The cold jungle, p.11
The Cold Jungle, page 11
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Ella’s morning face was bright with new-day optimism in spite of some rain cloud up above again. I knew that anything I said to her would get back to Willie.
“Can you tell me where I can buy a shirt and some pyjamas?”
Her smile stretched and then came back under control again.
“McGhie’s down on the front, sir. You’ve been travelling light, have you?”
“Very light.”
“Well, McGhie’s have everything. You’ll find them dearer than the mainland, but that’s the shipping charges. You’ll be staying for a day or two?”
“I think so. And as a man with no luggage how about me pre-paying for tonight?”
She didn’t refuse money on the grounds that I looked honest. It went in the till and I was given seven and four-pence change. I walked down to McGhie’s to find that shipping charges really did add to the cost of living out here, then went on up the street by the harbour to look for my new Australian.
He was in the garage doing something to a car up on a lift, and came out wiping his hands on a rag.
“Hallo, Mr. Harris. You know this, it’s one hell of a job getting parts out to the island. It’s like the English has never heard of us and won’t believe there is any such place as Mull to send things to. I’ve had that damn’ car sitting there for three months. I tried to get the blacksmith to make the bearing I need, but he hasn’t got the metal for it. I hear Ma Gibson brought you out last night? That was an expensive way of doing it.”
“Everything I do seems expensive.”
“Well, it’s the way things are, isn’t it? In this damn’ country.”
“When is it you emigrate?”
“I can’t really be sure about that yet. It’ll be soon, though, you can count on that. Wanting a hire?”
“Yes. To the people Mrs. Cope-Hendrey is staying with. Neighbours, I think.”
“Och, that’ll be the Duchess.”
“Come again?”
“It’s what we call her. She’s Lady Rieden. She has the title and he’s just plain mister. And no wonder, really. One look at the man and you can’t see anyone giving him a title. It’s all one of those English things that we can’t make head nor tail of. So you’re wanting to go to Carmin House? Well, I can be ready in ten minutes or so.”
It was actually forty-five minutes. I had time to stroll up to the hotel with my purchases and then stand by the water watching a yacht sail and another come in. Then, with all the flurry of an Atlantic liner docking, the outer islands steamer arrived from Barra and Lochboisdale on the way to Oban, with sheep noises coming from its foredeck where the poor brutes were packed, standing room only.
Willie drove rather more slowly this time, while we discussed the world. His interest seemed to be that of a man about to set foot on it for the first time, a step which naturally caused him a certain amount of nervousness after thirty-two years since birth out in this Scottish Eden. I felt like telling him not to do it, that work was something you had to get used to much earlier in life.
We reached Carmin House just after eleven-thirty and under sun again. It was very different from Milnish, more sheltered for one thing, set low and surrounded by a plantation of trees that were like an oasis in the smooth, rolling bareness of the high moors round about. Disciplined order suggested a passionate attention to property on the part of the owners, plus a lot of money. Geraniums bloomed against Snowcem and a square Scots house had been transformed into Surrey with additions and new windows. Even the gravel looked as though it had been whitewashed.
“I have a hire at one-thirty, Mr. Harris, and I’ll have to be getting back to it right away.”
He might have told me at the other end.
“What do I do? Walk?”
“Not at all. You go up the road and something passing will give you a lift. It’s what we all do at times. And it’s going to be a fine day again. It’ll be an outing for you. Where would ye ever see anything like what you’ll be seeing from up the hill there?”
I cut off the poetry with money just as a dog started to bark. It came running out of the open front door, a spaniel, not very aggressive. The voice which followed it was much more so.
“Budge, come here! Budge, come here at once!”
Budge went off on to the lawn and lifted his leg. Lady Rieden stood in the arch of her front door. There was no doubt about who it was. She had the kind of face which was held in neutral until she had decided whether she was dealing with a gent, or other. In my case the decision wasn’t immediate, perhaps because of the drip dry shirt.
“Yes?”
She seemed alarmed by my car just driving off and I couldn’t blame her.
“I came to see Mrs. Cope-Hendrey.”
“But surely you must have heard she’s not seeing anyone? Under strictest orders not to.”
“I still think she’ll see me.”
“Really? You’re an old friend?”
“Of her husband. My name is Paul Harris.”
“Odd. She hasn’t mentioned it.”
I knew I hadn’t seen Lady Rieden at the funeral. Perhaps she didn’t approve of them.
“Well, I’ll go and find out, Mr. Harris. Would you like to come in?”
I rated the dining-room, the place to put estate factors, the Presbyterian Minister if he was so foolhardy as to call, and possibly, on a rainy day, collectors for charity. There was a recess entirely devoted to porcelain.
“Blue onion Meissen,” I said.
I heard a hiccup of astonishment.
“You … know it?”
“Yes. And there are some things here I’ve never seen. Do you mind if I have a look?”
She came up behind me. I would scarcely have recognised her voice.
“I’ve been collecting it ever since I was married.”
“And the real stuff, too.”
“I simply wouldn’t have the contemporary.” Then she cleared her throat. “Mr. Harris, I think perhaps we ought to go into the drawing-room. Will you come this way?”
It’s nice to get quick promotion. The drawing-room was also straight from Surrey, chintz, water colours, two gilt framed family portraits, good rugs, Chinese vases which should have been used for the drainage under a rockery, and no books. There was, however, a very large television set. Through open french doors on to grass I saw high-backed chairs set to face the view.
Lady Rieden left me for the chairs. I was beginning to wish I’d eaten more breakfast. There was a bowl of fruit on a low table and I wondered if I’d have time to swallow a banana. Luckily I didn’t try.
“Elizabeth does want to see you. Have you had coffee?”
“No.”
“Well, would you like me to bring some out?”
“Thank you, I would indeed.”
“Elizabeth is over there.”
There was cloud about still, but the sun seemed to be winning. The day held a kind of excitement, a wind blowing, but soft, a sense of nature in action everywhere, the sky, the sea, gulls playing tag, and there was Barra of the MacNeils, a blue lump on the horizon.
My feet made no sound on turf that felt two Tientsin carpets deep. I came around one fan-backed chair and saw Elizabeth in another. She looked almost tiny in it, her arms along its arms, as though in a bid to fill up the too large space provided. She had her head down, but must have seen my feet, for it came up, slowly.
I think I had expected to bring to this meeting the armour of at least a half anger, but the sight of her face drained away even its dregs. She was no opponent, just a victim, and so immune, any kind of violence of words from me at once unthinkable. Her eyes exposed pain, these pulled back into the bone structure of her head as though that pain was physical. I don’t suppose she had actually lost much weight, but the impression was there of a terrible fragility and I got the shock then which hits us when we see old friends dying, a personality long known dwindled to feebleness, the voice gone, and the gestures, and certainly the laughter.
“Hallo,” I said, like a man on tiptoe in a terminal ward.
“Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come. Richard said you wouldn’t. He said you’d left Mull without trying to. He must have been mistaken.”
Even those little sentences seemed to make her slightly breathless.
“I left Mull, but I came back again.”
“You must excuse me if I don’t seem very bright. I’ve been on drugs of some kind. They insisted. I don’t think they suited me. I’ve never been one for medicines. I scarcely took aspirins. I kept telling Richard I didn’t want to be given those things but he said the doctor had ordered them. Richard’s away, you know?”
“I gathered that.”
“He’ll be sorry to have missed you. There was some business … Oh yes, that ship.”
I could see that she didn’t want to think about a ship, and had suddenly, by a kind of verbal accident, opened a door she had meant to keep shut and locked.
“It was good of you to come out here. I told Richard to ask you to the funeral, but only if you wanted to come. Such a long way from London. It’s such a long way from everything. That’s why I liked it here really, Paul.”
I couldn’t remember her using my first name before.
“Bill often talked about you. He liked Singapore. It was why I was so sure he would like the Mediterranean once he got used to it. The warmth. It does something for me.”
Suddenly she put her hands over her face and almost cried out:
“God, what am I talking about?”
It was the first human thing she had said. And when she took her hands away it was Elizabeth Cope-Hendrey I was looking at, not the ghost widow.
“What you want to talk about is how Bill died,” I said.
She stared.
“How did you know? How did you know that?”
The social voice of Lady Rieden came between us like a padded quilt.
“Here you are. I’ve brought a cup for you, too, Elizabeth, dear. And you must have another. Try to drink it. Anything you can take helps to build up your strength again. And Mr. Harris has promised me that he won’t stay too long and tire you.”
“I’m not tired!”
The force of that startled our hostess. She looked at Elizabeth and then at me.
“Well … I’m glad to hear it, dear. I’ll just leave you to pour for yourselves then.”
I felt briefly sorry for Lady Rieden. She had, after all, and from the most humane of motives, allowed the splendidly oiled serenity of her patterns to be invaded. And kindness even to the most deserving of friends has its limits. Friends are not acts of God to be endured indefinitely, like relations.
When we were alone again Elizabeth made no move to pour coffee so I helped myself. It was probably not the moment in which to be eating home-made scones already buttered and jammed but to stay hungry wouldn’t serve the woman opposite. I poured for her, too.
Elizabeth found a bag and cigarettes. I had the feeling it was a long time since she had smoked one. She lit it. Then her words came like bullets through a sweet morning.
“The police think I killed him.”
I put down my cup.
“Nonsense.”
“They sent out some sergeant. Questions and questions. They built up. I didn’t see what they were building up to at first. Then it was there. Oh, they talk on the island about us, the locals I mean. They had a good deal to work with, too, how Bill was almost never here, and when he came didn’t stay long. They sit in their houses and drink tea and feed on us.”
“Why do you stay?”
Her eyes never left my face.
“Because it should be all right. It should be!”
I could see what she meant, the blue sea and Barra of the MacNeils, and Eriskay of the love lilt, and South Uist somewhere up there, too. She was right. It should be all right. Except that no runaway hide ever is.
“Paul, they think he deliberately killed himself. To get away from me. Did you know that?”
“Yes.”
She gasped.
“They … told you? Just like that?”
“More or less.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said that Bill wouldn’t have done that.”
“But they didn’t believe you?”
“No.”
She sat back in the seat.
“You really mean it?”
“Of course I mean it, Elizabeth.”
“Then you believe it was an accident, that he …?”
“I don’t know what I believe. But he didn’t kill himself.”
She put her hands over her face again. She seemed to be biting into one palm. There were little whimpering noises. Her cigarette burned away on the grass where it had fallen. Then quite suddenly she bent down to pick it up. There was really no hint of feebleness in that movement. And for the first time she looked at the view, staring at it, as if she hated it.
“We had one almighty row on the Sunday before he went off, as usual.”
“What was usual about it?”
“The theme. Cope, Wilson’s in Glasgow. Bill, saved once again by your order. Nothing but brightness on the horizon. The way out of the wood. You know how many times I’ve seen that way out of the wood thing since we were married? At least a dozen. The order that was going to make all the difference, that meant the place humming for years. At one time I believed it enough to put in money. Did you know I’d put some of my money in?”
“Yes.”
“That was for part of the modernisation scheme that was going to make Bill able to compete with the Japanese. I believed it. And I wanted to make Bill happy, you know that? You didn’t like me, Paul. You want to believe that I never really thought about making Bill happy. But I did. Once. I worked at it. For a long time. Until I had to give up. Until I saw that a company like his could never really hope to compete with the Japanese or anyone else. Never in a hundred years. It wasn’t Bill’s fault. He worked, God, he worked. But there’s a point at which work doesn’t matter any more, when you’re a fool if you won’t see the truth. Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know. I think I’d refuse to see it, too.”
She stared.
“But why?”
“You don’t pack in a life simply because you’ve failed in it.”
“Why not, in heaven’s name? If there is an alternative?”
“What was the alternative?”
“A different life. I have plenty of money.”
“You wanted Bill to be your pensioner?”
“I was married to him!”
“Oh, sure. And you’d have made him a generous allowance.”
“That’s a foul thing to say!”
“It’s what you wanted. Was he to play laird up here?”
“We’d use Milnish in the summers.”
“Mediterranean in the winter?”
“Well, what’s so bad about that?”
“For a man like Bill it would be a kind of death.”
After a moment she said:
“I might have known you’d take his side.”
We sat there looking at each other. I’d done at least one thing, got her out of the cave. She was back in the day again, this day. I waited for her to light another cigarette and she did it. I had a feeling she would eat lunch, and not strained beef broth either. There were three scones left on the plate and I took one of them. She watched me chewing. The thing that was reviving her was my scrapping of the bedside manner coupled with the fact that I didn’t believe that Bill had done the thing that had haunted her. She knew I wasn’t lying, that suddenly I didn’t give a damn about the ghost building up her strength. She could do it herself, the ghost exorcised.
“Drink your coffee. It’s getting cold.”
She picked up the cup and sipped, still looking at me over the rim.
“You know what Bill said about you, Paul, years ago? I’ve always remembered it. He said you could be a right mean bastard.”
“Perhaps sometimes.”
“And when it’s called for with a bitch wife?”
“I don’t think you were that.”
And I didn’t. The incompatible in marriage have this simple fact to contend with, that they are. And with honesty they can still make the grade together, even though the incompatibility remains and always will. I didn’t make the grade once, and it was mostly my fault. I’ve had to live with that ever since.
“Tell me about your brother,” I said.
“Why?”
“I’m interested in him.”
“I thought it was only women who were interested in Richard. By the dozen.”
She told me about him with, in this area of her living, the honesty functioning all right, no illusions, almost ironic self comment. She talked about Richard as though it was a relief to get away from the other thing that had been pounding in her brain, to escape into this relative lightness that was almost a diversion.
That was about all that Richard seemed to be, a diversion. His mother had been their common father’s secretary on whose account Elizabeth’s mother had got her divorce, together with the family cash as heartbalm. The old man’s case seemed to be one of those not too infrequent ones where a highly shrewd business man has suddenly gone bonkers as a direct result of the male menopause and been forced to pay a steep price for the renewal of his youth. And it was only renewed for about long enough to produce Richard. I gathered, too, that late romance destroyed the old boy’s commercial wits, because his death had left the second bride with practically nothing. That was where Elizabeth had stepped in eventually, to play fairy stepsister, taking the boy on as her responsibility, perhaps because she just couldn’t allow all that beauty to go to waste.
“I’ve kept my brother close,” Elizabeth said. “He always did what I wanted.”
Up on the grassy high ground beyond the trees something glittered, glass caught by the sun. We were being watched through binoculars.
8
I THOUGHT about a rifle with telescopic sights. In the sun, with the fan back of a chair like a halo behind my head, the bull’s eye was too clearly marked. My instinct was to go down flat on the grass and crawl away, but Lady Rieden would have thought that odd. I stood up and suggested a stroll around the garden.
