Джозефина Тэй - To Love and Be Wise

‘No, he has just a pied-à-terre in town. He lives down at Salcott St. Mary like the rest of us. Where he has the farm, you know. The farm he broadcasts about. At least it’s my farm but he runs it and talks about it and– He’s broadcasting this afternoon, that is why he isn’t coming to the party. But you must come down and stay. Come down this weekend. Come back with us this afternoon.’

‘But you don’t know if Walter–’

‘You don’t have any engagements for the weekend, do you?’

‘No. No, I haven’t. But–’

‘Well, then. Walter is going straight back from the studio, but you can come with Liz and me in our car and we’ll surprise him. Liz! Liz, dear, where are you? Where are you staying, Mr. Searle?’

‘I’m at the Westmorland.’

‘Well, what could be handier. Liz! Where is Liz?’

‘Here, Aunt Lavinia.’

‘Liz, dear, this is Leslie Searle, who is coming back with us for the weekend. He wants to meet Walter because they were both friends of Cooney’s. And this is Friday, and we are all going to be at Salcott over the weekend recovering from this – being nice and quiet and peaceful, so what could be more appropriate. So, Liz dear, you take him round to the Westmorland and help him pack and then come back for me, will you? By that time this – the party will surely be over, and you can pick me up and we’ll go back to Salcott together and surprise Walter.’

Grant saw the interest in the young man’s face as he looked at Liz Garrowby, and wondered a little. Liz was a small plain girl with a sallow face. True, she had remarkable eyes; speedwell blue and surprising; and she had the kind of face a man might want to live with; she was a nice girl, Liz. But she was not the type of girl at whom young men look with instant attention. Perhaps it was just that Searle had heard rumours of her engagement, and was identifying her as Walter Whitmore’s fiancée.

He lost interest in the Fitch ménage as he saw that Marta had spotted him. He indicated that he would meet her at the door, and plunged once more into the suffocating depths. Marta, being the more ruthless of the two, did the double distance in half the time and was waiting for him in the doorway.

‘Who is the beautiful young man?’ she asked, looking backwards as they moved to the stairs.

‘He came looking for Walter Whitmore. He says he’s a friend of Cooney Wiggin.’

‘ Says ?’ repeated Marta, being caustic not about the young man but about Grant.

‘The police mind,’ Grant said apologetically.

‘And who is Cooney Wiggin, anyhow?’

‘Cooney was one of the best-known press photographers in the States. He was killed while photographing one of those Balkan flare-ups a year or two ago.’

‘You know everything, don’t you.’

It was on the tip of Grant’s tongue to say: ‘Anyone but an actress would have known that,’ but he liked Marta. Instead he said: ‘He is going down to Salcott for the weekend, I understand.’

‘The beautiful young man? Well, well. I hope Lavinia knows what she is doing.’

‘What is wrong with having him down?’

‘I don’t know, but it seems to me to be taking risks with their luck.’

‘Luck?’

‘Everything has worked out the way they wanted it to, hasn’t it? Walter saved from Marguerite Merriam and settling down to marry Liz; all family together in the old homestead and too cozy for words. No time to go introducing disconcertingly beautiful young men into the ménage, it seems to me.’

‘Disconcerting,’ murmured Grant, wondering again what had disconcerted him about Searle. Mere good looks could not have been responsible. Policemen are not impressed by good looks.

‘I wager that Emma takes one look at him and gets him out of the house directly after breakfast on Monday morning,’ Marta said. ‘Her darling Liz is going to marry Walter, and nothing is going to stop that if Emma has anything to do with it.’

‘Liz Garrowby doesn’t look very impressionable to me. I don’t see why Mrs. Garrowby should worry.’

‘Don’t you indeed. That boy was making an impression on me in thirty seconds flat and a range of twenty yards, and I’m considered practically incombustible. Besides, I never believed that Liz really fell in love with that stick. She just wanted to bind up his broken heart.’

‘Was it badly broken?’

‘Considerably shaken, I should say. Naturally.’

‘Did you ever act with Marguerite Merriam?’

‘Oh, yes. More than once. We were together for quite a lengthy run in Walk in Darkness . There’s a taxi coming.’

‘ Taxi ! What did you think of her?’

‘Marguerite? Oh, she was mad, of course.’

‘How mad?’

‘Ten tenths.’

‘In what way?’

‘You mean how did it take her? Oh, a complete indifference to everything but the thing she wanted at the moment.’

‘That isn’t madness; that is merely the criminal mind at its simplest.’

‘Well, you ought to know, my dear. Perhaps she was a criminal manqué. What is quite certain is that she was as mad as a hatter and I wouldn’t wish even Walter Whitmore a fate like being married to her.’

‘Why do you dislike the British Public’s bright boy so much?’

‘My dear, I hate the way he yearns . It was bad enough when he was yearning over the thyme on an Aegean hillside with the bullets zipping past his ears – he never failed to let us hear the bullets: I always suspected that he did it by cracking a whip–’

‘Marta, you shock me.’

‘I don’t, my dear; not one little bit. You know as well as I do. When we were all being shot at, Walter took care that he was safe in a nice fuggy office fifty feet underground. Then when it was once more unique to be in danger, up comes Walter from his little safe office and sits himself on a thymey hillside with a microphone and a whip to make bullet noises with.’

‘I see that I shall have to bail you out, one of these days.’

‘Homicide?’

‘No; criminal libel.’

‘Do you need bail for that? I thought it was one of those nice gentlemanly things that you are just summonsed for.’

Grant thought how independable Malta’s ignorances were.

‘It might still be homicide, though,’ Marta said, in the cooing, considering voice that was her trademark on the stage. ‘I could just stand the thyme and the bullets, but now that he has taken a ninety-nine years’ lease of the spring corn, and the woodpeckers, and things, he amounts to a public menace.’

‘Why do you listen to him?’

‘Well, there’s a dreadful fascination about it, you know. One thinks: Well, that’s the absolute sky-limit of awfulness, than which nothing could be worse. And so next week you listen to see if it really can be worse. It’s a snare. It’s so awful that you can’t even switch off. You wait fascinated for the next piece of awfulness, and the next. And you are still there when he signs off.’

‘It couldn’t be, could it, Marta, that this is mere professional jealousy?’

‘Are you suggesting that the creature is a professional ?’ asked Marta, dropping her voice a perfect fifth, so that it quivered with the reflection of repertory years, and provincial digs, and Sunday trains, and dreary auditions in cold dark theatres.

‘No, I’m suggesting that he is an actor. A quite natural and unconscious actor, who has made himself a household word in a few years without doing any noticeable work to that end. I could forgive you for not liking that. What did Marguerite find so wonderful about him?’

‘I can tell you that. His devotion. Marguerite liked picking the wings off flies. Walter would let her take him to pieces and then come back for more.’