Chapter VI
It was more than an hour later that he waked with great suddenness. Waked, or was awakened? For the moment he wasn’t sure, but the more he thought about it the more it came to him that something had waked him up. He put on the light and looked about him. The clock made it half past one.
He got up and looked into the sitting-room. There were some heavy portraits there. One of them might have fallen. That was the impression that he had brought with him out of his sleep-a crash-something heavy falling. But old David Craddock in neckcloth and whiskers still gloomed between the windows; his wife, Elizabeth, stood stiff in puce brocade; whilst over the mantelpiece his daughters, Mary and Elinor, in white muslin and blue ribbons, played with an artificial woolly lamb.
He went back to the bedroom and listened. He could hear nothing, but that impression of having heard some loud and unfamiliar sound was very strong. The bed stood with its head against the wall which separated this flat from the next. Ross Craddock’s sitting-room lay on the other side of it. If something had crashed in that room it might very easily have waked him from his sleep.
A crash-yes, that was what it had been. The impression was getting stronger all the time. He hesitated for a moment, and then went to the outer door and opened it. A light burned on the landing all night long. Rather a dingy light, but sufficient to show him the empty lift-shaft, two flights of stairs, one up, one down, and the perfectly bare landing with Lucy Craddock’s door facing him across it, and Ross Craddock’s door on his right facing the entrance to the lift. There wasn’t the slightest sound of anything stirring. The whole great block might have been uninhabited except for himself.
He was just stepping back, when the door of Ross’s flat was wrenched open and Mavis Grey ran out. Her silver dress was torn. She tripped and stumbled over it as she ran, and it tore again. Before Peter had any idea what she was going to do she had flung herself into his arms, and before he had time to say more than “What on earth-” Ross Craddock stood in the open doorway staring at them.
He stared, and he stood there swaying as if he were drunk. Peter thought he was drunk. And there was Mavis shuddering in his arms. He said,
“Look here, hold up. What’s happened?”
She was clutching him and sobbing violently.
“Oh, Peter! Oh, don’t let him touch me!”
Peter said, “It’s like that, is it? What have you done to her? Mavis, pull yourself together. Has he hurt you?”
“Of course I haven’t,” said Ross.
He laughed in a confused sort of way. He had one hand on his head. He dropped it now and held it out palm upwards. The palm was darkly stained. Blood ran down his face from a cut above the eye. He laughed again and said heavily,
“I was the one that got hurt.”
“Well, we can’t have a scene about it here,” said Peter. “Come in if you’ve anything to say.”
Mavis sobbed and clung to him.
Ross said, “Thank you, I’ve had enough.” He stood there and watched them, swaying.
Peter stepped back and banged his door. He was in a state of pure rage. This would happen as soon as Lucy had gone away. And a bit of pure luck if no one had heard Mavis sob.
She had made enough noise over it in all conscience. He removed her arms from about his neck, put her firmly into Mary Craddock’s big armchair, and said,
“You’d better tell me what’s happened.”
Mavis let her head fall back against the magenta cushion and closed her eyes.
“Something to drink-” she said faintly.
Peter brought her cold water. She revived- sufficiently to register indignation.
“I don’t call water something to drink!”
“If you’d stuck to the water-wagon you wouldn’t be here tonight,” said Peter grimly.
Mavis shuddered. She was suddenly young and disarming.
“You don’t seem to notice what a lot you’re drinking when everyone’s doing it too, but it does make you do things you wish you hadn’t afterwards-doesn’t it?”
“It has been known to.”
She leaned forward.
“But I wouldn’t have come here tonight if I’d known Aunt Lucy had gone-oh, Peter, I really wouldn’t. He said she’d put off going-something to do with business. And he said it was so late, why not come back here and get her to put me up? Because the Greys do fuss most frightfully if I’m not in before twelve. And I didn’t know she’d gone till I got here, and then he said he’d made a mistake.”
“It’s the sort of mistake he’d be likely to make-isn’t it?”
Mavis looked puzzled.
“I don’t see how he could. Do you? Not really. I mean he couldn’t have thought she had put off going unless she had told him so herself-I mean there couldn’t have been any mistake. And anyhow everyone always knows everything that’s going on in these flats.”
Peter looked piously at the ceiling.
“Let’s hope, my dear, that everyone doesn’t know what’s been going on tonight.”
“Oh!” said Mavis on a shocked breath. And then, hopefully, “But they’re nearly all away, aren’t they?”
“Miss Bingham came back last night, and she’s the worst of the lot.”
“She told Aunt Lucy I wanted watching,” said Mavis, with a faint hysterical giggle.
“And I’m sure she’d have been most happy to oblige.”
“Oh, Peter!”
“Oh, Mavis!”
She shivered and sat up.
“What had I better do?”
“Let me take you home, I imagine.”
She looked over her shoulder at the clock.
“Oh, Peter-is that right?”
“Absolutely. It’s a quarter to two.”
“Then I can’t possibly go home. You don’t know what they’re like. Aunt Gladys is bad enough, but Uncle Ernest is ten times worse. I mean, Aunt Lucy’s a fuss, but she simply isn’t in it with the Grey relations.”
“All the same I think you will have to go home.”
“Peter, I can’t-honest. You see, they don’t approve of Ross, and they’ve forbidden me to go out with him, and-well, they think I was at the party at Hampstead with Bobby Foster-his sister Isabel’s party-and I rang up from the Ducks and Drakes and said Isabel was keeping me for the night, so you see I simply can’t go home.”
With rage in his heart Peter saw. He said in a most unpleasant voice,
“What you want is about ten of the best with a hair-brush.”
“How can you be so unkind!”
There was a pause. Peter mastered a desire to shake her and said,
“Are you going to tell me what happened? You needn’t if you don’t want to, but I think you’d better.”
Mavis brightened. Now that she wasn’t frightened any more there was something exciting about having had such an adventure. And she had always liked Peter much better than Peter had seemed to like her. Perhaps this was an opportunity. She found a little scrap of a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes with it.
“Well, I really was going to Isabel’s party with Bobby, so I didn’t tell a lie about that. But then we quarrelled-”
“You and Bobby, or you and Isabel?”
“Oh, Bobby of course-about Ross. You know, Peter, it’s frightfully stupid of people to go on warning you about someone. Everyone has been warning me about Ross for months-Aunt Gladys, and Uncle Ernest, and Aunt Mavis, and Aunt Lucy. You know-all the sort of people you can’t have rows with. So when Bobby started in I just let him have it. I’d got it all saved up, and out it came. And then of course I couldn’t go to the party with him-could I? So I rang Ross up. Every time any of the aunts do any of their awful warnings I always ring him up-it just makes me feel I must. So I told Bobby I wasn’t ever going to speak to him again, and I met Ross at the end of the road.”