‘So you heard this S.O.S. in the hotel at Birmingham?’
‘Yes. Last night, on the National Broadcast.’
‘When did you leave Birmingham, then?’
‘This morning, of course.’ (I’d planned out the journey in my mind, just in case there should be any need to lie my way out of it. Left at ten, lunch at Coventry, tea at Bedford–I’d got it all mapped out.)
‘So you thought last night I was seriously ill, and you didn’t even leave till this morning?’
‘But I tell you I didn’t think you were ill. Haven’t I explained? I thought it was just another of your tricks. It sounded a damn sight more likely.’
‘Then I’m rather surprised you left at all!’ she said with so much vinegar in her voice that I knew there was something more coming. But she went on more quietly: ‘So you left this morning, did you?’
‘Yes. I left about ten. I had lunch at Coventry–’
‘Then how do you account for this?’ she suddenly shot out at me, and in the same instant she ripped her bag open, took out a piece of paper, and held it out as if it had been a forged cheque, or something.
I felt as if someone had hit me a sock in the wind. I might have known it! She’d caught me after all. And there was the evidence, the dossier of the case. I didn’t even know what it was, except that it was something that proved I’d been off with a woman. All the stuffing went out of me. A moment earlier I’d been kind of bullying her, making out to be angry because I’d been dragged back from Birmingham for nothing, and now she’d suddenly turned the tables on me. You don’t have to tell me what I look like at that moment. I know. Guilt written all over me in big letters–I know. And I wasn’t even guilty! But it’s a matter of habit. I’m used to being in the wrong. For a hundred quid I couldn’t have kept the guilt out of my voice as I answered:
‘What do you mean? What’s that thing you’ve got there?’
‘You read it and you’ll see what it is.’
I took it. It was a letter from what seemed to be a firm of solicitors, and it was addressed from the same street as Rowbottom’s Hotel, I noticed.
‘Dear Madam,’ I read, ‘With reference to your letter of the 18th inst., we think there must be some mistake. Rowbottom’s Hotel was closed down two years ago and has been converted into a block of offices. No one answering the description of your husband has been here. Possibly–’
I didn’t read any further. Of course I saw it all in a flash. I’d been a little bit too clever and put my foot in it. There was just one faint ray of hope–young Saunders might have forgotten to post the letter I’d addressed from Rowbottom’s, in which case it was just possible I could brazen it out. But Hilda soon put the lid on that idea.
‘Well, George, you see what the letter says? The day you left here I wrote to Rowbottom’s Hotel–oh, just a little note, asking them whether you’d arrived there. And you see the answer I got! There isn’t even any such place as Rowbottom’s Hotel. And the same day, the very same post, I got your letter saying you were at the hotel. You got someone to post it for you, I suppose. That was your business in Birmingham!’
‘But look here, Hilda! You’ve got all this wrong. It isn’t what you think at all. You don’t understand.’
‘Oh, yes, I do, George. I understand perfectly.’
‘But look here, Hilda–’
Wasn’t any use, of course. It was a fair cop. I couldn’t even meet her eye. I turned and tried to make for the door.
‘I’ll have to take the car round to the garage,’ I said.
‘Oh, no George! You don’t get out of it like that. You’ll stay here and listen to what I’ve got to say, please.’
‘But, damn it! I’ve got to switch the lights on, haven’t I? It’s past lighting-up time. You don’t want us to get fined?’
At that she let me go, and I went out and switched the car lights on, but when I came back she was still standing there like a figure of doom, with the two letters, mine and the solicitor’s on the table in front of her. I’d got a little of my nerve back, and I had another try:
‘Listen, Hilda. You’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick about this business. I can explain the whole thing.’
‘I’m sure you could explain anything, George. The question is whether I’d believe you.’
‘But you’re just jumping to conclusions! What made you write to these hotel people, anyway?’
‘It was Mrs Wheeler’s idea. And a very good idea too, as it turned out.’
‘Oh, Mrs Wheeler, was it? So you don’t mind letting that blasted woman into our private affairs?’
’She didn’t need any letting in. It was she who warned me what you were up to this week. Something seemed to tell her, she said. And she was right, you see. She knows all about you,
George. She used to have a husband just like you.’
‘But, Hilda–’
I looked at her. Her face had gone a kind of white under the surface, the way it does when she thinks of me with another woman. A woman. If only it had been true!
And Gosh! what I could see ahead of me! You know what it’s like. The weeks on end of ghastly nagging and sulking, and the catty remarks after you think peace has been signed, and the meals always late, and the kids wanting to know what it’s all about. But what really got me down was the kind of mental squalor, the kind of mental atmosphere in which the real reason why I’d gone to Lower Binfield wouldn’t even be conceivable. That was what chiefly struck me at the moment. If I spent a week explaining to Hilda why I’d been to Lower Binfield, she’d never understand. And who would understand, here in Ellesmere Road? Gosh! did I even understand myself? The whole thing seemed to be fading out of my mind. Why had I gone to Lower Binfield? Had I gone there? In this atmosphere it just seemed meaningless. Nothing’s real in Ellesmere Road except gas bills, school-fees, boiled cabbage, and the office on Monday.
One more try:
‘But look here, Hilda! I know what you think. But you’re absolutely wrong. I swear to you you’re wrong.’
‘Oh, no, George. If I was wrong why did you have to tell all those lies?’
No getting away from that, of course.
I took a pace or two up and down. The smell of old mackintoshes was very strong. Why had I run away like that? Why had I bothered about the future and the past, seeing that the future and the past don’t matter? Whatever motives I might have had, I could hardly remember them now. The old life in Lower Binfield, the war and the after-war, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, machine-guns, food-queues, rubber truncheons–it was fading out, all fading out. Nothing remained except a vulgar low-down row in a smell of old mackintoshes.
One last try:
‘Hilda! Just listen to me a minute. Look here, you don’t know where I’ve been all this week, do you?’
‘I don’t want to know where you’ve been. I know what you’ve been doing. That’s quite enough for me.’
‘But dash it–’
Quite useless, of course. She’d found me guilty and now she was going to tell me what she thought of me. That might take a couple of hours. And after that there was further trouble looming up, because presently it would occur to her to wonder where I’d got the money for this trip, and then she’d discover that I’d been holding out on her about the seventeen quid. Really there was no reason why this row shouldn’t go on till three in the morning. No use playing injured innocence any longer. All I wanted was the line of least resistance. And in my mind I ran over the three possibilities, which were:
A. To tell her what I’d really been doing and somehow make her believe me.
B. To pull the old gag about losing my memory.
C. To let her go on thinking it was a woman, and take my medicine.
But, damn it! I knew which it would have to be.
