Lonely Road (24 page)

The day was overcast and clouding up, with a slowly falling barometer. It looked as if the fine weather was over for the time.

I turned and slipped an arm through Mollie’s, and we went back to the house. After my absence I had business waiting for me at the yard; I left her at the house to look after herself for the morning, and went down to my office to get things squared up.

I found that nothing at the office wanted squaring up so much as did my personal affairs. I sat in my office staring at the calendar and absently polishing the telephone with a duster, and wondered how I was going to propose to Mollie. I had treated this part of the business as a detail up till now, but now that I was up against it it didn’t look so easy after all.

I did very little work that morning beyond opening my letters, and went up to the house with an uneasy mind. We lunched together and I asked her what she had been doing; it seemed that she had spent the morning in the garden and down by the sea. It had grown too cold to bathe with any comfort, and she was no cold water bather at the best of times.
I noticed when we went into the library that there was a gap where Mortimer’s
Naval History
had been. So she had had another look at that. I found later that she had taken it upstairs to pore over.

It was while we were sitting in the library over coffee that the telephone bell rang. I lifted the receiver, and it was Fedden, speaking from his house.

He said: “I’ve just had a call from the Yard. It seems that they’ve had news from Gloucester.”

“Oh,” I said. “What’s that?”

“The man called Palmer called on Gordon this morning, and gave him Friday night, the day after to-morrow, for the landing of the next batch of arms. Unfortunately, the man got away.”

“Friday night?” I said. “That’s earlier than was expected.”

“Only a day or two. But the unfortunate part is that the man Palmer got away. The police weren’t quick enough.”

I asked: “Does he know that information has been laid?”

“I don’t know,” said Fedden. “I imagine that he does.”

“Gordon must have protection, then,” I said. “What’s happening about that?”

“That’s all right—that has been thought of. Gordon is on his way back to the Yard this afternoon. I think that Norman may bring him down with him to-morrow—we shall want him for identification if we get the boat.”

“You’re trying for the boat?” I asked.

“Oh, certainly. I am arranging that side of it here.”

“Do you want any help from me?” I asked. “I’ve got that tug.”

He considered. “Look here,” he said, “could you come down and have a chat?”

“I’ll come down now,” I said.

I
FOUND
Fedden very busy with the local police officials. He broke off for a few minutes to have a talk with me, but he could not add much to what he had told me on the telephone. So far as he knew, Gordon had left Gloucester and was now at Scotland Yard. He expected Norman to come down on the next day to assist in the preparations for the arrest of the boat. He accepted my offer of the tug, and I promised to see that she was properly equipped for a long trip. He was not sure in what way he would use her, and would consult with Norman about this.

He was up to his eyes in work, and so I didn’t keep him long. I went on to my yard, and gave instructions for the tug to be filled up with fuel oil and fitted out for a sea passage. Normally her crew consisted of the skipper and the engineer; I didn’t quite know what to do about these men, and told them I would see them the next afternoon.

I was getting more than a little worried over this affair. Stenning’s warning was troubling me a bit, though Billy seemed to be in safety from his associates. I was more concerned over the safety of my own men, the crew of my tug. I had offered the vessel for police use; one could hardly have refused that help. At the time I had not thought about the crew, but obviously the vessel was no use without her crew. If she were used for the arrest of a gun-runner I might be sending my skipper and my engineer into some danger if I sent them out with her. I had not thought of that.

By the time that I reached home I had decided that I’d ring up Stenning and see if he could come. I called him up in London, and got through to him in a few minutes. He was free all the next day, and I fixed up with him that he would come down by the early train. I didn’t want him to fly down;
it seemed to me that the less attention that was directed to this part of the world the better for us all. I arranged to have the car to meet the train.

Then I rang up the yard and gave instructions that
Irene
should be got up on the slip at once. That would provide a reason for his visit.

I went to look for Mollie then, and found her with old Robertson in the garden. She had been with him all the afternoon, grubbing about in an old pair of gloves in the herbaceous border; she loved her flowers. As I came near she straightened up, and came and showed me what she’d done while I had been away.

I walked back with her towards the house, and as we went I told her about Billy. I don’t think she was very greatly interested. Throughout the whole of this affair the politics of it made very little difference to her; she was pleased to hear that Billy’s association with an apparently illegal business was coming to an end, but she had no interest in the business itself. She was far more interested in my garden and the traffic of the harbour mouth. She told me that she had seen two steamers coming in.

We went in and had tea together in the library. I was still worried and absorbed in this affair, and talked to her about it for a time, but not with much success. She told me that old Robertson had been telling her about gannets, how they eat so much fish that they can’t fly and go scuttering off along the water when you come near them in a boat. And so I gave it up, content to watch her and to see that she enjoyed herself.

In any case, I was inclined to doubt if anything was going to happen after all. The glass was going slowly down; from a long knowledge of our local conditions it looked to me as if we were in for a spell of continuous bad weather, probably with a gale or two from the south-east. That would be no weather for landing anything upon a beach; it might quite well happen that the whole affair would come to nothing.

But after tea she said a thing that startled me. “I don’t know what they’ll be thinking of me at the Palais,” she said, a little
ruefully. “I ought to have gone back there on Sunday, but I can’t till Billy gets right, can I?”

I fumbled mentally for my immature proposal, and put it back again. “I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “Will they make a lot of bother if you stay a few days more?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Things are generally pretty slack about this time of year. Of course, they might turn nasty and get somebody else in my place if I stay away.”

I nodded slowly. “You’d have to stay on here if they did that,” I said timidly.

But she said quickly: “Oh, I couldn’t do that,” and I hadn’t the wit to take her up and ask: “Why not?” She added: “I could always get in at Birmingham. Mr. Evans said he’d take me on any time if I was out of a job. He’s ever so nice.”

“You needn’t really worry about that,” I said. “We can probably fix up something between us when the time comes, both for you and Billy.”

She looked up at me. “It’s ever so good of you to take this trouble. But we wouldn’t want any money. Only just to get started in a job again.”

I smiled. “Get you a job all right,” I said. “Even if I had to buy a Palais to do it.”

She laughed, and said: “Oh, you are silly.” And then she said: “Just an introduction, like, to somebody you know, would do.”

And so we left it. I went off to write letters feeling I had been a coward. She spent a little of the time before dinner cutting and arranging the flowers she had picked, and for the rest she sat in the model room where I was writing, pretending to read a book but really looking out over the Range at the darkening sea. “It’s ever so different,” she said. “It looks all cold and grey like, now.”

“It’s like that all the winter,” I said absently, from my desk. “You wouldn’t like it down here then.”

She said: “I think I should. It must be lovely when it’s rough.”

The dressing-gong went soon after that and we went up to
change. I had a fire in the library again that night for it had grown quite cold; when I came down Sixpence was standing before it, stretching out her bare arms to the blaze. She wore the same blue and silver frock that she had worn before. She had said that it was an old one, but as I came into the room and saw her standing there before the fire it seemed to me that she was most beautiful. To me that night she was the loveliest girl I had ever seen in all my life.

I said: “What about a drink?”

We had our cocktails and went in to dine. I had had a fire lit in the dining-room and we had the candles lit; outside in the grey evening the dusk was falling early. That was an intimate dinner that we had that night, and a good one; Rogers had done us well. I ordered up a bottle of the Château Yquem, and we dined merrily; we had nothing to be particularly pleased about, and yet we were very happy in the dining-room. I close my eyes and I can see the gleaming silver and the glass, and see the blue and silver of her frock.

We went through into the library, and sat before the fire with our coffee and liqueur. I suggested that she played a little on the piano, but she wanted to sit by the fire, and so we sat there talking all the evening. She wanted to know about the world, the foreign countries that she’d only seen upon the films. She wanted to know about my early life, about my time in the United States and about the Amazon affair. She wanted to know about dogs and horses, and hunting; she had never ridden a horse.

I sat and told her about all these things, watching the play of the firelight upon her face and neck, and the slim grace of her arms. I told her all about my early life, the things that I had done when I was a boy, the places I had seen, the places that I meant to see before I died. As I sat there talking to her I seemed to slip back through the years; I was no longer a man of middle age, stuck in his own small groove of shipbuilding. I talked to her as if I was a young man starting out on life, wanting to see and to experience all that life could give. She made me feel like that.

She said, a little wistfully: “It would be wonderful to do all that.”

“My dear,” I said, “I want you to.”

It had slipped out before I knew what I was saying, so easy is it when one isn’t bothering. She sat there very quiet in her chair, staring at the fire. I rose and took her hand and drew her to her feet beside me in the firelight while I said my piece.

“I want you to stay here with me,” I said as gently as I could. “This last fortnight has been the happiest I’ve ever had. My dear, I don’t want you to go back to dancing. It was lonely enough down here before you came; God knows it would be lonelier if you went away.” I drew her into my arms. “I mean, I love you, Mollie. That’s a funny sort of thing for an old man like me to say. But it’s true, dear. I want you to stay here for good with me.”

She rubbed her face against my dinner-jacket coat. “Oh, my dear,” she said, quite quietly. That was all.

Ten minutes later she looked up at me, and said: “You mean we’d live down here together, like? Just you and me?”

I bent and kissed her. “That’s right,” I replied. “I want you to stay and marry me as soon as this is all cleared up.”

She said: “To marry you.…” And then she drew herself upright in my arms, and said: “Malcolm dear, I want to sit down and talk sensible.”

I let her go, puzzled, and we sat down again upon the chesterfield. She took one of my hands in hers, and held it. “I couldn’t marry you,” she said simply. “It wouldn’t do.”

There was a little silence after she said that; I was attempting to collect myself. I fell to stroking the hand that was holding my own.

“Tell me what’s the matter,” I inquired. “Why wouldn’t it do? I think it would do very well myself.”

She shook her head. “It wouldn’t do,” she repeated, staring into the fire. “I know.”

She turned to me. “I don’t want you to think that this is a surprise to me,” she said quietly, “or that I didn’t know you wanted me. You don’t have to have been in a Palais to know
that. And I have thought of what I’d do if you told me, and if you wanted me to marry you.”

I smiled. “So have I,” I said. “This isn’t any snap decision on my part. I’ve been thinking of it for some time. I’d like you to know that.”

She nodded slowly. “Please,” she said, “I want to tell you what I think.”

“Of course,” I said.

She turned away and stared into the fire, but she did not withdraw her hand. “Lots of the girls I’ve been with married fellows who came in to dance,” she said. “And some didn’t, but just went away, and in a year or so they’d be back again, but in some other Palais. And lots of the ones that married, married people in quite good positions, earning a thousand a year, some of them. And it didn’t come out right, not for them. Not ever that I know.”

She glanced at me. “And I always thought that whatever happened to me, I’d not do that.”

I stirred. “You mean that the families made things uncomfortable for them?”

She nodded. “That’s right. They didn’t seem to settle right, and then the men would get going after someone else.…” She smiled at me, a little sadly. “Not that I think that you’d go doing that on me.” She turned away again towards the fire. “Some of them just didn’t want anything more than the money, and they got that so they didn’t mind. But it never came out really right—not like one’d want it to be.”

She said: “In the books, and the things you hear about men being dragged down by marrying wrong—they do happen. And the girls that get dragged up by marrying … I believe it’s happier not to be married at all, when it’s like that.”

We sat for a little time in silence after she said that. I was wondering how I could best get over this difficulty, which seemed to be so real to her. But she went on:

“I wouldn’t know what to say to your friends, Colonel Fedden and the rest, and they’d not know what to say to me. They’d think you’d acted awfully funny, marrying like that.”