The Walking Stick (19 page)

‘What d’you mean? What information can I possibly give them?’

‘About Whittington’s.’

Silence. Mind move around in its little cell, probing, cold cell, the heat has been turned off. ‘What sort of information?’

‘The sort of precautions that are taken at night.’

‘Against burglary?’

‘That kind of thing – yes.’

‘Somebody wants to break in?’

‘It’s being considered.’

Silence. I lay very still.

He said: ‘I don’t know how they’ve come to think of you. I suppose seeing you here and
friendly
with people . . .’

‘With Jack Foil.’

‘Maybe.’

I breathed out on his fingers. ‘Well, just tell them no. Tell them to go and feed the swans.’

‘It’s not so easy as all that. There’s no one else they know who has an inside on Whittington’s.’

‘Good, I’m relieved. Tell them to try Sotheby’s instead.’

‘Whittington’s is the place they’ve got in mind, see. Of course . . . There’d be money in it for us.’

Stare up into the dark. Almost sightless dark. Voice and body beside me. Can be heard and touched and deeply loved, but not the brain activating . . .

‘You’re not seriously suggesting I should do it?’

‘That’s what I’ve been awake so long about. Beating it out, saying to myself, I’ve no right to ask her, and then thinking, it’d be five hundred. That’d get us
in the clear with Jack and give us the beginning of a nest egg.’

‘Oh, Leigh, stop it! Don’t be so utterly silly!’

Silence. ‘I know it’s silly. I
know
it’s silly.’

‘Well, then.’

‘It sounded plumb crazy to me at first, I promise you. But that’s what I’ve been mulling over. When you come to think of it, it seems easy money for so little.’

‘So little?’

‘Well, when you’ve told ’em what you know they may decide to do nothing at all. That’s up to them.’

‘And pay us the five hundred? Oh, ho!’

‘Maybe not . . . I don’t know. I don’t think I can reason straight tonight!’

Silence for a while. ‘I reckon the place is insured, is it?’ he asked.

‘What, Whittington’s? Well, of course.’

‘I suppose if they were broken into, the publicity would be almost worth the upset.’

Not the brain activating, not ever. Not even in the fusing fires of love.

‘When did you hear this? When was the proposition put to you?’

‘Last night.’

‘By Jack Foil?’

‘No, someone else. Someone bigger than him.’

‘At the
party
? Ted?’

‘No. One of the others. It’s not important. You’ll never guess.’

‘You should have kicked him out.’

‘That would have been
very
unhealthy.’

Think this over. ‘Leigh, have you got mixed up with a
gang
or something? It sounds awfully melo—’

‘No. Not that. Only people I know.’

‘You know some strange people.’

‘Yeh.’

‘Darling, they don’t know
me
. So if they’re so silly as to think . . . well, that’s excusable. But for you to think the same . . .’

‘I said I didn’t dare ask you. But you pestered . . .’

‘Well, you can’t be surprised, surely, at the way I feel.’

Long silence. I said: ‘Could you drink tea if I made it? Or Horlick’s? Or . . .’

He said: ‘I’m
sorry
, Deb. Honest. I knew how you’d feel and yet . . .’

‘Yet what?’

‘It’s so difficult for the likes of me. You get a proposition like this – you chuck it out. I get a proposition like this – and it sticks. So it makes you that much
better than me—’

‘Oh, rubbish—’

‘Well, it does. But I’ve told you – we come from different ways of living. My dad’s on the railways. Mum died early and he had kids to bring up. All my life I’ve
seen him
scraping
. You haven’t a clue what that means. When you were short of money it meant you couldn’t afford a luxury. When we were short of money it meant we couldn’t
afford a necessity. I was second eldest. I had to wear all my brother’s clothes, when they were already rubbed threadbare by him.
Always
the cheapest food to try to make it go further.
Always
making do with fifth rate. Of course the money came in every week. We made do. But every penny gobbled up. Never a penny spare. I swore when I grew up I’d not be like that. I
swore it through my teeth every time we went short. So you see . . . money means different to me. It means too much, maybe. But that’s the way it is, Deborah. I can’t change now.
I’m not saying I’m right – I’m only saying the difference.’

I began to feel a bit sick. ‘And . . . you’d like me to give information to thieves who want to break into my firm, a firm that trusts me, for £500. Just £500. You want
me to betray them for that? I’d rather
give
you £500. I’d rather give it you so that you can say no!’

‘Oh . . . forget I ever spoke!’ He turned half away, and sighed, blowing out a long deep breath.

‘I can’t, Leigh. I want to know.’

He said: ‘This business of honesty . . . we’ve talked about it before. I don’t know. I’m not the Lord God. But who’s honest and who isn’t? I know you are,
love; but how many others? Anyone knows – you can pick a hundred cases. Lord X. His great-grandfather was a dirty moneylender and bought property in Rotherhithe. His grandfather and his
father were slum landlords, employing men to squeeze and bully their tenants while they lived in a great house in Sussex and owned a private yacht and what all. The property is half blitzed and
half condemned, so the present Lord X sells it to a development company for £600,000. Is that honesty? By the laws of the land, yes. But how much honester is it than the Great Train Robbers?
Who caused the most suffering? Look at half the Rolls-Royces in London today. Who owns ’em? Old men driving about, lechers, gluttons, sitting on fortunes. How did they come by their
money?’

I took his hand. ‘Of course that’s partly true. But you can always justify yourself in anything if you point your finger at other people. It’s really only yourself you can
judge.’

He took his hand away. ‘You sound like a parson.’

‘No, I sound like a prig. You don’t give me much choice, do you?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ve told you, forget I ever spoke.’

There was a silence that lasted into minutes. Somewhere a clock chimed the quarter hour.

I said: ‘Forgive me, darling, for being like this. Don’t think I think myself better than anybody else. Of course I was brought up in lucky, comfortable surroundings – I grant
you that. But that doesn’t make the difference – not really. It’s just that there – there are – are things I feel I can do, things I . . . just can’t see myself
doing
at all
, under any circumstances. You’re a much more generous, open enthusiastic person than I am –
kinder
, more thoughtful, so often unselfish. You beat me in all
these things. But when you ask me to – to cheat the firm I work for – it – it isn’t on. It’s as if someone asked me to cheat
you
!’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’m sorry I asked.’

No word of it next morning. Up early, trying to make some order of the chaos before he woke. When he did he said he had a headache and would go out for the Sunday papers. He
was away a long time and didn’t get in until a few minutes before lunch. We ate without much conversation.

He was perfectly pleasant but cool. But what he’d asked was a lead weight in my stomach; that he said no more of it emphasized by omission.

Rain all day, and we didn’t go out. There were enough bits of leftovers from lunch and yesterday to make a scrap supper. I went through my presents, a coffee pot from Douglas and Erica,
perfume from Sarah and Arabella, stockings from the Foils, chrysanthemums from Philip Bartholomew; but the savour was lost. I wondered if I really was a prig. Or, even if I wasn’t, whether I
seemed one to him. This same big gap in our mental outlook. However much we loved, sometimes we might have been of a different race. Did he make any effort to understand me? Did I make any to
understand him? At the party, thoughts across my mind: I’ll die for him. But not lie for him – is that it? The big noble sacrifice, but not the small shabby one.

A busy day on Monday, and I stayed late, deliberately, stayed on until the security guards came at seven. Home by bus. Nearly eight. He wasn’t in.

When I was late we usually ate out, though I tried to avoid this by bringing food home with me, as it was so much less expensive. Tonight there was nothing in the house but eggs and bacon. I
poured myself a gin and tonic and waited. He came in at nine-thirty, looking tired.

‘Hello, love. Been waiting? Sorry I couldn’t let you know. We ought to be on the telephone. I applied and then cancelled it because we couldn’t afford it.’

Quite nice. Pleasant, cool, friendly, no resentment. But
cool
.

‘There’s only eggs and bacon, will that do? I didn’t have time to get anything.’

‘Well I’ve – eaten a bit. Couldn’t avoid it, really. You eat and I’ll just have a whisky or something.’

‘I don’t think there’s any whisky. Two or three wouldn’t drink wine on Saturday.’

‘Blast. Oh, a cup of tea, then.’

I made tea but didn’t cook myself anything. I buttered a couple of crackers and put cubes of Cheddar on them. He ate one and I the other. We talked a bit and then got ready for bed. He
didn’t say where he’d been and I didn’t ask him.

I asked him on the Tuesday evening how they’d taken my refusal.

He said: ‘D’you mean . . . ?’ and blinked his heavy lids. ‘Oh,
that
. . .’ He put his knife and fork down and cut a piece of bread from the loaf on the
table.

We continued to eat for a bit. I said: ‘I suppose they didn’t like it.’

‘No, they didn’t. Not much.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They asked me to ask you to think again.’

‘And what did you say?’

‘What could I say?’

‘That you would?’

‘Yes.’ He looked at me steadily for a second. Queer look. Sombre. No warmth in it. ‘Yes, I said I’d ask you to think again.’

‘Why? Why make it worse?’

He pushed his plate a couple of inches away from him with his thumbs. ‘I was trying not to make it worse. It isn’t easy just to say no.’

‘Why not? You owe them nothing.’

He shrugged. I said: ‘Or do you mean you
do
owe them something? Is Jack Foil pressing you for his money? Is that it?’

He got up, thrusting back his chair so that it screeched. ‘Jack’s a receiver, not a blackmailer. He’s my friend.’

‘And the others?’

‘Well, not so as you’d notice. They weren’t very friendly today.’

‘Well, can they do anything about it, if I refuse?’

He shrugged again. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

‘But this – this is ridiculous. It’s another form of blackmail—’

‘Oh, it’s not as bad as that – they’re not thugs. Nobody’s going to be beaten up, if that’s what you’re thinking. But this is a tough world, Deborah, as
soon as you get out of the nice little suburbs. It only means – I’m only saying that it’s not easy for me just to say no, just like that. I’ve got to think all round it. And
so have you. So I’m playing for time. I said I’d let them know definite by next Sunday.’

On the Wednesday there was a big miscellaneous sale at Whittington’s which really took off from the start. Every auction room knows this can happen. Six sales will be
quite normal, good business, etc. The seventh seems to go from the first lot. People bid more quickly, they bid against each other at the right times, in the heat of it all prices rocket.

This was the sale in which we’d put the single Meissen piece. It fetched 3900 guineas. Two eighteenth-century candlesticks reached 580 guineas. A young American paid £3700 for a tiny
jade toucan with emerald eyes; interviewed afterwards, he said it was a Christmas present for his fiancée in Boston. Two or three of the less reputable dealers were there and were working in
collusion, but private interference was so great that this time they couldn’t do much to control the prices. One of Shaw’s Prefaces, signed by the author, went for £l0,000. I
looked at the catalogue. ‘
Fabergé clock, the property of the Hon Mrs Anthony Justine . . . Chinese lacquer screen, the property of Lord Suppint . . . the property of the late Earl
of Calshot
.’ All the property of someone, and all fetching ever-increasing prices. Money flowed like milk. An elderly woman in a print frock paid £7000 for a Stubbs while scarcely
bothering to lift her eyelids, and another, 600 guineas for a Sheraton breakfast table. Money, money. Of course I could see what Leigh meant. The hideous discrepancy. Leigh’s father was an
ardent trade unionist battling dourly for his pay rise of 11/6 a week. Leigh looked at it differently. Leigh was in with an odd crowd and saw no particular harm in trying to persuade his mistress
to sell a little information for a sum of money that represented 11/6 a week for sixteen years – and that tax free. You could see his point of view.

But Deborah Dainton had her standards. It sounded prissy but it was true. How far did they go? It was very odd. With a little effort one could probably produce a perfectly rational case for
doing what Leigh wanted. The moral issue, as he said, was very confused. Nobody would come to any harm. One of the vast insurance companies might pay away a little of their profits. Nothing more.
But Deborah Dainton didn’t do it. Not if she wanted to go on living with herself, she didn’t.

But what if she wanted to go on living with Leigh?

He was a bit strange all that week. No one could say he was sulky or moody or short-tempered or unkind. But a sort of thin transparency had come between us. This was perhaps
not deliberate on his part, but it was as if I had damaged our relationship. He bore no ill will but it had happened.

It’s much easier to justify yourself if the opposite party gives you cause for complaint. If he’d snapped at me I should have felt better. So I began to snap at him.

On the Thursday he said: ‘All right. I’ll go and tell them tonight that it’s no sale. That satisfy you?’