The Long Shadow (16 page)

“W
ELL, THAT EXPLAINS
everything
!” declared Cynthia. “In love with Ivor! Would you believe it! No wonder we couldn’t get any sense out of her about her ‘boy-friend trouble’. Though mind you, Imogen, I suspected something of the sort all along….”

“I’m sure you did,” said Imogen drily—and then repented almost at once of her sarcasm. Cynthia had a habit of being wiser, after a greater variety of events, than almost anyone Imogen had ever known, but this was no time to start an argument about it. Cynthia had, after all, suffered quite a bad attack of nerves last night, and this morning—as is so often the privilege of the one who has caused all the trouble—was having breakfast in bed. In her pink lacy bedjacket, and with her fluff of pale hair all anyhow, she looked like a bruised child. The blue eyes, still muzzy from all those sleeping-pills and things, looked up at Imogen questioningly.

“Have another piece of toast?” Imogen invited, trying to make amends—though in fact no such effort was necessary. Cynthia was more or less impervious to sarcasm (perhaps this was one of the things that had made her so difficult to divorce?), and had taken Imogen’s snide remark as a compliment.

“Yes, well, I’ve always had this sort of rapport thing with the young,” she agreed modestly. “As Teddy always used to say—Oh, thank you—Yes; yes please … Thanks a lot….”

To avert being told who Teddy was and what he used to say, Imogen was feverishly plying her companion with butter, marmalade, more coffee … and sure enough, it worked. Cynthia’s stream-of-consciousness soon meandered obediently back to the matter in hand: namely, Piggy, and Imogen’s strange encounter with her last night. The last half of the story was even more
dramatic than the first, and Cynthia was soon listening
open-mouthed
, asking pertinent questions here and there, and putting Imogen right on points of detail.

Not that Cynthia had actually been present, of course, or knew anything about the sequence of events, but she was very quick at knowing what
should
have happened.

“But she was still crying, Imogen, she must have been …”

“Oh, but Imogen, she’d never have said a thing like
that,
not at such a moment….” “Oh, but she couldn’t have, Imogen, not unless the light was on….”

And so on and so on. Imogen began to wish that she didn’t have to tell the story at all, and particularly not to Cynthia. She would have preferred, for Piggy’s sake as well as her own, to have kept the whole thing to herself and never mentioned it to anyone: but the way it had all ended made secrecy impossible.

*

She had grown stiff, standing there behind the curtain. Stiff and cold, and aching in all her limbs. Once or twice, she had imagined that Piggy must have tiptoed away, but each time, when she peeped through the curtains, the girl was still there, spreadeagled across the chair in an attitude of silent, abandoned grief. She was no longer weeping, but neither was she asleep. Her eyes were bright, and wide open, staring, apparently, straight into Imogen’s own eye, though of course they couldn’t have been. In the faint light from the dying fire it was impossible to read their expression, they looked like two silver beads; the rest of the girl’s face was quite lost in the shadows.

More than once, as the aching of her back worsened, Imogen was tempted to throw in her hand; to walk out from behind the curtain and make a clean breast of it. Yes, I’m sorry, I
was
spying; but not on
you …
I never meant … I’d never have dreamed … I was expecting something quite absolutely different….

Piggy’s anger she could have faced. It was the girl’s
embarrassment
that would be so insupportable. How awful for the poor child to learn that her most private emotions had been spied on,
the extravagant secrets of her heart laid bare. For someone so young, and so emotional, it could be quite traumatic.

No. Backache or no backache, she must stick it out.

Hardly had this heroic decision crystallised in her mind, than she became aware that it was unnecessary. Her vigil was right now coming to an end. The figure on the chair was moving.

Imogen dared not peep through the crack any more. Flattening herself against the glass, holding her breath in sheer relief, she waited to hear the soft barefoot padding towards the door … the swish of the burnous as it brushed the lintel … and then the lovely, luxurious silence that would swing back into the room once the girl was well and truly gone.

That all this wasn’t happening was at first unclear. Through the muffling folds of curtain, the direction and quality of the sounds were hard to assess, and Imogen only took in what was happening when the long, heavy curtain swept softly against her, and Piggy stepped through into the moonlight.

Even then, Imogen might have escaped unnoticed. She was still partially hidden, and Piggy, her hair all around her in a silver waterfall, looking neither to the right nor to the left, stood as one enchanted, her eyes upraised towards the moon, which hung, larger than life it seemed, and almost exactly at the full, just above the bare, motionless elms. Their black shadows lay across the frost-bitten lawn at a strange angle, never seen at a normal hour of the night. If ever witchcraft were to be abroad, if ever magic were to come into its own, it would be on such a night as this.

Slowly, her eyes still fixed upon the giant moon, the girl lifted her arms—slowly, slowly … reaching upwards and outwards towards the heavens like some primitive worshipper from the very dawn of history….

“Bloody Christ almighty …!”

Piggy’s shriek burst from her as her outspread fingers
encountered
Imogen’s shrinking flesh … and in the ensuing confused medley of rage, and outrage, and useless apology, it was amazing that the whole household wasn’t awakened.

They weren’t, though. Perhaps noises at night seem louder to the perpetrators than they do to others. Anyway, no one came down … no one intervened to demand explanations, or to say calm down, take it easy, or to take one side or other in the furious battle.

Furious, but not, actually, a battle; for they were on the same side, right from the start. Imogen sympathised totally with Piggy’s anger, and was fully conscious of the unforgivable injury she had unwittingly inflicted: consumed by guilt, she attempted to explain to excuse and to apologise all at once, in a confused,
incomprehensible
jumble: “I never meant …” “I wouldn’t for worlds …” “… and from then on I felt I
had
to stay hidden…. Oh, Piggy, Piggy,
please
try to understand….”

*

Piggy’s face was pale as pudding in the moonlight, and Imogen tried to recall, like something in a dream, how beautiful it had been a few minutes ago. On the whitish forehead sweat gleamed, and from the contorted mouth came toads, in the form of insult after insult.

Imogen had always known that Piggy disliked her; but never before had she grasped the virulence of that dislike, nor the reason that lay behind it.

Partly, of course, it was that she, Imogen, was Ivor’s wife, and during her year or more of unrequited love, Piggy had had plenty of time to observe, from her vantage-point on campus, all the ways in which her hero’s wife was unworthy of him, and to collect evidence (albeit mostly hearsay) of the woman’s
inadequacies.
Fair enough: any girl-friend worth her salt will do as much.

But it hadn’t stopped there. After Ivor’s death, the girl’s natural grief and shock had been compounded by a new and unprecedented factor: she had heard, somehow, of the same rumour that Teri had heard: the two of them had got together on it, talked it over, come to a joint decision. Between them (she hissed, her lips grey and drawn in the moonlight)—between them, they would get
Imogen hanged; yes, they would, capital punishment would be back just in time….

“… but that’s silly …” Imogen protested weakly, just as she had protested to Teri. “I mean, I can
prove
that I wasn’t …”

“Proof! … Proof …!” Piggy mouthed the word as if it was an obscenity. “You’ll find that it’s too late for proof now, Mrs B. You’ve left it too long. By now, even your own family know that you did it! Yes, they do …!”

She faced Imogen with blazing eyes and fists white to the knuckles. Imogen, for some reason found herself giving a short, breathless little laugh.

“What, Herbert and all?” she asked. Really, it was too absurd. “Well, why haven’t they mentioned it, then? Why haven’t they accused me …?”

Piggy looked at her with narrowed, shining eyes.

“Because they’re frightened, that’s why. They’re scared. They know you’re mad, you see. They’ve known it for weeks now, and so they’re frightened. They don’t know what you might do next.”

P
ERHAPS
C
YNTHIA
WASN’T
quite the right confidante to have chosen. Sitting there, her pink bedjacket clutched around her with one white hand, while the other held a piece of toast, motionless, half-way to her parted lips, she looked as if these last revelations had been altogether too much for her. Imogen felt sorry, and a little ashamed. But then, who else was there, in all this household, to whom she could have turned? Robin, who would have laughed at the story, and saved it up to tease Piggy with next time he felt inclined? Or Dot, who would have said, But those curtains are supposed to overlap, how could there have been a crack? Or Herbert, who would have set himself to proving that it wasn’t his fault, and that even if it had been…

It was at this point in her musings that Imogen realised that Cynthia, far from being overwhelmed, was absolutely loving it. Breakfast in bed
and
a scandal of these dimensions—even in the Rich Man’s Paradise you don’t get more than that.

“I knew it! I knew it!” She exclaimed—an assertion which Imogen took as a form of applause rather than a statement of fact—“I knew it! And, Imogen, like I said at the beginning, it explains
everything.
The handwriting, I mean…. You know how it is when you’re in love …” her eyes took on a rapt, reminiscent look. “There was a geography master we once had, I’ll never
forget
him. He had a little brown moustache, and his eyes sort of crinkled when he told you off…. Oh, I thought he was gorgeous, though I daresay I wouldn’t
look
at him now…. Anyway, for two whole terms I practised making my handwriting just like his—sort of flattened, with the ‘t’s’ just like the ‘r’s’, you know. I made a very good job of it actually, the other girls used to bribe me to write ‘Excellent’ in red ink at the end of their homework, so that when the form-mistress looked through their exercise-books for
end-of-term reports, she’d … It was a sort of sacrilege, I
sometimes
felt, to let my love be used for such ends … but anyway, you see what I mean. That’s how it must have been for poor Piggy…. Oh, I understand it all so well …!”

So did Imogen. There certainly was something in what Cynthia said. While writing forged deliberately for some extraneous
purpose
would indeed betray signs of artificiality and over-careful penmanship, it could well be that writing imitated out of love … out of the need to incorporate into one’s very soul every gesture, every mannerism of the loved one … this might be a very different matter. The only puzzle was, how had Piggy ever come across any samples of Ivor’s handwriting? It wasn’t as if she was one of his own students.

Cynthia treated this objection with the scorn it deserved. For Heaven’s sake, hadn’t Imogen ever
been
in love?
Of
course
Piggy would have laid hands, somehow, on things he had written with his own hand…. Probably locks of his hair, as well….

“Yes, all right,” Imogen bowed to Cynthia’s superior expertise with good grace— “Yes, I suppose she would… lots of the students got crushes on him like that, it was always happening. Poor kid, I hope he threw her a kind word now and again….”

“Well, but surely…?” Cynthia was beginning; but then, apparently, thought better of it, for she went on, “I tell you what, Imogen, would you like
me
to talk to her? I mean, it’s obviously all nonsense, all this about you having murdered poor Ivor, but all the same, one can’t help wondering what ever gave her such an idea? It may sound conceited, but I can’t help feeling that if
I
asked her … I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that she’s
really
been in love with Teri all along, and that’s why she’s
backing
him up in his crazy story….”

*

Actually, it was the other way round. When Cynthia returned, like an explorer with a bag of gold, from her successful interview with Piggy, the first thing that became clear was that it had been Piggy, not Teri, who had initiated the “crazy story”: and while
she
was in it for pure revenge,
he
(like any other middle-man)
was in it for money and status. Money, of course, for its own sake, and status as a one-time boy-friend trying to get back into her favour.

No wonder he had proved so inept a blackmailer. All his “
information
” and his “proofs” were at second-hand, fed to him by Piggy. She’d have done better, really, to have done her own dirty work—apart from anything else, if
she
had done it, it wouldn’t have
been
dirty. Revenge is one of the purest of all motives, untainted as it is by any thought of personal gain.

*

Cynthia seemed to have done her job well. Her boast of having “this rapport thing” with the young was evidently not wholly unfounded—or maybe it was that her uninhibited and uncritical delight in anything the least bit shocking would have put almost any malefactor at his ease, young or not.

Anyway, whatever her techniques, they’d certainly worked. She’d managed to corner Piggy after lunch with a minimum of fuss and protest, and had succeeded in extracting from her some surprisingly detailed and intimate confessions.

“And I
promised
I wouldn’t breathe a
word
to you about
any
of it,” Cynthia explained, “so let’s go up to your room and lock the door …” and the demands of loyalty thus satisfied, here the two of them now were, Cynthia reclining at ease on Imogen’s bed as she talked, while Imogen sat leaning forward, all attention, in the basket-chair under the dormer window. While the afternoon light faded, and the draught from the window whistled silently against her neck, Imogen learned, with relief, everything that Cynthia had to tell.

Relief, because the story turned out to be a pathetic rather than a sinister one: a silly teenager, in the throes of calf-love, and half-crazed with shock and grief, thrashing around for something or someone to blame for the tragedy.

The “someone” was not far to seek.

“She really
did
think you were at the hotel that night, you know, Imogen,” Cynthia explained. “She actually heard them saying so. You see, she was hanging about outside the hotel half
the evening, hoping to get a glimpse of Ivor as he came in or out; and when she finally summoned up the courage to go inside and ask if he was still there, she heard all about it. The staff were all whispering and laughing about it—how you’d been chasing him all over the hotel. Obviously, it must have been some stupid mistake … but how could
she
have known that? Besides, by that time, she must have been pretty exhausted and wrought-up
anyway
… she’d started at crack of dawn, hitch-hiking up there in hopes of getting in to his lecture, but of course it was no good, it had all been booked-up for months, and anyway it wasn’t for the general public at all. You can understand how she must have felt….”

Imogen agreed that she could. So far, it all sounded silly, and sincere, and utterly plausible. Except, of course, this business about the hotel staff saying they’d seen
her,
Imogen. “How
could
they have? I just simply wasn’t there,” she insisted.

“Oh, I
know
you weren’t, darling,” Cynthia hastily assured her. “Of course I know—but I didn’t want to argue with her. I mean, she might have turned huffy or something, and not told me the rest….”

Which God forbid. So all right, then: there Piggy was, in the hotel foyer, her eyes out on stalks watching for Ivor every time the revolving doors revolved, and her ears filled with voices that she imagined were talking about Ivor’s wife….

Saying what about her?

Why, that earlier in the evening she had been in there making a scene. Phoning up to Ivor’s room, refusing to take “No” for an answer, pushing her way past lift-man and porter and racing along the hushed, lush corridors to batter and plead at his locked door … quite a drama it had been, by all accounts, and Piggy no doubt had listened avidly.

Still, tangling with Ivor’s wife (even in such propitious
circumstances
as these) was no part of Piggy’s programme; and so, after hanging about uncertainly a little longer, she’d decided to put Plan B into operation: to be found, by chance, thumbing a lift at the side of the very motorway along which Professor
Barnicott happened, by chance, to be driving home. The fact that it was a two-hour walk to the chosen rendezvous; that she had no idea whether her hero would be driving back tonight or tomorrow morning; and that it never stopped pouring with rain for one single second throughout the whole operation—none of this deterred her in the least … indeed, it only added to the glamour and excitement of the thing. Imogen pictured her
standing
there by the dark motorway as she had stood tonight beneath the moon, entranced, seeing and yet not seeing the cars that flashed past through the downpour, while her eyes, her whole soul, were all the time focused on another car, a non-car, a car that wasn’t there: a car, though, that
must
come into sight sooner or later, for this was his way home. Standing there, she must have been unaware of the cold, of her soaked clothes. She would have been warmed through and through by her dreams: dreams of the magic car coming into sight … slowing down; of the magic face leaning out, first curious, then (who knew?) alight with recognition. Dreams, too, of what might follow … lurid, glorious, improbable dreams, alternating with terrible, searing
nightmares
… that he would be cool … preoccupied … bored with her company …? Dreams, in fact, encompassing every
conceivable
possibility, good or bad, except the possibility that as she stepped forward, hand raised, he should suddenly and furiously accelerate, swerving at ninety miles an hour on to the wrong side of the road, covering in a few seconds the black quarter-mile, gleaming with rain, which separated her from the slow,
shuddering
crash which would echo in her head for the rest of her days.

*

Well,
of
course
his wife had been the cause of it! Raving and carrying on like that at the hotel—what else could have upset so experienced and confident a driver as Professor Barnicott to that degree? Thus Piggy had reasoned; and then, later, when the news began to filter round the Campus that Professor Barnicott’s wife had deliberately lied to the Press about the date of his accident … had pretended, for a whole day, that he was still alive … had denied having been at the hotel at all on that fateful
night, although she had been positively seen there by half a dozen of the staff—why, the sinister implications of it stared you in the face. Obviously, the woman had somehow engineered the whole thing, either driving along with him and by some means escaping just in time, or else, maybe, administering some sort of drug before he set out….

Something, anyway. It was obvious. Teri thought it was obvious, too.

*

Well, he would, wouldn’t he? The aspiring boy-friend trying to win favour in the eyes of his love…. As Cynthia pointed out, it was all perfectly natural and understandable. Rather sweet, really, when you thought about it.

“Charming!” agreed Imogen, thinking about it. “And so he helped her worm her way into my home on false pretences, so that she could collect further ‘evidence’ against me? Spy on me, in fact?”

“That’s right,” agreed Cynthia amiably, “and actually, Imogen, that’s one reason she was so upset to find that
you
were spying on
her.
I mean, it made it so confusing. She felt she just didn’t know where she stood.”

“Well! Too bad …!” Imogen was beginning, and Cynthia took her up eagerly.

“Yes, she
has
had bad luck, hasn’t she, poor girl? I’m so glad you see it that way, I was sure you would in the end. Because the thing is, Imogen, she’s dreadfully, dreadfully unhappy. I mean, she did
really
love him—”

“I’m sure she did. So did I. But I’m not making that a reason for persecuting
her.
I do hope, Cynthia, that you tried to make her see things a bit more rationally? I mean for her own sake, too. All this lying and fantasy—it’s an obsession she’s got, and it can’t be doing her any good. She must be made to snap out of it. After all, it’s months now since he died.”

“Four months,” interposed Cynthia; and though her tone was neutral, her facts correct, Imogen knew exactly what she meant. She didn’t mean it unkindly, but she meant it: that Piggy, for
all her faults and follies, was nevertheless mourning Ivor more adequately than Imogen herself was.

Grief is a strange malady. From what other illness would your friends—even the best of them—actively discourage you from recovering?

There was just one last point to clear up, and then—as Cynthia had said—everything would be explained. Where did Robin fit into the picture? For it was he, not Teri, who had introduced the girl into the house that Christmas eve.

For the first time since embarking on her narrative, Cynthia looked a little uneasy.

“Oh, well, you know what Robin is,” she said off-handedly, and Imogen did not press the matter further. Because, of course, it was true, she
did
know what Robin was. Who better?