Queen's Pawn Page 16

  At that moment as Raikes turned his face to the wind and began to walk up the heather and tufted moor grass slopes to his car, Mary Warburton was sitting in her bedroom, a few minutes after returning from a shopping expedition in Exeter, holding in her hand a letter which had been in the afternoon post for her. The contents of the letter had set for her a problem which she had suspected for some time had existed. She left her room and went downstairs to the telephone.

  And at that moment a man was sitting in a room in Paris having just read the obituary notice of Sarling in The Times. He was long past middle-age, a fair-haired man, the hair white above the ears, his face long, forbidding, the nose hooked to give him something of a Wellington look. He put the obituary down and stared through the uncurtained window at the Seine far below. Daylight had almost drained from the sky and yellow beads of light were strung along the river. A skein of barges went downstream towards the Pont de l’Alma. He flicked the black tongue of his intercom.

  A woman’s voice said, ‘Monsieur?’

  ‘Have you a file on Applegate?’

  ‘It’s a London file, monsieur. But we have a copy.’

  ‘Let me have it. Also I want a call to Benson.’

  He flicked off the intercom before she could answer and turned to the rest of the papers on his desk.

  Raikes and Mary had had dinner together. Mrs Hamilton was gone and Mary was staying the night. The birch logs in the fire burst now and then into thick yellow and blue flame, tiny eruptions of creamy smoke spurting from the peeling silver bark.

  Raikes tossed aside that week’s copy of The Field and settled back in his chair, relaxed and at home. Almost unaware of Mary, he was remembering a chalk stream in Hampshire and the gentle take of a trout to an upstream nymph.

  Mary said, ‘A penny for them.’

  He came back to her and smiled. ‘You won’t like it.’

  ‘Try me.’

  ‘I was thinking of a fish.’

  ‘Oh, Andy.’ She laughed.

  He laughed too, and in the ease between them wondered why the Andy from, her was so different. She was lying back in her chair, red trousered legs perched on a small tapestried footstool, wearing an angora wool jumper dyed a sulphury yellow-green. Just, he thought, the colour of a blue tit’s breast. She ran her hands backwards from the sides of her neck, through the loose fall of her hair and gave her head a little shake. It was a movement he knew so well, had seen her make here in this chair, and upstairs in bed when their lovemaking was finished and he dropped away from her; that familiar run of her hands and then the naked flexing of arms and shoulders. He reached for the cigarette box, held it to her questioningly and, when she shook her head, took a cigarette for himself.

  She watched him light it, the brown hand steady on the lighter, the flame unwavering in the room’s still air. Not to tell him, she thought, would be a cheat.

  And, because she was forthright, not the kind to try and work a conversation round to a point which would serve for an easy entry into the unpleasant, she had decided—even before she had gone down from her room to telephone and say she was coming over for dinner and to spend the night—that the right moment would be after dinner, after his brandy, when bed was near, and to go bluntly into her admission, knowing that her love for him was of a different nature from his love for her, his love made up of so many things, peripheral things like Alverton, a wife and family, a Raikes tradition, and hers just him, wanting him, wanting to give him the things he wanted.

  So, bluntly, she launched into it, thinking, God I hope it doesn’t go badly, and above all no crying, no tears, they just make a man give on-the-spot promises which he regrets the next morning.

  ‘Andy, there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  The lazy, unsuspecting smile was hard to take.

  ‘Yes. For the last six months I haven’t been wearing a loop or taking the pill.’ Which was what she had been doing before, insuring one against the other.

  He sat forward. ‘ Hell, wasn’t that risky?’

  ‘Would you have minded if anything had happened? We could always have married and waited for Alverton.’

  ‘I suppose we could. But it wasn’t the way I saw it. Anyway, why?’

  ‘Because I wanted to know if I could have a baby.’ She rushed on. ‘Do you know how many times we’ve been together in these six months? Of course, you don’t, but I do—exactly. Thirty-seven. And nothing’s happened.’

  ‘That doesn’t prove anything. The Bostocks went five years and then they adopted a kid and two months later she was pregnant.’

  ‘I’m not interested in the Bostocks, or anybody else’s peculiarities. I’m thinking about us. Perhaps more about you, because I know how much it means to you to have children. And the plain fact is that it’s highly unlikely that I ever will. There, I’ve said it.’

  She tightened her mouth, schooling herself. For God’s sake don’t get emotional. Just facts. She reached into her trouser pocket, seeing his eyes follow every movement, and pulled out the letter.

  ‘Read this.’

  He took the letter, unfolded it, turned it over and looked at the blank back first almost as though any delay in reading was welcome.

  He turned it over. He heard Mary say, ‘He’s a gynaecologist in Plymouth. He’s known us for years …’

  The typed script came up at him:

  With reference to your attendance last week at my surgery for a screening examination with regard to your forthcoming marriage … You will remember that we had quite an anxious time over your appendicitis six years ago. As I explained to your parents then you had a considerable pelvic abscess which had to be drained. At the time of the operation the appendix was removed as well as the right ovary and a large part of the right Fallopian tube. The left Fallopian tube was also involved …

  I am afraid that this was an extreme measure which had to be carried out for the safety of your own life. Although I regret having to say this to you. I must since you have asked me the direct question. It is my considered opinion that your chances of becoming pregnant by normal conception are remote …

  He lowered the letter to his knees, looking at her. He could see that she was near to tears but fighting them. He felt himself swamped with sympathy for her, sympathy perhaps that partly included himself, and with admiration for her honesty and he said to himself, a commentator remote from the room, if only I knew what it was to love and really loved her it wouldn’t matter a damn.

  He said, ‘Your people never told you about this?’

  ‘Only vaguely. I was hardly out of school. Somehow it didn’t register. Or maybe they didn’t want it to register.’

  He handed the letter back to her. ‘It’s not absolutely positive.’

  ‘Does it have to be absolutely?’

  ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘Andy, you know and I know how we feel about one another. Let’s be honest—the big thing in your mind is Alverton and the Raikes family. You want a woman who can fill that house with children for you. I may not be able to do that.’

  ‘Well, that’s a chance we’ll have to take, isn’t it?’

  He got up, went over to her and knelt down, holding her hands.

  ‘Is it? I know how much children mean to you. I don’t think it’s a chance I can ask you to gamble on.’

  ‘What kind of a man do you think I am? A blood stock dealer who’s just gone around and picked himself the best mare he can for breeding? You think that first time up on the moors there was any thought like that in my mind?’

  ‘No, I don’t. You weren’t thinking that far ahead. But it’s there now, large and clear. Alverton, children, a couple of boys going off to Blundell’s where all the Raikes men have gone … Don’t you think I see that? Don’t you think I know your thoughts when you’re down on the river … seeing yourself with a boy, teaching him all the things about the river and the country that your father taught you?’

  ‘Well, if there
isn’t going to be a boy, there isn’t, and that’s that. I’ve asked you to marry me and you’ve said yes. What do you think I’m going to say because you show me that?’ He flipped the letter which lay in her lap. ‘That I’m sorry, but I must buy another mare? For Christ’s sake!’

  ‘No, I don’t expect you to say it. Not now. But it’s what you’re going to feel like later. You won’t be able to avoid it. That’s why I want you to know that I’m not holding you to anything, Andy. Not to anything.’

  ‘Don’t be bloody silly!’ He stood and pulled her up to him, holding her. ‘You think I care what some bloody doctor says? Doctors, lawyers, all these professional types, they don’t know their own jobs.’

  He held her to him, kissing her eyes, knowing how much this had cost her, knowing her fears and knowing he had to banish them, but knowing also that she was right, that the one thing he wanted was children, his own children, children with the Raikes blood in them.

  She pulled her face back from him, his arms still round her, and looked up at him.

  ‘You’re being nice, Andy. But I mean it. You know I mean it—and what’s more I don’t want you to make any quick promise now.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more about it. Not another word. You’re going to put it right out of your mind and so am I.’

  Much later, in bed, in the darkness, their love-making over, he lay and knew that there was no question of putting it out of his mind. Talk could be controlled, but not his thoughts, and in the blackness, with Mary warm alongside him, it was hard to keep from his mind a bitter protest. For years he’d worked, taken a hundred risks, to be able to come back and buy Alverton and take a wife there. But it seemed now, in the silent disorder of night thoughts, that there was something down here that rejected him, wanted to bar his coming back, wanted to break the cherished continuity of family that meant so much to him. He had come back once, only to be summoned by Sarling. He had freed himself from that and was back again. And now there was this. Sarling he had been able to deal with, but Mary was different. Against her straightforward honesty, knowing the agony in her of offering him release, he had—for the moment, at least—no weapons that he was willing to use. It would have been a hundred times better if she had been less honest, kept her doubts to herself, never gone to the Plymouth man … that way no onus would have been put upon him to make a decision. They would have gone on through the years until the thing slowly became apparent … and then? What would he have done then? God alone knew. All he knew was that if he couldn’t go back to Alverton on his own terms then he didn’t want to go back … Why did he want Alverton and children so much? Was it because he was afraid of something? Knew that at Alverton he could hide from it, forget it? Was it true that he really was Frampton not Raikes, that he had done what he had done with Berners not to pay a debt owed by life to his father, not to settle at Alverton and re-establish the name of Raikes, but had done it because it was in his nature to do it? That all the time he had been crying out and working for a secure pastoral life he had been denying his real impulse … masking that terrible challenge that lives inside some men to defy convention and venture themselves and their intelligence against society because society held no true place of contentment for them?

  Chapter Ten

  Before she had taken her bath Belle had washed out some underclothes, girdles and stockings and strung them up on a nylon line across the bathroom. Bathed now, she powdered herself and slipped into her nightdress. From her bedroom came the sound of the radio which she kept on at night for company when she was alone here. She took her dressing gown down from behind the door and went into the bedroom, throwing the gown across the foot of the bed. She was crossing the room to switch off the main bedroom light when the door opened.

  It was a smooth, even movement, but nevertheless she jumped, shocked, her heart thumping violently, and gave a little cry.

  The woman standing in the doorway said gently, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.’

  Belle said nothing, standing there, fighting to get her breath back.

  The woman said, ‘Don’t worry. No one’s going to harm you. Just put on your dressing gown and come out.’

  ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get in?’

  The woman smiled. ‘A lot of questions, but you’ll get the answers. Just put something on and come out.’

  Keeping her eyes on the woman, Belle reached for her dressing gown. I should have screamed, she thought. Why didn’t I scream and then perhaps someone would have come? The woman watched her, a pleasant smile on her face. She was short, very slim, wearing a black and white checked suit and she had blue framed glasses that went up at the corners like little ears, a small, dark, pleasant woman of about thirty-odd. She said, ‘I was for ringing the bell, but he said no you might not answer. So we came in and I’m sorry to have frightened you. I’d have screamed myself. By the way, my name’s Saunders. Ethel. And his is Benson. John Benson.

  She came forward and, as though they had been friends for years, took the cord of the dressing gown and tied it about Belle’s waist and then put a hand on her shoulder and moved her into the sitting room.

  A man was standing looking at the picture of the Camargue horses. He turned from the picture and smiled at Belle, giving a half nod to the picture.

  He said, “I was down there once and watched a round up of the horses. It’s a bad picture though. I hope you don’t mind our coming in unannounced, Miss Vickers?’

  Recovering now, Belle said, ‘ I do indeed. It’s no way to go on at all. And anyway, what do you want?’

  ‘Questions,’ said Ethel Saunders. ‘ We’ll have to try to be fair and answer some of yours and then you can answer some of ours. But it will all be easier if we sit.’ Her hand came out and moved Belle to a chair, gently pressing her down.

  The man said, ‘I’m Benson and that’s Miss Saunders—my secretary. We wouldn’t wish to say any more about ourselves at the moment. We opened the door with this.’ He held up a bunch of keys. There was a flash of immaculate white cuff, of a gold link and a smile just shadowed the tanned skin of his face. He was a big, clean, unhurried, confident man … foreign, somewhere, Belle thought, a little too much dressing on the dark hair for her fancy … Oh, God, what had that got to do with anything right now? What were they doing here… ? Suddenly, the shock they had caused her, the quick upsurge of fright at the woman’s appearance faded and another fear took over. Oh Christ, what was it all about?

  Maybe the man knew this for he said to Miss Saunders, ‘Give her a brandy. Good for the nerves.’

  ‘No thank you,’ said Belle. Drink at this moment would make her sick.

  ‘Just as you like. Let’s talk.’

  Stupidly Belle said, ‘You’re not going to steal anything, are you? I mean there’s nothing here.’

  They both laughed.

  ‘Just questions,’ said Benson. ‘Ordinary, simple questions. You’re Miss Belle Vickers, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘No, no—your turn will come. Miss Belle Vickers. But the door outside says Mr and Mrs Vickers.’

  ‘So what?’ Although it wasn’t diminishing her fear, spirit was coming back. At least they weren’t going to steal anything or be violent.

  ‘So we understand perfectly. Mr and Mrs Vickers but not in the eyes of the Law. So who cares? Where’s Mr Vickers?’

  ‘He’s away.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know. Travelling. That’s what he does—travels. For a firm, I mean.’

  ‘I see.’ Benson nodded. Then he turned to Miss Saunders. ‘Ethel, take a look around. A good look. Begin with Mr Vickers’ bedroom.’

  Belle said, ‘I don’t care for that.’

  Miss Saunders said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to take anything. And I won’t be untidy.’ She moved towards the far bedroom door.

  Benson said to Belle, ‘How old is Mr Vickers?’

  There was no question now in B
elle’s mind that his real interest was in Raikes, and there was no question in her mind of how she had to deal with this.

  ‘About fifty.’

  ‘What’s he like? To look at, I mean.’

  ‘Well … I don’t know. I suppose you’d say he was kind of shortish and plump, going a little bald. Look, why don’t you tell me what all this is about?’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me why, without knowing what it’s all about, you feel it necessary to lie about Mr Vickers? I’ve met him, you know. He’s not short, or plump, or going bald. However, don’t let us bother with that. You were Mr Sarling’s secretary, weren’t you?’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘Did he know you lived here with Mr Vickers?’

  ‘I worked for Mr Sarling. He had no interest in my private life.’

  ‘That sounds reasonable. Were you upset when he died?’

  Belle’s lips tightened. Hold on, Belle, hold on, she told herself.

  ‘Naturally,’ she said. ‘And I really insist that both of you leave this place at once; otherwise I shall ring down for the porter … or even the police.’

  Benson gave a little shrug of his broad shoulders. ‘All right. We’re not leaving just yet so you must do what you will. Personally I would suggest the police.’ He nodded towards the telephone.

  Belle sat unmoving. Why had she said that? It was a damned fool thing to say. She didn’t want the porter or the police up here.

  Benson smiled. ‘I give you the chance and you don’t choose to take it. I wonder why? Mind, I have my own theory, but we won’t bother to go into it. Tell me—who keeps the key of the safe behind the picture?’