Marnie (26 page)

I said: ‘Mark, I want to thank you for what you’ve done tonight. You’ve been a real friend tonight, sticking up for me the way you did – I shall never forget
it.’

‘No?’

‘No. I – it was wonderful and reassuring to feel that you wouldn’t let me down. I really am most awfully grateful.’

He said: ‘Well, d’you think in that case it’s time to start being most awfully truthful?’

‘About – tonight?’

He said patiently: ‘What else?’

‘Are you angry with me?’

He glanced at me. ‘Angry isn’t quite the word. Rocking on my heels, you might say – and anxious.’

‘It was marvellous the way you backed me up.’

‘So you’ve said. But let’s not make too much of that. Just put it down to the fact that I still don’t like the idea of your going to prison.’

I sighed. ‘Well, thank Heaven for that.’

‘I honestly think, Marnie, that it’s time you stopped thanking Heaven, or me, or anyone else, and faced up to the facts of life.’

‘Which are?’

‘That you’re going to have to tell me about all the other money you’ve stolen in the past.’

‘What d’you mean? Who said it was anything to do with money?’

‘I asked Strutt.’

‘You
what
!’

‘I asked him. I was entitled to know why he was so worked up at the thought of meeting Marion Holland. Eleven hundred pounds is enough to work any man up.’

‘But he’ll think—’

‘He’s suspicious anyway; but no more so than he was before. I think we’ve pretty well choked him off, at the expense of making Terry believe I was trailing round after you
while I was married to Estelle. Oddly, it’s just the sort of explanation Terry would most easily swallow.’

‘Well, I’m sorry about that—’

‘You needn’t be.’

The other car had gone. We went miles in silence. He said: ‘I must know, here and now, I’ve just got to know what the real score is. Helping you at all may be unprofitable, but
helping you blindfold is a fool’s game.’

‘I suppose it looks as if I’ve cheated you. But you see, I never wanted you to know—’

‘I can believe that.’

‘Let me finish. I never wanted you to know because I felt you had faith in me, and if I told you any more, that would destroy it. You may think I care nothing about you but . . .’ My
voice broke.

‘Whatever else happens tonight,’ he said gently, ‘for Pete’s sake let’s not get the issues blurred with crocodile tears.’

We turned in at our drive and he drove into the garage.

‘D’you remember,’ I said, ‘when you caught me before, when you brought me back here and we were having supper, I said I was a thief and a liar. I told you so plainly
then. I said forgive me and let me go. And I said it later too. You wouldn’t let me go.’

‘So what’s followed is really my fault?’

‘I didn’t say that—’

‘But I have to bear a share of the responsibility? Is that it? Well, quite right too.’

He cut the engine and we sat a minute in the dark. I wriggled my handkerchief out and blew my nose. In the garden you could hear the wind sighing through the bare branches of the trees.

‘Quite right too,’ he said. ‘I
wanted
to believe what you told me before we were married. I checked some of it and took the rest on trust. After all, I was in love with
you, and trust must begin somewhere. To tell the truth, I was afraid even then of going too deep, just in case there
was
something wrong with your story. I thought, what’s over is
over. We love each other. Surely we can begin from here. If you deluded me, I was a willing victim. So in a sense you’re absolutely right.’

‘Mark—’

‘But it was pretty bad reasoning all the same. What’s over isn’t over. I’ve got to go into your past life, Marnie.’

‘I’ll tell you everything I can—’

‘You mean you’ll tell me everything you can’t avoid. I’m afraid that won’t do this time. We’ve really got to go a bit deeper.’

I opened the door of the car and moved my legs to get out.

He said: ‘
Marnie
.’

‘All right.’

‘No, it’s got to be more than all right this time. I’m no longer the man you married. With your willing aid I’ve become cynical and disillusioned. So, though I still want
to help you, I swear to God that if I find you out in any lies tonight I’ll go to Mr Arthur Strutt and tell him of the mistake I made. After that nothing can save you from the police. So bear
it in mind, will you?’

We didn’t go to bed that night until five. Except that he was so polite about it he’d have made a good man for the Inquisition. His face got whiter and whiter as
the night went on. He looked like the Devil. Sometimes I cried, sometimes I screamed at him; but he just went on.

In the end I told him all about the Birmingham affair, all about the one in Manchester, all about Newcastle. In the end I was so exhausted I couldn’t stand. And I hated him more than ever.
All the good he’d done by sticking up for me at the Newton-Smiths was lost.

Even then I didn’t tell him about Mother, and I didn’t tell him about Swansea. He thought he’d squeezed me dry but he hadn’t quite. I clung on.

But three was bad enough. I’d never have thought anyone could have made me tell so much. I’ve heard about prisoners being questioned in the war, how once they
started
talking
they went on.

At five o’clock he made a cup of tea and we drank it together. We’d been in the kitchen all the time because it was warmest at that time of night. The windows were steamed as if it
was with all the hot air.

After we’d been sipping for a time he said: ‘I still don’t know why you did it, why you began.’

‘If you ask me anything more now I shall faint.’

‘Not with that warm tea inside you, you won’t . . . But anyway I think we may be getting to the end of our tether tonight. You’re sure you’ve not forgotten
anything?’

I just shook my head.

He helped himself to more sugar. ‘The thing now is what we’re going to do about it.’

I shrugged.

He said: ‘Well, my love, it’s just not possible to leave it as it is.’

‘Why not?’ He didn’t answer. I said: ‘Why did you lie for me if you didn’t want to leave it as it is?’

‘I lied for you to save you temporarily, and to gain time. But it can’t be a permanent thing. You can’t live a normal life when you’re wanted by the police of three
separate cities.’

‘
I’m
not wanted—’

‘Not as Marnie Elmer, not as Mrs Rutland. But you’re at the mercy of every wind that blows. Next time I might not be there. Next time you might not be so lucky.’

I shivered as if I’d caught cold. ‘Let me go to bed, please.’

‘There may be some way out of this, but if so I don’t know it. You just can’t live all your life as a wanted criminal.’

‘Let’s think of it in the morning.’

He put down his cup and looked at me. ‘I wonder if that’s one way you live, by saying when anything difficult turns up – let’s think of it in the morning. Or else
you’ve cohabited with this idea so long that the danger doesn’t look so big. Well, it looks big to me. Not to mention the fact that I don’t think one ought to live with that sort
of thing permanently in one’s personality.’

I watched him walk across the kitchen and back. His tie was round the side and his hair was sticking up. ‘Every time we went into a room together – think of it – meeting new
people, keyed up for the chance accident; then denials, hasty lies, all the rest . . . until one day it doesn’t work and you’re caught . . .’

‘There’s nothing else for it,’ I said.

‘And apart from you – though you’re the chief problem – I carry not only the moral but the legal load, as accessory after the fact. I don’t want to go to jail,
Marnie.’

‘Just let me go,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing else for it.’

‘To jail, you mean?’

‘No, just let me leave you. I’ll quietly disappear. People will soon forget.’

‘I doubt it. Anyway, that really solves nothing.’ He came back. ‘Perhaps that was good advice of yours after all. We’ll see it clearer in the morning.’

It wasn’t clearer in the morning, nor the day after that, nor the day after. We stopped talking about it, but I could see he hadn’t stopped thinking about it. But
each day when he said nothing and did nothing I felt that much safer.

Well, what was there to do, honestly? He either gave me up to the police or he didn’t give me up. I didn’t believe he would ever really get to the point of betraying me – and
every day he left it he was more implicated himself. Anyway, he was still in love with me, or whatever it was he did feel – that hadn’t changed – and the way he’d stuck up
for me at the Newton-Smiths had been an eye-opener.

But I knew that for the next few weeks, while it hung in the balance, I depended an awful lot on his goodwill, and I was sorry I’d thrown so much of it away. I had to get on the right side
of him again, or at any rate not give him cause for complaint. Of course if I’d been able to make up to him like other women it would have been easy.

Then one day, about a week later, he mentioned that Roman had rung him, and had I really decided to drop all that for good? I saw at once that if I could do it, this was the way to please him,
so I said I’d try going for another few weeks. I didn’t
want
to start again, I said, because it always made me so miserable, but I’d do it because he wished me to.

So he agreed, and I went back to Roman, and I felt that Mark had accepted this as the only way out.

About this time one of the two old blind men – the less blind one, the one called Riley – took ill and was in bed for two weeks with his heart. This was the bad time of the year for
Mrs Richards’s bronchitis too, and she couldn’t help much, so I went down every morning after Mark had left and did for the blind men. I’d sometimes spend three hours a day down
there, what with one family and the other. It was queer, the way those two men worked together. Even with Mr Riley in bed he would
talk
to Mr Davis, telling him where things were, so that Mr
Davis had a sort of eye after all. They were closer than twins.

Mr Davis had a wonderful Welsh voice, and listening to him answering Mr Riley’s instructions was like listening to someone singing responses in church. ‘Over a little more to your
left, David,’ Mr Riley would say, and ‘Over a little more to my left, John,’ Mr Davis would answer. ‘Mind that stool by your left ankle, David.’ ‘The stool has
been minded, John.’ By the end of the third week Mr Riley was up again and they were able to start their walks. I was afraid some motorist would run them down.

What with one thing and another I hardly had time to wonder whether there’d been any other outcome of that awful dinner party, whether Mark was any more on terms with the Holbrooks, or
whether the Glastonbury Trust was persuading Rex to sell any of his shares; but I did notice Mark looking very preoccupied, and he was back later than usual. I could always tell if he was thinking
something about me or when he was thinking about other things. In a way I was glad he had something else to worry about; he’d have less time for me on his conscience.

Then the second weekend he said he had to be away. He was spending Saturday night and part of Sunday with his mother at the house of some man whose name I can’t remember; he said he was a
second cousin or something, and did I mind if I didn’t go because they had to beat out some family matter?

I said no, of course I didn’t mind. And of course I went to Terry’s.

Perhaps I asked for it, going like that, but I was getting pretty short of money.

When I got there I found only five of them besides myself, and it was a no-holds-barred evening, as Terry called it, meaning that the limit was off the raise. I did all right for a time and then
I began to lose. It was easy to lose big money tonight, and I twice borrowed from Terry. Then I got in an awful hand with Alistair MacDonald, when everyone else dropped out early, and I had a full
house. I thought from his discards he had threes and we bet against each other until he ‘saw’ me, and when he put his hand down he had four sevens.

I lost forty-seven pounds that night. This is the last time, I thought. Never again, this has finished me. When we broke off the Jewish film director came across and said:

‘D’you know, Mary, you’re the best woman poker player I have ever met.’

‘Are you being funny?’ I said.

‘No. There’s only one thing wrong.’

‘What’s that?’

‘It isn’t card sense you lack. It’s a sense of knowing when your luck is in. When I’m playing, I know. It is almost like being aware of a gentle breeze. If it blows for
me I know that with reasonable cards I shall make money, with good cards I may make quite a lot of money. If it blows against me I have to cut my coat accordingly. I know that if I pick up a good
hand, someone else, against the run of the distribution, will probably have a better.’

‘Well, anyway,’ said Terry, coming up, ‘she ought to be lucky in love.’

‘I’ll pay you next week, Terry,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll send you a cheque.’

‘Take it out of the housekeeping. That’s if Mark gives you any.’

‘He’s generous enough that way.’

‘Interesting evening at Rex’s, wasn’t it?’ Terry said, when the film director had gone to pick up his winnings.

‘Yes?’ I said cautiously.

‘Well, yes, I thought so anyway. All that business of a man out of your past. What did Mark really think?’

‘Darling,’ I said, ‘he wasn’t out of
my
past. I thought that was clear at the time.’

‘Well, yes and no, my dear. It was clear that you’d
had
a man in your past. The point that didn’t emerge was, had it been Strutt or Mark? They both seemed to be claiming
the privilege.’

‘Really, Terry, how silly you are—’

‘And Strutt’s wife looking daggers. I’ve never seen such a
diverting
situation. And where did your first husband come in? I honestly think you should tell me all about
it.’

‘There’s nothing to tell. I met Mark. We were just friends. When the job at Rutland’s came vacant he knew I was a widow and wrote to tell me.’