Bleeding Heart Square Part 9

In her gloved hand was a page torn from Mr. Serridge's looseleaf memorandum book. On it he had written in pencil: Mr. Shires, 3rd floor, 48 Rosington Place, Tuesday, 2.30 p.m.

Lydia found the house with no difficulty. It was almost immediately opposite the chapel. Like most of the houses in the cul-desac, it had a cl.u.s.ter of bra.s.s plates beside its front door. A notice invited her to walk inside without ringing the bell. She found herself in a drab hall with a high plastered ceiling whose discolored moldings were draped with dusty cobwebs. There was brown linoleum on the floor and the air was filled with the clacking of typewriters. She scanned the noticeboard on the wall. It listed the offices of at least ten firms, including two sets of lawyers as well as Shires and Trimble, a jewelry importer, a surveyor, a company manufacturing kitchen stoves and a furrier's.

She climbed the stairs. The house was much larger than it seemed from the street. On the second floor there was a door marked SHIRES AND TRIMBLE set in a part.i.tion made of wood and frosted gla.s.s. She knocked. After a moment she turned the handle and went in. Immediately in front of her was a narrow counter, beyond which was a general office containing four people. Two men were sitting at high desks, one talking on the telephone; a typist with very red fingernails was attacking the keyboard of her machine with noisily vicious efficiency; and a red-haired boy was licking stamps and putting them on envelopes. No one took any notice of her.

Lydia tapped the bell on the counter. The younger of the two men looked up, sighed theatrically, climbed down from his stool and sauntered over to her.

"Good afternoon," Lydia said. "My name is Langstone, and I've an appointment with Mr. Shires."

He conveyed her across the general office to the door of a private room, as if without his guidance she might be expected to lose her way. Mr. Shires' office was small, and most of it was filled with a large partners' desk. The gas fire was burning at full blast and the air smelled of peppermints.

Mr. Shires himself, a plump little man in a shiny black suit, was writing at the desk. He capped his fountain pen and rose to a crouching position, not quite standing. He extended a hand across the desk and said, "Good afternoon, Mrs. Langstone. Pleased to meet you. Do sit down," in a continuous rush of words that suggested he was in a terrible hurry. He sank back in his chair and popped a peppermint from a white paper bag into his mouth. His eyes drifted back to the pile of papers in front of him.

"I believe Mr. Serridge has talked to you about me," Lydia said.

"Yes." He sucked the peppermint and the tip of his nose twitched. "I understand you're looking for a position." He uncapped the pen, initialled the foot of one page and turned it over. "And that you have no experience of office work."

"That's correct."

"Married or widowed?"

"Separated," Lydia said firmly.

Shires stared at her with weak, watery eyes. "Are you living by yourself?"

"No. I'm staying with my father in his flat."

"Of course." There was a tinge of amus.e.m.e.nt in Mr. Shires' voice. "In Bleeding Heart Square. Yes, I see. Very convenient."

Lydia felt her temper slipping away from her. "I don't want to waste your time, Mr. Shires..."

"I don't want you to waste it either, young lady."

Lydia gave way to her feelings and glared at him. "I'm glad we understand one another. Though I've no experience of office work, I've run two large houses for several years. I'm a quick learner, I'm methodical, and I'm willing to learn."

"Splendid, Mrs. Langstone." Mr. Shires took off his gla.s.ses and sat back in his chair. "I'm looking for a girl to do some of the donkey work for Mr. Smethwick and Miss Tuffley. Mr. Smethwick is our junior clerk. Miss Tuffley is our typist. They spend far too much of their valuable time filing or answering the telephone or making cups of tea for our clients. I can make more use of them than that. So if you are willing to do that sort of thing, I can give you a month's trial on a part-time basis, and we'll see how we go. Are you interested?"

"What do you mean by part-time, Mr. Shires?"

"If you come to work for me, Mrs. Langstone, you will have to get used to addressing me as sir. Let's say three days a week. Our hours are eight thirty to five thirty. The precise days and hours may vary from week to week; you would have to fit in with us. Shall we say thirty shillings?"

"Thirty shillings a day?"

"No, no." Mr. Shires belched unhurriedly. "Thirty shillings a week."

"That's ten shillings a day."

"So it is. Will that suit, eh? Yes or no."

"Yes," Lydia said.

"Yes, what?" Mr. Shires said.

Lydia stared at him. "Yes, sir."

Finding a job was proving harder than Rory had antic.i.p.ated. On Tuesday he had lunch with a friend from university who now worked at an advertising agency in the Strand. When Rory had been in India, the friend had written enthusiastically about the opportunities awaiting him back in London. But now Rory was actually here, those opportunities seemed to have vanished. "Everyone's tightening their belts, old chap," the friend said as they drank their coffee after lunch. "And people want chaps with the right experience. There's no getting round it, I'm afraid."

By the time Rory got back to Bleeding Heart Square, the Crozier had opened for the evening. It was a cold night, and he went into the paneled saloon bar and ordered whisky. The place was crowded with people having a drink on their way home. Lucky people, he thought, people with jobs.

Rory found a seat in an alcove almost entirely filled with a large table, around which sat four law clerks engaged in a slanderous conversation about their employer. He slumped behind his newspaper in a chair at the end of the table and turned to the Situations Vacant. He was aware of the ebb and flow of voices around him. His attention wandered from the newsprint. He tuned in and out of conversations in the alcove and the bar beyond, as though he were twirling the dial on a wireless set.

"No change then?" said an educated man's voice.

"Found herself a job, I understand. Extraordinary."

"Good G.o.d. I'd have thought she was unemployable. Where?"

"Some lawyers at Rosington Place. Perfectly respectable billet, you needn't worry about that."

Rory recognized the voice of the second speaker: Captain Ingleby-Lewis, his neighbor on the first floor. He knew he ought to make his presence known or at least stop listening but his curiosity was stronger than his sense of propriety.

"She's settled in much better than I thought she would," Ingleby-Lewis said. "I mean, she's not enjoying it, slumming it with her old father. But she's putting a brave face on it. Plucky girl."

"It can't go on."

"Of course not. But I can't just throw her out."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't," Ingleby-Lewis said, his voice suddenly sharp. "After all she is my daughter. Flesh and blood and all that. She is causing quite a stir in my place."

"What do you mean?"

"Serridge-my landlord-he's taken quite a shine to her. It's he who found her the job. Even Mrs. Renton downstairs, who disapproves of most of the human race-I wouldn't say she likes Lydia exactly, but she is being quite kind to her. As for that fellow Fimberry, he goes around with his tongue hanging out at the very thought of her."

"Who's this?" There was no mistaking the anger in the other man's voice.

"Fimberry. Nervy chap. He's got the room on the left of the front door, opposite Mrs. Renton's. He's meant to be writing a book. He's always hanging round the chapel in Rosington Place."

"He's dangling after Lydia? Making a nuisance of himself?"

"Let's say he's getting rather fresh. Don't worry, I'll give the fellow his marching orders."

"I must go. Would you give Lydia this for me?"

"Of course. You're sure you haven't time for another drink?"

The conversation continued but less audibly than before. Other voices drowned it out. When Rory left the Crozier ten minutes later, Ingleby-Lewis was no longer in the bar. He walked across the cobbles of Bleeding Heart Square and let himself into the house. Mrs. Renton was standing in the doorway of Fimberry's room.

"Good evening," he said.

"Settling in all right?"

"Yes, thanks."

"Could you do me a favor? I promised Mr. Fimberry I'd do his curtains. But he hasn't taken them down. I need a longer pair of arms."

Rory went into Fimberry's room. The electric light was burning brightly. It was almost as cold in here as it was outside. The room was spa.r.s.ely furnished and anonymous. The only touch of individuality were the books that filled almost the entire wall opposite the window from floor to ceiling. They were housed in two bookcases around which had grown a precarious network of shelves consisting of unpainted planks resting on bricks. It looked as if the slightest vibration would bring the entire erection crashing down.

Rory stood on a chair and unhooked the curtains from their rail. Afterward, while Mrs Renton was folding them, his eyes drifted over the spines of the books. Most of them were historical or topographical; almost all of them were old. They made the room smell like the seediest sort of second-hand bookshop, full of dead and decaying words that no one in his right mind would ever want to read.

He turned away and looked out of the uncurtained window. There was enough light to see a tall man in a dark overcoat standing on the corner by the Crozier. A cigarette glowed briefly as he inhaled. For an instant the skin of his face was as red as the devil's.

When Lydia let herself into the house, Mr. Wentwood was climbing the stairs. He glanced back.

"Evening, Mrs. Langstone. You all right? You look as if you've seen a ghost."

"I'm fine, thank you," Lydia said, though in a sense she had seen a ghost: Marcus had been hovering in Bleeding Heart Square and had tried to speak to her. She had turned her face away and walked resolutely past him. She followed Mr. Wentwood up the stairs. "How's the job-hunting?"

"No luck yet." He paused on the landing, as if ready to talk. "Still, I'm having a day off tomorrow. I've got to run down to the country."

"Lucky you." Lydia nodded goodbye, wondering if he would be taking that girl with him tomorrow. She went into the flat's sitting room. Her father was dozing in the armchair in front of the fire.

Without opening his eyes he said, "There's something for you on the table. A parcel."

Lydia's stomach lurched. For a split second she glimpsed the possibility that someone might have sent her an uncooked heart. But this parcel looked very different from Serridge's-it was about the shape and size of a brick and it hadn't come in the post. She examined the superscription-only her name, no address-and recognized the large, square handwriting.

"Marcus," she said. "Has he been in the house again? I saw him outside."

"I happened to b.u.mp into him in the Crozier," Captain Ingleby-Lewis said, his eyes still closed. "He asked me to give it to you."

She stripped off her gloves and took off her hat. It was too cold to remove her coat. A car drew up outside the house.

The parcel had been professionally wrapped. Marcus could no more wrap a parcel than he could have performed an appendectomy. She undid the string and peeled back first the brown paper and then a second layer of tissue paper beneath. Finally she found what she was expecting, a box of chocolates from Charbonnel et Walker. Marcus was convinced that the road to a woman's heart was paved with expensive chocolates. There was also an envelope with her name on it. Inside was a sheet of paper with the address of his club at the top.

My dear Lydia, I don't want to pester you but I do miss you frightfully. I do wish you'd come back. Everyone goes through these sticky patches. I'm awfully sorry about what happened, and swear it won't happen again. We ought to give it another try, don't you think? I couldn't stand rattling around in Frogmore Place all by myself. So I've shut up the house for the time being and I'm living at the club. The only other bit of news is that I had a long chat with Rex Fisher, and he arranged a private meeting with Mosley himself. Sir Oswald isn't at all what I'd expected-and, by the way, he says I have to call him Tom now; all his friends do-I've never met anyone like him, in fact. He's a real leader. The sort you feel you could follow to h.e.l.l and back. Anyway, old thing, the long and the short of it is that I've decided to join the Party. I wanted you to be one of the first to know. I'm going to work directly with Rex. He's got a special role in mind. All rather hush-hush. Do think about what I said. It's just not the same without you, old girl. With my best love, Marcus A car door slammed in the square below. Lydia crumpled the letter and dropped it in the wastepaper basket. She threw the box of chocolates after it. The noise made her father stir in his chair but he kept his eyes resolutely closed.

Lydia went into her bedroom, where she hung up her coat and put away her hat. She stared at her pale, set face in the damp-stained mirror over the washstand.

"d.a.m.n it," she said aloud. "d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n."

She returned to the sitting room. Mr. Serridge was in the hall, shouting for Mrs. Renton. She retrieved the chocolates from the wastepaper basket, ripped off the pink ribbon that fastened the box and removed the lid. The smell of good chocolate rose to meet her. Her mouth watered. She began to eat.

8.

UNTIL YOU READ Philippa Penhow's diary with the benefit of more than four years' hindsight, you don't realize what a methodical man Serridge was. He always gave the impression of being impulsive, and somehow this impression was reinforced by the untidiness of his appearance. He was the sort of man whose hair always needs brushing. Who apparently needs mothering.

Sunday, 16 February 1930 We walked in Kensington Gardens this afternoon. I could not help watching the nurses and their charges. If I had married Vernon all those years ago, one of those little children might have been my grandchild. What an extraordinary thought! All that is impossible now, of course. I have made my bed and I must lie on it. It seemed surprisingly mild for the time of year and Major Serridge was in high spirits. He protected me from the attentions of an overenthusiastic Labrador in the kindest way possible. I think he is particularly fond of animals, and they instinctively trust him. We watched the children sailing their boats on the Round Pond and then walked over toward the statue of Peter Pan near the Long Water. He said the statue was charming, and that it made him wish that he could be a child again. As we were strolling back, he told me something that rather disturbed me. He said he was a little concerned about Mr. Orburn, and how he was managing Bleeding Heart Square on my behalf. He thinks he may be overcharging me. "I don't say he's a crook, of course, that wouldn't be fair. But he's a lawyer, and he's always got his eye on his fee." (How like the dear Major: always bending over backward to be fair to everyone.) I pointed out that Aunt and I had always used Mr. Orburn, and before him his father, for all our legal business. The Major said that perhaps that was the problem-that Mr. Orburn had become a little too used to my trusting him.

You may have read somewhere that that's how lions catch an elephant-they isolate it from the rest of its herd: they separate it from its natural protectors.

As the crow flew, the village of Rawling was hardly more than forty miles from Bleeding Heart Square. If you were an earth-bound mortal, however, the distance was longer, and seemed far longer still. The village was six or seven miles north of Bishop's Stortford in a bleak and spa.r.s.ely populated area of country where lanes meandered from hamlet to hamlet.

The railway did not pa.s.s through Rawling itself so Rory was obliged to travel to the nearest station at Mavering. The journey took him the better part of the morning-the bus to Liverpool Street Station, a train to Bishop's Stortford, another train on the branch line pa.s.sing through Saffron Walden, where he changed again to a small, almost empty train that took him slowly to Mavering itself.

There was too much time to think. At Liverpool Street Rory found a window seat in a third-cla.s.s smoker. As the scruffy suburbs gave way to the equally scruffy countryside, he found himself thinking not so much about what lay before him as about Fenella.

He had telephoned her the previous evening. She had been in too much of a hurry to talk for long-she was on the verge of going out to another of her political meetings. This one was going to be a smaller affair than the last but the same speaker, Julian Dawlish, would be there. There was talk of founding a committee, Fenella said, and Rory had heard the note of excitement in her voice without altogether understanding it. He had come back from India to find Fenella had grown into a familiar stranger.

He was glad to leave the last of the trains. Mavering turned out to be a thin, uncertain village, little more than a scattering of agricultural cottages linking two substantial farms. Only two other pa.s.sengers joined him on the small platform. Both of them looked curiously at Rory, as did the solitary porter. Rory ignored them and strode away.

Narton had drawn a sketch map on the back of an envelope that showed the way to Rawling from Mavering. Fifty yards from the station was a squat little church. Rory swung onto the footpath running along the wall of its graveyard. It was muddy underfoot but Narton had prepared him for that as well so he was wearing stout boots.

Beyond the churchyard, the path dropped down between fields. It was lined with bushes and the casual trees of the hedgerow, and in the summer must have been a green tunnel. Now there were clear views of bare fields on either side and rows of feathery elms. Though it was a gray day, it wasn't raining and the air smelled clean and unused.

After a few hundred yards, Rory slipped into the rhythm of the walk and began to enjoy himself. Even if this was a wild-goose chase, at least he was out of London. He came to a junction, where he bore right as Narton had told him to. After another quarter of a mile, the path came to an end at a five-bar gate of rotten wood with a stile on one side. Beyond it was a metalled lane.

Rory paused on the stile to light a cigarette. To the right, on the brow of a low ridge, was a red-brick house of some size set in parkland. The wall that ran along this side of the lane was in poor repair and in places had been patched with barbed wire. He jumped down and turned left into the lane, following a long, lazy bend that pa.s.sed a lodge cottage on the right. When the lane straightened out, he found himself within sight of the village.

Rawling had another small, squat church. Beyond it, half hidden by a pair of Douglas firs and a majestic cedar of Lebanon, was the Vicarage. It was an ill-proportioned building constructed mainly of dirty yellow bricks, with round-headed window and door openings picked out in red. Apart from the mansion on the ridge outside the village, it was the only residence of any substance.

Rory walked up the short drive. Parked on the gravel outside the front door was a Ford 8 painted black on top and white underneath, like a penguin. According to Narton, the Vicar was a creature of habit. He usually paid calls in the first half of the morning. The second half he devoted to working in his study. Then came lunch, followed by a lengthy period of recovery.

"You can set your watch by Mr. Gladwyn," Narton had said. "Silly old b.u.g.g.e.r."

Rory rang the bell. The door was answered by a middle-aged maid who looked Rory up and down. Her face was neither welcoming nor hostile. She just wasn't very interested in him.

"Good morning," Rory said. "Is the Vicar in?"

"I'll see if he's free. Who shall I say?"

"My name's Wentwood. I've got a card here somewhere."

He took out his wallet. He almost made the mistake of giving her one from the South Madras Times. He suspected Mr. Gladwyn wouldn't welcome a journalist, not in this connection. Fortunately he also had cards with his parents' address in Hereford on them. He gave one of these to the maid.

She glanced at it and then at his face. "You'd better come and wait in the hall, sir." The card seemed to have rea.s.sured her as to his potential respectability. "You can wipe your feet there. Shall I say what it's in connection with?"

"A lady who was once a neighbor," Rory said. "Miss Penhow."

The maid's face remained bland and unreadable. She knocked on one of the closed doors and went into the room beyond, leaving him, hat in hand, standing in the tiled hall. He heard the mutter of voices. He stared at an engraving on the wall above the umbrella stand. It was a view of the village, showing both the church and the house on the ridge. RAWLING HALL, read the inscription. THE SEAT OF CHARLES ALFORDE, ESQ. Both the church and the house looked considerably more impressive than they did in actuality. Then the maid returned, glanced once more at his boots, and said that the Vicar would see him now.

Mr. Gladwyn was a round-faced, cheerful-looking man with a high color. He greeted Rory with mechanical enthusiasm, pumping his hand up and down. "How d'you do, Mr. Wentwood, how d'you do?" He called sharply after the maid, who was leaving the room, "Tell Cook I have a fancy for Brussels sprouts, Rebecca, and we need more coal in here." He turned back to Rory, and his face once again became cordial. "Now do sit down. How can I help you?"