The Only Problem (18 page)

‘When I
arrived,’ she said, ‘there was a crowd of reporters and photographers on the
road outside the house. But the police soon got rid of them with their cars and
motor-cycles. No problem.’ Her eyes rose from her sewing. ‘Harvey, you have let
your house go into a state of dilapidation.’

‘I
haven’t had time to put it straight yet. Only moved in a few months ago. It
takes time.’

‘I
think it absurd that your maid brings her baby’s washing to do in your house
every day. Hasn’t she got a house of her own? Why are you taking a glass of
scotch with your breakfast?’

‘I need
it after spending half the night with the police.’

‘They
were all right to me. I was glad of the ride. The prohibitive price of fares,’
said his aunt, as one multimillionaire to another.

‘I can
well believe they were civil to you. I should hope they would be. Why shouldn’t
they be?’ He looked at her solid, irreproachable shape, her admonishing face;
she appeared to be quite sane; he wondered if indeed the police had been
half-afraid of her. Anne-Marie was already tip-toeing around in a decidedly
subdued way. Harvey added, ‘You haven’t committed any offence.’

‘Have
you?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘Well,
I should have said you have. It’s certainly an offence if you’re going to
attack the Bible in a foreign country.’

‘The
French police don’t care a damn about the Bible. It’s Effie. One of their
policemen has been shot, killed, and they think she’s involved.’

‘Oh,
no, not Effie,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘Effie is your wife. She is a Gotham as of
now, unfortunately, whatever she was before. No Gotham would stoop to harm a
policeman. The police have always respected and looked up to us. And you’re
letting yourself go, Harvey. Just because your wife is not at home, there isn’t
any reason to neglect to shave.’

Harvey
escaped to go and shave, leaving Auntie Pet to quarrel with Anne-Marie, and
walk about the grounds giving orders to the plainclothes police, whom she took
for gardeners and woodsmen, for the better upkeep of shrubs and flower-beds,
for the cultivation of vegetables and the felling of over-shady trees. From his
bathroom window Harvey saw her finding cigarette-ends on the gravel path, and
chiding the men in full spate of Canadian French. Prompted by Anne-Marie, they
took it fairly well; and it did actually seem to Harvey, as he found it did to
Anne-Marie, that they were genuinely frightened of her, armed though they were
to the full capacity of their leather jackets.

When
Harvey came down he found in the living room a batch of press-cuttings which he
at first presumed to be about himself and Effie; Stewart Cowper had left them
behind. But a glance at the top of the bundle showed him Edward’s face, now
beardless. The cuttings were, in reality, all reviews of the play Edward had
made such an amazing success in; they were apparently full of lavish praise of
the new star, but Harvey put them aside for a more serene moment. Amongst some
new mail, a letter from Edward was lying on the table. Edward’s name and
address was written on the back of the envelope. Maybe the police hadn’t read
it; maybe they had. Harvey left this aside, too, as Auntie Pet came back into
the room.

‘I have
something to tell you,’ she said. ‘I have come all the way from Toronto to say
it. I know it is going to hurt you considerably. After all, you are a Gotham,
and must feel things of a personal nature, a question of your honour. But say
it I had to. Not on the telephone. Not through the mail. But face to face. Your
wife, Effie, is consorting with a young man in a commune, as they call it, in
the mountains of California, east of Santa Barbara if I recall rightly. I saw
her myself on the television in a documentary news-supplement about communes.
They live by Nature and they have a sort of religion. They sleep in bags. They
—’

‘When
did you see this?’

‘Last
week.’

‘Was it
an old film — was it live?’

‘I
guess it was live. As I say, it was a news item, about a drug-investigation by
the police, and they had taken this commune by surprise at dawn. The young
people were all scrambling out of their bags and into their clothes. And I am
truly sorry to tell you this, Harvey, but I hope you’ll take it like a man:
Effie was sleeping in a double bag, a double sleeping-bag, do you understand;
there was a young man right in there with her, and they got out of that bag
sheer, stark naked.’

‘Are
you sure it was Effie? Are you sure?’

‘I
remember her well from the time she came when you were engaged, and then from
the wedding, and I have the wedding-photo of you both on my piano, right there
in the sitting room where I go every day. I ought to recognise Effie when I see
her. She was naked, with her hair hanging down her shoulders, and laughing, and
then pulling her consort after her out of the extramarital bag, without shame;
I am truly sorry, Harvey, to be the bearer of this news. To a Gotham. Better
she killed a policeman. It’s a question of honour. Mind you; I always suspected
she was unvirtuous.’

‘You
always suspected?’

‘Yes, I
did. All along I feared the worst.’

‘Are
you sure,’ said Harvey, very carefully, ‘that perhaps your suspicions have not
disposed you to imagine that the girl you saw on the television was Effie, when
in fact it was someone who resembled her?’

‘Effie
is not like anybody else,’ said Auntie Pet.

‘She
resembles her sister,’ said Harvey.

‘How
could it be Ruth? Ruth is not missing, is she?’

‘No. I
don’t say it could have been Ruth. I only say that there is one case where
Effie looks like somebody else. I know of another.’

‘Who is
that?’

‘Job’s
wife, in a painting.’

‘Job’s
wife it could not be. She was a foolish woman but she never committed adultery
in a sack. You should read your Bible, Harvey, before you presume to criticise
it.’

Harvey
poured himself a drink.

‘Don’t
get over-excited,’ said Auntie Pet. ‘I know this is a blow.’

‘Look,
Auntie Pet, I must know the details, every detail. I have to know if you’re
absolutely sure, if you’re right. Would you mind describing the man to me?’

‘I hope
you’re not going to cite him as co-respondent, Harvey. You would have to
re-play that news item in court. It would bring ridicule on our heads. You’ve
had enough publicity.’

‘Just
describe the young man she was with, please.’

‘Well,
this seems like an interrogation. The young man looked like a
Latin-Mediterranean type, maybe Spanish, young, thin. I didn’t look closely, I
was looking at Effie. She had nothing on.

Auntie
Pet had not improved with the years. Harvey had never known her so awful. He
thought, She is mistaken but at least, sincere. He said, ‘I must tell the
police.’

‘Why?’
said Auntie Pet.

‘For
many reasons. Not the least of which is that, if Effie and her friend are in
California and decide to leave, — they might come here, for instance, here to
France, or here to see me; if they do that, they could be shot at sight.’

‘That’s
out of the question. Effie wouldn’t dare come to your house, now. But if you
tell the police how I saw them, the story will go round the world. And the
television picture, too. Think of your name.

Harvey got through to the
commissariat. ‘My wife has been seen in California within the last few days.’

‘Who
saw her?’ ‘My aunt.’

‘Ah,
the aunt,’ said the police inspector.

‘She
says she saw her in a youth-documentary on the television.’ ‘We had better come
and talk to your aunt.’

‘It isn’t
necessary.

‘Do you
believe your aunt?’

‘She’s
truthful. But she might be mistaken. That’s all I have to say.

‘I
would like to have a word with her.’

‘All
right,’ said Harvey. ‘You’ll find her alone because I’m going down to my
cottage to work.’

He then
rang Stewart Cowper in London but found he was out of the office. ‘Tell him,’
said Harvey to the secretary, ‘that I might want him to go to the United States
for me.’

He had
been in his cottage half-an-hour when he saw the police car going up the drive,
with the two security men from Paris. He wished them well of Auntie Pet.

Harvey
had brought his mail with him, including Edward’s letter.

In his
old environment, almost smiling to himself with relief at being alone again, he
sat for a while sorting out his thoughts.

Effie
and Nathan in a commune in California: it was quite likely. Effie and Nathan in
Paris, part of a band of killers: not unlikely.

He
began to feel uneasy about Auntie Pet, up there at the house, being questioned
by the security men. He was just getting ready to go and join them, and give
his aunt a show of support, when the police car with the two men inside
returned, passed his cottage, and made off. Either they had made short work of
Auntie Pet or she of them. Harvey suspected the latter. Auntie Pet had been
separated from Uncle Joe for as long as Harvey could remember. They lived in
separate houses. There was no question of a divorce, no third parties, no
lovers and mistresses. ‘I had to make a separate arrangement, Uncle Joe had
once confided to Harvey. ‘She would have made short work of me if I’d stayed.’

Harvey
himself had never felt in danger of being made short work of by his aunt.
Probably there was something in his nature, a self-sufficiency, that matched
her own.

He
wondered how much to believe of what she had told him. He began to wonder such
things as why a news supplement from California should be shown on a main
network in Toronto. Auntie Pet wasn’t likely to tune in to anything but a main
network. He wondered why she had felt it necessary to come to France to give
him these details; and at the same time he knew that it was quite reasonable
that she should do so. It would certainly be, for her, a frightful tale to tell
a husband and a Gotham.

And to his
own amazement, Harvey found himself half-hoping she was wrong. Only
half-hoping; but still, the thought was there: he would rather think of Effie
as a terrorist than laughing with Nathan, naked, in a mountain commune in
California. But really, thought Harvey, I don’t wish it so. In fact, I wish she
wasn’t a terrorist; and in fact, I think she is. Pomfret was right; I saw the
terrorist in Effie long ago. Even if she isn’t the killer they’re looking for,
but the girl in California, I won’t live with her again.

He
decided to get hold of Stewart Cowper later in the day, when he was expected
back at his office. Stewart would go to California and arrange to see a re-play
of the programme Auntie Pet had seen. Stewart would find out if Effie was
there. Or he would go himself; that would be the decent thing to do. But he
knew he wouldn’t go himself. He was waiting here for news of Effie. He was
writing his monograph on the
Book of Job
as he had set himself to do. (‘Live?
— Our servants can do it for us.’) He wouldn’t even fight with Ernie Howe
himself; if necessary, Stewart would do it for him.

He
opened Edward’s letter.

Dear Harvey,

The crocs at the zoo have rather lack-lustre eyes, as can be
expected. Perhaps in their native habitat their eyes are ‘like the eyelids of
the dawn’ as we find in
Job,
especially when they’re gleefully devouring
their prey. Yes, their eyes are vertical. Perhaps Leviathan is not the
crocodile. The zoo bores me to a degree.

I wish you could come over and see the play before it closes. My
life has changed, of course. I don’t feel that my acting in this play, which
has brought me so much success, is really any different from my previous
performances in films, plays, tv. I think the psychic forces, the influences
around me have changed. Ruth wasn’t good for me. She made me into a sort of
desert. And now I’m fertile. (We are the best of friends, still. I saw her the
other day. I don’t think she’s happy with Ernie Howe. She’s only sticking to
him because of Clara, and as you know she’s pregnant herself at long last. She
claims, and of course I believe her, that she’s preg by you. —
Congratulations!) Looking back — and it seems a long time to look back although
it’s not even a year — I feel my past life had a drabness that I wasn’t fully
aware of at the time. It lies like a shabby old pair of trousers that I’ve let
fall on the bedroom floor: I’ll never want to wear
those
again. It isn’t
only the success and the money, although I don’t overlook that aspect of things
— I don’t want to crow about them, esp to you. It’s simply a new sense of
possibility. One thing I do know is when I’m playing a part and when I’m not. I
used to ‘play a part’ most of the time. Now I only do it when I’m onstage. You
should come over and see the play. But I suspect that possibly you can’t. The
police quizzed me and I made a statement. What could I say? Very little.
Fortunately the public is sympathetic towards my position — brother-in-law,
virtually
ex-
brother-in-law of a terrorist. (Our divorce is going
through.) It isn’t a close tie.