Dead In The Morning (2 page)

Then he had met Helen, and the miracle had happened.

“I still marvel about coming into that shop just when you were in trouble over Cathy’s present,” Helen said. “What if I’d been a little sooner? Or a half-hour later?”

“I expect it was in our stars,” Gerald said with a smile. “Mrs Van Doren would say that.”

“Yes, indeed.”

Helen still felt that she was living in a dream. So much had happened, so fast, that it was hard to catch up with the reality of events. She had met Gerald in the spring. He had gone to Milan on business, and had taken a few days off to visit Venice, where he had never been. Helen was there with the rich American widow who was employing her as secretary, lady’s maid and companion during her travels around Europe.

Gerald quickly fell captive to the magic of Venice, walking for hours along the narrow streets, pottering in and out of the churches, gazing from the bridges at the murky water below, and simply watching what was going on around him. Like every tourist, he wanted to take presents home, and he went into a jeweller’s shop off the Piazza San Marco in search of something for Cathy. The high-powered salesmanship of the shopkeeper was obscuring his judgement when Helen came into the shop.

Gerald asked the
padrone
to attend to her, since he needed time to make his choice, and freed from the flood of effusive persuasion, he turned with relief to inspect in peace the trinkets set out on the counter.

Helen thanked him, and then launched into a torrent of rapid Italian. The shopkeeper treated her with deference, and produced a large parcel which she had come to collect. Flowery remarks passed back and forth during this exchange. Gerald was only vaguely aware of all this going on as he held a gold mesh bracelet in one hand and a necklace in the other, debating their relative merits.

“Thank you so much,” Helen said to him, preparing to leave the shop with her parcel. “That was kind of you.”

“Oh, not at all. I shall be here for ages,” Gerald said despairingly. “I can’t make up my mind what to buy.”

For the first time, he really looked at her, and on impulse said, “Perhaps you would help me?”

“Well, surely, if I can,” Helen said. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m trying to find something for my daughter. She’s nearly eighteen. I thought perhaps a bracelet, like this one? Or a necklace? I can’t decide which she’d prefer.”

Helen promptly set down her parcel and picked up the bracelet.

“It’s pretty,” she said. “What does your daughter look like?”

“She’s small and dark,” Gerald said, and added, looking at her, “a little like you.”

“Well, then.” Helen held out her wrist, and the shopkeeper, delighted, fastened the bracelet round it. “This is beautiful,” she said. “Any young girl would think it just lovely.”

It certainly looked perfect where it was.

“The necklace is more sophisticated,” Helen said. “Your daughter might not be able to wear it so often, but she could use the bracelet all the time.”

“You’re right,” Gerald said, greatly relieved. “I’ll take the bracelet. You think that one’s the nicest?”

They tried on several others, but in the end chose the first one. Gerald paid, and picked up Helen’s parcel. They left the shop together.

“You speak very good Italian,” he remarked. “Where did you learn it?”

“In college,” Helen said. “I majored in modern languages. I thought I’d forgotten it after so long, but it’s coming back. I certainly do enjoy being able to speak the language of the people.”

“I envy you,” Gerald said. “I’ve got just a smattering, enough to get by at a pinch, but I don’t get much chance to improve. I come to Italy quite often for my firm, but my Italian colleagues are better at English than I am at Italian, so you can guess what we speak.”

“You should practise,” Helen told him with a smile. “It’s a pretty language.”

“Yes,” Gerald said. “But they talk so fast I find it very hard to understand. Do you travel a lot? Europe seems to be very close to America now.”

“It’s closer to Boston than the Rockies are,” Helen said. “I haven’t been over before, but my employer knows Italy well. We’ve been touring Europe for the past six months.”

“How very pleasant,” Gerald said. “I thought the usual American way was to cram all the N.A.T.O. countries into three weeks.”

“I guess that is the normal pattern, but Mrs Van Doren is very rich, and she can take her time,” Helen said. “She likes to get the atmosphere. And of course she buys souvenirs everywhere; that’s what’s in this parcel.”

“Do you enjoy working for her?”

“Very much,” Helen said. “She’s a thoughtful person, and I’ve loved visiting all these different countries. We spent Christmas in Paris, just imagine.”

In a sudden burst of confidence, she added, “Mrs Van Doren’s a great believer in what the stars foretell, and some days we have to get through a heavy programme because her horoscope’s encouraging, and other days we don’t stir out in case of disaster.”

“What’s today’s forecast?” Gerald asked. “A good day?”

“Steady progress may be made today,” Helen said demurely.

“Oh, good,” Gerald said. “Let’s help it on by having a drink, shall we? Have you time?”

Helen looked up at the great clock on the ‘Torre dell’- Orologio above their heads.

“I guess so,” she said, laughing. “Mrs Van Doren rests till her martini at six.”

So they sat at a table in the huge square watching the fluttering pigeons and the strolling crowds, sipping Cinzano and listening to the rival orchestras vying with each other as they played nostalgic tunes on either side of them.

Gerald stayed in Venice for three more days, and in that time he met Helen on several other occasions, by appointment and by chance. She and Mrs Van Doren were in the Basilica staring in appropriate wonderment at the Pala d’Oro while he did the same; he saw them admiring Mantegna’s St. George in the Gallerie dell’- Accademia that afternoon; and the next day, in the cool interior of Santa Maria della Salute, he heard Mrs Van Doren say, “Why, I declare, there’s that good-looking Englishman again. I wonder who he is?”

Helen’s reply was inaudible. She gave no sign of recognising him on these encounters, and though he took his cue from her, Gerald was disappointed. He thought their sight-seeing would have been enriched by being conducted
a trois,
but perhaps Mrs Van Doren’s stars did not favour converse with a strange Briton that week. Helen agreed readily enough to meet him when she was free; on his last night Mrs Van Doren had a dinner engagement at the Gritti Palace; he and Helen ate
fritto misto
in a little
trattoria,
and then took a gondola trip around the city. As their long, black vessel with its curving prow moved smoothly down the canals, rounding the corners with a melodic cry from the gondolier, neither thought the experience corny.

Before they parted, Gerald asked her if Mrs Van Doren’s trip would bring them to England.

“I don’t know,” Helen said. “Maybe in the fall. She hasn’t fixed on what we’re doing after Greece. We go to Athens next month.”

“Will you write, Helen?” Gerald asked her gravely. He recognised, with something like dismay, that it had become necessary for him to keep in touch with her. “I want to see you again,” he said.

“It’s better not,” Helen said. “It’s been fun. Let’s just leave it that way, Gerald.”

She would not budge. Implacably, she refused to answer if he wrote to her, or to give him any address where he might find her, nor would she promise to get in touch with him if she did come to England.

Despondently, Gerald left her, but he could not get her out of his mind. When, in the summer, he had to go to Genoa and Turin, he took some leave after his business was done and stayed on in Italy. Cathy was in France on a language exchange, so that this year he had no obligation to take her away for a holiday, and half mocking at himself, he set about trying to track down Mrs Van Doren and Helen. For all he knew, they might be still in Greece.

He tried the American Express, and he telephoned the best-known hotels in Rome and in Naples, with no success, but in Florence he found the trail. They had passed through, bound for Assisi, and in that small town he caught up with them at last. He had no difficulty at all in locating their hotel and securing a room there for himself.

This time, Mrs Van Doren’s stars had prophesied a pleasant encounter. Recognising Gerald, she bowed graciously towards him in the hotel dining-room while Helen, crimson-cheeked, bent intently over her soup. Later, Mrs Van Doren invited him to have coffee with them; afterwards they strolled together down the hill towards the monastery, Gerald gallantly supporting Mrs Van Doren on one arm, but aware only of Helen’s nearness on his other side. He accompanied them, the next day, along the cobbled streets to see the tiny cell where
II Povero
was imprisoned by his father to encourage him to recover from his religious obsession; they visited the tomb of St Clare and saw her mummified remains, gruesomely visible behind a grille; they stood below the Rocca Maggiore in the gentle wind and surveyed the soft Umbrian landscape spread out below. Gerald got an extension of his leave. Another chance had come his way and he was determined not to let it go. He told Helen that he would not leave Italy without her.

Surprisingly, Mrs Van Doren was his ally. She made various calculations to do with the position of the planets at their births, and recommended them not to flout the stellar plan. In privacy, she told Helen that she would be crazy to pass up such an opportunity.

“You’re pretty enough, my dear, but you’re not a girl any longer, let’s be realistic about that. A woman must have money, or a man. You like him, don’t you?”

“Oh yes,” Helen sighed. “I like him. That’s part of the trouble.”

In the end she was overborne. Mrs Van Doren cabled a niece in California to come and take over Helen’s duties for the rest of the tour, and here they were, on their way to meet Gerald’s family.

“We’ve landed, darling,” Gerald said. “You were miles away.”

“Yes. Yes, I was,” Helen said. She gathered up her handbag and her gloves. Apprehension filled her, and he saw it.

“Don’t worry, darling. Everything will be all right,” Gerald said. “You’ll see.”

Dr Patrick Grant, M.A., D.Phil., Fellow and Dean of St Mark’s College, Oxford, and lecturer in English, crossed Fennersham High Street, at grave risk to his life, among the cars whose drivers were all looking to right or to left in search of parking space. On Fridays the small market town was crammed with shoppers stocking up for the weekend; no wonder his sister Jane had so eagerly accepted his offer to carry out her commissions.

He went into the chemist’s shop to buy some humiliating requirements for his infant nephew, and stood patiently waiting to be served among a cluster of mothers with restive children, a very old man with a stubble of whiskers, and two middle-aged women.

“Mrs Ludlow’s tablets, please,” said one of these older women briskly when her turn came. The name caught Patrick’s attention. He searched about in his well-stocked mind for the connection. It was in some way associated with trouble, and soon he remembered young Timothy Ludlow, a Mark’s second year man, slightly spotty, a muddled thinker, and up before the Proctors and then himself more than once last term. Now that he thought about it, the boy did come from Hampshire. Could this woman be his mother? He looked at her more sharply while she made some other purchases. She was a tall, striking woman wearing a bright green jersey suit; her ash-coloured hair was swept up round her head in a becoming manner; she wore glasses and had plain pearl studs in her ears.

Patrick had just finished this inspection of the lady when an assistant came forward to attend to him, and he read out the items on his sister’s list. By the time he left the chemist’s, finished the rest of the shopping, and returned to his car, it had been hemmed in on all sides by other cars and he could not move it. Never one to waste energy on vain causes when it was so often needed for essentials, he lit a cigarette and settled down to wait for the return of the offending land-rover driver who had double-parked beside him, meanwhile opening a small book of modern verse he had in his pocket and which he had been asked to review.

From time to time Dr Grant looked up from his reading to see how the traffic situation might be changing, and thus it was that he saw the woman he had noticed in the chemist’s shop walking along the pavement towards him. Her step was firm and decisive, like her voice; she was clearly someone who knew what she was doing and went about it purposefully; no ditherer, she. Patrick watched her enter the Cobweb Cafe, immediately opposite where he was parked. It looked a pleasant little place, a replica of hundreds all over England, selling home-made cakes and serving genteel teas. Patrick, mildly curious about her Ludlow connections, waited for the woman to emerge, but she did not reappear.

He glanced up and down the road. There seemed to be no immediate relief for his traffic problems, and no sign of a policeman or a traffic warden. He took his volume of verse into the Cobweb Cafe, sat at a table by the window where he could see what went on outside, and ordered a cup of coffee.

Cathy Ludlow pedalled along the road from Fennersham towards Winterswick. In one hand she held her tennis racket, and a duffle bag containing the rest of her sports gear was slung across her shoulder. She felt pleasantly stretched by the afternoon’s exercise, and very full of the large tea she had eaten after the game.

Long shadows were slanting through the trees as she bicycled slowly down the hill into the village. Winterswick was a straggly cluster of dwellings, some of them dating back to Tudor days with mellow tiled or thatched roofs and sturdy beams supporting the walls. She passed the Vicarage, a red brick Victorian edifice which had splendid large rooms and many draughts within, and the Post Office, whose affairs were conducted in the parlour of a bright yellow bungalow, and rode on past the Rose and Crown and the village grocery. Then she turned into the lane that led eventually to her grandmother’s house, Pantons. There was a small council estate on one side of the road, and on the other a speculative builder had put up two rows of timber-faced houses which had been sold at high prices to commuters from London. Further on down the lane there were more cottages, some of them still occupied by farm workers, some owned by retired couples, and more by people working in London who preferred antique charm to contemporary convenience.