him off, will you?’
‘Too late,’ said Mrs Pettigrew, resuming her place.
Mrs Anthony looked around the door.
‘Was you wanting something?’
‘We did hope,’ said Mrs Pettigrew very loudly, ‘to have our meal without interruptions. However, I have answered the telephone.’
‘Very good of you, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Anthony, and disappeared. Godfrey was still protesting about the photographer. ‘We’ll have to put him off. Too many strangers.’
Charmian said, ‘I shall not be here long, Godfrey.’
‘Come, come,’ said Mrs Pettigrew. ‘You may well last another ten years.
‘Quite,’ said Charmian, ‘and so I have decided to go away to the nursing home in Surrey, after all. I understand the arrangements there are almost perfect. One has every privacy. Oh, how one comes to appreciate privacy.’
Mrs Pettigrew lit a cigarette and slowly blew the smoke in Charmian’s face.
‘No one’s interfering with your privacy,’ Godfrey muttered. ‘And freedom,’ said Charmian. ‘I shall have freedom at the nursing home to entertain whom I please. Photographers, strangers —’
‘There is no need,’ said Godfrey desperately, ‘for you to go away to a home now that you are so much improved.’
Mrs Pettigrew blew more smoke in Charmian’s direction.
‘Besides,’ he said, glancing at Mrs Pettigrew, ‘we can’t afford it.’
Charmian was silent, as one who need not reply. Indeed, her books were bringing in money, and her small capital at least was safe from Mrs Pettigrew. The revival of her novels during the past winter had sharpened her brain. Her memory had improved, and her physical health was better than it had been for years in spite of that attack of bronchitis in January, when a day and a night nurse had been in attendance for a week. However, she still had to move slowly and was prone to kidney trouble.
She looked at Godfrey who was wolfing his rice pudding without, she was sure, noticing what he was eating, and she wondered what was on his mind. She wondered what new torment Mrs Pettigrew was practising upon him. She wondered how much of his past life Mrs Pettigrew had discovered, and why he felt it necessary to hush it up at all such costs. She wondered where her own duty to Godfrey lay —where does one’s duty as a wife reach its limits? She longed to be away in the nursing home in Surrey, and was surprised at this longing of hers, since all her life she had suffered from apprehensions of being in the power of strangers, and Godfrey had always seemed better than the devil she did not know.
‘To move from your home at the age of eighty-seven,’ Godfrey was saying in an almost pleading voice, ‘might kill you. There is no need.’
Mrs Pettigrew, having pressed the bell in vain, said, ‘Oh, Mrs Anthony is quite deaf. She must get an Aid,’ and went to tell Mrs Anthony to fetch her tea and Charmian’s milk.
When she had gone, Godfrey said, ‘I had an unpleasant experience this morning.’
Charmian took refuge in a vague expression. She was terrified lest Godfrey was about to make some embarrassing confession concerning Mrs Pettigrew.
‘Are you listening, Charmian?’ said Godfrey.
‘Yes, oh yes. Anything you like.’
‘There was a telephone call from Lettie’s man.’
‘Poor Lettie. I wonder he isn’t tired of tormenting her.’
‘The call was for me. He said, “The message is for you, Mr Colston.” I am not imagining anything, mind you. I heard it with my ears.’
‘Really? What message?’
‘You
‘Well, I should treat it as it deserves to be treated.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Neither more nor less,’ said Charmian.
‘I’d like to know who the fellow is. I’d like to know why the police haven’t got him. It’s preposterous, when we pay our rates and taxes, to be threatened like that by a stranger.’
‘What did he threaten to do?’ said Charmian. ‘I thought he merely always said —’
‘It’s upsetting,’ said Godfrey. ‘One might easily take a stroke in consequence. If it occurs again I shall write to
‘Why not consult Mrs Pettigrew?’ said Charmian. ‘She is a tower of strength.’
Then she felt suddenly sorry for him, huddled among his bones. She left him and climbed the stairs slowly, clinging to the banister, to take her afternoon rest. She considered whether she could bring herself to leave Godfrey in his plight with Mrs Pettigrew. After all, she herself might have been in an awkward situation, if she had not taken care, long before her old age, to destroy all possibly embarrassing documents. She smiled as she looked at her little bureau with its secretive appearance, in which Mrs Pettigrew had found no secret, although Charmian knew she had penetrated behind those locks. But Godfrey, after all, was not a clever man.
In the end Godfrey submitted, and agreed to keep the appointment with his lawyer. Mrs Pettigrew would not absolutely have refused to let him put it off for another day, had she not been frightened by his report of the telephone call. Obviously, his mind was going funny. She had not looked for this. He had better see the lawyer before anyone could say he had been talked into anything.
