Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (42 page)

Suddenly it came to her that she had not thought of her mother for more than a month. Mutti, whom she had never loved as much as her father. That was why Johnnie was not coming home as much as she had hoped. Looking at herself in the mirror, she decided that she would wear Mutti's old amethyst brooch. No wonder her luck was against her - leaving her mother's jewellery in the silver box in the wardrobe. She would wear a different piece every day now and keep Mutti's memory alive and then her luck would come back. She took out the silver box and laid it on the dressing-table. When she opened it, it was empty.

Superstitious fright rapidly gave way to rage. She knew at once who had taken it. She had shown the jewels to Johnnie and Larrie some weeks before, saying that she never wore them. At that moment even Johnnie's devotion would not have saved his friend from her fury had the boy been in the room. To take
her
property, to bring
her
bad luck, was not the mark of an ordinary criminal, it was an act for which there could be no mercy. Her more considered train of thought, however, was too recent to have altogether left her. She must not risk Johnnie's love by a rash action. She sat down on her dressing-table stool and made such an effort to control her anger as she had never made before. The sheer physical spasm of such self-control made her great body shake all over and tears welled up in her blue eyes. After a minute or so, however, she realized that she had won. She descended the stairs with a sad look of reproach and a bitter little smile. She had brought a thief into the house, and she must pay the price. It was her duty, her sad duty, to make the boy ashamed, to make him tell the truth.

Larrie gave her a great big, loving smile when she came into the room. 'Just in time,' he said. 'And won't Johnnie be proud of his old lady?'  He looked for the heart of gold and the soul of kindness in those big blue eyes, but they did not seem to be there. 'Now, Mrs Middleton, darling,' he cried, 'you must sit down. We'll be missing Johnnie's introduction, and then what'll we say to him?'

'I don't know what
I'm
going to say to him,' she said, shaking her head in solemn reproach. 'I don't know how I am going to tell him that his friend is a little thief.'

Her discovery was a nasty blow to Larrie. He had, of course, expected it sooner or later; but neither sooner nor later ever meant now in his scheme of things. He had told himself in his heroic moods that he would tell the old lady the truth; but he had always anticipated her rage, and this unexpected mood of soft-speaking sorrow reminded him too easily of the many kindly, moralizing people he had met in his life of institutions. For such old fools he had only one reply - evasion, lying, soft-soaping. And so he said, 'Now whatever do you mean, Mrs Middleton, darling?'

'No! no!' Inge cried, shaking her great head to and fro and rounding her great eyes. 'No! Larrie. That is not good enough. You know very well what I mean.'

'I do not,' he cried. 'I swear I do not. If you'll not tell me what you mean, how can I? Even if I've been in trouble, I've the right to defend myself.'

'I want to give you the right to tell me the truth,' she answered with a little bitter, disappointed smile. 'I can't help you, you know, if you won't help yourself.'

Larrie had heard it all so often before. 'Indeed I want to,' he cried, 'and yet you say these wicked, cruel things to me.' His eyes began to fill with tears; he could only remember all the unfairness he had met in life.

Inge, too, had now completely assumed the role of the trusting woman who had been let down. She sat on the arm of his chair and stroked his unruly hair. 'Now, Larrie,' she said in a soft, cooing voice, 'shall we try to see if we can remember the truth? Perhaps I can do it for you. You've tried to fit in here, to live the happy, good life I offered you. But it's not easy to throw off the wicked, black troll who has sat on your shoulders for so long.'

'Indeed, that's the truth,' he said, gazing up at her.

She smiled and twisted a lock of his hair around her finger. 'Well,' she said, 'the little black troll won, didn't he? You spent all your money on silly, bad things and you wanted some more. That stupid old fool Mrs Middleton wouldn't give it to you - I'm afraid she wasn't darling Mrs Middleton then. And you remembered that old box of jewellery which she had told you she never used and so Larrie jumped from the chair. With his tousled head and his flushed cheeks, he was the picture of frightened indignation. 'It's not true, it's not true,' he cried. 'I've not taken a thing that isn't mine. God strike me down! I wish I were dead if it's always to be this way. People suspecting me, hating me because I never had a chance in life.' He was shaking all over and his voice came shrill and hysterical through his tears.

Inge sat monumental, patient, and sad. 'The jewellery has gone, Larrie,' she said. 'Who has taken it?'

'How do
I
know who's taken it?'  he cried, and then suddenly he turned to her, his bright tear-glistening eyes awake with a new idea. 'And yes, I do. Indeed, I do. It was that Irmgard, Mrs Middleton; you can be sure it was. She's a lying, deceitful bitch. Don't I know it from the wicked lies she told of me?'

Inge's splendid, Valhalla neck flushed scarlet. She arose from her chair, an avenging goddess. 'No!' she cried, towering over him, 'you cannot be helped. You are wicked and bad all through!'

The accusation against one of the maids touched deeply all her social democratic morality, but further still Larrie's reference to his exploit with Irmgard brought back all the disgust she had felt at the time. It had only been Johnnie's pleading that had made her pass over the incident so easily at the time and the suppressed distaste came surging up. 'You are filthy too,' she said, 'to use your position here to make the poor girl do
that
with you. It was vile and disgusting.'

Through all Larrie's fright came a wave of anger at her bullying and a fury of hurt vanity. 'Made her!' he cried. 'She was glad to get the chance to do it.' He turned to Inge, laughing and pointing his finger. 'And so would you too, for all that you're old enough to be my grandmother. That's why you hated it so, you old beast!'

The idea was horrible to Inge, indeed for many years any idea of sex had been revolting to her. Now indeed she was the thunder goddess. 'How dare you?'  she cried. 'There is only one thing to do for this. I shall telephone to the pobce. They will know how to deal with such filthiness.'

Larrie clung to her dress, but with greater strength she moved on, erect, determined. He began to whimper at her, It was true what she said, but didn't she see what his life had made of him, an institution boy; and not only that, his physical health, hadn't he been turned down for National Service, though he'd wished to serve and him an Irish boy? Inge's heart was stone.

Suddenly Larrie's tone of voice changed. 'You'd better not be telephoning to the police. Johnnie wouldn't be liking that at all,' he said.

'I can't help Johnnie's feelings,' Inge said; 'this has been too bad.'

'You'd best be careful, or you'll be sorry for what you're doing,' Larrie shouted, and in crude words he began to speak of his relations with John. 'That'll not sound so good,' he said, 'in a police court.'

Inge turned towards him a doll's face of horror. Then she put her hands over her ears. 'Don't speak such things. Go away! Go away! It is terrible.' The thing that she feared most was happening to her, that she dreaded most. Someone was telling her things that she could not bear to hear and she could not stop them. She met the attack with the hysterical panic that had seized her in the old days of Kay's burned hand. 'Go away! Go away!' she screamed.

'I'm going all right. I don't want to stay here. You needn't worry,' Larrie said. He found easily the tough, hard tone which he had so often assumed in such scenes in the past. Although he had always been too frightened to blackmail, he had no such fears about a little threatening and bullying. 'I'll just be needing a little money. That's all.' Going over to where her bag lay on the table, he opened it and took out the notes. He counted them. 'Twenty pounds,' he said, 'I'll take that.'

She had sunk on to a chair by the door and, with her elbows on her knees, she covered her face with her hands. She would not look.

Her fright increased Larrie's bullying and a very genuine resentment of the rotten deal he felt he had got from the Middletons. He remembered how some men he had known, who had broken into a flat in Knightsbridge, had told him that they had urinated on the lady's bedroom carpet, 'to teach the old tart a lesson': It seemed to him that this would be the tough thing to do, yet, surveying the spacious drawing-room, awe overcame him. He contented himself by shoving his hands in his pockets and, as he slouched across the room, spitting on the polished parquet skirting. Even then he was seized with shame, he scraped the spittle with his foot. 'I apologize,' he said, 'I shouldn't have done that.'

Inge saw nothing of what he was doing, she repeated, 'You must go. You must go away.'

He went down to the stables flat and packed his bag. Then, taking her car, he drove off to London. He guessed rightly that once anything had been stolen, she would make no attempt to recover it.

John, driving out of London on the sunny June morning of the next day, decided to visit the Kershaws once again. He was beginning to find his new career a strain. Elvira was no longer there to give him support. The Marlow set-up had removed Larrie from him and had only made his visits to Inge more difficult. The little that he had seen of the Cressetts had told him that he was easily carried too far into things without examining them closely enough to see where they would lead him. He had only extricated himself from graver self-mistrust by refusing to look any farther into the matter. When everything went smoothly on its own impetus, he felt himself master of his own fate - the strong, individualistic social reformer with cynical good sense enough to make a nice career out of his genuine mission. When there were mishaps or setbacks or close shaves like the Cressett affair of last night, he saw himself as the artist caught up in a web of other people's trickery, chicane, and selfishness, by the unfortunate fact that unlike other artists he had a social conscience. He would write again, but not among the carping, little-minded, cliquey literary world in which Elvira lived. He would go away with someone simple and ordinary - somebody like Larrie who needed help -
that
would take care of his social conscience. And he would realize himself as an artist. All the same a certain canniness told him that he could not easily get off the celebrity big wheel. It would be as well to find out a little more about the Cressetts, for example; not directly, but from Maureen. After all, with Derek there, she would not tell him anything 'too disturbing'.

Derek was busy at the garage when he arrived and he was left to a
tête-à-tête
with Maureen. He did not feel easy. She produced coffee and home-made coffee-iced cake. 'We saw your television programme,' she said, 'or as much of it as we could stand. Honestly, John, you drive me up the wall. What sort of a mess have you got poor Dad into, or yourself for that matter?'

John swallowed a draught of coffee too quickly, but his choking fit allowed him time to compose his face in an innocent boyish look of surprise. 'What do you mean "a mess"?'  he asked grinning. 'I look like getting your father his compensation after all, and you call that a mess?'

'Have you seen Dad's market-garden?'  Maureen asked. 'No, well I shouldn't. The compensation would be difficult to assess. But that isn't the point. Dad's a wretched creature in some ways, but he doesn't deserve to be made a fool of like this. Heaven knows what sort of nonsense he'll get up to if he has much more of this publicity. Or the awful Alice. She'd be as much a fool in things like that as he is, if she wasn't such a tough nut.'

John decided to probe further. 'As a matter of fact, Maureen, I was a bit taken aback last night,' he said candidly. 'I thought I'd never stop the old boy.'

'You shouldn't have put him there,' she said. 'But he won't do you any harm. My stepmother might. She's ignorant, but she's as hard as nails and pretty sly. Don't you let her in on your private life! Not that she can get you into much worse of a mess than you're in. What sort of a circus clown are you making of yourself, Johnnie, with all this radio racket? You were a ghastly reactionary in the Labour party, but at least it was some use, but this sort of nonsense is
bound
to make you look a fool in the end.'

John said huffily, 'I happen to think there are more ways than one of effecting social changes.'

'Oh! Johnnie. And you've got education.
I
don't know.'

'We'd better not argue about it.'

'No,' said Maureen. 'You're right there. Have some more coffee.' When she had poured it out, she added, 'All the same, it'd be more respectable to be a crooner.'

John held up his hands in mock surrender. 'All right,' he cried, 'you keep Nye Bevan for your pin-up boy. I'm not competing.'

'A lot you care if I pin you up or not,' Maureen laughed. 'All the same, some of the fans you do care about will be taking your picture down from the wall soon. Derek, for instance.' As soon as she said it, she felt ashamed, but could only cover her embarrassment with gaucherie. 'Look!' she said, 'it'was lovely seeing you, but I've got Derek's lunch to cook. Go round and see him at the garage.' She went into the kitchen.

John drove round to the garage and had a few words with Derek between customers. The garage did a good summer trade. 'I honestly think I'm going to pack the whole racket up, Derek,' John said, 'and go back to writing stories.'

Derek glinted his best advertisement smile at him. 'I don't say you'd be wrong there,' he said. 'And while you're about it, Johnnie, I'd pack up that Larrie.
He
won't get you anywhere.'

He went to serve another customer and John drove off without waiting to say goodbye.

He was very annoyed to find Larrie out when he arrived at Marlow. Inge said she had no idea where he had gone, but she had no doubt that he would be back later in the day. She was beginning by now to hope that he
would
return - anything rather than having to recount last night's scene to Johnnie. She fussed around him all day, pretending that she had watched the television programme with Larrie as she had promised. Luckily he did not seem very keen to discuss it. She told herself sometimes that a chastened Larrie would return and all would be as before. He would tell her that the dreadful things he had said about himself and Johnnie were lies and she would tell him that she had not heard them. Then again she told herself that Johnnie would give Larrie up for ever when he heard her story; indeed, would stay with her for a long, long time to comfort her for what she had been through.