Family and Friends. Emma Page
Читать онлайн книгу.
It was only in the last few weeks that she’d really noticed the change in him. Had anything happened to spark off that change? Had any new factor appeared in his life? She was by now quite certain that he was up to something.
Abstractedly she rearranged the heap of magazines and books. I could do a great deal worse than have him followed, she thought. A nice little job for Arnold Pierson. She drew a long breath, savouring the notion. It was so exactly the kind of thing she most keenly relished, killing, as it undoubtedly would, half a dozen birds with one skilfully-aimed stone.
It would arm her with information about Owen’s carryings-on, allow her to jerk the string that bound Arnold to her, gratify her taste for deviousness and intrigue, keep boredom at bay–and all without the necessity so much as to set foot outside her own bedroom.
Yes, she would do it, her mind was made up. She glanced at the clock. Seven-fifteen. Arnold would be home from work by now, he would probably be eating his supper. Phone him, say, in twenty or thirty minutes, catch him before he had a chance to go out again, he would be here and gone long before Neil’s arrival. And he would just be in nice time to get down to the Independents’ to keep an unobtrusive eye on Owen’s car.
What especially delighted her about the scheme was the deep revulsion she knew it would inspire in Arnold–and his total inability to do anything but fall in with her commands.
Her movements grew quite brisk; she finished tidying the room in another few minutes. Then she spent a little time on improving her own appearance, discarding the woollen dressing gown for an elaborate affair of silk and tulle, a flattering shade of turquoise that did what it could for her and drew a discreet veil or two over the rest.
She switched on the radio as she made up her face and attended to her hair. Gay, inspiriting music burst into the room; she smiled at her face in the glass, feeling well and lively, better than she’d felt for quite some time.
A few liberal sprayings of expensive perfume and she was ready for the fray. A little remaking of the bed, a plumping-up of the pillows. And that was about it. She looked at the clock and decided to give it a few more minutes. Just enough time for some slight refreshment.
She knelt down and plunged a hand under the quilted drapes. Still the whole of the second layer of petit-fours. Before she climbed back into bed she opened the cabinet and took out the brandy bottle. One–or perhaps two–plenty of time before Arnold actually got here.
She poured out a generous measure, settled herself comfortably into her nest and lifted the lid from the box of confectionery. The radio began to play a tune from the old days, carrying her back twenty or thirty years to the golden time before everything turned sour.
‘A-ah!’ she said aloud on a long note of satisfaction. All in all, it promised to be a very agreeable evening.
Owen drove slowly through the misty streets towards the club. Not many folk about on this dismal evening. He let his mind slip back to its current preoccupation, trying to look at his total situation with the dispassionate eyes of an intelligent outsider. One of the many shrewd businessmen down at the club, for instance. He imagined himself confiding in such a man–not that he would be fool enough ever to indulge such an insane impulse. What would this sensible adviser suggest?
Can’t quite see your problem, he might say with a lift of his eyebrows. Divorce your wife, marry again, start a family. Plenty of time left to you. Other men have done it; why can’t you? We live in less rigidly puritanical times, old boy; no one expects a fellow to live in misery these days; the laws are more humane, public opinion more enlightened.
Owen halted his car at the traffic lights. It isn’t quite as simple as that, he told his shadowy listener. Zena would never agree to a divorce. She’s a vain woman, and vanity, injured pride, do more than anything else to keep one partner in a dying marriage clinging fiercely to an unwilling mate. If I left Zena, it would be five years before I would be free to marry again.
Five years! He set the car in motion again. A pretty young woman like Linda Fleming was scarcely likely to be unmarried in five years’ time.
There are other women in the world besides Mrs Fleming, said that insistent voice. Owen shook his head. He didn’t want the other women, he wanted Linda.
And simply setting up house with her, living together without benefit of legal ceremony, was totally out of the question. It might be all right in London or some other great city but not in a place like Milbourne with its narrower, more censorious views. He couldn’t visualize himself even opening his mouth to mention such a scheme to Mrs Fleming.
And I can’t uproot myself and move away, he thought with finality. My business is here, the new factory–it’s not possible to contemplate such a step.
The factory–there you are! he said to the imaginary adviser. The new laws may be a fraction more humane, but they’re a good deal more stringent about the division of property. Everything I possess would be split down the middle, Zena would be entitled to half. And she would take a vicious pleasure in insisting on that half in cash. It would be the end of Underwood’s. He’d have to sell up in order to pay her.
No possibility these days of raising such a massive loan; he’d been hard put to it to find enough borrowed capital for the new factory. And he could never repay the additional loan even if it could be raised. The interest alone would probably bankrupt him.
He turned the car into the park beside the Independents’. Grossly unfair, this new ruling on property division, he thought with a surge of anger.
Old Ralph Underwood had bequeathed his daughter the High Street business and half of his fairly substantial savings; the other half had gone to Neil. But it was Owen who had slaved night and day to develop the really quite modest business, who’d built the old factory after the war and would shortly see the new factory begin to take shape.
What had Zena to do with all that expansion? She’d run the gown shop until she’d grown too idle even to go down there once a month. Left to herself, she would by now have been merely the owner of a failing, out-of-date business and she’d have frittered away her capital. True, she’d agreed years ago to let Owen raise a mortgage on the shop. And she’d put her money into the postwar factory readily enough in those friendlier years when their marriage was young.
He switched off the car engine, not caring at this hostile moment to contemplate that happier time. She knew I was an ambitious and enterprising man, he told himself, dismissing sentimentality; she knew I’d put her money to good use, she was well aware when she was on to a good thing.
For a harshly cynical moment he allowed himself to believe that that was why she’d married him, then he shook his head slowly, compelled in justice to admit it wasn’t true. But he refused to dwell on the complex motives that had led her to say Yes. It was all a long time ago; it no longer mattered very much. Whatever she had done for him in the past didn’t give her a moral claim now to half his assets, in spite of anything the law might say.
He squared his shoulders and set his mouth in a grim line. Divorce might be a non-starter but there were surely other ways of resolving his difficulties; there must be other ways.
He opened the car door and stepped out on to the asphalt. He stood looking up at the solid face of the club. In a short time he would be president, he would stand even higher in the opinion of Milbourne.
He locked the car door and thrust the keys into his pocket. Perhaps after all it might be wiser to hang on to what he had got, consolidate his position, be thankful for what life had handed him instead of imperilling it all, put away fanciful notions as many another man had done.
With a firm tread he walked towards the wide stone steps. A question of discipline, after all, control of the inner mind. And if the mutinous dog beneath would not always be quelled, if he stirred sometimes in the late evenings, raised his head in the bleak watches of the nights, there was always a remedy, there were always sleeping-pills.
He smiled briefly to himself, raised his hand and pressed a forceful thumb on the doorbell.
Twenty-five minutes past seven. Zena studied the