The Sleeping Partner (25 page)

‘And then?'

‘He talked to the girl and to her mother. Again I don't know what he said, but whatever he tried didn't come off. They wouldn't believe him.'

The man on the bed stirred and she was across to him instantly. But he made no other move.

I went to peer out of the window again, and she came back.

‘You've got to go, Mike.'

‘Not while I can be of help.'

‘You certainly have been.'

‘And I want to know why he went off as he did last night.'

I think she saw what I meant.

‘He wanted to help you and did help you without considering the cost to himself.'

‘Aren't I allowed the same luxury in return?'

‘No
… Because you both do it at my expense!'

That held me for a bit. I said: ‘I hadn't thought of it that way. Maybe I need even more egoism than I've got to see it that way.'

‘Or less pride.'

I looked at her. Physically she was as close to me now as at any time since last Sunday. I looked at the soft flare of her nostril, the fine skin under the dark curling hair beside her ear, the sheen of her eyelashes and the curve of her lips. Last Sunday. But we'd come such a long way since then.

A train went past. The line was some distance away but it caused a tiny vibration of two of the bottles on the table. As it stopped we heard the telephone ringing.

‘I'll answer it,' she said.

It was raining now. My watch said five minutes to one.

‘Mike,' said John.

I went quickly to him. His lips moved when I came into his view. Some of the dead whiteness had gone. ‘Heard you – mumbling there.'

‘Sorry. We thought—'

‘Stella been – telling you – my visit to Margot du Caine?'

‘Yes.'

‘Peculiar interview.'

‘Don't talk now. Lewis is coming.'

He made a face. ‘ There was – no moving her, Mike. I could tell by the look in her eyes she knew
something.
My hunch was right. By marrying her French is in some way covering up. But she pretended – didn't know what I was talking about. I told her – Lynn was dead. She said – unpardonable interference. Tried to show me the door. Her mother … I appealed to her. I think – she thought me insane. But the girl did not. The girl did not.'

‘You did your best.'

‘Time is it?'

‘Plenty of time yet.'

‘It's – up to you, Mike. You've got to stop it.'

There was the sound of a car drawing up outside the cottage.

‘John, I have to ask you one thing.'

He closed his eyes for a couple of seconds and then looked at me. ‘ Yes?'

‘I want to know why you did that yesterday – getting up against all orders, nearly killing yourself.'

He gave a faint shrug. ‘It looked to me – a fair and reasonable expenditure to make.'

I said: ‘ You know when the divorce petition came; I asked you, supposing what it said were true, what would you have done – and you said you'd take steps to remove yourself.'

‘Yes?'

A door banged. I said hastily: ‘Coming here I had the idea that perhaps you thought Stella was in love with me – why you should think that, God knows, but you apparently considered it possible on Friday. And that if you thought that, you might – have taken these steps.'

I watched him. He considered. ‘Done it – to kill myself?'

‘Yes.'

‘It would be – roundabout way, wouldn't it?'

‘I thought you might have considered it appropriate.'

‘How?'

‘Well, it might go with your ethics. Helping the man whom you thought …'

He smiled and his gaze didn't flicker. ‘I see you don't – understand me.'

‘I'm sorry if I don't.'

‘Or you underrate my – liking for you.'

‘I don't understand
that.'

There were voices downstairs.

‘Nor would it – go with my ethics, as you call them.' He paused, listening, and then said quickly, with an effort: ‘Wouldn't doing that, my doing that, have the opposite effect of what you think? Wouldn't that way be putting a barrier between you and Stella for ever?'

I stared at him and he stared back at me.

‘Yes,' I said.

There were footsteps on the stairs. ‘One is – not always detached, Mike. Don't make the mistake of thinking I am. I hate the misfortune

that's come on me. But I don't hate you.'
I put my hand on his. ‘I can't think of anything to say.'
He returned the pressure. ‘Say nothing. But go.'
Stella and Dr Lewis came into the room.

I waited downstairs. I knew it was cutting it impossibly fine now. An hour from here to Chelsea even on a Sunday afternoon. Fairly certainly, so far as the wedding was concerned, I'd lost the trick. But I didn't regret having come.

There were photographs in the room, one of Stella, one of a woman I didn't know. His first wife perhaps. If it was only as good of her as it was of Stella, I shouldn't get far by looking at it. I felt pressed down with a sense of not knowing, and a sense of fatality along with it. At the moment I was one making up a set of six. John and Stella, Lynn and Ray and Margot du Caine. I felt I didn't understand a thing about the motives or feelings of any of them, why passion blew up where it didn't belong, why loyalties and deceits had got tied in with crime and punishment. I could only guess at half the reasons behind what had happened, and I saw no hope at all that I would ever know more.

In about a quarter of an hour Stella came down.

‘He's having another blood transfusion. Dr Lewis says he's responded well to the first. I slipped down to tell you to go.'

‘He'll be all right?'

‘As right as he can be. Perhaps two weeks in bed. Then he
may
get up again …'

I peered out again, at the garden and the rain.

‘Now do you feel free?' she said, almost angrily.

‘Yes, I feel free.'

It was a queer expression of the way I was at present fixed. I kissed her and left. This was the final goodbye and had to be excused.

I got across to the wood without any trouble. Fifty yards brought me to the edge of the lane. My car was where I had left it, and I was going to climb over the low wall and go towards it when some sort of sixth sense made me decide to have a look first from the other side. I ducked back into the wood and approached this time from about a hundred yards ahead. I didn't get very far. In a green lichened gateway of the wood just out of sight of the car, and conveniently placed to step out at the right moment, a policeman was waiting.

I
MADE
for the station. Once out of the wood at the eastern corner, you were up against the raw new villas at the edge of the town; and from there it was only two hundred yards. I knew all the back streets of Letherton.

Of course they might be waiting for me, but that was a risk that had to be taken. There wasn't any other way of getting to London now.

There was a train in ten minutes. That was lucky for a Sunday, but it didn't alter the fact that it takes an hour and five minutes from Letherton to King's Cross, and from there I had to get to Chelsea.

It still didn't matter as much as it should have done. Even in practical terms my visit to the cottage hadn't been thrown away.

I didn't think I'd proved anything to anybody by going to see John Curtis, not even to myself, but at least I hadn't snapped at the bait that circumstances had shoved in my way. I'd behaved like a fool two or three times in the last few days, but this time at least I hadn't been trying to save myself. Perhaps it showed a twisted outlook, not being able to accept what he'd tried to do for me – but I couldn't, on those terms.

The train was five minutes late. I got on it all right and settled into the corner of a third-class carriage; there were two other men in the carriage; one in a blue mack nodded to me; doors slammed and the dirty, smoke-grey engine stammered on the greasy lines.

The man in the mack said something about the weather, and, finding he was speaking to me, I agreed, then they went on talking between themselves. They were going to some sort of a meeting, and the other chap, who was in black, was going for the first time.

We ran into the next station, a halt, oddly rural-looking, left over, an anachronism. As we waited there an express went through on the fast middle line; rattling windows, carriages flickering like a halting movie film.

We were off again. ‘It's the following's that's hard, d'you see,' said the man in the mack, biting his nails. ‘ Mr Thompson always emphasises that with new members. The
following
and the
acceptance …
'

The train was late. It was nearly three when we stopped at New Barnet, and from there on into a darkening city with the sky yellow and a heavy downpour settling in, the train crept forward as if scared of being checked at every signal. As we slid along the platform of King's Cross I opened the door of the carriage; a porter's face stared, passing. The man in the blue raincoat said: ‘ You'll get wet, sir, with no hat or coat. It's raining. Like to borrow my umbrella?'

I stared at him.

He said: ‘It's got my name and address, inside.'

‘Thanks. Thank you … No, I haven't far to go.'

I got out quickly and made down the platform, gave my ticket; no taxi waiting but I caught one in Euston Road. It was twenty past three. There might have been some delay.

‘St James's Church in Chelsea.'

‘Eaton Place?'

‘Yes.'

While we were on the way I took out once more the invitation to the wedding. The reception afterwards was at the Royal Hotel, which was in King's Road. Where the couple were spending the night I didn't know; he'd said they were to stay in London.

The afternoon traffic was just beginning, but the heavy rain kept people off the streets. Queues outside cinemas, and in Hyde Park a few tub-thumpers persevered to clusters of hardy listeners. He took the route down Grosvenor Place and turned left at Chapel Street. It was ten to four.

As we turned into Eaton Place there were no cars waiting and I knew it was all over. The taxi stopped outside the church and I got out. Bits of sodden confetti lay trampled in the rain. The church was dark and empty except for an old woman sitting in a pew in the lady chapel. A noticeboard said that evensong was at six. I walked up as far as the altar and back. There was a nice show of flowers.

I went out to the taxi again and stood for a few seconds. A lunatic interruption at the wedding might have had some result. Nothing could come from breaking into the wedding luncheon. Nothing really could help now at all.

‘If I was you, mate, I should get back in. You'll be drier there.'

‘Drive me to a telephone box, will you.'

We purred round a couple of streets and into Belgrave Square. On the way I thought out a list of the ten best hotels.

I borrowed some change from the driver and began. When the first one answered I asked to speak to Mr Raymond French. After a pause the receptionist said: ‘ I'm sorry, sir, there's no one of that name staying in the hotel.' I tried five and got the same answer from each. At the sixth there was a longer pause, then the girl said: ‘I'm sorry, there's no reply from the suite. If you'd care to wait I'll have him paged.' I said, No thank you, and rang off.

It was a hotel overlooking Hyde Park. I got back in the taxi and told him to drive me there.

I could wait. There was nothing more to lose now and I could wait.

I went into the tea lounge of the hotel, which was convenient for seeing people coming in and out of the revolving doors; and being Sunday it was quiet. After a while I began to feel dizzy and light-headed so I ordered tea. The waiter didn't think much of my looks but he only commented with his eyebrows, and went away and brought the tea. I sat and drank it and ate toast and cakes, and thought about things. A few well-dressed people were about now, talking in brittle polished crackly voices, but I didn't take my eyes off the doors. It was now a quarter to five. The police would be getting anxious about Mr Michael Henry Granville, factory owner and top-rank radar expert, who had not yet been interviewed. Perhaps Mr Michael Henry Granville was on the run.

‘Calling Major Moolchan, calling Major Moolchan,' said a page boy in a green uniform with brass buttons. A tall well-dressed Indian with an anonymous sort of face got up at the end of the room and hurried out.

I paid my bill and went over to the book counter for some cigarettes. I'd not had any real desire to smoke for some hours, but one had to have something to do.

A woman there was arguing querulously with the man behind the counter. ‘But I know it's been published, I saw it in Paris.' ‘ I'm sorry, madam, perhaps it was an American edition.' She'd been a pretty woman twenty years ago; all the gestures were still there, the rings flashing as the hand trembled up to the dyed hair. Her fine eyes went coquettishly over me and then she turned back to the assistant. ‘Who are those for?' said a black-coated employee beside me. ‘Four-two-six. Name of French.' ‘Take this up with you, will you, give it to Ferguson of room service. Same floor.' ‘OK.'

I'd bought my cigarettes and paid for them before the words properly sank in. It had been a page boy who had answered the man, and he was walking away now with a box of orchids in his hands.

‘But you must have
something
by him. I met him in Monte last year. There was a book of his mentioned in
Country Life,
I'm sure.'

‘I'm sorry, madam, but there doesn't seem to be anything in print. These are the latest lists.'

The page boy had got into the lift, I stood and watched the doors close. A cigarette was unlit in my hand. I walked across to the lift on the opposite side of the foyer.