My Name is Michael Sibley (15 page)

She shook her head slightly, impatiently. “Well, I’ve changed my mind, what with you going away, and everything.”

“Look, I’m not earning nearly enough, Cynthia.”

“They’ll give you a rise when you go to London. They must.”

“Living is much more expensive in London.”

“We could manage. I know we could.”

She watched me intently as I stubbed my cigarette out on a stone. I took another one out of my case and lit it. I remember how thankful I felt that I had never told her about Aunt Nell’s bequest to me.

I said, “Look, we’ve got to be a bit patient, sweetheart. I’m not going to get married until I’ve got a home for you.”

“We could live in a flat, love. And save money to put down a deposit for a house.”

“With the salary I’ll be getting, we could never afford to save anything for the house. We’d just go on wasting money paying rent for years. I want to start married life with a home and all debts paid. Then when the children come, and have to be educated—”

“Who said there’d be any children?”

“There would. A couple, anyway.”

“There might not be. You can’t tell.”

I said nothing to that. She lay on the soft, dry sand, looking up at the stars, plucking at a tuft of coarse grass. After a while, she put out her arm and drew me down. She put both her arms round my neck again, and pulled me closer. As we had been walking along, I had taken off my jacket because the night was hot. I could feel the soft warmth of her body through my tennis shirt.

“You do really want to marry me, don’t you, love?”

I thought of nothing but the warmth of her and the closeness of her.

“Of course I do,” I lied.

Try as I might, I still could not remember what it was that had occurred at Palesby which could cause me worry. Yet the idea grew in my mind until it became a certainty that in the kaleidoscope of events which had occurred during those years something had indeed happened which would interest the police.

I had a notion that it was connected with the stuffed birds on the piano. So far my memory went, but no further. My inability to recall what it was, and my feeling that it would be better if the police did not know about it, increased my uneasiness over the Prosset case. A horrid fear was tapping at the back of my mind that before the affair was over, the whole story was going to come out, of Kate and Prosset and me, since I came to London; and nobody was going to be spared, not even poor little Kate, who had not harmed a soul.

I
came to London from Palesby in August, 1938, and stayed for a few days in a hotel near Paddington until I could find myself some lodgings. My Aunt Edith suggested that I should return and live with her in Earl’s Court. But I had had enough to last me a lifetime of the dreary house and garden.

Moreover, the necessity of explaining my comings and goings if Cynthia should come to town was in itself a barrier. I therefore told her that, as the life of a newspaperman was one of irregular hours and mealtimes, I felt it would be better for both of us if I took a room elsewhere. She did not press the point, being by now far too busy with her own affairs to care a great deal one way or the other.

I found a room in Harrington Gardens, South Kensington. It was a ground-floor room, barely furnished and cheerless, with a high ceiling, mass-produced furniture, and the inevitable shilling-in-the-slot gas meter. I paid 30s for bed and breakfast, and dinner in the evening was 2s extra. The place was clean, the staff obliging enough, and I was reasonably content with it.

I would have liked a basement flatlet, like Prosset’s, and my first instincts were to go along to Oxford Terrace to have a look round; but though I now felt myself every whit capable of holding my own with him, I thought that on the whole it would be as well not to live too near to him or I would have him continually popping into my digs, just as he used to be always popping into my study at school.

Technically, work in the London office was easier than in Palesby, for there was not the overwhelming attention to detail which is required of a reporter on a provincial paper. Our task in London was mainly to follow up stories appearing in the national newspapers with a view to developing some slant on them which would be of interest to the provincial papers we served.

The work was less arduous than in Palesby, the hours easier, the pay better. There was little or no night work, so that for the first time since I started work I found myself with plenty of time on my hands after six o’clock. I devoted two or three evenings a week to short stories, which were now selling more easily, the income they brought in being equivalent, on an average, to some £3 a week.

So the position was that I had about £1,300 in the bank, an income of about £13 a week, and a reasonable and interesting job. It seemed to me then that after a shaky start the course of my life was favourably set. I was aware that a reporter’s position is rarely completely secure, and that I might find myself suddenly without a job; but even if this occurred, I reckoned that by devoting myself entirely to fiction I could make enough to keep myself until I could get another newspaper job, even if that should take a long time.

Then, as if to consolidate my finances still further, I had not been in London more than a few weeks when I received a cable stating briefly that my father had died in Delhi after a car accident. The news affected me emotionally but little, for we had known each other so slightly that I felt no more than I would have done had I heard that a friend whom I had known for many years, but seen very little, had suddenly died abroad.

Upon his death I became the recipient, after payment of estate duties, of an annual income from trust investments of £200 a year.

No wonder that at that period my position seemed impregnable. I had a profession, private money and good health. I contemplated writing novels, and if I was as successful with them as with short stories I thought I would retire from the newspaper game. Perhaps I would travel, gathering material for my work, which in turn would improve it, leading to wider sales and further and more ambitious travels. But I would not retire from newspapers until I was sure how my novels would be received. I was going to act sensibly.

Ironically, the access of money which Cynthia Harrison imagined would bring our marriage nearer only served to render its fulfilment less likely. Wider horizons were opening up, and within the picture I saw no figure which resembled a local Palesby girl. There were women in the picture, but now they were women of a more exotic and sophisticated kind; I record this with some shame.

Nevertheless, outside the world of dreams, Cynthia was still there; we were exchanging letters full of endearments, and I had already paid one visit to Palesby, staying at the Station Hotel, and seeing her almost the whole weekend. She herself was to come to London soon for a weekend. And lurking in the wings, unseen but ready to step upon the stage, was Prosett.

I never harmed a hair on his head, but he struck back at me after his death. Nor am I certain now what I could have done to prevent it.

It was November before I called on Kate Marsden.

Indeed, I only did so because I had nothing better to do. I had spent two evenings in succession at my short stories, and felt like taking an evening off.

I looked down the list of films showing in the West End, and saw nothing that attracted me. Entirely on impulse, I made my way to Manchester Square. Her room was no longer at the top of the house, but it was still small. It was hardly bigger than a normal bathroom. It was distempered in cream, and had the usual bed-settee, one small easy chair, a hard chair, a basin with hot and cold water, and a small folding table which she had bought herself. Against one wall was a bookshelf, and there was a small chest of drawers in one corner. She kept her dresses on hangers behind a cheap curtain which covered a recess in one of the walls.

She was sitting in front of a gas fire reading when I knocked and went in. I noted that she had had to take to using spectacles, and was wearing a blue horn-rimmed pair. This was a pity because her eyes had been her best feature. She quickly put down her book and got up.

“Hello, little stranger,” I said, taking her hand, “how are you?”

“This is lovely,” she replied. “This is a great evening. Sit down, Mike. I was going to make a cup of coffee, so you’ve come at a good moment.”

I went to fetch the hard chair from the side of the room, but she insisted on me sitting in the easy chair while she made coffee.

I asked her how life had been treating her. She had taken off her spectacles, and now she looked round at me from the basin, where she was putting some water into a saucepan, and smiled.

“Not too badly. Office, and the flicks now and again. The usual thing.”

“Still at the same office?”

She nodded, stirring some coffee into the water. “Same old place, same old faces. Still, I suppose there are worse faces around the town.”

“Home every weekend?” I asked.

“No; I don’t go home much now. Mummy died, and Daddy married again six months ago. It made a bit of a difference. She’s a very nice woman, I suppose, but it’s not the same. I don’t think she likes having me around very much. I expect she thinks I remind Daddy of the past, and all that. You can’t blame her, really. It’s not what she says. She’s always very polite. Rather cool and indifferent, you know. Nothing you could pick on, but I just think they are happier if I don’t go down too often.”

“That’s bad luck.”

“Oh, well, it’s just one of those things. Really, it is nice to see you. You’ve been a rotten correspondent, you know.”

I offered her a cigarette and a light. I said, “My trouble is, I can never write a short letter. And that means that, as I know I’m going to write a long one, I always keep on putting it off till I’ve got more time.”

“Well, it’s a bad habit.”

She was sitting on a cushion on the floor by my side, a position of hers which I was to get to know well in time. She peered up at me a trifle shortsightedly and smiled.

“It is,” I agreed.

I thought that the intervening years had added depths to her voice. She was also taking much more trouble with her appearance. She was wearing a brown coat and skirt, and her hair, though still rather lank, was neatly done, and her feet were neatly shod. I told her about my transfer to the London office.

“That’s fine for you! You’re getting on fine, aren’t you?”

After a while she got up and brought out half a bottle of tawny port from a little cupboard under the window sill. She poured some into two cheap glasses, and handed me one. She raised her glass and said, “Let’s celebrate your return to London.”

“The prodigal’s return?”

“If you like. Anyway, here’s success to you.”

It was not very nice port, and I thought it fitted in well with her dreary existence. On the other hand, I assumed in the way men do that she didn’t mind living in that horrid little room. I thought she had probably grown accustomed to it and was even content. She told me some more about her life, and about her friend Marjorie, and I outlined a few things about Palesby.

“Do you always go to the cinema with Marjorie?”

“If you mean, have I got any boyfriends, the answer is no.”

“What, none?”

“No. One or two people have taken me out now and again, when they’ve had nothing better to do, but that’s all there is to it.”

She added with that devastating ability to face the truth which I was to associate with her later, “I’m not very good-looking, you know.”

“You’re being a bit modest. You look very nice to me.”

“I’m not being modest. I may be shortsighted, but I can still recognize what I see in my mirror.”

“Well, I think you look much nicer than when I went away, you’re more
soignée
and assured.”

“So are you. You would never have noticed that ten years ago, or said it even if you had.”

“We’ve both grown up a good deal.”

She smiled at me rather wistfully. “Growing up is a two-edged weapon for a woman. It’s different for a man.”

“When did you start wearing glasses?”

“About a year ago. We work in an electrically lit office. It’s a strain on the eyes. Of course, I only really need them for reading. I can see all right without them, otherwise.”

“Can you?”

“Well, fairly well, anyway.”

“I think glasses suit some girls. I think they suit you. They enhance the delicacy of some people’s faces.”

She put her hand on my knee impulsively. “Dear old Mike! Still trying to say what you think people wish to hear?”

“Well, it’s true in your case, anyway,” I insisted.

She sat staring at the gas fire for a while saying nothing. Suddenly I saw the pathos of her position. I saw her coming home each evening to that room and cooking her meal, and sometimes going to the cinema with her girlfriend. I thought it must be pretty miserable to be a girl who was not wanted by anybody in particular, not even her own parents. A girl who was neither remarkably good-looking, nor very intelligent, nor even very witty. It must have seemed so hopeless.

When finally I got up to go, I said on the spur of the moment, “What are you doing on Sunday, Kate?”

She made no pretence of thinking if she had an engagement. She said at once that she was doing nothing at all, and that since she had stopped going down to her parents’ she very rarely did do anything on Sundays.

“What about driving out to Hampton Court, and then having tea and coming back and going to a cinema?”

“I’d love to, unless you’ve got anybody better to go with.”

“There is nobody I would rather go with,” I answered firmly, “nobody at all.”

I did not wish her to think that I was taking her for a trip to Hampton Court because I felt sorry for her.

Yet what a dangerous thing pity is! It warps judgments, deflects justice, raises false hopes; it makes men risk worthwhile things for something which may be fundamentally of only transient worth; it will colour a man’s whole outlook so that he forgets honour, morality, honesty, even personal safety. Pity is much lauded, yet in excess it can be an insidious poison which can make a man mad and lure him to destruction. But I did not know all that when I invited Kate to Hampton Court the following Sunday.

I only saw a girl who was lonely.

No doubt I should have known that each evening in her room she would be looking forward to Sunday, reckoning it a day when a boy-and-girl romance, interrupted by events, would be renewed, and that when she had almost reconciled herself to a life of work and monotony a chance seemed to be offered her to seize something which she thought had eluded her forever.

I did not understand how far I was committing myself when I extended that casual invitation in her room that evening.

So we went to Hampton Court and strolled about the palace and gardens, and afterwards had tea in a hotel opposite the main gates. You could get a good tea out in those days, and we had crumpets thick with butter and sandwiches and cakes, served to us near a big fire as the day was closing in. Afterwards we drove back and went to an early film. I have forgotten what we saw, but I know that later we went to a restaurant in Frith Street, and had dinner.

It was a pleasant enough day, and I found Kate a pleasant enough companion. The shyness and reserve which I had associated with her from earlier days had largely disappeared when she was with me; it had almost gone, together with the ill-arranged stockings, the untidy hair, and the face devoid of make-up. She used a fair amount of make-up now, taking advantage of her natural sallowness rather than seeking to hide it, using a suntan cream and powder, and an orange lipstick. She was certainly not beautiful, with her horn-rimmed spectacles and ungainly walk; and I could well see that her serious manner and deliberate speech might put men off. But she was no longer dowdy, and if she had not Cynthia’s rather brittle prettiness, she was a more attractive conversationalist.