The Fancy (47 page)

Connie herself, just before she left, had wavered in the hall with the taxi ticking outside the gate. “I’m sure I do hope you won’t miss me too much,” she had said, longing for him to admit that he would. But he was not going to. He had covered up the awkwardness of her departure by giving her a hearty kiss and telling her that she would miss her train if she didn’t get a move on. He waved her off from the gate and saw the corner of Mrs. Dowlinson’s front window curtain drop guiltily as he turned to go indoors and put the kettle on for his tea.

Connie had found a sloppy old woman who came in when she felt inclined and did a little short-sighted housework, and sometimes prepared something to eat. He hardly ever saw her corroborationan along, for she had always gone by the time he got home from work, and she communicated with him by a system of illiterate notes which she left in unexpected places all over the house.

“Did I do write to buy vim,” he found on the back of a coal bill lying in the bath. “took 2 loaves from bker to last you sunday. Colliflour cheese is in ov.”

On Thursdays there was always a note on his pillow or impaled on a stair rod or even curling up and browing on top of the boiler, to say : “Don’t forget to leve mony same place. You o me for :——” Here followed a list of sundries that she had been moved to buy in his interest.

He lived picnic fashion, using the same plate and knife and fork each time, eating in the kitchen, on the floor in front of the living-room fire, or even in bed if he felt like it. He was in his armchair one evening, with his shoes off and his feet up on the side of the fireplace, a cup of tea on the arm of the chair and the pot in the fender, a plate of bread and cheese and pickles in his lap. The old woman had not been in for the last three days. She seemed to have forgotten about him, but as he
did not know where she lived, nor for certain whether her name was Mrs. Whitten or Mrs. Whiffen, he could not get hold of her.

The front door bell sounded unusually loud in the empty house. Dick probably. Grunting, Edward put the plate on the floor, heaved himself out of the chair and padded out to the front door in his stockinged feet.

An unknown woman in a three-cornered hat stood in the moonlight, looking out to the street. Unknown at least, until she turned round and he saw with surprise that invaluable Club member, Mrs. Ledbetter.

“Glorious moon,” she said briskly. “May I come in, Mr. Ledward?”

She sat opposite him in Connie’s chair, drinking tea, the tight skirt of her costume drawn up by the spread of her seated hips and her sturdy legs planted apart so that he had an occasional embarrassing glimpse of her bloomers, and told him an amazing story. She related it in her deep, matter-of-fact voice, her strong man’s face unmoved, only the peak of her tricorne jerking forward every now and then to emphasise a point.

“If I did wrong, Mr. Ledward, I can only say I’m sorry. I did what I thought right, and in view of what I discovered, I think I was justified. But if you’re angry at my interfering, please say so.” She waited calmly for him to speak.

“Angry!” cried Edward. “Why, I’m so pleased, I—I don’t know what to say.” He spread his hands helplessly. “You’ve done what I’ve been longing to do for months. I’d been convinced for ages that Bell wasn’t playing the game.”

“Then why didn’t you do something about it, if one may ask?”

“I couldn’t. My wife works in his office, you see. He was quite a family friend, although I personally couldn’t stand the sight of him. I simply couldn’t make trouble, though goodness knows what it cost me to have to sit back and see him having his own way with the Club, and all of you getting dissatisfied—and I must say I don’t blame you. But it’s all right now, you know. He’s gone, left the district—probably for good. Did you know?”

“Did I know? That’s a good one!” She laughed resoundingly, slapping her hands on her thighs. “Why it was I who made him go, Mr. Ledward.”

“Oh no, he had to go up to Birmingham on business, my wover his shoulder blyhife told me.”

“Aha, that’s the official excuse he gave, no doubt, to save his face, but the truth of the matter is after I’d done my detective work and confronted him with the proof of his dishonesty, he ran from me like a scalded cat. I made him. I gave him the alternative of clearing out or letting me set the B.R.C. on to him. The police even might have taken it up after I discovered that business about the Egg Club.”

“Egg Club?” asked Edward, bewildered.

“Oh, I didn’t tell you. In addition to swindling over the bran ration and the flesh stock, he’d been getting people to give him their egg coupons to buy rations for his hens in return for giving them eggs when the hens started to lay.”

“But that’s perfectly legal, isn’t it? A lot of people do that.”

“Yes, but our friend Bell didn’t have any hens! Not—one—hen.” She spaced the words out, accompaning each by a jerk of the tricorne. “He would have been bound to have been rumbled sooner or later. I can’t think how he was stupid enough to embark on such a thing. He was a very petty criminal, I’m afraid, Mr. Ledward.” She washed her hands of him, and stood up. “Well, I must be on my way now. I just thought I’d better come and confess to you what I’d done.”

“No, don’t go yet, Mrs. Ledbetter. I feel I haven’t thanked you properly for all you’ve done.”

“It’s Mr. Ledbetter you ought to thank really,” she said. “After all, it was he who had to force an entrance to the place and get me all the facts. I only put two and two together.”

“Jolly sporting of him,” said Edward.

“He didn’t want to do it, I can tell you, but it was that or nothing. I couldn’t go myself, you see, because Mr. Bell knew me, but he never recognised my husband, although he’s been at all the shows.” Of course he wouldn’t. Insignificant Mr. Ledbetter with his narrow, sloping shoulders was always occupied in the background at shows, washing up behind the refreshment counter, or labelling travelling boxes in a corner well out of sight.

Edward could not help smiling when he thought of him pretending to be a big stock breeder from Ireland and being shown round the stud at “Uanmee” with all respect and flattery. What a fool old Bell must have felt afterwards! It was a joyous thought.

“Well,” said Mrs. Ledbetter, moving towards the door. “Give my regards to your wife. I’m sorry to have missed her. I don’t think we’ve ever met.”

“No, she didn’t—she doesn’t come to the shows,” said Edward. “She’s away now, as a matter of fact.”

“Yes, I can see that.” Mrs. Ledbetter looked round the untidy room, littered with traces of purely masculine occupation. Edward blushed and found himself telling her : “As a matter of fact, she’s gone up to Birmingham to work for Bell in his office. His sister’s up there, you know, and she lives with them.”

Mrs. Ledbetter was horrified. “You don’t mean to say that you’ve let her go up there with those horrible people? The sister’s no better—I’ve seen her. Wouldn’t trust her a yard. And that unpleasant man—no more than a common criminal! I don’t know how you can have a moment’s peace, Mr. Ledward. I suppose you’llover his shoulder blyh send for her though, now that you’ve heard what I told you tonight.”

Edward shrugged his shoulders. “Wouldn’t be much good, I’m
afraid.” Somehow, he felt that he could confide in Mrs. Ledbetter. “She’s a very independent character. Goes her own way, you know.”

“Yes, but she wouldn’t want to stay up there once you’d told her.” Mrs. Ledbetter had come back into the room, intrigued by Edward’s domestic affairs.

“She wouldn’t probably take it from me. She likes being up there. I had a letter from her only the other day, full of it all. She seems to get on very well with the Bells and their friends.” Connie had written to him after three weeks, not from compunction, but to be sure he understood the high standard under which she was now living. There were dinner parties ; she had been to a civic function ; the Bells were very well connected in Birmingham. She did not omit to mention that Miss Bell kept two maids, a sleeping-in cook and a daily, and she also alluded to hot lobster and mushrooms casually as if it were an everyday occurrence. It was all so different, she said. Quite a change. She said nothing at all about coming home.

“Yes, but you’ll be glad to get her back, all the same, I dare say,” probed Mrs. Ledbetter, watching him closely.

“I don’t worry really. Connie can look after herself pretty well.”

“We must meet when she comes back. Perhaps you’d both come round to supper at the Hollies?”

“That’s very kind of you. She won’t be back just yet, though, I’m afraid.” Breaking down under her searching gaze, he suddenly said : “I don’t know why I should tell you, for I’m sure it can’t interest you, but between you and me, she’s been glad of the excuse to get away. We—we didn’t get on too famously. Nothing serious, but you know how it is. Little things mount up. It was my fault entirely. I should have been able to make her happy, but evidently I didn’t, and so——” he shrugged his shoulders. “She decided to make a break.”

“Hm—hm.” The tricorne nodded. “She did, did she? From my experience, Mr. Ledward, it’s the woman who makes or ruins a marriage, not the man. I don’t think you should blame yourself.”

“If she never comes back,” said Edward, “I shall always feel that it’s my fault.”

“By the sound of it,” said Mrs. Ledbetter, dogmatically, “it wouldn’t be the end of the world for you if she didn’t. Am I right, or am I perhaps speaking out of turn?”

Edward gave her a nervous grin and then hung his head and said sheepishly, drawing his toe along the pattern of the carpet : “I believe you are right, Mrs. Ledbetter. It sounds terrible to say, but I’m happier without her than I ever was when she was at home.” He looked up to see whether she was scandalised, but she was grinning now.

“
I
thought so!” she said triumphantly, and having got to the bottom of things was ready now to take herself off. When she picked up her bag from the hall table, she saw the clear space it had made in the dust there.

“My goodness, Mr. Ledward,” she said, “you may be enjoying your bachelor freedom, but you can’t live like this you know. Haven’t you anyone to do for you?” Edward told her about automaticallyan alongMrs. Whitten or Whiffen.

“Far too unreliable,” said Mrs. Ledbetter, blowing dust off her bag. “And what about your food? Does this woman cook for you?”

“Sometimes.”

“And other times?”

“Oh, I manage all right. I throw something together for myself. I usually have my main meal in the middle of the day, you know, so that I don’t need much at night.”

“You need more than bread and cheese,” said Mrs. Ledbetter, who had missed nothing in the living-room.

“I’m all right, really. It’s very nice of you to bother, but——”

“And I’m going on bothering,” said Mrs. Ledbetter. Now that the Bell business was finished with, she needed a new campaign. “The first thing is, why do you stay on here? A man by himself doesn’t want to be burdened with a house like this. Why not look for a flat, or I could find you some nice, homey rooms. I know my way about this district. I’d soon find you somewhere.”

Edward shook his head. “No, I must stay here because of the rabbits, thanks all the same. I’ve got a couple of score now. I need all my garden space and more.”

“Yes, of course.” She understood this at once. “Well, the thing then is to find you a good reliable little woman to come in by the day and look after you. I shall start right away in the morning making enquiries.”

“Please don’t bother,” said Edward, but she did not even hear him. She looked round the hall, her mind busy with plans. “You ought to get a better curtain on this door, then you could have more light in the hall. This is like a mausoleum.”

“I know,” said Edward, “but it’s always been like that.”

“The more I think of it,” she said suddenly, “the more pleased I am with myself for having killed two birds with one stone.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It was I who got rid of the Bell creature, wasn’t it? And if he hadn’t gone your wife wouldn’t have gone either, would she? Think that over, Mr. Ledward. You may think me interfering now, but I believe you’ll come to thank me in the end. Good-night.” Opening the door, before he could get to it, she was away down the path in the moonlight, squat and earthbound, quite the wrong shape for a fairy godmother.

Mrs. Ledbetter, however, was cheated of her fun. Three days after their conversation, while she was still only on the distant scent of a good, reliable little woman, Edward suddenly forestalled her by
finding not only one, but two good little women all by himself.

Wendy was at the end of her tether. In three weeks’ time, Mrs. Colquhoun would be turning them out and she still had not found anywhere to live. She was dreading to see her mother’s face when she told her. If she did not find anywhere—and why should she now after two months of searching?—she had no idea what they were going to do. She saw them sleeping in the Tube, or in a street shelter. Perhaps they would have to go to the Workhouse. What did people do?

Edward, coming back early from the canteen at lunchtime, found her hunched on her stool in the dark deserted shop, crying in quiet despair. There was nobody about, so he put his arms round her, gingerly at first and then tightening them as she made no resistance but turn took a step nearer to her mother,’ blyhed and clung to him, burying her head on his chest.

She was lovely to hold. He had not embraced any woman but Connie for ten years, and never in his life one as fragile as this. She felt almost breakable. She smelled of apples and he was dying to kiss her thin white neck, wilting only an inch from his cheek. She was still crying, and when he bent his head, trembling, and just brushed her neck with his lips, he was not sure whether she felt it.

After she had told him, still with her face hidden, he had not at first dared to voice the thought, the wonderful thought that flashed across his brain like a light. It would be impossible. Things like that just didn’t happen.

Only when she had sat up and apologised and was blowing her nose with a little snuffle, so exactly like that little grey doe, he said with his heart in his mouth, looking away from her out into the Shop, where stray lights were going on as people trickled back from lunch : “Why don’t you and your mother come and live with me for a bit? I’m all alone in the house. My wife’s away—there’s plenty of room.”