The Jealous One (21 page)

Tuesday. The Tuesday when she had been in bed with ’flu. It was lunch time … no, early afternoon … and she was roused from a feverish doze by the sound of the back door opening.

‘Rosie!’ came the gay, unmistakable call. ‘Are you there, Rosie?’

It was part of the irritating madness between the two households that they could walk in and out of each other’s houses unannounced. Rosamund clutched her dressing gown about her and cowered, like a trapped animal, waiting to see what would happen. If she didn’t answer, would Lindy go away?

‘Rose—ee!’

The voice sounded from the foot of the stairs, purposeful. In another moment steps would be coming up. Rather than be caught here, in bed, Rosamund would go down and face her.

‘Oh—Hullo! Not up yet? Or are you not well, or
something
, you poor thing?’

Lindy was observing her from the foot of the stairs, and her pitying tones seemed to Rosamund to embrace both possibilities: that Rosamund was so slatternly as not to get up till the afternoon, or that she was a middle-aged, sickly sort of a creature, always succumbing to various ailments.

‘No, of course not! I’ve just been having a bath, that’s all,’ lied Rosamund, and felt her temperature leap in protest. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Oh. Oh, well, I just came to say, could you tell Geoff not to worry about his mother, I’m going down there this
afternoon
. I know he was afraid she’d be disappointed at my not going yesterday, she does count on it so, but I just couldn’t in all that fog.’

‘Counts on it so’!—just as if
she
was the daughter-in-law!
Rosamund’s anger broke through the lethargy of illness.

‘Don’t bother,’ she said icily. ‘
I
’
m
going this afternoon. I was just getting ready.’

Nothing had been further from her thoughts until this moment, but as she spoke she knew that this was exactly what she would do.

‘Oh.’ For one pleasing second Lindy looked quite
disconcerted
. Then a strange, almost a cunning look came into her eyes. ‘Oh, I see. How will you go, then?’

‘By train, of course,’ snapped Rosamund. ‘Just as I have for about twenty years, before you turned up with your car.’

Ordinarily she would never have allowed the hostility to sound in her voice like this, but her raised temperature, combined with anger, was making her feel not exactly
light-headed
, but a little irresponsible; a not unpleasant feeling, rather like being slightly drunk.

‘Oh.’ Lindy had an oddly thoughtful look. ‘Well, that’s that, then. I’d better go back.’

Lindy had said goodbye. The back door had closed
behind
her, yet somehow Rosamund could not feel that she was really gone. She felt every minute that Lindy was going to walk in again, call some gay, sharp-edged comment up the stairs; so she prepared for her expedition with nervous, almost furtive, haste. Just as she was about to start, it occurred to her that she had better ring her mother-in-law and warn her that it was she, and not Lindy, who would be coming.

It was Jessie who answered the phone, and in a husky, nervous voice (nervous because of her fear that Lindy might somehow be overhearing her) Rosamund explained hastily the change of plan—stated it, rather, for explanation, really, there was none. Jessie understandably sounded a little
bewildered
, but never mind, Rosamund could think up some suitable explanation when she actually arrived there.

She didn’t know then, of course, that she never would arrive.

Her memories of the next hour or so were a little blurred.
She remembered that by the time she left the house the short December afternoon was already fading; and as she hurried along the damp, darkening streets, she presently became aware of footsteps hurrying just behind.

Yes, it was Lindy, swift and purposeful, full of some explanation or other of her presence … that she felt she ought herself to bring the typed notes to Mrs Fielding … that it was still too foggy for the car … that she thought it would be fun to travel down by train with Rosamund….

As far as she could recall, Rosamund had managed to respond with reasonable civility … they had reached the station together … and there, yes, there had been Norah, just as she had claimed, chattering despairingly about Ned and his escapade. And then the train for Ashdene had come in … and the next thing Rosamund clearly recalled, she and Lindy were sitting opposite each other in an empty
carriage
, arguing. No, quarrelling, as they had never ventured to do before.

What had started it all? Had Rosamund, with the
irresponsibility
of fever, allowed her self-control to slip? Or had Lindy provoked it, with quiet deliberation, for purposes of her own? Whichever it was, Rosamund’s next clear
recollection
was of bitter words darting back and forth between them, shrill above the clatter of the train.

‘I
knew
you’d come to it in the end!’ Lindy was crying triumphantly. ‘As soon as I saw you in that dressing-gown today, I knew you’d sunk to the last resort of the jealous wife—flight into illness. You were planning that Geoffrey should come home and pity you—feel guilty at having
neglected
you——’

The very thing which Rosamund had so absolutely
determined
not
to do, from the very moment that she knew she was ill. Strange that Lindy should have put her finger on exactly that.

‘What rubbish! I told you, I was getting ready to go out. And why on earth
should
I want Geoffrey to pity me? You don’t really imagine I’m jealous, do you? Of
you
?’

She tried to put into the last word all the belittling scorn
which Lindy would have done, but was conscious of failure. Lindy gave a pitying little laugh, inaudible above the roar of the train, but unmistakeable.

‘Jealous? Of course you’re jealous—you’re half crazy with jealousy! It sticks out a mile, the way you’ve been acting tolerant all these months; encouraging Geoffrey to spend half his time with me; inviting me over to your place all the time; pretending I’m your best friend. Don’t you know it’s the oldest technique in the world? Practically all jealous wives do it—and they all think they’re the only ones in the world ever to have thought of it! Just as you thought
you
were….’

The truth in this was terrifying.

‘Rubbish!’ said Rosamund again, aware of how feeble it sounded. ‘I’m never jealous, ever. Ask Geoffrey——’

‘Oh,
Geoffrey
!
Poor Geoffrey! The man is always the last to see through a trick like that, I grant you! It makes me wild—it makes me absolutely
furious
—to have to stand by and watch him taking it all at its face-value, and
thinking
what a tolerant wife you are, and how he ought to be grateful to you, and not do anything to hurt you! But I’m not going to stand by and watch it any longer! I’m going to find a way of showing him what you’re really like—jealous,—spiteful—possessive! Just like the other wives! I’m going to talk to him this very night…. Tell him …!’

‘And
I’m
going to tell him what
you’re
really like!’ cried Rosamund, fever and anger together blazing like fire in her body, giving her a sense of extraordinary abandon. ‘It makes
me
furious to watch him taking
you
at your face-value! I shall tell him that all this calm and gaiety that you lay on is just so much play-acting. I’ll show him—prove to him that underneath you’re nervy—hag-ridden—jealous. Yes,
you’re
the jealous one! That’s why you’re always flattering the husbands and criticising the wives—it’s because you know you can’t make a man happy yourself, and so you’re for ever trying to prove that nobody else can——’

The heat playing in her face was unbearable. With a quick movement Rosamund stood up, opened the window
and leaned out, letting the blessed, cool, misty air stream across her face. Lindy’s words about the obviousness of her jealousy had struck too near the bone. In her fury, she only hoped that her own retaliatory words had struck Lindy with equally painful nearness.

They had.

At first, Rosamund was not aware of the hand reaching softly, lightly, from behind as she leaned out … and by the time she knew that it was on the handle of the carriage door, turning it, it was too late. She tried to push Lindy violently away, but already the latch had slipped, and the only effect of her pushing was to speed her own falling
outwards
as the door swung open. It seemed like the ineffectual pushing of a dream, with no force, no impact … and then, strangely, she seemed to be floating away from the train, with no sense of violence, or even of rapid movement.
During
that half second, which was all it could have taken, she did not feel as if she was falling at all, but rather as if she was hovering, in utter freedom, while the lights and sparks of the train whirled past like wheeling stars. And it was not fear that she was conscious of at all, in that strange,
disembodied
instant; rather it was triumph; an exultant,
glorious
sense of victory. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won!’ she seemed to cry aloud in her soul. ‘Now at last Geoffrey will know that she is wicked—evil! He will know that she is a murderer!’ And as she glimpsed Lindy’s white face, still leaning from the train as it streamed away from her, she felt that it was Lindy, not she, who was hurtling to her doom.

Less than a second, less than half a second, it must have been while she seemed to float thus like a triumphant,
disembodied
spirit; and then the ground, like some dark monster out of the fog, sprang up and flung itself upon her.

It must have been hours later when she recovered
consciousness
, and found herself lying among a tangle of bushes and tussocky grass by the railway line.

*

And now as Rosamund relived the memory, sitting once
again in a train thundering through the misty night, the relief was so enormous that she could only close her eyes and lean back in a peace of mind and body that she had hardly expected ever to know again. Everything was
explained
now: her own blackout of memory; Lindy’s
disappearance
; everything. After such a deed, Lindy could not do otherwise than disappear, at least for a time. And
Rosamund
must have had concussion from her fall, hence the temporary loss of memory, and also the savage headaches which she might have guessed, had she thought about it, were far worse than one would have expected from a mild attack of ’flu.

And those sickening panics that had so mysteriously assailed her of late—they were not, after all, a symptom of subconscious guilt—they were quite simply her nerves and body remembering the shattering shock of being flung from the train. For it was the sound of a train that had set them off on each occasion—the sound, or the sight, or the smell of trains and railways. Hence her inexplicable terror the other night when she had come with Basil to the railway bridge, and she had fancied that it must be something about his words or presence that was making her feel faint with fear.

The muddy shoes and coat were explained, too; and Lindy’s battered handbag. Rosamund must have clutched at it in a last unnoticing effort to save herself; and Lindy, in the stress of the moment, or in fear of being pulled out herself, must have loosed her hold on it. Hence, perhaps, the frightened look on her face as it whirled away—even in that first second she must have realised that the handbag, found by Rosamund’s body, would incriminate her beyond hope of escape.

Yes, what
would
Lindy have been thinking, in that
moment
and later? There could be no doubt that she had meant to kill Rosamund; but how soon did she realise that she had failed? It had been the merest chance that
Rosamund
had landed among grass and bushes—almost
anywhere
else, she would undoubtedly have been killed.

So what would Lindy have done, when she finally got off the train? Rosamund put herself in Lindy’s place: she set her mind working as Lindy’s mind must have worked, noticing, as she did so, how easily it came to her.

Well, of course, first and foremost she would try to get the whole thing regarded as an accident—you didn’t need to have any particular sort of mind to decide on
that.
She couldn’t pretend that she hadn’t been on the train at all, because Norah had seen her; would it be best to pretend that she had witnessed the accident, or that she hadn’t? Hadn’t, of course; for if she had, then she should surely have pulled the communication cord at once. It would be easy enough to say that Rosamund had gone off down the corridor, and that it was some time before she, Lindy, began to wonder why she hadn’t come back.

So what then? Well, of course, when she got out at
Ashdene
, she really
would
have to go through the motions of wondering why Rosamund hadn’t got out too. She would have to show due concern about the disappearance.

Show who? There would be no point in all this
pantomime
of solicitude unless someone knew of it. Yet she
certainly
wouldn’t want to alert the station people, have them sending search parties along the line before she had been able to retrieve the incriminating handbag. So at this point it would be a good idea to phone Geoffrey, let him know that something had happened, and that she, Lindy, was duly anxious about it; but not to tell him exactly
what
had happened yet, because she still wouldn’t have a proper story worked out—later on she could explain the cryptic nature of her communication by claiming that she’d been so
bewildered
—couldn’t think what had happened—didn’t want to worry him without cause—that sort of thing.

A becoming degree of anxiety on her part thus
established
, she could now concentrate on retrieving the
handbag
. How long would this take? How far away from
Ashdene
had the ‘accident’ occurred? And would Lindy go on foot—perhaps for miles? Or on a slow, infrequent country bus? Or would she dare to take a taxi to somewhere in the
vicinity, with the risk of the taximan remembering about her if it came to being questioned by the police?