Take My Life (16 page)

‘They do. Really they do. And on Monday or Tuesday they'll say so.'

He said: ‘Those first weeks in Naples, it didn't occur to me that I couldn't meet you clear-mindedly, that I was still likely to be dragging along the trivial tag ends of things finished and done with years before. I should have realized it, but I'm ashamed to say I didn't.'

She smiled back at him. ‘Oh, nonsense …'

‘No … Not nonsense, Philippa. But it's really a question of having a few adventures when one's young, and being unsophisticated enough at the time to think them gay and romantic. It isn't really until one of them comes home to roost in a court of law that it's made to look tawdry and vulgar.'

‘Everything looks tawdry in a court of law.'

‘No,' said Nick. ‘Not everything.'

There was a moment's silence. Time was passing.

‘Joan sends her love,' she said quickly. ‘ I'm spending the week-end down there again. Next week we'll go down together. From then on we'll really start everything over afresh.'

‘Phil, I want to say … that one thing's stood the strain of these weeks, hasn't it.'

‘Nick, did you ever have the least doubt?'

‘Not doubt,' he said. ‘I knew it. But I didn't know it all. From the first moment you've been a rock. You've never doubted for an instant, have you?'

Philippa did not answer.

‘Well, there's something I want you to promise me. Whichever way this turns out, you must look on it as an interlude in your life. Whichever way
I
come out of it, you're too important to get twisted so young. I want to be by you always, giving you love and support But if by any chance I'm not …'

‘You must be. Promise you will be.'

‘I will be,' said Nick. ‘Some way.'

‘Goodbye, my love.'

‘Goodbye.'

Philippa went out.

She went out of the prisoners' room and out of the Old Bailey to John and Joan Newcombe who were waiting for her; and fifty minutes' run in a car took them to their home in Surrey, where the trees were just in their first green and a cow lowed at milking-time. And the two scenes just did not belong to the same planet: they existed jointly in Pbilippa's mind and had contact nowhere else.

She slept fitfully and woke at last just after dawn, to find rain dripping on the window. She dressed listlessly, watching the downpour, and spent the morning helping Joan to put up a rufflette rail over the window of Leslie's bedroom.

Somehow the presence of Leslie whistling and chattering about the house was a comfort. Here was the normal, the ordinary, the unimpressed. Leslie knew all about Uncle Nick, but he was at an age when the life in him could not be contained. Cork him down at one point and he bubbled out at another.

It rained the whole day. Joan said it was the only drawback to living in the country, you couldn't get away from the weather. A tonic when the sun shone, a liability when everything dripped and splashed and wept.

In the afternoon they sat over tea a long time. Cheated of his golf, John was working on
The Times
crossword. Leslie was busy with his stamp album, carrying on a, muttered conversation with himself, since none of his elders was willing to be drawn in. Joan and Philippa had talked over the trial for the
n
th time. Joan believed now that Mike Grieve had committed the crime, but Philippa, like Nick, was doubtful. It was the sort of thing that could have happened, but some instinct told her it hadn't.

At last Joan said: ‘We're getting no further! I confess I'm desperately anxious. Let's try and forget it for the time being. Won't you sing something?'

Philippa said: ‘I couldn't. I think I've lost my voice altogether.'

Nevertheless, once suggested, the lure of the piano was not to be put aside; and a bit later she went across to it. She couldn't sing; but instead she played part of Schubert's G Major Sonata.

Even her fingers were stiff, as if they had not touched a piano for years. Drearily, uneasily she browsed through a few of her earlier pieces and then fell silent.

Leslie said: ‘Where's Venny-zu-eela, Dad?'

John looked up: ‘Um? Venezuela. In South America. You'll get jam on your stamps that way.'

‘Daddy, look at this head. The postmark says Porto something. Crikey, I think –'

‘Not too loud, dear,' his mother said in an undertone, and made a movement of her head in Philippa's direction. All day she had been trying to tone Leslie down. But it was a pretty hopeless task.

What was that manuscript thing among Elizabeth Rusman's belongings? Philippa thought. How did it go? I did remember it for a time. The first notes were: E, C, D, E, G … F, E, D, E, C …

She tried this out on the piano, adding simple harmonics, and soon remembered how it went.

Leslie, full of philatelic zest, hesitated a moment now that Aunt Philippa was playing again. Then he touched his father on the arm.

‘The postmark says Porto Rico, Dad. Where's that?'

‘Er –' John looked up again. ‘ In South America too.'

‘Yes, but what part of South America?'

‘I thought you were good at geography,' John said. ‘You tell me.'

This was too much for Leslie. ‘You don't know!' he exclaimed in delight. ‘Mummy, Daddy doesn't know where Porto Rico is! Isn't that great!'

John laughed good-temperedly. ‘Get the atlas and well look it up.'

They looked it up.

Philippa rose from the piano and went to the window and lit a cigarette. The glass was steaming with the rain. The dark drooping greenness out of doors suited her mood.

She was full of harrowing afterthoughts about the trial, being sure now that she might have found something more to say which might have helped. to influence the jury. She had expected a much longer ordeal in the box; but Wells had seemed to want to cut it as short as possible. And she was worried too about the judge's question to her. ‘You ask us to believe,' he had begun, as if he did not believe himself. Did that mean the judge was against them?

‘ ‘‘Porto Rico,'' ' read Leslie. ‘ ‘‘A West Indian island lying seventy-five miles east of Haiti.'' Where's Haiti, Daddy?'

‘A West Indian island,' said John, ‘seventy-five miles west of Porto Rico.'

Leslie looked mischievously at his father. ‘Anyway, it isn't in South America.'

Silence fell, while the rain continued to run down the glass. Leslie flipped over the pages of his album and whistled under his breath.

Suddenly Philippa turned and stared across the room, the cigarette smouldering in her hand. Then in a flash she was across the room and standing opposite the boy.

For a few seconds Leslie was unaware of the move.

‘Porto, Porto, Porto, Porter, Porter, Po-po-po-po …' he went on.

Joan Newcombe, alarmed, stood up.

‘Philippa …'

‘
Leslie
,' said Philippa.

Leslie jumped. ‘What?'

‘Philippa, dear, is he annoying you?'

‘Leslie!' said Philippa. ‘What's that you were whistling?
What
is it you were whistling? Tell me.'

‘Um?' said Leslie, frightened by the look on her face and getting up. ‘What's what, Aunt Philippa?'

‘Was it the whistling that upset you?'

Her face white to the lips, Philippa turned to Joan.

‘
Please
, Joan. Just a minute … That tune, Leslie. Where did you hear it?'

Leslie stared. ‘Which one? I don't know what you mean.'

John too was on his feet, but Philippa ran past him to the piano.

‘This one,' she said.

After a few moments Leslie's face cleared. ‘Why, you'd just played it, Aunt Philippa. That's why I whistled it.'

‘Yes, but where did you hear it, before? You couldn't have whistled it straight off after me if you hadn't heard it somewhere before!'

Leslie frowned. ‘I – I don't remember. Why?'

‘It sounds a very ordinary little tune,' John said. ‘ What's all the fuss about, Philippa?'

‘Just for a minute please,' she said, ‘try not to interrupt us. It's desperately important. Listen while I play it.'

There was silence at last while she played it again.

‘It sounds like a hymn,' Joan said.

‘Leslie …'

Reassured now that he had not committed some awful sin, Leslie put his wits to work.

‘Ye-es,' he said. ‘I remember it now. It's the tune Bungey Baker had on the brain in the Christmas hols. He kept on whistling it till I got it too.'

‘Who is Bungey Baker?'

‘Don't you know Bungey Baker?' Leslie asked in surprise. ‘ I thought everyone knew Bungey Baker.
He's
one of those chaps who seem to know everybody …'

‘He's a boy Leslie met on his holidays last year and they struck up a friendship,' Joan said. ‘He spent Christmas with us. Philippa, I wish you'd explain –'

‘Where does he live?' Philippa asked the boy. ‘Have you his address?'

Leslie frowned. ‘It's in Hampstead. I can't remember where, but I can get it you in a jiff. He lent me a book, and I've got it upstairs. Would you like me to fetch it now?'

‘Please, Leslie.'

The boy ran off.

And then Philippa explained.

For a few minutes they were irritatingly slow to see the significance of the facts, irritatingly anxious that she should not build too much on it.

‘I know that,' she said. ‘I know it may lead to nothing. But don't you see I've got to follow it. I've got to see the boy Baker tonight and find out where he learned that tune. He must have heard it a lot somewhere, and it's the fact that it was in manuscript in Elizabeth Rusman's case which makes it so important. I did try one or two music shops and none of them knew it. You see, if it was printed, why should she bother to copy it in manuscript form?'

They couldn't answer her, although they were only half convinced. She had done so much this last month, Swindon, Bournemouth, Canterbury, Utrecht, extravagant quests that had led nowhere. Did this mean another one right in the middle of the trial?

Leslie came scooting down.

‘Here you are, Aunt Phil,' he said, and displayed a book on the flyleaf of which was written in a spidery round hand. ‘
This Book is the Property of: Benjamin Henry Baker, 260 West Terrace, Hampstead, London, England, The World
.'

John drove her there in the pouring rain. Joan would have liked to come too, but she didn't want Leslie out till all hours, so she stayed behind with him.

They reached the centre of London in time for the early theatre traffic and nosed patiently through until they were in Regent's Park. Then in a few minutes they reached Hampstead and began to inquire for West Terrace. Twice they were wrongly directed, and eventually found the Bakers' house only to be told that Benjamin and his mother had just gone to the pictures …

The maid said she did not know which cinema they had gone to, and Mr Baker was not yet home. She did not ask them in, so they went back and sat in the car while the rain trickled down the windscreen. There are few things harder to bear with patience than being bent with desperate urgency on some course and being balked by life set in its commonplace routine. Nothing moved out of the normal rut to make way for the abnormal. Mrs Baker and Mr Benjamin had gone to the pictures and would not be back till nine. Mr Baker was out and had given no time for his return. John Newcombe looked at his companion's gloved hands endlessly fingering her bag, and drove her off to a restaurant for some food and drink to pass the time of waiting …

At eight they went back again and this time found Mr Baker at home. They introduced themselves and explained their visit. There was no piano, so Philippa was forced to hum the tune. Mr Baker looked self-conscious and rubbed his nose and said he didn't know it, though, now he came to think, he believed he had heard Benjamin whistling something like that.

‘I'm afraid I don't quite understand what the – er – the importance of this tune is to you, Mrs Talbot; but I'm sure Benjamin will be glad to help in some way he can. Would you care to wait till he comes home?'

They would care to wait.

Mr Baker turned on the electric fire and the radio and excused himself, and from then until nine-fifteen, a time that seemed like a century, Philippa smoked endless cigarettes and listened despairingly to Saturday Night Music Hall and the Nine O'clock News.

At last they heard voices in the hall, and Philippa could imagine the whispered conversation that was going on. ‘ My dear, two
extraordinary
people … Some tune … Newcombe … Yes, where Benjamin stayed … It's connected with that trial. You
know
Talbot is Newcombe's brother-in-law … I don't know … They attach some curious importance …'

The door opened and a woman in a fur coat stood there. With her was a plump boy with spectacles awry and the chubbiest, cheeriest face Pliilippa had ever seen. She knew at once that he would enjoy this.

Once again, with Henry Baker stroking his nose and hovering curiously in the background, she had to tell them enough to explain the visit, and then at once she began to hum the tune. Bungey Baker's twinkling eyes were bright behind his spectacles.

‘Oh, yes,' he said before Philippa had finished. ‘I know that all right. I suppose I did have it on the brain a bit last Christmas. We had it drummed into us a bit at breaking-up time … and it's got a sort of catchy air, hasn't it?'

‘Where did you hear it?'

‘At school. At my prep. school. I've left there now. I left at Christmas –'

‘Now that we've moved to the south of England it was too far for Benjamin to travel,' said Mrs Baker. ‘Every term. A day's journey.'

‘What's the name of the school?' Philippa. asked.