Mr Wrong (2 page)

The following weekend was also wet, but foggy as well. At one moment during a tedious day in the shop (where there was either absolutely nothing to do, or an endless chore, like packing china
and glass to go abroad), Meg thought of putting off going to her parents: but they were not on the telephone, and that meant that they would have to endure a telegram. She thought of her father,
and decided against that. He would talk about it for six months, stressing it as an instance of youthful extravagance, reiterating the war that it had made upon his nerves, and the proof it was
that she should never have gone to London at all. No – telegrams were out, except in an emergency. She would just have to go – whatever the weather, or anything else.

Friday passed tediously: her job was that of packing up the separate pieces of a pair of giant chandeliers in pieces of old newspaper and listing what she packed. Sometimes she got so bored by
this that she even read bits from the old, yellowing newsprint. There were pages in one paper of pictures of a Miss World competition: every girl was in a bathing-dress and high-heeled shoes,
smiling that extraordinary smile of glazed triumph. They must have an awfully difficult time, Meg thought – fighting off admirers. She wondered just how difficult that would turn out to be.
It would probably get easier with practice.

At half past four, Mr Whitehorn let her go early: he was the kind of man who operated in bursts of absentminded kindness, and he said that in view of her journey, the sooner she started the
better. Meg drank her last cup of instant coffee, and set off.

Her progress through London was slow, but eventually she reached Hendon Way. Here, too, there were long hold-ups as cars queued at signal lights. There were also straggling lines of people
trying to get lifts. She drove past a good many of these, feeling her familiar feelings about them, so mixed that they cancelled one another out, and she never, in fact, did anything about the
hitchers. Meg was naturally a kind person: this part of her made her feel sorry for the wretched creatures, cold, wet, and probably tired; wondering whether they would
ever
get to where they
wanted to be. But her father had always told her never to give lifts, hinting darkly at the gothic horrors that lay in wait for anyone who ever did that. It was not that Meg ever consciously agreed
with her father; rather that in all the years of varying warnings, some of his anxiety had brushed off on her – making her shy, unsure of what to do about things, and feeling ashamed of
feeling like that. No, she was certainly not going to give anyone a lift.

She drove steadily on through the driving sleet, pretending that the back of her car was full of pieces of priceless chandeliers, and this served her very well until she came to the inevitable
hold-up before she reached Hendon, when a strange thing happened.

After moving a few yards forwards between each set of green lights, she finally found herself just having missed yet another lot, but head of the queue in the right-hand lane. There, standing
under one of the tall, yellow lights, on an island in the streaming rain, was a girl. There was nothing in the least remarkable about her appearance at first glance: she was short, rather dumpy,
wearing what looked like a very thin mackintosh and unsuitable shoes; her head was bare; she wore glasses. She looked wet through, cold and exhausted, but above all there was an air of extreme
desolation about her, as though she was hopelessly lost and solitary. Meg found, without having thought at all about it, that she was opening her window and beckoning the girl towards the car. The
girl responded – she was only a few yards away – and as she came nearer, Meg noticed two other things about her. The first was that she was astonishingly pale – despite the fact
that she had dark, reddish hair and was obviously frozen: her face was actually livid, and when she extended a tentative hand in a gesture that was either seeking reassurance about help, or
anticipating the opening of the car door, the collar of her mackintosh moved, and Meg saw that, at the bottom of her white throat, the girl had what looked like the most unfortunate purple birth
mark.

‘Please get in,’ Meg said, and leaned over to open the seat beside her. Then two things happened at once. The girl simply got into the back of the car – Meg heard her open the
door and shut it gently, and a man, wearing a large, check overcoat, tinted glasses and a soft black hat tilted over his forehead slid into the seat beside her.

‘How kind,’ he said, in a reedy, pedagogic voice (almost as though he was practising to be someone else, Meg thought); ‘we were wondering whether anyone at all would come to our aid, and it proves that charming young women like yourself behave as they appear. The good Samaritan is invariably feminine these
days.’

Meg, who had taken the most instant dislike to him of anyone she had ever met in life, said nothing at all. Then, beginning to feel bad about this, at least from the silent girl’s point of
view, she asked:

‘How far are you going?’

‘Ah, now that will surprise you. My secretary and I broke down this morning on our way up, or down to Town,’ he sniggered; ‘and it is imperative that we present ourselves in
the right place at the right time this evening. I only wish to go so far as to pick up our car, which should now be ready.’ His breath smelled horribly of stale smoke and peppermints.

‘At a garage?’ The whole thing sounded to Meg like the most preposterous story.

‘Between Northampton and Leicester. I shall easily be able to point the turning out to you.’

Again, Meg said nothing, hoping that this would put a stop to his irritating voice. ‘What a bore,’ she thought: ‘I
would
be lumbered with this lot.’ She began to consider the social hazards of giving people lifts. Either they sat in total silence – like the girl in the back
– or they talked. At this point he began again.

‘It is most courageous of you to have stopped. There are so many hooligans about, that I always say it is most unjust to the older and more respectable people. But it is true that an old
friend of mine once gave a lift to a
young man
, and the next thing she knew, the poor dear was in a ditch; no car, a dreadful headache, and no idea where she was. It’s perfectly
ghastly what some people will do to some people. Have you noticed it? But I imagine you are too young: you are probably in search of
adventure

– romance
– or whatever lies behind those euphemisms. Am I right?’

Meg, feeling desperately that
anything
would be better than this talking all the time, said over her shoulder to her obstinately silent passenger in the back: ‘Are you warm
enough?’

But before anyone else could have said anything, the horrible man said at once: ‘Perfectly, thank you. Physically speaking, I am not subject to great sensitivity about temperature.’
When he turned to her, as he always seemed to do, at the end of any passage or remark, the smell of his breath seemed to fill the car. It was not simply smoke and peppermints – underneath
that was a smell like rotting mushrooms. ‘She must be asleep,’ Meg thought, almost resentfully – after all there was no escape for
her

– she
could not sleep, was forced to drive and drive and listen to this revolting front-seat passenger.

‘Plastic,’ he continued ruminatively (as though she had even
mentioned
the stuff), ‘the only real use that plastic has been to society was when the remains, but
unmistakable – unlike the unfortunate lady – when the remains of Mrs Durand Deacon’s red plastic handbag were discovered in the tank full of acid. Poor Haigh must have thought he
was perfectly safe with acid, but of course, he had not reckoned on the durable properties of some plastics. That was the end of
him
. Are you familiar with the case at all?’

‘I’m not very interested in murder, I’m afraid.’

‘Ah – but fear and murder go hand in hand,’ he said at once, and, she felt, deliberately misunderstanding her. She had made the mistake of apologizing for her lack of interest
–

‘. . . in fact, it would be difficult to think of any murder where there had not been a modicum, and sometimes, let’s face it, a very great deal of fear.’ Glancing at him, she
saw that his face, an unhealthy colour, or perhaps that was the headlights of oncoming cars, was sweating. It could not still be rain: the car heater was on: it was sweat.

She stuck it out until they were well on the way up the M1. His conversation was both nasty and repetitive, or rather, given that he was determined to talk about fear and murder, he displayed a
startling knowledge of different and horrible cases. Eventually, he asked suddenly whether she would stop for him, ‘a need of nature’, he was sure she would understand what he meant.
Just there a lorry was parked on the shoulder, and he protested that he would rather go on – he was easily embarrassed and preferred complete privacy. Grimly, Meg parked.

‘That will do perfectly well,’ she said as firmly as she could, but her voice came out trembling with strain.

The man slid out of the car with the same reptilian action she had noticed when he got in. He did not reply. The moment that he was out, Meg said to the girl: ‘Look here, if he’s
hitching lifts with you, I do think you might help a bit with the conversation.’

There was no reply. Meg, turning to the back, began almost angrily: ‘I don’t care if you are asleep –’ but then she had to stop because a small scream seemed to have
risen in her throat to check her.

The back seat was empty.

Meg immediately looked to see whether the girl could have fallen off the back seat on to the floor. She hadn’t. Meg switched on the car light; the empty black mock-leather seat glistened
with emptiness. For a split second, Meg thought she might be going mad. Her first sight of the girl, standing under a lamp on the island at Hendon, recurred sharply. The pale, thin mac, the pallor,
the feeling that she was so desolate that Meg had
had
to stop for her. But she had
got into
the car – of course she had! Then she must have got out, when the man got out. But he
hadn’t shut his door, and there had been no noise from the back. She looked at the back doors. They were both unlocked. She put out her hand to touch the seat: it was perfectly dry, and that
poor girl had been so soaked when she had got in –
had got in
– she was certain of it, that if she had
just
got out, the seat would have been at least damp. Meg could hear
her heart thudding now, and for a moment, until he returned, she was almost glad that even that man was some sort of company in this situation.

He seemed to take his time about getting back into the car: she saw him – as she put it – slithering out of the dark towards her, but then he seemed to hesitate; he disappeared from sight, and it was only when she saw him by the light
of her right-hand side light that she realized he had been walking round the car.
Strolling
about, as though she was simply a chauffeur to him! She called through the window to him to hurry
up, and almost before he had got into the car, she said, ‘What on earth’s become of your secretary?’

There was a slight pause, then he turned to her: ‘My
sec
retary?’ His face was impassive to the point of offensiveness, but she noticed that he was sweating again.

‘You know,’ she said impatiently; she had started the engine and was pulling away from the shoulder: ‘The girl you said you’d had a breakdown with on your way to
London.’

‘Ah yes: poor little Muriel. I had quite forgotten her. I imagine her stuffing herself with family high tea and, I don’t doubt, boy-friend – some provincial hairdresser who
looks like a pop star, or perhaps some footballer who looks like a hairdresser.’

‘What
do
you mean?’

He sniggered. ‘I am not given to oversight into the affairs of any employee I may indulge in. I do not like prolonged relationships of any kind. I like them sudden – short –
and sweet. In fact, I—’

‘No –
listen!
You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.’

She felt him stiffen, become still with wariness. Then, quite unexpectedly, he asked: ‘How long have you had this car?’

‘Oh – a week or so. Don’t make things up about your secretary. It was her I really stopped for. I didn’t even see you.’

It must be his sweat that was making the car smell so much worse. ‘Of course, I noticed at once that it was an MG,’ he said.

‘The girl in the back,’ Meg said desperately: he seemed to be deliberately stupid as well as nasty. ‘She was standing on the island, under a lamp. She wore a mac, but she was
obviously soaked to the skin, I beckoned to her, and she came up and got into the back without a word. At the same time as you. So come off it, inventing nasty, sneering lies about your secretary.
Don’t pretend
you
didn’t know she was there. You probably used her as a decoy – to get a lift at all.’

There was a short, very unpleasant silence. Meg was just beginning to be frightened, when he said, ‘What did your friend look like?’

It was no use quibbling with him about not being the girl’s friend. Meg said: ‘I told you . . .’ and instantly realized that she had done nothing of the kind. Perhaps the girl
really hadn’t been his secretary . . .

‘All you have done is allege that you picked up my secretary with me.’

‘All right. Well, she was short – she wore a pale mac – I told you that – and, and glasses – her hair was a dark reddish colour – I suppose darker because she
was wet through, and she had some silly shoes on and she looked
ill
, she was so white – a sort of livid white, and when she—’

‘Never heard of her – never heard of anyone like her.’

‘No, but you
saw
her, didn’t you? I’m sorry if I thought she was your secretary – the point is you saw her, didn’t you?
Didn’t
you?’

He began fumbling in his overcoat pocket, from which he eventually drew out a battered packet of sweets, the kind where each sweet is separately wrapped. He was so long getting a sweet out of
the packet and then starting to peel off the sticky paper that she couldn’t wait.