Rose in Darkness (3 page)

He took a long swig of his drink, eyeing her dubiously. ‘If they want to kill you, why don’t they just kill you? What’s the use, following you about?’ But he answered his own question: ‘Perhaps they just want to scare you.’

‘That wouldn’t stop me telling. If I wanted to, which I don’t. But they’d never accept that.’

‘If they thought you might—well, blackmail them—?’

‘They wouldn’t think that. I’ve got enough money. But while I’m alive I know—what I know. What they think I know. I think they’re just waiting for a chance.’

The brandy warmed the cockles of his heart. ‘Look, love, people don’t go about murdering people. I mean, not just ordinary people—’

‘These aren’t just ordinary people. They’re very un-ordinary people. They’re in something called the Red Mafia, Mafia Rossa, which is about fifty times worse than any ordinary old Italian Mafia—’

‘Oh, come on!’ he said. ‘The Mafia. What secrets could
you
have that the Mafia wouldn’t want you to have?’

‘It’s not the Mafia themselves. They’re just carrying out orders. The real people giving the orders are very rich and grand.’

‘People don’t give orders to the Mafia.’

‘Those people do,’ she said.

Just nuts, poor girl. On the other hand—she was frightened, he could see that, properly frightened. She really believed in all this tommy rot. All the same, soon he must turn her out. He glanced up at the clock; five minutes to Time, and anyway he was waiting for the doctor to come. He confided in her; he was proud of himself and his care for his wife. Baby coming more or less any time now and the specialist had promised to call in. Not the ordinary doctor, mind: the special gynaecologist, rooms in Harley Street and the lot. But he was on the staff of the hospital here in Wren’s Hill and had rooms in Wren’s Hill too and this was the first baby. ‘Nothing but the best,’ he said to Sari, telling her all about it. ‘My wife and my baby—nothing but the best.’

‘Well, I think that’s lovely,’ said Sari.

And
she
was lovely too. He looked at her closely again. ‘Don’t mind me asking, but haven’t I seen you somewhere?’

‘If you’ve been in the town in the last few days, you may have seen my photograph. There’s an old film of mine, showing at the Cinema Club. That’s why I’m here.’

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘Some Indian name. The wife was talking about you only this afternoon.’

‘Sari,’ she said. ‘Sari Morne.’

‘Well, I’m damned! She was cursing herself, the baby coming a bit before its time or so they think, so she wouldn’t be able to go into town tonight to see you. Mad about you she is. You was in some Italian film; but three years ago or more, she says, and she never saw you again.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘That was my last. But you see—Italy: so it’s not so impossible about the Mafia, is it?’ And she put down her empty glass with a little clonk on the polished wood surface of the counter, glanced out uneasily at the blackness of the night and gave a little shudder. ‘I must go.’

He followed her glance, saw where the heavy raindrops bounced and shimmered on a gleaming black rooftop. ‘Decent bus you seem to have, out there.’

‘It’s the new Cadmus, the Halcyon 3000.’

‘Ah, yes, very popular that is. We’ve got several right here in Wren’s Hill. All that advertising, I suppose. I must say, outwardly it looks much the same as anything else.’

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Inconspicuous.’

For the first time he thought that this might, after all, be something serious. ‘You especially choose an inconspicuous car?’

‘That’s right,’ she said again, dully; and got down from the stool slowly, as though reluctantly, perched the big black hat on top of her head with a careless bang on the crown to push it down further over the glow of her hair, pulled on the soft leather gloves, slung the handbag over her shoulder. Beautiful. Beneath the brim of the black hat she looked more beautiful than ever, he thought, everything about her was beautiful, everything she owned, luxurious and beautiful. Only the fear in the shadowed blue-grey eyes was disturbing. He came round to the front of the bar and put a hand on her arm. ‘Don’t worry, love. They’ll have gone past now. They’ll be miles ahead of you.’ He didn’t believe in her followers but it was evident that she did; she was deeply afraid.

‘Unless they’ve realised and stopped somewhere and are—waiting.’ But she would have to go. He went with her to the door. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.’ He stood in the lighted entrance, one hand already lifted to shoot the bolt behind her. ‘Be seeing you!’

‘I dare say you will,’ she said. ‘In the
News of the World.
’ And stepped out into the rain and opened the nearside door and shifted across into the driving seat. The overhead light, automatically switched on, illuminated the beautifully finished interior; it was a very expensive car. He looked it over with interest till she reached across and slammed shut the door and the light went out.

‘Well, goodnight then, love!’ he called again; and the headlights sprang on and the engine purred and she drove off slowly and then faster—faster—faster—away from the warmth and the light, away from security, along the lonely road.

And straight across the path of the speeding car—the great tree fell.

P
HINEAS DEVIGNE LIVED UP
at the top of the steep incline which gives Wren’s Hill its name: a rather beautiful one-storey house which he resolutely refused to call a bungalow. Nanny came through from her sitting-room as he stood in the hall peeling off his soaking wet raincoat; smelling of cold cream and tightly belted into her pink woollen dressing-gown with its tasselled cord: a big woman not improved by a heavy greying moustache. ‘Well, so you’re home?’

Usually it irritated him intensely: what was one supposed to reply? But tonight—tonight there was a sort of glow within him that he could not quite place, not like any of the minor glows that had, of necessity, for the past year or so punctuated his life; and he only said, holding out the wet mac, ‘I’d better hang this somewhere to drip.’

If he had been Ena, Nanny would have been all cluckings of distress, urging on him hot drinks and cossetings. But Ena had gone where her faithless little heart had led her and he had custody of Ena Meena; and the one person Nanny loved more than Ena was Ena Mee. She bore within her an unceasing resentment against a law that would take away a child from its mother, however ill behaved, and hand it over to a mere man. And what fun those bygone days had been! - with Mummy so naughty and indiscreet, all those secrets and coverings-over and the little rewards of teas and even lunches in places Mr Devigne never even heard about, and exciting little gifts that were not to be shown to him! She was living with a very rich gentleman now, Mummy was, and many a chat she had with Nanny over the ‘phone when His Nibs was working at the hospital or up in London, in Harley Street. She took the wet mackintosh, however, ungraciously. ‘I’ll hang it to drip in our bathroom, over the bath. It’s warm in there, it’ll dry out for the morning. And gimme that flah from your buttonhole, I’ll throw it down the lav.’ Our bathroom was hers and Ena Mee’s. ‘I s’pose you don’t want a hot drink?’

‘No thank you, Nanny, I think I need something a bit stronger.’ He tossed his soaking wet gloves on to the umbrella stand. ‘Some storm!’

‘Well, fancy going out on such a night, anyway, just to the cinema!’

‘I’d have had to go and see Mrs Dawkins at the Fox. And anyway,’ he pointed out mildly, ‘it wasn’t nearly so bad when I started.’ He glanced over in the general direction of Ena Mee’s room. ‘She wasn’t upset by it?’

‘What, by you going off for the evening?’

‘By the storm,’ he said with an edge to his voice.

‘No,’ said Nanny. ‘Nanny was with her. Even if she didn’t have her Mummy,’ she added with a significant sniff. But as he turned away without reply towards the dining-room and a decanter, she enquired, apparently placating: ‘Well, how was the picture?’

‘Quite good,’ he said, briefly, unrelenting.

‘Sari Morne came up to expectations, did she?’

‘Yes, she was fine.’

‘Funny she died out. Lovely film that was, her in that Italian place. That bit’, said Nanny craftily, ‘where she runs up them steps with her lover coming after her—’

‘You’re thinking of some other film,’ said Phin. ‘She never does run up the steps. As a matter of fact,’ he added, a touch craftily on his own part, ‘on this occasion a young woman ran down some steps: and full tilt into
me.
’

‘Whatever do you mean—ran into you?’

‘Some girl, looking for a seat I suppose, ran down the steps and I bumped into her.’

‘Oh, so you did go to the cinema?’ said Nanny; and could have bit her silly tongue out, honest she could.

A
ND IN THE FLAT
next morning, Rufie was ringing up Sofy. Sofy was short for Sofa because she was so wickedly fat. She was another of the somewhat shifting group which had come to be known - from a Ronald Searle drawing it was - though in fact there were not often as many as eight of them, as the Eight Best Friends. Sari’s Eight Best Friends. ‘Sofy? It’s all right to talk. She’s still sound asleep.’

‘Are you sure, Rufie? I know by your voice that it’s Something.’

‘Ap-solutely soundo: I’ve just peeked in.’ The Eight Best friends were always tricking Rufie into saying certain words whose correct pronunciation subtly evaded him.

‘Yes, well, the cinema at Wren’s Hill, last night—’

‘She has no idea—?’

‘No, no, she didn’t want anyone to go, so one just plays it that way. Why she should care—?’

‘I suppose it’s a bit humiliating, poor love,’ said Sofy, ‘not ever getting any more work. And I never can think why. Of course she pretends to outsiders that it’s because she won’t do nude scenes.’

‘And that’s really to laugh,’ said Rufie. ‘Don’t you remember the other day when she opened the door, practically starko and couldn’t think what the lady was so surprised about?’

‘No, did she? Oh, Sari!’ said Sofy, fondly. ‘She really is too wonderful.’

‘And in a state because the woman might be upset. I mean, the rest of us were falling about with laughter but Sari was so afraid she’d shocked the poor thing and hurt her feelings.’ ‘Sari is a very special person,’ said Sofy. ‘Yes, but this time, darling, it really is a bit too much.... ’

And Sofy rang up Etho. ‘Darling—have you heard from Rufie?’

The gay, high voice that always sounded as though you were the one person in the world that Etho had been hoping would ring up! ‘I saw him last night.’

‘He called in at your place?’

‘Not to tell me anything in particular, though.’

‘It’s Sari again,’ said Sofy.

‘Oh, my God, no! What now?’

‘Followed.’

‘Oh, well that,’ said Etho. ‘She’s always being followed.’

‘But now some elaborate story, Rufie says, of a tree across the road, blown down by the storm. And can you believe it?—swapped cars with some man who also couldn’t get by because of the tree and
he
took her car and
she
took his—’

‘My dear, it’s all just fantasy, you people get so worked up. Sari gets bored, she cooks up these things for her own inner amusement. And she knows how Rufie does love a bit of drama.’

‘It’s more than that, Etho. I mean, no one loves Sari more than I do, but sometimes I do think that she’s a little bit kinky.’

‘She’s not kinky in the least. She’s bored, that’s all. She’s having fun. You don’t know Sari....’

But he rang up Nan, all the same. ‘Nan, do go round and see what goes with Sari. They’re all in a flap because she had some adventure or other last night. She arrived home in something like a state of shock, apparently. Rufie had to ply her with brandy—’

Nan was the newest of the Eight Best Friends. She listened with horror to Etho’s brief outline of the story of the tree blown across the road. ‘Oh, poor darling! And in that awful weather. I’ll go round to the flat, of course I will, and see that she’s all right.’

‘The only thing is’, said Etho, carefully, ‘that Rufie and Sofy don’t believe a word of it.’

‘Don’t believe it? Why not?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ said Etho. ‘You’d better ask Rufie.’

So before she went round to Sari’s, Nan telephoned the flat. ‘Rufie? Is it all right to talk?’

‘Yes, yes, brandy and pills last night and still ap-solutely soundo.’

‘Why don’t you and Sofy believe this thing about her swapping cars?’

‘Nan, darling, you don’t know Sari yet,’ said Rufie. ‘She’s always being followed and having these terrible adventures. Of
course
she never swapped cars with anyone. There’s not a word of truth in it.’

Nan was silent, bewildered. They were all so bewildering—exciting, amusing, glamorous, so quick and flashing; she never could think why they bothered with her, a sad, bored, ordinary widow, much older than any of them (except perhaps Etho) who had somehow got drawn into their enchanted circle. But—bewildering. She said at last slowly, a little ashamed of being so dull and prosaic: ‘There’s one simple way to find out. Why don’t you go down to the car park and see if the Halcyon is there?’

‘But I’m looking at it out of the window this minute,’ said Rufie. ‘Of course it’s there.’

In the event, they
all
turned up that morning at the flat.

Sari woke late, very muttery and grumbly, with cat-like stretchings and yawnings and a great deal of gasping about how awful one felt in the mornings and how dreadful it was to be alive at all. Rufie, well used to her total inability to behave like a human being until fortified with cigarettes and black coffee, paid her no attention whatsoever except to supply her with both. He was employed somewhat spasmodically as a designer for the great fashion house of Christophe et Cie in Regent Street, and mostly worked at home. Home to Rufie was where he happened to be living—with any luck in someone else’s apartment. Much loved—by both sexes—he easily settled in, a welcome cuckoo in any available nest, bringing with him little but an assortment of only very slightly outré clothes and a simple arrangement of the tools of his trade. The work, when he was on form, came to him with such ease that he would sit on the edge of his bed with a pad on his knee and a few paint pots precariously balanced along the pillow and dash off sketch after sketch that in a brief time would be making headlines in all the couture magazines. Form, alas! however, too often eluded him and no arrangement of paint pots could produce anything but despair. His income in consequence was hardly a dependable factor; but since he would give away without a thought every penny he had, he equally without a thought accepted, when in need, the bounty of his friends. True, the second was a little inclined to out-balance the first but he was quite genuinely unaware of the fact. Calculation of this sort had no place in Rufie’s mind. At the moment, Sari had a large flat and was all too frequently short of spending money. Rufie simply appropriated the second bedroom, and while he was in funds, what he had was Sari’s also. The second bedroom led out, via the kitchen, to the fire-escape steps; so his social life, if a little curious to those who were narrow-minded about such things, need offend no one. Not that Sari cared two hoots how other people conducted their private lives. Live and let live.