Death and the Joyful Woman

He turned his head on the pillow and stared steadily at the wall. He couldn’t say it, even now. What made it much worse was that she was still in love with Leslie, and his father’s complacent proposal must have seemed to her horribly shocking. “Jean said in those circumstances she’d go to a woman if she had to have help,” he said, controlling the level of his voice with determination. He wasn’t quite himself yet, he cried easily if he wasn’t on his guard.

“I see,” said George, remembering how in the night Bunty had reorientated him with much the same phrases and sent him off after the same quarry, though by slower and more orthodox methods. “So you thought of one woman at least who was older, who was well known to her, and who’d been on the scene with her that evening.”

“Yes. And I thought what Kitty could have said to her that might make her suddenly want to kill Mr. Armiger, and you see, it was there as soon as I began looking for it.” Yes, it was there to be found, though he shouldn’t have known enough to go looking for it. There isn’t much boys miss; even the gossip they disdain their knowing senses record accurately. “I wouldn’t mind betting,” said Dominic, “that Kitty’s the one person who didn’t even know what they said about him and Miss Hamilton. She’s so apart from those things. Even if you told her something like that it would go in one ear and out the other. She doesn’t hear what doesn’t interest her.”

George wasn’t prepared to follow him into the shadowy sweet hinterland of Kitty’s mind; there was no permanent place for either of them there.

“So you decided as we couldn’t find the gloves to try a gigantic bluff and pretend that you had. How did you set about it?”

Dominic told the whole story, glad to unburden himself; it was difficult to recapture the fear now, in this familiar and secure place, but there were times when he trembled.

“I went there after I knew old Shelley’d left, and pretended I wanted to talk to him, and that it was something about the case. As soon as she bit like that and suggested I should tell her instead I felt sure I was right about her. And when I told her I’d found the gloves, and they were a woman’s, letting on I thought they must be Kitty’s, and wanted to suppress the evidence, well, then it began to look even more promising, because right away she said I could give them to her and she’d deal with them. Meaning me to understand, she’d destroy them. Well, I mean people just don’t stick their necks out like that, not to a chap they’ve hardly set eyes on before, and don’t know at all. Do they? Not without a pretty urgent reason of their own. She tried to make me tell where I’d found them, and what they were like and all that, so she could make sure whether she really had anything to fear or not, but I laid on a sort of hysterical act, and she couldn’t get any sense out of me. And you know, she couldn’t afford to take even the least risk of my tale being true. Even if the odds were a thousand to one against my having anything that mattered to her, she couldn’t afford to let even that one chance slip by. So she said give them to her. And if I’d done it then and there I don’t know what she’d have done, because long before that I could feel her thinking that I was just as dangerous to her as the gloves themselves, and she had to get rid of both of us. I was acting pretty emotional, I bet she was thinking to herself, this little ass will never be able to keep his mouth shut, some day he’ll blab to his father. I think she’d have seen to it that something happened to me right there in the office, because everyone else had gone, and with the car she’d have been able to take me somewhere miles away to dump me. But I said I hadn’t got them on me, on account of the chaps at school being naturally a bit casual with one another’s things, and I’d bring them to her when I came in for my music lesson at night. You should have seen her jump at it! Nobody’d ever know we were going to meet, and if I vanished nobody’d ever think of her. She suggested she’d wait for me at the end of the road when she came from the club. And she impressed on me that I wasn’t to say a word to a soul. So then I was absolutely sure. She had got rid of some bloodstained gloves somewhere close to the barn that night, and she had killed Mr. Armiger. Why else should she prepare a set-up like that?”

“And why,” asked George gently, “didn’t you come to me then and tell me everything? Why did you have to go through with a thing like that all by yourself? Couldn’t you have trusted me?”

The note of reproach, however restrained, had been a mistake. “All right, I know, I know!” said George hastily. “It wasn’t proof, and you felt you had to provide the proof. But did it have to be by using yourself as live bait?”

“Well, having gone so far I sort of couldn’t stop. And if I’d told you you’d have stopped me from going on with it. You’d have had to. I could do a thing like that, but you couldn’t let me do it. You don’t blame me, do you?”

“I don’t blame you, I blame myself. I ought to have made it possible for you to rely on me more.” That wasn’t the way, either; self-reproach seemed to have a worse effect still on Dominic. “Never mind,” said George gently. “You did what you felt you ought to do, let’s leave it at that for now. How did you know what sort of gloves to provide? That must have been a headache. If they were wrong, one glance and she’d know you were lying.”

“But then she’d also know I suspected her and was trying to trap her, wouldn’t she? And that would have come to the same thing, she’d still think it essential to get rid of me while she had this chance. So it didn’t matter. But I did try to do the best I could. I saw she hadn’t got gloves on when we left the office, so I went along to see her to the car, and sure enough she had them there in the locker, and they were plain short black kid and quite new, hardly creased at the joints yet. So I thought the safest bet was that she bought a pair as like the ones she threw away as possible, and I rode back into town and got some like them. I ran the tap on them and crumpled and soiled them and tried to age them a bit, and even then I wrapped them up so she should only get a glimpse of them.

“And you know all the rest,” said Dominic, lying back in his pillows with a huge sigh. “I couldn’t know my note to Leslie Armiger would be held up like that, or I’d have said eight o’clock instead of half past.”

“I should think so,” said George warmly. “Turned nine when they located me at the garage near her place, and no sign of you or the Riley by the time we got to Brook Street. If it hadn’t been for young Leslie, , , ” He dropped that sentence quickly, for his own sake as much as for Dominic’s.

“Suppose she goes back on her confession? Will you still be able to get a conviction without the real gloves?”

“Oh, there’ll be no trouble there. Her car’s full of traces of blood, all the seams of the driving-seat show it. The leather’s been washed, but she made the usual mistake of using hot water, and in any case you can never get it out of the threads. And we’ve recovered the zip fastener of the black skirt she wore that night, and two ornamental buttons from the front pleat, all metal, out of the furnace ashes from the flats where she lives. The jacket she must have thought wasn’t marked, she sent it to a church rummage sale, but we’ve traced it. The right sleeve is slightly splashed with blood, too. Oh, yes, we’ve got a case. She must have knelt on the floor beside him, I should think, anyhow she found it necessary to burn the skirt. No wonder the hem of Kitty’s dress was stained where it brushed hers.”

Looking fixedly at the edge of the sheet which he was folding between his fingers, Dominic asked abruptly: “Did you see her to-day?”

“Who, Ruth Hamilton?”

“No,” said Dominic, stiffening. “Kitty. When they, when she was released.”

“Yes, I saw her.”

“To speak to? How did she look? Did she say anything?”

“She looked a bit dazed as yet,” said George carefully, remembering the stunned purple eyes that had stared bewildered at freedom even when it was put into her hands. “Give her a day or two, and she’ll be her own girl again. At first the truth was just one more shock to her, but she was coming round nicely the last I saw of her. She said she was going out to get her hair done and buy a new dress.”

Dominic lay silent. His diligent fingers lagged on the hem of the sheet. He kept his eyes averted.

“And she said she’d like to come and see you tonight, if you were well enough to have visitors.”

Dominic rolled over and sat up in a flurry of bedclothes, eyes flaring golden. “No! Did she, though? No kidding?” He had clutched at the bright promise with all his might, but caution made him give it a second look. “I suppose you went and told her I had to be kept quiet,” he said suspiciously. They needn’t think he hadn’t heard them talking about him last night, even if he’d been in no mood to argue then.

“I told her there was nothing the matter with you but a swollen head. I don’t suppose she’ll manage to reduce that any,” said George, grinning, “but anyhow she’ll be here about eight o’clock. You’ve got a quarter of an hour to cover the worst ravages.”

Dominic was half out of bed, yelling for Bunty. George tucked him back again firmly, and brought him his new dark green silk dressing-gown, his last birthday present that was too good to be worn except on special occasions. “You stay where you are, and don’t squander your advantages. You look very interesting. Here you are, get busy on the details.” He dropped comb and mirror on Dominic’s bed, and left him to his bliss.

He was already closing the door when Dominic suddenly cried: “Hey!” And when he looked back: “Somebody must have told her about me. I mean, about what I did. Otherwise how would she know, why would she want, , , “

“So they must!” said George. “I wonder who that could be?”

He met Bunty on the stairs, coming up in haste to answer her fledgling’s agitated cheeping. George spread his arms suddenly, on an impulse of gratitude and relief for which he didn’t trouble to seek a reason, and swung her off her feet. He kissed her in mid-air, and put her down gently on the landing above him. She kissed him back warmly before she fled. She didn’t know which of them she was sorrier for; but she knew they were both going to survive. George’s heart, as a matter of fact, was lighter than she supposed; it had not occurred to him until this morning that he’d been so full of pride and excitement and joy for Dominic that he had somehow mislaid the sting of jealousy that belonged to himself.

Bunty was more respectful than George had been to her son’s passionate and unaccustomed concern with his appearance. She didn’t smile about it, she was as much in earnest as Dominic himself, though she did tend to go about it in a way that made him feel about seven years old. She brought him George’s Paisley silk scarf and tied a beautiful cravat for him; and he was too agitated to resent her attentions provided they produced the desired result, and submitted to having his face sponged and his hair brushed like a convalescent child.

“Now you’re not to make her too excited,” said Bunty artfully, busy with the comb, “because you must remember she’s been through a lot, and she may be easily upset. You be calm and gentle with her, and she’ll be all right.” She was rewarded by feeling him put the trembling tension away from him very firmly, and draw a deep, steadying breath that rilled him down to his toes.

Kitty came prompt to her hour. She was thinner and paler than when he had last seen her, and she wore that small, rueful smile of hers with a kind of wonder, as though she had rediscovered it after a long separation. She had done him proud. The new dress was a rough silk suit of a colour somewhere between honey and amber. The soft, floating motion of the sheaves of fair hair testified to the care someone had spent on the new hair-do, and the scent that shook out of it when she moved her head was enough to turn his. She sat by his bed and stretched out those splendid long legs in their almost invisible nylons, and looked at the toes of her absurd, fragile shoes, and then at Dominic.

A moment of shyness hung over them both like an iridescent bubble, while they held their breath for fear of breaking more than the silence. Then she suddenly wrinkled her nose at him and grinned, and he knew that it was all right, that it had all been worthwhile. The shadow hadn’t lifted, the grin didn’t ring quite true, not yet; but the time was coming when it would, and if not for him, then by his gift.

“What am I to say to you?” said Kitty. “It just shows you a good deed really is its own reward. If I hadn’t rashly taken a fit to give away a pint of my blood I might never have met you, and then where would I have been? Strictly up the creek!”

“They’d have found out without me,” said Dominic, humbled. “Dad was on the right lines as it turned out, only I didn’t know it. That’s the way I am, big-headed. I thought nobody was working at it properly but me.” What would George have thought, or Bunty, if they could have heard him now? Adulation from Kitty made him want to go on his knees and confess all the things that least satisfied him in himself, and beg forgiveness for not being more adequate, and shout with joy at the same time because she saw him as so much more likeable and fine than he really was.

“I know the way you are,” said Kitty positively. “You’re sure you feel all right now? No pain? Nothing?”

“I’m absolutely fit, only they won’t let me get up until tomorrow. And what about you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. I lost ten pounds in gaol,” said Kitty, and the grin was warmer and more sure of itself this time. “That’s what they call looking on the bright side. Don’t I look all right?”

“You look marvellous,” said Dominic with unguarded farvour.

“Good! This is all for you.” She leaned forward, playing with the pleated edging of his eiderdown. “I wanted to tell you about my plans, Dominic. You’re the first person I am telling. About all that money. I don’t want it. What I should like to do is just to refuse it, but before I do I have to make sure that if I do it will go to Leslie. Otherwise I shall have to accept it and find the best means of transferring it to Leslie and Jean afterwards. I’m determined they shall have it, it’s just a question of which is the best way to arrange it. I’m going to see Ray Shelley about it tomorrow.”

“Leslie won’t want to take it,” said Dominic, rather hesitantly because his knowledge of Leslie was so new that it seemed cheek to presume to instruct her in what he would or would not do.

“No, I know he won’t. But I think he’ll do it, because he won’t want to make me unhappy.” She had almost said “more unhappy than I am”; the boy was so grave and so sweet and so altogether a darling that it was hard work remembering that he was in a position to suffer, too. “And I think Jean will let him, for the same reason. And as for me, I’m going away. If they want me for the trial I suppose I shall have to stay until that’s over, but after that I’m going right away. I couldn’t live here any more, Dominic, not now.”

She lifted her head, and the great purple-brown eyes looked into his, and he saw her there immured within the crystal of her loneliness, and felt the wonderful burden of responsibility for her settle upon his shoulders. Who else was ever going to get her out?

“Yes,” he said, swallowing the heart that seemed to have grown too big for his breast, “I can understand that. I think you’re right to go.”

“It isn’t because of being in prison, or being afraid to face people, or anything,” she said. “It isn’t that. It’s just that I have to get away from here.”

“I know,” said Dominic.

“Do you? Do you know what it’s like, loving someone who doesn’t even know you’re there?”

He didn’t say anything to that, he couldn’t; the turbulent heart was back in his throat, quietly choking him. But suddenly she heard what she had said, and understood the answer he hadn’t made. She slid from her chair and fell on her knees beside his bed with a soft, wretched cry of remorse and tenderness, and caught up his hands in hers and laid her cheek on them. The swirl of her hair spread like a wave over his knees.

His heart seemed to burst, and he could breathe and speak again. He took one hand from her gently, and began to stroke her hair, and then her one visible cheek, smoothing the long, silky line of her brow, laying trembling fingertips on her mouth.

“You’ll find somebody else,” he said manfully. “Just give it time. You’ll go away from here, and it will all be different.” He listened to his own voice, astonished and awed. The words he had expected to find bitter were sweet as honey, and tasted not of renunciation but of achievement. “Don’t just settle somewhere else, Kitty, not straight away. You travel. Go right round the world, give him a chance to show up. You’ll find him, you’ll see.”

She lay still, letting him soothe her and listening to the deepening tones of the voice that was feeling its way by great forward lunges towards manhood. This was something she’d never meant to do. She had debated all day what she could bring him, what gift she could offer him for all he had done for her, and she had been able to think of nothing that would not diminish his triumph rather than complete it, so that in the end she had come empty-handed. And here without even meaning to she had made him the perfect return, her life for his life, the gift of her drifting, solitary self to be moulded and urged and cherished, and launched on a new course. He had recovered her, he had the right to dispose of her. And why not? Comerbourne wasn’t the world. One man couldn’t be the world, unless she shut all the rest out. I’ve got to live now, she thought, I’m a piece of his life, I owe it to him to live.

“You know what?” she said softly, moulding the words with her lips against his palm. “You’re absolutely right. That’s just what I’m going to do.”

“Go to India, go to South America, all those places with the wonderful names. There are people everywhere. Nice people. You’ve only got to let them in.”

“Even a few as nice as you,” she said, and smiled up at him, cradling his hand against her cheek. She was in two minds about trying to prolong his pleasure, inviting him to plan with her where she would go and what she would do, but then she thought, no. One more thing she could do for him, and only one, and that was wind up this thing now and get out of his life clean, and leave him a perfect, immaculate, unassailable experience, safe for ever from any anti-climax. Wind it up on a high note, and finish! He’d be miserable for a while, but it would be wonderful misery. Not like mine, she thought, drawn out day after day, month after month in decline. My own fault, my own fault! I won’t let that happen to him. I’ve been to blame. If I’d cared enough, if I’d felt enough, I could have saved all this. He could have been alive still, and poor, frustrated, calculating, vindictive Hammie needn’t have been a murderess. But all I could see was my misery. Now I look at Dominic, and I no longer see myself so clearly, but I see him, he’s real to me. With him I won’t make any mistake.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she said. “And when I do find him, you’ll be the first person to know.”

She rose on her knees, leaning towards him, and her face was where a woman’s face should be, just below the level of his own. She put out a hesitant hand and passed it gently over the back of his head, where the thick hair was clipped short. The touch of her fingers on the dressing was almost too light to feel, and very close to his, all great warm eyes and sympathetic mouth, her face swam out of focus. He drew breath hard, and suddenly his arms went round her and caught her to his heart, and he kissed her three times, beginning at her throat and ending on her lips, inexpertly but not clumsily, with an abrupt, virginal passion.

His mouth was cool and fresh and smooth, and moved her to prodigies of hope and excitement and laughter and tenderness. She knew by every touch of him that there was nothing left in the world that he wanted or needed, not even from her. She let him begin the embrace and end it. She held him tenderly while he willed it so, and as soon as he recollected his role and gently and firmly disengaged himself under the impression that he was releasing her, she took her arms away and drew back, rising and stepping back from him in one lovely, fluid movement.

“Good-bye, Dominic! Bless you for everything! I’ll never forget you.”

She was gone from the room, the door closing softly after her, before he managed to get out in a small, stunned voice: “Good-bye, Kitty! Good luck!” He didn’t say that he’d never forget her, either, but she knew it; never until the Greeks forget Marathon.

When Bunny looked in half an hour later Dominic was curled in his pillows fast asleep, smiling a little with fulfilment and content like a fed infant.

Kitty was as good as her word. Nine months later, one morning in the height of the summer, there was a picture postcard of Rio bay by Dominic’s plate at breakfast. The text said:

I’ve found him, and you’re the first to know. His name is Richard Baynham, he’s an engineer, and we’re getting married in September. Terribly happy. Bless you!

Love, KITTY.

*

Dominic read it through with a puzzled face, frowning over a hand which was totally unknown to him. He was not quite awake yet, and the message struck no immediate chord. Nine months is a long time. At the end he said blankly: “Kitty?” And then, in a very different voice: “Oh, Kitty!” That was all; but he didn’t leave the postcard lying about, he put it carefully in his wallet and no one else ever saw it again; and he got up from the table and went about his business with a bright reminiscent gleam in his eye and looking several inches taller, a man with a future and a past.