Her mind still echoing with these memories, Daisy put down the last pair of socks and went to the window. Leaning out, her elbows on the sill, she might have been a castaway searching the horizon for some sign of human life. Her horizon was a row of detached houses, large, seedy and secretive, their ground floors screened by groups of laurel or privet which seemed to be putting their heads together furtively like men planning a dirty deal, the stucco of the façades peeling and discoloured as if they had caught a skin disease from one another. Some of these mansions were still tattered and boarded up, a bomb having fallen nearby ten years ago: but even those which were occupied gave no evidence of it—one might have supposed their tenants to be persons who, having come down in the world like their houses, were ashamed to show their faces in it.
It was a neighbourhood without neighbourliness. The countrybred Daisy felt her isolation, not acutely, but like a permanent, pervasive ache. She missed the girls in the shop: she even missed the garish, clattering life of her old Pimlico street. Here, little traffic came; the few passers-by seemed intent on getting somewhere else as rapidly as possible; there were no lines of washing, no heads at windows, no gossiping in the street below. Even the other occupants of her own house might have been in a conspiracy of silence. They passed her on the stairs, the coloured students with a polite “good morning” or “good evening,” the others without a word: thin though the ceilings and partition walls were, few sounds of life percolated through them; and what one could hear was spasmodic and somehow meaningless—unrelated to the normal noises of domestic activity.
This vague, muffled existence going on around her had already begun to infect Daisy with its strong suggestion of fecklessness, raffishness, hand-to-mouth living. Her girlhood had trained her to be tidy, economical, a good housekeeper: but here, in the prevailing atmosphere of sluttishness, her standards were relaxing. And Hugo, though she would not have admitted it, was no help. Untidy as a small boy, he would leave his underclothes, shirts, towels, littered over the floor of their poky bedroom: he stuffed his belongings into drawers anyhow, and if he wanted one of them, he threw everything else out in the search for it, and put nothing back. These habits filled her with affectionate exasperation. She had remonstrated once, upon which he replied, gently but firmly, “You mustn’t try to make a tame cat of me, my girl.”
She did not want to try. She had enough domesticity for them both. It not merely passed the time but still gave her positive pleasure to follow behind him, righting the disorder he left in his wake; to wash the underclothes he would always have worn far too long; to press and brush the suits which were the only things he had obviously taken care of before they met. No, it was not his rather lordly carelessness over possessions which had begun to influence Daisy, but something deeper—a rootlessness in their life together which, strangely enough, was even more noticeable now, when they had settled down in Maida Vale, than it had been during those first weeks of flitting over the English countryside. One cannot have a home, Daisy obscurely felt, without some prospects: it is not the past but the future into which one puts down roots.
Daisy had the normal woman’s need for the routine which is an emblem of security. But from her life with Hugo it was impossible to compose a routine. One day he would be out for hours—“looking up his contacts,” as he put it; the next, he might lie in bed all the morning, reading the papers, lazily watching her as she cleaned the room, then pulling her down on the bed beside him. Or, in a sudden access of gaiety, he would take her off for a jaunt somewhere—as often as not, just when she had begun preparing a meal. Such things were delicious to her; but they made life seem more than ever ephemeral, and opened no predictable road into the future: so Daisy was beginning to be adapted to her environment, living for the present hour as well as in it.
She still had a little of the money saved from her employment. The rent was paid, Hugo had told her, for the rest of the year—he kept these rooms permanently, as a place of retreat for times when his funds ran low. Where these funds came from, she still did not know. Every now and then Hugo gave her a few £1 notes for the housekeeping; and, so wildly was she in love with him, it seemed like a present. It was enough that the money came from him. She had asked him once, less out of curiosity than out of a woman’s simple pleasure in talk, what a “commission agent” did. “I just organise a deal between two chaps, and take a percentage,” was his reply, which left her as much in the dark as ever. Daisy was still the village girl, for whom the “gentry” are a race apart, their foibles and failures the subject of cosily malicious gossip, their sources of income always taken for granted—amateurs of life, who move round the villages in an outer orbit, romantic, envied, but never taken quite seriously. Hugo was clearly “one of the gentry”: so Daisy did not find his eccentricities at all surprising, and assumed that his cavalier way with money—spending it lavishly when he had it, then doing a bit of work when he needed to “lay his hands” on some more—was quite the normal thing for high-spirited young men of his class. It fitted in with the notions of “society” life she derived from gossip columns, which she assiduously read with a vague idea of preparing herself for the time when he might introduce her to such glittering circles.
For the present, however, she was content to stay as she was. Even her isolation, though it irked her at times, could be cherished as a necessary part of the wonderful dream in which she was living. Soon after returning to London, she had gone to see her aunt—gone in a flush of joy which the stony reception of her news, frankly and freely offered, that she was living with a man, could not dissipate. The aunt had grumbled rather than threatened: a good deal was said about the bad blood which Daisy had clearly inherited from her runaway father: but it soon became evident that this aunt was more concerned with her own reputation than with her niece’s—she could not recommend the girl to any of her connections in the trade so long as she persisted in this disreputable association. “You’re throwing yourself away on this young man,” she kept saying. Only at the end of the interview did her grudging tone alter, as, looking again in her sidelong, flustered way at the radiant girl, she came out with, “Well, it’s your life, not mine. He seems to be making you happy. Yes, you only live once, Daisy my dear”—and then, as if regretting such a lapse from her own respectability, “but it won’t last, my dear. These things never do, take my word for it! You should get him to marry you.” And Daisy, feeling infinitely wise, profoundly sure of him, had replied, “We couldn’t be more married, Auntie; not if we’d been wedded in Westminster Abbey.”
Hugo did not get back till after nightfall. Daisy heard his rapid step on the landing outside, and flung herself upon him when he opened the door.
“Sweetheart! I thought you were never coming.”
“Supper spoiled again?”
“Well, it has been in the oven rather a long time.”
“Never mind. Your burnt offerings have a sweet savour in my nostrils, saith the Lord. And here’s my contribution to the shrine.” Withdrawing a hand from behind his back, he held out a great bunch of carnations.
“Oh, how lovely! Hugo, you shouldn’t. Wherever did you get them?”
“Well, I happened to be passing your Mrs. Chetwynd-Smythe’s garden and I saw them. Her carnations needed thinning out—she’s got far too many—such a vulgar display. So I did a little gardening for the old basket.”
“Oh, Hugo, you are a fool!” She beamed at him over the top of the flowers. “I know what happened. You went without your lunch to buy them for me. You’re a very naughty boy, and I love you.”
He sent his hat spinning like a quoit at the peg on the door, waltzed Daisy round the room, then collapsed laughing into the rickety basket-chair. “Yes, I am hungry. Bring on the grub, slave, or I’ll eat you, you succulent great morsel.”
Daisy retrieved his hat from the floor where it had fallen. Infected, as she always was, by his gay mood, she showered the carnations over him and ran out into the tiny kitchen before he could struggle up. When she returned with their supper, he had arranged the flowers in a vase, and there was a card stuck in amongst them.
For my darling Daisy’s 18th birthday, she read, unable to speak for a moment.
“I meant to smuggle them in and keep them for tomorrow. But—”
“Oh! How did you know? Fancy you remembering—”
“Of course I remembered. Don’t cry, sweet. Nothing the matter, is there?”
“No. It’s just—” She buried her face in his shoulder, on her knees beside him. “You make me so happy. You’ve no idea. I feel like—like an old married woman.” She glanced up at him, and was surprised by a shadow on his face. “No,” she went on quickly, “it’s not—I don’t want anything more, you give me everything I want.”
The shadow had passed. As they began to eat supper, he told Daisy he was on the point of putting through a big deal. This was why he had been put so much lately. He must go out again, later to-night, to clinch it. If it came off, she would get a real birthday present.
“And we can clear out of this dump for a bit. How would you like to stay at the Ritz, pet?”
“Oh, but I couldn’t. I haven’t any clothes.”
“That will be arranged. Not that you wouldn’t knock them sideways, just as you are.”
“Are you tired of—don’t you like living here?” she asked, gazing round the shabby, cluttered room with a feeling of loss.
“Who would?” he said carelessly.
“I do.” She could not keep a hurt tone out of her voice, and he responded to it at once:
“But it must be so dull for you, living here, never seeing anyone, while I’m chasing around.”
“I don’t want to see anyone but you. And I’ve plenty to do.”
“That’s not healthy, love.” His brown eyes sparkled. “A young woman needs suitable companionship of her own sex. Or she starts going broody.”
“Well, I never meet your friends,” said Daisy, who was not always at ease with his gentle mockery.
“My friends? Oh, I wouldn’t—”
“You mean they’re too good for me?” It came out before she could stop it, but Hugo did not appear ruffled.
“Quite the reverse,” he said equably. “They’re a low lot of characters. I wouldn’t trust them an inch with you. Except old Jacko, of course.”
“Who’s Jacko?”
“Very good bloke. Ran into him after the war. Medico of sorts. Looks like a tortoise. Tell you what—suppose we have him to supper to-morrow: celebrate your birthday.”
“But I—”
“Don’t give it a thought. I’ll victual up at Fortnum’s in the afternoon.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the food. It’s just—it’d be nice to have dinner alone together, as it’s my birthday.”
Hugo prodded his fork in her direction. “Now look, my pet: you complain of never meeting my friends. I offer to produce one, and you turn round and—women baffle me.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. Of course let’s have him. What’s his name?”
“Jacko. Oh, Jaques—John Jaques.”
“And he’s a doctor?”
“I’ll brief you on him to-morrow. Let’s have a game of draughts after supper. Must steady my nerves for the big moment.”
Daisy was aware of a tension in him—a subdued excitement different from the kinds she had known before. The next hour passed agreeably enough, though. Shortly after eleven, having beaten her several times at draughts, Hugo got up, saying he must collect his documents. Their rooms, which were on the top floor, had a small length of attic above them, where Hugo kept some trunks. She heard his feet moving about overhead. Presently he locked the door behind him—he always kept the attic room locked—and descended the ladder. He was wearing a dark, belted macintosh she had not seen before, and black gloves.
“Don’t wait up for me, Daisy. I may be quite late.”
“It’s a funny hour to—”
“Oh, these big chaps are difficult to get at, you know. Got to suit one’s time-table to theirs.”
As Hugo moved to embrace her, the macintosh fell open a little.
“Oh, darling,” she cried. “You’ve still got your old suit on.”
“Old suit?”
“Oughtn’t you to change? I mean, as you’re meeting an important—”
“Suppose I ought. But there simply isn’t time. I’m late already. Now, keep your fingers crossed for us, and mind you go to sleep. ’Bye, love. Over the top.”
Hugo’s tension must have communicated itself to Daisy, for she was not able to go to sleep: she lay awake, random thoughts passing across her mind, full of an uneasiness she could not explain. Saying good-bye to Hugo just now, she had felt some knobbly, flat object, a case or a satchel, in the poacher’s pocket of his suit. It had been a joke between them—that poacher’s pocket. She remembered how, during their holiday, he had taken a fancy to some beer-mug mats at a pub, and suddenly whisked three of them into this capacious pocket: half amused, half shocked, she had told him to put them back. “But they get them free from the brewers,” he had said, in an almost puzzled voice, as he obeyed her. “I thought you looked like a poacher, the first time I saw you,” she said. The fancy tickled him: next day she found him making a catapult, and from time to time he took pot-shots at pheasants or rabbits they came across while wandering in the woods. But no game found its way into the pocket. “I always was a rotten shot,” he grumbled, absurdly dashed by his failure like a small boy who has been trying so hard to impress a grown-up.
For some reason, Daisy could not take her mind off that pocket now. Businessmen, men who brought off big deals, carried brief-cases: the world of “business” was a complete mystery to Daisy, but she did know that. And the case in Hugo’s pocket, though flat, had not felt as if it contained documents; it was more like—she groped for a resemblance—more like the kit of tools they had had under the dashboard of their hired car. But the idea of Hugo’s going to a business conference with a kit of car tools was silly. Ah, now she had it!—they must be samples: like a commercial traveller’s: he was going to sell an idea—some industrial process, perhaps—and those objects would enable him to demonstrate it. Then why had he talked of “collecting his documents”? It must be very secret—something he could not mention even to her. A secret process.
The phrase touched off in her mind an old disquietude, which had been forgotten for weeks: the notion which had occurred to her in the Dorset wood, that Hugo was some sort of spy—a traitor, a Communist. Was he selling a secret to the agents of some foreign Power? Judging by the films she saw, this sort of thing was going on all the time nowadays. But it was always documents, papers, top-secret formulæ which passed from hand to hand in those films, not cases of tools. Daisy knew herself quite out of her depth in such matters, yet the dreadful thought kept nagging at her. One wouldn’t carry such vital papers in a brief-case: one would “secrete them about one’s person”: one could conceal them, for example, inside some harmless-looking spanners or screwdrivers, hollowed out for the purpose.
The idea slid into her mind, irresistible and unexpected as an assassin’s knife. And then she had to turn the knife in the wound, torturing herself for such disloyalty to the man she loved, such mad, poisonous suspicions. Hugo a traitor? She deserved to be shot like a traitor for imagining it.
Yet she knew she had to find out. And she knew she dared not ask Hugo point-blank: how could he ever go on loving her if she gave him the slightest hint of these horrible suspicions? The image of him as a wild creature recurred: she had got the creature eating out of her hand; but one false move, betraying her own uneasiness, her own fears, would send him streaking back into the darkness from which he had come. She was only his mistress. She had no hold upon him except by the leash of her love: to speak out would be to snap it; yet, if she kept her suspicions to herself, the cord would be gradually frayed and frayed.
There was only one thing to do. She must kill these venomous doubts. And only one way to do it—find out the truth for herself. If Hugo had a guilty secret, it was hidden up there in the attic he kept locked even from her. Her eyes, which felt gravelled with sleeplessness, turned up to the ceiling. He had never forbidden her to enter the attic: it wasn’t a Bluebeard’s room: he just kept it locked, and kept the key in his pocket. On the one occasion she had asked about it, he did not start like a guilty thing, did not blush or bluster—merely turned off her inquiry with, “Oh, I just have some old lumber up there. It’s a filthy little hole. I wouldn’t bother with it.”
I’ll take his keys one day soon, and if he finds out, I’ll say I wanted to clean the place, she thought, and was instantly appalled by the duplicity of it, the bitchy scheming stranger who had spoken in her own mind. “How could you?” she muttered to the darkness. This was what happened when you stopped trusting—this stain spreading over your mind like some galloping disease, disfiguring it so that you could no longer recognise yourself. “You’ll do nothing of the sort, you bad girl,” she murmured, and with a feeling of relief, as though her conscience had been somehow cleared, turned over to sleep.
She must have been sleeping lightly, for she was awoken by the sound of the front door closing. She heard Hugo call her name, quietly and tentatively, as if not to awake her should she be asleep. Something—a hangover perhaps from her own guilty thoughts—made his call sound stealthy to her, conspiratorial, and she did not immediately answer it. Then she was unable to, for she was listening with strained attention to a sound from the next room—a sound she soon identified as that of a clothes-brush vigorously applied. Hugo was brushing his suit. A few minutes later she heard his steps in the attic overhead. Her mind, still dazed with sleep, registered some objection which she could not precisely pin down.
When he came into the bedroom, Daisy pretended to wake up. Hugo switched on the light. With a little sob she held out her arms to him, inexpressibly relieved to see the familiar face of the man she loved, not the face of the monster her imagination had been conjuring up. Hugo regarded her affectionately. Yes, he looked just the same: a little tired, perhaps—the gentle but pale and withdrawn look she had seen so often on his face after they had made love.
“Did it go well?” she said.
“Yes. All according to plan, love. Happy birthday.”
He went to sleep in her arms at once, like an exhausted, trusting child. Just before she went off herself, she drowsily grasped the thing which had eluded her—the oddness of Hugo’s brushing his suit before going up into the dirty attic, not after. You darling gormless lad, you do need looking after, don’t you? she thought, and fell asleep.