To Fear a Painted Devil (5 page)

‘And I haven’t got anything exciting for your dinner,’ she finished on a note of near-triumph.

‘We’ll go out to eat, then.’

‘You know we can’t afford it. Besides I’ve got to finish this filthy dress.’ She struggled from his lap back to the sewing machine.

‘This,’ said Oliver, ‘is the end.’ Nancy, already involved once more in fitting a huge sleeve into a tiny armhole, ignored him. She was not to know that it was with these words that Oliver had terminated each of his previous marriages. For him, too, they sounded dreadfully like the mere echoes of happy finalities. Must Nancy be his till death parted them? More securely than any devout Catholic, any puritan idealist, he had thought himself until recently, bound to his wife. Hercules had climbed his last tree. Unless—unless things would work out and he could get a wife with money of her own, a beautiful, well-dowered wife …

He stepped across the rugs, those small and far from luxuriant oases in the big desert of polished floor, and poured himself a carefully-measured drink.
Then he sat down and gazed at their reflections, his and Nancy’s, in the glass on the opposite wall. Her remarks as to the unattractiveness of his former wives had seemed to denigrate his own taste and perhaps even his own personal appearance. But now, as he looked at himself, he felt their injustice. Anyone coming in, any stranger would, he thought bitterly, have taken Nancy for the cleaning woman doing a bit of overtime sewing, her hair separated into rough hanks, her face greasy with heat and effort. But as for him, with his smooth dark head, the sharply cut yet sensitive features, the long hands that held the blood-red glass … the truth of it was that he was wasted in these provincial, incongruous surroundings.

Nancy got up, shook her hair, and began to pull her dress over head. She was simply going to try on the limp half-finished thing but Oliver was no fool and he could tell from the way she moved slowly, coquettishly, that there was also intention to tempt him.

‘If you must strip in the living room you might pull the curtains,’ he said.

He got up and put his hand to the cords that worked the pulley, first the french windows, then at the long Georgian sashes at the front of the house. The silk folds moved to meet each other but not before, through the strip of narrowing glass, he had seen walking past the gate, a tall fair man who rested a freckled hand on a dog’s head, a man who was strolling home to a beautiful well-dowered wife …

With this glimpse there came into his mind a sudden passionate wish that this time things might for once go smoothly and to the advantage of Oliver Gage. He stood for a moment, thinking and planning, and then he realised that he had no wish to be here
like this in the darkness with his wife, and he reached quickly for the light switch.

I
t was fully dark, outside as well as in, when Denholm awoke. He blinked, passed his hands across his face and stretched.

‘Ah, well,’ he said to his wife, ‘up the wooden hill.’

She had meant to save it all for the morning, but the hours of sitting silently beside the sleeping man had told on her nerves. His expression became incredulous as she began to tell him of the meeting on The Green.

‘He was pulling your leg,’ he said.

‘No, he wasn’t. I wouldn’t have believed him only I know you’ve been worried lately. You have been worried, haven’t you?’

‘Well, if you must know, things have been a bit dicey.’ She listened as the bantering tone left his voice. ‘Somebody’s been building up a big stake in the company.’ Only when he was talking business could Denholm shed facetiousness and become a man instead of a clown. ‘It’s been done through a nominee and we don’t know who it is.’

‘But, Den,’ she cried, ‘that must be Patrick!’

‘He wouldn’t be interested in us. Selbys are glass, nothing but glass and we’re chemicals.’

‘He would. I tell you, he is. He’s got that contract and he means to expand, to take you over. And it does rest with him. The others are just—what do you call it?—sleeping partners.’

She would have to say it, put into words the grotesque
fear that had been churning her thoughts the entire evening.

‘D’you know what I think? I think it’s all malice, just because you once hit that dog.’

The shot had gone home, but still he hesitated, the jovial man, the confident provider.

‘You’re a proper old worry-guts, aren’t you?’ His hand reached for hers and the fingers were cold and not quite steady. ‘You don’t understand business. Business men don’t carry on that way.’

Did they? he wondered. Would they? His own holding in the firm had decreased precariously as his family had increased. How far could he trust the loyalty of those Smith-King uncles and cousins? Would they sell if they were sufficiently tempted?

‘I understand people,’ Joan said, ‘and I understand you. You’re not well, Den. The strain’s too much for you. I wish you’d see Dr. Greenleaf.’

‘I will,’ Denholm promised. As he spoke he felt again the vague indefinable pains he had been experiencing lately, the continual malaise. ‘I’ll have a quiet natter to him tomorrow at the party.’

‘I don’t want to go.’

Denholm did. Even if it was cold and there wasn’t enough to drink, even if they made him dance, it would be wonderful just to get away for one evening from baby-feeding at ten, from Susan who had to have a story and from Jeremy who never slept at all until eleven.

‘But we’ve got a sitter,’ he said and he sighed as from above he heard his son’s voice calling for a drink of water.

Joan went to the door. ‘You’ll have to talk to Patrick.
Oh, I wish we didn’t have to go.’ She went upstairs with the glass and came down again with the baby in her arms.

Trying to console her, Denholm said weakly, ‘Cheer up, old girl. It’ll be all right on the night.’

4

W
hen he had been married to Jean, when indeed he had been married to Shirley, he had always been able to pay a man to clean the car. Now he had to do it himself, to stand on the gravel like any twenty-five pound a week commuter, squelching a Woolworth sponge over a car that he was ashamed to be seen driving into the office underground car park. There was, however, one thing about this morning slopping to be thankful for. Since he was outside he had been able to catch the postman and take the letters himself. With a damp hand he felt the letter in his pocket, the letter that had just come from his second wife. There was no reason why Nancy should see it and have cause to moan at him because of its contents. Those begging letters were a continual thorn in his flesh. Why should his daughter go on holiday to Majorca when he could only manage Worthing? Such
a wonderful chance for her, Oliver, but of course she, Shirley, couldn’t afford the air fare or equip Jennifer with a suitable wardrobe for a seven-year-old in the Balearics. Fifty pounds or perhaps seventy would help. After all, Jennifer was his daughter as well as hers and she was his affectionate Shirley.

He dropped the sponge into the bucket and bent down to polish the windscreen. Over the hedge he saw that his neighbour was opening his own garage doors, but although he liked the doctor he was in no mood for conversation that morning. Resentment caught at his throat like heartburn. Greenleaf was wearing another new suit! Gossip had it that the doctor was awaiting delivery of another new car. Oliver could hardly bear it when he compared what he thought of as the doctor’s miserable continental medical degree with his own Double First.

‘Good morning.’

Greenleaf’s car drew level with his own and Oliver was forced to look up into his neighbour’s brown aquiline face. It was a very un-English face, almost Oriental, with dark, close-set eyes, a large intelligent mouth and thick hair, crinkly like that of some ancient Assyrian.

‘Oh, hallo,’ Oliver said ungraciously. He stood up, making an effort to say something neighbourly, when Nancy came running down the path from the kitchen door. She stopped and saw the doctor and smiled winningly.

‘Off on your rounds? What a pity to have to work on a Saturday! I always tell Oliver he doesn’t know his luck, having all these long week-ends.’

Oliver coughed. His other wives had learned that his coughs were pregnant with significance. In
Nancy’s case there had hardly been time to teach her, and now …

‘I hope I’ll see you tonight,’ said the doctor as he began to move off.

‘Oh, yes tonight …’ Nancy’s face had taken on its former lines of displeasure. When Greenleaf was out of earshot she turned sharply to her husband. ‘I thought you said you left Tamsin’s present on the sideboard.’

Oliver had a nose for a scene. He picked up the bucket and started towards the house.

‘I did.’

‘You bought that for Tamsin?’ She scuttled after him into the dining-room and picked up the scent bottle with its cut-glass stopper. ‘Nuit de Beltane? I never heard of such extravagance!’

Oliver could see from the open magazine on the table that she had already been checking the price.

‘There you are.’ Her finger stabbed at a coloured photograph of a similar bottle. ‘Thirty-seven and six!’ She slammed the magazine shut and threw it on the floor. ‘You must be mad.’

‘You can’t go to a birthday party empty-handed.’ Oliver said weakly. If only he knew for certain. There might, after all, be no point in bothering to keep Nancy sweet. He watched her remove the stopper, sniff the scent and dab a spot on her wrist. While she waved her wrist in front of her nose, inhaling crossly, he washed his hands and closed the back door.

‘A box of chocolates would have done,’ Nancy said. She lugged the sewing machine up on its rubber mat. ‘I mean, it’s fantastic spending thirty-seven and six on scent for Tamsin when I haven’t even got a decent dress to go in.’

‘Oh my God!’

‘You don’t seem to have a sense of proportion where money’s concerned.’

‘Keep the scent for God’s sake and I’ll get some chocolates in the village.’

Immediately she was in his arms. Oliver crushed the letter down more firmly in his pocket.

‘Can I really, darling? You are an angel. Only you won’t be able to get anything nice in the village. You’ll have to nip into Nottingham.’

Disengaging himself, Oliver reflected on his wife’s economies. Now there would be the petrol into Nottingham, at least twelve and six for chocolates and he’d still spent nearly two pounds on Nuit de Beltane.

Nancy began to sew. The dress had begun to look passable. At least he wouldn’t be utterly disgraced.

‘Can I come in?’

That voice was Edith Gaveston’s. Quick as a flash Nancy ripped the silk from the machine, rolled up the dress and crammed it under a sofa cushion.

‘Come in, Edith.’

‘I see you’ve got into our country way of leaving all your doors unlocked.’

Edith, hot and unwholesome-looking in an aertex shirt and a tweed skirt, dropped on to the sofa. From the depths of her shopping basket she produced a wicker handbag embroidered with flowers.

‘Now, I want the opinion of someone young and “with it”.’ Oliver who was forty-two scowled at her, but Nancy, still in her twenties, smiled encouragingly. ‘This purse …’ It was an absurd word, but Edith was too county, too much of a gentlewoman to talk of handbags unless she meant a small suitcase. ‘This purse, will it do for Tamsin’s present? It’s never been
used.’ She hesitated in some confusion. ‘I mean, of course, it’s absolutely new. I brought it back from Majorca last year. Now, tell me frankly, will it do?’

‘Well, she can’t very well sling it back at you,’ Oliver said rudely. ‘Not in front of everyone.’ The mention of Majorca reminded him of his second wife’s demands. ‘Excuse me.’ He went outside to get the car.

‘I’m sure it’ll do beautifully,’ Nancy gushed. ‘What did Linda say?’

‘She said it was square,’ Edith said shortly. Her children’s failure in achieving the sort of status their parents had wanted for them hurt her bitterly. Linda—Linda who had been at Heathfield—working for Mr. Waller; Roger, coming down from Oxford after a year and going to agricultural college! She would feed them, give them beds in her house, but with other people she preferred to forget their existence.

Nancy said with tactless intuition: ‘I thought you weren’t terribly keen on the Selbys. Patrick, I mean …’