The Knave of Hearts (9 page)

But hadn’t he known how it would go, even before?
Because, the way the papers said, he’d given a wrong name ....
Muddling to reason out, but he didn’t think so, not that time. He’d
been frightened over Julie Anderson, because it was so close to home.
Of course, later he’d decided it was safer—down there—his real
home, his own place, nobody knew about that, and he could use it in
safety, in leisure ....

But nobody knew Julie was dead, and in the end it had
all blown over with no trouble. But it had set him thinking, just in
case—mightn’t it be a good idea to start all over again, the way
he had when he came here first, with a new name and background? That
had been in his mind that day—a different name and all—he hadn’t
consciously planned to do it, but when she’d said her name and he
had to introduce himself, the Edward Anthony had come out quite
naturally. Queer, how things happened .... He’d felt all buoyed up
right then, as if everything was going to be different from then on,
it was a new beginning, he would be Edward Anthony and no one else,
he’d marry this nice girl so it wouldn’t be sinning, and get all
straightened out. It would mean—this had crossed his mind
regretfully—quitting his job, starting in fresh somewhere else, and
what he’d do about papers, certificates, that would be a
problem—but worth any sacrifice.

Just chance, meeting her like that there in the
college cafeteria. He’d been thinking, then, if he just had enough
to keep him busy all the while, outside work hours—and he’d gone
there to ask about the evening classes— And there was Mary Ellen,
at the table where he took his coffee. Friendly, but of course
innocently so. A nice girl.

And he’d tried to do it right, meant to take her
out, the ordinary thing, work up to marrying her in the conventional
way. But it all went wrong, too fast, the first time he found himself
alone with her in the car that day, only two days later ....

It just showed how people could get the wrong idea,
too, from plain facts. Sally Haines had been quite right in saying he
had a reason to put Mary Ellen there, but it wasn’t anything to do
with her husband. It was her. All of a sudden, he’d thought of
where to hide Mary Ellen, and if they did find her, it would be a
terrible shock to that woman, and serve her right. He hadn’t, at
the time, known her name or anything about her, just what he’d seen
and heard, passing the place as he did almost every day. (He moved
away afterward, of course.) A most unwomanly woman, who wore
trousers, and several times he’d heard her speaking very sharply to
her husband, really ordering him around. One of those women who
thought herself superior to men, you’d think common sense would
tell them how false a notion—it said quite plainly in the
Scriptures that—

It had been too bad about Allan Haines. He was sorry
about it, it hadn’t crossed his mind that anything like that would
happen, but when it all came out he hadn’t felt quite as bad,
because of Haines confessing his sin. A married man, too.

And it was lucky he hadn’t given Mary Ellen his
right name. As if it was meant he should be saved. But that was the
end of any new start as Edward Anthony, of course. And of any real
hopefulness that even if he did manage to get married— But that
would be the best solution, if he could ever control himself and be
patient enough to get there with a woman. It was what he’d tried
for every time since, with Celestine and Jane and Pauline: what had
been in his mind.

Only then, those times, knowing what might happen,
he’d been very careful to give them another name, tell them wrong
things about where he worked and lived, and so on. If it had ever
worked out, well, he’d just have forgotten this permanent name and
place, started over again (the way he’d hoped with Mary Ellen), but
it never had .... It all happened just like before—he couldn’t
stop himself.

Another thing about that, he’d been careful—after
Julie—not to try with any woman who knew him in his own background,
by his own name. A few times it had been hard. He’d meet some woman
like that, in the way of business or introduced by someone who knew
him, and want her—and knowing what might happen, he didn’t dare .
. . He never planned it out, cold. Just, suddenly the day or so after
that, he’d find himself in conversation with a strange woman
somewhere, the way it had been with Celestine . . . and meeting Jane
Piper in the bank elevator that day, talking—and afterward, waiting
for her to come out, so he could pretend to meet her by chance in the
street, invite her to have a cup of coffee with him .... And Pauline
sitting there alone on the beach, looking lonely. Everybody talked to
strangers, casually, on the beach. Of course, he knew honestly that
his instinctive good manners, his quiet behavior, were reassuring to
respectable women: he wasn’t the ordinary kind who tried to pick
them up. Well, a man in his line of work, a job with some prestige,
educational requirements—he acquired that manner.

Oh, he’d been careful, but sometimes it was hard.
Right now, for instance, there was this woman he felt powerfully
attracted to, and God, God, he must be careful, because she knew him
as who he really was—properly introduced—and if anything like
that happened to her— Well, it mustn’t, that was all. When they’d
connected those other three with Mary E1len—guessed that it had
been a man known personally to all of them—if another one
happened—!

He got up and walked around the room uneasily,
loosening his collar, feeling hot and excited, trying to get himself
in hand. Hard. Times like that, before, when the immediate lust was
focused on a woman who knew him, he’d just found another who
didn’t. A strange one . . .That was how the Scriptures said it, the
strange woman.

Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse;
thou hast ravished my heart . . . How fair is thy love . . . Turn
away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me . . .

Very strange indeed that that kind of thing should be
part of the Scriptures: Father never would allow that book to be read
aloud, or read at all for that matter, and true, true, it was
dangerous reading. Whatever it meant, whyever it was included.

Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honeycomb . . .
Thy two breasts are like two young roes . . . This thy stature is
like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes .... I
said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs
thereof; now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine . . .

No, no, that was not the page to find the truth.
Where was it, what was it?
A strange woman is
a narrow pit—it was Proverbs, of course—she also lieth in wait
for prey. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart
shall utter perverse things—

But hopeless, even by what the Scriptures said,
because that went on—how did it go on?—
they
have stricken me, shalt thou say . . . they have beaten me. . . .
When shall I awake? l will seek it yet again.

Oh, but he must take care, take care and be strong to
keep himself from it! This one, she excited him, she disturbed him.
And suddenly, thinking about her, he wondered if it was the red hair,
if she reminded him of Rhoda. The mind made odd connections: even
when they were so different, a dirty slattern like Rhoda and this
one—this one with the unusual, rather nice name: Alison.

Take care. Because she knew him as himself. And he
must not, he could not, this time, go looking for a substitute—when
they were hunting, alerted. It must not happen again for a long time.
Better, never: but perhaps that was too much to hope for.

And it was time now he left. Get hold of himself, to
put up his usual quiet, gentlemanly appearance.

He had dropped the
Times
on the floor a while ago, and now he picked it up, tidily folding it
together, to leave the room neat. As he did so, a small line of print
took his eye, there on an inside page where the front-page story on
the murders had been concluded—right in the next column this was.

Regrading of Beach Street
,
it said. And below, the name jumping out at him with the effect of
being in blacker print.

Colibri Avenue.

He started to shake again; the paper rattled in his
hand.

Oh, no, he thought. Not just now. This bad time. When
they— Yes, of course it had always been far too steep a grade. Even
for an unimportant narrow lane leading off the coast highway there,
toward a few scattered houses back in the little canyon. But just
now, why in heaven’s name must there come the big bulldozers, the
men with spades and picks, just to make it an easier road for a few
cars?

Not a long street, not a wide one. The men with the
spades—

They’d find her now, they’d fund Julie Anderson.

Oh, God, he thought.

But, twenty-seven months, nearly twenty-eight. A long
time, there might not be much—

I must be careful, he thought distractedly. Take good
care to look and act just as usual.

And not, not, however hard it was, not let himself
get so excited, interested, in this new woman. Or any one. There must
not be another one now, soon.

He took an anxious look in the mirror, was reassured.
Must go, they’d be expecting him. It was all right, he could carry
it off. The main thing to remember was that there was no possible way
for anyone to connect him, the man he really was, with all these
women. There mustn’t ever be a way.

He was afraid this new one, who excited him so, would
be there tonight—no help for that, though the less he saw of her
the better. But so hard, when it all came boiling up in him, hot and
demanding—to keep himself from—

Must be very careful, and
try.

* * *

"Oh, all right, all right!" said Alison
resignedly. "I’ll be there, Pat."

"Well, you needn’t sound as if I’d applied
the Chinese water-torture to persuade you," said Patricia Moore.
"I only thought you might enjoy—"

"You needn’t waste time on the pretty
fiction," Alison told her. "I’m not a fool, and you’re
not the only one who’s scheming to cheer up poor Alison. Really,
it’s insulting—1 should be allowed some private life, and why
everybody’s leaped to the unflattering conclusion that I’ve
suffered some tragedy and need cheering up—"

"You think too much about yourself," said
Miss Moore with dignity. "Why you should leap to any such
conclusion I don’t know. I know nothing about your private life, or
very little, and I’ve always been under the impression that it’s
perfectly ordinary behavior to invite a few friends in for the
evening now and then."

"I said all right—sorry to sound cross, Pat,
it’s been one of those days when everything went wrong, and I’ve
got a headache, that’s all. I’ll see you on Sunday, then."
Alison put up the receiver before Pat could say anything more.

It was true, of course: a horrible day. And what
other sort did she expect, an old-maid teacher? Teacher: what it came
down to, though it sounded so glamorous and exciting, a charm school,
where doubtless all sorts of romantic secrets were dispensed .... So
romantic, she thought viciously, teaching these shallow little dunces
to wash their faces occasionally, not to wear four-inch heels and
dangly earrings to work, or shave off all their eyebrows! Damned
little morons. Gum-chewing fat fools like that Green girl, no
self-discipline to go on a diet, expecting she’d turn into
Cleopatra by a sort of osmosis if she sat through a six-week course.
And the Bernstein girl—
But I don’t get
it, Miss Weir, I mean about not using too much make-up. Listen, my
cousin Rose, she just plasters it on, what I mean, and she caught a
real nice fella, makes good money too, he don’t seem to care—

She leaned on the table there a minute, resting her
forehead on the cool impersonality of the telephone. Be-all and
end-all:
a real nice fella.
Well, so it was, so it was inevitably—women being women.
¿Qué
mas
, what else?

Never mind the girls, they weren’t so bad really.
Not the girls: her own friends, so damned irritating . . .

She laughed, and sat up, and found suddenly,
shamingly, that she was crying; she blew her nose, took herself in
hand firmly. She never cried, Alison the competent and cheerful,
who’d stood on her own feet and weathered enough trouble so far to
stand up to this—this disgustingly conventional kind of trouble,
losing a man!

Of course when it came to one’s private life, no
one needed to go around telling. Friends talked, guessed—how they
talked and guessed! None of them knew anything definite, naturally;
but somehow these things got round. And quite suddenly, she was being
besieged on all sides by all these well-meaning people. As if they’d
got together and—Well, no. Because several different sets of them,
as it were, had different candidates to trot out before poor Alison
(or the other way round). And come to think, that must represent some
hard undercover work, some cunning social traps, because unattached
men weren’t so easy to find.

It was really very funny, looked at objectively. She
could imagine the anxious debates about poor Alison: Well, I never
met him, did you?—and I wonder what sort of thing it was, none of
our business of course, but I gathered from what Pat said once—oh,
not gossip, because she doesn’t, but anyway . . . Such a pity
Alison was still single, such a nice girl, if she’d only meet some
really nice man— And inevitably, Who do we know who might do?