Dangerous to Know, page 7
He saw the bruising on her face.
She’d thought of merely calling out that she was there; then he need not look at her. The arrangement was that if she had not arrived by ten, he would assume she was not coming, though she promised that she would telephone if anything were to prevent her.
‘You might have a puncture,’ he said.
‘Then I’d push my bike the rest of the way,’ she told him. ‘I would be late, of course.’ She looked at him solemnly as she spoke. There was no hint of levity in her voice or in her expression; he thought she lacked a sense of humour.
‘I’d mend it for you during the coffee break,’ he told her gravely.
‘Oh, I could do that,’ she assured him. ‘I’ve got a kit and I’ve mended plenty of punctures in my time.’ She’d always done it for the girls until she had taught them how to repair their own tyres.
‘I think you’re a very practical person, Mary,’ Nigel had said. ‘I’m surprised you do this job. Couldn’t you find something more interesting?’
‘It is interesting,’ she said. ‘This is a lovely house and you’ve got some beautiful furniture, and I’m well paid. Besides, there’s nothing else I could do. I’m not trained for anything.’
‘You could put that right,’ he said. ‘There are heaps of courses geared to women whose children have grown up. The magazines I write for are full of details.’
‘I’d never manage that,’ said Hermione.
‘You would, if you made your mind up to succeed,’ he said.
Hermione did not answer. What was the point of discussing something so impossible?
That was two weeks ago, and now she managed to announce her arrival while still keeping her face concealed, but when he came out to make the coffee she was taking the washing out of the dryer, and she kept her back turned to him as she folded garments and put them in the basket. Hermione was not normally doing this job at coffee time; more usually she was wiping down the work surfaces or had just swept the floor.
Today, she did not turn round as he boiled the kettle and put instant powder into two mugs, getting out the tin of biscuits with which he tempted both of them each week. She seemed to be making a business of folding up the clothes, and when he set the mugs down on the table, instead of sitting down, she picked hers up and said she’d take it upstairs to drink while she cleaned the bathroom.
This abrupt withdrawal was quite new; in past weeks she had seemed to enjoy their short conversations, relaxing more each time, sitting for ten minutes at the table. Surely she didn’t suspect him of having designs on her, thought Nigel.
‘No – you need a rest. Sit down. Have a break,’ he urged.
‘It’s all right,’ she said.
Her voice seemed strange and he looked sharply at her. Her head was still turned away so that he could see only one cheek, which was pale.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. If he had given out some signals which she’d misinterpreted, he’d better sort it out at once; how could he tell Laura she had left because of his attitude?
‘Nothing,’ said Hermione. ‘Really, it’s nothing.’
‘You’re not telling me the truth,’ he said. Perhaps Laura had been right and she should have had a contract. ‘Do you want to leave and you can’t pluck up courage to say so? Is that it?’
‘No! Oh, no!’ came the instant protest, spoken from the heart, and without thinking she turned to face him.
Nigel’s relief at this assurance was succeeded by shock when he saw the ugly mark, blue and blackening, around her eye and on her cheek. A quip about her having been in a fight came instantly into his mind, but before he uttered it, he realised it might be too close to the truth to be risked.
She had turned her face quickly away again.
‘I’m glad you don’t want to leave,’ he said. ‘Like in the song, I’ve grown accustomed to your face, but it seems to have been damaged. What happened? Did you walk into a tree?’
‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing. It looks worse than it is.’
‘It looks painful,’ he said.
‘It was an accident,’ she said.
It might have been. People fell and hit their heads, sustaining black eyes and broken jaws without having been in scrimmages, but she had not wanted him to see her injury, and Mary was not vain.
‘Sit down and have your coffee,’ he said. There was no point in embarrassing her by persisting with questions. Besides, he had something to ask her. ‘Laura and I want to beg a favour from you,’ he said.
It was a change of subject and Hermione seized upon it.
‘Oh yes?’ she asked. ‘What? I’ll help if I can.’
‘It’s next Wednesday night,’ said Nigel. ‘We’re invited out to dinner, and we rather want to go, but our regular baby-sitter can’t come. We’ve got another who can usually help us out, but she’s away. Laura and I thought we’d ask you before we try scouring the neighbourhood for someone else.’
Hermione did not answer at once. What a wonderful prospect! To spend an evening in this lovely house, basking in its atmosphere of calm, sounded to her like a glimpse of heaven.
‘Wednesday, you said.’ She was thinking. ‘What time?’
‘About seven-thirty. The children will be ready for bed, but they’ll want a story and need settling. They’re pretty good as a rule – it shouldn’t be too arduous. We might not be back until after eleven, though.’
Hermione’s imagination – never vivid – had now placed her in front of the Wilsons’ log fire, reading the latest copies of the magazines in which Nigel’s work appeared.
‘Let’s see – it was the parish council last night, and I think it’s the PCC next week – the parochial church council,’ she explained, in case he wondered what she meant.
‘Are you on those?’ he asked.
‘No, but it means I won’t be needed at home.’ Hermione was amazed at how easily this specious explanation came to her mind. ‘I’ll do it,’ she decided. Walter would have gone before she need leave.
‘I’ll collect you and take you home,’ said Nigel.
‘No – that’s all right. I’ll be able to have the car,’ she declared.
Walter went to all the village meetings on foot. He liked to see what was going on about him, he explained, if marvelled at for walking more than half a mile in a downpour. In fact he thought it wasteful to use the car for such short journeys, as, of course, it was. She could wait until he had gone, then drive over to Prendsmere.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes. If there’s hitch – like it won’t start or something – I’ll let you know,’ said Hermione. She could walk up the road to meet Nigel if he came to fetch her. The notion gave her a frisson of excitement, but she did not understand the true reason for that; she considered the whole undertaking somewhat of an adventure.
‘Good,’ said Nigel. ‘Would you like some steak for your eye, or more seriously, have you bathed it with anything – witch hazel, for instance?’
‘It’s all right,’ she assured him. ‘No serious damage.’
She hadn’t known men could be as nice as this, anyway not since her father died.
9
Hermione collected her money from the kitchen dresser and left without saying goodbye to Nigel. He was so engrossed in his work that he had not realised how late it was; he had intended to put her bike in the Volvo and drop her off; it was the least he could do when she’d got such a bruiser.
Could her husband have done it? If so, it rather knocked on the head his theory that she was earning money for a special holiday or present. That evening he told Laura about the injury.
‘It’s a corker,’ he said. ‘A real black eye.’
‘And she said it was caused by some sort of accident?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, it could have been. People do get black eyes from other causes than a bashing,’ Laura said.
‘But if she is being knocked about, it’s terrible,’ said Nigel. ‘She’s so shy and timid – like a startled mouse,’ he added. ‘It fits.’
‘Well, if your suspicions are correct, what are you going to do about it?’ Laura asked.
‘I don’t know. Write a piece about concealed domestic misery and earn a quid or two,’ said Nigel. ‘What I ought to do is go and knock his block off, but I’m no hero, as you know.’
‘Passive rustic irony is more your line, isn’t it?’ said Laura. ‘You could do worse than explore marital violence. There’s a lot of it about.’
‘You’re right, I know,’ said Nigel.
‘How would you conduct your research? You can’t force Mary to describe her private life to you. You could visit a refuge for battered wives and hear the stories of the inmates.’
‘You make it sound like a prison.’
‘It is, in a sense,’ she answered. ‘They’re really only safe inside. Their husbands or partners often track them down and try to get them back or beat them up again.’
Nigel shuddered.
‘I couldn’t stand it,’ he said. ‘It churned me up just to think that some man might have done that to her. Why doesn’t she turn him in to the police?’
‘Assuming you’re correct, and that her husband did do it, she probably blames herself,’ said Laura. ‘Women in her situation often do. They tell themselves that if they can only mend their ways – be better wives – please their husbands – the men will change.’
‘But that won’t work,’ objected Nigel.
‘Of course not, but the husband does blame her. There are plenty of people who go round blaming someone else for their own mistakes and failures. It saves facing facts,’ said Laura.
‘Like saying, “Look what you’ve made me do,” when you’re interrupted and spill or break something.’
‘Yes.’
‘I asked her to baby-sit next Wednesday,’ he said. ‘I did it on the spur of the moment, because we’re in a fix over it and she’d be much more reliable than Jessie.’
Jessie was a girl they had used before; she always brought her current boyfriend and, as she was only sixteen, Nigel and Laura were not sure this was such a good idea. The boyfriends, who changed from time to time, always had cars and were rather old for her, Nigel and Laura thought, and they never had regular jobs. There was the fear that they might be thieves, or scouts for thieves, seeking targets, or in other ways undesirable. There were her objections, too; the last time Jessie and had come, with a young man in a leather jacket and very clean jeans, Laura and Nigel’s bed had definitely been occupied in their absence. Apart from all other considerations, what if the children had caught the couple in it? Laura had not been pleased at having to change sheets in the middle of the night.
‘Good,’ she said now. ‘I vowed never to have Jessie again, and I meant it. We’ll have Mary and hope she’ll be our future standby. Did she accept at once?’
‘No. She worked out something in her mind connected with a village meeting and said she wouldn’t be required at home – something like that,’ said Nigel. ‘She said she’d be able to have the car.’
‘That’s fine, then,’ said Laura. She did not want to discuss it any more, but she made a diary note that on this day Mary had come to work with a black eye, allegedly sustained in an accident.
She still wished they had a contract. Mary might start saying she’d fallen whilst in their employ and seek damages.
Unless Nigel was right, and the cause of the injury was close to home.
* * *
Walter had been shocked when he saw that he had marked Hermione, but he felt no remorse. She’d got ridiculous thin skin which bruised easily; that was the trouble; he’d noticed it before. Now she’d be setting off for the coffee morning wearing not only her permanent patient martyred look but visibly injured. The bruise would soon fade; in memory he shrank it to the size of a small coin. He must be ready, if asked, to explain that she had had a fall.
Even if Hermione were to say that he had hit her, she would not be believed, but then only he, Walter, knew how careless she was, how lacking in all the qualities he had a right to expect. What did it say in the Bible? That the price of a good woman is above rubies? Why, if Hermione were a housekeeper, she would have been sacked for incompetence years ago. Musing like this on the way to the station and in the train, Walter justified his actions as he mentally listed Hermione’s many faults. He recalled burnt scones in the first year of their marriage; dinner often late when the children were young; plate powder left on silver; smears on windows; the tail of a new shirt scorched, due, she had said, to a defective thermostat on the iron when the real cause was her inefficiency. He remembered seeing his own mother spit on the iron when she was testing its heat before ironing his father’s uniform shirts. He remembered the hiss and sizzle as she pressed his khaki trousers through a damp cloth. Walter himself would be under the table in his private hiding-place, fearful lest he incur his father’s wrath for some misdemeanour. But the harsh punishments he received had taught him to mend his ways. When he was young, he had blamed his mother for failing to protect him from the beatings he was given; now he knew that they had instilled in him high standards. People who erred deserved punishment, and Hermione had failed, throughout the years, in every way.
Having satisfactorily resolved this subject, Walter turned his mind in the direction of the woman on the train. If he could have persuaded her to listen to him, if he could have got her to accompany him into the pub, let him buy her a drink and talk, she would have appreciated his sincerity and a meaningful relationship, as nowadays it was called, could have developed between them.
If it were not for Hermione, he would be free to seek other company, find another woman, one who would respond to him, someone who would offer him comfort and understanding. There were plenty of women about, but as he was married he was not free to pursue any he might meet. Why, there were Belinda and Rosemary at work, for instance, not that either was his type, and sometimes there was a female student filling in time, a young person who would be flattered if he paid attention to her. It was well known that young girls enjoyed the company of older men, just as Hermione had done when he first met her; then, she had been glad of his protection.
What if he were rid of her?
Walter brooded about what life could be like if he were not handicapped by a cold, pallid wife whose very expression invited punishment. She was like a cur – a dog cringing round its owner’s heels until it had to be kicked away. The dog should sit subservient in a corner, waiting on its master’s commands, and so should a wife, when not actively performing her duties.
Walter never thought about other people’s marriages; for him, no one else’s life held any interest; he did not even envy their circumstances if they were richer or more successful than he was, except to regard himself as having been dealt an unlucky hand of cards by fate. He was so self-absorbed that he thought only in terms of how he was affected by the actions of others and he never queried the impression he made on them; it did not occur to him that it might not be favourable.
At the office, the efficiency of his colleagues was his only concern, and often it was wanting. Belinda and Rosemary talked too much and spent too long in the cloakroom, but they were both unpaid and the director said that reproofs to voluntary staff were not in order. Casual helpers were worse still; they lacked all sense of discipline, and when Walter attempted to introduce some method into what looked to him like a muddled cheque-counting operation, Simon, the director, had dared to suggest that Walter’s approach was less than tactful.
Walter was tolerated by the organisation because he was so capable. He had good, practical ideas about how to run campaigns and he was an excellent book-keeper; accounting was his main task. He was not popular, but he was not actively disliked. Rosemary thought he was a heartless robot, but Belinda said you had to have a heart to work for their cause.
Rosemary did not agree. You might be of a certain age, as Walter was, and have found it difficult to get other, better paid work. Here, he was a large fish in a tiny pool; elsewhere, he might be merely a minnow.
Walter, at odd times during the day and in his study in the evenings, planned a future following Hermione’s death. There would be a brief period of formal grief, then the enjoyment of his freedom and eventually another marriage with someone like the woman on the train, or indeed, the woman herself. The episode when he had spoken to the woman and had been rebuffed was expunged from his memory, written off as a misunderstanding because he had accosted her in the street. After her unpleasant experience with the louts on the train she was naturally nervous, and he had not made clear his honourable intentions.
His intentions: what were they, in fact?
He let his mind wander back to some of his encounters with women who took money for gratifying male desires; that was how he thought of them, those shady sisters of the twilight hours. When he read the newspaper definition of the recent murder victim, whose long hair had been twined around her neck, as a prostitute, he shied away from accepting the crude description. Some men were not adequately catered for at home, the right place for indulging their natural appetites; they were forced to look elsewhere and to pay for services which could be forgotten as soon as the transaction was over.
