody except in his imagination.'

‘He might kill you.'

‘I know how it all was, Austin is no murderer —'

‘Matthew, he might kill you.'

‘Only he won't. And now, dear Charlotte, since we've had our talk and I now know what to tell Clara let us call it a day. I've got to see the Monkleys and then give Mavis dinner and then I've promised to call on Charles Odmore since Hester, as you probably know, is down at the Arbuthnots for the pig festival or whatever it is —'

‘Matthew, I simply don't understand you,' said Charlotte. ‘No, don't try to get up, I've got you cornered and I'm not going to let you go. I have accused your brother of the murder of his first wife. You seem quite unmoved and you don't even answer the charge.'

‘I know he didn't, that's all,' said Matthew. ‘I know him better than you do. You're just thinking all this up to make an exciting drama and a thrilling secret between us and so on.'

‘You swine,' said Charlotte quietly. ‘And I didn't invent the swimming certificate and —'

‘Oh let it go, Char.'

‘Are you going to marry Mavis?' said Charlotte.

‘I hope so.'

‘Matthew, I am not amusing myself. Sit still and listen! I seriously want to warn you, you could be in serious danger —'

‘Oh stop it, Charlotte. And do stop playing amateur detective.'

‘Do you know that I've loved you all my life?' said Charlotte. She stood in front of him.

‘You haven't known me all your life.'

‘Don't be a fool. I've loved you ever since I've known you. Ever since George introduced us. I've been in love with you.'

‘I thought you loved George.'