“What is it? What’s the matter?”
The girl must have recognised him, for she almost threw herself into his arms. He recognised her too. It was Mrs. Crantock’s daughter, a child of about fourteen.
“Did something frighten you?” he asked.
“A man,” she said breathlessly. “Standing by a car. He spoke to me. I got in a panic.”
“You shouldn’t be out alone at night.” He shepherded her into Fontaine Road, then thought better of it. “Come with me,” he said. She hesitated. “You’re all right with me.”
Back through the black tunnel. Her teeth were chattering. He raised his torch and brought it like a searchlight on to the figure of a man who stood beside the bonnet of Burden’s parked car, The duffel coat he wore with its raised hood gave him enough of a sinister air to alarm any child.
“Oh, it’s Mr. Rushworth,” She sounded shame-faced.
Burden had already recognised the man and saw he was recognised too. Frowning a little, he walked towards the husband of the woman who had failed to notify the police after Mrs. Mitchell’s warning.
“You gave this young lady a bit of a scare.”
Rushworth blinked in the glare of the torch. “I said hello to her and something about it being an awful night. She scooted off like all the devils in hell were after her. God knows why. She knows me by sight, at any rate.”
“Everyone round here is a bit nervous at present, sir,” said Burden, “It’s wiser not to speak to people you don’t really know. Good night.”
“I suppose he was taking his dog out,” the girl said as they came into Fontaine Road. “I didn’t see his dog, though. Did you?”
Burden hadn’t seen a dog. “You shouldn’t be out alone at this time of night.”
“I’ve been round to my friends. We were playing records. My friend’s father said he’d see me home, but I wouldn’t let him. It’s only a couple of minutes’ walk. Nothing could happen to me.”
“But something did, or you thought it did.”
She digested this in silence. Then she said, “Are you going to see Mrs. Lawrence?”
Burden nodded, and, realising she couldn’t see his nod, said aloud, “Yes.”
“She’s in an awful state. My father says he wouldn’t be surprised if she did something silly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, you know. Committed suicide. I saw her after school in the supermarket. She was just standing in the middle of the shop, crying.” A true daughter of the bourgeoisie, she added with some disapproval, “Everyone was looking at her.”
Burden opened the gate to the Crantocks’ garden. “Good night,” he said. “Don’t go out alone after dark anymore.”
There were no lights in Gemma’s house and for once the front door was shut. Very likely she had taken one of Lomax’s sleeping tablets and gone to bed. He peered through the stained glass and made out a faint gleam of light coming from the kitchen. She was still up, then. He rang the bell.
When the gleam grew no brighter and still she didn’t come, he rang the bell again and banged the lion’s-head door knocker. Behind him, from the branches of the untended trees, came the incessant drip drip of water. He remembered what Martin had said about her drinking and then what the Crantock girl had said and, having rung the bell once more in vain, he made for the side entrance.
The path was nearly as overgrown as the gardens of Saltram House. He pushed away wet holly and slimy creeper, soaking his hair and his raincoat, His hands were so wet that he could hardly turn the handle on the back door, but the door wasn’t locked and at last he got it open.
She was slumped at the kitchen table, her head on her outflung arms, and in front of her was an un opened bottle, labelled: “Chianti-type wine, produce of Spain. This week’s offer, 7p off.” He went up to her slowly and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“Gemma . . .”
She said nothing. She didn’t move. He pulled up another chair, pulled it close to her, and took her gently in his arms. She rested against him, not resisting, breathing shallowly and fast, and Burden forgot all his agony of the past week, his battling against temptation, in an overwhelming selfish happiness. He could hold her like this forever, he thought, warmly and wordlessly, without passion or desire or the need for any change.
She lifted her head. Her face was almost unrecognisable, it was so swollen with crying. “You didn’t come,” she said. “For days and days I waited for you and you didn’t come.” Her voice was thick and strange. “Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” It was true. He didn’t know, for now his resistance seemed the height of pointless folly.
“Your hair’s all wet.” She touched his hair and the raindrops on his face. “I’m not drunk,” she said, “but I have been. That stuff is very nasty but it deadens you for a bit. I went out this afternoon to buy some food - I haven’t eaten for days - but I didn’t buy any, I couldn’t. When I came to the sweet counter I kept thinking of how John used to beg me to buy chocolate and I wouldn’t because it was bad for his teeth. And I wished I’d let him have it, all he wanted, because it wouldn’t have made any difference now, would it?”
She stared at him blankly, the tears pouring down her face.
“You mustn’t say that.”
“Why not? He’s dead. You know he’s dead. I keep thinking that sometimes I got cross with him and I smacked him and I wouldn’t let him have the sweets he wanted . . . Oh, Mike! What shall I do? Shall I drink that wine and take all Dr. Lomax’s tablets? Or shall I go out in the rain and just walk and walk till I die? What’s the use of living? I’ve got no one, no one.”
“You’ve got me,” said Burden.
For answer she clung to him again, but this time more tightly. “Don’t leave me. Promise you won’t leave me.”
“You ought to go to bed,” he said. There was, he thought, a sickening irony here. Wasn’t that what he had intended when he left the car in the next street? That he and she should go to bed? He had really imagined that this demented grief-stricken woman would welcome his love-making. You fool, he whispered harshly to himself. But he managed to say calmly, “Go to bed. I’ll make you a hot drink and you can take a tablet and I’ll sit with you till you go to sleep.”
She nodded. He wiped her eyes on a handkerchief Grace had ironed as carefully as Rosalind Swan ironed her husband’s shirts. “Don’t leave me,” she said again, and then she went, dragging her feet a little.
The kitchen was in a hideous mess. Nothing had been washed up or put away for days and there was a stale sweetish smell. He found some cocoa and some dried milk and did his best with these unsatisfactory ingredients, mixing them and heating them on a cooker that was black with burned-on fat
She was sitting up in bed, the black-and-gold shawl around her shoulders, and that magic exotic quality, compounded of colour and strangeness and lack of inhibition, had to some extent returned to her. Her face was calm again, the large still eyes staring. The room was untidy, chaotic even, but its chaos was powerfully feminine, the scattered clothes giving off mingled sweet scents.
He tipped a sleeping pill out of the bottle and handed it to her with her drink. She gave him a wan smile and took his hand, lifting it first to her lips and then holding it tight.