The Backward Shadow (7 page)

‘You know what would really be interesting in here,' Dottie said suddenly. ‘Scandinavian ware. You know—Design Centre stuff. Teak, whitewood, enamelled iron, ceramics, glass candle-sticks,
snow-white yakskin rugs, maybe a few rolls of Swedish fabrics …'

I gazed at her aghast. ‘Are you quite barmy? In
here
?'

‘Of course! Think of the contrast. The tudor setting with the brand-new, stark simple goods—it'd be marvellous!'

She sounded so enthusiastic that I looked round dubiously, trying to visualise it. ‘Strip lighting? Show cases?' I asked incredulously.

‘Possibly—possibly—' She was pacing about with such an air of purpose that I grew suddenly worried for fear she was serious.

‘Dottie, come on out of it, will you? Are you crazy?'

‘No. We've got to do something, why not this?'

‘We?'

‘You're looking for gainful employment, aren't you? You should be. And so am I. And this might be just what we both need.'

‘But—but—but—you can't open a shop, just like that! What about permits, stock, capital,
experience
…?'

‘I've got the capital—we won't need much. I've got the experience, too—well, a bit of it. As for the rest, we can deal with everything as it comes.'

‘I wish you'd stop saying “we”! Include me right out of this, I've never heard of anything so insane.'

‘I have.'

‘What?' I said, taken off balance.

‘Your New York scheme is a lot madder, it's absolutely certifiable if you want to know, but did I throw cold water on it when you told me? No I didn't, I even thought seriously of asking if I could come with you. I'm still thinking of it. And in the meantime, it strikes me we might try and do something together, to keep ourselves alive and sane and self-respecting until—' She stopped. We stared at each other through the dust-motes. Suddenly she drooped.

‘You're right,' she said flatly. ‘What am I talking about? Let's get out of here and go home.'

* * *

That afternoon, abruptly, she left for London. She was very subdued.

‘You can't do anything without a man,' she said dispiritedly. ‘You can't even give yourself the illusion of enterprise.'

She kissed David tenderly and then kissed me. ‘Take care of him,' she said, and walked swiftly to the car, leaving behind a bottle and a half of Scotch and a very unpleasant emptiness.

I was doing some gardening towards dusk, trying to dispel my depression, when I heard the gate creak and a stranger walked in. He was very London-looking, tweed jacket, whipcords, Clydella shirt and all. He was also extremely attractive. I hadn't seen such a handsome man for ages, at least not one with such a gloss. I leaned on my spade and tried to look casual.

He doffed his brand-new driving cap and crinkled up his eyes.

‘Mrs. Graham?'

‘Miss,' I said automatically.

‘Ah,' he said whimsically. ‘Yes. Is—er—Dorothy still on the premises?'

‘No, she drove back to London at lunchtime.'

‘Ah,' he said again, looking downcast.

A sudden intuition told me that this was the interior decorator. Dottie had told me, among other things to do with her called-off love-life, that he had been tentatively trying to renew acquaintance.

‘Just my luck,' he said. ‘Must have missed her on the way down here. Damned awful road, missed my way twice.'

‘I'm sorry,' I said, quite untruthfully.

We stared blankly at each other.

‘Well,' he said, stirring himself. ‘I suppose I'd better be starting back.'

‘Perhaps you'd like something before you go,' I offered without much enthusiasm.

He brightened. ‘Well, that's very sweet of you—if you were making a pot of tea, that'd be just—'

I suppressed a sigh and led him into the cottage. David was
asleep in his pram in the hall and we had to edge past.

‘Do you share the house?'

‘Only with him,' I said shortly, praying he wouldn't say ‘Ah!' again, but of course he did, very sagely this time.

I offered him whisky, chiefly because I'd had tea and couldn't be bothered to start making more. He seemed gratified to find some of London's amenities in this rural wilderness. He took his glass and strolled to the window, where he sat on the window-seat and gazed out at the darkening garden. David began to whimper, so I went out and changed him and when I came back about ten minutes later, the young man looked round at me with an expression of some surprise.

‘It's quite pleasant, just sitting here, isn't it?' he said.

‘Do you mean, not boring?'

‘No, really pleasant. Pretty. Quiet. The birds and so on. And the air smells fresh.' He smiled diffidently. ‘You can tell I don't get into the country much. Not the real country.'

‘Well, the whisky's probably helping.'

He laughed rather uncertainly. ‘Are you getting at me?'

‘Maybe a little. Quite unfairly. Sorry, I'm in a rather bad mood today.'

‘Why?' he asked interestedly.

‘Well, I've had Dottie here for a week, and now she's gone.'

He looked at me with a sudden sharpening of sympathy. His good looks became much more actively attractive when he wasn't being blasé and mannered.

‘How I do know exactly what you mean!' he said fervently. He drank the remains of his drink and then said, ‘By the way, my name's Alan Innes. Without wanting to inveigle any confidence out of you, would you mind me asking if she's ever mentioned me at all?'

I hesitated. ‘Not that I remember. But names without faces never stick in my mind. She might have done.'

‘Yes. I see,' he said glumly. He looked through the window which was now a series of black diamonds, then back at me with his crinkled-up smile of rue. ‘We were very fond of each other once. But it all broke up, unfortunately.'

‘Oh?'

‘I couldn't have been sorrier myself. It was all so absurd. You know how these things can happen, if one's fool enough to let them—everything's going along beautifully, and then some absolute nonsense happens—something so silly and trivial one's ashamed to remember it later—and it's like pulling out the supporting pillar which brings the whole thing down on one's head.'

He looked at me. I said nothing.

‘Idiotic, isn't it?' he said with a wry smile.

‘Well. If the relationship is supported on such frail pillars, perhaps it wasn't very strong anyway,' I said, remembering the green and gold picture which had brought this particular temple of love tumbling down.

He sighed. ‘P'raps you're right. Felt quite strong at the time.'

He stared into his empty glass in what might have been a gloomy reverie or a broad hint. It had begun to rain outside, rather heavily. I excused myself and went out to put away my gardening tools, returning after a while rather too wet for comfort. I put some more logs on the fire, realising as I did so that this might create just the sort of cosy atmosphere which, together with the rain and the whisky and Mr. Innes' melancholy mood, might make it even more difficult to get rid of him.

It did. He sat on and on, until another small drink became a necessity of good manners. I made it as small as I could, and then left him again, this time to feed David and put him to bed. I was gone some time, and when I came back I found my visitor stretched on the settee reading a book with his shoes off, looking mightily at home. The glass, which looked slightly fuller than when I had seen it last, was on the floor beside him. He gave me a most appealing grin as I came into the room.

‘I say, I've taken a diabolical liberty,' he said, holding up the glass.

‘So I see.'

‘I do hope you'll forgive me. I feel incredibly at home here somehow. Funny, that. Not my milieu at all.'

‘Well, it's Dottie's whisky, as it happens. I'm just a bit concerned about you finding your way home in the dark.'

He got up reluctantly and padded to the window in his socks. ‘It's coming down in buckets,' he said, sounding more cheerful than he had any right to. ‘What's worrying me is not finding the way, but the fact that I shall be doing it in an open car.'

‘What do you mean, open? Can't you put the roof up?'

‘No. It's broken.'

I felt so annoyed I could scarcely hide it. Did he expect me to put him up for the night? If so, he was in for a rude disappointment.

‘You've got a car full of water by now, then,' I said.

‘Oh, no, that's all right—I've got a bit of canvas over it. But it'd be pretty wet trying to drive through this lot.' He looked at me. The winning grin still played about his lips. His whole manner was that of a man accustomed to getting things his own way. Something in it made me stubborn.

‘I'm awfully sorry,' I said. ‘I'd offer to put you up here, if you were a female. But as you're most decidedly not, I'm afraid I can't.'

The smile slipped briefly, and was restored. ‘Oh, Jane, don't be like that!' he said, throwing in my name so casually I wasn't sure I'd heard it. ‘Are you worried about your reputation, or your virtue? I assure you, neither will suffer from me spending the night in your spare bedroom! Or even down here on that most comfortable settee.'

‘I'm sure my virtue, what's left of it, is quite safe in your hands, Mr. Innes,' I said. ‘I wouldn't flatter myself so far as to think it might not be. As to my reputation, you're quite worldly-wise enough to realise I've nothing much to lose there. However, nothing much is better than nothing at all. This is a village, and I have to live in it. They naturally expect the worst of me because of my situation; I take a rather perverse pride in not fulfilling their expectations.'

His face had changed and now he came towards me and put his glass down on the table. ‘How long have you lived here?' he asked curiously.

‘Six months.'

‘And in all that time—you've never let a man stay the night?'

I stared at him, as if winded. From feeling utterly in control of the situation two minutes before, I now felt as out of countenance as I had felt in the face of the plumber's sly wink. My thoughts flew to Toby and latched to him like a burr. But how can the man you love protect you if he is not there?

‘You poor little thing,' said Alan Innes, and took me in his arms with practised tenderness.

Some dim instinct told me not to struggle, that if I stood there coldly and let him kiss a dead mouth he would be insulted and lose interest. But it didn't work, for two reasons. One, he was very strongly inclined to spend the night in my warm bed and not driving through the rain in his open car, and he was not really sensitive enough to notice or care whether I reacted to his first kisses or not. But the other reason was the one which was shaming to me. I despised him; but I was not, it seemed, physically indifferent to any man so good-looking and sexually able. His mouth, hands and body compelled me to a response, a response so treacherous and despicable that nausea damped down the sudden blaze in my body as soon as he let me go.

He looked into my eyes with simple triumph for a second, then with admirable adroitness took me off balance with a turn of his foot and the next moment I found myself in a highly connubial position with him on the hearthrug.

I don't really know what would have happened if he had managed to down me on the settee instead of the floor. But the floor before the fire was where I had lain with Toby.

Galvanised by this sudden recollection, I began to struggle fiercely, as if I'd just woken up to find an irresponsible erotic dream to be quite terrifyingly real and imminent. He had me at a severe disadvantage, moral as well as postural, having just distinctly felt me return his kiss, and being thus certain
of victory he held me down and laughed in my face—a not entirely lover-like laugh. It alarmed and infuriated me. I got one hand free and pushed him sharply in the mouth with it. This hurt him enough to make him want to hurt me, which he did by kissing me with most unpleasant violence, biting me painfully at the same time.

‘Is that what you wanted?' he asked me, with what I can only call a leer, and without further ado wrenched at my shirt, tearing the first two buttons off it.

God, I thought, he's going to rape me.

It was too ridiculous—too bizarre. How could this have happened? The polite, ultra-correct young man who had climbed, so immaculately dressed, out of his car two hours ago was now swarming all over me and pawing me like a savage, literally panting with lust, his neatly-barbered fair hair falling over a suddenly sweating brow. I felt panic rising in me and pulled his head back by the hair as hard as I could. He let go of me just long enough to slap my face. I could feel his knee working its way between my legs, and I suddenly thought: well, thank God I've got slacks on, anyway, he won't find those so damned easy to navigate.

This thought returned me to some faint sense of proportion. No woman, surely, can be assaulted by one man against her will, and the whole enterprise by this time was thoroughly against mine. But since I didn't fancy a lengthy continuation of this undignified struggle, I decided to try a ruse. I suddenly went limp, rolled my eyes, stuck my tongue out, arched my back, let out a gargling sound, and went limp again.

It worked. He dropped me like a hot brick and clambered hastily off my apparently unconscious form.

‘Jane—' he began uncertainly.

I was on my feet in a second and making for the door. Before he could gather his wits to follow me I was locked in the hall lavatory. I sat down there and put my head between my knees. I felt sick and rotten.

He knocked on the door. With his fist.

‘Come out, you bitch,' he said harshly.

‘Not bloody likely,' I replied in kind.

‘You can't stay in there all night,' he said after a moment, in a slightly less vicious tone. I made no reply, but stood up shakily and gave myself a drink of water. ‘Come on out. I won't make love to you if you really don't want to,' he said, merely sullen now.