Suspicious Circumstances (22 page)

The terrible party for thirty dear, dear friends, from which she’d sweep in her glory into the arms of Elizabeth II R! Gino was watching me with affectionate perplexity.

‘What’s the matter with you anyways, kid? You sick?’

‘I’m all right.’

‘Then, for Pete’s sake, go buy your present.’

So I dressed and left with Delight, who had to be at her French gentleman’s in a place called St John’s Wood by nine-thirty. As we went out, three women whom I recognized from John Cavanagh’s emerged from a taxi with a package. The Elizabeth II R dress? I looked at them sourly. What was I going to buy for Mother? What possibly could anyone give Mother? An automatic pusher which she could use when her arms got tired from precipitating people over stair-rails?

It seemed for ever since I’d been alone with Delight. St John’s Wood, apparently, was way out in the sticks and she’d become a whiz, she said, at the subway. As we plunged into a main street which was loused up by people with bowler hats and umbrellas rushing to work, she started chattering about her song and the Opening and the party and Mother Meets the Queen and suddenly, in the middle of it all, I found I wasn’t with it, not even part of the way.

‘Darling, it is rather wonderful, isn’t it?’

She’d snitched that word from Mother. Every other word was ‘darling’ now. I glowered.

‘Sometimes I still can’t quite believe it. Cannes…London… And, darling, I didn’t tell you. Last night Anny promised to take me to John Cavanagh for the wedding-gown.’

We reached the subway and started down the steps with all the thousands of bowler hats and umbrellas and British stenographers. I was going to Bond Street because that was the place for presents, Delight said. She pushed ahead of me, put pennies in odd machines and got us the right tickets. Then we were squeezing past the barrier, sardines among sardines, going down an escalator.

‘Nickie, darling.’

‘Yes.’

Her red pocket-book was jammed uncomfortably into my ribs. ‘What’s the matter? You’re not still brooding about ...’

‘For God’s sake.’

‘But, Nickie, even if she did ...’

‘If!’

‘Darling, I should have said this before. You’ve got to settle for it. It’s done; it’s over. There isn’t going to be any trouble and it’s none of your business anyway. Besides, in spite of it all, She’s wonderful.’

We were pushed off the bottom of the escalator by the mob coining down behind us. Then we were struggling along a passage towards the platform. Delight was separated from me; then she got back to me and clung on to my arm, the red pocket-book digging into me again.

‘Darling, please, you’ve got to be sensible. She is wonderful, whatever you say. We had a talk. I never told you.’

‘A talk?’

‘That night in Cannes after you’d gone to bed. You’d blurted that out about the marriage and Roger Renard. She’s no fool. She guessed what had happened. Nickie, she swears M. Picquot was an accident; that they were all accidents. And even if we don’t believe her — look how good she’s being to us. She was marvelous that night. After we’d talked, she admitted she’d been wrong to suspect me. Darling, she said, I see it all now. We got off on the wrong foot simply because we’re so much alike. So ...’

Suddenly that was all I could take. For days it had been there, but for days I’d refused to admit it. Now there it was. I didn’t love this girl. I didn’t even like her. What had happened? How conceivably had we reached the point of the wedding-gown, the divine church ceremony, the …’

We were on the platform, standing right on its edge, squeezed on all sides by throngs of natives. I could hear the train roaring out of the tunnel towards us. I felt panic, a terrible claustrophobia. And it wasn’t just the people pushing all around us, it was Delight. The wedding-gown ... the church ceremony ... I couldn’t bear another second of it.

The train was roaring nearer. I could see its red nose coming out of the tunnel. I swung away from Delight and started clawing my way backwards.

‘Nickie.’

I heard her voice but I didn’t care. I pushed on blindly through the people. I got to the back of the platform. I stumbled over a bench. I got myself together again and pressed on against the crowd back towards the entrance. I had reached it when I heard the scream. It wasn’t really a scream — it was more than that, a terrible, collective gasp and, almost instantly, a rending sound of brakes.

I turned. I didn’t really go back of my own accord. I went back because there was nothing else to do, everyone was pushing, scrambling in that direction. I was in the middle of it, umbrellas, attaché cases, pipes, elbows.

‘What is it?’

‘What ‘appened?’

I was right on the edge of the platform then, right where Delight had been, right where the head of the train was, motionless now, with a nightmare of faces pressed inside against the window, looking out.

A woman screamed. Then another woman screamed. And then one voice, for some reason, sorted itself out from the jungle noises as if it was speaking to me. It wasn’t, of course.

‘Gorblimey,’ it said. ‘A girl ... pushed off the platform in the crush ... right under the train. ... God almighty, what a mess ... no, ‘ilda, no. Don’t you look now. Don’t you look.’

But I looked. And there, down on the tracks, I saw Delight’s red pocket-book — and a hand.

The crowd, I thought. Anyone could have followed us in the crowd. Anyone ... Mother. ... The thought wasn’t coherent, it was hardly a thought at all and it was swallowed up in the chaos of feeling inside me, just as I was swallowed up, shoved, jostled further and further away from The Place. The police would come. I would have to wait. Why? Because I’d been with Delight. But who in that rush-hour mob would have noticed that I’d been with Delight? I hadn’t been with her anyway, not when — when …

An eddy in the mob was twisting me against the current back towards the exit. Mother! The thought or the feeling whatever it was — surged up again, obliterating everything else. I must get to Mother. Why? For God’s sake, what do you want with her anymore? How could you possibly face…? But it was there, the way it always had been in a crisis ever since I could remember.

Get to Mother.

I was squashed against the tiled concave wall next to a poster saying
ANNY ROOD AND FAMILY AT THE PALLADIUM.
I pushed with all my strength and was shot backwards and out by the exit into the passage. Everyone was streaming down towards the train; no one was streaming out. There was a little empty track along the wall. I ran to the up-escalator, out on to the street, dodging and ducking, back to our side-street and the house.

I took out my key. I tried to get it into the lock. There’d never been two things less intended for each other. Then, somehow, the key was in place and I was opening the door and I could hear Mother’s voice.

I went into the living-room. There was Mother. She was wearing a pink housecoat, pacing agitatedly up and down.

The Elizabeth II R dress was spread over a table and three women were crowding around it.

‘It’s always the same,’ Mother was thundering, deep in her Scourge of the Haute Couture characterization. ‘Wherever I go — Balmain, Balenciaga, Dior. Always at the last minute some disaster. You poor dears, I know it isn’t your fault, but ...’ She saw me then. ‘Nickie, a terrible crease, right under the left arm.’

I’d forgotten the three women who’d been arriving when Delight and I left. As I stood looking at them, I could feel the relief from tension starting way down inside me.

‘Mother,’ I said. ‘These ladies — they’ve been here all the time?’

‘All what time, darling? They’ve only been here since you and Delight left. Just time enough for me to try on the dress and find …’

The relief was so violent that it was actually painful. ‘Mother. Can you please — somewhere alone . ‘

‘But, Nickie ...’

‘Please.’

Dimly I was aware that the great eagle eyes under the enormous lashes were taking me in for the first time. Then they swooped to the women.

‘I’ll be back in a minute, dears. Just carry on.’

She was slipping her arm through mine. We went upstairs to her bedroom. She shut the door behind us.

‘Nickie, darling, what is it? If you knew how you looked …’

I was pouring it out then and Mother was firing sharp astounded questions.

‘But the police ...’

‘I didn’t wait.’

‘You didn’t wait? But — why?’

I looked at her and it was miraculously all right. I knew I could say it.

‘I thought you’d pushed her.’

‘Oh, Nickie.’ I was sitting on the edge of her bed. She dropped down next to me and folded her arms around me. ‘What things you’ve been thinking. My poor sweet darling.’

‘But, Mother, it seemed …’

‘Seemed, seemed, seemed. Boys — what can you do about them? But listen, Nickie — listen to me. You’ll think this is cold blooded, I know you will, but later you’ll realize I’m right to tell you now. How it happened in the subway, I can’t imagine, I can’t conceive. But, darling, that was a terrible girl.’

Her arms, around me, were deliciously warm and steadying.

‘Appalling, dear — worse than Sylvia La Mann. Listen, that night in Cannes, when you were drunk, after you’d talked to Roger Renard, Delight and I had a talk. You can’t imagine what she was like. Stripped — positively stripped of all decency. She told me that, at Norma’s funeral, the editor of
Bare
had offered her thousands of dollars to get some scandal on me. She said that if I didn’t let her marry you, she’d send
Bare
enough evidence to prove I’d murdered M. Picquot and Norma and Sylvia. It was crazy, of course. I’ve always been sure it was an accident with M. Picquot and with Norma and with Sylvia. That’s the only way to think without driving yourself insane. But ... how could I fight her? I was at her mercy. Oh, darling, I had to give in.’

My thoughts were floating in every known direction like heat-dazed butterflies on a summer afternoon. Mother going on being Mother! Mother making herself believe, against all the evidence, that three murders were three accidents just because that way life was more comfortable! Who but Mother had a mind which operated like that? But I wasn’t distrusting her any more. All that was over. Incredible as it might once have seemed, I knew Delight had been what Mother was saying she had been. Hadn’t I sensed it at the beginning, before whatever it was — the green eyes? the red hair? — had got me all screwed up?

‘Nickie dear, you must think I was a monster, sacrificing my own son on the altar to save myself from scandal. But I hadn’t given up. I was determined to think out a counterattack, and I would have done. ... But, dear, at least I managed a little bargain. To protect us for the future, I ...’

Mother got up from the bed, swept over to her dressing-table, took a piece of paper from her jewel box and brought it to me.

‘I made her write this. I knew it would come in handy some day. Here, dear — read it.’

I looked at the note, written in Delight’s familiar, round handwriting.

I have threatened to sell information to
Bare
Magazine exposing Anny Rood as the murderer of M. Picquot, Norma Delanay and Sylvia La Mann unless she lets me marry her son. I want to marry him purely for ambition. I do not love him. Once the marriage has taken place, I swear I will keep all I know to myself.

Delight Schmidt

I sat looking at it, looking at myself too. There was a tap on the door and one of the John Cavanagh ladies called, ‘Miss Rood, there’s a telegram.’

‘Coming, dear.’

Mother swirled away from me to the door, opened it, took the telegram and came back to me, slitting the envelope. I wasn’t really thinking about her. I wasn’t thinking about anything. I was just feeling that, in spite of everything, I was going to be all right eventually.

Mother’s voice made me look up. She was standing gazing at the telegram and her face, suddenly, was all gaunt, unrelieved bone-structure.

‘Mother, what is it?’

‘Oh, Nickie.’

For a moment she seemed to be dwindling in front of me, shriveling, getting drained of life like that woman in
Lost Horizons
who suddenly got to be a hundred years old. But it was only for a moment, then she was back again being Mother. She dropped the telegram on the bed and was hurrying out of the room.

I sat looking at the telegram lying beside me and somehow, looking at it, whatever it was, brought all the horrid realities back. Mother was Mother. Mother could go on kidding herself that three murders were three accidents. Three murders? No, four murders. But I couldn’t. Someone had killed those people. Someone …

I picked up the telegram and it was as if my thoughts, by some muddle in time, had come before the thing which was to inspire them, because the telegram, sent from a Post Office only a couple of blocks away, said:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAREST ANNY OPEN MY PRESENT NOW

YOUR LOVING HUSBAND

Husband! There it was. The whole pattern was suddenly in place. Not Mother. But someone who had been with Mother in the old days, who had been there in the backroom when M. Picquot had rejected her. Someone who had been willing to marry her, not as a real marriage, but as a token marriage for her to get her work permit, someone then who must have adored her, worshipped her, been determined that, M. Picquot or no, Norma or no, Sylvia or no, Delight or no, Mother would always be safe, forging ahead up, up, up to those perilous pinnacles which, for Mother, were ‘home’.

Why hadn’t it come to me when I’d discovered that the ‘National Figure’ husband had just been one of Mother’s myths? Why hadn’t I realized that the ‘cheap little vaudevillain’, whom Mother would never divorce, had to be someone close to her, someone in our lives, someone with whom a marriage, exposed to the world, would have caused, not a lovely juicy scandal, but a silly ridiculous little scandal which would have had Mother laughed off her glamour throne?

The vaudevillian ... The man who, having fulfilled his function, had been ruthlessly abandoned, the man who, by accident, ten years ago, had been found again and who — Mother being Mother for all her egomania — had been loyally absorbed back into the group.