The Meddlers (34 page)

He suddenly saw himself sitting at the shabby table in his room at Mrs. Constatine’s, struggling with the mathematics of an experiment in chemical analysis and looking up to see Carrie sitting on his bed, her arms around her knees, gazing at him with a half-smile on her face. “Come here, Mike,” she had said softly, and he had got clumsily to his feet and crossed the room to her, frightened suddenly. And she had put up her face and said commandingly, “Kiss me, Mike.” And he had stood and stared helplessly at her, until she had put up an impatient hand and pulled him down beside her.

He shook his head irritably, pushing the memory away. The twenty-year-old innocent he had been was dead and long since
gone, had no relevance to the here and now, to this crazy girl beside the desk, looking at him through those dark lashes with still intentness.

“I don’t know,” he said again and looked at her, and she looked back silently.

“You’re quite mad,” he said uncertainly.

“But you will, won’t you?” she said, and it was a statement of fact.

  There was surprise in her when he spoke, for she had been lying bemused and relaxed for what seemed a long time, safe in her own sense of remoteness.

“I’m sorry,” he said heavily, and she turned to look at him.

“Sorry? For what? If apologies are due at all, it’s from me. I did rather—well, it was my decision.”

He was sitting hunched up with the counterpane pulled over his knees and with his arms around them, staring at the wardrobe on the far wall. “I … I didn’t show you the sort of… concern I feel I should.” He turned and looked at her then. “You are very inexperienced and it would have been kinder in me to have been gentler, less impatient. But you—”

He frowned and looked away from her. “You surprised me.”

“In what way?” It was curious how peaceful she felt, and there was a sudden stab of pleasure in realizing that she had an academic interest in what he was saying. Indeed, she had been right; she had solved her problem and could think well again.

“I said I needed to feel something for a girl. That I wasn’t the sort of man to behave like a bull in a field. I said it because I … I don’t think I knew certainly. Now I do.”

“Knew what?” She yawned suddenly and pulled the counterpane closer around her shoulders.

“I find you—you are a very attractive woman.”

“I imagine most women are in this situation.”

“No. I don’t mean just sexually. I mean attractive to me. You made me respond more than I would have expected myself to respond to someone I hardly know.” He looked at her again and said
with sudden awkwardness, “You are very like the only woman I’ve ever really cared about. A long time ago, when I was at University.”

“Perhaps that’s my good fortune, since it made you able to solve my problem for me.”

“Is it solved so easily? That’s an absurd idea.”

“What’s absurd about it? You’ve done just that. I feel better than I have since the birth. Better than I have for a long time.”

“That’s post-orgasmic euphoria.”

“My dear man, who’s being
New Statesman
now? Nonsense. I had a need, you provided a means to satisfy it, and I can now forget it.”

He stared at her and then shook his head in disbelief. “Ye gods, how naïve can you be! Do you honestly think you can shut the book on one episode like this and say that’s that?”

“Why not? I’ve managed perfectly well for many years without any sexual involvements. I don’t imagine I’ve changed that much. Having the baby had an unfortunate effect, maybe, but it was temporary. It was simply a matter of finding how to… well, complete the pattern. So now it’s complete.”

She smiled then with real amusement. “It may have been a reversal of the usual procedure, but I don’t think I need worry about that.”

She moved sharply and got out of bed and picked up her clothes. “I’ll dress in the bathroom, and you can dress here. Then I must pay my debts, mustn’t I? You want your story, and you’re entitled to it, on the understanding of course that you don’t publish my name.”

She moved across the room and into the small bathroom and after a while went on talking through the open door. “I’m sure you’ll appreciate why I must insist on anonymity. It really would be impossible to do any work if your colleagues came pestering me, wouldn’t it? And I suppose I must keep my promise to George and protect my identity.”

Her voice hardened. “Although I’m annoyed with him, I must confess. He refused this morning to—well, no harm done.”

She came back into the room to find him silently tying his shoe laces. “In fact, it’s perhaps as well. I doubt if I could have found
so … swift a solution in discussion with George! I indeed owe you a debt of—”

“Is that all you can say?” He seemed to explode into anger, and she looked at him in surprise. “You’ll pay your debts? Christ, what am I to you? A male prostitute? Someone you can use and then pay off like some bloody—”

“Why are you so angry? I told you what I wanted, and you provided it. The least I can do is cooperate with you in my turn. What is there in that to anger you?”

“How would you feel in my shoes? If I had walked in here, told you I needed a woman and that you’d do as well as anyone, and how about it? And if I then offered to give you something in exchange for being so accommodating? How would you feel if I had done that to you?”

“If I had consented to cooperate, how should I feel? It sounds perfectly reasonable to me.”

“Reasonable! My God, you’re—I don’t understand how any woman could possibly behave like this! It’s the most unnatural thing I—”

Her jaw tightened, and she walked into the living room, and he followed her furiously.

“—unnatural thing I’ve ever come across. I’ve known plenty of women in my time, but never one who could coolly offer to pay me in some way for—”

“Why not!” She turned on him, angry in her turn. “If men can buy women for sex, why shouldn’t I do the same thing? Not that I made any such offer! I simply made it clear I was willing to cooperate with you in appreciation of—”

“Services rendered?”

“No! In appreciation of your assistance with a problem that was a nuisance. That’s all.”

“That’s all! You treat me like some… some—”

“I really don’t understand you.” She tried to sound reasonable. “What is it that makes you so furious?”

“What is it that—look, I—” and then he stopped and sat down heavily on the sofa and put his head between his hands.

“I don’t know,” he said after a long pause. “I simply don’t know.

At first, I—oh, I don’t really know why I’m here. Why I agreed to do as you wanted. Why I’m so angry. You’ve got me into a state of complete confusion.”

“I’m very sorry indeed if you’re upset. But you must see there’s no reason for it.”

“I told you in there that I find you very attractive. I’m not given to—look, it’s been a long time since any woman has had on me the effect you have. Does that mean anything to you?”

She looked at him and then shook her head. “No. I’m sorry if that distresses you further, but no. I’m not the sort, you see.” She moved away from him, across the room. “I don’t make relationships. I never have. I don’t care what people think about me, what effect I have on them. Since I never have, I doubt if I ever shall.”

“Don’t you? Yet you wanted a sexual relationship enough to—”

“This evening has had nothing to do with relationships,” she said swiftly. “It was a simple solution to a problem. That’s all. I’m sorry if I’ve … if I’ve had a personal effect on you. If you want a relationship, you’ll have to look elsewhere. I’m just not interested in you in the way you seem to have become interested in me. I’m sorry about it, but there it is.”

He looked up, anger rising in him again as he recognized the note of kind dismissal in her voice. But she seemed unaware of his reaction and went on in the same patiently explanatory manner. “Look, can’t we look at this reasonably? I’m a logical woman, who worked out logically the structure of a problem and sought the logical solution to it. As a reasonably intelligent man, surely you can recognize the intelligence in me, and—”

“Intelligence! Ah, balls!” He was so furious he could hardly control the pitch of his voice. “You make me puke! You hide behind a great overblown notion of your own brilliance, kidding yourself you’re some unique creature that—for Christ’s sake, you’re no better than the rest of them! I’ve been pulled into bed by women just as bright as you think you are, I can tell you. And if they had to kid themselves, they did it more honestly, telling me they loved me, or I loved them, or some such thing! But this phony garbage about intelligent logical thinking—who the hell do you think you’re talking
to? Some mindless idiot you can blind with your lousy science? Who the hell do you think you are? I’ll tell you what you are.”

He took a deep breath and then said deliberately, “You’re no better than a whore. You had hot pants and didn’t know what to do about it. You wanted a man—any man—and you covered up the honesty of that with a load of crap about rational thought. If you’d walked out into the street and said to the first man who came along, ‘Please, sir,’ there’d have been some decency in you. But you chose to sell yourself like any prostitute, using the science you pretend to care so bloody much about for currency. Much you care about science, to use it to buy yourself the going-over you wanted! Much you care, you lousy stinking
whore
.”

The sense of peace, the resumption of cool academic thinking that had been with her since she had got out of bed, began to shake and splinter, and she felt the weight of confusion that she had been fighting all these weeks pushing back through the rifts, and fear rose in her.

“No. I’ve had enough! I don’t want to hear another word about it! Get out of here, do you hear me? Get out! I
should
have just got some man from the street. I should—get out! Leave me alone! Just go away and leave me alone.”

She ran to the door and tugged his coat from it and threw it at him and then pulled the door wide.

“Get out, and leave me alone! I don’t care what you feel, what you think, anything about you! I don’t want to know about why you agreed to do as I asked, or why I—get
out
!”

She knew she was shrieking like a fishwife, and she didn’t care. She had to get rid of him, free herself of the weight of his feelings, desperate for the safety of being alone inside herself again. She had to be free of this man and his probings, free of him to be free of herself.

But he stood and stared at her, his expression oddly triumphant, and she had to find some way to rid herself of him immediately, urgently. And with a sudden inspiration she shouted, “I won’t give you your bloody interview, not now or ever. But I’ll pay you in hard cash. If you won’t take what I offered—and you’ve earned
something this afternoon—I’ll give you a check. That should clear the slate.”

And she moved across the room toward the desk, but he moved more quickly and pulled on her shoulder and swung her around, and with his open palm and then the back of his hand he hit both sides of her face hard.

“And you’ve earned that! You’re not the only one who can pay debts!”

And then he was gone, leaving her standing very still in front of the desk, her hands hanging limply at her sides.

“But of course I turned him away, Mr. Gurney. Sad as I was for the poor boy, I had to turn him away.” Wayne shook his head in gentle regret and smiled, his face illuminated with kindness. “I would have been happier to try to bring him to a knowledge of the good that I know lies beneath his unprepossessing exterior, but he is not at present accessible to the voice of God. But one day, one day, I trust, he will find the road to Him.”

Gurney was trying not to let the man see he was conscious of the fascination being projected at him, but it was extraordinarily difficult. The soft voice, the beguiling lilt of the accent, American, yet, unusually, in no way irritating to him, the cleanly handsome lines of the face, all conspired to make him feel wrapped in the warmth of the man’s personality. It took a considerable effort of will not to let him see how determinedly he had to fight against it.

“I doubt if he wanted the sort of help you have to offer, Mr. Wayne. He was looking for something far more concrete.”

“Oh, I was aware of that, Mr. Gurney. I could hardly be otherwise. He was quite absurdly blunt in his demands. I guess, from your visit with me this evening, that he made you the same offer? Yes, of course he did. Poor young man.”

“May I too be blunt, in my own way? Why did you send him away? I would have thought that the information he had to offer would be of value to you.”

Wayne smiled again. “Would you, Mr. Gurney? How little you understand of the ways of God! You know, I could ask you, Mr. Gurney, why you sent him away. In your position, didn’t he have something to offer you?”

Gurney smiled thinly. “It might seem so. I’ll be honest with you, if you will be equally honest in return.”

“You don’t have to barter for my honesty, Mr. Gurney,” Wayne said gently. “It is a free gift offered freely by every God-loving man, and I will give it you as to every other man, as to God Himself.”