The Man Whose Dream Came True (11 page)

Later he felt an extreme exhilaration. He had been tested, tested as severely as possible, and he had come through. He could have taken the money and given it to Cotton. It was a kind of proof for him that his love for Jenny was something real. And hers for him was sufficiently proved by the value of her gift. Not until the evening did it occur to him that since the man had offered a hundred pounds the links and pin must be worth much more than that.

Wednesday morning. He had known that Jenny would not be there, because she had said that she was going shopping, but it was still a disappointment when Foster opened the door. They went into the study and started dictation as usual. After an hour Foster said abruptly, ‘I shan’t be here tomorrow. I may be going away.’

It would be better not to reveal that he knew of this possibility. ‘And Mrs Foster too?’

‘I shall be going alone. I find it necessary sometimes to get away, there are too many pressures.’

What a fool the man was, wanting to get away from Jenny. Contemplating Foster’s feebly handsome face and nervously twisting hands Tony felt both sorry for and contemptuous of him. ‘Does that mean you won’t want me any more?’

‘I didn’t say that. I may be able to leave sufficient–’ His voice died away.

‘If you could show me what you wanted perhaps I could do some research.’

‘Perhaps, yes.’ His hands coiled and uncoiled. ‘I haven’t made up my mind. I only know I must get away.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘What’s that to do with you?’ Foster said angrily, then recovered himself. ‘I don’t know. I think I shall go to South America. Peru, Chile. I should like to spend some time in the Andes.’

At midday Tony heard the front door close, and at half past twelve Jenny came in. Her usual calm was ruffled. ‘Eversley, you never do a thing I ask you.’

Foster smiled nervously. ‘What is it?’

She ignored him, spoke to Tony. ‘Can you knock a nail in a piece of wood?’

‘Yes, of course.’ He looked uncertainly at Foster, who rose slowly from his chair.

Jenny still ignored him. ‘Then I’d be grateful for your help.’ He followed her out into the kitchen, where she pointed to a shelf that lay on the floor and handed him a hammer and some nails. The job was simply that of nailing the shelf to wooden wall brackets, and it took no more than five minutes. She stood watching, hands on hips.

‘Thanks. I’ve been trying to get him to do it for a couple of days.’ There was something almost flirtatious and out of character in the way that she whispered, ‘I told you he was useless, didn’t I? Even for knocking in a nail.’

Later they went through the sherry ritual in the drawing-room. Jenny had recovered her usual coolness. Foster was moodily silent. Tony, feeling the silence awkward, admired the little Battersea enamel snuff and trinket boxes that said in ornamental copperplate, ‘A gift to tell you of my love, O pray do not forget me,’ with other similar sentiments. More to maintain the conversation than because he was really interested he picked up one of the photographs on the piano. Jenny joined him.

‘Family group, my family that is. There I am.’ She pointed to a pig-tailed girl standing meekly beside a large man with flourishing moustaches and a thin elegant woman. ‘With mother and father.’

‘I’d never have recognised you.’

Foster got up and poured himself another glass of sherry. She handed him another photograph, showing a mild old gentleman with an angry-looking woman beside him who wore a large floppy hat. ‘Uncle William and Aunt Hilda.’

He looked at the other pictures. ‘No wedding groups.’

‘Eversley and I did it all as quietly as possible. No photographers, no family, no friends even.’

‘Who’s this?’ He pointed to a portrait of an elderly erect figure with a small moustache.

‘A cousin of mine. His name’s Mortimer Lands.’

When he turned round a moment later to put down his sherry glass Foster was staring straight in front of him, his face white as milk. What was the matter with the man?

That night he went to the theatre with Widgey and O’Grady.
‘Murder in the Cathedral,’
Widgey said. ‘Should be good.’

‘I like a thriller.’ O’Grady had close cropped grey hair and although not tall gave an impression of bulging strength.

‘I believe it’s poetry. A play in verse.’

‘If it’s got a murder in it, that’s good enough for me.’ O’Grady glared at Tony as though inviting him to make an issue out of this. His eyes had the slightly unfocused look of the heavy drinker.

When they got to the theatre the posters showed naked girls prancing with their legs up. ‘Fine goings on in a cathedral.’ O’Grady crossed himself.
Murder in the Cathedral
had been playing the previous week, and the current show was called
Guts and Garters.
There were as many almost naked girls on the stage as there had been on the posters, but the principal performers were a couple of comics who told jokes all of which ended in rude noises made by a pair of clapper boards. Widgey, wrapped in an old fur coat, watched intently. O’Grady muttered unintelligibly under his breath. Tony thought about Jenny and about the future. He felt that he ought to ask for an explanation, but what exactly did he want her to explain? ‘Do you love me, did you buy those links, would you have kept a present from me which had cost a lot of money as I have kept this one from you?’ It was not merely that he wanted to be reassured about her feelings for him. When he was away from her he found it difficult to believe in her existence.

At the interval they went to the bar. ‘Filthy,’ O’Grady said as he downed a large whisky. ‘A desecration of the human body. In the old country we’d not permit it.’

‘You live in Ireland?’ Tony asked.

O’Grady glared at him. ‘I live in Leeds. I cannot watch another moment of this filthy performance.’

Widgey gathered mouldering fur around her. ‘There’s a lot of tit if you like that. I’m a bit old for it myself.’

They ate fish and chips and visited three pubs on the way back, then took a short cut through an alley. O’Grady had become melancholy in the last pub and was singing ‘The Minstrel Boy’. At the end of the alley a man leaned against the wall. As they walked slowly and uncertainly along their footsteps sounded curiously speedy.

There were too many footsteps. Tony’s hand touched the rough brick wall beside him and found no reassurance in it. He was afraid to turn round.

‘And his harp he’s left
behind
him,’ O’Grady wailed. Then two men were with them, standing between Tony and his companions. One of them spoke to Widgey in a low polite voice.

‘You go on ahead. We just want a couple of words with our friend here.’

Widgey was not alarmed. In the darkness of the alley her face was a white blur. She began to move away, and O’Grady with her. Tony felt one of the men pushing against him, pressing him back hard against the wall. He saw, or thought he saw, the gleam of steel. He cried out. O’Grady stopped singing.

He could not have said afterwards just what happened in the next minute. O’Grady’s body was launched towards them, Widgey screamed, he cried out again himself, there was a frenzied flurrying and mixing of bodies like that of fish in a pool after bait. Then one of the men was on the ground and the other was running back down the alley. O’Grady was furiously kicking the man on the ground and cursing at him. He stopped when Widgey pulled at his arm. The man slowly got to his feet and limped away.

Tony haltingly thanked O’Grady, who was immensely cheerful.

‘Think nothing of it, I enjoy a scrap. I bruised my knuckle on him.’ He showed a bloody fist.

‘They didn’t hurt you? They had knives.’

‘Knives? Not they. Ah, they were just a couple of toughs. We don’t have that type in the old country, I can tell you that. I could do with a drink.’

Tony bought them all double brandies in a pub. Widgey said nothing at the time, but after O’Grady had gone upstairs she took Tony into the parlour, rolled a cigarette, stuck it in her mouth and puffed smoke at him.

‘I hate to say it but you’ll have to go.’

‘All right.’

‘It’s about the money, isn’t it? The hundred pounds.’

‘Yes.’

‘You can have it. Tomorrow. But you’ll have to go. I’ve got this place to run, they’ll be round here.’

Something about the way she spoke, combined with her refusal to look at him, made him cry out, calling simply her name.

‘What’s up?’

‘I’ll go away. But I can come back, can’t I?’

‘If you want.’

‘Widgey, don’t–’ He could not say what he felt about the severance of this tie with the past and his childhood. ‘I can manage without the money, I’ve got enough.’

‘Don’t be a fool.’

‘It’s true.’

‘You wanted it yesterday.’

‘I can raise the money. If I have to. But I don’t want to borrow from you.’

‘Please yourself. Let’s have a cuppa.’ She moved to put the kettle on the gas ring. ‘I still want you out, though. By the weekend. It’s best for you too.’

‘It’s finished,’ Jenny said. She was alone and she had taken him straight into the drawing-room.

‘Finished?’

‘Eversley’s made up his mind to go away. On Saturday.’

‘Where to?’

‘He’s talking about South America, but he doesn’t really tell me. I shall be lucky if I get a couple of cards.’

‘And he doesn’t want me to go on? I told him yesterday, I could easily do some research.’

‘He doesn’t like you, Tony. I think he knows.’

‘But then–’ He wanted to say that if Foster suspected her of carrying on an affair it would be natural for him to take her with him, but he could not phrase the words. What she said next did something to answer this unasked question.

‘I told you, he’s a strange man. When something like this happens, seriously I mean, he has to go away. Alone. He gives it time to burn itself out as he calls it. Then he sends me a card saying where he is, and if I want to I can join him. Otherwise he sends another card to say when he’s coming back.’

He seized on the single element that was important to him. ‘It’s as I said, it’s happened before.’

‘You don’t think I could live with Eversley without there being someone else?’ And again in response to the question he could not ask about why she stayed with him she went on coolly, ‘He has the money.’

There was something remote about her, something unreal in the whole situation that frustrated and infuriated him. The barrier between them did not fall when he stepped forward and took her unyielding body into his arms, telling her that he loved her. The words also sounded unreal to him, although he knew that they were true. The next words came more easily. ‘I have to be with you, I can’t leave you.’

‘I want that too.’

‘But the others. You felt that about the others.’

‘They were nothing.’ She moved out of his arms. ‘Don’t make a scene, I hate them. Let’s have some whisky.’ While she was pouring it she looked at him with the wariness of one animal watching another. ‘Eversley doesn’t have to come back.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He doesn’t have to go.’

‘I don’t understand.’ He knew that something terrible was being proposed to him, but he did not know what it was, and he wanted her to tell him; she did not do this. Instead, sipping her whisky like a cat and looking at him over the rim of the glass, she told him things that taken by themselves did not seem significant, appeared almost to be said at random. She and Eversley had a joint account at the bank, did he know that (the question was rhetorical, for of course he didn’t), but there was not a lot of money in it, not more than a few hundred pounds. But supposing, just supposing, that Eversley decided to settle in somewhere like – oh, say Venezuela or Costa Rica – and supposing he didn’t come back, and that he liked South America so much that he decided to settle there for good, then naturally he’d have his securities transferred to a bank out there, wasn’t that so? And Eversley was rich, his securities would last for a long time, you could say for ever.

The sun shone through the windows, yet he felt cold. The whisky tasted bitter. He had to say again that he didn’t under-stand what she meant.

‘Look.’ She went out of the room, returned with a sheet of writing paper headed
Villa Majorca.
‘Don’t touch,’ she said. The paper was blank except for the signature at the bottom, ‘Eversley Foster.’ ‘I asked him to sign it because I wanted to write to the telephone people about a new extension. But it could be used for typing a letter to the bank, he’s signed it. I told you, he’s a fool.’

‘But what can we do with it, how does it help?’

‘First we copy this signature until we’re perfect at writing it. I mean perfect. And don’t forget we’d only have to convince a bank in Venezuela.’

‘I suppose that might be possible.’ He spoke cautiously, he did not want her to know of his previous experience with signatures. She gave him a smile that raised her upper lip off her teeth. ‘But we couldn’t keep it up, we’d be found out. One day the bank would ask to see him.’

‘Of course. And they would see him. You’d be Eversley.’

‘But how would–’

She talked quickly, like somebody who has rehearsed an argument many times. ‘You go out there as yourself, right? You just fly abroad on a trip. Out in Caracas we get a passport that makes you Eversley.’

He began to expostulate. ‘You can’t get a passport just like that.’

‘I know somebody out there,’ she said so brusquely that he did not like to ask more questions. ‘And he has contacts. It’s not difficult, just a matter of money. Either we buy a passport or we use Eversley’s and get the picture and the description changed. And then you’re Eversley. He doesn’t have any near relatives or close friends, you see the sort of life he leads. And then there’s something special about Venezuela – or Costa Rica or Honduras or Dominica, it doesn’t matter which. They don’t have any extradition treaty with Britain. I fancy Venezuela though, from what I’ve read about it Caracas is a lovely city.’

‘You’ve worked all this out. You’ve planned it. For a long time.’ She gave him again that feline smile. ‘You’ve talked about it to other people.’

‘One.’

‘He was your lover?’

‘He was frightened.’ Her thin shoulders shrugged under her dress.

He felt a tremor beginning in his hands and legs, and put down his glass on a table. She got up and turned away from him. Her profile seemed to him so beautiful that it took away his breath. The tremor stopped.

‘I’m not frightened. Nothing frightens me.’

‘I love you.’ He repeated the words almost angrily, as though they were some kind of insurance against disaster.

‘It’s not a word I use.’ The coldness and rigidity of her features frightened him. ‘I told you, I want to be with you.’

‘But supposing in a few months–’ He could not complete the sentence.

‘I didn’t want to be with you. You’d be Eversley Foster, you’d be signing the cheques.’

He closed his eyes and instantly had an image of his body descending silently down an endless tunnel, twisting from side to side, bruised and torn by the speed of a descent which he was powerless to check. There was a roaring in his ears which might have been the sound of water. He thought that he was going to faint. He opened his eyes again and blinked to find himself still in the room. ‘I can’t bear violence.’

‘There won’t be any violence.’ She went on, again talking with compulsive eagerness. ‘I told you Eversley has a weak heart, he takes capsules to speed it up. If I slip three of them into a drink he won’t wake up. I’ll be responsible for all that. If it worries you. I won’t need any help from you until afterwards.’

‘Afterwards?’

‘I said he was going away. And I told you he bought me a motor launch.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ll have to help me get him into it.’

‘And then?’

‘A sea burial. By the time he turns up he’ll be unrecognisable. And anyway we shall be in Venezuela.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You mean you don’t trust me. We want the same thing, you must see that.’

What he wanted – but how could he say this to her? – was the ideal Jenny, tender and loving, not the real woman who cloaked hard shrewdness behind an impassive beauty. As though she understood this she gave the ideal Jenny’s quick gentle laugh. ‘I trust you, anyway. You’ve got a passport?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why don’t you fly out to Caracas on Saturday and wait for me there. I shan’t be able to come for – oh, perhaps a couple of weeks. They couldn’t extradite you, you’d be safe anyway.’ It seemed only proper to ask about her safety. She came close to him and gripped his arm. ‘I don’t want to be safe, that’s the difference between us. If you’re going to buy a ticket you’ll want some money. The single fare is a hundred and forty pounds.’ He watched in amazement as she opened her handbag, took out a thick envelope and handed it to him. He put it on the table between them.

‘You feel very sure of me.’

‘I’m direct, you see,’ she said as if she were explaining a mathematical problem to a not very bright student. ‘I know what I want and what you want, and they both amount to the same thing. And I know what you’re like.’

‘I wonder if you do.’

‘If something’s made easy you’ll do it as long as you feel you don’t have the responsibility, isn’t that right?’ He could not answer. ‘I’m making it easy. Have you got money to live on until I fly out to join you?’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll draw another two hundred and fifty from the bank. You see, this trust is a one-way operation. But you don’t get the rest of the money until you show me the air ticket.’

Everything she said humiliated him. ‘I wouldn’t steal money from you.’

‘But you
have
stolen money, isn’t that right?’

‘Whatever I’ve done–’ He stopped, and began again. ‘Those links. I found out what they’re worth, but I wouldn’t sell them.’

‘Oh, my sweet Tony, you priced them, did you? Don’t worry, I don’t mind, I wouldn’t mind if you’d sold them. Being with someone like you makes it more exciting. I knew what you were like, I could tell from the first.’ Her eyes sparkled as they did while making love.

‘Today is Thursday. There’s no time.’ It was impossible, surely, that on Saturday night or Sunday morning he should be in Venezuela.

‘Of course there is. You can go up to London this afternoon and buy the ticket.’

‘And he’s going away on Saturday?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I can’t come here tomorrow morning. To see him. I couldn’t do it.

‘No, I suppose you couldn’t,’ she said with no hint of criticism. ‘He wouldn’t want to see you anyway. I’ll tell him I’ve paid you off. He’d be pleased about that. Then come on Friday night.’

‘Friday night?’

‘Ten o’clock. I’ll be ready by then.’ He did not ask what she meant. ‘Come to the back. I can’t see it would matter much, but try to make sure you’re not seen.’