The Grass Widow's Tale

“To London?” said Bunty sharply. “Not up here, then?”

“No, to London. She had a few days of her holiday left to use, she suggested we should drive down on Friday evening. So when it came to Friday evening I was ready well ahead of the time we’d fixed, and I ran the car round into town, to her flat, to pick her up. It was a good half-hour earlier than she’d be expecting me. And I was just parking the car, a bit away from the house—you know what it’s like trying to find anywhere to park in Comerbourne—when I saw her come out of the private door of her flat. Not alone, with a fellow I’d never seen before. And she was hanging on his arm and chattering away to him and looking up into his face, like… like a cut- price call-girl! You can’t mistake it when you do see it.”

“Did they see you?” asked Bunty intently.

“No, I told you, I could only find a place farther along the street. No, they didn’t see me…”

“And you didn’t go after them? You didn’t challenge them?”

“I never had time. I’d just got out of the car when they came out, and they turned the other way. He had a car parked there just in front of the shop, and they got into it and drove off in the other direction. By the time I was across the road they were turning the corner out of Queen Street.”

“What sort of car was it? Would you know it again?”

“I didn’t get the number, I never thought of it, but it was a light-grey Jag. Does it matter?”

“It matters,” she said sharply. “Every detail matters. What about the man?”

“I’d know him again,” he said bitterly. “A big chap, well-dressed, over-dressed for Comerbourne, you don’t see many dinner jackets around in Queen Street. But he made everything he had on look like slightly sporty wear, this type. You could imagine him rally-driving in a special one-off, instead of rolling round in a Jag. He had this he-man touch, and yet everything about him was smooth, his clothes, his movements… everything except his face. That had some pretty crude, craggy lines, a knubby forehead, auburn hair growing low, cleft chin, eyes buried in a lot of bone. Yes, I’d know him again!”

“And she went with him willingly? You’re sure?”

“Willingly? Gladly! You should have seen her!”

“And what did you do?”

“What could I do? They were gone, and I didn’t know where. But it was pretty safe betting she wasn’t going to be hurrying back within the next half-hour to meet me. I went back home, trying to kid myself there must be another answer, persuading myself there’d be a message for me. And there was! Bill was just rushing off for his own half-term, to his parents’ place in Essex, when I got back. He told me there’d been a phone call for me from Pippa, he’d left me a note. She was terribly sorry, but she’d have to put off leaving for our jaunt until to-morrow evening. Her mother’d turned up unexpectedly, meaning to stay overnight, and she hadn’t the heart to run out on her, and couldn’t even tell her she’d had a trip planned, because Mother would be so upset at having spoiled it for her! So would I mind keeping away until to-morrow evening, and she’d come along and join me as soon as she’d seen her visitor off home! And it could all have been true,” he said bleakly, staring into the past with the sick fascination of one contemplating disasters about which nothing can now be done, “if I hadn’t known beforehand that her visitor wore a dinner jacket and stood about six feet three in his shoes. Because we’d only just got engaged, and her mother knew nothing about me yet, and we wouldn’t have wanted to spring it on her in circumstances like that, without any preparation. It could all have been true, only I knew now that there wasn’t a word of truth in it.

“So I went out and got horribly drunk. Black, vicious, murderous drunk. I don’t usually drink much, but I seem to have an abnormally high tolerance, it takes a lot to fill me up. But I wasn’t too tight to walk round by her flat after the pubs closed, and I wasn’t too far gone to know what I was seeing, either. The grey Jaguar was parked discreetly round the corner in the mews. Mother stayed the night, all right!”

“And this was Friday? But if she’d ditched you, and if you’d written her off as a dead loss, how did you come to tangle with her again on Saturday?” demanded Bunty.

“You forget, she didn’t know I’d written her off. She thought she only had to drop me a message, and I’d swallow it whole and sit back until she wanted me again.”

“Of course,” she said, enlightened, “she turned up on Saturday evening according to programme!”

“According to her programme. And if you’ll believe me, that possibility had simply never occurred to me. I was so full up with what had happened, the thing was so completely finished for me, that I’d clean forgotten she didn’t know I knew! She thought everything was serene, and she only had to stroll in at my place and say: Darling, here I am, all ready! and I’d run to fetch the car, and we could start. So that’s what she did, around seven o’clock on Saturday evening, came rolling up in a taxi with her biggest suitcase, and started on another apology for Friday’s hold-up as soon as she came in at the door. And I’d been howling like a dog all morning with the hangover of a lifetime, and topping it up again in self-defence most of the afternoon, and I was fit for murder.”

“You do realise,” said Bunty, frowning with concentration, “that so far you haven’t so much as mentioned that you owned a gun? Legally or illegally!”

“I didn’t own a gun. Legally or illegally. I’d never had one in my hands, as far as I can remember. I know damn-all about the things. When I do mention it you’re not going to believe me. I wouldn’t believe myself.”

“I might, though,” said Bunty. “All right, get to it your own way. She came breezing in, expecting to be taken to London. And you told her that she’d had it, that it was over, and she might as well go home.”

“What I told her was meaner than that, but let it go, it added up to much the same. I asked if her mother had slept well, and whether I could have the name of her tailor. She was always quick on the uptake, Pippa, not as clever as she thought she was, perhaps, but pretty sharp, all the same. She got it in a moment that I’d seen them, and she came up with a good story faster than you’d ever credit. That was her mother’s cousin, that man with the Jaguar, it was because he’d turned up for a visit that her mother’d been able to make the trip, and that’s why she had no warning. And she was all set to put me in the wrong and herself in the right, as usual, and I was the one who was supposed to apologise. Only this time it didn’t work. Damn it, I’d seen them! I asked her whether they’d locked Mother in the flat while they went out to dinner, because I’d seen her just slipping her keys in her bag. You’re a liar, I told her, and a cheat, and what else you are you know best, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve done with you, you can go to London, or the devil, or wherever you please, but not with me. She couldn’t believe it. I’d been so easy up to then, it took a little while to sink in. But as soon as she did manage to get it into her head that I meant it, things got even crazier than they already were. She started persuading, threatening, even fawning… you’ve no idea how