A Little Treachery

16

‘I’ll tell you all about myself, if you like,’ Emmy began. ‘For I expect you’re wondering a bit what you’ve got off the Christmas-tree. My Mumsie’s Hetty Allen. You know the name, perhaps?’ Catherine was sorry – she did not. Emmy was unoffended. ‘Well, if you’re not much interested in the stage, I suppose you wouldn’t. Of course it’s more than twenty years ago, really, that she made her name, in vaudeville. She was one of the Baker troupe of dancers to begin with, yes, performed on the continent, Paris and everywhere. Then she starred and made a real hit in one of the Ted Brown shows. Quick-fire musicals, if you remember. But of course she’s getting on now – she’s lost her lovely figure – she was a swell dancer in her day. She still does a bit of stuff on the air – and there’s a packet to be made that way if you catch on, but it never did give her proper scope. And now her looks have gone.’

On this Catherine was able to say, ‘But I haven’t a wireless, as you see.’

‘Yes, I noticed that,’ Emmy rejoined in a voice of astonishment. ‘That’s why I wondered whether you were a Plymouth Brother – or would it be Sister? No? Well, I must say I’m glad. . . . I’ve had people tell me I might make a thing of the stage, and of course I can dance and sing, and antic a bit, too – but, no, not on your life! I never had the least hankering after the boards myself – I’ve seen too much how things go, my dear, unless you’re tops. Of course I had to go on time and again when I was little – fairies and so forth. And I once played Ibsen, too,’ – here Emmy’s big, mobile mouth suddenly became a clown’s mouth, an effect which Catherine inclined to think would have been popular with the gallery-boys, although she could but judge by her own feelings. ‘In my youth, that was. In fact, I was carried on – the little bonnet in A Doll’s House – just plain little Emmy. My one and only lapse into the legitimate. And my brother the Rip was one of the little boys in the piece –’

‘The Rip?’ Catherine thought she had not heard aright.

‘Oh, why, yes, his friends sometimes call him that. Rippy. Don’t know why. Not what you’d think, though. Rest-in-peace, perhaps. Quick on the draw, perhaps.’

Although not taking quite all this in, Catherine was startled; it occurred to her that this crudely satirical nickname, at the same time childish and sinister, had a flavour of the criminal world.

But Emmy had made eyes to show she was only being funny, a certain disrelish for dry fact was already to be suspected, and she went on talking perhaps even more trippingly. ‘Should have said “Ferdinand”. . . . Yes, I’ve got three brothers, two of them just kids and the other older than myself. But Ferdy’s a problem, that’s God’s truth. He’s always been a headache to poor Mumsie.’ Here Ferdy was switched off, with some abruptness. ‘Well, I never rose to Ibsen again – somehow they’ve done without me. That was the highlight of my stage career.

‘However, I suppose this is all a kind of surprise to you? Ah, I can see it is. I do hope you don’t feel I’m a bit behindhand with mentioning I’m theatre in a manner of speaking? But you see I thought to myself that you might be chapel, living in a place like this, and chapel people are sometimes pretty hot against stage folk. Bless them! I don’t know why. You’re not? That’s fine! I reckon it’s providential. Because had you been, and passed me up for that reason, I’d have been in a jam.

‘Here’s how it is. Mumsie’s got a new friend, and he’s resident. She doesn’t mind the two kids, but I’m a spare, naturally. And Ferdy, too. So Ferdy and I have got to pack up. Oddly enough, it looks as if the old lad’s quite a bit feathered – a miracle, I grant you, if it’s really so. But if she’s afraid of me making the running, well, I ask you, what wouldn’t I give to have her get off! But she can’t seem to see it. She needn’t have shrieked at me like that, though,’ Emmy added reminiscently, in a tone of slight grievance. ‘Nor bashed me with the bottle – or such was her intention – but it smashed up on the mantelpiece instead of my nob. Lucky, wasn’t it? But, there, I don’t know whether she meant it. Oh, she can’t help it, you know, it’s just that she’s got that kind of nature. Dynamic.

‘Still, she does put upon me, and always has done. In fact, that goes for the lot of them. An artist isn’t at his best in such circumstances, it doesn’t make for good work. So I thought, “Well, I’m in the money at the moment, why not give myself a break? I’ll just walk out on them all” – take the chance, you know, while Mumsie’s cashing in on her fellow. And at that very second, if you’ll believe me, my eye fell plonk on your ad. “That’s good enough,” I thought. “Here’s my cue and good luck to me!” I knew I’d have to go right off into the blue, you see, and find some rustic scene that would be a real hide-out, or they’d all be piling in on top of me – Ferdy especially. Of course I shall send Mumsie a wire as soon as I’m settled. I don’t want her to be wondering whether I’m murdered – she might worry.’

It was in a bemused state that Catherine had listened, and went on listening to many more details in the same style; an exotic world opening before her. She listened quite passively, in physical ease, too, leaning back. Her mood was one of deliberate acceptance of a solace, a comforter, as treacherous as drink. More than once she found herself laughing. She seemed to be witnessing one of those express-speed, coruscating spectacles of the theatre which fascinate an audience into disregarding crudity and degradation of content; she was aware that such was the effect upon her of Emmy’s sensational narrative, so vigorous in itself and retailed with such vivacity of voice and gesture – and also, it occurred to the listener, with a kind of heathen innocence. Crudity, and worse, there was. These were low standards. She saw that perfectly.

But strange things had happened to her in the course of the past hour.

When Emmy’s narrative came to a pause, when she began to hint questions and look interrogatively, invitingly, to look, in short, quite obviously for a return of information, Catherine suddenly told her that a few months after they had come to the cottage her sister had been taken away, very ill. So far her tongue carried it. But then her heart turned in revulsion, and instead of going on to tell the rest she began relating to this strangest of confidantes, in a flood of passionate, distressful words, the story of the cottage and Hungerford’s part in it; exaggerating this part all unwittingly, getting the proportions wrong, unconsciously garbling the tale, because she could not go on to say what had happened to Clem. Voice and manner did not belong to what she was saying; the undertones of an intense despair sounded far too intense for such a tale, one merely of money loss and a little shabby trick which had wrought material damage. But she did not know it. Nor did she see that the eyes gazing into her own were full of intelligence, sharpening to a watchful curiosity.

Nevertheless, Miss Rivers did not forget to be a talented listener. She entered into her part with zest and artistry. She drew up her chair, gazed earnestly into Catherine’s eyes, her expression changing to suit the various phases of the tale and always reflecting the speaker’s emotions many times intensified. She gave back indignation which grew generously as the narrative proceeded. She questioned tirelessly, received answers with an air of startled horror which seemed to say that the story abounded in matters almost too shocking to be believed. At times she even clasped her cheeks in her two hands, fingers spread, elbows raised, rather as if about to shriek.

But the poor raving one, if she noticed the quality of the performance, was too far gone to care. Nothing with the faintest aspect of sympathy was too crude to catch this weak heart suddenly flayed of all protection and left helpless for ever. She appealed to the girl as if to a friend, anxiously inviting her opinions; she was like a person who has spent all his resources and asks humbly for help of the first comer in the street.

Emmy forcibly did not think that a man so experienced could have made an honest mistake. Her enlarged tragedy-eyes said here was wickedness she had never dreamed of. But when posed with the riddle, ‘But what reason can he have had, do you think? We felt it was incomprehensible,’ the young woman opened her eyes in real astonishment, dropped all her stage effects and exclaimed quite simply.

‘Why, my dear, of course – a good rake-off! What else,’

This, however, brought Catherine to a halt, and even called up a smile. ‘A man of his means and reputation? No, it would never have been worth while to him.’

But Emmy shook her head darkly. What would people not do for cash? Her colour rose, her eyes sparkled with excited wrath. She grew voluble, and the name of Hungerford was pronounced in a rising key of scorn and disgust. ‘That Hungerford!’ it became at last, with suitable adjectives and dramatic brandishings of the fists.

In fact, Emmy was enjoying herself in the novel position of meting out moral judgment.

That night, Catherine, instead of lying awake for hours, excited, exhausted, or in fevered vision making her dark journeys to the hospital, fell at once into a profound sleep.