“Didn’t you say that Ferguson had chartered a plane to go to Ireland?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s looking for someone to share it with him?”
“He’s looking for three people.”
“But all the formalities are over already? I wouldn’t have to meet anyone? I mean if I decided to go.”
“I suppose you’d have to meet the Customs authorities, like everyone else. But do you want to go to Dublin?”
“It would make a change. Yes, I’d like to go. Just for a few days. I’d come back, you know.”
She stood with her hand on the door, bored and uneasy, anxious to help, anxious not to be asked to help too much. “Why don’t you go and see Uncle Joe about it now?”
“I’m not well enough to walk all that way.”
“You could telephone.”
“I don’t want to see Harry. He’s downstairs.”
“Harry’s in the kitchen with the burglar, so far as I know.”
“Hester, do me a favour. Keep them in there while I telephone. For ten minutes. Only for ten minutes, Hester. I don’t want them hanging about, listening and worrying me.”
“All right,” she said reluctantly. “Just for ten minutes.” She disliked being involved in even elementary conspiracies.
WEDNESDAY (8)
WHEN Hester went into the kitchen Harry was sitting with his feet on the table, talking to the blond burglar, who looked wispy and immature, like an exploited child, as he stood labouring by the sink. He had taken off his yellow jersey and was exposed in a flowered shirt, reminiscent both of the fashions advertised for Florida and of the waistcoats worn by young bloods in the bound volumes of nineteenth-century Punch. Hester felt mournfully responsible even for his taste in clothes and his lavishly-styled hair. She knew it was Society that made juveniles into delinquents; she represented Society; it was her fault that he had attempted to steal.
“He’s called Jackie,” Harry told her. “He always washed the dishes for his Mum. That’s why he’s so good at it.”
“What’s your other name?” Hester asked gently.
“Daw, Miss.”
“Change it,” Harry advised seriously. “There are other names that go with Jack. Try Sprat, or Cade. What about Built? This is the house that Jack Built. Or Broke? This is the house that Jack Broke into. Do you remember the story, Hester? This is the What that lay in the House that Jack broke into. This is the Who that tried to get the What that lay in the House that Jack Broke into.”
Hester looked at him impatiently. “You’re being silly, Harry.”
“Am I? Let’s have some coffee. We’ll have it in the kitchen and Jack can tell us the story of his life.”
Hester filled the kettle and put it on the stove.
“I haven’t had what you’d call a life,” Jackie said. “This is m’first chance since m’father died. I used to go round with him, see.”
“What was your father’s job?”
“He was a lay-about.”
“How interesting,” Hester said, trying to look enlightened. “What does a lay-about do?”
“He waits till people go out and leave the door unlocked, then he nips in and takes a handbag or a clock, or the change off of the mantelpiece. His idea was that he’d lay-about and I’d nip in, but I wouldn’t do it.”
“But of course you wouldn’t,” Hester said, her mind already far away, worrying about the children of burglars. Would they learn to steal? If they admired their fathers, perhaps they would.
She went out of the kitchen and stood at the bottom of the stairs, and called up softly to Morgan, who was waiting on the landing. He came down absolutely noiselessly, and went to the telephone. She stood by the kitchen door, making mental plans for the protection of burglars’ children. A suppressed part of her mind was wondering what Harry had meant about the What and the Who.
“I am speaking up,” she heard Morgan whispering into the telephone. “Look, I want to fly to Dublin with you on Friday. Expensive? No, I don’t think that’s too much. Oh, I’ve just taken the fancy to see the place. I’m not sure where I’ll be coming from. I’ll meet you at the airport… Brickford? I’ve never heard of it. What? What did you say the pilot said? A place called the Fairway Arms?”
He was backing steadily away from the instrument, as though it frightened him. By now he had the flex pulled out as far as it would go. In the dim light of the hall he looked like a monstrous fish tugging weakly against the pull of the line.
She was listening with a detached part of her mind to the voices from the kitchen. She had an impression that Harry had been making jokes at Jackie’s expense. Morgan was beginning a discussion about the cost of a seat on the plane. She didn’t want to hear his financial views. She turned her attention back to the kitchen.
“Life is made up of moments of weakness,” she heard Harry saying. “History would never get anywhere at all if it wasn’t.”
She stopped with her hand on the door. She was too tired to listen to Harry’s interminable theories.
“Just in case you’re as weak as the rest of us, would you like to take off the dainty gun you have strapped under your shirt?”
Hester was appalled. It was impossible that a mere boy like Jackie should carry a gun.
“You know there’s no reason to fire it at me,” Harry said in a coaxing voice. “You’d only be destroying innocence. I’m not trying to turn you in. You’ll get in bad trouble if you’re found with a gun on you now. Old Bailey trouble.”
“I’ll do you in, you slimy bastard,” Jackie said.
“If you pull that gun on me, I’ll run for my life, screaming,” Harry said. “That’s a threat.”
Hester tried to open the door. Someone was standing against it. She thought of Harry, bravely waiting to be shot, defending her.
“Let me in,” she said desperately.
She pushed. The door opened suddenly. Harry, with one hand in his pocket, stood smiling at her. Jackie was turning back to the sink.
“Jackie’s going to be very happy here,” Harry said blandly. “He looks happier already, don’t you think?”
“I thought I heard – some kind of argument,” Hester said.
“We were only getting to know each other. What are you going to do when you’ve dried the dishes, Jackie? Cosh your benefactor with a bicycle chain? Or do you mean to stay?”
“Stay.”
Hester looked at them both uncertainly. It was impossible that they should be so calm if they had just been fighting over a gun. She looked at Jackie’s flowered shirt. It had no menacing bulges, but it was unbuttoned down the front.
“It’s hot tonight,” Jackie said apologetically. “Excuse me, Miss.” He buttoned the shirt up to the neck again.
“What brought you this way?” Harry asked.
“Just walking about. Haven’t been in the country since I was a kid, see. Then I wanted a place to spend the night. I thought I’d doss down in that bedroom.”
“Like Goldilocks,” Harry said approvingly.
Hester was suddenly so tired of the conversation that she turned and left the room. Morgan had finished his telephoning. There was no one in the hall. She thought she heard her father’s voice. He was probably talking to Maurice about money.
She was anxious to avoid all of them. She didn’t want to be confronted with another problem that night. She needed time to think of herself, to let her mind move slowly out of the climate of anxiety. She went out into the garden, and along the path to where the roses grew. They sprawled and twisted in a riot of neglect; in the dusk of the faintly star-lit night they had no colour, but their scent proclaimed them. She bent and picked a rose that dropped under the weight of its unfurled petals. She sat down on the grass and held the rose to her face, while the petals fell silently, like shadows, on her lap. She wondered what it would be like to go to Ireland alone, to charter a plane and leave and stay on the plane for months, like a hermit in his hut, only flying free, with no old problems to solve and no new problems to meet.