The Hunter and the Trapped (4 page)

The flat was empty when he arrived there. This did not surprise him. The morning daily came at nine and left at two. On the days when they had people in to dine, another helper managed the meal. Otherwise Diana cooked it herself. Tonight they had nobody coming. He looked at his watch, saw that the time was just after six and decided that Diana would be home at any time now. He refused to let himself wonder in definite terms where she might be, but instead poured himself a whisky and soda and took it to the window, where, after pulling back the sunblind, no longer needed, he stood looking out at the roofs opposite and beyond.

The sound of the front door bell made him start. It was too soon for Mrs. Stone. He frowned. A caller would be a bore. He was tired or rather he was emptied of any wish to communicate. Six patients had drained him in the course of that hot June afternoon. But he went at once to the door and opened it. His great friend, Hubert Dane, stood on the threshold.

“Well!” he said. “You!”

“I know,” Dane said, walking past him and making straight for the drawing room. “I know. You're surprised. You might have been out. Why didn't I ring up?”

“Why didn't you?” William asked.

“Only decided to come in a few minutes ago, on my way to the Club.”

“You'll stay now you've come, won't you? Diana's out at the moment, but she's due back any minute.”

He tried to speak as if he knew where she was, or as if it were not important in any case, but he thought he failed.

Hubert glanced at him briefly and looked away.

“I wanted to have a word with you about Penny,” he said and seemed to be unable to go on.

William found him a drink and persuaded him to stop wandering about the room and sit down.

“Ever since Phil died …” he began vaguely.

“I know,” William interrupted him. “You feel helpless. You don't know how to cope with a teenage daughter. You feel inadequate. But surely Penny couldn't be growing up nicer, prettier, more successful, more admired …”

“She's fallen in love with a man twice her age whom I hesitate to call an out and out stinker because he happens to be a friend of yours.”

“Simon Fawcett?” asked William immediately and stared defiantly at his friend, quite aware of the implication of his spot diagnosis.

“So you agree with me?” Hugh said, grimly.

William reddened.

“I don't know,” he said crossly. “I've no right to criticise him. I'm sorry for him, in a way. He can't help looking like a rather undersized dark god or angel. It's bad luck on any man to have such an appearance, especially in this country, where male beauty has always been suspect and just now is synonymous with perversion. Fawcett is extremely popular at the college and is a very valuable member of the staff there. So I've been told.”

“By Fawcett or someone reliable?” asked Hubert.

He spoke with such bitterness that William was shocked.

“Not by Fawcett. What have you got against him?”

“I've told you. Penny is head over ears in love with the blighter.”

“And he?”

Hubert got up and moved restlessly about the room again. “I don't know. I don't
know
, I tell you. But I'm desperately worried. If only Phil … She'd have been able …”

“Yes,” said William gently and went on, “Hasn't Penny got any particular girl friends she's likely to have confided in?”

“Yes. There's Caroline Feathers. Very nice child, often comes to the house. What d'you suggest? That I ask whether my daughter has been seduced by a member of the college staff?”

William said, slowly, “From what you say I should imagine she has
not
been seduced. She would not be miserable, as you imply she is, if her feelings were shared. On the contrary.”

“She ought to be miserable, either way,” said Hubert gloomily. “It's an immoral age,” he added, going back to his chair and sitting down again with a heavy sigh.

“I shouldn't take it too seriously,” William said. “Did Penny tell you herself she was in love with this chap?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why are you so sure?”

“Because she never stops talking about him. Not in relation to herself. She's pathetically careful not to do that. But anecdotes about his kindness, his cleverness, his jokes … I'm sick to death of his name. It isn't as if I didn't know something of the other side of the picture.”

“But Penny does tell you when she's been out with him?”

“Oh yes. She tries not to, but it bursts out of her. Or did. I think that phase is over.”

“Ah! Why do you say that?”

“She's very depressed. Something's happened. I wish to God I knew what.”

“And I don't mind betting he's turned her down. It wouldn't be the first time. I think there's a big streak of neurosis in Fawcett. Endocrine unbalance, I suspect.”

“Don't get on the hobby horse
now
, of all moments!”

William laughed and went no further. But his belief in a medical basis for Simon's peculiarities was serious. In fact it was the one thing he held to in his constant, persisting unease about Diana. He dared not let it go. However Hubert, he saw, would not be impressed, “She'll get over it,” he said, including Diana in his thoughts. “She's very young. I remember being desperately in love with a rapid succession of girls about every six months at that age.”

“Penny has never been like this before. She's never taken any man seriously. Not even John.”

“He'd like to marry her, wouldn't he?”

“He told me so. But he hasn't had much chance this year. Been in the Med most of the time. Couldn't even crew for me last summer.”

“A pity. Where is he now?”

“Gib. And likely to be fully occupied this summer, too.”

“But you will be cruising? And taking Penny?”

“If she'll come.”

“Of course she will. She's as keen on it as you are. As you always were. Your best move is to find some personable youngster to crew for you. Preferably someone who already knows and likes Penny. He might catch her on the rebound and solve your problem in one.”

Hubert put down his glass.

“I don't think it's anything to joke about,” he said, stiffly.

“I couldn't be more serious,” William assured him. “It sounds like a tuppenny novelette, I know, but it's the sort of thing that could easily happen. You try it. And for God's sake don't go on worrying about Fawcett. He may be a bit of a menace but there's no real harm in him. He's been at the college six years now. Do you think if he was a wrong ' un some scandal wouldn't have broken before this?”

“Hasn't it?” said Hubert. “What about the Darson case? Or don't you call suicide a scandal?”

“I don't, as a rule,” said William, coldly. “I call it a tragedy or a medical failure or an inevitable part of an incurable disease, according to circumstances. I've never called it a scandal.”

“Not even when a scandal induced it?”

“Can't you explain?” William said, irritably. He felt he had endured enough of Hubert's obsession. “You talk about Penny being lost in love for this fellow. You seem to me to be pretty well lost in hate for the same man. Are you sure you haven‘t got an inverted Oedipus complex?”

“Don't be obscene!” said Hubert, furiously.

William refilled their glasses and sat quite silent while Hubert recovered his temper, though not his sense of proportion.

“The boy Darson broke his own college career on Fawcett's account,” he said, at length. “He decided to go to Canada and his parents managed to get him a place in a college there to continue his work. He was lost at sea on the way over. He left a note in his cabin for Fawcett, which the captain very rightly gave to the parents, together with all his possessions. They consulted me.”

“After opening Fawcett's letter themselves?”

“Yes. I think they were justified.”

“I see. So you read the letter, too?”

“I did.”

“What did it prove? That Fawcett had ruined this boy?”

“Fawcett had turned him down. But not before they had reached a position of considerable intimacy.”

“What d' you mean by that?”

“Everything short of physical intimacy.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake!” William was exasperated. “An unbalanced lad with homosexual leanings gets a crush on an older man, is quite rightly put in his place, goes off in an hysterical state and drowns himself. Blame his unobservant, ignorant parents, but not – really not – Fawcett!”

“You don't understand. I told them there was nothing they could do. I told them they must let Fawcett have the letter. Or rather I would give it to him, telling him not to destroy it in case the body turned up and there was an inquest. This is unlikely as Darson disappeared in mid-Atlantic. But I thought it might serve as a warning to him. I also warned the parents against attempting any sort of action against Fawcett. I explained the danger of a libel action. They had no wish for publicity, poor things. It would have done more harm to their boy's memory than anything else.”

He stopped speaking, looking at William with a kind of horror in his eyes.

“I shall never forget Fawcett's face when he read the letter.”

“He was shocked by it?”

“For one instant he was shocked and terrified. Abject terror. Then he drew himself up and read it to the end and stood looking at it as still as a statue, with a hard look on his face that I can't describe. He reminded me of those Egyptian things on vases – sacrifices – priests in masks – you know what I mean?”

“The dark gods,” murmured William. “Saturnalia – the devil and all his works … It dies hard, our inheritance.”

“I don't know what you mean,” Hubert said, suspiciously, afraid once more that his friend was treating him lightly.

“I'm not sure that I do myself,” William answered. “But I think Penny's safe enough. Her feelings, however strong, are clearly normal. It makes all the difference. And girls definitely don't go into a decline for love, these days.”

“I never thought they did.”

“Take her away on the boat. Get a promising crew. When are you going?”

“In a fortnight. Actually I've got two boys lined up already that Penny knows and likes.”

“Better and better. Rivals should help to restore her self-esteem. Help her to make up her mind, too. At least, engage her interest.”

Hubert looked at his friend with disapproval.

“I don't know why you choose to be flippant over the whole thing. The poor child is very genuinely miserable. To her it's all serious in the extreme.”

“Of course it is. All the more reason for us to make light of it.”

“I don't agree.”

“No,” said William, suddenly allowing himself to become serious. “No, I suppose you can't.”

Hubert did not stay long after that. Though William had not been much help it had been a relief to state his case to him. For an uncommitted person his views and arguments were probably sound. They would be shared by most of his other friends, perhaps not wholeheartedly by those with grown-up daughters. That was really the trouble with William. His own children were still too young to present him with modern problems. Pity he had married comparatively late. It had been a slight barrier between them ever since.

When he had seen Hubert into the lift William went back into the drawing room, collected the glasses and took them away to the kitchen sink, where he left them on the draining board. He moved mechanically, his thoughts still with Hubert and his feelings roused to a degree of pity for Penelope he had altogether concealed from his friend.

He knew very well why he had behaved as he had, why any discussion of Simon Fawcett induced in him the same responses. It was necessary for his own peace of mind, on account of Diana. He had to believe in the portrait of Simon he had painted for Hubert: he had to rely on the man's shallow approach to life; on the truth of his seeming immaturity, in spite of his well-developed mind; he had to put away from his thoughts such stories as Hubert had related that day and this was not the only one of its kind, though the most hideous. Because otherwise – on account of Diana – his own life would be in danger of crumbling into ruin. His personal life and through it, what was to him of even greater importance, his life's work, his patient, persistent, unremitting, exacting, voyage of discovery in narrow, but to him all-compelling waters.

Diana arrived home about ten minutes after Hubert left. She was hot and tired, longing to strip and get into a tepid bath. But seeing William look so worried and forlorn, both inclination and instinct took her to him, to kiss him affectionately and ask what was the matter.

“Hubert's been in. Worrying himself to death over Penny.”

Diana frowned, remembering the rumours.

“Penny? What's the matter with her?”

“He thinks she is suffering from unrequited love.”

“Isn't that a bit vague to get het up over?”

William did not like this stalling. Diana must have heard the rumours if he had, though they had never discussed them.

She glanced at him now, saw she had gone too far in assumed innocence and said carelessly, moving away, “Hubert doesn't mean Simon, does he? That horse never did run.”

“Naturally he means Simon. Are you sure – quite sure – there's nothing in it? On his side, I mean. Obviously Penny has been seriously hurt. Is that entirely her own fault? Can it be entirely a girl's fault?”

Diana's eyes opened wide. She was very angry.

She said, with emphasis, with passion, “Entirely her own fault! Indeed,
yes
. And serve her right! He's always being plagued by these childish crushes. He's bored to death with it. He …”

She stopped for want of breath.