The Blackmailer, page 11
‘Which makes me not bother to tell you things because I know you’re bound to ask, in time,’ she said.
‘How are you different from what I think?’ he asked. ‘Less good?’
‘Oh, I should think so,’ she said.
‘But you needn’t worry,’ he said. ‘I know you’re less good than I think, but I still think it.’
When Aunt Susan came back on Sunday evening, Judith was easily persuaded to stay until the next day, and Thomas’s confidence after the two days they had already spent together was such that he hardly once blushed for his aunt.
On Saturday morning, Judith had written to Sir Ralph to tell him of the need for more money, but once that was done she almost forgot about the whole thing. Even the image of Baldwin Reeves retreated, to emerge occasionally for a moment or two, but without the same oppressive power.
‘I’m coming up next week,’ said Thomas, when he drove her to catch the boat. ‘On Tuesday. I’ll come and see you, shall I?’
When she said good-bye to him, Judith kissed him on the cheek. It was not a gesture she was much given to making but it seemed obvious. He looked pleased.
As the boat moved away she leant over the rail to wave to him, the morning being fine and sunny.
Feliks greeted Judith with some petulance when she went into the office.
‘All this about my being your greatest friend,’ he said. ‘And you leave me completely out of your confidence. What’s it all about? If it was Baldwin Reeves who was forcing you to send Jean-Claude away, why couldn’t you tell me? You told me on Thursday that you’d decided he must go at once, and would I have him for a fortnight, which naturally I said I would. But you know how I hate being left in the dark. You might have told me. Why did Baldwin want him to go, anyway?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Judith. ‘Honestly, Feliks, the whole thing was so complicated and so mad, that I simply couldn’t go into it all.’
‘Then why did he suddenly bring him back?’ said Feliks.
‘I don’t know,’ said Judith. ‘I really don’t know why he does anything.’
‘Is he asking you for money still?’
‘Yes.’
‘What a monster he is,’ said Feliks.
‘I don’t know,’ said Judith. ‘Perhaps he isn’t. I just don’t know.’
‘Of course he’s a monster,’ said Feliks. ‘I shall tell him so.’
‘You mustn’t let him know I’ve told you about it,’ said Judith.
‘Of course I shan’t,’ said Feliks. ‘I shall simply tell him he’s a monster. Now listen, Skin Deep having done so well, and what with one thing and another, I think we ought to have another secretary.’
‘Oh, d’you think so really?’ said Judith. ‘I don’t mind typing my own letters now and then, and Fisher’s getting awfully good.’
‘Fisher’s not meant to be a typist,’ said Feliks. ‘He may look like one, but that’s neither here nor there. No, the other night at Gavin Miller’s party—now that you see after all I do owe entirely to Baldwin Reeves, we mustn’t forget that—anyway, there I met quite a nice little girl called Sally Mann, and she seemed perfectly intelligent and wants a job and.…’
‘Feliks,’ said Judith. ‘Don’t pretend that you don’t know perfectly well that her name is Lady Sarah Mann.’
‘Well, but Judith,’ said Feliks. ‘But listen. She could be useful. She really could. She doesn’t want much in the way of wages, and if she turned out to be good, you never know, if she’s got a bit of money.…’
‘You think her name would look good on the paper,’ said Judith.
‘I told her the whole thing depended on you,’ said Feliks. ‘She’s quite clever. Incidentally, this man Ivor Jones—would you like me to have another look at the manuscript?’
‘Oh dear,’ said Judith. ‘I sometimes think we conduct this office in a very unbusinesslike way.’
Ivor Jones was an enthusiastic Welshman whose novel Judith wanted to publish because she thought he would one day write a good one. Feliks, on the other hand, had until then been opposed to it on the grounds that too many of their writers were in the nature of long-term investments.
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Judith, sighing. ‘I’ll think about it all.’
‘You look tired,’ said Feliks. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ said Judith. ‘Perhaps I need a holiday. What about my going away for a week or two? I haven’t for ages.’
Feliks smiled. ‘Well, perhaps if we get another secretary…’ he said.
‘We’ll get her,’ said Judith. ‘Where is she?’
‘Oh, darling, how wonderful of you,’ said Feliks. ‘I’ll get her to come in tomorrow and you can see what you think.’
Travel was the thing, Judith thought. Even a week-end with Thomas Hood had momentarily taken away her horror of Baldwin. That was the answer, simply geography, simply physical distance. It had been some time since its fascination had worked on her. When she had been younger it had always been on her mind. Not that she was so anxious to see new places—it was the departure more than the arrival which had appealed to her then. Simply to go. She thought again, making her way home from the office, of departure, of trains drawing slowly out of stations, and ships swaying away from crowded quays, of disciplined embarkations on to aeroplanes, of luggage, newspapers and odd encounters, of the infinite variety of individuals even now, even this evening, undertaking voyages.
When she reached home, she found Baldwin Reeves waiting for her.
He had made a fool of himself. The scene when he had brought Jean-Claude back to Judith had been simply absurd. His consciousness of this made him feel, as he always did when the possibility arose of his being laughed at, that the best thing to do would be simply to drop the whole business. He had had £400 out of it, and it was important to know when to stop. He was annoyed by Judith’s having, as it seemed to him, insisted on offering him more money in exchange for Jean-Claude. He had come back, then, to tell her that he was not asking for more; and that his plan was simply to get out. The whole thing had become too complicated, and was best forgotten as soon as possible. In a way, he rather blamed Judith for his having turned out to be a not altogether successful blackmailer. It had shaken his faith in himself.
To Judith the sight of him was simply doom; and the look on her face amazed him. She had no idea why he had come, but felt quite convinced that he would never go.
‘I came to say,’ Baldwin began. ‘That there seemed last time to be some misunderstanding about the money. Do you remember?’
‘Yes, I remember,’ said Judith.
‘You seemed to think I wanted £500,’ said Baldwin.
‘Yes,’ said Judith.
‘I never said that,’ said Baldwin. ‘I don’t know why you thought I had.’
‘What d’you mean?’ asked Judith.
‘I never said I wanted £500.’ said Baldwin.
‘Oh,’ said Judith.
‘I don’t,’ said Baldwin. ‘I don’t want it.’
‘You don’t want it?’ repeated Judith.
‘No.’
‘What? Never?’ asked Judith.
‘I told you the whole thing was only temporary,’ said Baldwin.
‘Oh,’ said Judith. ‘Well——’ She began to move slowly about the room, nervously picking things up off the tables and putting them down again, moving a cushion, straightening a rug with her foot. Baldwin, standing in front of the fireplace, said nothing. Bertie had hurried downstairs to see about his evening meal.
‘Well——’ said Judith.
‘I thought I’d better tell you,’ said Baldwin.
‘Yes,’ said Judith.
‘I’ll go then,’ said Baldwin, suddenly making for the door.
‘Oh, but——’ said Judith.
‘Yes?’ Baldwin paused.
‘Nothing,’ said Judith. ‘I mean I had actually made arrangements—for the money.’
‘I see,’ said Baldwin. ‘But surely, those sort of arrangements are quite easily changed?’
‘Yes,’ said Judith. ‘I suppose so. You mean—it’s the end—of the blackmailing I mean?’
‘Oh yes yes yes,’ said Baldwin, impatiently, going out into the hall.
Judith followed him in silence, and passing him put out her hand to open the front door. He put his hand on her arm to prevent her, then kissed her.
After the first shock, and the first acute pleasure, Judith found herself prolonging the kiss because she could not think of what to say after it. She drew back.
‘We understand each other,’ said Baldwin, who looked shaken. ‘You must see, we understand each other, even when we don’t want to. Haven’t you felt that?’
Judith, nodding, allowed her head to incline towards, though not actually rest upon, his shoulder. He gave a small moan, and would have kissed her again. The moan, however, had been a mistake: it jarred, and Judith, anyway calmer, suddenly pushed him away.
‘No, you must go,’ she said. She looked at him for a moment, then smiled slightly—a smile in which she seemed to appeal to him to join. Then she opened the front door and said again: ‘You must go.’
After a moment he said: ‘Yes, I’ll go,’ without answering her smile.
He walked away from her quickly, angry with himself, not because of the kiss, which impetuous though it had been he certainly did not regret, but because of the moan he had made, which had been the cause of her pushing him away. She had been quite right, and for the first time he not only admired, he really respected her. It was not the way in which he was used to women behaving, but he was quite aware himself of its having been an insincere moan, and as such an insult to her intelligence. Yet he hated to think she believed him to be altogether insincere; it was merely that he was used to exaggerating his emotions on such occasions, in order by simulating a passion to engender one, both in himself and in the other person. In this case, however, he realised that he had been wrong, and it made him feel rather shabby.
In retrospect his mistake became more and more embarrassing. The hateful little sound seemed hideously vulgar: it was the sort of thing Anthony Lane would never have done.
The money would be coming all the same—that Judith knew. If there was one person on whom, ever since she had met him, she had relied, it was Sir Ralph.
Her father in his lifetime had been, though rather distant, upright and unfailingly kind; but her mother she remembered as having been hysterical and over-effusive, and there had been no one else, even Anthony, in whom there had ever been any question of her seriously putting her trust. Partly, of course, she was naturally self-reliant, partly the effect on her of her emotional embarrassing mother had been to breed in her a deep reserve.
With Sir Ralph, however, the reserve, in a curious way, was not there. It was not that she knew him so very well. Their relationship was the artificial but charming one between an old man, to a certain extent worldly, and the pretty girl his grandson had married; but she had felt immediately at ease with him, as if, if revelations had to be made, she would prefer them to be made to him. He had still his old charm, and she found his eccentricities amazingly sane. She was also aware that into her feeling for him there entered the consideration of who he was, that is to say of the people he had known, the houses he had stayed in, the line of similar ancestors. She was outside his world, or what his world had been, not so much even by birth or upbringing as by sentiment, and that made her see it round him as a mysterious but appealing attribute. If she had been told her attitude was snobbish, she would have been furious, but it probably was. There was more to it, however, than that—he was a symbol to her of more than merely a class.
He had a way, a partly defensive way, of seeming vague and forgetful. His great age and his constant state of disagreement with his daughter-in-law had made him now a little sly. Judith was right, all the same, in thinking him worthy of trust: he had never been anything else. Only, now, though the instincts and unquestioning reactions were still there, sometimes the means of putting them into effect, of safeguarding the trust or defending the faith, were lacking.
He had made a note in his little book of the payment to Judith for Baldwin Reeves, and had just sent her the money. One afternoon when his daughter-in-law came in to tell him that tea was ready, he was bent over his books, working out, in anticipation of the next demand, which account could least stand the strain of another payment and would therefore be the most satisfying to use, in order to alarm his bank manager.
‘Tea’s ready, Fa,’ Mrs. Lane said. ‘Nanny made it rather early I’m afraid; her watch was fast. Oh, you haven’t seen your letters.’ She picked up the afternoon post which was lying unnoticed by his desk. ‘Here you are—the Investor’s Chronicle and a letter from the Agricultural people—oh, and one from Judith. Shall I open it? It must be about the week-end.’
‘Do, my dear, do,’ said Sir Ralph. ‘Subtract this from that and there we are. I’ll come along in a moment, just got to finish this.’
‘Couldn’t you finish it afterwards?’ said Mrs. Lane. ‘You’ve got all the evening. What’s this Judith says? I don’t understand. What £500?’
‘What’s that?’ said Sir Ralph.
I’m so terribly grateful that you can deal with the £500, Mrs. Lane read out. I really believe it will be the last he’ll ask for—I’m almost certain of this. You’ve no idea how much happier I’ve been about it since I’ve known you know. I knew Anthony well, always. . . . ‘What is this, Fa?’ though it made no difference to us. What does she mean.… but you would hardly believe the relief I feel because you understood him too. So you must see how really thankful I am. . . . ‘and so on. What on earth is she talking about? What is this, Fa? What an extraordinary letter.’
Sir Ralph pushed his chair back from his desk.
‘May I have it please?’ he asked.
He took the letter and gazed at it for some moments in silence. ‘Twenty-fourth,’ he said eventually. ‘Ah yes, let’s see, that was yesterday, wasn’t it? Is there a postmark?’
‘That’s hardly important, Fa,’ said Mrs. Lane. ‘Do you mind explaining what this letter is about?’
‘My dear, it was addressed to me,’ said Sir Ralph, gently.
‘You asked me to open it,’ said Mrs. Lane. ‘What is she talking about? What is it to do with Anthony?’
‘It’s nothing, nothing,’ said Sir Ralph. ‘There’s no mystery, it’s just a private matter. It’s not important.’
‘How can it be private when it concerns my son?” said Mrs. Lane.
Sir Ralph looked at her reproachfully.
‘Judith and I sometimes correspond, you know,’ he said. ‘If she talks about her late husband to me, I don’t always tell you about it.’
Mrs. Lane looked at him for a moment almost wildly. Then she said: ‘So you refuse to answer my question?’
‘If you put it like that,’ said Sir Ralph.
Nanny’s large white face peered round the door.
‘Oh, you’re here,’ she said sadly.
‘We’re just coming,’ said Mrs. Lane. ‘You start tea, Nanny.’
‘I have started,’ said Nanny. ‘It’s getting cold.’
‘Oh come along then,’ said Mrs. Lane, impatiently. ‘Come along, Fa.’
‘You go ahead, Grizel,’ said Sir Ralph. ‘I’ll follow you in a moment. I must just finish this calculation—won’t take me a moment.’
Mrs. Lane hesitated, then, shepherded by Nanny, went out of the room.
Sir Ralph picked up a pen in his slightly trembly hand (he always wrote with a relief nib), but he left his subtraction half finished, and sat without moving at his desk. Later Nanny came back and took him, quite firmly, to tea.
9
There can be no doubt but that Miss Vanderbank was a dear creature. There was her adored Hanescu flirting about with the new secretary, who looked like a Red Indian but turned out, as Miss Vanderbank freely admitted, to be full of good intentions; and yet, horribly as she suffered, she still performed her duties with her usual bouncing efficiency and most generously watched, encouraged and sighed over what she felt confident was a romance developing between Judith and Baldwin.
‘He’s taking her out to lunch again,’ she said to Fisher. ‘And d’you see the way he looks at her?’
‘But she’s so rude to him always,’ said Fisher, who, relieved though he was that Baldwin’s attentions had been diverted from Miss Vanderbank, still regarded him with a certain amount of distrust.
‘That’s just it,’ said Miss Vanderbank, wisely. ‘That just proves it.’
‘Oh,’ said Fisher.
He would have been even more puzzled had he seen them at lunch, for Baldwin, who had now decided quite simply to get to know Judith better, in order both to explain to himself the attraction she had for him and to study and somehow deal with the challenge she represented, was finding his task difficult, and it was certainly not made easier by Judith, who was never, at the best of times, much of a breaker of silences.
One of his difficulties, curiously enough, was the fact that he felt he already knew her very well. This, being the result of the necessarily intimate nature of the relationship between blackmailer and victim, was an embarrassment rather than anything else. He had resolved to take things slowly, and at first confined their meetings to a series of lunches. For a time he tried to start all over again, and to keep the conversation on the same sort of note it would have had had they only just met; but since, unlike Judith, he was not fundamentally at all a tactful person, this manœuvre was not successful and he abandoned it.
‘What I like about you,’ he said once, ‘is that you’re not altogether what you pretend. If you were really the good conventional straightforward creature you sometimes seem, would you associate with that scoundrel Hanescu?’
‘He’s not,’ said Judith.
‘Not wholly, perhaps,’ said Baldwin. ‘But mostly. I don’t mean to say he runs his business dishonestly, but you know his whole method is—well, shall we say, corrupt?’
Judith defended him, as best she could, but Baldwin laughing, simply said: ‘Oh, you won’t admit it to me. But I know you admit it to yourself.’
