“Has he been in my room?”
“What if he has?” she asked brutally. “He was looking for death watch beetles anyway.”
“Tell me what he did in my room?”
“Morgan, I have to get ready for a party.” She ran past him and into Hester’s bedroom.
Hester was sitting on the bed, doing nothing.
“There’s something wrong with Morgan. Go and shut him up, Hester.”
Hester went over to the dressing-table and began to brush her hair.
“Please, Hester, don’t bother about your hair now. Please do something about Morgan. I want you to help me get ready and I think Morgan’s mad. I’m sure this doesn’t happen to other people getting ready for parties. I’ll bet Rosemary and Jane are just getting dressed quietly. They’d go mad themselves if they had something like Morgan in the house. I’d sooner keep a couple of werewolves and a poltergeist as paying guests than Morgan,” Prudence said, her face changing shape as she tried not to let the tears out.
Hester put down the hairbrush and went to the door.
“And Jackie’s making baked beans for dinner,” Prudence called after her.
Hester tapped on Morgan’s door.
“Are you coming down to dinner, Morgan?”
“No.”
“But you didn’t have any lunch, Morgan.”
“Come in, Hester, if you’re alone.”
Hester opened the door and looked in. Morgan was sitting in his outdoor coat, holding a briefcase on his knees. In the diminished daylight, he looked very pale.
“I wondered if you were all right,” Hester said weakly.
“Is Harry in the house?” he asked.
“I’m not quite sure,” she said apologetically.
“I’m not leaving my room while he is in the house.”
“But Harry won’t do you any harm.”
“Oh, won’t he?”
“I’m sure he won’t,” Hester said with spirit.
“You be a good girl and get him out of the house for me. And keep him out. He’s getting on my nerves. And I’ll tell you someone else who’s on my nerves,” he said, suddenly beginning to shout. “That little crook who came last night. Why didn’t you send for the police? Can you tell me that? Is your father in this too?”
“Morgan!”
“Oh, it’s terrible,” he said, putting a cigarette in his mouth and lighting it from the half-smoked one in his shaking hand. “I’m being spied on by everyone, Hester. You’re the only one I trust. You wouldn’t steal anything from me, would you, Hester? You wouldn’t steal anything from anyone, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t, Morgan,” she said in a soothing voice.
“Do you know why that little crook came here? This isn’t the kind of house where he’d expect rocks and mink. He came for me. Now what am I to do? What would you advise me to do, Hester?”
“Don’t you think you’d feel better if you went out more,” she suggested timidly. “It’s depressing to be in one room, always.”
“I’m not depressed,” he said angrily. “Who said I was depressed? Harry? Was it Harry? Has he been talking about me?”
She retreated towards the door. “Of course he hasn’t.”
“Oh, Hester, don’t go,” he said, watching her in terror.
She stopped, in compunction. “Morgan, you’re not well.”
“I’m all right,” he muttered.
“You’ll come down to dinner, won’t you? It isn’t good to be alone too much.”
“Alone,” he said, and sighed in relief as the word escaped him, as though he had managed at last to make his confession. “I’ll tell you something, now. I’ve been alone for two years and two months. All that time I’ve been hiding from them. Now there’s Harry, and there’s this little crook, and tomorrow there will be more. Perhaps they’ll be here tonight. I’ve been frightened to leave the country, but I’m going to do it at last, Hester. Tomorrow I’ll be in Ireland, if I have the luck. But I don’t feel lucky, Hester. I’m telling you these things because I trust you, not because I’ve been drinking. I can drink twice as much as I’ve had tonight and still keep my mouth shut. Hester, if I gave you something, you’d look after it? Would you? You wouldn’t let anyone know about it?”
“I don’t know,” she said reluctantly.
“Just take it and hide it for me?”
“It would depend what it was.”
“I thought so. You’d try to find out what it was. There’s no one I can trust, you see.”
“I think I hear Maurice’s car.”
“It was bad enough before, but now they’ll all be after me. He’ll send for them all. If I try to go they’ll stop me. If I stay here, they’ll come. Hester, you’ll do one thing for me?” He felt in his pockets and brought out a wallet. “Take this money and give it to Ferguson.” He offered her a bundle of notes.
“To Uncle Joe?”
“Yes, for my seat in that plane tomorrow. I don’t want there to be any doubt about that. You give him the money. Give it to him tonight. Do you promise?”
Hester took the money. “I promise,” she said. She was glad to be able to do something for him.
She went out of the room and stood quietly on the stairs. She wondered if it was too late to help Prudence dress for the party. She had decided to turn back to her own room when she heard Maurice’s voice, low and easy, speaking into the telephone in the hall below.
“Joe? About this plane you’ve chartered for Ireland? What do you mean by a stiff price? Oh, I see. Is it too late to get a fourth passenger?… Someone interested in drinking and horses. Why not Harry? Oh, I didn’t know you felt like that. Where shall we meet? Oh, you’re coming over tonight. Here, to the Wades’? I’ll see you then. Goodbye.”
Hester went downstairs slowly. It was her duty to be polite to Maurice over the baked beans.
THURSDAY (9)
“BAKED beans!” Maurice said. “By Jove, that takes me back! When I was a boy being starved at school I used to nip into a little place in the town and fill up on baked beans. I’ve loved them ever since!” He caressed them with his fork, and then looked at Hester, his eyes begging her to admit that he was behaving very well.
Hester smiled as though her face was being worked by electricity, while she wondered if real people ever said By Jove. The feeling that Maurice was not real, that he was only someone she had read about in a book, was increasing. She looked at her father, who was examining the baked beans with genuine distress. He pushed his plate away.
“What comes next?” he asked in a voice that quivered with self-pity. “Something made with suet and jam, I suppose?”
Hester murmured that Prudence had gone to a party, and then sat in an oppressed silence until the segments of apple, floating in an ocean of sweetened water, had been borne triumphantly to the table by Jackie. She was worn-out by the weight of too much emotion; she had no energy to examine Maurice’s socially admirable reactions, or to smile maliciously at her father, who was displaying astonishment at his daughters’ failure to support him with adequate food. She waited listlessly until they had finished, and then went quickly out of the room, out of the house, and into the garden.
She sat down in the shadow of the trees, and remained there while the world turned her slowly under the dark sky, and she let all thoughts of people drift away behind her.
A long time afterwards, she heard her father calling to her. She didn’t answer.
He walked across the lawn towards the trees.
“Hester!” he called again.
“Yes, Father,” she said, and came slowly towards him, not seen at all except as a pale flicker of a summer dress moving through the black trees.
“Hester, Uncle Joe is here. Will you come in?”