The Hunter and the Trapped (5 page)

“You know him very well, don't you?” William said. “If he confides in you to this extent …”

He broke off, too, and staring at one another they both lost their nerve and fled from the danger revealed.

“I
must
get into a bath,” Diana said. “I feel disgusting. Dinner's in the frig. All cold. I couldn't face cooking on a day like this.”

“Why should you?” answered William, politely. “Don't hurry. I'm not particularly hungry.” He looked at his watch. “Mrs. Stone hasn't been up with my letters. Being tactful on account of Hubert, I expect. I'd better go down. There's a paper, too, I ought to read tonight.”

He stopped himself. He was running on too obviously. Diana nodded and left him.

In the cool peace and gloom of his little consulting room on the ground floor, William sat with his colleague's learned paper in his hand, slowly recovering from the shock of his near approach to a battlefield.

Lying in her bath upstairs Diana blamed herself for the sudden dreadful danger.

“I was a fool,” she thought, “the most awful bloody fool to let her meet him outside the college. I might have realised she isn't a child any longer.”

She shuddered, inventing for herself a host of unknown women who might be her rivals.

Mrs. Allingham arrived in Welmore Street at the end of the first week in July. Diana met her at Paddington, dutifully assembled her suitcases, found a taxi, had the suitcases conveyed into the house with the active assistance of Mrs. Stone and later, while Mrs. Allingham rested, unpacked them for her and disposed of the contents in the various built-in cupboards and shelves of the principal spare room.

The brilliant sun that had scorched the town during most of June had been replaced by heavy cloud and a disagreeable drying wind that sent the parched dust whirling about the streets. The air remained hot, suffocatingly so. Mrs. Allingham, who was a tall heavy old woman in her early seventies, had found the whole journey very trying and as she sat in Diana's drawing room, leaning back on a pile of cushions in an armchair, with her swollen ankles supported on a lower chair in front of her, she longed for her own sheltered cottage below the Cotswold hills and regretted the progress of sanitation that had overtaken it and her. She felt that the well and the cesspool could very easily have lasted her time. The next few weeks would be a great strain. The garden would get out of hand in her absence. July was the very last month to choose to be in London when you were old and fat and becoming arthritic and had lost any interest you ever had in the theatre, in music and art. She was ready to acknowledge at this moment that the interest had always been small.

Shutting her eyes Mrs. Allingham set herself to conquer her inner complaints. In her present state of anarchy she felt quite seriously cut off from the higher sources of comfort. As her whole present life was built round her religious beliefs and observances, the case, she realised, was urgent.

But hardly had she forced herself into a positive joy on behalf of the village of Little Fairing, for whose inhabitants the coming of the drains would mean so much in health and comfort, hardly had she confessed the meanness of her own selfish attitude, scarcely had she remembered that she would have daily contact with her much loved and seldom seen, distinguished, highly successful son, William, than Diana swept into the room, carrying a tray with tea, thin buttered toast and a plate of varied sweet biscuits.

The tea, which she felt she did not deserve, revived Mrs. Allingham. Diana's attentions gave her renewed feelings of guilt, but she became calmer on the whole.

“I'm afraid I'm giving you a lot of extra work and worry,” she said. “I wish it hadn't been necessary. Perhaps I ought to have stayed with the Brunts.”

“Who are they?”

“The vicar and his wife. Don't you remember them? When you called in on your way back from Cornwall last summer?”

“I forgot the name. Yes, I remember them now.”

“They wanted to put me up, but I didn't want to be a burden to them. Besides, they would have been offended if I'd insisted on being a paying guest and I couldn't have gone to them otherwise.”

“Quite so,” said Diana.

Cheaper far for the old girl to come up to the flat, she thought. Why couldn't she say so straight out? They didn't grudge her anything. Religion made people very tortuous. What a bore the next few weeks were going to be.

“How long will the job take?” she asked and added quickly, “Of course you must stay until it is finished. I was just thinking of the school holidays.”

“I know,” said Mrs. Allingham, unhappily. “So was I.”

This was not strictly true, but it was another thing she must turn into a matter for rejoicing. She saw far too little of her grandchildren. If only she could understand Diana better – or not so well, suggested her baser nature, uppermost on this distressful day.

As time passed Mrs. Allingham, always striving for peace of mind, for tolerance, for love; always taking her difficulties to God and usually finding strength from that source, did manage to work out a daily routine and way of life that went smoothly, avoided direct conflict of any kind and left both her and her daughter-in-law free to follow their very different kinds of existence. This helped Diana very greatly, because she soon got to know at what definite times of the day she could rely upon Mrs. Allingham being occupied with religious observance, either at church or in her own room. When she had managed to impress upon Simon the need to follow this time-table himself in his visits to her, she lost her uncomfortable sense of strain and even felt a certain exhilaration when she thought how much high-minded assistance Mrs. Allingham was affording her in her affair with her lover.

July drew towards its end. The work at Little Fairing was at its height. William drove down with his mother and Diana one Sunday to inspect it and found the whole village street torn up, with ditches plunging away up side roads and mud everywhere. At the cottage a narrow wooden plank crossed the ditch to give access to the garden gate.

Clearly Mrs. Allingham could not go back just yet. Equally clearly the children would be impossible in the flat at such close quarters and besides, they ought to be away in the country. On the journey home he and Diana wrangled over various plans without finding a solution. Mrs. Allingham felt sad, but carefully refrained from interfering.

In the end it was Mrs. Stone, as usual, who solved the difficulty. She had a widowed sister who would be only too pleased to look after Dr. Allingham's own cottage and the children for as long as he needed her. She would get a nice holiday that way and she liked and understood children. It seemed to be a way out.

One morning in the following week Mrs. Allingham, emerging from her room at about ten in the morning, as was her habit, held out the folded newspaper to Diana.

“I see the Dane girl is engaged,” she said, calmly. “How quickly these children grow up.”

With a chill at her heart and fingers she could hardly keep from shaking Diana took the paper and read.

“Richard Carrington? Carrington? Do we know any Carringtons?”

Her relief was so great she was half laughing, her face all smiles. Mrs. Allingham was astonished.

“Don't you? I expect William does. He knows all Hubert Dane's friends.”

“That doesn't guarantee this boy is one of them. More likely not,” she said, sharply. Then changed her mind and added, “No. I expect you're right. They've been away sailing. I expect he was with them. Well, what a blessing!”

Mrs. Allingham looked thoughtful. She was not entirely ignorant of Penelope's recent troubles. Though she had not been able to discuss them with Hubert or Penny herself, since they were away, she had heard a good deal on the subject from William and also from Hubert's married sister, with whom she had lunched once or twice since she arrived in London. But she said nothing. Diana's attitude implied a certain impatience with the girl. Nothing else.

“I must write to Penny,” she murmured. “I hope she'll be very happy. She's a dear girl. How her poor mother would have …”

“They must be
back
!” cried Diana. “I didn't think …”

She felt confused. The sudden intrusion of the Danes was totally unexpected. Somehow she had put them away from her mind as they had faded for the time being from her life. But here they were again in a very disturbing aspect. How would it affect Simon? He was still in London. He had been with her only two days before. The college term was over but he was supervising and taking part in one of the inevitable summer schools there. What would he think? What would he do? She wanted to get on the telephone, to the Dane's house, to Simon, to Hubert's sister. But Mrs. Allingham had already crossed the room and was settling herself at the telephone table and picking up the directory. It was no good, she would have to wait.

In a fever of impatience she left the room and went into the kitchen to occupy herself while she struggled for control.

When she went back a little later, the room was empty, but Mrs. Allingham appeared almost at once, in hat and long black summer coat, pulling on her gloves.

“I shall not be in to lunch, dear,” she said.

“Did you get on to Penny?”

“No. They are still away. The notice was sent from Majorca, Nora tells me. Hubert is leaving his boat there and they are all flying home at the end of the week. You were quite right. Richard Carrington has been one of the crew. It sounds very suitable.”

Again relief swept over Diana. By the time the Danes got back the news would be stale. Had Hubert arranged that on purpose? No, he was not subtle enough. He was simply overjoyed at the success of his plans.

“Poor Penny,” said Mrs. Allingham, unexpectedly, at dinner that evening.

Diana was startled.

“I lunched with Nora,” Mrs. Allingham went on. “She told me a great deal more of what she had only hinted at before. I mean, of course …”

“You mean the ridiculous fuss over her adolescent crush on Simon Fawcett. I simply can't imagine why everyone made so much of such a trivial matter.”

“Nothing to do with Mr. Fawcett can possibly be called trivial,” said Mrs. Allingham, seriously. “That is not the word. He is a most dangerous man.”

“No really!”
Diana was exasperated.

“I'm sure William agrees with me,” his mother persisted.

He looked up, unwilling to be brought into such an unprofitable argument.

“Actually, I don't,” he said, quietly. “No, mother, I don't. He's a queer person in some ways. I have strictly medical views on that, which I don't propose to go into. But dangerous … I shouldn't have said so. Except possibly, to himself.”

Mrs. Allingham was baffled, but she wisely gave up. The meal continued in silence for a while, then Diana with an effort led the conversation on to less difficult ground.

But she was still anxious to present Simon to her mother-in-law in a less alarming aspect. So when she heard that he was giving an open lecture to the summer school she persuaded Mrs. Allingham to go with her to listen to it and afterwards meet the lecturer.

“You've hardly ever really spoken to him, have you?” she said. “He isn't always in a good mood. Sometimes he deliberately pretends to be stupid or childish, simply because he's feeling bored.”

“As he would no doubt feel with me,” said Mrs. Allingham, drily.

“No. Oh, I can't think why you have to be so prejudiced against him. I thought the whole point of your religion was goodwill towards everyone.”

“
Our
religion, I hope,” said Mrs. Allingham, flushing. “To recognise evil is not prejudice.”

“I don't understand you.”

Nevertheless Mrs. Allingham agreed to go to the lecture and in spite of her fixed estimate of Simon's character and worth she very much enjoyed it. The subject was ‘biography in the twentieth century.' Simon dealt accurately, wittily and fully with the modern development of the genre into something not far removed from fiction. Hence its popularity in the lending libraries, he explained, with well-chosen illustration and quoted, imagined dialogue. He referred to the great biographies of established literature, building up a comparison that was illuminating without being too destructive. Altogether he kept his audience completely absorbed and the applause at the end was enthusiastic.

Mrs. Allingham was impressed and said so.

“Now come and meet him,” Diana said. “Coffee for the V. I. P. s is in the Common Room.”

“Does that really include us?”

“It will, on this occasion.”

They found Simon closely surrounded by a group of those younger dons and their friends who were not already away on holiday. Among them, too, were the organisers of the summer school. The Press, to Simon's regret, had been excluded from the Common Room, though present at the lecture. As a consequence of this he did not expect to have more than a brief mention in one or two educational papers. So far no one had suggested printing his lecture and the professor of history had said, rather waspishly, “I thought you covered the ground admirably, Fawcett. Particularly the twenties and thirties. I remember …” he named a similar treatise published some years before, and finished, “You must have come across it when you were preparing this.”

Simon agreed that he had come across it, that it was good, and had been helpful. It had, in fact, formed the base and skeleton of his own work, but he did not explain this near plagiarism. The professor moved away and Simon found it a relief to welcome Diana and that funny old religious maniac, William's mother.

He accepted their congratulations as he accepted all praise, with humility but as of right. Mrs. Allingham looked less scared of him than usual, he thought, but Diana was in a state of strange nervous excitement.

“We ought to tell Mr. Fawcett our news, Diana,” said Mrs. Allingham, at length.