The Trouble-Makers Read online

  Katharine filled in some of the uneasy minutes of waiting by going back to her own home to make sure that the children were asleep, and to leave a brief and rather confusing note for Stephen explaining where she was in case he came in before her. By the time she came back, Stella had made herself more at ease, sitting on the floor in front of the fire, her legs stretched out before her, and reading a copy of Health for All. As soon as she saw Katharine, she embarked on a forceful and argumentative dissertation to the effect that drinking two gallons of yoghourt a day wouldn’t necessarily make you live to be a hundred and fifty. Since it had never occurred to Katharine to suppose that it would, the forcefulness of the argument was somewhat wasted on her, but all the same she was pleased to find Stella so much herself again after the shock; and the time passed really quite pleasantly until they were interrupted by a sharp, decisive ring at the front door, and knew that Auntie Pen had arrived.

  Katharine could not have said exactly what she had expected Auntie Pen to look like—indeed, she had deliberately not allowed herself to build up too definite a picture on the basis of that reassuring voice on the telephone. But with all her caution, all her refraining from over-optimism, she had never dreamed that Auntie Pen’s appearance would give her a shock like this. For there in the doorway, framed unmistakably against the misty rain-drenched light from the street lamp, stood the black-coated woman whose eyes Katharine had so disconcertingly met in the bus queue this very evening.

  CHAPTER IV

  IN THAT SINGLE moment Katharine’s sense of recognition was complete and beyond doubt or argument. It was only after they had moved into the brightly lighted sitting-room and the newcomer had removed her coat, that Katharine began to wonder if she had been wrong. For with the black coat gone, with the down-turned corners of the mouth lifted in a smile, with the hostile look in the black eyes replaced by the friendly animation suitable to the first greetings between strangers, the woman did indeed look quite different. Moreover, she showed no signs of recognising Katharine.

  Full of uncertainty, Katharine felt some uneasiness about confiding in the newcomer, but Stella naturally had no such inhibitions. Indeed, she seemed by now to have developed a somewhat proprietary attitude towards the whole business, and ushered Auntie Pen into the study and showed her the bloodstains with the air of a house-agent displaying a desirable property.

  Mrs Quentin (for such they had learned was Auntie Pen’s name) did not seem shocked, nor even very much surprised; but her face changed in some indefinable way as Stella went on talking, so that Katharine once again felt sure that this was indeed the woman in the bus queue. After staring, thoughtfully rather than with horror, at the desk and at the floor, Mrs Quentin turned towards Stella, checking her flow of narrative with an impatient half-patronising gesture.

  “I see,” she said slowly. “I’m beginning to understand.” Then, more briskly, and with a hint of apology in her smile: “This has been a dreadful shock for you both, I realise now. I’m sorry. I really am. I should have rung up or something. … But do let me assure you that nothing very dreadful has occurred——”

  “Then you know——”

  “What is it, then——?”

  Katharine and Stella both spoke at once, and Mrs Quentin smiled again, deprecatingly.

  “No, no. I don’t know exactly what has happened, any more than you do. But I do know that no one has been seriously hurt. Mary—Mrs Prescott—rang up to tell me that Alan—my brother, you know—has had a slight accident with a knife and is in hospital. It’s not serious, you understand; he will probably be out again tomorrow. But the wound has to be stitched, you see. Nothing to keep him laid up for long——”

  She stopped, and looked her two companions straight in the eyes—almost, Katharine fancied, as if defying them to disbelieve her or to ask any more questions. And Katharine, indeed, could not for the moment think of any more to ask. Her mind was fully if foolishly occupied in calculating how this old—or at least elderly—woman could possibly be Mary’s sister-in-law. She could, though. After all, Alan must be at least fifty—it was only because he was Mary’s husband, and Mary was so much younger, that they all thought of him as the same sort of age as themselves. He could easily have a sister ten years older than himself, or more….

  But while Katharine’s mind was tracing out this byway of irrelevant curiosity, Stella’s had kept zestfully to the point. She was bombarding Mrs Quentin with questions of every kind, ranging from the wholly reasonable to the nearly impertinent. When had it all happened? When had Mary rung up? Why had Mrs Quentin come to give Angela tea in the first place? And then gone away again? Where was Alan wounded?

  Mrs Quentin was no longer smiling: she was watching Stella guardedly as the questions rattled forth; and when she replied to this last question she seemed to be choosing her words carefully. Her brother had been wounded in the upper arm, she said, clearly and primly; and it was an accident.

  Such finality did she put into the word that even Stella was silenced. For a few seconds no one spoke, though it seemed to Katharine that the whole room was a-whisper with the unspoken question that must be filling the three minds: namely, what sort of task would a man have to be engaged on to wound himself in the upper arm by accident? Pencil-sharpening? Wood-carving? Cutting bread? You’d have to be a contortionist to manage it.

  But, anyway, he was all right; no harm had been done. Oddly, all three women broke the silence simultaneously with words to this effect. But the only thing was, where was Mary now? Apparently she had rung up Auntie Pen from the hospital at about nine o’clock, and Auntie Pen had understood from her then that she would be leaving for home almost at once.

  “And she still isn’t back,” commented Katharine, looking at her watch. “It’s after eleven. What do you think can have happened? Should we ring the hospital?”

  But Mrs Quentin thought not.

  “There’s no need to rush her, now I’m here,” she said. “I can stay the night if necessary, so Angela will be all right. Mary’s probably had to stay to sign forms or something. Or maybe he’s been given an anaesthetic, and she wants to see him when he comes out of it. Anyway, there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Nothing to worry about. It was as if Stella had been waiting for these words as for a green light at a crossroads. Now it would be all right to say something a teeny bit nasty about Mary.

  “I’m surprised Angela can’t come home from school and get her own tea,” she commented, cautiously feeling her way out of the unaccustomed charitableness forced on her by the events of the last two or three hours. “I’d have thought a child of ten—a secure child—would be able to do that.”

  Mrs Quentin looked at her appraisingly.

  “Yes—I suppose so,” she said non-committally. “But it didn’t matter—I was quite pleased to come. I’ve been out of town a long time, you know, and I was glad of the chance to see Angela again. I’ve always been fond of the child. Besides,” she went on cautiously, “I didn’t think it was just a question of Angela’s tea. When Mary asked me to come—when she rang me up this afternoon—I got the impression that she was—well—in a bit of a state. You know—well, you must do, being neighbours—you must know that Mary doesn’t always get on too well with my brother, so when she rang up sounding so—so upset—I thought perhaps she might have left him again——”

  Mrs Quentin stopped: feeling, perhaps, that she was being indiscreet, carried away by the lateness of the hour and the illusory intimacy of shared anxiety.

  “And has she? Left him, I mean?”

  Stella’s gusto was almost indecent, and Mrs Quentin stiffened.

  “Well—obviously not,” she replied dryly. “There she is, in hospital with him, waiting anxiously for him to come round. A devoted wife. She really is, you know, in her own way.”

  The last sentence was spoken in such a way as to give the lie to any suspicion of sarcasm in the preceding phrase. Stella looked a little downcast. It had been such fun when Mary had left
Alan before—she’d cried for nearly a week when she came back, letting the neighbours give her good advice all the time, and telling them about all the awful things Alan did. And now here was Alan’s sister who might, handled carefully, be induced to tell then about all the awful things Mary did. Expertly, Stella surveyed the possible openings. Not a blatant question, of course; it would have to be something sympathetic—and it must also suggest that they already knew so much about Mary’s affairs that it wouldn’t be disloyal of Mary’s sister-in-law to discuss her with them.

  “Of course, anything like that is so disturbing to children,” Stella began. “Particularly to Angela, of course. Being an adopted child, she’s be bound to feel it more.”

  “Oh—so you knew she was adopted?”

  The ruse was working. No, it wasn’t. Praise, not criticism was to follow: “I think she’s a happy child, all the same. Not an anxious one.”

  “Not anxious!” Stella was outraged. “Look how nervous she was this evening, just at finding herself alone in the house! Did you notice, Katharine, how she clung to us, following us about every step we took? And so reserved, too, and so repressed. A normal child would have been crying.”

  “She was shy, naturally,” Katharine pointed out. “Any of mine would have been the same if they’d had to go in to Mary in a similar situation.”

  Stella looked at her pityingly, and Katharine realised that she had merely exposed her own children to similar charges. Shyness was doubtless another of the troubles that simply didn’t arise at Wetherby Hall. She shifted her ground. “Anyone would have been worried, whatever their age,” she argued. “We were worried, if it comes to that.”

  “Yes, of course we were; but then Angela hadn’t the same reason. She didn’t know about the bloodstains. Didn’t you notice that the study was the one room she didn’t follow us into?”

  Katharine had noticed; and suddenly the oddness of this fact struck her with full force. She had assumed that it was a lucky coincidence that Angela should have tired of the search just then. But was it? Gould it not be that Angela was deliberately avoiding that room? Avoiding it because she had been in it already: knew what was to be seen there; and did not want to see it again?

  Katharine was just about to suggest this possibility, but something—a sort of weariness—held her back. She would only be told that such behaviour in a ten-year old argued unhealthy secretiveness of a sort characteristic of adopted children who are about to go in for the eleven-plus, and that Jack and Mavis would have behaved quite differently in similar circumstances, and anyway circumstances like these simply didn’t arise at Wetherby Hall, as indeed they probably didn’t. And in any case, the conversation had now shifted from Angela to the parents.

  “Of course, my brother is a very reserved man,” Mrs Quentin was saying. “As well as being so much older than Mary. I don’t imagine he is very easy to live with—especially for a girl like Mary, so open and impetuous by nature, though of course marriage has changed her a lot. I always said he should have married a Victorian heroine sort of girl—an ultra-feminine type who would twist him round her little finger. But Mary’s the type of girl who never uses her little finger where fists will do: she insists on head-on collisions when she wants her own way. Or did. As I say, she’s changed.”

  “And I think she shouldn’t let herself be changed,” burst out Stella. “Head-on collisions are healthy. They’re honest. Every marriage should be based on absolute honesty, collisions and all.”

  Mrs Quentin looked at her a little pityingly.

  “Absolute honesty couldn’t fail to wreck even the best of marriages,” she observed, with a sort of sad certainty; and then, as Stella stared at her, she elaborated: “Or rather, I should say absolute honesty on the part of both partners. It’s all right for one of them to be totally honest so long as the other is willing to undertake all the necessary deceptions. By this means one partner is enabled to glory in his egocentric honesty, while the other struggles to keep the marriage going; and for him—or her—there is no glory.”

  She fell silent, with a look of brooding melancholy which set Katharine speculating about a possibly non-existent Mr Quentin. Was he—had he been—an inveterate truth-teller? Had Auntie Pen shed him somewhere along the line—divorced or separated? Or was she a widow? Or—possibly—was she just an ordinary married woman, with Mr Quentin sitting at home right now, with one eye on the clock, waiting to embark on some more than usually forceful truth-telling? Just look at the time—nearly twelve o’clock!

  Katharine got up from her chair. There was absolutely no reason for staying any longer, now that Auntie Pen was here. And yet—she hesitated. It was so queer that Mary wasn’t back. Her husband’s injury was not serious: what could be keeping her so long? Why hadn’t she at least rung up—sent some message? As she stood hesitating, Katharine saw Mrs Quentin’s eyes fixed on her just as they had been in the bus queue, with the same thoughtful, faintly hostile intensity. They seemed to be delving deep into her thoughts … boring for samples into her very soul.

  “Yes—you must be very tired,” was all the older woman said at the end of this deep scrutiny. “I’m sure you’re both dying to get home and go to bed. Please don’t feel you have to stay any longer; everything’s under control.”

  She stood up briskly; and then, as if there had been no interruption of her former train of thought, she added:

  “And so, you see, I always feel it is fairer if both partners take their share of the necessary deceptions.”

  Whether this remark was addressed to Stella, or to Katharine, or simply to the world at large, it was impossible to tell. Katharine only knew that it added somehow to the obscure uneasiness she felt about leaving the house with Mary’s absence still unexplained. Still, Mrs Quentin was in charge. She must really be kind and sensible—look how fond Angela was of her; how pleased—how comforted and reassured—she had seemed on hearing that Auntie Pen was coming. Children’s instincts could be relied on in these matters—or so everyone said, and who was Katharine to query so universally held an opinion, and at twelve o’clock at night, too.

  She ran quietly down the Prescotts’ steps in the still, damp air of midnight, and quickly up the adjoining ones to her own front door, closing it softly behind her as she went in.

  The light in the hall was still on; her note to Stephen was still lying on the little table where she had left it. Katharine was seized with a sudden anger close to tears. So he hadn’t even bothered to read it! He didn’t care where she was or what she was doing at this hour of the night. He would be asleep by now, no doubt, and certainly she wasn’t going to risk waking him. She did not know whether it was anger at the unread note that brought her to this decision, or fear of starting a quarrel, or even consideration for Stephen’s night’s rest after his long day at work. What ever it was, she did not go up to bed: instead, she passed a brief, uncomfortable night on the sitting-room couch, waking at half past six, stiff and dazed, to the unaccustomed sound of someone else doing the washing up.

  CHAPTER V

  FOR A FEW MINUTES Katharine lay still, trying to feel grateful. It was Stephen, of course; Stephen must have noticed that she had gone out last night without washing up the supper things, and had decided to get up early and do them for her. It was terribly nice of him. Any wife would appreciate it.

  So Katharine rounded up her thoughts and tried to compel them in the direction they should go. But it was no use. Trying to coerce one’s thought was like that frantic stirring of an egg custard after it has already begun to curdle: you know that the change is irrevocable, and that it will never be smooth again, and yet you go on stirring, compulsively.

  The trouble was that it always seemed to Katharine that Stephen only washed up when he was annoyed with her. But what could he be annoyed about this time? Something she had said—done? Or something she had not said—not done? Or something about the children? Surely Clare couldn’t still have been crying about her Latin when he came in last night? And te
lling him, with that admirable, catastrophic frankness of hers, exactly how much her mother had helped her with it? Katharine wriggled off her uncomfortable couch, pulled on her dressing-gown, and went out into the hall.

  At the kitchen door she stopped, adjusting a grateful smile on her face as she might have adjusted a slipping shoulder strap. For after all, even if Stephen always washed up in anger, it didn’t follow that he washed up out of spite. On the contrary, he probably did it rather as she had brought that nice crusty bread last night—a forlorn attempt to make up in trifling material ways for the empty or unkind feelings towards her that were beyond his control. Was he beginning to hate crusty bread, just as she hated being helped with the washing up?

  This feeling that they were fellow-sufferers of each other—that they were each painfully evolving the same hopeless techniques for dealing with the same unwelcome emotions—moved Katharine strangely. A stab of rare tenderness towards her husband suddenly changed the carefully adjusted smile on her face into a real smile, bewildered, sad, and loving. If Stephen had turned round at once when she came into the room, he would have seen it. But he didn’t; he went on scrubbing fiercely at a saucepan for several seconds. By the time he did turn round, it was too late; everything had already gone wrong.