I Shall Not Want (33 page)

Punctually at nine o'clock John Marco walked round to Clarence Gardens. As he mounted the broad, familiar steps he shivered involuntarily for a moment as though the chill of the big house had already entered into him; the house, each time he entered, seemed colder and less friendly than before. But he did not pause. Searching out the large, old-fashioned key on his ring he let himself into the high dark hall still covered with the heavy blood-red paper, and climbed towards old Mrs. Marco's room.

On these occasions, Emmy spent the entire evening somewhere near the head of the stairs so that she could dart quickly upwards when the time came. It was essential for her peace of mind that she should know how this amazing marriage was prospering. To-night as usual she followed John Marco cautiously up the staircase keeping a flight behind all the time, saw him go into old Mrs. Marco's room, and seated herself on the bottom step to wait.

Inside the bedroom, John Marco walked over to his mother's bed. She appeared at first sight to be asleep, but after a moment she opened her eyes and sat up.

“Why don't you let him come to me?” she asked. “I've never done any harm to him.”

He paused.

“Don't you know me?” he asked.

“Of course I do,” she said irritably. “I'm not a fool. It's the child I want. They won't let me have him.” She leant over and caught John Marco by the arm. “You're out such a lot,” she whispered. “You don't know what goes on here. They never let me see him nowadays.”

He disengaged the hand that gripped him and laid it gently back on the bed. There seemed to be no real strength in it: it rested limply where he placed it.

“I'll speak to them,” he promised.

There was silence for a moment and then the worn cogs in Mrs. Marco's mind began to move again, groping for something for their teeth to catch on.

“Why
are
you out so much?” she asked, with the air of someone who has stumbled unawares on a solution. “Why don't you get married?”

As he did not answer, old Mrs. Marco raised herself a little from the pillow and resumed.

“Why don't you marry Hesther?” she asked. “She's always talking about you.”

He placed his hand on his mother's: it felt cold and faintly damp to the touch.

“You're tired,” he said. “You're getting confused.”

“Am I?” Mrs. Marco asked wearily. “Perhaps you're right. It's time I went to sleep. I could do with a good long sleep.”

She closed her eyes and lay back. But at the same moment one of the cogs started whirring again. Inside her brain something or other was happening. Her lips began twitching.

“Have you got married secretly and not told me?” she asked. “You're not in any kind of trouble are you?”

“No,” he told her, “I'm not in any trouble.”

Mrs. Marco nodded her head dubiously: it was obvious that she was not entirely satisfied with his explanations.
Then she beckoned to him in the manner of someone who has a tremendous secret to impart.

“As soon as the child's grown up,” she said under her breath, “I'm going away from here.”

“You can come away to-night,” he answered. “I've told you that before.”

“And leave the boy here?” The voice rose almost to a scream. “It's not safe, something might happen to him.”

“He's safe enough,” John Marco assured her. “You needn't worry.”

Mrs. Marco looked at him reproachfully.

“You wouldn't say that if he were your son,” she said. “He's such a dear little boy.”

Having made her point, the old lady was evidently prepared to let the matter drop. She folded her hands across her chest and closed her eyes again. John Marco sat there in silence until he judged her to be asleep and then he began to move on tiptoe towards the door.

The departure, however, was premature. Old Mrs. Marco was suspended in sleep by only the slenderest of threads; and the disturbance broke it. She woke with a jerk and sat up.

“Don't go,” she said. “I was in the middle of telling you something.”

He came back and stood at the foot of the bed.

“What is it?” he asked.

But old Mrs. Marco was coy: up among the pillows she simpered.

“Can you keep a secret?” she asked.

John Marco nodded.

“It's something Hesther told me,” she said. “She asked me to get you to come back again.”

“She asked you that?” John Marco said.

“That's right,” old Mrs. Marco answered excitedly. “She wants you back where you belong, same as I do.” She paused. “Only that's not the secret,” she added.

“Then what is it?”

“The secret,” said old Mrs. Marco dropping her voice again, “is that Hesther didn't want you to know that she'd asked me. She wanted you to think that it was just my own idea.”

Mrs. Marco gave a sudden little cackle of laughter at the impishness of her disclosure and lay back. John Marco stood there at the end of the bed, waiting for her to continue. But she did not seem disposed to say anything more. Her eyes were closed again and this time she was really sleeping; she slept noisily, fumbling over each mouthful of breath. John Marco went carefully across the room and turning the handle of the door by fractions of an inch opened the door noiselessly and prepared to step out into the dark corridor.

As he did so there was a sudden movement in the blackness in front of him, a swirl of skirts and the squeak of a high heel on the oilcloth. A moment later there was the sound of Hesther's door shutting, and the house was in silence again. The night-light under its patent globe beside old Mrs. Marco's bed sent a faint gleam across the room and illumined an empty corridor.

Down in the front basement, Emmy was almost hugging herself with gratification. No sooner had John Marco gone into his mother's room and she had stationed herself on the second step of the stairs just in case anything should happen, than Hesther herself had emerged from her room and stood in the darkness with her ear close up against old Mrs. Marco's door. While she had been standing there she had repeated her husband's name several times softly to herself, and Emmy had nearly died from excitement when the door had opened and he had appeared: she could still make her heart hammer simply by thinking about it. And what a disclosure! Rather than exchange a single word with her own husband Hesther had darted inside her room again.

Taking up the silver tray that she had been polishing, she aimlessly rubbed it round and round, round and
round, round and round with the duster, happily dreaming over this, her private and stupendous revelation.

iv

When he got back to the shop John Marco gathered up the late post which lay at the bottom of the letterbox and made his lonely way upstairs.

The gas was already burning in the sitting-room. The light shone down on the big, red leather chair and the footstool that stood in front of it. His slippers were set out beside it on the Turkey carpet, and there was a fire burning in the grate. The whole room looked male and comfortable and substantial.

When he had taken off his hat and coat he went over and unlocked the cupboard. There was a decanter of whiskey and a syphon. He poured himself a drink, measuring the whiskey carefully against the breadth of his two fingers, and changed into his slippers.

At first when he had drunk a whiskey in the evening he had been conscious of the sin of it: he had remembered Mr. Tuke every time he raised the glass to his lips. But now he never thought of it. It was significant, however, that even in sin he behaved in severe Amosite fashion, allowing himself only one drink each evening and no more. He drank so that he could go on working; not for pleasure.

Settled solidly in his chair, John Marco began to go through the evening's post. But there was one envelope that caught his eye—it was so different from the others. It was a small blue one, written in a rapid, excited hand. It had, moreover, been delivered in person. Pushing the others aside he picked it up and ripped it open.

“Dearest”
it ran.
“Thomas has just told me that he has asked you here, but of course he doesn't know anything. And I don't want him to know. He's very good to me and I love him. Please give some excuse so that you needn't come. It'll only make things too difficult for both of us. You know how much I've
always loved you and I still do. But we mustn't see each other again”

The signature was scrawled hurriedly at the bottom and John Marco sat there staring at it. Then he folded it up in its envelope again and thrust it into his pocket.

Mr. Thomas Petter had invited him to his house at eight-thirty on Thursday evening; and at eight-thirty on Thursday evening he would be there.

Mr. Petter ‘s shop stood at the corner of Harrow and Emmanuel Streets. It was small and well-stocked and newly-painted. On either side of the narrow front door stood two enormous coloured bottles that reflected the thoroughfare in giddy sweeping curves and, when the sun shone through them, cast huge blobs of light like prodigious fruit drops.

Mr. Petter, however, had never regarded the bottles merely as ornamental; every time he looked at them he was reminded with a little thrill of pride that the origins of his profession lay buried somewhere in the smoky caves of alchemy—and simply thinking about the antiquity of his calling reconciled him to a lifetime of selling face powders and scented shampoos and other rubbish which he regarded as frivolous. But ornamental, the bottles undoubtedly were. And the whole shop front with its array of sponges and tooth-brushes and elixirs and baby foods, and its neat label “Night Bell” on the side door, might have been a model shop front from a child's toy town.

John Marco arrived punctually at eight-thirty and rang the bell. Almost immediately came the sound of a door shutting somewhere in the flat above and the noise of feet descending the stairs. Then the door opened and Mr. Petter stood there.

He was flushed, but clearly delighted to see his visitor.

“Ah, there you are,” he exclaimed. “My wife was afraid that you wouldn't be able to come after all.”

“Really,” said John Marco as he shook hands with Mr. Petter. “I wonder why that was. I had every intention of coming.”

“Then I'll lead the way,” said Mr. Petter gaily.

John Marco followed him up the thin strip of carpet which ran up the white-painted stairs. He was breathing deeply. He was very close to Mary now; already he was in the same house with her. Soon he would be holding her by the hand, looking into those clear eyes again. He began mounting faster.

Mr. Petter, for his part, was obviously very proud of the flat into which he was leading him. The white paint on the stairs was only the beginning of it. The doors were white, too. And the window sills and the cupboards of the living room. Nor did the general air of brightness stop there. The walls, instead of being papered, were coloured with an apricot distemper and in place of lace curtains at the windows there were plain casement ones. The whole place, in short, looked gay and modern and abreast of the times. And with so much white about, the air of a bridal suite remained; the silk and wicker bassinet in the hall, looked, indeed almost shockingly premature.

But the room was empty and Mr. Petter looked round it in dismay.

“My wife won't be long,” he said reassuringly, “we're just having a little trouble with the child.”

“I can wait,” John Marco answered. “I'm in no hurry.”

He settled himself as deeply as he could manage into a chair that was too small for him and glanced round the room. Despite its newness and its bright up-to-dateness he felt contemptuous towards it. “I could have given you so much better, Mary,” he was saying over and over to himself. “So very much better.”

But Mr. Petter was busy making conversation.

“It's very moving, sitting up with a sick child,” he said. “It does something to you. So helpless, you know.”

“So I understand,” John Marco replied.

“You've not got any children of your own, then?”

Mr. Petter put the question tentatively as though aware that in cross-examining his important visitor he was exceeding the bounds of good breeding.

And he received his rebuke: John Marco ignored the question.

“How long have you been married now?” he asked.

“Two years,” Mr. Petter replied. “We were beginning to wonder whether we'd ever have any children.”

Mr. Petter's further matrimonial confessions were interrupted, however. There was a sound in the room above them, and his smooth pink face lit up automatically.

“I can hear her,” he said. “She's coming.”

John Marco smiled at him.

“How fortunate,” he said. “That must mean that the child is asleep again.”

But Mary did not appear. After a minute of anxious silence, during which Mr. Petter sat with ears straining for some sign, he rose apologetically.

“I'll just slip upstairs and see what's happened,” he said. “That is, if you'll excuse me for a moment.”

He was gone for more than a moment and it was evident that there was some hitch. Eventually there was the sound of Mr. Petter's voice raised in remonstrance—and it is difficult to remain discreet in argument in a flat of only four rooms.

“Of course you've got to come down,” John Marco heard him saying. “What ever will he think? He particularly wants to meet you.”

John Marco re-settled himself in the inadequate armchair and smiled: he felt at that moment as though he held this tiny household balanced on one finger.

It was nearly five minutes later when there was the sound of two people descending the stairs towards the living room. Then the door was thrust open and Mary stood there. Mr. Petter preceded her in the manner of a man exhibiting his most precious possession.

“My wife asks you to excuse her lateness,” he said as though even now that he had persuaded her to come he could not guarantee that she would actually say anything. “It was the child. She is teething.”