Suspension of Mercy (20 page)

26

S
ydney found that he had the third, fifth, and sixth Whip stories’ notes, and they were very much the same in his scribbles as they were when the synopses had been typed out. Story number four had somehow got lost, or thrown away in a different place, and Sydney didn’t want to go through the sloppy dustbin on the chance it might be there. The notes for the first two stories, alas, were burned weeks ago. He paper-clipped his synopses notes and put them carefully away.

On Tuesday, August 23, a note came from Cecil Plummer of Granada, saying that under present circumstances the purchase of The Whip series would have to be postponed “until the situation is clarified.” The contract, Mr. Plummer said, would be reissued and redated. Sydney remembered it had borne Plummer’s signature and a date when he saw it.

The postponement was a financial blow. It could mean a couple of months’ delay, Sydney supposed. No money from Granada until the contract was signed, and no money from anywhere until the end of September, when $300 would come in on his quarterly arrangement of his dead Uncle Herbert’s legacy. Sydney wished he hadn’t paid the twenty-eight pound grocery bill in Framlingham last week, because the store was very nice about its credit. Sydney had paid it, because he had felt sure of The Whip’s money.

Sydney picked up the telephone and rang Potter and Desch for an appointment to discuss
The Planners
. A very pleasant female secretary spoke to him.

“Miss Freemantle is free at four o’clock today. Could you come in?”

Sydney said he could.

The appointment made him feel better.

Sydney bathed, shaved for the second time, and drove off to Ipswich to catch a train for London.

The Potter and Desch offices were in New Cavendish Street, one flight up in a large old building a bit threadbare but clean. He met Miss Freemantle, a bespectacled, slender woman of perhaps forty-five. The points she mentioned were ones Sydney might have stuck on, he thought, if he had been editing
The Planners
for someone else. Fuzzy thinking in some of Ernesto’s politics (ex-Communist, now Trotskyite), and an anti-ex-lover speech by one of the women was a little heavy-handed and eloquent for her character. The work wouldn’t take him long, not that he cared how long it would take. He signed the contract in Miss Freemantle’s presence, having made sure there was nothing in it giving a percentage of any movie money to the publishers. There was nothing about movies in it.

“We’d love to see your two earlier books that you mentioned in your letter,” Miss Freemantle said. “Would that be possible?”

Her telephone buzzed.

“Of course. I can post them this week.”

Miss Freemantle answered her telephone, then told Sydney that Mr. Potter would like to meet him, and would he step into his office the second door to the left down the hall.

Sydney bade adieu to Miss Freemantle in a glow, his manuscript under his arm. He knocked on Mr. Potter’s door. Mr. Potter stood up to greet him, a big, dark-haired man with glasses.

All went well for two minutes, until Mr. Potter said:

“We definitely want your book, Mr. Bartleby, but I hope you’ll understand that we can’t publish until this matter of your wife is cleared up. I’m sorry about it—but I think you’ll agree that a new book shouldn’t be blighted by something quite extraneous like this.”

Sydney had a sensation of blushing, which flustered him all the more. He pressed down his pride, and said, “But you do want the book. There’s no question of your not publishing.”

Mr. Potter hesitated. “I have to admit there is.”

Sydney was not in such a glow when he walked out of the building. Despite the contract, he knew he would lose if he tried to force Potter and Desch to publish—say, six months from now—and who would want to be on such a hostile footing with a publishing house, even if he should win his case?

He got some shillings from a shop, found a call box, and rang the post office in Angmering, Sussex.

“Hello,” Sydney said when a man’s voice answered. “I’m calling to ask if the Leamans are still—if they still have an Angmering address?” He knew the town was so small, merely Angmering would reach Alicia, if she were there.

“Oh, the Leamans. No. Just a minute.” And in a leisurely manner, as if it weren’t a trunk call, the postmaster absented himself from the telephone, and returned a minute later. “They said they were going to Lancing.”

Sydney knew the town by name, from his map. “Any street?”

“Just Lancing.”

“Thank you very much,” said Sydney.

Then he caught the first train he could back to Ipswich and his car.

At home, he checked the spelling of Lancing on his map, then wrote a letter on his typewriter:

Tues. Aug. 23

Dear Alicia,

For some time I have known where you are, and though I still consider it your affair and your privilege to hide yourself, I would appreciate it very much if you announced that you were still alive. Afterwards, if you wish, you may go into hiding again. Please believe that I bear no ill feelings against you, and hope that you do not against me. I suggest that you go to your parents’ house. You do not have to see me, if you don’t wish to. But your staying away is making it increasingly difficult for me to live and to work. With very best wishes and love,

Syd

He reread the letter, put it into an envelope and sealed it. It was certainly mild enough, he thought. Threats would get him nowhere with Alicia, though on the train to Suffolk, he had composed threatening and angry letters in his mind, letters that mentioned Edward Tilbury. He knew what was happening inside Alicia: she was ashamed of having shacked up with Mr. Tilbury, and was having more trouble facing her family than the world, probably. Yet it was impossible to imagine Alicia facing up to the police first, ringing them or dropping into a station and saying, “My name is Alicia Bartleby, and here I am.” Therefore, Sydney had had to suggest that she break the news through her family. The family was still a sort of nest, where she would be protected. Unless, of course, she decided to go into a police station on Tilbury’s arm, but Sydney doubted if Tilbury had the courage to do that. He didn’t look the type. Sydney drove to Framlingham to post the letter, because they had a later collection than Roncy Noll, and he wanted her to get the letter tomorrow.

The next morning, there was a letter from Dreifuss, Scott and Co., Sydney’s American agents, on the floor under the letter slot, and he opened it eagerly. It was from Jim Dreifuss, and said:

Aug. 22

Dear Syd,

S. & S. seem quite interested in THE PLANNERS (I like it too, need I say, a great improvement) but they are worried about the publicity you’re getting here. Sharpshooting in one gossip column, that’s the latest, and of course there was a lot of stuff in July when your wife disappeared. S. & S. want to wait before committing themselves, but I think we can clinch it after. . .

Sydney felt a little faint. He went into the kitchen and automatically started making coffee.

And was Alicia opening her letter at this moment? Sydney hoped so. He wished now that he had said, if you don’t go to your parents in the next twenty-four hours, dear, I’ll have to come down and get you. But he hadn’t said that, and he could easily imagine Alicia sitting in a blue funk for the next week. Sydney drank coffee, but couldn’t prepare any breakfast.

Inspector Brockway dropped in at eleven that morning. His message was that Sydney might be asked by Scotland Yard to come to London to answer a few more questions. “I gathered they might want you there for a few days,” the Inspector said. “They’d like to ask you some questions along with Mr. Polk-Faraday.”

Sydney had in his hand a letter to Jim Dreifuss which he had just been going out to post, saying he was positive the whole affair would be cleared up within three days, though he could not tell Jim why just now. Sydney said, “I’m sorry, Inspector, but I don’t care to go.”

The Inspector smiled slightly. “If you don’t, they’ll come to see you. It’s not a question of their taking you to London forcibly, but you can’t avoid answering the questions they put to you. We’re all of us bound to answer questions put to us by the police. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”

Sydney felt he no longer knew what was reasonable and what wasn’t. But he felt he would have to prod Alicia again. His letter hadn’t been strong enough. “Yes, it’s reasonable,” Sydney said.

“Have you had any news of any kind?” asked the Inspector, glancing at the letter in Sydney’s hand.

“No, I’m sorry to say.”

When the Inspector left, Sydney waited until his car had turned around and disappeared, before he drove to Roncy Noll and posted his letter to America. In the post office, indifferent now as to what Mrs. Naylor at the window might think, he composed the following telegram and handed it to her:

PLEASE CONTACT YOUR PARENTS BY TOMORROW THURSDAY OR I SHALL HAVE TO COME FOR YOU. SYD.

In the afternoon, instead of an answering telegram from Alicia, or a joyous telephone call from her parents to say she was on the way to Kent, or a call from the police saying the same thing, there was a blast from Alex, a two-page letter with as many underlinings as an epistle from Queen Victoria.

. . . So now you’ve done it, old chum, got The Whip “postponed,” which as you know means
out
, rejected, corpsed. Exactly as I foresaw . . .

I mentioned to the police that your
own wife
had once spoken to me on the subject of your sanity, asked me if I thought you were a bit off. I think this is
important.
You’re in no mental state and haven’t been in some time to compose anything but maniacal, illogical farce (I’ve had to maneuver our plots back to commonsense a million times, if you recall) or melodrama spun out of thin air, like a spider web. But you’ll be caught in your
own
web, Syd, and you are now. For your own sake, I advise you to hang onto what shred of sanity you may still have and make a clean breast of things to the police. Plead insanity, it’ll go easier for you. I believe that you did Alicia in and that you have convinced yourself
somehow
now that you didn’t, after cockily admitting it, even proclaiming it at first. But now you’d prefer to think it was all a dream, like something you made up for a story. Hittie agrees with me, so don’t think she may be on “your side” or that I’ve coerced her into being on mine. She simply feels as I do about you . . .

Because life would be pretty hellish for her if she didn’t, Sydney supposed. He only skimmed over the last page, a thunderous peroration about defending his work (by which Sydney gathered he would have to haul out those synopses notes) and his
family
, and about justice, the clean and normal mind, and the sanctity of law-abiding society. It had a strong Sneezum flavor.

Alicia had received the telegram by one or two in the afternoon, certainly by four, Sydney thought—unless of course she had moved from Lancing or never been there. But the telephone did not ring Wednesday evening, and he at last went to bed in a rage of impatience and frustration that kept him from sleeping for hours.

27

O
n Monday afternoon, when Alicia read in the evening papers that “a close acquaintance” of Sydney’s had called him more or less a psychopath, she became quite jittery, imagining Sydney’s rage against Alex. She was sure the close acquaintance was Alex Polk-Faraday. Up to now, she had heard of Alex’s comments via Vassily who got them from Inez and Carpie and told them to Edward. But Alex’s statements now were to the police and the press. Sydney must have gotten into a quarrel with Alex over their Whip series, Alicia thought. It was like Sydney to fly into a temper and ruin things when he was on the brink of succeeding.

Then Wednesday when Sydney’s letter arrived, followed by his telegram a few hours later, Alicia got into a near panic. Sydney knew where she was and even knew her name! He must also know that the man she was with was Edward Tilbury. He’d been spying, and of course doing a clever job of it. Alicia drank several scotches to steady herself, but she was in such a state by 3
P.M.
, she could neither sit nor stand still. She was alone, and had been alone since early Monday morning. She had the feeling now that Sydney would barge into the house at any moment and knock her senseless before he summoned the police. Around four, she did the unprecedented, and rang Edward in his London office. She had to wait a long time while they extricated him from a conference, and when Edward came to the telephone, he was angry.

“I had to ring you, Edward. I’m in a terrible state.”

“I’m very busy. Can I ring you back?”

“Can you come down tonight? Will you? Something’s happened, but I can’t tell you about it over the phone.”

“All right. I don’t know if I can make it before nine,” Edward said grumpily, and hung up.

Edward arrived at five minutes to nine. Alicia, hoping he would take the 7:30 train down from London, had been concentrating on the clock for the preceding hour, and when she at last heard his quick step on the stone walk, her relief was like an inward collapse. He tried the door, used his key, then looked surprised to see her huddled in the corner of the sofa.

“Why didn’t you let me in? What’s the matter, Alicia?”

“Oh, nothing. Now that you’re here,” she answered, and got up. “Fix you a drink?” She found herself unsteady from what she had drunk, more than a third of a bottle of scotch, which had done her no good at all.

“Come, come now, what’s up? Somebody say something to you?” Edward tossed down his briefcase and hat and followed her into the kitchen.

Alicia was determined not to tell Edward she had heard from Sydney, no matter what he asked her. Just where she went from there, however, she didn’t know. She had burned Sydney’s letter and telegram. “In a way,” she said finally. “I just got horribly nervous on the street today. I went out to buy something—and I came back with nothing.” She splashed scotch into two glasses.

“That’s all right, dear. Did you see someone? Did a policeman speak to you?”

“No.”

“Did you see someone you know?”

“No, none of that.” She handed him his glass, smiling.

They sipped their drinks in silence for a few moments, standing. Edward studied her with a worried expression.

She knew he was going to launch into another speech about her going home to her parents, as soon as he’d drunk half his drink. Where did one go from there?

When the speech came, she barely heard it. The same old argument, even the same old words. Alicia only knew that she had to have Edward with her, or she’d go under. Here or London or anywhere, but with her. “I’m not going back, so don’t talk about it,” she said finally, interrupting him, and with more force than she thought was left in her.

“But obviously you can’t stand the strain, and neither can I—much longer.”

“Would you—go back with me to my parents?” she asked.

“No. That I can’t do. It’s not fitting. It’s impossible.” He lit a cigarette. “But I think I should start things moving by going back to London. You’ll never make a move unless I do. I feel I should go back and stay there. And I should go now. I should go back tonight.” He moved restlessly about the room.

“Oh, Edward, don’t
leave
me,” Alicia wailed with the start of tears.

He smiled and patted her shoulder. She was standing by the sofa. “Darling, I’ll be waiting for you. You know that. Whatever we have to face, we’ll face together. But don’t make me run the risk of losing my position—and finding it damned difficult to get another, if I do.” Edward spoke passionately now.

“Then stay here,” she pleaded.

“That I can’t, darling. Forgive me, but I cannot. I must go.” Hesitantly at first, then more purposefully, Edward began to gather his belongings, preparatory to packing his suitcase that was in the bedroom closet.

And absurdly, it crossed Alicia’s mind that she owed Edward seventy-two pounds, because he had paid all the bills, almost, since they had been together. She could easily repay him out of the hundred pounds that would be at the bank in Ipswich by September 2. She remembered, only a month ago, when finances had been her most embarrassing problem. Now money seemed a triviality compared to the total wreckage around her. She lifted her glass and tried to drink it all down at once, almost succeeded, but choked on the last couple of inches. Edward came back into the room as she was bent over, coughing, and she turned and darted for the door.

It was cool outside. She ran into the dusk, ran faster at the sound of Edward’s voice behind her, calling her name.