Cat and Mouse (10 page)

“I took her everywhere. I dragged her back to England, I hawked her up and down Harley Street, I wouldn’t give them half a chance, I suppose, looking back. I wandered half across Europe with her—when they held out no hope, I turned to quacks and charlatans. They patched and grafted, they took skin from her stomach and her thighs and her arms and grafted it to her face; and I can only tell you that what she is now is peerless beauty compared with what she has been. And three quarters of the time she was under morphia, and now she’s—what she is, and a drug addict to boot. That’s charming, isn’t it?” He swept the little room with a gesture of his hand. “I took this place and buried myself down here—hoping, if you will forgive my saying so, Miss Jones, for a little privacy, and waited for her to get out of the last of the nursing-homes. It took a long time, and at last I couldn’t bear it any longer, she was so unhappy, and I simply told them that they must finish what they were doing by coming to see her down here. We brought her here one night and carried her across the ford and up the mountain-path. Mrs. Love came with her from the home; and that man today…”

A woman expertly making a bed, tucking in the corners with a clever little
flick
—a woman who said, not “put your foot up” but “elevate the leg.” A man, standing in his shirt sleeves, soaping the blood off spatulate, rubber-gloved hands. A nurse. And a surgeon. Types, recognizable all the world over, not by face or figure but by the mannerisms of their trade; and associated indissolubly in the mind with—death. A hospital nurse, making believe to be a maid-servant in this secret-haunted house; a surgeon turning up without due warning to make some small adjustment to the poor, terrible, patched-up horror of a face and hurry off home before the light began to fail. A comfortable old Sairey Gamp of a nurse; and a mild little refugee from Nazioppressed-
Char
many.

Katinka lay on the sofa with her silly leg stuck up before her on a cushion. “But why didn’t you
tell
me? Couldn’t you have trusted me?”

“Trusted you?” said Carlyon. “Well, no, I don’t think we could have trusted you. And after the irreparable harm you’ve done, I think we had something there, don’t you, Miss Jones?” He kicked at a log which smouldered, sweet-scented, halfway out of the little grate. “I took one look at you the moment you arrived and I said to myself, ‘She’s a journalist.’ And as soon as you were out of the room, Inspector Chucky confirmed my opinion. We’ve had no occasion since then to think otherwise.”

Inspector Chucky! She had it on the tip of her tongue to cry out that “Inspector Chucky” was a journalist himself, that he had crept in here just using the fact that she, fortuitously, happened to work on a paper. But “honour among thieves,” Mr. Chucky had said. She stammered instead: “Yes I
am
a journalist: but not that kind of journalist—not a reporter.”

“Not a reporter?”

“I was a reporter, it’s true. But now I’m on a women’s magazine. I mean, what would I be snooping after here?”

“A women’s magazine!” said Carlyon. He stood with his hands deep in his pockets, his back to the fireplace. “Could anything be a more juicy dish to set before your women? A pretty girl—a bride, happy and in love—and all in a moment her happiness and prettiness and love and everything in the world that can possibly mean anything to her, are all swept away, for ever ended—and she’s a grotesque monstrosity, horrible, revolting—disgusting even to those who love her and—pity her. Just the sort of prey for you sharks of journalists, just the sort of victim that Miss Jones would glory in, serving it all up on a platter for some dirty little Fleet Street rag.” As she raised her head in stammering protest, he kicked out blindly at the log till the sparks flew, disregarded, onto the silken rug. “I couldn’t think how you’d scented her out. But you’d been questioning the villagers of course—I remember you let it out, over Dai Trouble’s name. Not that they could tell you very much; and the servants had their orders, don’t answer questions, never tell anyone, there’s nobody in this house except us three. You made it easy for us, because all we had to do was to dismiss your ridiculous story and pack you off. But we hadn’t counted on your worming your way back. And I must say, you almost had me taken in, Miss Jones. When I came round the corner and saw you sitting there in the rain…” He kicked out at the log again. “I congratulate you. You certainly have the forlorn act to a
T
”

“I’d injured my ankle,” said Tinka, with not quite justifiable indignation.

“A trick known to every wretched little cub reporter that ever nosed his way into a house where he wasn’t wanted. You’re a journalist all right.”

Tinka began to lose her temper. “Yes, I
am
a journalist, I don’t make the slightest secret of it. But not that kind of a journalist, you don’t know anything about it or you would know that my kind of paper doesn’t
print
stories like this, it isn’t interested in them. … And anyway, how could we have known? You say the accident happened abroad, you brought her down here secretly. How could
Girls Together
have heard anything about it at all? That’s what I work on, a thing called
Girls Together
, a lot of cute rubbish about how to dress like a film star on four pounds a week, and whether to let your boy kiss you in ‘a nasty way,’ and smart little stories that are really only the old married-her-boss stuff tarted up. How could we possibly have got hold of this accident business—even if we printed real-life stories, which we don’t.”

“Then why did you come here?” said Carlyon.

“A girl has been writing to me from this house—I’ve told you a thousand times. A girl who calls herself ‘Amista.’ She told me about the house and about you and Dai and Mrs. Love and even the milk-woman and the plumber who came up to do the drains. … Look, now, surely that’s proof: who could possibly have told me that Dai Jones Ych-y-fi came to do the drains? It would be about four months ago, sometime in the spring it was, I remember.”

“But you admit that you were talking to him yesterday in the village.”

“Oh, God!” said Tinka. She slumped back against the sofa pillows. “You don’t believe a word I’m saying,
do
you?”

“The thing is utter rubbish. There has never been any girl in this house, except my wife.”

“Perhaps your wife…”

“When the drains were attended to,” said Carlyon, “my wife was in a nursing home in London; you can ask Mrs. Love—she was there as a ‘special’ looking after her. The whole thing’s a lie, Miss Jones, from beginning to end.”

She was defeated. She could send for Amista’s letters, get proof from Miss Let’s-be-Lovely and other people in the office, and lay them all before him with dates and postmarks and all the rest of it. But now was now. “I can only say that whatever you want to believe, I knew nothing about your story, I never dreamed of bringing a lot of publicity down on you, making a drama of it all.” She looked up at him piteously. The round face, usually so insouciant and gay, was tear-stained into little bumpy patches, the freckled nose was polished with much rubbing, wet eyelashes stuck together in little starry points. “Surely you don’t believe—surely, after we sat in the rain yesterday afternoon, talking so—so
friendlily
, surely you can’t go on believing that I would be so cruel and heartless as to do her any harm. Surely you must have known that I was—well, sincere!”

Carlyon’s blue eyes softened for a moment, looking down at her woebegone face. But he thrust his hands deeper into the pockets of the shabby tweed coat. “Charm is a dangerous thing, my dear Miss Jones. It takes all sorts of guises—it isn’t just being gushing in the right way, being brilliant, being amusing, looking nice. The dangerous part about it is that, whatever form it takes, it always does seem ‘sincere.’ In some mysterious way, your professional charmer always
is
sincere—even when he least means it. That’s the essential magic of the thing.”

“I must say,” said Tinka, bitterly, “that Katinka Jones in the role of professional charmer is something that will have my pals in Fleet Street rolling in the aisles.”

“All journalists are professional charmers,” said Carlyon. “It’s part of their stock in trade. Add an air of jolly-friendliness-sitting-on-a-rock-in-the-rain and you’re top of the class.”

“Or a rainbow,” said Tinka.

For a moment he looked as though she had hit him across the face, but he said at once, “Or a rainbow!” and gave her an infinitesimal bow, as though to say, “Your point, Madame, and I wish you joy of it.”

“So you brought back Olga Powhatsaname the beautiful spy into your house and she all unsuspectingly allowed you to administer a sleeping draught. …”

He looked a little ashamed. “Mrs. Love has lots of those things—for Angela, of course. We thought it would keep you from rambling round the house. …”

“And made doubly sure by hobbling me up like a goat. Tying my ankle to the bedpost with bandages.”

“That’s nonsense. You got your foot caught, I suppose, threshing about.”

“And of course you did look through my things.”

“I think that was justified,” he said.

“And found nothing incriminating.”

“Well, we didn’t find a press card or anything. I confess that that shook me a little. But anyway, by that time you’d seen my wife.”

“I only saw—well, a face bending over me. Next morning I thought I must have imagined it, I thought the—the lines and things must have been just shadows. I thought it was Mrs. Love.” She added: “But what I don’t understand is—why did she come into my room? What was she looking for?”

“She was looking for what you eventually led her to,” said Carlyon. “She was looking for a mirror. All that she’d been craving for was to look into a mirror and see how far they’d got in rebuilding her face. We couldn’t let her know how bad it still was; she thought it was better, we persuaded her to wait till they’d finished. God knows what we thought we were going to do in the end, because there’s a very, very long way more to go. And she got impatient, sometimes she tried to dodge us and find a glass. We locked the upstairs rooms and hung a shawl—as you know—across the mirror in the hall. There’d always be someone with her when she came downstairs; her legs are injured too and she has a job to manage steps. But we had to tell her there was someone here, we had to explain to her that she must keep to her rooms. To her, your being here meant that there would be a room unlocked with a mirror on the dressing-table. She came to look into your mirror. She didn’t think you’d be in bed so early. Mrs. Love came in and found her bending over you.”

“And today?”

“Today,” said Carlyon, “the surgeon came. I misunderstood his letter, we weren’t expecting him yet. He took out some stitches and—I don’t know, something’s gone a little wrong and he had to do more than he’d intended—in other words, it was all about as ghastly as usual. And he was a long time over it, he had to hurry back. Mrs. Love and I went down to the boat with him, to get last-minute instructions on the way—and in the meantime, Miss Jones puts in her oar. Dai finds you hanging round under her windows, and you lead him a wild goose chase over the mountains. We came back and found her standing in the hall looking into the mirror—which, thanks again to you, was no longer covered

“You know that she did see herself?”

“Oh, she saw herself all right,” said Carlyon, tossing aside the half-hope with angry scorn. “Those animal gruntings, my dear—that’s Angela crying. She doesn’t cry like other girls, you know, pretty little sobs and snivellings, she can’t open her mouth to take a deep breath. She was set upon seeing herself in a mirror—and after all this time, after all the care and anxiety and planning to keep it from happening—thanks to you, she has. She was crying, whether you recognized it or not, because she had seen in a mirror, thanks to you, Miss Jones, what was left of the beauty and the charm and the pretty little ways.”

Katinka saw in her mind’s eyes, the fluttering movements of the hand behind the window glass, the appearance of the little hand, thrusting itself through like a chicken breaking out of the egg. The left hand, the uninjured hand, tracing out the tall letters on the flat surface of the wall. She had called out: Tell me what you want! and the hand had written an A, and paused; and then an M; and then an I. A mirror. Tell me what you want! and the answer had been A mirror. The word had not been Amista at all.

They were both silent, staring down into the gayly burning fire. She said at last: “Well, I don’t know that it was right to prevent her from seeing it, to prevent her knowing the truth. She’d have had to know some day. God knows I’m sorry if through me she’s had to suffer an iota more than she suffers already; I’m terribly, terribly sorry, I shall never forget it, I shall never cease as long as I live. But—don’t you think it may have been the best thing in the end? I do. Honestly I do.”

“Good,” said Carlyon. “I must tell the various doctors and surgeons and psychiatrists who have advised us—after heaven knows what earnest thought and discussion—that she wasn’t well enough yet to stand the shock. I’m sure they’ll be interested to know you think otherwise. For the moment, however, your theory doesn’t seem to be working out too well. She’s in a state of suicidal despair, and I do mean suicidal. We’ve had to give her morphia again. It’s a pity, because we were trying to ease it off a bit; but on the other hand, the craving for the drug may be so appalling, when she comes to again, that she’ll forget the lesser agonies you’ve brought on her.” The rainbow was a scarlet rainbow, torn across her horizon by his deliberate, lacerating cruelty. In all her easy-going, friendly, gay life she had never been hated, perhaps never been so much as positively disliked. Now Carlyon bludgeoned her with the bitter blows of his anger and scorn and she, trying to fight back for her own self-respect, felt like a spaniel unjustly whipped by its master and yet cringing adoringly at his feet. If this is love, she thought, how happy was I before!

But was it love? That night she lay in bed and tortured herself with the memory of Amista’s confidences. “I wanted to throw myself on the ground and kiss his feet. …” Did she, Katinka, feel in the least inclined to fall upon the ground at Carlyon’s lovingly cared for brown leather shoes? The hopeless, the idiotic truth was that the bare sight of him now irresistibly impelled her to fling herself there. “I was absolutely sick with the longing to put up my hand and brush the hair across his forehead, out of his eyes. …” And here was the tough, the cynical, the insouciant Miss Jones, thrusting her fists down into her pockets to keep them from straying to that “soft, sort of spikey” lock of hair.
Honestly
, she thought. At my age! It’s too Ethel M. Dell for words!