Читать книгу Bodies from the Library 2 - Группа авторов - Страница 11

Henry Brodribb was engaged in an argument with his wife; or, rather, he was pacing the room, wordless, trying to take in the sense of her final proposal. His wife, calmly stitching an undergarment, watching him, was aware of his throes, and allowed time to elapse before she continued:

‘It’s no good our going on living together when there’s no reason for it and we don’t suit each other.’

‘Don’t we?’ interjected Mr Brodribb ironically.

‘No,’ said his wife, disregarding the irony, ‘we don’t. Now, Arthur and I do. We like the same sort of plays, and there’s bridge, and he’s ever so good-looking. But, as I said to him, I won’t have anything underhand.’

‘Nothing underhand,’ Mr Brodribb repeated, ‘only a pack of lies for me to tell in court. Only perjury and collusion. What about the King’s Proctor?’

‘People can’t be expected to tell the truth,’ said his wife comfortably, ‘with the silly way the law is. I’m sure if there was any other reason they’d let you have, I’d have no objection to your divorcing me. But there’s only infidelity for a woman. As I said, there’s never been anything of that between me and Arthur. Besides, it wouldn’t be good for him in his business.’

‘And what about my business?’ Mr Brodribb inquired, sarcastically.

‘You’ll be all right,’ his wife replied, disregarding the sarcasm. ‘Nobody’d ever dream of your doing anything wrong. It ’ud be a change for both of us.’

To this Mr Brodribb’s imagination gave involuntary assent. He pictured home without Cissie, a life free from comment, in charge of a good cook-housekeeper. It was alluring. Also, he could move from the country into the town. But he sounded a protest, as was right.

‘I never heard of such a thing. I won’t listen to another word about it.’

And he sat down in the chair opposite hers and shook out his evening paper. Mrs Brodribb, biting off a length of yellow silk. resumed:

‘Nobody thinks anything of it, nowadays. Look at these countesses, and Lady This and Lady That; always in and out of the divorce courts.’

Mr Brodribb beat the paper into more convenient folds and replied severely:

‘We’re not countesses.’

It was a shot fired in flight, at random, which could not give pause for an instant to the victorious advance of his wife. She had made up her mind.

Mr Brodribb realised this, and was appalled. Only once before had he known her to make up her mind. She had not argued with him then, but she had used other methods without scruple, and he had turned up at the church on the day she named. Having secured him by this display of resolution she had laid decision aside until now, when all the slow force of her will was once more arrayed to be rid of him. Cowering behind his paper, Mr Brodribb sank deeper into his chair and prepared to offer such resistance as pride demanded.

‘I was afraid,’ said Mrs Brodribb calmly, ‘that it might be expensive. But it’s not so very, Arthur says, if the case isn’t defended. Arthur’s been finding out about it. Of course, he’d share expenses. Arthur—’

‘How dare you mention that fellow’s name to me?’ Mr Brodribb inquired. ‘It’s bare-faced. You don’t seem to have any sense of what’s right and proper.’

‘I’ve told you,’ Mrs Brodribb answered with dignity, ‘there’s nothing wrong at all between me and Arthur. And won’t be.’

Mr Brodribb dashed down his paper, rose, and retired to the only refuge that owned him for master, the tool shed. Mrs Brodribb showed no emotion at his exit, did not lift her eyes from her sewing; but some minutes later she smiled.

This was the first of a series of encounters whereby, at the end of a fortnight, Mr Brodribb was finally brought to reason. Towards the result his wife’s arguments contributed in some degree; but in the main she owed her victory to that unknown ally, Mr Brodribb’s imagination, which displayed him to himself a free man. Only that wicked preliminary, the necessary infidelity, alarmed him. He made guarded inquiries, confirmed Arthur’s estimate of the expense, and admitted one evening that he might think it over. His wife kissed him, and telephoned to Arthur to come round at once.

The meeting passed off without awkwardness, owing to Arthur’s tactful praise of Mr Brodribb’s generosity. Indeed, the evening ended with a kind of impromptu supper, during which healths were drunk in whisky and water. After all, as Mrs Brodribb pointed out, it was not as if they had any of them anything to be ashamed of. It was she who steered the men towards action, with:

‘All very fine, but what do we do first? You can’t sit with your hands folded and expect a judge to come to you.’

Mr Brodribb involuntarily consulted Arthur with his eyes.

‘Restitution of conjugal rights,’ said Arthur, responding. ‘That’s the first step.’ Mr Brodribb cleared his throat.

‘No question of that, old man. Restitution, I mean. She’s never been deprived.’

‘Well, you’ve got to deprive her,’ said Arthur.

Mr Brodribb looked helplessly about the comfortable room; at the ferns he had tended all the winter long; at the black marble clock, shaped like a tomb, that the firm had given him on his marriage; finally, at his wife.

‘You don’t have to do it for long. You go to some nice boarding-house—there’s a little place in north London I could give you the address of, a private hotel—well, you go off, and you write Cissie a letter, saying you’re gone for good. Then off she goes to a solicitor and shows him the letter, and he sues you.’

‘What for?’

‘Restitution. You don’t answer him. He sues you two or three times more—’

‘Who’s going to pay for all this?’

Arthur waved the question from him.

‘And that’s all, as far as that goes.’ He coughed, and went on delicately: ‘There’s one or two other things. But you’d better get a solicitor to put you up to all the dodges.’

Mrs Brodribb, with healthy feminine contempt of delicacy, said:

‘Yes, the infidelity; what about that? I don’t know that I like the idea of Henry going off with goodness knows who.’

‘I think you’ll find,’ Mr Brodribb ventured at last, ‘that it’s only a form.’

‘That’s it,’ Arthur agreed, relieved; ‘that’s all. A form.’

Mrs Brodribb, with feminine bad taste, laughed.

‘Fancy, Henry!’ said she.

They separated, and Mr Brodribb, making his way to the spare bedroom, felt that he had taken that night another step towards freedom. Next morning, at breakfast, it was arranged that he should leave home on the following Monday.

‘It’s always nicer,’ said Mrs Brodribb, ‘to start the week clear.’

The intervening days went smoothly by. Mr Brodribb secured a room in the little place in north London at a reasonable figure. During the Friday lunch hour he was measured for a new suit. At home Mrs Brodribb passed his underclothing in review, darned, packed, and began to look younger. With the near prospect of escape, home became tolerable to both. They were considerate and friendly.

On Sunday night, as he knelt by his suitcase, affixing the label, Mrs Brodribb entered the spare room. In her right hand was a brown paper parcel. She held it out timidly and said:

‘Got any room in your case?’

‘Plenty,’ said Mr Brodribb. ‘Hello, what’s this?’

‘Hot water bottle,’ his wife answered. ‘Extra strong, guaranteed. You know what your feet are, and I thought, perhaps now—’

Mr Brodribb unwrapped the parcel, revealing the gift, whose outer cover appeared to be made of tiger skin. His wife went on, justifying her display of sentiment:

‘If it leaks any time in the next six months, Prosser’s’ll give you a new one. Only don’t let them fill it with boiling, whatever you do. If you fill it with boiling, they won’t guarantee.’

‘Right,’ said Mr Brodribb. ‘I’ll tell them. Thanks, Cis.’

He was touched, and uneasy. Still on his knees, he wrapped the bottle again in its paper and stowed it with care in a corner of the suitcase. When he lifted his head his wife was at the door.

‘All aboard,’ said Mr Brodribb, to lighten the tension. ‘You be off.’

He made a threatening gesture, in play. His wife lingered.

‘Is that place comfortable you’re going to?’ she asked.

‘Seems all right,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘there’s a nice bit of garden at the back.’

‘Oh,’ said his wife. ‘Well, good-night.’

‘Good-night, Cis,’ Mr Brodribb responded. ‘I won’t forget about that hot bottle.’

Nor did he. On Monday evening in the boarding-house bedroom, his belongings strewn about him ready to be absorbed into drawers and cupboards as yet uncharted, Mr Brodribb paused to hand on his wife’s instructions to the housemaid, who, regarding the disorder with that sympathetic mockery which is the everyday attitude of woman to man, replied:

‘I know all about that. You leave it to me. I was filling bottles before you were born.’

Mr Brodribb, who had guessed her age at about twenty-five, was flattered. He handed over the bottle, and felt in his pocket for a coin which should ensure her continued interest in him. He found two, and bestowed them. Instantly the housemaid informed him that her name was Ivy and that she never could bear to see a gentleman trying to do things for himself. On this Mr Brodribb thankfully abandoned the struggle with his belongings and went for a stroll with a cigar; retiring, he found order, and the temperature of the bottle judged to perfection.

In the kitchen Ivy sketched his portrait for the benefit of Queenie and the cook.

‘That’s a nice little feller in number four,’ said Ivy. ‘Good clothes, and not pernickety, I should say. No scent or brilliantine.’

‘Married?’ Gladys inquired.

‘Ought to be,’ Ivy responded. ‘A bit shy, though. And no photographs. No, single, I should say. But a nice little feller. The sort you can soon learn their ways.’

This prophecy was fulfilled. In a week such ways as Mr Brodribb had were learned, and the routine of ‘Melrose’ began to fit him like his waistcoat. His life appeared to the other boarders to be entirely uneventful.

They could not know, nor could the servants know, the significance of certain letters in blue envelopes which arrived for him from time to time and were immediately destroyed. These letters, which denounced Mr Brodribb as a vagabond and wife-betrayer, called upon him to return without delay to his duty, and stated in clear type what steps, in the event of non-compliance, would be taken. Each letter troubled him, not by its black and white accusations of guilt but by its wordless reminder that these were, as yet, unfounded. He knew that the step must be taken. He knew that Cissie, and Arthur, and two impeccable forms of solicitors expected it of him, and he was resigned; but, also he was afraid. He procrastinated. Time went by.

It was a chance word from Ivy that in the end, strangely, gave him courage. She appeared one evening unusually early to turn down his bed, announcing that she had the evening off.

‘Oh,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘what’ll you do? Pictures?’

‘Pictures!’ Ivy repeated with scorn. ‘Why, last time a feller started trying to flip my suspender elastic. I had the attendant on to him, quick. No, it’s dancing I’m mad over.’

And she described the joys of the Alexandra Palais de Danse, with its twin bands, its delectable sixpenny partners.

‘You ought to go,’ said Ivy, summing up.

‘I might, some time,’ Mr Brodribb replied. ‘Good-night. Have a good time.’

‘Watch me,’ Ivy responded, and withdrew.

The next evening Mr Brodribb slipped out and took a taxi to the Palais de Danse. The exterior alarmed him; it was garish with light. But indoors, the large room into which he blundered was dim, save for a moving radiant circle in which two figures shifted to hushed music. This, he knew, must be an exhibition dance; it looked easy, artless; nevertheless Mr Brodribb’s neighbours bent forward to observe with the rapt stillness of trees and mountain tops attentive to Orpheus’ lute.

It was ended; the band, long spent, burst into a frenzy of syncopation, and Mr Brodribb, looking about him in the restored light, began to feel lonely. Couples formed the assembly, sitting, dancing, dallying: nowhere could he see a woman unattached. The couples were respectable, they danced with decorum, as a social rite, unsmiling, while above their heads the music raved and pranced, kicked high, and came slithering down on a wail from the saxophone.

At last a woman appeared in the doorway alone. She was fair, small, not so very young, not so very pretty. Her nice average face was masked with paint, and her dress was showy. Mr Brodribb wondered at her presence in that place, for he had no illusions as to her calling. Neither, it seemed, had the attendants, who watched her, questioned each other with glances, and then, nodding to each other, bore down. Calmly, civilly, they edged her towards the door. The group was almost out of sight when Mr Brodribb, stepping forward and craning to see the last of the episode, caught the woman’s eye over an attendant’s shoulder. Without hesitation she pushed the man aside and came towards him, widely smiling. Dimly he heard her greeting:

‘Well, George, wherever have you been hiding? Keeping me standing about—’

‘This lady with you, sir?’ the attendant asked, doubtfully.

‘Can’t you see I am?’ she interrupted, and took Mr Brodribb’s arm, which he did not withhold. Reassured, the attendant moved away.

‘Well,’ said Mr Brodribb to his companion, ‘since you’re here and I’m here, suppose we have a dance?’

‘I don’t mind,’ the lady replied, surveying her face by the swift circular motion of a mirror two inches square; and without further reference to his chivalry disposed herself for him to clasp. She had a snub nose, which he liked. Her hair’s metallic refinement matched that of her voice. If her scent was pervasive, her feet kept their distance. Not a bad little woman at all, he decided. Silently they shuffled, while the music raved.

‘Often come here?’ Mr Brodribb asked.

‘Not so often,’ she replied, and was instantly in full conversational sail. ‘They don’t like a girl to come here without a gentleman. Of course I saw at once you were what I call a real gentleman, or I wouldn’t have spoken.’

‘Very glad you did,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘I was wondering what to do for a partner.’

‘Come on your own?’ she asked.

He explained that he lived quite near.

‘Lucky!’ said she. ‘It’s a nice part.’

‘And where do you live?’ Mr Brodribb asked, with no ulterior motive; but her answering glance dismayed him, reminded him. Through the hurry of his own thoughts he heard her say:

‘Not so far. Like to come along? I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

Mr Brodribb rose.

‘That’s right,’ said his partner, ‘and there’s a nice pot of salmon paste I haven’t opened.’

During the drive she told him that her name was Edna, and asked for his. He gave it, with some reluctance; unnecessarily, since she disliked it and elected to call him George as before.

But the room into which she led the way surprised Mr Brodribb from his brooding. It was small and tidy.

Mr Brodribb watched her preparations for tea through a cloud of thought. Where, he asked himself, could he find a correspondent more suitable in every way? Impulse overcame him; and as she handed him the cup he made his suggestion.

Edna doubted, mocked, required assurance, read the ultimate letter from the solicitor, and was convinced.

‘It would have to be some hotel,’ said Mr Brodribb, ‘so as to get the servants’ evidence. I dare say you know of some place.’

‘Well, I do,’ she responded without enthusiasm, ‘but they’re not what I’d call very nice. What’s this place like you’re in?’

Mr Brodribb described ‘Melrose’ at some length. She pondered.

‘Sounds the sort of place I’d like,’ she said at last. ‘I’m sick of these flash hotels. Everybody knows what you’re there for. Now, what I’d liked be some nice quiet boarding-house, or somewhere like that, just for once in a way.’

Mr Brodribb, too, had been pondering. What, after all, was ‘Melrose’ to him? No final refuge, since he would have to leave as soon as the case came on. There was a vacant room next to his own.

‘But it would have to be as my wife,’ said he, thinking aloud.

‘Well, rings are cheap,’ she answered, unperturbed.

A week later Mr Brodribb introduced a small mouse-coloured woman to ‘Melrose’ as his wife; he let it be understood that they had been married some months ago, but that Mrs Brodribb had been nursing a sick mother in the country.

The good time ended by reason of financial pressure. Mr Brodribb, assessing his expenses for the half-year, which included two homes, a retaining fee for Edna, and a month of junketing for two, decided that the experiment could no longer continue. Edna approved.

Mr Brodribb gave notice to the proprietress that they would leave in a week’s time, and sent a letter with the same information to the solicitors. At the prospect of losing them, upper ‘Melrose’ showed tepid surprise; nether ‘Melrose’ lamented, prophesying wrath to come, boarders in their stead who would be neither tidy, civil nor generous. For the guilty couple, grateful to the establishment which had sheltered their idyll, had no way save one of showing gratitude. On the night before their departure Ivy and Queenie were summoned. Each received garments from Edna, and from Mr Brodribb largesse. Queenie and Ivy, dismissed, descended to the kitchen almost in tears, declaring to the cook that never again would ‘Melrose’ see the like of the Brodribbs, and vowing eternal regard. Upstairs, Mr Brodribb, on his knees beside his suitcase, looked up to find Edna standing by him, a parcel in her hand.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s just a little thing I got for you,’ Edna replied, ‘to look nice on your mantelpiece.’

He unwrapped the gift, revealing a brown plaster monkey six inches high, dressed in striped bathing drawers and playing the fiddle left-handed. The pedestal on which it stood was pierced with holes.

‘For pipes,’ Edna explained. ‘Cute, isn’t it? How ever they think of these things I don’t know.’

Mr Brodribb, overcome, acknowledged her thought for him and the genius of the inventor.

‘It hasn’t been such a bad old time, has it?’ he asked wistfully.

‘I believe you,’ Edna replied. ‘As good as a trip to the sea. You tell your wife from me she doesn’t know a gentleman when she sees one.’

They left next morning, some two hours before the arrival of a young man who made inquiries. This young man, having told his errand, and assured the proprietress, anxious for the good name of ‘Melrose’, that only servants’ evidence would be required, sent for Ivy and Queenie, whom he interviewed in her presence. He questioned them, took notes, made clear their duty, and within twenty-five minutes departed. He was a brisk young man, who now and then sacrificed other things to promptness, and he did not on this occasion take time to observe the demeanour of the witnesses, which was, to say the least, reluctant. But three months later, when the case of Brodribb v. Brodribb and Another was called, he and his employers had cause to regret this economy of time.

For plaintiff’s counsel, seeking to establish the facts of Mr Brodribb’s desertion and adultery, met with a check when he called upon Ivy Blout to prove that Mr Brodribb had for weeks lived in an intimacy unsanctioned by law. Having ascertained her name, age and calling, he suavely inquired:

‘You were housemaid at this address from October 5th last until December 10th?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Ivy replied.

‘During that time was the defendant a paying guest in the house?’

‘I don’t know.’

Counsel halted, staring.

Ivy, contemplating Mr Brodribb, repeated without hesitation or haste:

‘I don’t know that gentleman.’

‘You lived in the same house, in constant attendance on this man for weeks, and you say you don’t recognise him?’

‘No, sir.’

Counsel took another tack.

‘You understand that you are on your oath?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Do you quite understand what is meant by perjury?’

‘Telling lies.’

‘Telling lies on oath, yes. A serious offence, punishable by imprisonment. Do you still insist, on your oath, that you don’t know the defendant?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Why do you suppose you were brought here into court at all?’

Ivy, for the first time, permitted herself a smile.

‘I really couldn’t say.’

He fared no better at the hands of Queenie; words, questions and threats alike broke in spume against her unshaken gratitude. At last, on a note from his instructors, he sat down. There was a chill pause, into which the ironic comments of the judge fell softly as snowflakes. The case was dismissed.

On their way home, in the ’bus, Queenie said to Ivy:

‘That was ’is wife, her in the blue hat. Think of it; sitting there with a face like that, and trying to get rid of that nice little feller.’

‘Cheek!’ Ivy agreed. ‘She ought to be thankful for a husband like him. Whatever Mr Brodribb’s done,’ said Ivy, ‘he’s a real gentleman, and they don’t get their dirty evidence out of Ivy Blout.’

In the restaurant off Fleet Street where they had met as arranged Mrs Brodribb lamented to Arthur:

‘Now what? Do I have to take him back?’

‘Not him,’ said Arthur. ‘We’ll get more evidence, other witnesses. Prosecute these witnesses. Whatever can have happened I don’t know, but it’s not his fault, I’ll bet. He’s been having no end of a time on his own.’

‘Yes; well, if that’s how he’s been going on,’ said Mrs Brodribb with decision, ‘he’d better come home. I’m not going to be made a laughing-stock again. Going over it all again, and the same thing happening, most likely. Like trying to get a number on the telephone.’

‘That’s your look-out,’ Arthur answered, hurt, but jaunty. ‘If you like to take him back slightly soiled, you’re welcome.’

‘Oh, Arthur,’ said Mrs Brodribb, suddenly overcome, ‘and we’d even chosen the bedroom suite.’

Lunching alone in a chop-house in the city, and waiting for his cheese, Mr Brodribb thought with affection of a brown plaster monkey in bathing drawers, playing the fiddle left-handed; then, suddenly recollecting, of a hot-water bottle, dressed in tiger skin, which, after only five months’ use, had begun to leak at the seams, and which Prosser’s, according to their guarantee, were obliged to replace without charge. He made a note on his cuff there and then.