IT WAS YEARS since screams like that had been heard in this decorous road, and of course they all loved it, especially at Number 36 and at Number 32, which were nearest to the scene of the action. Along they surged, like beggars to a soup-kitchen, all agog to snatch for themselves some small share of whatever excitement it was that was going. One of the husbands, indeed, arrived armed with a poker, and, full of nostalgia for his Home Guard days, tried to organise the thing so as not to have everyone chattering, and running up and down stairs, and tripping over things.
But it was uphill work. While one party foraged for candles and matches, another succeeded in fusing what were left of the lights, and in the resultant noise and confusion a dozen burglars could have got away unnoticed. Presently, though, a degree of order was restored. Someone fetched some fuse-wire and got the lights going again, and soon the whole house had been explored from top to bottom. By the time everyone had been in and out of every room at least twice, tweaking up the dust-sheets and commenting on Dot’s choice of bed-linen and furniture fabric, the thing was beginning perceptibly to pall.
No corpses. No burglars. Imogen was aware of her drop in status. Although they were still being very sympathetic and nice to her, she knew she had become a nuisance and a disappointment.
Besides, there were dinners to cook by now, and children to be ferried to and from Brownies: what with one thing and another, they were only too glad, by six o’clock, to lend Imogen a cat-basket and get her out of the place. Their enthusiasm even ran to getting someone’s nephew to drive her and Minos to the station twenty minutes too soon for the train.
They were travelling in the opposite direction from the rush-hour, and so the platform was almost deserted. The pair of them sat on a solitary bench at the far end, gusts of damp January wind whipping at them out of the darkness, piercing through the thin wickerwork to where Minos crouched, unsurprised as always, but certainly not pleased.
“Well, well! Look who’s here!”
The voice, the tone of factitious surprise, were unmistakable. Imogen jerked round, clutching the cat-basket closer to her stomach, whether protectively or as a shield between herself and the newcomer, it would have been hard to say.
“Teri! What on earth are you doing here?”
“Waiting for the 6.48, Mrs B., just like you,” he answered equably. “Mind if I sit here?”—and without waiting for an answer, he slid on to the bench beside her.
“Funny, running into you like this again,” he began, still on the familiar mocking note. “Or maybe not so funny? I had a feeling you wouldn’t be able to keep away from that house much longer. Bit of a risk, though, wasn’t it, visiting it by daylight?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Imogen retorted. She found herself drawing away from him along the bench, and not only from fear. His thinness, his spots, his smell of ingrained cigarette smoke, repelled her.
“What business it is of yours I can’t imagine,” she continued, “But in fact I’ve been fetching my step-daughter’s cat….”
“A cat…?” He gave a little yelp of startled laughter. “So that’s what you call it—a cat?” He flicked the basket lightly with his forefinger.
“Puss, puss, puss! Wotcher, puss,” he squeaked, in a contemptuous falsetto. “Hiya, puss …” to which series of indignities Minos naturally made no response.
“Puss, puss … Hey, Mrs B., whassimatter with it? It’s not moving. ’S it dead, or something?”
“He’s frightened—you’re frightening him—” Imogen was beginning, when Teri interrupted with another spurt of laughter.
“Come on, Mrs B., stop kidding! I know what you’ve got in there. It’s what you went for, isn’t it? And very sensible, if I may say so. It wouldn’t be very nice, would it, Mrs B., if they discovered that the Prof, wasn’t alone in the car when he crashed it? That there was a woman with him … a woman who jumped out just before he went into that skid?
“How did you do it, Mrs B.? Jog his elbow? Whisper a sweet nothing into his ear just when he was least expecting it? Or”—here he gave a sort of exultant cackle—“did you, Mrs B., by any chance have a cat with you? Do you always keep a cat handy when you’re travelling, just in case…? A sensible precaution, I’m sure, pity more people don’t do it. But … a cat …!”
The joke, whatever it was, must have been exquisite, for he sat rocking with silent laughter, the bench shuddering beneath him, long after Imogen had gathered up her gloves, her cat, and her handbag, and strolled, with what she hoped was icy dignity, towards the other end of the platform. She had expected him to follow her, but when she looked back a minute later he was still there, a hunched silhouette in the darkness; surprisingly small. Then the train came in, and she lost him.
The warmth of the compartment, the somnolent faces of her fellow-passengers, and the soporific rhythm of the wheels, were not conducive to clear thinking. She found her thoughts, such as they were, going round and round in the same useless circles.
Had Teri followed her to Twickenham? Or had he encountered her by chance, and decided to make the most of it? And if by chance, then what was he doing in Twickenham? Though of course Twickenham is a big place, people do all sorts of things in it….
If he had followed her, then what for? To catch her out at something which would provide further “evidence” against her, and add verisimilitude to this blackmail pantomime?
Could he actually be serious about it? Did he himself really believe these preposterous charges he’d been launching against her, up to and including this latest absurdity about her having been in the car with Ivor on the night of the accident?
And if he didn’t believe these things, then what was he up to? Making the whole thing up just for the hell of it? Just for the fun of upsetting her?
It didn’t upset her, of course. How could it, when it was all such complete and utter nonsense, and so easily disproved? All the same, the mere idea that someone should want to upset her so much was in itself a little unnerving; and that they should be prepared to go to so much tedious and time-consuming trouble over it, too, travelling all the way to Twickenham….
It all seemed so motiveless and stupid. Ignoring it had not brought it to an end; should she, then, try taking it seriously? Go to the police? That sort of thing?
“‘What would my dear husband have done?’”—this, according to Edith, was the criterion by which a widow should make her decisions; and now, with her thoughts bumbling on in time to the train wheels, Imogen tried it out.
Faced by Teri’s threats and malice, what would Ivor have done?
He’d have made it ten times worse, of course. He’d have loved the outrageousness of it, and would have encouraged it, at least to start with, as he always encouraged outrageousness in the young, thereby displaying his own broad-mindedness and youthful spirit. And then, when he began to get bored with the thing, or when it began to inconvenience him in some way, he’d have expected someone—most likely Imogen—to make the whole thing not have happened.
This was the trouble with nostalgic musings about Ivor, they were always barking up against this sort of thing. She felt a sudden, reluctant little surge of envy for Edith, with her endless, uncomplicated grief. Darling Desmond’s posthumous advice was always so sensible, and so exactly in accordance with what Edith actually intended to do—why couldn’t Ivor be like that, now that he was dead?
Imogen didn’t know, of course, what sort of a husband Darling Desmond had made when he was alive; but certainly, he made a marvellous dead one.
*
Maybe there is some sort of telepathy that makes one so often run into the person one has recently been thinking of? Or maybe (thought Imogen) Darling Desmond really does go sneaking around the ether, spying into people’s inmost thoughts and telling tales on them, as his wife’s discourse would sometimes lead one to suppose? Whatever it was, the fact remains that the first thing she saw as she toiled with Minos up the dark road towards her home, was Edith, standing in her gateway. No—in Imogen’s gateway—silhouetted in a blaze of light from the open front door.
“Imogen!—Oh, thank goodness you’re back!” she cried as soon as Imogen, hugging the cat-basket, came in sight under the street lamp. “Oh, Imogen, my dear I’ve been so worried. I thought of calling the doctor, but I didn’t like …”
Before she could finish the sentence, another figure had burst into the arc of light, its halo of fluffy hair almost ashen in the yellow glare.
“Imogen … Imogen …!” Cynthia shrieked as she stumbled forwards. “He’s back! Ivor’s back! I tell you, he’s back!”