The Fallen Curtain (6 page)

“My dear Elizabeth,” he began, “my dear Hugo, I know why you asked me here tonight and what you’ve been hinting at ever since I arrived. And because I want to enjoy your very delightful company without any more awkwardness, I’m going to do here and now what you very obviously want me to do—that is, explain just how it happened that I suggested Hugo would be happier away from Frasers.”

Elizabeth said, “Now, Duncan, listen…”

“You can say your piece in a moment, Elizabeth. Perhaps you’ll be surprised when I say
I am entirely to blame for what happened.
Yes, I admit it, the fault was all mine.” He lifted one hand to silence Hugo who was shaking his head vehemently. “No, Hugo, let me finish. As I said, the fault was mine. I made an error of judgment. Oh, yes, I did. I should have been a better judge of men. I should have been able to see when I promoted you that you weren’t up to the job. I blame myself for not understanding—well, your limitations.”

They were silent. They didn’t look at him or at each other.

“We men in responsible positions,” he said, “are to blame when the men we appoint can’t rise to the heights we envisage for them. We lack vision, that’s all. I take the whole burden of it on my shoulders, you see. So shall we forgive and forget?”

He had seldom seen people look so embarrassed, so shamefaced. It just went to show that they were no match for
him. His statement had been the last thing they had expected and it was unanswerable. He handed her his plate with its little graveyard of chicken bones among the potato skins and as she took it he saw a look of baulked fury cross her face.

“Well, Elizabeth,” he said, unable to resist, “am I forgiven?”

“It’s too late now. It’s past,” she said in a very cold, stony voice. “It’s too late for any of this.”

“I’m sorry if I haven’t given you the explanation you wanted, my dear. I’ve simply told you the truth.”

She didn’t say any more. Hugo didn’t say anything. And suddenly Duncan felt most uncomfortable. Their condemnatory faces, the way they both seemed to shrink away from him, was almost too much for him. His heart began to pound and he had to tell himself that a racing heart meant nothing, that it was pain and not palpitations he must fear. He reached for one of his little white pills ostentatiously, hoping they would notice what they had done to him.

When still they didn’t speak, he said, “I think perhaps I should go now.”

“But you haven’t had coffee,” said Elizabeth.

“Just the same, it might be better…”

“Please stay and have coffee,” she said firmly, almost sternly, and then she forced a smile. “I insist.”

Back in the sitting room they offered him brandy. He refused it because he had to drive home, and the sooner he could begin that drive the happier he would be. Hugo had a large brandy, which he drank at a gulp, the way brandy should never be drunk unless one had had a shock or were steeling oneself for something. Elizabeth had picked up the evening paper and was talking in a very artificial way about a murder case which appeared on the front page.

“I really must go,” said Duncan.

“Have some more coffee? It’s not ten yet.”

Why did they want him to stay? Or, rather, why did she? Hugo was once more busy with the brandy bottle. He would have thought his company must be as tiresome to them as theirs was to him. They had got what they wanted, hadn’t
they? He drank his second cup of coffee so quickly that it scalded his mouth and then he got up.

“I’ll get an umbrella. I’ll come out with you,” said Hugo.

“Thank you.” It was over. He was going to make his escape and he need never see them again. And suddenly he felt that he wouldn’t be able to get out of that house fast enough. Really, since he had made his little speech, the atmosphere had been thoroughly disagreeable. “Good night, Elizabeth,” he said. What platitudes could he think of that weren’t too ludicrous? “Thank you for the meal. Perhaps we may meet again some day.”

“I hope we shall and soon, Duncan,” she said, but she didn’t give him her cheek. Through the open door the rain was driving in against her long skirt. She stood there, watching him go out with Hugo, letting the light pour out to guide them round the corner of the house.

As soon as he was round that corner, Duncan felt an unpleasant jerk of shock. His car lights were blazing, full on.

“How did I come to do a thing like that?”

“I suppose you left them on to see your way to the door,” said Hugo, “and then forgot them.”

“I’m sure I did
not.”

“You must have. Hold the umbrella and I’ll try the ignition.” Leaving Duncan on the flooded path under the inadequate umbrella, Hugo got into the driving seat and inserted the ignition key. Duncan watched him, stamping his feet impatiently. “Not a spark,” said Hugo. “Your battery’s flat.”

“It
can’t
be.”

“I’m afraid it is. Try for yourself.”

Duncan tried, getting very wet in the process.

“We’d better go back in the house. We’ll get soaked out here.”

“What’s the matter?” said Elizabeth, who was still standing in the doorway.

“His battery’s flat. The car won’t start.”

Of course it wasn’t their fault but somehow Duncan felt it was. It had happened, after all, at their house, to which they
had fetched him for a disgraceful purpose. He didn’t bother to soften his annoyance. “I’m afraid I’ll just have to borrow your car, Hugo.”

Elizabeth closed the door. “We don’t have a car any more. We couldn’t afford to run it. It was either keeping a car or taking the boys away from school, so we sold it.”

“I see. Then if I might just use your phone, I’ll ring for a hire car. I’ve a mini-cab number in my wallet.” One look at her face told him that wasn’t going to be possible either. “Now you’ll say you’ve had the phone cut off.” Damn her! Damn them both!

“We could have afforded it, of course. We just didn’t need it any more. I’m sorry, Duncan, I just don’t know what you can do. But we may as well all go and sit down where it’s warmer.”

“I don’t want to sit down,” Duncan almost shouted. “I have to get home.” He shook off the hand she had laid on his arm and which seemed to be forcibly detaining him. “I must just walk to the nearest house
with
a phone.”

Hugo opened the door. The rain was more like a wall of water than a series of falling drops. “In this?”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Duncan cried fretfully.

“Stay the night,” said Elizabeth calmly. “I really don’t know what you can do but stay the night.”

  The bed was just what he would have expected a bed in the Crouch menage to be—hard, narrow, and cold. She had given him a hot-water bottle, which was an object he hadn’t set eyes on in ten years. And Hugo had lent him a pair of pyjamas. All the time this was going on, he had protested that he couldn’t stay, that there must be some other way, but in the end he had yielded. Not that they had been welcoming. They had treated the whole thing rather as if—well, how had they treated it? Duncan lay in the dark, clutching the bottle between his knees, and tried to assess just what their attitude had been. Fatalistic, he thought, that was it. They had behaved as if this were inevitable, that there was no escape for him, and here, like it or not, he must stay.

Escape was a ridiculous word, of course, but it was the sort of word you used when you were trapped somewhere for a whole night in the home of people who were obviously antagonistic, if not hostile. Why had he been such a fool as to leave those car lights on? He couldn’t remember that he had done and yet he must have. Nobody else would have turned them on. Why should they?

He wished they would go to bed too. That they hadn’t he could tell by the light, the rectangular outline of dazzlement, that showed round the frame of his bedroom door. And he could hear them talking, not the words but the buzz of conversation. These late Victorian houses were atrociously built, of course. You could hear every sound. The rain drumming on the roof sounded as if it were pounding on cardboard rather than on slates. He didn’t think there was much prospect of sleep. How could he sleep with the noise and all that on his mind, the worry of getting the car moved, of finding some way of getting to the office? And it made him feel very uneasy their staying up like that, particularly as she had said, “If you’ll go into the bathroom first, Duncan, we’ll follow you.” Follow him! That must have been all of half an hour ago. He pressed the switch of his bedlamp and saw that it was eleven-thirty. Time they were in bed if she had to get to her school in the morning and he to his accountancy course.

Once more in the dark, but for that gold-edged rectangle, he considered the car lights question again. He was certain he had turned them out. Of course it was hard to be certain of anything when you were as upset as he. The pressure they had put on him had been simply horrible and the worst moments those when he had been alone with Hugo while that woman was fishing the ancient pullet she’d dished up to him out of her oven. Really, she had been a hell of a time getting that main course when you considered what it had amounted to. Could she …? Only a madwoman would do such a thing and what possible motive could she have had? But if you lived in a remote place and you wanted someone to stay in your house overnight, if you wanted to
keep
him there, how better than to
immobilise his car? He shivered, even while he told himself such fancies were absurd.

At any rate, they were coming up now. Every board in the house creaked and the stairs played a tune like a broken old violin. He heard Hugo mumble something—the man had drunk far too much brandy—and then she said, “Leave all the rest to me.”

Another shiver that hadn’t very much to do with the cold ran through him. He couldn’t think why it had. Surely, that was quite a natural thing for a woman to say on going to bed? She only meant, You go to bed and I’ll lock up and turn off the lights. He had often said it when his wife was alive. And yet it was a phrase that was familiar to him in quite another context. Turning on his side away from the light and into fresh caverns of icy sheet, he tried to think where he had heard it. A quotation? Yes, that was it. It came from
Macbeth.
Lady Macbeth said it when she and her husband were plotting the old king’s murder. And what was the old king’s name? Douglas? Donal?

Someone had come out of the bathroom and someone else gone in. Did they always take such ages getting to bed? The lavatory flush roared and a torrent rushed through pipes that seemed to pass under his bed. He heard footsteps across the landing and a door closing. Apparently, they slept in the next room to his. He turned over, longing for the light to go out. It was a pity there was no key in that lock so that he could have locked his door.

As soon as the thought had formed and been uttered in his brain, he thought how fantastic it was. What, lock one’s bedroom door in a private house? Suppose his hostess came in in the morning with a cup of tea? She would think it very odd. And she might come in. She had put this bottle in his bed and had placed a glass of water on the table. Of course he couldn’t dream of locking the door, and why should he want to? One of them was in the bathroom
again.

Suddenly he found himself thinking about one of the men he had sacked and who had threatened him. The man had said, “Don’t think you’ll get away with this, and if you show
your ugly face within a mile of my place you may not live to regret it.” Of course he had got away with it and had nothing to regret. On the other hand, he hadn’t shown himself within a mile of the man’s place…. The light had gone out at last. Sleep now, he told himself. Empty your mind or think about something nice, your summer holiday in the villa, for instance, think about that.

The gardens would be wonderful with the oleanders and the bougainvillea. And the sun would warm his old bones as he sat on his terrace, looking down through the cleft in the pines at the blue triangle of Mediterranean which was brighter and gentler than that woman’s eyes…. Never mind the woman, forget her. Perhaps he should have the terrace raised and extended and set up on it that piece of statuary—surely Roman—which he had found in the pinewoods. It would cost a great deal of money, but it was his money. Why shouldn’t he spend his own? He must try to be less sensitive, he thought, less troubled by this absurd social conscience which, for some reason, he had lately developed. Not, he reflected with a faint chuckle, that it actually stopped him spending money or enjoying himself. It was a nuisance, that was all.

He would have the terrace extended and maybe a black marble floor laid in the salon. Frasers’ profits looked as if they would hit a new high this year. Why not get that fellow Churchouse to do all their printing for them? If he was really down on his luck and desperate he would be bound to work for a cut rate, jump at the chance, no doubt….

God damn it, it was too much! They were talking in there. He could hear their whisperings, rapid, emotional almost, through the wall. They were an absurd couple, no sense of humor between the pair of them. Intense, like characters out of some tragedy.

“The labour we delight in physics pain”—Macbeth had said that, Macbeth who killed the old king. And she had said it to him, Duncan, when he had apologised for the trouble he was causing. The king was called Duncan too. Of course he was.
He was called Duncan and so was the king and he too, in a way, was an old king, the monarch of the Fraser empire. Whisper, whisper, breathed the wall at him.

He sat up and put on the light. With the light on, he felt better. He was sure, though, that he hadn’t left those car lights on. “Leave all the rest to me….” Why say that? Why not say what everyone said, “I’ll see to everything”? Macbeth and his wife had entertained the old king in their house and murdered him in his bed, although he had done them no harm, done nothing to them but be king. So it wasn’t a parallel, was it? For he, Duncan Fraser, had done something, something which might merit vengeance. He had sacked Hugo Crouch and taken away his livelihood. It wasn’t a parallel.

He turned off the light, sighed, and lay down again. They were still whispering. He heard the floor creak as one of them came out of the bedroom. It wasn’t a parallel—it was much more. Why hadn’t he seen that? Lady Macbeth and her husband had had no cause, no cause…. A sweat broke out on his face and he reached for the glass of water. But he didn’t drink. It was stupid not to but…. The morning would soon come. “O, never shall sun that morrow see!” Where did that come from? Need he ask?