and aware, with her big eyes, strangely afraid but more strangely not afraid of him, fixed steadily on his face.
“How did you know?” she said. “Was there someone who saw us? Who was it who told you?” And suddenly the tensions went out of her, ebbing very quietly, and she sat down limply in the nearest chair, and leaned her linked hands heavily into her thighs, as if the weight of them was too much to hold up any longer. But it was odd that she should first ask that. Why should she want to know if someone had told him? Because in that case the same person might have told someone else?
There was only one someone who could count for her in such an affair or at such a moment. Or perhaps two? The second of whom had just manifested nothing but rather scornful surprise at being asked about the newly painted door. But in any case her husband was in all probability the only creature about whom she really cared. Was it safe to conclude, then, that, as far as she knew, her husband was unaware of Helmut’s last visit, and that the fear she felt was of the possibility that, after all, there might have_been someone willing and able to enlighten him?
When she let herself sag like that she was middle-aged, even though her face continued dark, self-contained and handsome. She looked at him, and waited to be answered.
“On Helmut’s tunic-sleeve,” he said, “there were very faint traces of green paint, not much more than a coating on the hairy outside of the pile. The kind of just noticeable mark you get from a quick-drying paint when it’s tacky. It tallies with the new paint on the door in your orchard-wall. Jim painted the door, he says, last Wednesday afternoon.”
She passed her hand across her forehead, smoothing aside a strayed end of her black hair. “Yes,” she said, “he did. He left it unlocked afterwards. Yes—I see! So no one actually told you?”
“No one. I’ve come so that you can do that.”
She looked up suddenly, and said: “Jim—?”
“Jim is still wondering what the devil I meant by the question. He doesn’t know it could have anything to do with Helmut. This is just between me and you.”
She gave a long sigh, and said: “I’ll tell you exactly what happened. It affects no one but me. Chris didn’t know. Jim didn’t know—at least—no, I’m sure he didn’t know about that night, at any rate. He was down in the village before Helmut came near me.”
Yes, she could care about more than one man at a time, it seemed, even if not in quite the same way. A stubborn, deliberate loyalty to Jim Tugg crossed at right-angles the protective love she felt for her husband. Might there not even be some real conflict here in this house, where the two of them went about her constantly, either loving her in his fashion? George caught himself back aghast from this complication of human feeling. Good God! he thought, I’m beginning to see chasms all round me, complexes in the kitchen, rivalries in the rick-yard. Why, I’ve known these people for years! But he was not quite reassured. How many of the people you have known for years do you really know?
“It was the fifth time he’d been up here,” said Gerd, in a level voice, “since he left us. He didn’t come too often, partly because it was a risk—and you know he always liked to have the odds on his side—but also, I think, because he wanted me never to get used to it, always to be able to think and hope I’d seen the last of him, so that he could come back every time quite fresh and unexpected. Twice he came over the fence and through the garden, when both Chris and Jim were off the place. He must have stayed somewhere watching until they went. The third time he found the little door in the wall. That was perfect, because in the evening I have to go there to feed the fowl and shut the pens, and there it’s quite private, right out of sight of the house or the yard. And narrow! I could never pass until he chose to let me. The fourth time was the same. There’d been eight days between, and I almost thought he’d tired of it. Then I had a lock put on the door, and kept it locked until the Wednesday. Jim forgot to lock it again after he finished. It never used to be locked, you see, it was no wonder it slipped his mind.”
She paused, rather as if to assemble her thoughts than in expectation of any comment from George, but he asked her, because it had been mystifying him all along: “But what could he
She weighed it and him in the deeps of her appallingly patient eyes, and explained quietly: “Fright is not everything. There may even be a new pleasure to be got out of someone who is not—frightened, exactly. I think Helmut must have got rather bored with people who were just frightened of him, during the war. They seem to have stopped being amusing to him. He liked better someone who was desperate, but couldn’t do anything about it. I was desperate, but there was nothing I could do. Maybe it wouldn’t be easy to make you understand what Helmut was like, those times when he came here after me. Since I’m telling everything, I’ll try to tell you that, too. He very seldom touched me, usually just stood between me and where I was going. Toward the end he began to finger me. Even then it was in his own way. My flesh was only attractive to him because it was in a way repellent, too. He just kept me with him while he talked. He talked about all those places in Germany where my kind of people were herded, and used, and killed. He told me how it must have been for my family. Especially how it must have ended. He told me that all in good time it would be like that for me, that I was not to believe I had finished with these things. He said England would learn, was learning fast, what to do with Jews, niggers, Asiatics, all the inferior breeds. Do not be obvious, and tell me that I am in England, and protected. He was real, was he not? He was there, and he was protected. Oh, I never believed literally in what he said. But I believed in
She had regained, as she spoke, the power and composure of her body, and looked at him with straight, challenging eyes, but palely unsmiling.
“I wasn’t afraid of him,” she said steadily, “but I was afraid of the effect he had on me. I’d forgotten it was possible to hate and loathe anyone in that way.”
“I can understand it,” said George somberly. “But did he really get so much satisfaction out of these visits that he went on taking such risks for it?”
“He got the only bits of his present life that made him feel like a Nazi and a demi-god again. What more do you suppose he wanted? And he took very little risk. Almost none at all. He was always careful, he had time to be careful.”
“He could watch his step, yes, but at any moment you chose you could have told your husband the whole story. Why didn’t you? I can understand your keeping quiet at first, but after Jim’s flare-up with Helmut the story was out. Why didn’t you keep it that way? Why go to such trouble to pretend the persecution had ended? If you didn’t lie to your husband, you must have come pretty near it. You certainly lied to me. Why?”
She did not answer for a moment, and somehow in her silence he had a vivid recollection of Helmut’s body lying
