The Tiger in the Well (10 page)

"I see. Well, that's an unusual situation, as you might say. I don't know if the vicar would be able to help you. . . . He's on very good terms with Mr. Parrish. Makes a joke about it sometimes, the vicar does. 'Mr. Parrish is my parish,' he says. Or 'Where would my parish be without Parrish.?' Last week he said, 'My parish would perish without Parrish.' Oh, and the oranges he bought for the annual treat, the vicar called 'em 'Parrishable goods.' They laughed for hours over

that one. Enjoys his joke, the vicar. He's very thick with Mr. Parrish."

"Then he would noth^ able to help me," Sally said. "I've learned that much by now. How long has Mr. Parrish been churchwarden here.-*"

"Let me see. He came here two years ago, from somewhere on the south coast, if I remember right—"

"Portsmouth."

"That's it. He introduced himself to the vicar very early on. He's not shy, not backward in coming forward, as you might say. I think he even had a letter of introduction, so the vicar said to me. Enjoys passing things on, the vicar. I wonder ..."

He eyed the shabby bureau in the comer. Then he seemed to make up his mind.

"Look, I'm going to do something I shouldn't do," he said. "The only reason is that I don't like Mr. Parrish. I shouldn't say that. I know it's my Christian duty to have a respect for everyone, but I can't help it. I don't trust the man."

He pulled out a key ring on a chain and unlocked the bureau. He looked through an untidy pile of papers and handed Sally a letter.

"Mess this place is in," he said. "He's a fine man, the vicar, good-hearted, jolly as you please, but he's too trusting. And he could do with someone to keep order in here. It's not my place to tell him, mind you."

Sally read the signature and sat up. It was a letter from the Reverend Mr. Beech. It said:

Dear Mr. Harding,

I have the pleasure of writing to recommend and introduce Mr. Arthur Parrish to you.

He has been a member of my congregation for five years, during which time he has distinguished himself not only by his reg-

ular and reverent attendance at Christian worship but also by his

many personal qualities.

I understand that he is moving to a house in your parish, and

I would like to assure you that in him you will find a devoted

Christian and a hardworking friend.

Believe me to be, Yours very truly, Gervase Davidson Beech.

It was dated 14 July 1879—six months after the entry in the register, and after the new rector had taken over in the Portsmouth church. The address it came from was printed smudgily on the cheap paper. It was St. Anselm's, Taverham Walk, Norwich.

Her heart leaped up.

"Thank you very much," she said. "I can't tell you how useful this is. Is it—I don't know about these things—is it usual for clergymen to write letters like this.'*"

"Being only a verger, I wouldn't know, miss," he said. "Except that Mr. Harding's very open and free, as I said. And I've never known it. He made a point of telling me about it and showing me the letter. So I suppose it isn't very usual, no."

She read the letter again. The handwriting was cramped and scholarly, and oddly shaky in parts, as if Mr. Beech was old and infirm. Well, be that as it may, she had an address now, and that was worth the journey.

"Thank you, Mr. Watkins," she said, standing up. "You've been very helpful. This man Mr. Beech was the clergyman who signed the register for the marriage Mr. Parrish claims he went through with me, and I've been trying to trace him."

The old verger looked out the vestry door and shut it again. "Let me have your address, miss," he said. "Just in case I hear anything, you know. I don't suppose I will. Mr. Parrish is very popular here, no doubt about that, oranges and all, a cheery word for everyone, generous with the collection. But

you know how it is; there's some folk you trust, and there's some you don't."

She wondered if she should tip him, but decided on a donation to the poor box instead; and with Mr. Beech's address in her bag, she set off home for Twickenham.

And found a visitor.

"Rosa! How wonderful to see you! But you've come so quickly!"

"As if I'd skulk at home. What d'you take me for.?"

Rosa was the oldest friend she had, apart from Jim Taylor. She was Frederick's sister. When Sally met them both, Rosa was earning her living as an actress, to the scandal of her parents. Both she and Frederick had been a severe disappointment to their father; he was a bishop, and though he was Webster Garland's brother, there was nothing of genius, nothing of humor, nothing of generosity in him. With many tears and prayers and supplications, he'd cut off his children from all contact with himself and their mother. Only when Rosa married a clergyman herself and abandoned the stage did he deign to acknowledge her again. Frederick's death had been keenly felt, no doubt, but noted in silence. The fact that Frederick had fathered a child would never be mentioned, Sally knew; though she thought Rosa had hinted the fact to her mother.

Rosa's husband, the Reverend Nicholas Bedwell, was a different kind of man altogether. He'd had a share in Sally's first adventure, which was how he'd met Rosa. He'd been a boxer in his youth; he was fearless and friendly, and though as a priest he regretted the fact that Sally had borne a child out of wedlock, as a man he understood, and both he and Rosa loved Harriet without measure. As a matter of discretion, Sally was known as Mrs. Lockhart when she stayed with therr. In a real sense she was s. widow, and the deception, impatient though both Sally and Rosa were with it, made it possible to keep their friendship open.

Nicholas Bedwell had a living in a busy parish in Oxford-

shire and couldn't get away; but Rosa had come at once, leaving her own two children for a day or so with their nurse. She and Sally sat down in the breakfast room (newly secured by the locksmith) and drank tea, and Sally told her everything, from the moment the divorce petition came to her discovery of Mr. Beech's address.

"That's the most preposterous tale I've ever heard," said Rosa. "He can't get away with that. What does your lawyer say.? I mean, they'll laugh it out of court, won't they.'*"

"I wish he'd be a little more optimistic," Sally told her. "He wants to concentrate on defending all this nonsense." She flicked the petition, which lay on the tea table between them. "All the rubbish about being a drunkard and so on. I don't think that matters. I think he ought to concentrate on the marriage thing and hammer that for all he's worth till it falls apart. But he's equivocating. ... I don!t know."

"Change him. Go to someone else. For goodness' sake, go to someone competent!"

"I'm sure he is competent. He obviously knows the law. And he did make some sensible suggestions when I last saw him. ..."

But it was I who went to Clapham and found Mr. Beech's address, she thought, and it was I who discovered the register in Portsmouth. Has this expensive inquiry agent done anything yet?

Rosa's red hair shone in the firelight. She was frowning.

"I wonder if we ought to have Harriet in Cowley.'"' she said, meaning her home in Oxford. "That's at the heart of it, isn't it.'* This man wants Harriet. He doesn't care twopence about you; all this divorce business is only to get hold of her."

"And give him the right to have her. The point is that if the child's illegitimate, the mother has the right of custody. But if the parents are married, then the father has the right. The lawyer explained that. So, yes, it's all about her. But I have to fight it legally, Rosa. I have to go through this farce, I have to fight it in the courts, because if I don't they'll just find for him automatically and I'll lose her."

Suddenly, and quite to her own surprise, she burst into tears. They were alone in the room, since Harriet was being bathed by Sarah-Jane, and Rosa got up at once and put her arms around her, and Sally clung as she'd clung to no one since Frederick had died.

"I just don't know whyT she said, when the crying had ebbed. They were sitting side by side on the old sofa. "If I knew that, I could ... I don't know . . . offer something else, buy him off, fight him differently. But it's this not knowing that makes me so frightened. . . . It's like fighting a ghost or a madman or something. And to find that he was laying the plans for this all that time ago, before there was any Harriet, that someone's been watching me all this time. ..."

"Have you checked everything?"

"Everything.'' I think so, I think so. . . . What else can I look at.?"

"Somerset House. You know, the Registry of Births, Deaths, and Marriages. There'll be a record of Harriet's birth, won't there.'"'

Sally sat up. "Yes! Of course! Why didn't I think—" But then her expression darkened again, and she sank back in a way that was new to Rosa, a hunted, hopeless way. "He'll have altered it," she said. "I know he will. I'll go and look, but I know what I'll find."

"No," said Rosa, "/'//go and look. I'll go tomorrow. You know, if they set this all up before Harriet was even born, they can't want her for herself. They only want her because it's the best way of hurting you."

Sally thought about it. It was true, but that didn't make it any easier to understand. She glanced involuntarily at the wall. Rosa followed her eyes, and saw the bullet mark from the night before. She raised her eyebrows.

"Yes," Sally said. "I've got another pistol. I thought ..."

"And I thought you'd had enough of pistols," said Rosa gently. "After the first time."

The first time was when Sally had shot Ah Ling, the

Chinese-Dutch pirate. Rosa had been nearby and had arrived just too late to prevent it. Sally had thrown the gun away then, hoping never to touch one again.

"But it's ... I feel safer . . . No, that's not true either. I feel angry, Rosa. With a gun I can . . . Oh, I don't know. It's wrong, yes, I know. But if the only way to save Harriet was to kill that man, I wouldn't think twice about it. I'd pull the trigger cheerfully. And at the moment the only thing that stops me giving in to despair is the thought that I could do that. Does that make me an animal or something.? Immoral.? Inhuman.? Unwomanly.? I don't care. I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to sit around weakly and let it happen. I'll fight it legally all the way, and then if need be . . ."

She sat there, her hands clenched on her knees. Rosa watched her, and then put her hand over Sally's.

"But I've made some progress," Sally said. "I've found out Mr. Beech's address."

"And I'm going to find the birth certificate," said Rosa.

"And there's this person Mr. Lee of somewhere in Spital-fields. He comes into it somewhere. Let's go and put Harriet to bed, and then you can help me write to Mr. Beech. D'you think Nick would know how to trace mysterious clergymen.?"

The next day Rosa went to Somerset House and came back baffled, having paid a penny for a copy of the birth certificate of a Harriet Beatrice Rosa Parrish, who it said had been born on 30 September 1879 at Telegraph Road, Clapham. Her father's name was Arthur James Parrish; her mother was Veronica Beatrice Parrish, formerly Lockhart. Of Harriet Beatrice Rosa Lockhart, born on the same day at Orchard House, Twickenham, there was no record at all.

"I'm beginning to see what you mean," she said. "It's a lie and a fake, but the lengths they must have gone to. . . . We'll get them. We'll beat them somehow."

She didn't say, though Sally didn't need reminding, that it was a pity Sally hadn't had Harriet baptized, because then

there'd have been a certificate to show that and support Sally's side of the case. Well, it was too late for that now.

Rosa stayed two days at Orchard House. It was a strange time; there was a storm over Sally's head somewhere, and she knew it was going to break, but Rosa's energy and common sense made it impossible to believe that it would hurt her. And yet she knew it would. Sally felt as if she were half out of one world and half into another, and didn't know where she belonged.

The day Rosa left, another legal document arrived. As soon as she opened it, she hastened to Middle Temple Lane.

"It's an injunction," the lawyer said. "Oh, dear. How very unfortunate. What have you been doing, Miss Lockhart.^"

"An injunction—^what's that.'"'

"It's an order of the court requiring you to refrain from— oh, dear, dear, dear—have you been to Mr. Parrish's house.'"'

"Yes."

"And have you been disturbing—at any rate, you have upset a neighbor, it seems."

''^Mhat?\ spoke to her for less than a minute. She was the one who upset me, if anything. What on earth is this injunction for.^ Does he mean I'm not allowed to go and ask people questions, for heaven's sake.'"'

"Precisely that. It was most unwise, Miss Lockhart. It puts us in a difficult position as regards—"

"Has your inquiry agent started asking questions yet.'*"

"No, he has not."

"Well, for goodness' sake, why not.'* There's hardly any time left!"

"Miss Lockhart, I must ask you not to raise your voice to me in that fashion. I am quite aware that the feminine nature is more excitable than the masculine, but I had given you credit for some self-control. I have not yet appointed an inquiry agent."

Sally pressed her fists together to try and stay calm.

"But, Mr. Adcock, we spoke about this three days ago. Please —why haven't you appointed an agent yet.'"'

"For the best of all reasons. I want to make perfectly sure that we appoint only the best. I have been pursuing references—^would you like to see the testimonials I have been looking through.'* Miss Lockhart, you must not lose faith in your solicitor. I fully understand the anxiety you must feel, but it does not help to let it become agitation. And it certainly does not help to take steps of the sort you have done and initiate inquiries on your own account. Have you considered how difficult you have made it for the agent we appoint.^ He will have to counter the bad impression left by you before he can even begin. And, in fact, now that I look again at this injunction it is a moot point whether we shall be able to make this sort of inquiry at all. Only in the most delicate and tangential way. . . . And then with so many safeguards that . . . Miss Lockhart, I fear that you have damaged your interests to some extent. The other side is bound to argue that—"

Sally stood up.

"I'm trying to understand," she said. "Believe me, Mr. Adcock, I'm trying to understand how it is that an innocent woman can have her own child taken away by a total stranger, and how when she asks questions about it she's threatened with legal action—what sort of law is this that makes it worse for you if you just try to find out why you're being persecuted in the first place.'^ Do you know what this feels like.'*"

He spread out his hands. He intended to look wise and tolerant and understanding; in fact, he looked weak and foolish. Sally looked away and moved to the door.

"If I don't visit his house again, will I be safe from legal action.'"' she said, one hand on the handle.

"It's worded quite widely. ... As far as I can tell, yes, his house, and those neighbors whom you, ah, visited, and any other premises where annoyance was likely to be caused. One could argue that this was too wide. I think it would be reasonable to argue that. If you wish, I can—"

"No. Don't waste the time. Have you arranged a meeting with Mr. Coleman yet.'' The barrister.^"

"Ah. There we have been fortunate. Mr. Coleman is agreeable to a meeting at half past five on the afternoon of the seventeenth."

"The day before ..."

"As you say, the day before the court case. I had to put your point of view quite strongly to Mr. Coleman, Q.C. He is not of the opinion that it will help, but he has generously agreed to meet your wishes."

Welly thafs something, anyway, Sally thought. She was becoming obsessed now. The case had inflamed her mind to the point where she could not concentrate on anything else for more than a couple of minutes at a time. She dwelt endlessly on Mr. Adcock's words, trying to sift something hopeful out of them like a miner panning for gold, trying to be fair, trying not to brood over how slow he was being, trying to see it as sensitivity to the law and judicious shrewdness.

But she couldn't keep it up for long. Privately she raged. How could the law be used so viciously, in such an unprincipled way.f* Didn't the lawyers who drew up petitions and injunctions and prepared cases ever think of the meaning of what they were doing.f* Was the whole majesty and splendor of the English legal system so easily bent to do something so obviously wrong.?

She didn't dare think it was. She was still incredulous, still hopeful that the court would throw the case out, still unable, with part of her mind, to feel it was anything more than a bad dream. It was the perfect state to have your victim in, if you were the predator.

Mr. Parrish, by contrast, had just been having a highly satisfactory meeting with his lawyer.

"They've engaged Coleman," Mr. Gurney told him.

"Is he good.?"

"The best."

"Well, who've we got.? Haven't we got the best.? If not, why not.?"

"We don't need the best. We've got Sanderson. Second

best is good enough with a cast-iron case like this. Coleman wouldn't have a hope if he was Demosthenes and Cicero rolled into one."

Mr. Parrish had heard of those gentlemen, but not recently. He grunted.

"I suppose you know what you're doing," he said.

"Coleman knows it too. He'll do a damn fine job. I look forward to hearing his arguments. But he won't win, and he knows it. And I know he knows it, because I know his clerk."

"Good," said Parrish. "What about the other business.'' The financial side.'^"

"That's contingent upon the decision going the right way, as you know. Which it will. Your wife's property is, legally speaking, your property; there's no need for a separate ruling. The law's quite clear."

"So all her property's mine.'"'

"I wouldn't put it quite like that," said Mr. Gumey, whose conscience, though it had largely drained away, had left the odd puddle of fastidiousness behind. "I'd prefer to say that your property, which your wife has misappropriated against your wishes, will naturally and properly revert to your control."

"Say what you like," said Mr. Parrish. "A nod's as good as a wink. What it boils down to is that as soon as the court's found for me, not only the child, bless her heart, but the money and property my wife controls come to me. That right.?"

"Precisely so," said the lawyer.

"No snags.? No last-minute hitches.? You sent that injunction.?"

"The injunction will have been served this morning."

"Capital," said Mr. Parrish. "You know, Mr. Gumey, even more than getting my money back, you know what I'm looking forward to.?"

Mr. Gurney made an indeterminate noise expressive of polite inquiry.

"My litde baby girl," said Mr. Parrish. "I'd leave her mother

all the money, I would really, for the sake of her little golden head on my shoulder again. You got any kiddies, Mr. Gumey.?"

The lawyer had two sons at Eton, both stupid, both idle, both hideously expensive to support. The idea of their little golden heads on his shoulder filled him with nausea. He emitted another indeterminate noise.

"Still," said Mr. Parrish, getting up, "in justice to myself, I can't overlook the fmancial aspects. I'm reassured to think that my little girly won't go short."

And with these words, he left. Mr. Gurney would have wondered at his client, if he'd had anything left to wonder with; but what imagination and sympathy and human concern he'd been born with had trickled away with his conscience years before. He put Mr. Parrish's papers away and turned back to the straightforward, cleanly matter of evicting a widow from her tenement.

Sally realized as she came away from Middle Temple Lane that she hadn't told Mr. Adcock about the break-in, and the man in Harriet's room, and the missing toy bear.

She stopped in the gatehouse where the lane turned into Fleet Street. Should she go back and tell him.? The thought of his probable reaction decided her not to. There'd be a law against objecting to people stealing from you; she was very unwise to have gone to the police, since that would brand her as an agitator and a troublemaker and prejudice the courts against her; she must be prepared for further injunctions restraining her from even mentioning the matter; she must remove all the new locks and put back the old ones, so as to avoid making difficulties for burglars. . . .

She couldn't even laugh at her own imagination. She hadn't laughed for days; she'd hardly smiled. She didn't know, and Rosa hadn't wanted to tell her, but she was paler than she'd ever been, and there were dark shadows under her eyes. She knew she wasn't eating; she just didn't feel like it. She'd been sleeping badly, waking at the slightest noise and then

not being able to sleep again, and when she did drift off, her sleep was filled with disturbing dreams. She'd dreamed the night before that she'd left Harriet waiting on a bench in the park while she went to consult the lawyer, and forgotten about her, and only remembered when she got home; so she had to rush back there in a panic, and of course the bench was empty. She woke sobbing with guilt, and went in to the sleeping child, and lay on the bed beside her and held her tight, whispering that she'd never abandon her, never leave her alone, while the cold, gray light of the dawn filtered in and reminded her that they were one day closer to the court case.

It felt like waiting for an execution.

So she was not in a mood to react favorably when a hand tugged at her sleeve as she turned into Fleet Street.

She looked around, expecting a beggar, and automatically reached for her purse to find a coin and get rid of him quickly. But the figure she saw was clearly not a beggar.

It was a young man with a cap low over his eyes, a blue spotted handkerchief about his neck, and a wide brass-studded belt holding up his corduroy trousers. What she could see of his face was not encouraging: for Bill's experiences of life had left his habitual expression one of sullen threat.

She took it in, surprised, and then looked down at the rough-knuckled hand resting on her sleeve.

"Miss Lockhart.'*" he said, astonishing her further. "Listen. I know who you are. There's a bloke as wants—"

His low, hoarse mutter, the air of menace he wore, were too much for her. She shook her arm free, seized his arm instead, and to his amazement dragged him suddenly into the angle of the gatehouse and pushed him against the wall. Anger lent her strength, and the movement was so unexpected that Bill didn't resist, and in any case he was off balance. But before he knew what had happened, something hard and painful was thrust against his ribs. He looked down and saw the dull nickel-plated shine of a revolver.

She was standing so that her body shielded it from the view of passers-by. She knew what she was doing; he felt the skin crawl on his scalp as he noticed that the hammer was pulled back. A touch of the trigger, and he'd be dead. Her hand was rock-steady, and to judge by her expression, she'd be glad to do it.

"Tell him," she said, "that if he gives me the slightest excuse, I'll put a bullet through him. And that goes for his messenger boys, too. And for anyone who breaks into my house again. Stay away, you hear.? Leave me alone!"

Her voice was low and intense, and the furious hatred in her eyes—fine dark eyes they were, not at all what you'd expected in one so blond—kept him silent. Ladies didn't behave like this. They didn't carry guns; they didn't display passion. So he stood still and silent against the wall of the gatehouse as the revolver slipped out of sight, as she stepped away, as the busy crowd swallowed her and she disappeared.

"She was like a tiger, Mr. Goldberg," said Bill. "She wouldn't listen. She'd've shot me soon as blinking."

It was late the same evening, and they were in an unsavory public house near Covent Garden. Goldberg, in a wide-brimmed slouch hat and a black cloak, was smoking a cigar which earned a look of respect even from the hardened laborers at the next table.

"No go, then," he said. "What was that about breaking in.?"

Bill repeated what he remembered.

"Someone breaks into her house, and she thinks it's Parrish," said Goldberg. "You stop her in the street, and she thinks it's Parrish. Understandable, I suppose. Pity, though. We'll have to catch the right moment."

"D'you know where she lives, Mr. G..? We could keep a watch on her house, like."

"No, damn it, I don't. I made an excuse to go and see Parrish's lawyer a while back and picked up some papers off

a desk while his clerk's back was turned, and that's how I came across her case. I don't know, Bill; it smells wrong. It's mischief. The more I see of Parrish, the more repellent he becomes. Well, we've failed today. Have to try something else next time."

The House by the Canal

That weekend Goldberg took Bill to Amsterdam.

He was due to speak at a congress of the socialist parties of Holland and Belgium, and his speech was expected to make a stir. Bill had never been out of London in his life, and he stuck close to Goldberg, though he tried to look as tough and cool about it as he could. Nor, of course, could he speak German, which was what Goldberg was speaking most of the time. Goldberg introduced him as his bodyguard, a comrade from London, and he shook hands politely, accepted large glasses of the light Dutch beer, and watched. He was impressed by the respect all these people held Goldberg in. Wherever they went, from private house to cafe to meeting hall, Goldberg would be recognized and hailed and surrounded by admirers of all kinds: elderly, academic-looking gentlemen, vast and threateningly bearded Russians, stolid workers and trade unionists, and, not least, young women. Goldberg moved among them like a king come back from exile; they hung on his words, they bought him drinks, they gave him cigars, they stood up and applauded when he entered a room, they gazed wide-eyed as he spoke in that clear, harsh, laughing voice. Bill's estimation of him couldn't help but move up, to see his friend and protector treated as a man of such consequence.

He didn't know, because he couldn't read, that Goldberg's articles had been syndicated throughout the radical press of western Europe for some time; and he couldn't tell, because he didn't understand politics, that Goldberg represented for

people a real possibility of advancing the socialist point of view into the mainstream of argument and out of the divided, shallow backwater that the failure of the First International had left it in.

There were delegates at the congress from Germany, from France, from Britain, from Russia, and from Denmark, as well as from Holland and Belgium. Bill was content at first to watch them all, to try and make out what language people were speaking even if he couldn't understand a word of what they said. He followed Goldberg everywhere, as close and faithful as a dog, and just as far from understanding what his master was saying or doing. On the second day, however, he heard someone speaking in Yiddish, and—again like a dog— pricked his ears and looked sharply around.

They were in a crowded cafe near the docks: a place thick with smoke and salty with the pickled reek of herrings. Goldberg was discussing some point of doctrine with a group from Berlin, and Bill had been watching them automatically, watching in particular how one young woman kept interrupting scornfully and how Goldberg dealt with her interruptions. He spoke to her with the same brusque humor that he used with the men, and no less cuttingly, though she blushed with anger more than once. She was dark-haired and stocky and proud-looking, with fme, large angry eyes. Bill thought she might be Jewish. He was wondering what it would be like to have such a girl gaze at him with the intensity with which she was staring at Goldberg, when he heard the Yiddish speaker behind him.