Marnie (11 page)

When everything had been added and deducted the total amount to go into his pay packet was £18 2s. 6d. I took up the first envelope and opened my bag and took out eighteen slips of paper
from the first rubber-banded package and put the slips in the pay envelope. The eighteen pounds went into the other pocket of my bag. I had tried the slips against a similar number of one-pound
notes in envelopes at home, and it just wasn’t possible after shuffling them to tell which was which.

I went at it flat-out today. As I’ve said, the next office had only the telephone switchboard and some filing cabinets in it, and the one girl, Miss Harry, at the switchboard. The
frosted-glass partition between us didn’t quite reach to the ceiling, but there wasn’t any real communication; we could hear the low buzz of the calls and she could hear our Anson
machine and probably the chink of money. The door beyond her office had to open and about six steps be taken before anyone opened my door, so I had several seconds if necessary to shut my bag and
look innocent. In fact, except for the little alteration at the end of each calculation, I was working as usual.

I was only interrupted three times all afternoon.

When Mr Ward came in at five I only had £260 left.

‘Hm,’ he said, rubbing his mole. ‘Better even than last week. We’ll give Miss Clabon notice.’

I smiled. ‘It wouldn’t work. She’s really very good. Let me just finish this one, will you?’

He stood picking at his finger-nail while I finished off Stevens, F., journeyman apprentice, £8 4s. and put the money in an envelope and sealed it. Then I arched my aching back while he
picked up the tray with its neatly stacked and named and numbered envelopes and carried it to the safe. While he was putting this in I got together the rest of the silver and notes and clipped the
notes with rubber bands and put them in the cash-box. I carried the cash-box and the ledgers to the safe and held the door while he put them in. He locked the door and put the key in his pocket and
took out a packet of cigarettes. He looked as if he was going to help himself, but he thought better of it and offered me one.

The generous impulse must have nearly killed him. I smiled and shook my head.

He said: ‘No vices?’

‘Well, not that one.’

‘Quite
the
paragon, eh?’

‘No.’ I smiled again. ‘Do you dislike me, Mr Ward?’ I felt like challenging him tonight.

He was frightfully occupied shaking out a match and looking at the watch-spring of black smoke that came from it. ‘It’s not my business to like or dislike employees of this firm, Mrs
Taylor. My business is to see that they do their work.’

‘But you must have your own opinions.’

‘Oh, yes.’ He squinted down at his cigarette. ‘But those opinions
are
my own, aren’t they.’

This obviously wasn’t his day for confessions. ‘I’m glad you have nothing against me.’

‘What could I have? You’re so efficient. Everyone agrees.’

I picked up my bag, which suddenly seemed to me to look fatter than it should have done. I looked at my watch, Five-twenty. They weren’t working overtime today, and most of the printers
would be on their way out. It’d be murder if one came to the hatch now and asked for his wages tonight. It had happened once in April.

I went to the door. ‘You’ll be here tomorrow, Mr Ward?’

‘No, I’m going up to a meeting of paper wholesalers. Why?’

‘Mr Rutland will be back?’

‘Oh, yes, he’ll be here; and both Mr Holbrooks.’

I went out of the office and walked slowly, pretending to fumble with my shoe, until I heard Mr Ward lock the door. Linda Harry was putting on her jersey and she followed me out. We went along
together to the cloakroom, where there were still two or three girls powdering their noses. I stayed there talking to them until I saw Sam Ward leave the building.

As I was just going to go out Linda Harry asked me if I had a light. I darned nearly opened my bag to see. But I said, no, I was sorry I hadn’t.

We were about the last. You wouldn’t believe how quickly the place emptied. I said good night to Howard and went down towards the High Street tube.

When I got home I locked the door of the flat and took the money out and counted it. I had over £1,270. In fact £1,272 10s. It was my best haul.

So from then on it was the same old routine.

A gin and french first. It always tasted specially nice. Then I combed my hair out quite loose until it fell nearly to my shoulders. While I was finishing my drink I went over the train
times.

Then I took everything off, throwing it in a heap on the floor, and went naked into the bathroom. I never would if I could help it take a flat without a private bathroom because as I’ve
said soaking in warm water seemed to wash something away; not guilt because I never felt guilty, but the sort of old contacts with things and people. You skinned them off and left them in the
water. When you stepped out you were being born again. Or
reborn
again as Marnie Elmer. I was a real person again, Marnie Elmer, not someone I’d made up and dressed up for half a year.
Mary Taylor, the pathetic widow, had gone and left her old clothes on the floor.

She really had been a bit of a fool, Mary Taylor, getting so involved. Mollie Jeffrey had had much more sense. When that man Ronnie Oliver had rung up Marion Holland just after she’d
helped herself to a large sum of money from the office of Crombie & Strutt, right under the nose of Mr Pringle, the manager – when Ronnie Oliver had rung her up when she was in her bath
just before she left Birmingham for ever, I’d said never again. Don’t be a fool, getting entangled. So Mollie Jeffrey had taken that advice to heart. But Mary Taylor had forgotten it.
Mary Taylor had let herself be pawed about in private flats and she’d been taken to the races by a director. This was the worst and most incautious ever.

I packed all my old things in my case and dressed again in new clothes, all not to be noticed and not dear. Then began my usual round of the flat. Everything, magazines, newspapers, hand tissues
from the waste paper basket, they were all gathered up, and this time it was easy to burn them because the flat had an open grate. I picked up my suitcase and packed the money in a corner of it,
then I slung my coat over my arm and went to the door of the flat, stopped for a last look.

It was funny. There was nothing. Mary Taylor was as real as nothing. She left behind her a bank account containing seven pounds in Lloyds Bank, Swiss Cottage, and a few ashes in the grate. In a
way, I thought, I was a bit like that man Haigh, was it, who dissolved his victims in an acid bath. I was dissolving Mary Taylor. She was going, going, gone.

I left and took the tube to Paddington, changing at Baker Street. At Paddington I caught the eight-thirty-five for Wolverhampton and got a meal on the train. At Wolverhampton I took a late bus
for Walsall and I spent the night there. The next morning I was up early doing some more shopping, and then I went to a hairdressing salon and had a new hair-do.

But sitting there in the chair I began to think to myself that Mary Taylor had lived too long. I should have killed her sooner. It wasn’t as easy as usual to get out of her skin.

By now – it was twenty past eleven – they’d know the worst. Who would be the first to find out? Probably, when she didn’t turn up, someone else would take over the rest
of the pay envelopes – but there really seemed no reason why anyone should find out until the first of her envelopes was opened.

In a way it was rather sad that Mary Taylor wouldn’t ever see Mark Rutland again. Whatever else, you had to admit he was different. I mean, if you like to be heavy, he had class. And then
there was Terry too – and Dawn. They’d all somehow got themselves into three-dimensional figures, not just cut-outs any more; and they stuck in your memory.

I left Walsall in the afternoon and went by bus and train to Nottingham. It took me eight hours to do fifty miles, but doing it I covered four times that distance. I did this sort of looping the
loop every time after leaving a job. You just couldn’t be too careful. I also lost my old suitcase, deposited at a left-luggage office to rot for ever, and went on with my new one. I stayed
at Nottingham at the Talbot as Miss Maureen Thurston. On Saturday night I stayed at Swindon.

On the Sunday morning I left Swindon and made for the Old Crown, Cirencester.

It was like going back to old friends now, it really was; it was like a second home, and in some ways more homey than the first, because when I went back to Torquay it was sort of going back to
being a kid again. The old Crown was a new life I was making for myself, and this wasn’t a sham either, it was real.

I stopped only long enough for a couple of sandwiches in the bar and to change, and then I jumped on a bus that passed Garrod’s Farm. I had dropped a postcard saying I was coming so they
were expecting me, and you’d have thought Forio was too.

He knew it was me before I even got into the yard. He whinnied and stamped his foot and made noises that I’ve never heard another horse make.

When I went to him and rubbed my face against his muzzle he kept putting his soft mouth over the knuckles of my hand to find the piece of apple that I had for him. Always when I was away a long
time I was scared he’d have forgotten me; but I never broke my rule not to visit on a job.

When he was saddled and we clattered out of the yard John Garrod followed me saying to take it easy because he hadn’t been able to give Forio enough exercise, but I was too crazy to care,
and as soon as we got going Forio nearly ran away with me; if it hadn’t been for the heavy going and a slope he would have.

But of course it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered; it was a lovely day and the heavy showers didn’t count, and I was full of something though it couldn’t be food as I’d
only had the two sandwiches since breakfast. This was all I wanted, to hell with people; they cloyed and stuck and twisted you up inside and everything went wrong; this was simple, clean, easy, no
complications; a woman and a horse. No more. Nothing to be fought out or explained. You just rode together. That’s the way I wanted it always.

It rained heavily twice while I was out. The first time I sheltered in a copse, but the second time I galloped through it, Forio at full stretch, the rain pelting into my face. When we stopped,
both with no breath, at the edge of the common, we were dripping all over and the last of the shower was leaving us, and the sun threw a rainbow over the woods towards Swindon.

I turned for home, and thought about Forio and the way I’d bought him.

It was after the second job I’d done, the one at Newcastle, and I’d seen Mother all right and still had money in my pocket and had gone to the races at Cheltenham. Not that I was
going to bet, but there I was, enjoying myself all by myself.

One of the races was a selling plate, and after it was over I heard a man on the rails next to me say: ‘Let’s see how much the winner makes,’ and walked off, so I followed him
and the winning horse was being led into the ring with a few bored-looking people leaning against the rails, and a man suddenly started putting the horse up for auction.

Well, it never occurred to me to be interested until I saw that the horse had hurt its leg in the last few yards of the race and was limping badly and I thought, I suppose no one will bid for
him now. And he was a
lovely
horse, with plenty of bone, and
big
, a bit big for me, but it was a good fault. He was almost black, with a lighter patch on his nose and his chest.
Something wasn’t quite right about his ears but that might not matter. Of course I knew nothing
really
about horses, except riding a few hacks and what I’d read in books, but he
seemed such a wonderful bargain, and you know how it is, before you know where you are you’ve started bidding. And suddenly I had nodded once too often and the auctioneer said: ‘Going
for the last time –
Sold
to the lady in the corner, for two hundred and forty-five guineas.’

After that it was a sick panic to make all the arrangements, to leave a deposit with the owner and swear I’d be back with the rest of the money in the morning. Two weeks later I found
myself the owner of a horse, boarded at Garrod’s Farm at an
awful
cost per week, no job, and less than forty pounds left.

So I had to get work quickly, and I’d been lucky to get a promising job almost right off with Crombie & Strutt, the Turf Accountants. But it had been a bad grind for some months,
living myself and paying for Forio out of eight pounds a week.

Not that I’d ever regretted it, not for a second. From the first ride he was wonderful; he’d got a great heart, always good tempered, and such an
eye
. His mouth was the
softest thing; you couldn’t feel his teeth. And I learned to jump with him and he was such a fine jumper. And when we galloped he’d a lovely long swinging stride. I hadn’t had him
six months when a man wanted him as a hunter and offered me five hundred pounds for him.

The sun had set before I got back to the stables and I stayed a long time with Forio, rubbing him down and brushing and combing his mane and tail. He loved this sort of thing and almost talked
while I did it.

Being Sunday there were people about, and a crowd of half a dozen schoolgirls were in the yard chattering in fluting voices that weren’t at all like the voices I used to hear in Plymouth.
A dog barked in the farmhouse.

I was hungry now, fairly ravenous. I went through into the farmhouse and looked at the bus timetable. The next one passed the house at seven-thirty. That would get into Cirencester at
seven-fifty-three. Time for a bath and a change before dinner. Then an early bed.

Mr Garrod came out as I passed. ‘Oh, by the way, Miss Elmer, there was a gentleman asking for you about an hour ago.’

‘For me?’ My heart’s all right; it keeps steady most times, but it gave a bit of a lurch now. ‘What did he want?’

‘He didn’t say. He asked if you was here and I said you was out riding. I don’t know if he’ll be back.’