The Key to My Heart Page 7

  “You don’t say! Well, sit down. I’ve been washing my hair,” she said. She pointed to the deep, green settee where we had sat the night that had ended my engagement with Claudia. It was too low for me; I’m tall.

  Mrs. Brackett looked plain. There was a line across her forehead, and her hair was darker because it was wet. It ended in rat-tails, just like the hair of a maid we used to have years ago. Mrs. Brackett went to the far side of the fireplace and held her hair down to dry it by the fire. We both spoke at once.

  She said, in her cattle dealer’s voice, “I wanted to see you. I expect you think it was my fault Claudia broke up with you. I’m sorry.”

  I said, “What is this ‘Pays On’? ‘Say Pays On’? ‘Tray Pays On’? You said it on the telephone.”

  “Pays on?” she said, throwing her hair back and looking at me. “What d’you mean? On the blower—I said that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “You said it once before, when I came up here years ago, as well, about the bill.”

  She smiled. “Still on about the bill,” she said. “What’s the matter? Haven’t you paid your water rates? I don’t know what you’re talking about. ‘Pays on’? Never heard of it.” And she lowered her head to the fire. “I’ll never get this dry,” she said.

  “That’s it. Pays On,” I said. “Is it a horse? Noisy said it was a horse.”

  She sat up and again threw her hair back from her broad low forehead when she heard Noisy’s name.

  “When I came up here,” I went on. “Noisy said it sounded like one of those French horses.”

  “A French horse? I never heard . . .” She stopped. She opened her mouth and put her tongue in her cheek, like a child caught stealing. She got up and walked over to a side table where the drinks stood. I watched the way she walked. She was wearing one of her terrible dresses of blue stuff with little yellow and red daisies on it. It looked like someone else’s. And a tomato-coloured cardigan. I remember her saying, the night when Claudia and I had dinner there, that it puts a woman “one up in the conver” if you give a man a shock at the sight of your clothes and it “makes the other women look sick”.

  “A horse.” She laughed. “What will you have to drink?” she said, turning round. “Noisy told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” she said. “I will tell you.” And she spoke like someone spelling out to a child. “It’s not a horse, it’s a man. A Frenchman who lives in the country. It’s French.”

  “Nothing for me,” I said. “Why talk in French. Is it smart or something?”

  “You’re a suspicious character, Bob,” she said. “You sound sore. What’s the matter? Has flour gone up? Can’t you sell your cream puffs?”

  I kept my temper, because her voice had changed and was soft.

  “Let’s see,” I said. “He’s a man. And he’s French. And he lives in the country. He wouldn’t be a peasant, would he?”

  “Good!” she said, laughing. “That’s it—a French peasant. A real peasant.”

  I nodded. “ ‘Bloody peasant,’ Noisy said,” I said, giving a scratch behind my ear.

  She gave me a long look, which died away, and she said outright, “All right, you win. I was talking about you.”

  “That’s funny,” I said. “Noisy thought it was a horse.”

  “Noisy has better manners than me. Can we drop it?”

  “What?” I said. “Is it something insulting? I didn’t know that. What’s wrong with it? It’s no worse than silly bitch, is it?”

  I thought Mrs. Brackett was going to fly at me, but she didn’t. She stuck her chin out. She said quietly, seriously, “I apologize.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “It’s best to begin with a row.”

  “Damn, damn, damn,” she said. “I really do apologize. Honour bright.” And then her eye gave that little flick. “Begin what?” she said.

  I got up to walk over to the table to her.

  “No,” she said. “Stay where you are. If you don’t want a drink, I do.” I sat down again, but when she brought her drink, she came over to my side of the fire-place and sat on the stool there. We were silent for quite a time.

  “I’ve bought the Mill House,” I said.

  “That’s nice of you,” she said. “You’ve changed the subject. How did you hear about it?”

  She was sharp where there was a question of a deal. I told her about it. I said I thought of turning it into an hotel, and we argued about that a long time—how you’d never get a manager in a place like that.

  “How much did you give for it?” she said.

  I didn’t answer, but—it just came into my head, and I didn’t mean it—I said, “How would you like to manage it?”

  She was as surprised as I was. “I don’t like being mocked,” she said. “Is that what you came up to say? Of course I wouldn’t manage your hotel. Anyway, it’s a crime to do anything like that with that place. D’you always go about sitting in cars with women and then ask them to manage hotels. Did you ask Claudia? Why are you so mad about money?”

  Jealous! I pricked up my ears. The room seemed to smile at me. There was a picture on one of the walls of a lot of cardinals drinking wine, and the central one had his smiling face turned toward us. Even the white door at the end of the room might have opened; I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  “She was only a girl of nineteen,” I said. “Since Father died, I am responsible.”

  “Pooh. You’re only twenty-two yourself.”

  “Thirty,” I said.

  “How old d’you think I am?” she said, putting her head back and moving to the sofa. In a way, she looked her worst, but I wasn’t looking at her face. I remember Noisy once saying he was twenty-three hundred years old and that she was twelve.

  “Twelve,” I said.

  “I’m thirty-three,” she said, giving the short shake to her head. “Actually, thirty-six. And don’t copy Noisy.”

  Thirty-six, I was thinking—that will be something to tell Mother the next time she starts on me about Mrs. Brackett’s age. When I looked at her again, she was very friendly.

  “I’m selling this house, if you’re in the buying mood,” she said. “I can’t afford it.”

  I shook my head. “Why don’t you sell it to Teddy Longfellow?” I said. “I saw him at Noisy’s last night. He’s rich.”

  She started. “The liar!” she said, blushing. “Noisy said you weren’t there.”

  “I wasn’t when you rang,” I said.

  She smiled and leaned toward me. “Did you see this girl of his, the Argentine girl everyone is talking about?”

  I was the biggest fool in the world, I felt so confident of her.

  “Yes,” I said carelessly, and I laughed.

  “What is she like—young? I’m glad he’s got a girl.”

  I was in it; I had to go on. “Yes, young,” I said.

  “Is she tall?” Mrs. Brackett moved nearer to me. “Tell me what she’s like.”

  “Dark,” I said. “Yes, tall.”

  “Taller than me? Pretty? What is she like? What did she say?” She started arranging her hair as she talked.

  “Taller,” I said. “A bit—kind of stiff. I’ve only seen her in uniform. She didn’t say much. No, I don’t think she said anything. Teddy Longfellow was there, and Mother. Something dead about her.”

  “Is she working? I mean is she air-hostessing still?”

  I was beginning to enjoy this.

  “I think they’ve grounded her.”

  “Why?” Mrs. Brackett said anxiously.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You must have some reason,” she said.

  “She just looked grounded.”

  “How can anyone look grounded? She sounds like a dummy to me,” said Mrs. Brackett, with an unnatural laugh. “Stiff as a board, in uniform. Doesn’t she speak? Poor Noisy—serves him right. He likes a chat.”

  She put her hand on my arm and said excitedly, “I’ll tell you what w
e’ll do. Let’s go and see them. I’ll ring him up.”

  “No,” I said, alarmed by what I’d said.

  “Yes,” she said, moving away, but I caught her arm and held her.

  “My hair is wet,” she said, shaking to get away, but I held her arm and presently she stopped pulling.

  “Please,” she said. “You’re hurting me.” I slackened my hold and she got up at once. She was a trickster.

  “I’m going to see them,” she said, looking at her watch and going toward the door.

  “It’s ten o’clock,” I said. “They’ll be in bed.”

  Mrs. Brackett stopped at the door. She went very white. With her hair plastered down and her mouth suddenly small and her eyes startled as if I had hit her, she looked ugly.

  “That,” she said, coming back a step to me, “was a dirty remark.”

  “Trays Pays On,” I said.

  She looked as if she would throw something, if there had been anything near. Then her eyes almost closed and she laughed and laughed and came and sat down near me. “You’re not the same as when you first came up here. What has happened to you?” she said softly to me.

  “Nor are you,” I said, moving toward her.

  She began pulling at the thread of the settee as she had done before. I can’t remember what we said, but we did get on to the subject of the door at the end of the room and where it led to. To the second staircase, she said. And one thing led to another.

  * * *

  The next morning, when I had seen to the vans, I rang her. I was mad to hear her voice. There was no reply. Several times I rang, and there was no answer. Mother came into the room behind the shop to look at me, and everytime the phone rang, she and I moved to it. At last I had to go to Wetherington in the afternoon—it was early closing with us, and Mother wanted to come with me and go shopping. There was something secretive about Mother, because she wouldn’t, as she usually did, tell me where to pick her up in the town. Usually, I found her outside the biggest draper’s, but today she wouldn’t say for a long time, and then she said, “In the station yard.” This puzzled me. She had what we used to call her broody look, like a hen sitting heavily, and occasionally she’d break out into the first line of a song, but stop because she could never remember the others. In the end, I met her at the station, looking comfortable and sly, as though she had eaten something good, and when we drove away, she was soft-tempered and dreamy. She had got her week of anger off her mind. We had been driving for twenty minutes when she said, “They don’t tell you anything. It’s daft. Your Uncle Dan in Canada has been dead for years.”

  She had been to a fortune-teller.

  “Well, who else could it be?” she said.

  We got back to the shop, and I drove into the yard at the side and straight for the garage, which I had left

  open. It was dark now, and I had put the headlights full on. Just as the car was going into the garage, Mother clutched my arm and cried out “Stop, Bob! There’s a woman there!”

  She was right. There, standing against the white-washed wall, stood a tall young girl, smiling. For a moment I thought it was Molly Gibson; she was dark. Then I looked again. It was not a girl—not a living girl. It was Noisy’s cardboard girl from the Argentine Air Lines.

  “Oh, it gave me a turn, I thought you’d kill her,” Mother said. “What is it? Who put it there?”

  We got out. Mother looked at me suspiciously. It was what the fortune-teller had said, she told me: there’d be a visitor from overseas.

  I examined the figure. “It’s Noisy’s,” I said. “It’s got the key to his heart hanging on the back.”

  Mother came and looked. Her face darkened. “You’ve upset Noisy. You don’t listen to me. You’ve upset him. I could see it the other night.” And Mother marched out of the yard, down the street to our house.

  I knew Noisy was always playing the fool, but there was always something behind his jokes. And then—it was natural—I felt a bit uneasy about Noisy ever since I had fallen in love with Mrs. Brackett. He was friendly, but he had changed. I had once or twice caught him giving me a strange look, his face not twitching, but still as stone; his eyes very sharp, sarcastic.

  I went to the bakehouse, but the men didn’t know anything about the dummy. I went along to the café and asked the two girls there. Had Noisy been in, I asked the first girl.

  “No,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  The other girl came out of the kitchen.

  “Has Noisy been in today? Any time?”

  “No,” said the girls.

  I told them there was a poster in the garage.

  “Oh,” said the eager girl from the kitchen. “That was Mrs. Brackett. She left it this afternoon.” And she gave me a knowing smile; I did not like it.

  “Did she leave a message?” I said, not letting on. “You’re sure it was Mrs. Brackett?”

  “Yes,” they said. And there was no message.

  They were grinning behind my back when I left. I saw them in the mirror. You can imagine what was going on in my head. I didn’t mind the joke, but Mrs. Brackett and Noisy in it together!

  I went back to our house.

  “Mrs. Brackett brought it,” I said to Mother.

  Mother ignored this. Her temper was rising. “Trying to make a laughing-stock of your mother!” she said. “Telling me he had an Argentine girl up there! Do you think anyone in his senses would believe a twopenny tale like that?”

  “I didn’t make it up,” I said.

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” she said. “You haven’t the brains. All this love has made you stupid. Going about with your mouth wide open, you’d swallow anything, and the business goes to ruin. Two customers complained the bread was burned yesterday—the whole lot. The whole town’s laughing at you. Noisy’s taken your measurements, my boy. Running after another man’s wife! They’ve made fools of you. And I am glad. It will teach you a lesson. And don’t ask me to be sorry. I told you this divorcing was all my eye. Oh, I wish your father was alive!”

  “Why would they put it there?” I said. “Anyway, it was Mrs. Brackett.”

  I was going to say more; I was in a temper, too. I went round to the shop again and I sat at the desk staring at the telephone, and then I rang Mrs. Brackett.

  “I have been trying to ring you,” I said.

  “That is a change,” she said. “Is anything the matter?”

  Her voice sounded cold.

  I laughed. It was so lovely to hear her. “Well,” I said. And I laughed again.

  “What is the joke?” she said.

  I was still laughing as I began. “I—”

  “Are you ringing me up about that dummy?” she said sharply. “You are? You found it? Bad luck for you. Listen. I don’t like being mocked. I had ten years of that kind of thing with Noisy.”

  God, I thought. Mother storming at me at home, and Mrs. Brackett shouting from up on the hill.

  “I don’t want any more stableboy jokes.” Mrs. Brackett had a temper. We all had tempers, I suppose—Mother, me, Mrs. Brackett, and all of us.

  She slammed down the telephone.

  I would have let her temper go and waited for her to cool off and to come running down. What stopped me was not my own temper, but what was clearer every moment I thought of it: that she and Noisy had got together again, for how else could she have got hold of the dummy?

  * * *

  I ran into the yard, and that damn silly thing was still smiling away at me as I got into the car. I drove up to Heading. I was mad. The servant was coming down on her bicycle, just as I had seen her two days before. This time I could have gladly knocked her over.

  But Mrs. Brackett was not at Heading. She had gone out. I came slowly back to the shop. I did not know what to do. Several times my hand went to the telephone. I was tempted to ring Noisy to tell him what I thought of him, but I couldn’t. I went over to the Crown.

  And there I heard something that changed my mind. Teddy Lon
gfellow was in the bar talking to the landlord, who was polishing glasses and lifting each one to his eye to see if it was clean as he listened.

  “They cut fifty pounds’ worth of wire”, Teddy was saying.

  “He told me that on the phone,” said the landlord.

  “Hullo, Bob,” said Teddy. “Did you hear this?”

  “What was that? Have they cut your wire?” I said to Teddy. He often had trouble with hooligans who let his cattle out.

  “Up at Mr. Brackett’s,” said the landlord.

  “Noisy’s had burglars,” said Teddy.

  I looked at the landlord, for I never believed any tale that Teddy came along with, but the landlord put a glass down and said: “This afternoon. When he was out.”

  “Well they wouldn’t do it when he was in!” said Teddy scornfully.

  Yes. Out (I thought). With Mrs. Brackett, delivering that poster to me, but Teddy’s next words put another light on it.

  “I told Noisy just now it sounds like the job of a sex maniac to me,” said Teddy to the landlord, “cutting all that wire, smashing a kitchen window—all to get at a woman! I told Noisy months ago it was a mistake to keep a foreign woman up there.”

  “What woman?” said the landlord.

  “Bob knows her, don’t you, Bob?” said Teddy.

  That was enough for me. Noisy had not been with Mrs. Brackett; in fact it was clear from the far-away tone of Teddy’s voice that he was going to spread the rumour that I was with her. He was picking away at his beard fast, delighted with himself. It was clear he had had a peep into my garage.

  What puzzles me now is why I didn’t let it go at that. I suppose I was so relieved to see that Noisy and Mrs. Brackett were not in this together that I didn’t stop to ask myself “Whose side are you on?” but went straight off eagerly to ring up Noisy. If only I hadn’t rung him!

  “This is going to cost you a pretty penny, Bob,” Noisy said before I could get a word in. “A hundred feet of wire chopped up to bits, two locks gone, kitchen window smashed, geyser not working—add the men’s time at union rates . . .”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “And then,” Noisy went on. “There’s the emotional side. No one thinks of that nowadays. That’s what I can’t get over. Bob, you rotten free-lance, breaking up a happy home. Think of all those poor children crying, ‘Where’s Mummy? When’s she coming back from the Argentine?’ Tragedy of easy divorce, divided homes, one more little delinquent attacking women in parks, Father’s sad evidence—”