Dangerous Thoughts (18 page)

I must have spent longer on the phone than I’d imagined, because by the time I got back to the dining-room the meal was over. Even the washing-up was done, the kitchen empty, everything tidied away.

Where
was
everybody? And above all, where was Edwin? Who was he with? What was he up to?

The house was strangely silent. No stir of movement, no clink of coffee cups, no voices raised in idle chatter. With growing unease, I made a brief survey of the downstairs rooms. Only in the drawing-room was there a light on — a tall standard lamp casting a soft orangey glow into shadows, and highlighting the empty sofa, the empty luxurious chairs, the plump cushions unpressed by any human form.

Upstairs, then. By now I noticed that I was moving cautiously, on tiptoe, an instinctive response to the surrounding silence. The old stairs creaked a little here and there as I trod, but that was all.

Our own room was in darkness, like the rest, and when I switched on the light I was momentarily dazzled by the sudden brilliance. I don’t know what I’d expected to see — it was hardly likely that Edwin would be sitting in total darkness, meditating — though goodness knows he had plenty to meditate on. Nor did it seem likely that he had already gone to bed — it wasn’t much after ten. I was about to retreat once more after a cursory glance round the apparently empty room, when my eye was caught by a kind of hump under the patchwork quilt on the bed. So he
had 
gone to bed then, despite the earliness of the hour? The shock I felt was quite out of proportion to the occasion: why
shouldn’t
a man go to bed early? Especially when, to my certain knowledge, he had been up and about for a substantial part of last night. Even murderers need their sleep. More than most of us, very likely.

I moved nearer, conscious of an extraordinary reluctance to investigate further; and it was only now, as the first shock subsided, that I realised that whatever this hump was, it couldn’t be Edwin. It was far too small. It extended barely half-way down the bed.

He’d hidden something here, then? Buried something? For a moment, hysteria gripped me, and I almost rushed screaming from the room. Then, with an enormous effort of will, I controlled myself, leaned forward, and very gingerly lifted the quilt a few inches.

The shock, for one second, was even greater than the first one had been.

Barnaby. Eyes closed, quite motionless, and for that one terrible second I thought he was dead.

But no. It was all right. He was breathing, normally, peacefully, the breathing of any sleeping child. His cheeks were rosy with sleep, and at the slight disturbance I’d caused, he stirred a little but did not wake.

Weak with relief, I simply had to sit down. Slumped in the rocking chair, I slowly collected my wits, and realised just how foolish I’d been.

Of course! The most natural thing in the world. The evening for the grown-ups was obviously extending far beyond the bedtime of a four-year-old, and so they’d decided to bed him down temporarily until his parents were ready to take him back to their hotel.

All the same, why had they chosen
our
bed? Well, why not? He had to be somewhere. And anyway, it wasn’t
our
bed in any real sense; it was Jessica’s bed, which she’d kindly given up to us for the visit.

Still, she might have told me. I might easily have wakened the child, barging into the room, switching the light on, and maybe — if Edwin had been there — talking quite loudly.

Then I realised that telling me would have been a bit of a tiresome business, as I’d been on the phone throughout the time when the decision about the bedding-down of Barnaby must have been taking place.

Besides, Jessica had very likely consulted Edwin about it — after all it was his room as much as mine — and he’d certainly have said ‘Yes’. Not because Edwin is by nature a Yes-sayer, far from it, but because, as well as being vaguely fond of Barnaby, he was very fond indeed of the child’s unqualified admiration. Very ego-boosting is the admiration of a small child, unclouded as it is by any rational assessment of one’s good or bad qualities. Admiration was something Edwin needed, as a starving man needs food. How he throve on praise and approval! How happy, how kindly he had become during that brief spell of worldwide fame. What a
nice
person my husband would have been if only he could have been famous all along without having to do anything in particular to earn it.

Calmer now, my idiotic panic having quite subsided, I prised myself out of the rocking chair and tiptoed back to the bed.

Barnaby was still sleeping, deeply, peacefully, and pulling the quilt a little more off his face, I noticed that he was still wearing his blue tee-shirt. Well, naturally, they wouldn’t have brought his pyjamas with them for such an unpredictable visit. As he slept, one firm, brown little arm was cradled protectively round some toy or special treasure; and looking closer I recognised the worn wooden rim of a tennis racket, the tangle of broken strings making little criss-cross shadows on the pillow.

Useless to anyone else, to Barnaby the battered object was an exciting treasure, and something in Edwin must have recognised this. Casually, without thought but with unerring instinct, he had handed it over to the child, and had doubtless revelled in the ensuing squeals of joy and gratitude, especially if Sally had been
around to note admiringly how good he was with children — far better than the boy’s own father.

Why
was Edwin so good with small children? How was it that he, a liar, a criminal, a would-be murderer, had such an affinity for that most innocent section of the whole human race — the under-fives? Was it in spite of his criminal tendencies, or — it suddenly occurred to me —
because
of them? Did they recognise in him a fellow-spirit, a dweller still in that primitive Garden of Eden without the knowledge of good and evil?

Gently arranging the quilt to cover the child’s arm but to leave his face free, I tiptoed from the room.

Out on the landing, I had to think again. The silence throughout the old house was unnerving, and even more so now that I knew Barnaby was here. Surely they wouldn’t all have gone out together, to the pub or for a walk, leaving him alone in a strange house? Would they? It was just conceivable that Sally, loving mother though she was, might have countenanced a short absence in the airy confidence that “
of
course
it’ll be all right!”

But not Richard. Awkward though he might be in the handling of his small son, there was no doubt that he was a devoted father, and intensely protective. No way would he have allowed the risk to be taken.

Or did they assume that since I was still in the house, it was all right? But no one had said anything about it to me, or even checked that I knew the child was there.

Or had they — it suddenly occurred to me — left Edwin in charge? And he, finding himself alone and unsupervised, the whole house at his disposal, might have seen it as a heavensent opportunity for …

Well, for what? For the furtherance of some nefarious scheme, I had no doubt. This time, no scenario came into my mind of what he might be planning. The important thing was to find him. He must be somewhere.

Once again, the ancient staircase creaked beneath my cautious tread. Once again I did my rounds of the downstairs rooms, finishing with the drawing-room.

Here, I was brought up short. It was in darkness. Someone, since I had last looked in, had switched off the standard lamp.

Suddenly bold, I stepped inside.

“Who’s there?” I demanded, quite loudly, and switched on the light at the door.

A stirring, a heaving, a commotion behind the sofa made itself evident, and a moment later there was Jessica, more dishevelled than I had ever seen her, rearing up behind the sofa back.

“Oh, it’s
you
Clare!” she gasped, her voice shaking with relief. “I thought it was a burglar. A murderer. A rapist. I heard those footsteps tiptoeing around the house, Oh, I was so frightened! It
was
you, wasn’t it? Why didn’t you say?”

“Well, how could I? There didn’t seem to be anyone to say anything to. I looked everywhere. I looked in here, but I didn’t see you.”

“No,” she had the grace to look slightly shamefaced. “I must have been behind the sofa already. I heard the door open but I couldn’t see anything from where I was, and so I thought …”

“That I was a burglar, murderer or rapist,” I finished crisply. “And suppose I
had
been …”

I stopped. What point was there in accusing her of arrant cowardice in leaving Barnaby to be raped, murdered, etc., while she lurked behind a sofa? It hadn’t happened. No harm had been done. And people don’t choose to be cowardly.

“Well, anyway,” I said, as she clambered back over the sofa and settled herself, panting in one of the chairs, “here I am now. Everything’s all right. I’m surprised you didn’t realise it was me. After all, you knew I was still here.”

“I didn’t, you know. I didn’t know anything of the sort. I thought I was on my own. I thought you’d gone with them.”

With which of them? Where?

Well, all of them. You know. The others. No, not Rhoda, she’d had to go to the Nuclear Waste Dumping Committee. No, they weren’t dumping nuclear waste, though it did sound like that, didn’t it? Silly, really, calling themselves that when actually they were
against
dumping it, as indeed was Jessica, but she just wasn’t a committee person, if I knew what she meant. Rhoda
was
a committee person, and since it takes all sorts, especially in a village …

I tried not to sound too impatient.

“Which of them?” I interrupted again.
“Where
have they gone?”

“Where? Oh, you wouldn’t believe it! They must be out of their tiny minds! Didn’t they tell you? Well, it was like this. We’d finished dinner, you see, and everything seemed a bit flat — you know, with Leo still not being here after all our preparations, and everyone sort of hanging about — waiting for you to finish on the telephone, I suppose, and also for Edwin to come back. He’d vanished — surprise, surprise! — as soon as the washing-up was mentioned. Well that’s men for you, isn’t it …?”

“But where’ve they
gone?
”
I insisted, heading off this familiar detour. “You said they’d gone out somewhere. Richard and Sally, do you mean? Or Edwin too?”

“Yes, well, actually it was Edwin’s idea. He came bursting in — we were in here by then — he came bursting in, looking all — Oh, I can’t think of the right word for it! Kind of lit up, as if he was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk — we didn’t even open the Sauterne, did we, with Leo not being there. Pixillated! I think that’s the word — a kind of unearthly excitement; he was absolutely gabbling about it being a marvellous night, you should just see the stars — that sort of thing. And then, ‘Let’s go for a swim!’ he cried, ‘Come on Sally, how about it? A midnight swim!’ and he began kidding her that the water would be wonderful, still warm from the summer.

“Well, you know how Sally is. She was jumping about like a six-year-old. ‘Oh
yes
!’
she said,
‘Let’s
!’
and they rushed around
collecting towels and things. I told them they could take what they liked —
anything
so long as they left me out of it.

“And off they went. I don’t think Richard was so enthusiastic, he’d been arguing quite a bit, but Sally was mad keen, and so in the end he went too.”

Well, he would, wouldn’t he?

“And you?” I asked, “Didn’t you want …?” but she shrugged her shoulders, and executed a dramatic shudder.

“
Me
!
Swim
?
at this time of year? Honestly, Clare …! And as to the water in the North Sea being ‘Wonderful’ in October — they’ve got another think coming! But I didn’t interfere. Let them live and learn!”

And then she added, a little defensively: “Besides,
somebody
had to stay at home because of Barnaby. I didn’t realise that you were still here, I thought you’d gone with the rest of them.

I tried not to appear flurried or anxious as I hurried into my coat, changed my shoes.

“It’s something terrible, isn’t it?” Daphne had said; and, God forgive me, I had assured her that it was not.

By now there was no moon, and I had expected to be stumbling along in total darkness, but I had forgotten that darkness outdoors is never total. Even in the wildest and most out-of-the way stretches of country, there is always something, somewhere, glimmering and beckoning. Always, too, from this or that small town even as far as twenty miles away, there is a spreading paleness before which the blackness of space retreats a little, fails to be total. The very atmosphere itself is impregnated through and through with random accumulations of light.

In England, anyway. I recalled Edwin’s description of the total blackness of the desert sky, and its dazzle of stars, and I wondered if all this would actually have been true, if only it hadn’t been all lies …

By the time I had crossed the road and could feel the dry marram grass coarse and prickly around my legs, my eyes had become totally adapted to the nightscape, and I could see the dark curve of the sandhills quite sharply silhouetted against the paler sky, and I began to hear the faint, uneasy murmur of the outgoing tide.

Yes, the tide was well on its way out. From the crest of the dune I looked down on what seemed an immense expanse of faintly gleaming sand, stretching away and away to the thin white scallops of foam which marked the edge of the sea.

And here, to my dark-adapted eyes, lights seemed to be switched on everywhere, dancing, streaking, flickering towards me across the water. Lights from that anonymous low building on
the east headland; lights—a whole line of mini-lights from a slow, flattened sort of vessel creeping lizard-like along the horizon: a bright, intermittent floodlight, coming and going, from some far-off maritime signal station; and, nearer in, several small, lantern-like flickers close around our wreck — presumably warning lights to guide passing craft from this dark obstacle.

The wreck. Until this moment, I had been in doubt as to which way to turn along the beach, but now I was somehow no longer in doubt. Sally would have chosen, I felt sure, to return to the scene of the afternoon’s adventure; would she, even, have persuaded her escorts to drag one of the boats once again down to the water, in order to re-experience under the stars this afternoon’s excitements?

Would Richard have allowed it? Would the escapade fit in with Edwin’s plans, whatever they were?

For Edwin was up to something, that was certain. But what? If he meant harm to Richard, then why invite
Sally
to come for a midnight swim? Looking back, I can’t think why the answer didn’t spring to my mind immediately, so obvious was it. I can only say that it didn’t. I think, maybe, my mind was being stretched beyond its normal limits by the enormity of my fears and also, in some way, by the hugeness of the night sky, the unimaginable distances that curved above me, pretending to be known and familiar. For was not dear old Cassiopeia almost directly above me? The Great Bear, the Little Bear, and Perseus, all in their proper places, known since childhood; and Orion, too, well up in the southern sky after his long summer absence.

All there, long loved and long known, and yet in reality totally
un
known, infinitely alien, beyond the reach of human imagination.

Something like that. In a kind of dream, detached somehow, I was aware of being in a hurry, of my feet sinking into the loose sand as I tried to run; and of my eyes peering intently into the swinging darkness, here and gone, as the distant lights moved with me, step for step, across the moving water.

‘Peering intently,’ I say, but at this stage I didn’t know at all what I was looking for; nor did I know how frightened I ought to be. After all, there were three of them; Edwin would hardly intend to murder Richard under Sally’s very eyes; nor could he expect to find an opportunity to make love to Sally under Richard’s. Not that I thought — or ever had thought — that this had ever been in the forefront of Edwin’s mind. What Edwin loved above all else was admiration, and this was what he was getting from Sally in full measure already, without needing to hazard his prowess any further. And what she got from him was, I am sure, exactly the same: admiration. That two such basically self-regarding people would ever exert themselves to break out of this cosy little bubble of mutual admiration and launch themselves on the perilous and uncharted waters of an actual love affair seemed unlikely in the extreme.

I hurried on, scanning the dark landscape as best I could. What did I expect to find? What did I expect to see? The three of them cowering somewhere, an untidy black smudge on the dim expanse of beach? Making stilted conversation, perhaps, reluctantly deciding what to do next? Or maybe already disporting themselves in the dark shallows, shrieking as bathers do? Sally shrieking, anyway.

No shrieks. No dark figures breaking the white line of the foam. And the black smudge that I presently saw was smaller than I had envisaged, and way down towards the water’s edge.

“Hullo, Clare! However did you know where to find us? How clever you are! Oh, it’s so exciting! They’re having a
race
— all the way to the wreck and back! See? — D’you see? You can just see their heads — that’s Richard, he’s the one a little way ahead; I know it’s him because I’ve been watching the whole time. Look! Look! There he is, he’s just getting into that lit-up bit of the sea where the end bit of the wreck kind of sticks out sideways …!
Look
…!”

It was always difficult to get a straightforward account of
anything out of Sally. She was inclined to start every story in the middle, the exciting bit, and only under patient questioning would she bother her head about the more boring whys and wherefores of things.

And so, patient I was: and this, I gathered, was what had happened. Edwin’s suggestion of a midnight swim had, of course, delighted her, and off they’d gone, in spite of Richard’s being a bit of an old stick about it, currents and undertows and things,
you
know. Edwin, on the other hand had been
wonderful,
had explained about the tide being just right for this sort of thing, and that there wouldn’t
be
any currents. “It was his idea to come to this bit of beach where we were this afternoon. ‘It was the best place for bathing,’ he said, ‘and the water would still be quite warm after all the sun there’s been this summer …’ Gosh, though, he was wrong about
than
! It was
icy,
Clare, it was awful! I only put half a toe in, just about, I absolutely
shrieked,
I couldn’t help it, I came rushing out! I thought they’d be giving up, too, but Oh no! ‘Let’s have a race!’ Edwin called, ‘Come on, Barlow! Round the wreck and back. It’s not much more than a couple of hundred yards! Sally can be umpire. What about it? Are you up to it?’ And so off they went. I started them off — ‘One-two-three’, and — well there they are. You can still see them — they’re very nearly there!”

‘Are you up to it?’ Thus had Edwin challenged his companion, with Sally looking on. What did he
think
Richard would answer? At that moment, with sick certainty, I fitted together the loose bits of the jigsaw. Edwin, eavesdropping on my telephone conversation with Daphne, had learned of Richard’s heart problem, and had learned too, that he was currently without his pills. Far from imagining (as Jessica had supposed) that the North Sea in October would ‘still be quite warm’, Edwin had known very well that it would be icy (as Sally had found it), and had calculated that if he could somehow induce Richard to bathe in it, a heart attack would very probably follow—a fatal one if no
one pulled him quickly out of the freezing water. And no one would. Edwin could easily be too far away when it happened. And so none of it would be Edwin’s fault at all. He hadn’t even asked Richard to come for the swim in the first place; he had only asked Sally, knowing full well that Richard, consumed by jealousy as he was, would not tolerate the two of them going on their own. He would insist on coming too — and
that
wasn’t Edwin’s fault either, now was it! And then, when Richard failed to have the required heart attack at the first impact of the cold water, Edwin had resorted to the reserve plan of making him stay in it for a very long time, to make him swim, and swim, until his heart, un-helped by the usual pills, would surely give out? And this, too, when it happened, wouldn’t be Edwin’s fault, now would it? He hadn’t
made
Richard swim out to the wreck. He had merely light-heartedly challenged him to the feat, with Sally listening.

“See? … D’you see them, Clare? They’re practically neck and neck, they’re just rounding the … Richard’s got the outside track, the harder one, so if he
does
win it’ll be a glorious victory! Oh, he’s a wonderful swimmer …”

“So is Edwin,” I found myself retorting, rather to my own surprise. Strange how I can’t bear anyone else to belittle him, no matter what sort of awful things I may be thinking myself. “He once won the inter-county …”

Sally was instantly apologetic. “Oh,
of
course
he is!” she hastened to say. “I only meant — well they’re marvellous, both of them. Aren’t they?”

I didn’t answer, and she turned and looked at me, a tiny bit uneasy just for a moment. “Don’t you think so, Clare? That they’re both marvellous swimmers?”

“Yes,” I said; and what I was thinking was, Thank God, Edwin’s failed again!
This
ploy isn’t working, either. Richard is going to make it: his courage, his stamina, his determination will pull him through, heart problem or no heart problem. Good for him! It was becoming clear that he was a match for anything which Edwin might contrive …

It was time, was it not, for one of those dark heads to be reappearing, on the other side of the vessel from where we had last seen them? All around the wreck, the water was more or less lit up by those little warning lights, and we fell silent, straining our eyes towards the rippling, uneven brightness.

Perhaps the distance to be traversed athwart the wrecked stern was greater than it appeared from this distance? Perhaps their speed was beginning to flag, as well it might. Or perhaps each in his own mind was saving his strength for a final winning burst of speed as he neared the beach?

And so we waited. And waited.

It was I who was the first to say that we must
do
something. Get help? Alert somebody?

“Oh
no
!” Sally at first protested. “They’ll be
furious;
it’ll spoil the whole thing!” And then, a minute later. “NO. Oh please, Clare, Richard so longs to win, you don’t understand … If anyone intervenes, he won’t feel he’s really won!”

Did
he feel he had really won, in those last moments of his life? We will never know. We
did
interfere, of course we did; we tried to drag down one of those boats, but it was hopeless, the tide so low and hundreds of yards of empty sand lay before us. So I rushed back to the house to telephone, while Sally started, at last, to shout for help, there where she stood.

Too late, of course. The two bodies were washed up at dawn, coming in with the tide, and Accidental Death by Drowning was, of course, the verdict.

And why not? I, after all, was the only one who had glimpsed the murderous hatred in Richard’s eyes that afternoon. I, likewise, was the only one who was privy to Edwin’s dark and desperate intentions. As if I had seen it with my own eyes, I could picture the two men plunging into the black and icy sea, each with murder in his heart. Each had set out with the intention of drowning the other, well out of sight behind the great hulk of the wreck; and in the heaving, treacherous water, locked in their death-struggle, each had succeeded.

*

I recall very little of the hours that followed, though the bits I do remember are intensely vivid, like one of those lucid dreams. I remember it being morning, and Sally at my side sobbing, “I don’t believe it! It can’t be true, it can’t!” And I remember trying to console her, and noticing as I did so that I myself felt nothing — nothing at all. Like stubbing your toe. — For a perceptible length of time — a second at least — it doesn’t hurt at all; the pain hasn’t had time to travel the whole length of the nerve from toe to brain. Something like that. The feeling is on its way, I know it is, but I haven’t yet begun to feel it. And, of course, I don’t know yet what the feeling will be.

As I think I have made clear, Edwin and I didn’t have at all a happy marriage. But, on the other hand, I’ve noticed over and over again that the most grief-stricken widows tend to be the very ones who had the most miserable marriages. Why this should be, I do not know. Perhaps, all too soon, I shall find out.

Meantime, I can only think of the various things that have to be
done.
Like ringing Daphne, for instance.

Strangely, there was no answer. You would have thought that, worried as she was, she would have been more or less hanging on the phone. There floated into my mind some words she had used when describing her son’s heart problem; ‘He gets it from both sides of the family.’ This could only mean that she, too, had such a problem. Might it not, in this time of stress and anxiety, have caught up with her at last? I found myself half-hoping that this might indeed be the case; then she need never hear the tragic news at all.

What else do I have to do?

Ring Jason, of course. It occurs to me that I know no more what he is going to feel when the fact sinks in than I know what I am going to feel.

But one thing I do know: I am not going to tell him the truth. Any more than Sally (if indeed she knows it) is going to tell the truth to Barnaby. Each of our sons is going to go through life in
the comforting belief that his father died a hero’s death trying to save a friend from drowning.

It will be a lie, of course, but what of it? For Edwin, at least, it seems appropriate that a huge, flamboyant lie should be his lasting memorial.