The Walking Stick (20 page)

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t sound as if it does.’

‘How can I?’ I said, nearly crying, ‘unless I feel you agree with me.’

‘How can I when I don’t?’

‘You don’t?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ He stopped. ‘Not just in those words anyhow . . . I honestly don’t know what I agree with. One minute I think one thing, next minute the
opposite. I know you, and I know it’s a hell of a thing to ask you to do. But it’s choosing between two things, isn’t it, and neither of ’em’s good. That’s the
trouble.’

I bit at my finger. ‘D’you want me to leave you?’

‘I thought we were going to get married.’

‘So did I. But this . . .’

‘You’d break it for this? You can’t care much.’

‘You ought to know how much I care.’

He put his hands up to his face. ‘Why the hell did this ever come up? I’ll go now. Don’t wait supper. I’ll have it while I’m out.’

He went across for his leather jacket, put it on over his shirt, his face drawn as it might have been with pain. As he got to the door, I said: ‘Wait.’

He stopped short. ‘What for?’

‘Don’t go tonight. Let’s leave it a day or so. You haven’t to tell them till Sunday.’

‘It’ll make no difference. Best get it over.’

‘I don’t want to be
left
, Leigh. I can’t bear to be alone tonight in this studio. I feel – surrounded by all these buildings – they’re all empty at
night. Can’t we . . . talk? Let’s eat a meal and try to forget it. It’s been on my mind night and day this week. Let’s try for an hour or two to think of something
else.’

That night we made love but it wasn’t a success. Not either way. The loving kindness had evaporated too and left only a sort of exhaustion of spirit. I woke about
six-thirty and found him gone, the place empty. He came back at seven-thirty in time for breakfast, said he’d just been walking.

While we were having breakfast a barge came alongside the warehouse next to us and began to unload timber. The rattle of the derrick and the clank and thump of the timber did not encourage talk
between us.

You don’t stop loving a man because of one thing. Last Saturday was still so near that one kept harking back, trying to remember. I desperately wanted to comfort him, to care for him, to
please him, but there wasn’t any way. I felt now that whatever happened, even if I agreed, our feeling for each other was stained, spoiled. Whoever gave way, you lost.

He worked Saturday morning, and I didn’t. I shopped for the weekend, in and out of the crowds, waiting in the butcher’s, picking Cox’s on a fruit stall, remembering tooth
paste, limping – though not limping nearly as much – along the pavement, waiting at the traffic lights, shopping bag heavy on arm. People thronging, pushing; greedy faces, mean faces,
kindly faces, ailing, lonely, drink-flushed, self-satisfied, oversatisfied, underprivileged faces, new faces wrinkled in prams, old faces ready for the box. All little egos, all wanting personal
comfort, personal gratification, personal attention. I, I, the most important word in everyone’s language. They differed from the crowds in Hampstead, which were better dressed, more casually
at ease, more sophisticated, perhaps more decadent; but it was a superficial difference, not a fundamental one. All subscribed to the same motives, the same end.

And what was that end?

I could have cried in the street, wept with indecision. Anyway, to do what Leigh asked was ‘out’ for me. Then what? Leave him? Would I be able to now? I seemed at this time to need
him with an urgent emotional need. No one in all my life meant anything like him. We were lovers, companions, friends, helpmates; instead of being one against the world it was two. This was the
fundamental thing: my whole life was changed because I was sharing it. It’s the one vast difference between loneliness and non-loneliness, the bridgeable and the unbridgeable gap. I
couldn’t do without him.

And since we became lovers our complete relationship had changed. I was no longer a step ahead of him, in that he was the wooer and I the chooser. He’d never suggested or implied that the
pendulum had swung the other way. But if it came to the point might it not be so?

Did I need him more than he needed me? Perhaps you could only know when it was too late.

When I got home the barge had unloaded, so quietness again. A hazy sort of day, and the studio had absorbed some of the river damp, mirrors misted, chairs clammy. I dusted a bit, rearranged my
plates on the mantelpiece, shortened the stems of Philip’s chrysanthemums. Even with the windows shut I could hear a cox coaching his crew from the Wapping side of the river.
‘One-two-one-two-one-two.’

I blew out an uncertain sigh. Maybe I was making too much of it all. Let him tell these people, no, and there’d be an end: in a couple of weeks it would all be forgotten. We’d go out
tonight and ignore this silly sordid tangle.

On the table by the door was his post, which had come since he left. I never touched his letters normally, even his open flaps; but there were three today that looked like bills. They were.
£33.10.0., £9.11.3., and £41.5.0. All accounts-rendered with ‘
please remit
’ or ‘
an immediate payment will oblige
’.

I went to his desk, got envelopes, wrote cheques for all three, put them in my coat pocket to post them. My balance was going down. We were probably just paying our way with what we earned but I
never saw his money and never knew how much he paid toward overheads, how much he allowed the bills to drift.

He was right. I’d never been short of money before. Wasn’t now – yet. But might be.

I put two pork chops on for lunch, peeled potatoes, cut up a turnip. Then with a few minutes to spare I made a bit of pastry and tried my hand at a jam tart.

No luck with a different job for him. I’d tried to encourage him to look for something which would make use of his talents as a draftsman. It was very much up to me to help him in some
practical way, but as yet I hadn’t been able to find the way. To find worthwhile work, a new view of life for him, a new self-respect. Worthy but dull? Wasn’t it Nabokov who had said
that the only alternative to banality was perversity? But we had the
potentiality
for happiness together, however it might be realized. God knew that was rare enough. Two against the
world.

I was of course running him into extra expense merely by living here. Also, quite by the way, he was paying to have his wife watched.

When he came in I was looking through a book of his early sketches that I hadn’t seen before. He said: ‘Your horrible firm’ll be selling those at a hundred guineas a time in
the year 2000.’ And laughed.

‘Artists should always have children,’ I said, ‘then at least somebody benefits.’

‘Well . . . you said it.’

Lunch was ready and we sat down to it. Joy to find his mood changed. This was the man I knew, could be natural with. I didn’t ask the reason – if any – for the change, but
gratefully took up where a week ago we’d left off. He’d bought tickets for an ice-hockey match, and we spent the afternoon there. In the evening we drove through Rotherhithe Tunnel and
went to a public house on the Isle of Dogs, but this was less popular and less noisy than the one where we had met Jack and Ted.

I suppose I drank too much. Unusual for me; but I suppose this was the relief. On the way home I said:

‘What have you decided to tell them?’

‘Who? . . . Oh. I can only tell them what you’ve decided. But can it. It’s been a good evening. We don’t want to spoil it now, do we.’

‘Leigh’ – I struggled with curious emotion – ‘you’ve never actually told me what they want to know – have you?’

‘You haven’t given me a lot of encouragement – have you?’

‘Well, what is it? At least I ought to hear that.’

We dived into the tunnel. ‘Details? I don’t know ’em myself. They obviously’d like to know the general security arrangements, that’s all. You can imagine as well as
I can – what nightwatchmen, what alarms, when they come on, who’s responsible – all that. If they think it’s too tough an assignment they’ll scrub it, as I said
before. But until they know . . .’

‘Can’t they find all this out easily enough for themselves? It would cost a lot less than £500.’

‘They don’t believe in taking chances.’

Silence till we got home.

Ideas. If I
did
agree to help, it would warm our love again – so very important – but need I (privately) commit myself too deep? With the best will in the world, there was a
limit to what I could find out. With a little less than the best will . . . Even if ‘they’ refused to pay the £500, I would have appeared to do my best. So long as nobody
suspected – Leigh especially.

‘Ask them what they want to know,’ I said.

Conspiracy is the oddest thing. It spawns in the mind, and the mere circulation of thought carries the spawn into far corners. Conflicts develop in the strangest way.
‘Thou shalt not’ can be eroded from many sides.

Of course it’s not easy to be half committed – or not easy for someone who hasn’t cultivated the talent of deception – this I would have realized on a less emotional
evening. Yet even in the grey light of Sunday morning – and that of other mornings – I didn’t repudiate.

You can be over seven years with a firm and yet have hardly any idea. Security precautions are just something you never take notice of. You leave at six or seven in the evening
and come again next morning at nine-thirty. Doors are locked; men come on duty; but it’s all of utterly no importance.

So when someone asks you, you have to start from scratch. And move cautiously for your own sake. (I hoped still that the whole idea would be scrubbed, as Leigh called it; if I had any influence
it would be; but if it wasn’t, if ‘something’ happened, I wanted no finger of suspicion pointed.)

Sometimes I woke in the middle of the night and said, you fool, you screaming asinine little fool, you female Judas, you twisted little beast; and the man beside me was asleep,
a heavy young man, solid limbed, white limbed, gentle handed, kind mouthed; so I said, well, there it is, you trade love for integrity; and what is integrity? Can you feel it, can you taste it, as
you can feel and taste love? Four syllables; four socks on a line; and as significant, no more so – or only more so because of breeding and tradition. To whom anyway did I fundamentally owe
any loyalty except to Leigh? And I would turn over and try to hold his hand, as if that were the only certain thing in a world that didn’t seem to have a lot of certainty any more.

‘They’re not ordinary nightwatchmen,’ I said. ‘They’re Safeguards. You know, there are lots of organizations now. Securicor are the biggest, I
suppose. Safeguards send two men round every night. They come on at seven and stay till seven the next morning. We don’t pay them. We pay the firm Safeguards so much a year for over-all
protection.’

‘Is it always the same two men?’

‘No, I think they change every week. I suppose that’s part of the system.’

‘Are there burglar alarms as well? I’ve never seen any wires when I’ve called for you.’

‘Yes, there are two circuits. One operates on the windows and doors. I was looking today. It works by buttons. All the buttons are pressed down and then the alarm is switched on. If anyone
opens a window or door the button flips up and the circuit is broken and sets off the alarm.’

‘The other?’

‘It works in the strongroom but I don’t know how. It sets off separate bells on the roof if anyone goes in or opens the door.’

‘Where is the strongroom?’

‘In the basement. Not far from where I work. There’s a safe inside, and steel filing cabinets and some shelves.’

‘What’s the make of the safe?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

Leigh put down his pencil. ‘Well, it’s a start.’

‘Yes.’

He yawned and stared at the paper. ‘I honestly don’t know what else they want, but I’d think a plan of the place would be useful. It’s such a honeycomb.’

‘There is a plan on a wall in Peter Greeley’s office; I expect I could draw a rough diagram from memory.’

‘You give me the diagram; I’ll draw it.’

‘Now?’

‘Why not? It’ll show we’re doing our best. That’s what matters most.’ It was as if he had cottoned on already to my idea.

But it was three floors, and though I could more or less remember, I couldn’t fit the rooms over and under each other. ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘It’ll do for the time
being. Any idea what routine these Safeguard blokes follow?’

‘I think they must patrol. I think they have machines they clock in at certain times.’

He nodded. ‘Where are their headquarters?’

‘I’ve no idea. Won’t it be in the telephone book?’

‘Yeh . . . I was just wondering.’

On the Friday he was late back and said: ‘I didn’t see this man until today. He thinks it’s a good start. But he wants more details. I suppose it stands to reason.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘it stands to reason, doesn’t it?’

Hand on my arm. ‘Deborah, you’ve been a real sweetie, doing this. I hope you’ve not felt too bad about it.’

I smiled. ‘I’m beginning not to know how I feel. You’re doing a sort of Pavlov’s dog on me, and in the end I shall be a nervous wreck.’

‘Don’t
say
that.’ He scowled at me, but in worry not anger. ‘Not even as a crack. If this is doing anything serious to you, for Christ’s sake, we’ll
turn it in.’

Serious? What was serious? Seriously, I could no longer judge; that far the jest was true. ‘Tell me what they want now.’

He took out a creased sheet of typing paper. On it was written: