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CHAPTER TWO

Pat and Keith talked all the way to his home. It was a journey of perhaps a mile to the centre of the town. They paused at last outside a shop in Ridley Terrace, lying directly off the main street. On the front window it said—Ambrose Robinson. Ironmonger and Locksmith. Keys Made to Order.

“Now for it,” Keith murmured, grasping Pat’s arm. “Here we go!”

He unlocked the house door at the side—the shop itself being closed at six—and led the way through a narrow hall into the back room, which comprised the living quarters. Ambrose Robinson was present—a lean-faced man with thin grey hair. He was seated folded up at the table, eating a meal. Propped before him against the teapot was a volume on religious revival on the Dark Continent.

“Hello, Dad,” Keith greeted. “I’ve a visitor to see you.”

Ambrose Robinson looked at Pat with prominent blue eyes and got to his feet. He was extremely tall and his hand seemed, as he extended it, to be as fleshless as a skeleton’s.

“Oh, it’s you, Pat.” He had a sombre, judicial way of speaking. “Quite a long time since I’ve seen you. When was it, now?” he reflected. “Be the last time I called on your father, I think.”

“It was,” Pat agreed, with a nervous little smile. “But of course Keith and I have seen a lot of each other in the interval. We—er—take walks together.…”

Pat’s voice faded out as she caught a sharp warning glance from Keith. Ambrose Robinson made no comment. He simply loomed, his bulgy eyes narrowing ever so slightly.

“Oh—really?” he said, with intense quietness. “I didn’t know that.”

For a reason she had never yet fathomed, Pat always found that the gaunt, lanky ironmonger made her feel scared. She wondered if perhaps it was his irresistible resemblance to a vulture, typified in his hooked nose and jutting chin, the prominent eyes boring down from the great height.

Keith made a sudden effort to deal with the impasse that seemed to have arisen. He said:

“Pat and I are engaged, Dad. That’s why I brought her along to see you. I felt it was only right that I should.”

Ambrose Robinson considered this statement for a moment or two, then he reached behind him for his chair and sank down into it.

“Engaged?” he repeated, and Keith nodded.

“That’s what I said. See!” He caught Pat’s hand and Ambrose Robinson gazed concentratedly at the ring. After a moment or two he half-mumbled to himself:

“‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.’ You’re all I’ve got, Keith! Why did you have to do this? With your poor mother gone I was hoping that you and I—”

“It isn’t a surprise to you; it just can’t be!” Keith broke in, his tone suddenly rough. “I’ve my own life to live and if I’ve decided to get married, that’s the end of it. At least you might congratulate us!”

Pat gave Keith a wondering glance. “After all, Keith, there surely isn’t any need to fly off the handle like that?” she asked. “You haven’t even given your dad a chance to speak yet.”

“Be all same if I had!” Keith answered, his lips taut. “Since there’ll be a row anyway, I may as well get my piece in first.”

Ambrose Robinson got to his feet again and took hold of Pat’s hand. He looked at Keith.

“You’ve chosen Pat.… All right, that’s the end of it.”

Pat found herself kissed lightly on the cheek and tried not to wince. For some reason Ambrose Robinson looked at her in sudden sharpness. Then he said:

“I wish it hadn’t been Keith, that’s all.”

Pat smiled uncomfortably. “But it is, Mr. Robinson! And I’m glad of it. After all, we’ve no intention of leaving town or anything like that. We’re hoping to get some rooms in Gladstone Avenue, so we’ll be quite near. Remember the old saying—you’re not losing a son, you’re gaining a daughter.”

“As far as I am concerned, Pat, I am losing a son. No more, no less.… Don’t misunderstand,” Ambrose Robinson added, his voice still extraordinarily gentle. “I like you, Pat; I know you and your family well; only.… Well, perhaps I’ve sort of become selfish, regarded Keith as my own precious possession. I’ve always feared this would happen one day, yet now it is here I—I just don’t know what to say or think.” He sighed. “So be it.… ‘He that is greedy of gain troubleth his own house.’ That’s from Proverbs,” he explained, and sat down again.

“Oh, I see.” Pat gave Keith a glance. “Keith, don’t you think—”

What Pat thought was never expressed, for at that moment Keith Robinson fainted.

There was no warning beyond his rubbing his forehead once or twice, then suddenly his knees gave way and he fell flat on his face. Pat stared down at him in horror.

“It’s this room!” Ambrose Robinson declared, jumping up. “Too confoundedly hot for words! Keith never could stand a hot room.” He stooped, lifted Keith’s slight body across to the sofa and eased him onto it. Then he opened his collar.

Without waiting to be told, Pat hurried out into the back kitchen and returned with water in a basin. Ambrose Robinson whipped up his napkin from the table and dipped it in the water, began to smooth it across Keith’s forehead. He stirred but did not revive.

“Shall I get a doctor?” Pat asked urgently

Ambrose Robinson did not reply. He held Keith’s wrist gently, taking his pulse. There was a brooding look on his gaunt face.

“No,” he said finally; “he’ll be all right in a while. I can handle him.” He turned his head towards Pat again and she studied his vulture-like features. “I think you’d better go, Pat,” he said deliberately.

“But I don’t want to go! I want to be sure he’s all right. I can’t think what made him pass out like that.…”

“I can,” Ambrose Robinson said. “Drink! His breath is defiled with it—and so is yours!” He got to his feet and towered over the girl. “I noticed it when I kissed you. Where have you led my boy? What do you plan to do to do to him?”

Pat gestured helplessly. “But—but it’s nothing. We drank some wine. My dad insisted that we should—to celebrate.”

“You behold the result!” Ambrose Robinson snapped, pointing a bony finger at Keith. “To the best of my knowledge Keith has never taken intoxicant in his life. Wine—a hot room —and the fact that he is not an overstrong young man.… So he collapsed. ‘My heart is smitten and withered like grass.’ Psalms.”

“What’s that got to do with it?” Pat demanded angrily.

Ambrose Robinson ignored her question. “Young woman,” he said coldly, “I live to rule. You have chosen to become engaged to my son. Inevitably his feet will be directed out of the narrow path I had chosen for him. This is the beginning: that he falls under the curse of drink.”

“A glass of wine isn’t the curse of drink! It’s just Keith’s hard luck that he couldn’t stand it.… And I’m staying until he comes round.”

“No!” Ambrose Robinson said. “You are leaving, Pat— and ‘confounded be they that serve graven images’!”

Pat hesitated, looked again at the deeply sleeping, sprawled figure, then without another word she turned and went. With a harassed face she returned home through the quiet, hot streets. The moments with Ambrose Robinson had been intensely disturbing. Her expression gave her away the moment she entered the living room at home.

“Say, wait a minute,” her father said slowly, tossing aside his newspaper and getting up from the chesterfield. “What’s happened to you, Pat? You should be full of smiles and yet you look as though you’re nearing crying.”

“I am!” she declared fiercely, and burst out weeping as she threw herself down at the table. Irritably she pushed away the plate that had been laid for her tea.

“What’s the matter?” her father asked. “Quarrel?”

“No,” Pat mumbled, her face buried.

“Must have been to get you in this state.”

Pat did not answer. Her mother put an arm about her shoulders.

“What is it, dear? What’s wrong?”

“Look here,” her father said, “if that eagle-nosed old Ambrose scared you I’ll go over there this minute and tell him just—”

“It’s all because you gave Keith that wine!” Pat complained, looking up, and between gasps she got out the whole story. Instead of her father looking contrite, he began to laugh.

“When did it happen?” he asked, chuckling. “In the street?”

“No. We’d been in the house about ten minutes and then—”

Mr. Taylor laughed again and tears came into his eyes.

“It isn’t funny, Dad!” Pat objected, her own tears beginning to cease.

“Isn’t it, my girl?” Her father exploded internally. “Gosh, I can just imagine the face of that religious old fathead when his son passed out through quaffing the Devil’s brew. Do old Ambrose good!” he snorted. “He’s always trying to look like the archangel Gabriel while he spouts his yards of memorized scripture. ’Bout time he got acquainted with the facts of life.”

“But, Dad, what do we do about Keith?”

Mr. Taylor’s laughter subsided into a grin. “He’ll be all right,” he said. “He’ll sleep it off. Evidently he’s got the kind of mollycoddled constitution that folds up under a drink. Some people have. Won’t do the lad any harm. As for Ambrose, forget him. Next time I see him I’ll tell him exactly what I think.” Pat found her shoulders shaken with an understanding roughness. “Smile, girl, smile! You’re engaged! You should be as happy as a lark. There isn’t a thing to worry about! There’s only one solution to a drink knocking you out cold—have a bigger drink next time.”

“After all, Harry, that isn’t very practical,” Mrs. Taylor said seriously.

“Not practical!” he echoed. “Great Scott, my dear, if you’d been to as many engineering conventions as I have you’d know it’s the only answer. I’ve done my share,” Mr. Taylor added firmly, “and I know what I’m talking about.… Listen, Pat, get on with your tea and hear about a scheme your mum and I have thought up.”

By degrees the infection of Mr. Taylor’s good spirits began to tell and Pat even found herself laughing too at the thought of Keith laid out through celebrating his engagement. She drew her plate, knife, and fork back to her and helped herself to sardines and salad. Her father squatted down at one side of the table and her mother at the other.

“Keith might as well get in practice,” Mr. Taylor said dryly, “because there’s a big celebration coming up—say on Wednesday next week. You’ll be at home from noon and it will give you plenty of chance to doll up. Greg will also be home early on Wednesday, and so shall I.”

“You mean we’re going to throw a party?” Pat asked, in sudden excitement.

“That’s just what I mean. I’ll arrange it personally—and you know the kind of parties I arrange!”

“Do I! No expense spared.… Who’ll be coming?”

“Everybody that matters. Keith, his father, and you’ll want to dig up some of your own friends. What about those two boys who’ve been following you around with cow-eyes for the last few months?”

“Them?” Pat wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. Keith’s a bit jealous of them already: it would be throwing fat in the fire to ask them to a party with him present, too.”

“Oh.…” Her father rubbed his eyebrow. “Well then, it’s up to you.”

Pat said: “I’ll invite Madge Banning for one. She’s my best friend and relief cashier at the restaurant. And there’s Betty Andrews. She used to be at Roseway with me. Haven’t seen her for months. I want her and Madge Banning to be my bridesmaids—they’d love a celebration.”

“They shall have it. I’ll get some wine and we—”

“No wine, Dad,” Pat said seriously. “Please!”

“A celebration without wine, girl? What’s the world coming to?”

“Not after what happened to Keith tonight. Please—no wine. Let’s have non-intoxicants—ginger beer, lemonade, or something like that. Suppose Keith—or even Madge or Betty—passed out? They might. Three on our hands would be awful. Mr. Robinson would recite the entire Book of Psalms to us!”

“She’s right, Harry,” Mrs. Taylor insisted. “It’s her party, after all. We’ve got to consider her feelings.”

Mr. Taylor grinned. “And we will, my love. All right then—lemonade.… Now, anybody else you want to come?”

Pat considered and then gave a little smile. “Yes just one person. Miss Black, my old headmistress. She has friends in Redford she can stay with.”

“Oh?” Mr. Taylor looked dubious. “Miss Black? I can’t see how your former headmistress can bring joy to the proceedings. More likely to prove a wet blanket.”

“Not Miss Black,” Pat answered, smiling. “There wasn’t a girl in the college who didn’t like her—at the time I was there—and I don’t think she’s changed much. I’d love her to come. She’ll be highly interested in my getting married.”

“Langhorn, in Sussex, is a good fifty miles from here,” Mr. Taylor pointed out. “Do you think she’d—”

“Don’t start raking up obstacles, Dad! She’s got a little Austin Seven—and enough basic for the trip, I hope.”

“How do you know she’s got an Austin Seven?”

“Oh, I write to her now and again,” Pat said airily. “You know, problems I can’t solve myself and which I—” Pat hesitated—“and which I don’t want to bother you or Mum with.”

“I like that!” her mother exclaimed. “The child’s got a second mother pushed away and we never guessed.…” Then she laughed. “All right, Pat, you ask her. As I remember her she will be an asset to any party—even if only to put old Ambrose where he belongs. By the way, doesn’t she dabble in crime study or something?”

“It’s her hobby,” Pat said, and she laughed. “But surely that hasn’t anything to do with it?”

“Well, I don’t think there is a thing in my shady past which will interest the lady,” Mr. Taylor commented, grinning. “And anyway, a headmistress who is a criminologist sounds crazy to me. Dabbler, I suppose.”

“A dabbler who’s solved four cases which the police could not,” Pat stated proudly. “That’s why I keep on writing to her—apart from the personal problems I raise.”

Her father stared at her. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Crime, of course. It’s everywhere these days—in books, magazines, films, and real life. I’m interested in it—and there is no doubt that Greg is. I often wonder if anybody will ever commit the perfect crime.…”

Mrs. Taylor shook her head. “What next?” she sighed. “Even supposing somebody did, it would be so perfect nobody would know anything about it.… Now get on with your tea dear, then maybe you’d better write Miss Black and Betty and see what they have to say.”

* * * *

Keith Robinson opened an eye. It closed again before the naked brilliance of electric light. He reopened it more slowly and the other eye with it. He was looking at a silhouette of his father against the light. Head and shoulders with the face shadowed. He was reading something lying on his upthrust bony knees.… A Bible. Keith’s eyes strayed beyond his father to the clock on the mantelshelf. It said eleven. There was dull pain at the back of his head and a vile taste in his mouth.

“For the love of Mike, what happened?” he whispered sitting up and rubbing his face.

His father laid aside the Bible on the table and sat considering him.

“This is what you get for becoming engaged to a girl who loves this world’s pleasures,” he said bitterly. “You drank some wine, and it proved too much for you.”

Keith pressed finger and thumb to his eyes. “The wine.… Of course! And have I got a hangover! I—I passed out, then?”

“You passed out.” Long pause. “Keith, we’ve got to talk this thing over. You’re planning to marry a girl who drinks and I know her father does. I cannot let you throw yourself away on a girl who’s upbringing is—”

“Just a minute! There’s nothing the matter with Pat!” Keith lowered his hand and his handsome face was decidedly set. Anger kindled his grey eyes. “One drink doesn’t matter. It’s I who am the fool not to have been able to stand it. And you can’t tell me what to do, Dad. We’ve never hit it off together particularly well, and parting is about the best thing that could happen for both of us.”

“Have you no gratitude, boy?” Ambrose Robinson whispered.

“Gratitude! For what?”

“Have I not brought you up? Have I not guarded you? Have I not—”

Keith set his feet on the floor and sat upright. “Listen, Dad, I’ve spent all my life, when at home, listening to your everlasting psalm-singing about the evils of the world and the baseness of everybody except yourself. In any case, even if I had not decided to marry Pat, I would have walked out on you. You don’t see as much of life as I do. You’re cooped up in this little ironmongery shop, passing judgment on your customers and spending the rest of your time reading Scripture. That isn’t religion; it’s self-centred bigotry. Down at the station I see folk as they are, and as I mean my own children to be, if I have any. All this may sound callous but—I’m sick of you!”

“‘When the wicked spring as the grass it is they who shall be destroyed for ever.…’”

“Oh—rats!” Keith snorted, and got to his feet. “I won’t listen to such stuff any longer. Where’s Pat gone?”

“I told her to leave.”

“You told her to! By what right?”

Ambrose Robinson’s cadaverous face turned. “By the right of a father, Keith. Listen to me, boy. Don’t you realize what you are doing? You are marrying a woman whose first thought upon becoming engaged was to make you insensible with drink! If you must marry—and I had hoped to God it would never come to it—at least choose one who doesn’t touch drink.”

“It was Mr. Taylor’s idea,” Keith said sourly. “And even if I did pass out, it was only a single glass. Don’t start magnifying things. I’m marrying to get out of this beastly circumscribed atmosphere. I’ll drink if I want to—and I’ll smoke—and if the necessity arises, I’ll swear! You’re living in a world that just doesn’t exist beyond these walls, Dad.”

“That you should say such things to me,” Ambrose Robinson whispered. “Would that your poor dear mother were alive.”

“Yes.…” Keith stared absently at the table. “Would that she were. She’d understand just how I feel. You’re driving me out just the same as you drove her to her death.”

Ambrose Robinson looked up sharply, his bulgy eyes narrowed.

“You have the brazen insolence to suggest that I caused her to pass away?”

“That’s right,” Keith responded, his handsome face cynical. “I can remember your psalm-smiting, the way you treated her, the money you kept back from her, the way you crushed out every little thing she treasured.”

“I have always lived to a rule, boy, and I always shall. In the name of decency keep your mother’s name out of this. The friction is between ourselves.”

“What you really mean is you’d rather not have Mother’s death brought to your notice.”

“Nothing of the kind—”

“It’s true!” Keith snapped. “Your parsimony was directly responsible for her death. Oh, I know you spun a fancy tale about her dying peacefully in the Sunbeam Home of Rest after a long illness. I know that was the story you told everybody—including Pat’s father and Aunt Lydia. It made you look the injured party. I don’t forget these things even if you do. Mother’s memory is sacred to me, and the only thing I regret is that you and I didn’t part sooner.”

Silence. The clock chimed quarter past eleven. Keith glanced up at it. His father got to his feet and brooded.

“You have things mixed up, Keith,” he said at length. “And particularly in regard to your mother. I didn’t drive her to her death. It was—”

“Let it drop!” Keith interrupted harshly. “I’ve had my own views about it ever since I was old enough to think for myself.”

“‘Hatred stirreth up strifes, but love covereth all sins’,” Ambrose Robinson muttered; and added, “Proverbs.”

Keith controlled an utterance and looked at the empty table. Without a word he went into the back kitchen and spent a few minutes getting together a supper for himself. He was seated eating it before his father spoke again.

“I take it, then, that you’ll be leaving?”

“Once I’m married nothing will stop me. I can’t go until then, unfortunately, because there’s nowhere to go.…” Keith’s grey eyes met his father’s across the table. “This isn’t the first row we’ve had, Dad, and it probably won’t be the last. I’m not taking anything back. I mean all I said, but don’t think I’m staying on here because of any consideration for you. It’s simply that I can’t help myself.”

“We have never understood each other,” Ambrose Robinson declared bitterly.

“You don’t understand anybody, nor do you try. Religion, the way you handle it, is plain poison.”

Ambrose Robinson meditated. “You’re satisfied that you are doing the right thing in marrying Pat Taylor?”

“Yes. Perfectly.” Keith smiled cynically. “Even if she does take a glass of wine; so don’t start that again!”

“I wasn’t thinking of that: she will suffer for whatever sins she commits, just as you will. I was wondering if she knows you half as well as you think she does.”

Keith lowered his knife and fork. “Meaning what?”

“Meaning, Keith, that you are a strange boy. You’re utterly jealous. You have strange fancies and moods. Everything else apart, I cannot visualize you as the ideal partner for any girl. For that reason, amongst others, I have tried to dissuade you from all thought of marriage.”

Keith got to his feet and threw down his knife and fork.

“I’m not sitting here any longer listening to your drivel!” he shouted. “What’s it got to do with you how I behave or what I do? Look at home, Dad: there’s plenty wants altering! I’m going to bed!”

He strode out and slammed the door. His father sat in silence, thinking, his lips tight.

“‘A wise son heareth his father’s instruction’,” he muttered, “‘but a scorner heareth not rebuke.…’ Proverbs.”