“Whatever happened to you? Is the car all right?” Diana asked anxiously; and Bridget, having reassured her on this point, and apologising vaguely for having been so long, subsided into one of the big chairs to consider what, if anything, to reveal about her recent adventures. It seemed wiser, just for the moment, to keep quiet about it. It could only trigger off another spasm of Norah’s maternal anxieties, and might well be disastrous if Mervyn were to come back in the middle of it, as he well might do. Besides, she needed time to concoct a slightly modified version of events which would not reveal her own panic. For she was the strong one, was she not? She was the no-nonsense one who would never panic about anything, and she preferred it to stay that way.
Meanwhile Norah, re-united with her reading-glasses, was peering anxiously at the script before her, bringing it first close up to her face, and then an arm’s length away.
“It’s terribly small – the writing,” she complained. I know Christopher does write a very cramped hand … but not as small as this. I’ve always been able to read it before.”
She moved, so that the standard lamp shone straight down on the document, and peered even closer.
“It’s … I don’t know … It’s somehow … I can only read bits of it. ‘Dear Mum,’ he starts. But he doesn’t call me ‘Mum’, not unless … That is, normally he calls me Norah. He says he ‘Hopes I won’t be worried’ – I don’t know why he should say that, because I never let him know that I worry, Never.”
She went on reading: “We’ll be pitching our tent in a grassy meadow near the farm buildings … Wonderful views towards the hills …”
Norah glanced up, bewildered. “Christopher doesn’t say things like this. He doesn’t look at views, he never has. He lives inside himself, not among views. And he’d never say “grassy meadow”, The most he’d ever say would be “field”.
She studied the document yet more closely:
“And the writing! It’s small and cramped all right, but it’s not his. I’m certain it isn’t …”
Had Mervyn been listening outside the door? Or had he come in by chance just in time to hear his wife’s suspicions? Or had he, indeed, not taken in any of it? His manner, polite and imperturbable, revealed nothing.
“Well, my dear, are you satisfied?” he enquired, walking across to his wife and holding out his hand for the paper. “Or does the fact that your son is actually enjoying himself, without you in attendance, throw you into one of your maternal panics? I must say you’re looking rather pale – I wonder if there is anything more I can do to reassure you? If Christopher’s own assurances that he’s happy and well and enjoying his holiday aren’t enough …”
Bridget was clenching her teeth in a turmoil of indecision. Indecision wasn’t her thing, any more than panic was, but at this juncture it seemed unavoidable. Would she be making matters worse, or better, if she were to reveal to the assembled company that Christopher was right now outside in the road, nowhere near any holiday camp site?
Better for whom? Certainly not for Mervyn. Whatever his motives were for inventing all this rigmarole about the camping trip (and Bridget was only just beginning to speculate on what these motives might be), he certainly wasn’t going to be pleased at having his carefully-constructed fiction punctured by the intervention of an uninvited visitor.
Better for Norah, then? Norah had already expressed her grave doubts about the authenticity of the letter. Would it be some satisfaction to her to have her suspicions proved to be well-founded?
Satisfaction of a sort, yes. Everyone likes to be proved right (or so Bridget always supposed), but sometimes there was a heavy price to be paid.
“She was always right, and now she’s dead right” – the famous tombstone inscription floated briefly through her consciousness, and increased her uncertainty.
What would Norah gain by having her husband humiliated in front of her friends? He would feel betrayed – furious – and would inevitably take it out on her. And with good reason, too, if he had in fact heard her voicing her suspicions just as he came into the room.
No, the risks involved in telling the truth were too great. Those involved in keeping silent were unknown, and hence less weighty.
None of these thoughts, she trusted, were showing in her face, but all the same they seemed to fill the room. She became suddenly aware of all the other unexpressed thoughts which at this very moment were claiming a share of the enclosed space between these four walls. Mervyn’s thoughts, Norah’s, even Diana’s. The air was thick with thoughts, like some atmospheric pollutant, so concentrated that you could scarcely breathe.
“I think perhaps we should be going,” she said politely; and relief swept across the room like a great wind, before it subsided into the normal little conventional remarks incidental to the departure of guests.
Mervyn, courteous and correct to the end, came to see them off at the front door, and for a moment Bridget was filled with trepidation lest he should notice his son lurking under the lamp, and should react by – well who knew how he might react?
But, mercifully, it didn’t happen: Christopher was gone. By the time they’d reached the garden gate, and she could peer round the privet hedge, Bridget was sure of this. But her initial feeling of relief was sharply interrupted by Mervyn’s voice, close behind them.
“Wait!” he called “Wait a moment. One of you has dropped something.” and as they turned, enquiringly, they saw him straightening up from a flower-bed, and coming towards them, holding out a plastic supermarket carrier-bag.
For a moment, all three stared, bewildered. It was Bridget who took the bag – it was surprisingly heavy – and reached inside it. Her fingers encountered metal – a cold, irregular surface. Reaching further in, she pulled the thing out.
It was a hand-gun.
They all stared, bewildered; and on Mervyn’s face was a look of actual terror. Was he facing, at last, a long-suppressed awareness of his son’s derangement, and its awful unpredictable dangers? Frantically, he seemed to be seeking some alternative and less agonising explanation. While, characteristically, keeping his dignity as he did so.
“Good God!” he exclaimed, “Oh, I do apologise, of course it can’t be yours! Oh dear, some yobbo, I suppose, planning a break-in and suddenly thinking better of it. Realised he’d been spotted, and reckoned he’d better not be caught with the weapon on him. I’ll have to hand it in to the police, I suppose. Oh dear, I am sorry! What a parting shock for you!” and after a brief repetition of the conventional remarks appropriate to departing guests, he went indoors, presumably to ring the police about the gun and the attempted break-in.
The three drove home almost in silence, each preoccupied with her own speculations. It was Diana who spoke, just once, towards the end of the journey:
“It’s not going to be as easy as I thought,” she lamented. “That father’s going to be difficult.”