The Gossamer Cord (51 page)

What a fool I had been! Never in my worthless life had I been in such danger. In every other petty escapade my sister had been at hand to rescue me. Now she was mourning me for dead.

What should I do? Where should I turn?

As usual, one side of me sought to placate the other. She is only a model. Artists have their models. They are casual in their behavior.

Casual indeed … in their love affairs, slipping from one to the next, and the last one is as dead as the first one they ever had. This was the bohemian life which I had been so eager to sample. Oh, if only I could go back! But no … “The moving finger writes …” Well, it had written and where now? Oh, Violetta, why are you not here with me?

I must be careful. I must work out what I should do. Was I going to leave Jacques before he told me to go? Where could I go to? How? Return to Caddington? Face Violetta, my parents? It was the only way.

They loved me. They would be happy to have me back. But how could I explain? And yet… what else?

Think, I told myself. Don’t rush into something as you usually do—as you did into this. You have to do something. You can’t go on here. This is over … for him and for you. Thank your stars you are not in love with him any more than he is with you.

I would speak to him. I would ask him exactly what his relationship with Mimi was. How many others were there? I would be calm, practical. I must be.

I sat in the bedroom I shared with him. I heard footsteps in the attic above. I thought, when she left I would speak to him.

I waited and after some time I heard the front door shut.

I would go to the
salon
and confront him. But when I arrived the
salon
was empty. I went up to the studio. He was not there and I realized he had left with Mimi. I felt uncertain. Waiting had always been trying for me. I wanted to strike quickly. I wanted to be on my way. Where to? That was the question.

I rehearsed what I would say to him. I was ready and waiting, but still he did not come back.

He did not return that night. Was he with Mimi? It seemed possible. Perhaps there was someone else. But surely he was staying away to show he cared nothing for my feelings.

It was early afternoon of the next day when he came into the house.

I waited for him in the
salon.
When he came I said with the utmost restraint, tinged only slightly with sarcasm, “You have had a pleasant time?”

“Very, thank you.”

“With Mimi, the model?”

“Is that your affair?”

“I imagine it is yours.”

He lifted his shoulders and smiled at me benignly.

“Are you telling me she is your mistress?”

“I did not speak of it,” he said.

“Listen, Jacques …”

He continued to smile. “I listen,” he said.

“You can’t expect me to accept this.”

He raised his eyebrows questioningly.

This was maddening. He was behaving as though it were perfectly natural for me to find him in the company of a semi-clad woman and then go off to spend the night with her. I could be calm no longer.

“This is unacceptable!” I cried.

“Unacceptable?” He repeated the word as though puzzled. “Why so?”

“How dare you treat me like this?”

“Treat? What is this treat?”

He was seeking refuge behind an imperfect knowledge of the language. I had seen him do this before. But I knew he understood.

“I left home,” I said, “to come here … and now …”

“You left your home because you no longer wanted to stay there.”

“I gave up everything … for you.”

“You are being very … provincial.”

“And you are so worldly, so sophisticated.”

“I thought you had grown up, too.”

“How can you do this … right under my nose?”

“Your nose?” he said, puzzled again.

“You know exactly what I mean. You make no secret of what is going on.”

“Secret? What is this secret?”

“She is your mistress.”

“So?”

I could not go on. I would burst into recriminations if I did, and that would not help me.

“I hate you,” I said.

He lifted his shoulders and regarded me with that benevolent tolerance an adult might show towards a recalcitrant child.

I could bear no more. I ran out of the room, took a coat and left the house.

There was only one place I could go. Janet Bailey had said: “You know where we are, dear. You can always come to us and we shall be glad to see you.”

I was so relieved to find she was at home.

“I am so glad you came,” she said at once. “Geoff and I are getting ready to leave.”

I stared at her in dismay. This was another blow. What should I do now?

“Come in,” she went on. “And I’ll tell you all about it.”

I sat down in a daze.

“Cup of tea?” she asked.

“Tell me about your going first,” I said.

“It’s on company advice … well, orders, more like. It’s the way things are going. They’re sure there’ll be war. They think it’s better for us to get home. All the English staff will be leaving and the office will be run by French employees. Heaven knows what will happen! Anyway, we’ll be leaving.”

“When?” I stammered.

“In a few days. Just time to get ourselves together.”

“Oh,” I said blankly. Then she noticed something was wrong.

“What is it?” she said, and I blurted out what had happened.

“You can’t stay with him!”

“No … but what can I do?”

“You’ll have to go home. Why not come with us? We’ll talk to Geoff about it. He should be home in a couple of hours. Things are in a whirl at the office. They’re all saying Hitler won’t stop at Poland and then the balloon will go up. It will be a stampede getting back once it’s started.”

I was seeing a way out. I could go with them. They would help me.

Janet went on as though reading my thoughts.

“Yes, you must come with us. I am sure that will be the best for you.”

“How can I go home?”

“You’ll have to make a clean breast of it, dear. There’s no help for it.”

“Oh … I couldn’t do that.”

“What then? Stay here? Have you any money?”

“I haven’t bothered much about money. I have a little at the moment. Jacques always seemed to have plenty and he was quite generous. He liked me to buy clothes and things. I still have most of the last lot he gave me. I think he had a private income. I don’t believe he earned much with his paintings. That was one of the reasons I found life in the Latin Quarter so different from what I expected it to be. I’ve spent hardly anything recently. I suppose it was due to this growing resentment against him. Perhaps I had some notion of getting home. I am not sure. My plans are so vague.”

I could not remember how much I had, but I thought it would pay my fare home.

“Never mind,” said Janet. “We’d help, of course. You will, of course, have to leave with us, dear. It’s the only way. You will have to go back to your husband. Perhaps he will forgive you.”

“I couldn’t,” I said.

“But what will you do? You can’t stay with that man. I don’t suppose he’ll want you now he’s got this other one. Then you’ve always got that nice sister of yours—and your mother and father, too. They’ll look after you. I know it’s not nice having to eat humble pie, but sometimes it’s the only way.”

I could see that she was right, and I was wondering where I could work something out.

“Besides,” she went on, “what work could you do here? I can see something terrible happening to you if you stayed. No, you’ve got to come home with us. If you can’t go back to your husband, there are your sister and your parents.”

She was right, of course. The more I thought about it, the more I could see that I would go home with her and Geoffrey and in the meantime I would make a plan.

We talked in this strain until Geoffrey came home.

“We are leaving at the end of the week,” he said.

He listened to my tale of woe and said, of course I must go back with them. I embraced them warmly and said I did not deserve such good friends.

I stayed the night there and the next morning went back to Jacques’s house and packed my clothes. I was hoping to leave without seeing Jacques, but he arrived just as I was about to go.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

I fancied I saw a certain relief in his face.

“As you wish,” he replied.

“I am going home.”

“That will be wise.”

I felt a certain exultation because I felt no love for him now. I just wanted to forget the whole episode. If only he had never come to Cornwall! “The moving finger writes …”

But at least I would be free of him. I would find some way out of this. Violetta would help, as she always had.

“You’ll need money,” he said. “Your fare …”

“I can manage, thank you.”

He looked surprised. Then, characteristically, he made that gesture of lifting his shoulders, which had begun to irritate me.

“I would most happily …”

“No, thank you. Goodbye.”

“Bon voyage.”

And so I left Jacques.

Violetta had once said that feckless people such as I was often seemed to have helpers who arrive at the right moment. So it was with the Baileys. I have often thought since of that happy incident when the book fell from its place on the shelves. What I should have done without the Baileys at that time, I do not know. I shall always be grateful to them—and how fortuitous it was that they should be leaving at that time!

So the first stage was comfortably managed.

There were certain delays on the trains and we were late on reaching Calais. The ferries were uncertain, too.

“It seems,” said Geoffrey, not for the first time, “that we are leaving at the right moment.”

We had to wait three hours for the ferry.

“That will give us time to have a leisurely meal,” said Janet.

We went to a restaurant near the docks and on the way Geoffrey bought a newspaper.

“I wonder if there is any fresh news?” he said as we settled down and ordered the meal. He opened the paper.

“Hitler signs non-aggression pact with Soviet Union. That’s not good. It means he’s about to launch an attack on Poland.”

“And if he does,” said Janet, “that means war. Britain and France won’t allow that.”

“Well, we are on our way home, thank goodness. Oh …” he paused, and went on: “There’s been a murder … a body’s been found in the Rue de Singe.”

“Where?” cried Janet.

“It’s in the Quarter. I remember seeing it once. Odd name. Not a very salubrious spot. The sort of street you’d hesitate to go down after dark. As a matter of fact, I was interested in the name when I saw it and I asked them in the nearby cafe why it was called that. They said a man who had a monkey had lived there. He used to take it into the street and people dropped money into a cap it held out.”

He went on: “The body seems to be of a man … a Monsieur Georges Mansard, a wine merchant from Bordeaux.”

I was staring at Geoffrey.

“What?” I said. “May I see?”

“You look quite shocked, dear,” said Janet.

“I knew him slightly. He used to come to the house now and then. Jacques used to get his wine from him.”

“It’s always a shock when it’s someone you know. You never think these things are going to happen to people you know.”

I felt very shaken and I wondered who could have murdered pleasant, inoffensive Georges Mansard.

It was getting late when we boarded the ferry. Wrapped in a rug, I sat on deck with the Baileys and kept thinking of Georges Mansard’s body lying in that street… dead … shot through the heart, it had said. Who had done that to him, I wondered? Was it a love affair … a jealous husband? It was hard to imagine Georges involved in anything of that sort.

Then my mind was occupied with what I should do when I reached home. I should go direct to London on reaching Dover and I would telephone Caddington, for that would be the most likely place to find Violetta, and I wanted to ask her advice before I spoke to anyone else. It would be a terrible shock to them all to find me returned from the dead, and I needed Violetta’s help as I never had before.

Suppose my mother answered the telephone? Could I speak to her? I could disguise my voice and ask for Violetta. I would beg her to come to see me before I spoke to anyone else. If my mother or father answered the telephone, I should put down the receiver without answering.

We were nearly home now. It was a quiet night. Then I caught a glimpse of the white cliffs of Dover. The curtain was about to rise on a new act in my drama.

The Baileys insisted on my going home with them until I had really made up my mind what I was going to do. They had a pleasant house in a place called Bushey, which had grown out of Watford and was almost an extension of London, for there was mostly a built-up area between it and the capital.

“Convenient for the City,” Geoffrey commented.

Their daughter was there with her husband and I was introduced as a friend they had met in Paris who had had to leave as they had.

I managed, with Janet’s help, to avoid mentioning embarrassing details, and as the imminence of war was on everyone’s mind to such an extent, this was not really difficult.

I spent a rather restless night in the Baileys’ spare room and in the morning had made up my mind that I would telephone Caddington and ask Violetta to come here so that we could plan what had to be done.

I was trembling as I made the call, ready to cut off if anyone but Violetta answered … even my parents … though I should feel very guilty, remembering all the love they had showered on me throughout my life. But I simply could not face them, telling the truth. If I had merely eloped it would have been different, but to have staged my disappearance to make it look like death was a terrible thing to have done.

Yes, I must speak first to Violetta.

A voice came over the line to me. It is amazing what emotions one can feel in the space of a second.

“Caddington Hall,” said the voice, which I recognized as Amy’s, one of the maids. I felt relieved, then fearful that, if I remembered her voice, she might mine, so I assumed a French accent.

“Could I speak please to Mademoiselle Denver … Mademoiselle Violetta.”