The Hireling (26 page)

Leadbitter didn’t answer. They were going fast, too fast for the engine of the car, which might be irreparably damaged, too fast for their own safety. But did it matter? So few things seemed to matter.

‘There’s one thing you haven’t told us,’ said Hughie suddenly, ‘and that is how you know that my friend didn’t send that letter,’

‘Oh, don’t bother him,’ put in Constance. ‘We don’t want a post-mortem on it, do we? What matters is that I didn’t send it - I’m in the clear. That affair is closed, isn’t it? Unless you still think -‘

‘No, I don’t,’ said Hughie. ‘But I still want to know -please don’t drive so fast, Leadbitter - who did send it Who could have known about us? I certainly told no one.

‘Nor did I,’ said Constance.

‘Oh, didn’t you?’ said Leadbitter in his harshest voice. ‘Are you sure you didn’t? Think again,’

There was a pause.

‘My mind has become a blank,’ said Constance. ‘But I don’t talk in my sleep, and there’s no one to hear me if I did,’

‘It’s an absolute mystery,’ said Hughie. ‘We didn’t tell anybody, and yet someone knew,’

‘You didn’t tell anybody and yet someone knew,’ sneered Leadbitter. ‘Odd, wasn’t it? But you did tell someone,’

‘Who?’ asked Hughie, still incredulous.

‘You told me’ shouted Leadbitter. ‘Do you think I’m deaf? What do you think I am? Do you think I’m just a bit of the car, or one of these damned bloody automatons? Do you think I can sit here without hearing all the poppycock you talk?’

‘Now listen -‘ Hughie began.

‘Listen? I should just think I was listening - I can’t help listening, worse luck,’

‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ said Hughie, attempting dignity, ‘and don’t drive so fast. You realize you’ve done me a great injury, don’t you? Or are you in the habit of sending people anonymous letters?’

‘I’m not in the habit of driving spivs who earn their daily bread by night like any common prostitute,’ retorted Leadbitter.

‘Perhaps not, but what is it to do with you how I behave? I haven’t done you any harm, have I? I’ve always paid you-‘

‘You’ve paid me?’ Leadbitter said. ‘You make me laugh. I know where the money came from.’

‘Oh please don’t worry him, Hughie,’ Constance said. ‘He’s upset, you can see that. After all, he told us that he sent the letter, and he needn’t have told us. He could have left you thinking it was me, and then how wretched I should have been, and I don’t think you would have been happy either. Now we’re both happy, at least I am, and what else counts?’

‘You’re not selfish, are you?’ Leadbitter said. ‘You always think of other people, don’t you? Here I’ve been sitting in this car an hour and more, and heard you talking, and what’s it all been about? First Hughie moans because he can’t get married, and then you moan because he puts the blame on you; talk about people being sorry for themselves! And then I say you didn’t send the letter, and all at once everything in the garden’s lovely. “Nothing else matters if I’m happy I’ - and Leadbitter mimicked Constance’s voice. ‘You couldn’t spare a thought for anyone else, could you? All this time I’ve been waiting to hear a name and I haven’t heard it and I should like to hear you say it, one of you -‘

His voice became more threatening.

‘Whose name, Hughie?’ Constance whispered. ‘Whose name does he want us to say?’

Hughie didn’t answer: they both searched their minds.

‘I’m not going to wait much longer,’ Leadbitter said. ‘It’s an uncommon name and you both know it. If you don’t tell me I’ve got a plan for you, and it will jog your memories all right-‘

‘Does he mean Ernestine?’ said Constance, wondering and frightened.

Leadbitter hesitated a moment.

‘Oh no, I don’t mean her,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t come into it, does she? She doesn’t matter, does she, she doesn’t count. She’s not worth mentioning. She was only your stooge, your sugar-mummy, whose money was to keep the two of you on heat! It doesn’t matter how she feels, does it, when she’s lost her fiance” - though he was a heel and she’s well rid of him. It doesn’t matter how she feels - she may be dead for all you care! Is she dead?’ he demanded suddenly.

‘No, of course not,’ Hughie said. ‘She isn’t dead. Lady Franklin isn’t dead. Why should she be?’

‘How is she, then? You never told us. You told us all about yourself and how you felt - you didn’t say how she was when you left her - if she was ill or crying, or standing or sitting or lying down - How was she, or didn’t you notice?’

‘She cried a little,’ Hughie said.

‘She cried a little! Did she ask for anything, or did you help her?’

‘I left her to herself,’ said Hughie. ‘What else could I do? She wouldn’t say any more,’

‘You left her crying? You didn’t stop to ask if there was anything you could do? You just left her? Or did you say, “Sorry, but I’m off to see my Constance now”?’

Hughie didn’t answer, but Constance, who was crying herself, said:

‘He’s quite right, Hughie. We should have thought more of Ernestine, of course. I don’t know why we didn’t … I … I hope she isn’t too unhappy,’

‘Oh no, she’s not unhappy,’ Leadbitter said. ‘She’s gone out to a party - she’s having a whale of a time, singing and dancing, just like we are. We’re all happy, aren’t we? But I know someone who isn’t, though you’d never guess who,’

He was talking to the air in front of him, and crouching over the wheel.

‘Don’t tell us of anyone else who is unhappy, please, Mr Leadbitter,’ Constance said. ‘I don’t think I could bear it,’

‘Oh yes, you could,’ said Leadbitter. ‘It isn’t anyone who matters, nobody who counts. But if she knew - shall you tell her it was I who sent the letter?’

‘Why no, of course not,’ Constance said. ‘What good would it do? Besides, we shan’t be seeing her again.’

‘I shan’t be seeing her,’ said Hughie, finding his tongue, ‘but you will, Constance. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t see her - she doesn’t know it was you who -And I think you ought to tell her,’

‘Why?’ said Constance.

‘So that she shan’t suspect the wrong person. So that she shall suspect the right person, if you like,’ he added vindictively.

‘I shan’t tell her,’ Constance said.

‘Then I shall. If I can’t see her, I can write to her, I shall have to write to her about… about a lot of things, and then I’ll tell her,’

‘You’ll tell her?’ Leadbitter said.

‘Yes, why not? She’ll know then she has an enemy, and be on her guard,’

‘An enemy?’ said Leadbitter. ‘Me, her enemy?’

‘Only an enemy would have sent that letter,’

‘I’m not her enemy,’ said Leadbitter contemptuously.

‘You acted like one. If you’re not, why did you send the letter?’

‘Because,’ said Leadbitter, ‘because …’ he stopped. ‘You won’t believe me if I tell you,’

‘We’ll try to, won’t we?’ Hughie said.

‘I’d like someone to know,’ said Leadbitter, reflectively. ‘I’d like someone to know, but not you, you — And come to think of it, there’s only one person, one person in the world, I want to tell it to. The rest, well, they can think what they like. You can think what you like. But I’d like her to know, I’d like her to know I didn’t mean to hurt her, for if she doesn’t, what’s the use of going on? I shouldn’t want to,’

‘Look here,’ said Hughie. ‘Can’t we talk about this after dinner? I don’t know where we’ve got to - we seem to be going up a mountain. Do you know where we are?’

‘I haven’t been noticing,’ said Leadbitter. ‘She said to me once, “If you have anything to tell anyone, tell them,or it may spoil your life, as it has mine.” I thought it funny at the time, that you should want to tell anybody anything except where they get off, but now I don’t, I want to tell her, and I can’t tell her, you see. But if you tell her that I sent the letter, without telling her why -‘

‘We don’t know why,’ said Hughie. ‘You haven’t told us,’

‘It was because,’ said Leadbitter, ‘because … No, I can’t say it. … It wouldn’t make sense to her. She’d … she’d feel insulted. But promise me one thing,’

‘Well, what is it?’ Hughie asked.

‘Promise you won’t tell her that I sent the letter,’

‘I won’t promise anything of the kind,’ shouted Hughie. ‘You got us all into this mess, and you must stand the racket. What does it matter what she thinks of you - you’re only a hireling!’

‘Oh, so I’m only a hireling, am I?’ answered Leadbitter. ‘Well, I shan’t be much longer,’ A wave of revulsion for everything his life had meant to him swept over him irresistibly. He pressed his foot on the accelerator. The car sprang forward. The street was dark; towering buildings on the right shut out what light there was. The darkness was in Leadbitter’s mind too; he couldn’t see to think, and when a tree suddenly loomed up half-way across the road, with a warning white blaze on it, he was never to know whether he drove into it on purpose or not. But when he saw the crash coming he turned round and shouted, ‘Tell Lady Franklin that I -‘

For a few minutes the car stood by itself, in the empty, ill-lit street, as motionless as the tree-trunk from which it had rebounded. Untouched at the back, still gleaming with newness, in front it was a wreck of torn and twisted metal, like the idea of a death agony by a modern sculptor. Then a passer-by stopped and peered at it, and was soon joined by another and another, and when a little group had formed, curiosity overcame their dread and they went nearer. The chauffeur was sitting with his head resting on the driving wheel.

‘Why, he’s asleep!’ said someone.

But he wasn’t. Later it was found that a strut broken off the driving wheel had run into his chest, a chromium-plated spike of metal, so thin that when they pulled it out the wound was scarcely visible.

Hughie died in hospital but Constance gradually recovered. She had had concussion and shock and for some days her mind was in confusion. When it began to settle down her first thought was of Hughie.

She would have to adjust herself to life without him. She had done that once before, in a sense, when he told her he was going to marry Ernestine; but the misery of those moments was soon over and it was entirely an emotional response. Besides, there was a great difference between not having him in her life and knowing he was dead. Now she tried to think about him, not just feel about him. How much would she miss him? She had to find an attitude towards him, and it would be no help to blind herself to his faults.

During their last ride together those faults had been very much in evidence. She knew his faults, of course, and thought she knew the answers to them - the answers to his critics, of whom she herself was chief. You couldn’t trust him, she admitted that, and by admitting it, by making it a kind of postulate, she had drawn its sting. ‘Oh, we all know you can’t trust Hughie!’ His unreliability had become a proverb, and as impersonal as a proverb, but when she saw it in action, and smarted under it and blushed for it, it didn’t seem impersonal, it seemed the essence of him. She blushed for herself too, remembering the lash of Leadbitter’s tongue; he had flayed them jointly for their selfishness. Some of his strictures came back to her; she deserved them every bit as much as Hughie had. A spasm of self-dislike went through her, and disliking herself she couldn’t help, almost for the first time, disliking Hughie. Her vision of their relationship was changed. No longer could she see herself as his protector, the stronger of the two; she realized that he had been the stronger and made her act out of her character.

For this she couldn’t forgive him, but not to forgive him made her miserable; it poisoned the past and would poison the future. She simply must forgive him, but how? - how find a thought that would reconcile her to him? It came, the same thought that had alienated her, but turned the other way round. For in life she and Hughie, though they had been lovers, had not been quite together; always there had been the feeling that she was too good for him. Everybody told her so, and though she denied it, in her heart she believed it, and when she was with him was possessed by it, feeling a governess even in his arms.

She could not look down on him now; vis-a-vis Ernestine they were equally at fault.

But to a humanist like Constance it was no help to admit that they had both acted badly. She did not subscribe to Christian ethics; self-abasement, she felt, would get her nowhere. She believed in giving herself her due. If in the crisis she had let Hughie rule her, it was a momentary lapse and an exception; she had always thought of him as depending on her, and if she ever thought of death in relation to the two of them, it was her death that she dreaded, for his sake, because without her he would have no one to keep him afloat. For that reason, and because he was younger than she, it never occurred to her that he might die first - or die at all. In fairness to herself she realized that her surrender to his proposal that she should remain his mistress after he was married was not so abject as it seemed: with Ernestine he would be lost, but with Constance to keep an eye on him he might still be saved. He was her charge, her trust; and it was a steady consolation to her that she had never failed him and now could never fail him. She had been through a great deal with Hughie; many times she had asked herself if she could go on loving him, and always in the end the answer had been yes; each time it had been easier to say yes; and now that he was dead she still said yes. The old pattern of their relationship had reasserted itself, and she could still think of him with love -another consolation, and the greatest, which for a fleeting moment she feared that she had lost.

When the news of the accident came out, Constance was too ill to read the papers. Afterwards she was shown two or three accounts. Under the splashed headlines they were factual and objective; they said that Hughie’s head had gone through the inner windscreen, but they did not suggest that there had been special friendship between him and Constance. Their three names were there, of course; but within twenty-four hours the first wave of public interest had spent itself. The accident was just another case of death on the roads.

Constance herself could not remember it or what happened just before it. In front of the place where it should be a black mist hung, not solid like a curtain, but as impenetrable. Within the darkness something moved, something that struggled to come to life, to be born out of the womb of her memory. Throughout her convalescence it nagged her with a sense of incompleteness, like an untied shoe-lace - though she had far more serious things to occupy her, interviews with the police, for instance, trying to get facts out of her about the accident. An empty brandy bottle and a used tumbler, both intact, had been discovered in the car: was the inference that the driver had been drunk? No, said Constance; she had been unwell and drunk some of the brandy that the driver kept for emergencies, and Hughie had joined her, but to the best of her recollection the driver had taken nothing, and this was confirmed by the post-mortem. (Leadbitter had been carved up as well as killed.) Hughie had asked her to dine with him at Richmond; she had felt ill and they were coming back. Then how was it that the accident occurred in Hampstead, when she lived on Campden Hill? And why was the car heading northwards when it struck the tree? Constance said she had no idea, and pleaded loss of memory.