The Hours Before Dawn (16 page)

A sudden thought came to Louise.

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I think I can see how she got away. While you were at the front door, watching for your husband, she could have slipped into one of the other upstairs rooms; and then, when you and he rushed up to the bedroom – naturally you’d go there first – she could just have walked across this
landing here and down the stairs, while you were searching the wardrobe, or something. Or did one of you keep watch on the landing?’

Frances Palmer shook her head helplessly.

‘No – oh no. I stayed right by Tom all the time. I was
frightened
. I – I suppose – Yes, it
could
have happened that way. How odd I shouldn’t have thought of it before.’

It seemed odd to Louise, too; but after all, one must make allowances for the girl’s panic at the time. Why, she was looking quite white and strained even now, at the very memory of it Louise cast about for some way of reassuring her.

‘As a matter of fact,’ she remarked, as they made their way to the front door, ‘it’s just occurred to me – there can’t be anything very sinister about the woman’s past – I mean, your idea that she’s a notorious criminal or something. If she was, she’d never have given you her real name. And it
is
her real name, I know. She teaches at our local grammar school.’

Mrs Palmer looked dully at Louise, her delicate pink and white features looking less young than they had earlier in the afternoon.

‘How do you know?’ she said heavily. ‘Have you actually seen her teaching there? Or gone there to enquire if it really
is
her name?’

‘Well – no,’ said Louise, rather taken aback. ‘Actually, I haven’t. But, I mean, it would be such an easy thing to check up on – she’d never dare tell lies about it.’

‘But that’s probably just what she’s counting on!’ exclaimed Mrs Palmer. ‘Just because it
is
so easy, that’s the very reason why nobody will bother to check up. They’ll all think just the way you do.’

‘I can’t help feeling that’s a bit far-fetched,’ observed Louise. ‘Besides – I told you. She writes books. Homeric archaeology. That sort of thing. Terribly learned.’

‘Have you
read
them?’ persisted Mrs Palmer inexorably. ‘Have you ever even set eyes on them?’ And when Louise did not answer, she concluded, not without a certain
complacency
: ‘You’ve only got
her
word for it that she’s ever studied the classics at all. Hers – and your husband’s.’

L
ouise stepped out into the tranquil bustle of a suburban spring evening. Threading her way through the hurrying husbands and the tricycling children, the setting sun blindingly in her eyes, she made her way back to the bus stop.

But which bus stop? Which bus? There was still that other address, not more than a quarter of an hour’s journey away. It was after six already; by the time she got home it would already be too late to cook a proper supper, and the children would be whining, Mark aggrieved. Things would be bad enough; but would they be any worse if she stayed out another half hour? She tried to think how she could explain her absence. After last night, she couldn’t possibly confess that her errand was in any way connected with Vera Brandon. Already Mark – not to mention his mother and the Baxters – suspected that Louise was jealous. Looked at from their angle, this expedition would seem like suspicion and jealousy run mad, and no amount of explanation could be expected to alter this impression very much. That was the trouble about jealousy; once the word had been spoken between you, then everything you did or said was liable to be interpreted in that hackneyed but hideous light. Well, don’t say anything then, except that you’ve been having tea with a friend….

The trolley-bus which could have taken Louise homewards drew up by the stop. She stepped forward. Two youths pushed in front of her. She stepped back.

‘Hurry along, lady, cantcher make up your mind?’ yelled the conductor; and the two youths, discerning – or feeling that they ought to discern – some sort of feeble innuendo in the remark, began to guffaw half-heartedly.

Louise drew back. Even when wearing her best things, she was never quite sure whether such guffaws were meant in compliment or in mockery; today, in this four-year-old cotton blouse and winter skirt, she felt that there was no doubt at all.

Well, that settled it. There wouldn’t be another trolley-bus for twenty minutes, so it would be almost as quick to go to Mortlake Terrace as not. Besides, if she didn’t go now, she would only go some other time, and have to explain things to Mark all over again. Why have two rows when one would do? she thought philosophically, and moved across the road to the other bus stop.

The façade of the great block of flats was grey and forbidding. Lines of washing filled every balcony, and the now sunless courtyard was full of screaming children. Dirtier children than those in Elsworthy Crescent, but just as many of them, were mounted on tricycles, and Louise rubbed her shins ruefully, and dodged as quickly as she could into the stairway that led to No. 10.

Four flights of surprisingly hygienic-smelling stairs led her to the door she sought, and at her second knock a heavy,
adenoidal
child of about seven appeared, and stared up at her with a blankness only faintly tinged with suspicion.

‘Is your Mummy – your Mum – in?’ asked Louise.

The suspicion in the face seemed to fade a little, but the blankness increased. Two more heads appeared round the door – no, three, for the skinny little ten-year-old was peering
out from behind a large and doughy baby who looked much too heavy for her.

‘’Ts a lady,’ she diagnosed at last, shrilling the words into the dark passage behind her; and then, when there was no response: ‘G’ahn, Em. Tell Mum there’s a lady to see her.’

‘A lady,’ screamed the adenoidal child obediently, without taking her eyes off Louise’s face; and a voice in the darkness behind took up the cry: ‘A lady!’ ‘A lady!’ echoed again from behind some closed door in the recesses of the dwelling; and at last, with a flurry of slippered footsteps and shrill admonitions, Mum herself appeared, patting her faded, gingery hair with a damp, steaming hand.

Miss Brandon? No, she didn’t think she’d heard of no Miss Brandon. Not to remember it, like.

Some time ago, perhaps? Louise prompted, remembering that Mrs Palmer’s adventure had taken place last autumn. Six months ago, or thereabouts?

Six months ago. Mum considered this. That would be just about the time she’d come out the hospital, and there’d been no end of ladies round then, naturally. There’d been the lady from the Welfare; and the lady about the milk vouchers; and the lady about Em’s special boots on account of her toes turned in, and of course being in hospital she hadn’t been able to get her along to the clinic, not that month. Then there was the lady about the Registrations, and the lady from the School Attendance, because of course she’d had to keep Lil at home from school to help, being that she was only just out of
hospital
. Ever so kind, that lady had been, ever so sympathetic, and she’d written off for a form what’d put it all right, and the form hadn’t come, but it was all right, because they hadn’t heard nothing more about it, not a word, had they, Lil?

Louise could not help wondering what tiny fraction of all these ladies’ salaries would have solved Mum’s problems for
good without any more bother to anybody; but aloud she only asked if Mum could remember any
other
lady? Had there, she hazarded, been one wearing a brown costume?

Well, yes, to tell the truth, Mum thought that there had. In fact, now she came to think of it, most of the ladies were
wearing
brown costumes. Quite smart, too, some of them. Quiet, you know, but smart. But then, most of the girls
were
smart
nowadays
, there’d been a big change since the war, didn’t Louise think so?

It was Louise who wilted first. Of course, it was she who was confronted with the five unblinking pairs of eyes ranged
alongside
Mum, and under their gaze she found it difficult to pursue the enquiry intelligently. Besides, among this multitude of brown-costumed ladies there seemed little chance of identifying Vera Brandon by her appearance; and as to her conversation or activities, these would have had to be very odd indeed for Mum not to have thought resignedly that they came legitimately under some Schedule or other.

‘Well – thank you very much, Mrs – Um – Er—’ began Louise, and was a little disappointed that Mum should accept this title so contentedly – she had hoped that she might learn the woman’s name without having to ask for it point blank. Not that it mattered: it was hard to imagine that this woman could have any important connection with Vera Brandon’s affairs.

‘Thank you so much,’ she said again; ‘it’s been very kind of you – I must have mistaken the address.’ She backed to the stairs, awkwardly, and it was not until she reached the third flight that she felt herself really free of those twelve eyes.

The last streaks of sunset were fading as Louise hurried up the road towards her house, guessing uneasily at the time. Would Edna still be there, and would she have done anything about the children’s supper? Or would Mark be coping with everything—?

‘Good evening, Mrs Henderson. I’d like to speak to you, if you don’t mind. It’s not that I wish to complain, you understand, but—’

What, Louise wondered, would happen if she simply said to Mrs Philips: ‘No, of course you don’t’ and walked on up the path? Was that what the Keepers of Themselves to Themselves would do? She thought enviously of these technicians of
suburban
living who figured so large in Mrs Morgan’s anecdotes – those heroines who succeeded in keeping Themselves to Themselves in the face of murder, suicide or rape. Had it taken them years of study and practice to perfect their arid skill? Or had it been born with them? Were they simply endowed by nature with the chill genius needed to pass Mrs Philips without a word – to move unscathed through their front gardens like Daniel through the lions?

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Philips,’ she said hurriedly. ‘I’ve been out, you see. I was – er – called away in a hurry, and I had to leave the children. I’m terribly sorry if they’ve been disturbing you.’

Mrs Philips regarded her woodenly.

‘I didn’t say they’d been disturbing me, Mrs Henderson,’ she observed. ‘They’ve been bouncing their balls again, of course, those two older ones, but then that’s only to be expected, brought up wild the way they’ve been, no
consideration
for anybody. I’m not expecting consideration, Mrs Henderson. I’ve given up
looking
for consideration. But all the same, I feel I ought to tell you, there are limits. There are
limits
beyond which flesh and blood can’t endure, and the time has come, Mrs Henderson, when I must speak to you about your baby.’

It seemed to Louise that this momentous pronouncement would have carried more weight if Mrs Philips hadn’t been speaking to her about her baby roughly three times a week ever since he was born. However, she hastened to apologise:

‘I’m terribly sorry if he’s been crying this afternoon. I left instructions about his bottle, but perhaps …’

Mrs Philips interrupted.

‘No, Mrs Henderson; it’s not that. I’m not complaining about this afternoon. As a matter of fact, your baby has been very quiet while you’ve been out – I haven’t heard him at all. I
suppose
he’s been properly looked after for once. No, Mrs Henderson, it’s the night-time I’m talking about. Last night I didn’t get a wink of sleep, not one wink, with all that crying through the wall, right by my head. Never stopped all night long, it just about drove me crazy—’

‘But that’s impossible—’ Louise was beginning; and was about to add that Michael had been out in his pram most of the night, far away from the house. Then she thought better of it. There was no point in stirring up yet more gossip about her
outing
last night; and it wasn’t as if Mrs Philips was ever mollified by explanations, or even listened to them. For, after all, Mrs Philips was in the right, and the person who is right doesn’t need to listen very much.

‘If it goes on,’ Mrs Philips was continuing, ‘if it goes on, Mrs Henderson, I’m warning you, I’ll have to go to my doctor about it. Really I will.
He
knows that my nerves won’t stand that sort of thing. I’ve been under the doctor for my nerves for twenty years, ever since my poor husband died.
He’ll
tell you that I need my night’s sleep, don’t have any doubt about that, Mrs Henderson.
He’ll
tell you that I can’t stand this sort of thing.’

Louise recognised this threat as a trump card. For minor annoyances, you threatened your neighbours with the police; for major ones, you brought in the doctor. Not, Louise fancied, because the doctor was the more alarming bogeyman of the two, but because he was the more powerful. From the doctor’s surgery emerged potent little scraps of paper which could subdue the milkman into giving you milk at half price; which
could get you off work for weeks on end; which could conjure out of thin air liniments, spectacles and artificial legs. Surely from this shrine a piece of paper could also be summoned which would stop Louise’s baby crying at times when Mrs Philips wanted to go to sleep?

‘I’m sorry,’ said Louise for the third time; but before she could say any more (if, indeed, there was anything more to be said) she was interrupted by an explosion of sound from the house. The front door burst open, and Margery and Harriet were down the steps and flinging themselves upon Louise in imbecile rapture, as if she had been away for months, for years.

‘Mummy!’ they shrieked. ‘Mummy! Mummy!’ Their welcome was as warm and noisy and senseless as that of two puppies. And if only they
had
been two puppies, Louise reflected, how different the conversation with Mrs Philips would have been. How her face would have softened; how she would have beamed, and admired, and sympathised; how patiently she would have put up with the shrill yapping….

‘Funny time for children to be out of bed, I must say,’ Mrs Philips observed bleakly, and as loudly as was becoming in one whose nerves couldn’t stand noise; and then, louder still, to be heard above the commotion: ‘Of course, it’s all what you’re brought up to…. Some neighbourhoods…. Playing and screaming in the streets till ten o’clock at night….’

‘Where’ve you
been
, Mummy?’ Harriet was squealing. ‘We haven’t had any supper, and—’

‘Yes, we have,’ contradicted Margery. ‘Oh, Mummy, why—?’

‘No, we haven’t, Mummy. And—’

‘Hush, darlings, hush! One at a time! Listen: Isn’t Daddy in?’

‘No,’ said Harriet; and ‘Yes’ simultaneously said Margery.

Louise tried again. ‘Well, where’s Edna, then? Is she still here? And is Baby all right?’

Fatal, of course, to ask two questions in the same breath. ‘No’ shrilled into one ear while ‘Yes’ pierced the other; and Louise tried to manoeuvre her clamorous escort up the path and into the house. A little sense began to emerge from the babel of contradictions. Yes, Daddy had come in, Margery explained, and had given them supper (No, not
supper,
only
baked
beans,
Harriet contributed aggrievedly) and had then gone up to the Rubbish Room.

‘To have supper with the Spy Lady,’ elaborated Harriet, in tones likely to edify two-thirds of the street. ‘And she’s cooked him a
much
nicer supper than us. I can smell bacon, and cheese, and kippers, and—’

‘Not kippers,’ corrected Margery. ‘I know it isn’t kippers, because—’

‘It is,’ snapped Harriet.

‘It isn’t!’

Louise could see that both children were overtired, and no wonder. She interrupted hastily: ‘Is Daddy still up there with Miss Brandon?’

‘Yes,’ said Harriet resentfully. ‘And I think he’s going to be there for
ever!
He didn’t put us to bed, or anything. He went up there hours and hours and
hours
ago!’

‘No, he didn’t,’ said Margery. ‘It was only—’

‘Yes he did.’

‘Didn’t.’

‘Did!’