Anne Belinda (14 page)

When he had run ten miles, John had himself in hand. He went over all that Nicholas had said to him, and all that he had said to Nicholas. Then, when he had fixed the detail firmly in his memory, he did what he had set out to do—he stood away and looked at the interview as a whole. The thing that struck him at the end was the thing that had struck him at the beginning—not Anne's part, but Jenny's—the amazing number of lies which Jenny had told, and the apparent ease with which she had told them.

Right away at the beginning Anne gets out of the taxi, and doesn't turn up in time for the train. Jenny doesn't wait for her. Jenny and Mrs. Jones go by the train which Anne has missed. And Jenny tells her father that Anne is staying with friends in town. Why? Why on earth didn't she just say that Anne had missed the train? If she started to tell lies like that on Anne's behalf, it meant that she knew jolly well that Anne wasn't coming back, and that she'd got to be accounted for. After that floods of lies—and she must have told them well, or someone would have found out. Nobody did find out until Jenny went away on her honeymoon and left the lying to Mrs. Jones. Mrs. Jones was obviously nothing like such a good liar as Jenny, and Sir Anthony found out.

Jenny told Nicholas about Anne a week after their wedding. That was one of the things which had hit John between the eyes. Jenny told Nicholas when they'd been married a week. That meant she'd been feeding Nicholas with lies just the same as she'd been feeding everyone else. She'd been telling him about the nursing home, and Anne not being allowed to see anyone, and the daily bulletin—“Darling Anne's better to-day. Isn't it lovely?” or, “Oh, Nicko, Anne's not so well.” She'd been telling him this—this bunkum—and wailing because Anne couldn't be her bridesmaid. And then, when they'd been married a week, she had the nerve to tell him she'd been making a fool of him along with the rest of the general public.

John gave a short angry laugh. He wondered how Nicholas Marr had taken it. And then, quite suddenly, he realized that Nicholas had never looked at the thing at all from this particular angle. Nicholas Marr from his point of view could see only Anne and her impossible offence against her family and against society. Jenny fell into her place as one of those whom Anne had wronged. “Why, he wouldn't even notice that she'd been lying—he didn't notice when he was telling me.”

John, on the other hand, saw Anne and Jenny, and Jenny's story about Anne as one sees things in a fog. The fog was a fog of lies. The lies were Jenny's lies, and they plunged the whole story and the whole situation into obscurity. Amongst so many lies, why should anything be true? Why, for instance, should Jenny's account of what happened before Anne got out of the taxi be any truer than the story Jenny told to Sir Anthony to account for Anne's non-arrival?
Had
Anne written to Mrs. Jones, and if so, what did she really say?

John thought that he would go and see Mrs. Jones. He took the address which Delia had given him from his pocket-book and refreshed his memory. Mrs. Jones was living with a married daughter at 21, Edwin Road, Clapham; and to Edwin Road, Clapham, he accordingly took his way.

Hedges of flowering thorn are pleasanter to drive between than rows of yellow brick houses all exactly alike. Dirt soon mitigates the offence of the yellow brick, and one house varies from another in possessing, or lacking, an aspidistra; but the general effect is one of a yellowish-grey monotony. Edwin Road may, or may not, have been named in compliment to a great architect. It is quite certain that he can have been very little flattered.

John found number twenty-one, and knocked on a door whose blistered paint bore witness that this was the sunny side of the street. The window on his left had Nottingham lace curtains, as clean as it is humanly possible for Nottingham lace curtains to be in Clapham. The curtains were drawn across the window, and between them stood an aspidistra in a bright pink china pot. Between the pink china pot and the tightly closed glass of the window was a long, rather debilitated strip of cardboard upon which the word “Apartments” had been printed by hand.

The door opened and disclosed a plump, pasty-faced woman in a bright blue overall. John inquired for Mrs. Jones, and was ushered into the parlour, where white shavings blocked the fireplace and a funereal black marble clock ticked heavily at the aspidistra.

The married daughter's pride in the gentility of this room was evident. She threw a complacent glance at the two armchairs upholstered in crimson plush, which had figured in an auction ten years ago as “Gent's, plush, easy,” and “Lady's ditto.” Her eyes also dwelt fondly on the three-legged table—“real mahogany”—upon which there reposed in state a large picture Bible, a bound copy of
Good Words,
and two photograph albums. Then she turned her head.

“What name shall I say?”

“Sir John Waveney.”

Twenty years before, Mary Jones would have dropped him a curtsey. Mrs. Porter ducked her head and—almost—gave at the knees. “My! If I wasn't took aback!” she said afterwards over an excellent supper of tinned salmon and fresh cucumber. “'Im standing there and saying, ‘Sir John Waveney,' and I'm sure no one 'ud 've took 'im for a baronet.”

At the time she said nothing, only ducked her head and got awkwardly out of the room. John heard her, heavy-footed on the stairs, and was left with nothing to do but observe his surroundings.

There was a dark green paper on the walls. Mrs. Porter considered it a good wearing colour. There were striped pink and white antimacassars on the backs of the crimson armchairs. A lustre cup and saucer of a lovely bronze colour sat on the mantelpiece next to the horrible clock and was balanced on the other side by a peculiarly atrocious blue vase with cheap gilt handles.

John liked the cup and saucer, though he did not know that it was old and good. He was touching it when Mrs. Jones came in with a measured dignity of step. She was rosy, where her daughter was pallid, and she had the firmly buxom figure of a generation whose stays were really stays, and tightly laced at that. Over the stays she wore a black stuff dress, also heavily boned, and a high black stuff collar with buckram in it, and a little turned-over collar of Swiss embroidery. The collar was fastened by a large old-fashioned brooch with a border of plaited gold and a centre of plaited hair. She also wore a thick gold watch-chain and little gold earrings like buttons.

John turned with a friendly smile, and was fairly startled by her air of respectful hostility. She shook hands with him, and her hand was cold, plump, and limp. He didn't know quite what to say or where to begin, and found himself stumbling into some inanity about the weather—something to the effect that it was a fine day.

Mrs. Jones said, “Yes, sir.”

“Lovely, driving up—not too hot, you know.”

Mrs. Jones said, “No, sir.” She had small grey eyes. Her grey hair was very neatly parted in the middle and plaited into a tight, flat bun at the back of her head. Not a single hair was out of place.

“I've just been staying with Lady Marr for the week-end.”

Mrs. Jones said nothing, and after a desperate pause John plunged on:

“I expect you're wondering why I've come to see you. (Oh, Lord! That's not tactful!) I mean I wanted to see you awfully, because I want to have a talk with you.”

Mrs. Jones said “Yes, sir” again.

Then, to John's relief, she offered him a chair and sat down herself. But when they were both seated there ensued a perfectly awful pause. Mrs. Jones did not seem to mind. She gazed politely and resentfully at the wall about six inches to John's left and she kept her hands folded upon her knee.

John broke the silence with a manful effort.

“I wanted to see you because I wanted to talk to you about my cousins—you nursed them all, didn't you?”

“I took Mr. Courtney from the month,” said Mrs. Jones austerely.

“I never met Courtney. I wish I'd met him. I served under Tom.”

Mrs. Jones pressed her lips together, then opened them to say, “Mr. Courtney was the handsomest young gentleman in the county, and Mr. Tom was that clever at his studies there wasn't no one to come near him.” Her lips shut tight again; her little grey eyes dealt faithfully with any pretensions which this new Waveney might have to either looks or brains.

“Lord! What a refrigerator!” groaned John. But he went on:

“I said I wanted to talk to you about my cousins. I really want to talk about my Cousin Anne.”

“Yes, sir.” (“Never batted an eyelash!” was John's comment.)

“I want to see her very particularly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And I thought perhaps you could give me her address. Can you?”

Mrs. Jones became a little more frigid; there was a note of definite hostility in her “No, sir.”

“Mrs. Jones,” said John, sitting forward, “I want to find my cousin very badly. Do you know where she is?”

“Miss Jenny—I should say her ladyship—would be the right person to tell you that.”

“Would she? And supposing she doesn't know?”

“Her ladyship would be sure to know.”

“She doesn't. (That ought to break the ice with a crash.) I don't mean just that she says she doesn't know. She
really
doesn't—this time.”

Mrs. Jones gave no sign of anything having broken. She merely repeated her last words: “Her ladyship would be quite sure to know.”

“She doesn't know. She's said she didn't know, when she really did; but this time she doesn't know.”

“That's for her ladyship to say.”

(“That's the lie direct.”) Then aloud, “You're not making it very easy to talk to you. Look here, I'd better tell you. I know the whole story. (I wonder if I do—and I wonder how much this old image knows.)”

Mrs. Jones didn't speak. She looked politely at the wall.

John sprang up.

“I tell you I know the whole story. Lady Marr's been telling everyone that her sister was in Spain recovering from an illness. I didn't believe the story, and this morning Sir Nicholas told me the truth. He told me that my cousin had been in prison for a year.”

Mrs. Jones took a moment. Then she said:

“It's not for me to say one thing or the other.” Her voice was quite steady, but the plump folded hands shook.

“Yes, it is. I say, do stop being like this! I've come here because I wanted you to help me. I can't do anything unless you come off this awful frozen-up stunt. After all, you nursed Anne, you looked after her when she was a jolly little kid; and it's not in reason that you shouldn't have some human feeling about her. I'll be bound to say the family doesn't seem to have any. They don't seem to care a damn where she is, or whether she's got any money, or what she's doing.”

“Nobody,” said Mrs. Jones with trembling dignity—“nobody can never cast it up at me that I didn't do my duty.”

John struggled with this for a moment, and then decided to ignore it. At any rate, the ice was gone.

“I don't believe she's got any money. I don't see how she can have much, anyhow. She came out of prison yesterday, and she went to an hotel for the day, and in the afternoon she went down to see Jenny. And Jenny sent her away broken-hearted. I saw her. She looked as if Jenny had killed her. Then I missed her at the station. And she went off in the London train, and no one's seen her since. She didn't go back to the hotel. Jenny doesn't know where she is. She isn't lying this time—she really doesn't know. I thought there was just a chance she might have come to you. Did she?”

Mrs. Jones stopped looking at the wall. She looked at John and shook her head.

“Do you know where she is? Do you know anything?”

A very large, round tear rolled suddenly down Mrs. Jones's smooth red cheek.

“Are you telling me true?” she said. And then, with a little hard sob, “Lord ha' mercy, sir!”

“Of course I'm telling you the truth. Why should I tell you anything else? I only wish to goodness I could get the truth out of some of you for a change. I'm pretty well sick of lies—I can tell you that. First she's ill; and then she's abroad; and then she's mad; and now she's lost!” He gave a short angry laugh. “Lost, and, for all I know, without a penny; and, for all any of you care, starving.”

Mrs. Jones was much impressed; she liked to see a man angry—real gentlemen were often angry. Sir Anthony had had a most notable temper. Her nursery reminiscences included horrific tales of battle between Mr. Courtney and Mr. Tom. John ceased suddenly to be an outsider. “Looks a proper Waveney, he does, when he's angry—and, Lord knows, I've seen enough of them angry to tell.”

Having reached this point, she also reached the meaning of John's words, and at once suffered an access of distress and confusion.

“I'm sure no one could ever bring it up against me that I didn't do my duty by them all,” she said. “And twins is day and night work, as everyone knows, and if one of them was quiet, the other 'ud begin, till it was more than flesh and blood could stand.”

John made an impatient movement.

“I'm asking you if you know where Anne is. Do you?”

“Her ladyship—”

Mrs. Jones broke off at the look on John's face. “The very moral of Sir Anthony in one of his
worst
,” she said to herself. And if she quaked, she also admired.

Do you know where she is?”

“No, sir, I don't.”

“You're sure?”

“Gospel sure.”

“Then no one knows.” He did not shout as Sir Anthony would have shouted; but the passion was plain in his voice.

He went to the window in a couple of strides, pushed aside the lace curtains, and stood looking out into the dull, drab street, the smoky blue sky—just a dull strip of it was over the greenish slate of ugly roofs—and the smoky yellow brick of ugly houses. There were miles and miles and miles of streets like this—poorer, uglier streets; poorer, fouler, uglier streets than this; slum streets, congested with foul and ugly people, full of hideous sights and hideous sounds. Where did a penniless woman drift to in a great city like this? Where in all this city was Anne Belinda? He turned, his anger gone away, his heart sick and sinking.