The Key to My Heart Page 8

  “Listen, Noisy—”

  “Bob, you bloody daylight burglar. Over.”

  “I’ve got her,” I said. “She put her in our garage.”

  “Who did?”

  “Your wife.”

  “My ex-wife, if you please,” said Noisy.

  “We found her when we got back from Wetherington this afternoon.”

  “Who’s we?” said Noisy.

  “Mother and I,” I said.

  “Mother in it, too,” said Noisy. “My God! Radio silence, old boy. I’ll be over in five minutes.”

  He came with his usual roar. “Let me see her,” he said, and we went into the garage. He sniffed the air. “It’s damp in here. Bad for the poor girl’s chest.” He looked at her proudly. “Isn’t she a peach? Now, my sweetie,” he said to her, “you stay where you are, do as you are told. It will be all right. We’re going to lock you in, so you don’t get up to tricks.” And he closed the garage door.

  “Aren’t you going to take her back?” I said as he locked the door himself.

  “Bob,” he said very seriously, “when Teddy Longfellow and I broke into Heading that time and got my case of birds back, they were my birds, weren’t they? We didn’t steal anything, did we? We didn’t touch a thing that wasn’t our own—right? We didn’t do any damage, did we? We didn’t break a kitchen window and leave filthy footmarks on the floor, did we? One of the cleanest jobs you ever saw, I bet, wasn’t it? And we didn’t lift anything lying about, like a pair of service wire clippers, for example?” He was scowling. “Oh, yes,” he said, “we’re going to get them back. Jump in. I know her hideouts. We’ll buzz up to Heading to see if the clippers are there, but if they’re not they’ll be in her car. And remember, Bob, for future reference”—he gave that twitch to his eye as he turned his head to me—“when the Fairy Queen takes off she’s never got more than a gallon of gas in the tank. That cuts the target area down to eleven miles. She can’t be at the Fobhams’, for instance.”

  We were off. The roar of Noisy’s car was unmistakable in our town, and of course it brought Mother to the door.

  We tried Heading first—“the ancestral home”, Noisy said—and drew nothing, then to the Duck outside Tolton, the Lamb at Forth Hill, then the Aylesbury Arms, the Green Man, and the Sailor’s Return.

  “Bob,” said Noisy, getting whiter in the face after every pub, “the Fairy Queen is not one of those who, in the normal free-for-all, can dish it out but can’t take it. Something must have got her on the raw.”

  I told him the story—well, three-quarters of it.

  “Tall, dark girl, you said. Didn’t talk much, you said? Very nice,” he said, grinning. “Anything else?”

  “I said I thought she was grounded,” I said.

  Noisy laughed loudly. “Wrong there, Bob,” he said. “She’s in uniform.”

  He became thoughtful. “Of course, I can see she was getting her own back on me, but why dump that lovely creature at your place? That’s what foxes me.”

  We drove on, missing the Harrow at Denton Bridge, because the man there watered the gin. “There’s only one more chance,” Noisy said, driving now on the wrong side of the road. “Play the game or get out of the bed!” he shouted at a passing car.

  We seemed to lose our way in by-lanes. Suddenly he pulled up at a pub called the Fox and stopped in the yard. We did not get out.

  “The only thing I can think of, Bob, is you were making a pass at her. Yes, that’s what it must have been,” Noisy said as we sat there. “Never make a joke when you’re making a pass at a woman. They don’t like it. You’re right down the drain if you do. And let me tell you, I don’t care a damn if you are down the drain. But I want my wire clippers back. They’ve been with me in France, in Egypt, in India, and I’ve never seen the man who’d dare lay a finger on them.”

  We looked round the yard.

  “What did I tell you?” said Noisy suddenly. “See that? She’s here.

  He pointed to Mrs. Brackett’s car. We sat gazing at it.

  “Keep your eyes skinned, Bob,” said Noisy at last. He got out and went over to her car, opened the door, and looked around inside. He came back with the heavy pair of service wire clippers in his hand.

  “Mission accomplished,” he said. “Let’s get drunker.”

  We considered the peaceful white walls of the inn, the bare trees, the lights shining behind the curtained windows.

  “It brings back memories,” said Noisy. “Many’s the time we’ve finished up here, the Fairy Queen and I, after a row. Funny to think she’s in there now, all on her own, knocking them back. Mind if I come in, too, for old time’s sake?”

  For I had begun to move for the door.

  There was a loud noise coming from the bar, where the locals were, but we went into the small one. Sitting alone in a chair by the bar was Mrs. Brackett.

  “Scotland Yard,” said Noisy thickly, turning back the lapel of his coat.

  Mrs. Brackett put her drink down and, looking at Noisy, she blushed. “I see you’ve brought the Sergeant,” she said, glancing coldly at me.

  “We didn’t know whether this was going to be a strong-arm job, did we, Bob?” said Noisy. “It’s all right. We’re both drunk.”

  “Mr. Fraser’s quite free with his arms, too,” said Mrs. Brackett primly. “Why doesn’t he sit down? Is he going?” For Noisy had sat down beside her.

  “I’m mad about her, aren’t you, Bob?” said Noisy. “A real bit of old Newgate, isn’t she? No, Bob’s not going.”

  “Well, why doesn’t he join in the conversation?” said Mrs. Brackett. “Has flour gone up again? Or is he worried about his new girl?”

  “Oh,” cried Noisy, “has Bob got a new girl? He didn’t tell me that. Bob, what’s this, you rotten seducer? You never told me.”

  “A foreign girl—Argentine, I believe,” said Mrs. Brackett. “Very dark, very tall. They’ll make a handsome pair. She used to be an air hostess, isn’t that so, Mr. Fraser? Grounded . . .”

  “Much better grounded,” said Noisy. “You know where they are.”

  “A bit stiff in her uniform,” said Mrs. Brackett.

  “That will wear off when they get married,” said Noisy.

  I laughed, but Noisy didn’t and neither did Mrs. Brackett when she looked at me.

  “With a fine fellow like Bob, of course it will,” said Noisy. “Good-looking, too.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Brackett. “And doing well. He’s just bought the Mill House. He asked me to manage it. It’s going to be an hotel.”

  “Go on!” said Noisy. “What? Eight ten a week and all found?”

  “You won’t know him in ten years’ time. He’ll have bought the town,” said Mrs. Brackett.

  “Well, all I can say,” said Noisy, “I hope he’s found the right woman.”

  “She sounds absolutely cut out for him,” said Mrs. Brackett. “Has she got any money, Mr. Fraser?”

  “Mr. Fraser, Mr. Fraser!” said Noisy in a shocked way. “You don’t seem to know each other too well. Come and sit over here, Bob, and get acquainted. This is Mrs. Brackett. Will you excuse me a minute?”

  And Noisy went out.

  “I love you,” I said to Mrs. Brackett. “Let us go. Now.”

  Mrs. Brackett’s face softened.

  “I’ve been in love with you since I first saw you,” I said.

  “I was mad about you, actually,” said Mrs. Brackett. “But”—giving a shake to her head—“I don’t like technique.”

  “It was just a joke.”

  “Really?” said Mrs. Brackett. “Well, I haven’t got a sense of humour. Ask Noisy.”

  “But last night you loved me,” I said.

  “Hold it a minute,” she said. “I’ll tell you.”

  She got up and went to the street door. “Noisy’s a long time,” she said. “Has he gone? I didn’t hear him.”

  Then Noisy came in and met her there.

  “I thought you’d gone,” said Mrs. Brackett.
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br />   “No, my sweet, just taking the air,” said Noisy, taking her arm. “Nice to be missed.”

  Mrs. Brackett hesitated.

  “I’m going home,” she said and suddenly pushed violently past him out of the pub.

  We stared at the closed door. The closed door in the sitting-room at Heading came into my mind. I don’t know what was in Noisy’s, but we both went after her. At once we heard a shout from her across the yard.

  “Bloody funny!” she shouted and came marching in a fury across the yard, opened the door of Noisy’s car, and got in and slammed it. Noisy sauntered up to her.

  “You damn well drive me!” she shouted at him.

  Noisy turned to me, shrugged, and beckoned, but I was staring at her car. Someone had let the air out of the two back tyres. Suddenly, I heard Noisy’s car roar. He had taken off.

  * * *

  Mrs. Brackett’s car stood in our garage at home for three weeks. It took me twenty minutes to pump its tyres, and where she and Noisy went that night I do not know. I went after them. They weren’t at Heading. They weren’t at his cottage. Nor in the days, even the weeks that followed. The Post Office said they had gone abroad. The damp got into the hostess of the Argentine Air Lines. She peeled and she buckled and fell over. I told one of the men to pitch her in the dustbin. He brought the key hanging on the back to me, and I told him to throw that away, too. On second thoughts, I broke up the dummy girl myself.

  Mother said nothing, but once or twice she goes on about the future—the usual thing. “If you knew what was going to be you’d act differently,” she says. “People ought to tell you, then you’d know,” she says. And then she gets on to Teddy Longfellow saying there isn’t any future, and I tell her I agree with him. A few weeks ago, Heading came up for sale. Mother says the class of trade is changing in our town.

  To My Wife

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © V. S. Pritchett 1963

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