Loving - Green Henry - Страница 28

'No I'm quite comfortable,' the nanny answered. 'I just wonder if I won't have a little nap that's all.' So Miss Burch left. As she closed the door she said to herself, 'Well she never thanked me for coming but then I shouldn't have let my tongue run on. But she never took it in even. We're both getting old women,' she repeated aloud as she went along the white linoleum in that corridor and walked to one side over the purple key pattern border.

Miss Burch never told the nanny that her protest to Raunce and Edith had been without effect. Edith it is true had risen to her feet when she left them but Charley had not stirred. And now as Agatha went slowly to her room with a pounding heart, Edith down in the Red Library was back in what used to be Mr Tennant's special easy chair. She hardly seemed comfortable however for she Was protesting, '… and, well, I don't like it.'

'Now ducks,' he said.

'I don't want to set her against me Charley. It's me has to work with her. Not you after all.'

'She's got nothing on us,' he replied, 'no one has.' At that a silence fell between them. Then she let out careless in a low voice, 'Charley I found the ring.'

'What ring?' he asked as though talking of daisy chains.

'Why,' she explained with sudden excitement, 'Mrs T.'s ring she mislaid before she went away. I chanced on it the other afternoon.'

'She's always losin' valuables,' he remarked casual, 'the wonder is she gets them back so often.'

'That's what I mean,' she said.

'I don't get you.'

'Suppose she didn't get this ring back?'

'Well you're goin' to give it her surely? You don't want to hand it over to our Agatha so she claims all the credit. Stand up for yourself love. You found the object. You hand it back and gather the reward though I'm afraid you'll be unlucky there you know.'

'What I was wondering was suppose I never offered the old ring back?'

'Here,' he said, 'easy on. Knock the ring off you mean?'

'Keep it,' she agreed. She seemed overexcited.

'Where is it?' he asked.

'Hid here in the lining,' she replied and got up. She forked the thing out of a tear with her finger. Her hands trembled.

'Let's have a look,' he said. 'You know you want to go steady with suggestions like the one you've just put forward. See,' he said holding the ring on a level with his chin. It winked and glittered at him. He smiled on it. 'Christ,' he said low.

'Well Charley what d'you say?'

'I tell you this won't do,' he answered. Tut'm back where you found'm.'

'Put it back where I found it,' she echoed as though dumbfounded.

'Yes so they can't discover the old loot on you and call that stealing by finding. Go on,' he said, 'I hate to do this but put'm back.'

'An' then what?' she wanted to know and pouted.

'The minute Mrs T. returns you go up to her and say you came by it as you were doing this room out.'

'I thought you'd have a better use for it than that,' she said.

'I don't follow you,' he said extremely cautious.

'What d'you keep writin' in those notebooks then?' she asked.

'I have to make up my accounts I put before Mrs Tennant each month,' he replied in an educated voice.

'Oh yeah?' she said.

'You've got to understand,' he said.

'It'll take a lot of understandin', Charley.'

'Listen I'm not makin' out I can be accurate down to the last cork or that when someone comes to stay they don't forget to put back a pencil they've taken off one of the tables.'

'You're telling me,' she said.

'But there's no place for valuables like this object,' he went on. 'You've got to see that dear. Why you'd gum up the whole works.'

'I can't fathom you,' she said. 'Here's a ring may be worth hundreds. It's been missed. It's lost and you want me to hand it back. There's no sense in a thing like that.'

'What would you do then?'

I'd sell it an' save the money for a rainy day,' and she gave him a look as if to say the sky always rained at weddings.

'You're crazy,' he said.

'I'm crazy am I,' she cried, 'right then I'll act like I was,' and snatching that ring from his fingers she threw it in the fire.

'Now look what you've done,' he said going down on his knees. He fished it out with a pair of tongs. 'That'll need cleanin' that will. You leave me.'

'Leave what to you not very likely,' she said as though beside herself. 'I wouldn't trust you no further than that fender. Give here.' She grabbed the ring back again.

'Ouch it's hot,' she said dropping the thing on the rug. They stood looking down and from the droop of her shoulders it could be assumed that her rage had subsided.

'For land's sake I do feel awful,' she brought out.

'Now honey you don't want to take things so awkward,' he said putting an arm round her shoulders. 'There's nothing to get wrought up over,' he explained. 'I was only goin' to give it a rub so that when you gave it back to Mrs T. she wouldn't notice the difference. And look,' he said, 'you've no sense of proportion. If I make me a few shillings each week fiddlin' the monthly books that don't mean I can go and knock off valuables. That's dangerous that is. Besides what I'm on to is steady, ducks, get me? While I hold down this job I can put by something all the time.'

'What do you put by?' she asked not looking at him. There was a short silence during which she seemed to listen intently.

'Why a bit here and a bit there,' he said.

'And I don't suppose it's worth the small risk there is in it,' she broke out sudden.

'I don't know love but maybe there's two or three hundred a year one way or another all told.'

'Pounds?' she asked making her eyes big.

'Lovely British Bradbury's,' he answered.

'Oh Charley,' she said in admiration, 'so that's what you're on to?'

'And that's a sight less than old Eldon drew. But he was at the receiving end of some very special money.'

'What d'you mean?'

'He'd kept his eyes open. He wasn't so slow. Tell you the truth I never did give him credit till I come upon it the other day. He'd got your Captain weighed up.'

'The Captain?' she asked eyes shining.

'Those were my words.'

'But I mean that's worse than takin' a ring ain't it Charley?'

'Depends how you mean worse,' he replied. 'All I know is it's secure.'

'D'you stand there an' tell me Mr Eldon had come upon them some time? Just as I did? That she sat up in bed with her fronts bobblin' at him like a pair of geese the way she did to me? Is that what you're sayin'?' She was so excited again that she fairly danced before him.

'Oh I don't know,' he replied cautious and as if he was shy.

There she sits up at me…' Edith ran on, eyes sparkling. And he had to listen to the whole thing again, and with embellishments that he had never heard, that even he must have doubted.

Raunce's Albert, Edith, Kate, the little girls and Mrs Welch's lad chose for their picnic a place just off the beach. While those children ran screaming down to where great rollers diminished to fans of milk new from the udder upon pressed sand, Albert laid himself under a hedge all over which red fuchsia bells swung without a note in the wind the sure travelling sea brought with its low heavy swell. He could watch the light blue heave between their donkey Peter's legs and his ears were crowded with the thunder of the ocean.

'Fat lot of use you are,' Kate shouted to him as she began to unstow the panniers on Peter's back.

'Ain't there a glare,' he called.

'For land's sake you're not goin' sick on me surely like Charley did when I brought him out?'

'Don't he look pale?' Kate echoed Edith.

'Never mind let him be,' Edith went on, 'and we'll allow he may light the Primus.' She laughed, probably because it would never start up without a deal of coaxing.

'Did you remember your matches?' Kate yelled. On which he got to his feet to bring out a packet of cigarettes.