The Walking Stick (26 page)

‘How shall I get home?’

‘Drive yourself. A young lady like you, who is easy to remember – if you’ll pardon me – shouldn’t be seen catching a late bus or waiting in a tube or perhaps be
remembered by a taxi driver. Leigh will hire a Mini tomorrow and when he comes on this job will park it in Berkeley Square – on the south side – and you will pick it up there.
You’ll have a key. Do you know where Farthing Street is?’

‘No.’

‘Leigh will show you. It’s a cul-de-sac off East Lane, which runs off Abbey Street. His own car will be parked there. You just change cars and drive home. We’ll pick up the
Mini on Thursday.’

I said: ‘What about the two Safeguards?’

‘What about them?’

‘You’ll have to—’

‘Oh, they won’t be hurt, I can tell you. They’ll take care themselves for that. They’ll do their duty – naturally – but when there’s four to one,
they’ll show common sense.’

A man came out of the fog and tapped on the window. Jack Foil lowered it.

‘Can you tell me which way to Burlington Arcade?’ Australian voice.

‘Straight down. Straight down this way and cross the street. You can’t miss it.’

After the window was raised there was silence in the car.

‘One thing,’ said Jack Foil, and wiped his eyes. ‘One thing, Miss Dainton, if anything goes wrong at the beginning, don’t try to carry on – just drop everything and
pretend to be ill. If one of the Safeguards should see you, it’s all up, because he’d identify you anywhere and through you the police would reach Leigh – and perhaps even me. If
they come on you, say you twisted your leg and fainted, couldn’t remember where you were. Or if they find you in the cupboard, say you went in to find something and felt faint and someone
must have shut the cupboard door. I leave you to make up the best story. But get them to send for a doctor. I’ve given Leigh a pill for you to take before the doctor comes. It’s a
simple emetic – but it’s much more convincing if you really are sick. Do excuse me for putting such thoughts in your head, but to organize you have to prepare. Efficiency – you
remember we talked about it once.’

‘Yes, I remember.’

The smell of carnation overlaid the smell of petrol and dusty leather.

‘What time do we meet tomorrow night?’ Leigh asked.

‘Midnight. We pick up John Irons at 12.45, park here at 1.10. Perhaps the earlier time will be an advantage after all. In a manner of speaking the more people there are about the
better.’

I put my hand on the door handle.

‘Our car’s just round the corner,’ Leigh said. ‘What if it’s foggy like this, Jack?’

‘The forecast says clearing. But if it doesn’t we’ll meet an hour earlier in case of delays. One last thing, Miss Dainton.’

I paused. He had sunk back into his corner and the thick spectacles only gave off a sort of aquarium light.

‘This is a big effort for you, Miss Dainton, we fully understand. I never forget an injury and I never forget a favour. I’ll see you and Leigh do well out of this. You’ll do
very well indeed. So good luck for tomorrow.’

I was moving to get out when Leigh nudged my attention to Jack’s outstretched hand. I took it; it was cool and very soft; the metal of the ring was colder.

‘Good luck for tomorrow,’ he said again.

Tuesdays was usually our West End night, but tonight we would have gone home had there been anything at home but silence and thoughts and waiting. Instead a light meal at a
Chicken Inn and then the London Pavilion to see the latest teenage pop-singer hit. For about an hour the film was gorgeously noisy and actually squeezed the tension and the fear out of the centre
of one’s mind. But the noise began to fail with repetition, and as soon as it began to fail it began to jar. So in the end I couldn’t sit it out and we left at ten and began to grope
our way home.

Eleven-thirty when we got in bed, and we both more or less realized at the same moment that we were unlikely to sleep. Leigh never used sleeping pills and I hadn’t for eight years, and all
there was in the place were six aspirins and two Veganin. We tried one Veganin and two aspirins each, and we sat up and made tea and then read for a bit and the clock struck two and then three.

I dozed on his shoulder, and nightmare and reality took turn and turn about, the way it does when you’re a child and running a high temperature.

I suppose that way we slept, because much later I woke, warm and comfortable, the dark just giving way to the filtered light of dawn; I stretched my legs deliciously, the sheets where I parted
them being just cool enough to give a sensuous pleasure to lassitude and ease. And it was minutes, or seemed minutes, before the drawn sword of the new day slid its cold steel between my ribs.

He was still sleeping. But I no longer slept.

The forecast was right: the fog was clearing. Still thick in the morning, a genuine pale sunshine had broken through by midday. There was a breeze at London Airport. A few
ships left the docks and moved downriver.

I went out to lunch and, as I should get no supper, had a fairly substantial one. As usual I ate alone. The food didn’t go down but stayed in my stomach as if I had eaten clay. About three
o’clock I felt so sick that I began to wonder if I should be ill and so wreck the whole plan before it started. We were still working on the Stockton china, and there were about a dozen
pieces of valuable eighteenth-century stuff – jugs and mugs and vases – that I was almost certain were Lowestoft, in spite of the Meissen crossed swords on two of them – because
factories were not above copying even trade marks. But Maurice Mills was out this afternoon, so, sooner than commit myself, I put the pieces aside for him to see.

I told Mary I was going out for tea, and this gave me a chance to walk a bit; then I went in a café and swallowed three cups of weak tea and waited to see if it would kill or cure.

It was nearly four when I got back, and someone said an old lady was waiting to see me, so I went to the counter at the back and found old Mrs Stevenson. She had brought another couple of pieces
of china, which I accepted because they weren’t valueless; but I warned her she would be lucky to clear £30 for the two.

I thought, what would she think if she knew? What would John Hallows think? He’d probably pity rather than blame. Poor Deborah – so infatuated that she can no longer think straight
at all. But after seven years . . . nearly eight. But he would be truly hurt – as most of the directors would be if they ever knew. It was
such
a betrayal.

On the way back I went through the showrooms. A satisfying number of people about, including several top-rank jewellers whom I knew by sight. It would be a highly successful sale tomorrow
– if it ever took place.

Pains in my stomach. They seemed to be nerve pains, griping down the front of my belly and right into the groin. Nervous appendicitis. After working for twenty minutes I went into the
ladies’ lavatory and sat on a creaking bentwood chair in front of the damp-stained mirror and made up my face again. My grandmother, whom I could just remember, used little cool tear-offs
called
papier poudré,
and sometimes she’d wiped my face with them when I was a child. No modern compact seemed to have the same comforting, cooling feeling when one was hot or
worried.

A girl called Madge Stevens came in. ‘Feeling all right, Deborah?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘I just wondered. Is it the usual thing?’

‘Well, yes . . . I felt a bit green after lunch.’

‘I
thought
you looked it.’

‘Oh, I’m all right.’

Madge Stevens straightened her stocking. ‘Funny how things change, isn’t it? When I was at school we always used to call it the Curse. Now when it turns up I’m always so
relieved that I call it the Blessing!’

I got up, smiling. ‘Well, it’s your turn at the mirror anyhow.’

Back to work, still fighting odd bouts of pain. Mary had been called away so I took the opportunity of pretending to have to go to the cupboard opposite Smith-Williams’s office. It was as
I had seen it yesterday. Two mirrors, a folding camp bed, a copy of Rodin’s
Le Baiser
about quarter size, two buckets and a mop, and some overalls behind the door. But room enough for
me. If I ever got there. I had just shut the door when Smith-Williams came out of his office.

‘Oh, Deborah, can you come here a minute?’

Like a criminal already caught, I went shakily into his office, answered some routine inquiry as if not properly awake. He had to ask me one question twice before I heard him, and I thought he
looked at me appraisingly as I answered. Presently I escaped to my own office.

Five came and half past. Upstairs the showrooms would now be closed. In a few minutes John Hallows and probably Davidson, who had the longest service with the firm as a commissionaire, would go
upstairs with strongboxes and open the cases and put the jewels in – the vivid viridian emeralds from Gwalpur, the diamonds collected by the late Jonathan Plouth, the paper millionaire
– and bring them down and enter the strongroom and open the safe and put in the boxes and lock the safe and lock the strongroom; and then all would be secure for the night.

‘Look,’ Mary said, ‘I think I’ll slip off now, if you don’t mind. It was such hell getting home last night.’

‘Yes, of course, you go. I’m leaving myself in a few minutes.’

‘Where’s Mr Mills this afternoon?’

That was what I was wondering. ‘I don’t know if he’ll be back again. But anyway he won’t ask.’

‘OK. Thanks.’ She slid off her stool, tall and gaunt and graceless and young. ‘Thanks, Deborah. Bye.’

‘Bye.’

The directors usually went about six-thirty, though this was elastic either way. I wished I knew whether Maurice Mills would be back. If he came back he might well work on until seven-thirty, in
which case it would be difficult to find an excuse to outstay him. On the other hand, if I
left
now and he came back at six he might be surprised to find us both gone. Or John Hallows might
yet drop in about something and be similarly surprised. Also, the earlier I went to earth the more likely I was to be seen and the less unlikely it would be that by a thousand-to-one chance someone
went to the cupboard.

I worked on.

At seven the guards arrived and the alarms were switched on. At that point the guards
had
to know if anyone was left in the building, because they had to switch off the alarms to let them
out. Therefore if I was
publicly
in the building at seven I couldn’t just disappear. I was marked until I left.

In haste I got up, shut the reference book I’d been using, dropped my pen, groped under the desk and couldn’t find it. Starting up I jogged the desk and shook a cup and saucer to the
edge. Rubbing my shoulder I looked out through the glass door and saw Smith-Williams talking to Davidson at the door of his office.

Put the cup and saucer in the cupboard out of danger. How long would they talk? Davidson, a big grey-haired ex-Guardsman – one of those who had defended Calais in 1940 – was
explaining something. He was expressive about it, pointing upstairs and shaking his head. Look at my watch. Don’t panic. Do the Safeguards ever come early?

I got down on hands and knees and searched for the pen. It had rolled against one of the back feet of the desk. I stood up, wiping dust off my fingers. If Maurice Mills came back now he’d
certainly stay on for an hour.

Smith-Williams was lighting a cigarette, holding his birdlike head sideways so that the flame didn’t go in his eyes. Davidson, like the other commissionaires, never smoked on duty.

If I put on my coat and went past, turned left toward the stairs but skirted them, there was an alcove with three or four enormous old oil paintings leaning half across it. The lights in the
passages were still on, wouldn’t be dimmed until seven; but this alcove was halfway between lights and would be shadowy.

Twenty to seven. I put the ledger away, moved a few plates into places of safety, turned the key in the glass doors of the cabinet, picked up my bag. I fiddled in the smallest pocket of the bag,
found Jack Foil’s pill, put it back. I counted the money in the bag: about six pounds. I took out a compact, dabbed my face, dropped the compact in, shut the bag. I went to the cupboard by
the door, took down my coat, struggled into it, tied a Spanish scarf round my hair. In the mirror my face looked pinched, the eyes out of proportion – like a bush baby or something. The pains
in my stomach were coming and going like cramp.

They were still talking. I switched off the lights in the office and went out, walked toward the two men, ten paces.

‘You’ll never get young people to see it like that, sir,’ Davidson was saying. ‘There’s no discipline now, even like in my time . . .’

‘Good night,’ I said.

They both answered good night as I walked past my cupboard.

‘Well, you can’t have plain insolence, I agree,’ Smith-Williams said, his cigarette wagging. ‘Personally, I don’t see . . .’

Turn left toward the stairs and, on impulse, into the Ladies. Sensible precaution. No one there, fortunately; all the other women had probably gone. Wait five minutes. At twelve minutes to seven
I came out. Passage empty. No one on stairs. Three steps back. Davidson had gone, but Smith-Williams’s office door was open. To go back and walk into the cupboard with that door open and
Smith-Williams in his office was more than I could face.

Back past the stairs. Voices at the top of the stairs. Davidson and another man. Voices mumbling. Not coming down. At the end of the passage was the big furniture department, which was still lit
up, but I couldn’t see anything of Grant Stokes or either of his assistants. Abreast of the alcove. It wasn’t as dark as I remembered: one of the paintings had been moved. I bent down
to tie my shoe. Nothing moved either way. I straightened up, stepped over a nineteenth-century stool, round a rosewood trolley and slid behind the paintings.

Memories of childhood. Hide and seek with Sarah and little Arabella. The breathless, heart-thumping pain of crouching in a dark place while others
searched
for you! The
stomach-twisting pains of fear. The giggling, half-hysterical leap when you
were
discovered. The hour-long times, the clever times, when you were not. Once I’d hidden in the chimney in
the old washhouse that had then been attached to our house, and
no one
had found me. There’d been trouble then because everyone had got worried and been afraid I’d come to some
harm. That was when I was nine, when confined spaces meant nothing to me at all.