The Strange Story of Linda Lee (7 page)

Since writing her mother a brief note shortly after arriving in London, Linda had not written again. She had then determined to regard her grim past as though it had been a bad dream from which she had woken to her real and promising new life; and she had since been so fully occupied that memories of it came to her only infrequently. But now she was able to look back on it dispassionately, and realise that there had been at least some bright spots in her otherwise hateful existence.

Apart from her affair with Jim during her last few months at home, those few bright spots had been almost entirely due to her mother, who had skimped to buy her a new frock or a pair of nylons now and then. She had been as good a parent as she could be under the circumstances and must, Linda felt sure, have been
greatly worried at the thought of her being on her own in London.

In consequence, she decided that she ought both to reassure her mother about her well-being, and make some gesture to show her appreciation of the love she had received from her.

This resulted in her writing a letter to say that she had been very fortunate in getting a job as a companion—although, naturally, she did not disclose the sex of her employer—and that she lived in a very pleasant house where she was well fed and well cared for. Then, knowing how terribly short of money her mother always was, she enclosed in the letter five one-pound notes and said that, as long as her good luck lasted, she hoped to send a similar sum every month or six weeks. Against the rather remote possibility that, if she gave her address, her mother or Jim might come up to London to see her—which was the last thing she wanted—she said that any reply should be sent
poste restante
to the Great Portland Street Post Office.

A week later she went there and collected a reply. It proved a strange mixture of relief, gratitude for the money and bitter reproaches. Pa had been furious about her running away, got drunk and taken it out of her mother by beating her and blacking an eye. Jim had come to the house, told them that he had been ‘walking out’ with Linda, and been terribly cut up at her having left home without a word to him. He was a fine young man, earning good money in a steady job, and as nice a fellow as any girl could wish for. He was willing to make an honest woman of her, so why couldn’t she come back and marry him? If she remained in London, she might meet some city slicker who would get her into trouble. The letter went on:

What have I done to deserve all this? First Sid clears out. He writes now and then, though your Pa don’t know that. He’s married and has two little ones, both girls. He’s in a good job, to do with the City authorities in Montreal. But he don’t send me any money, or his address. And now you. Two children that I’ve slaved to bring up decent, and neither of them here to be a bit of comfort as I get old. It’s enough to give you the heartbreak. If you are going with a fellow on your evenings off, do watch your periods, dear. And write again soon
.

Up in her bedroom, Linda laughed herself silly over the expression ‘city slicker.” Her mother must have picked it up in her girlhood when reading some cheap novelette. Then it occurred to Linda that she had met one, or at least, if her mother knew about dear, plump, rosy-cheeked Rowley, she would regard him in that light. But ‘trouble’—no. Linda had no intention of letting him put her in the family way. By now she knew quite well how to look after herself.

About brother Sid having also withheld his address she was not at all surprised. After all, he had made off with the best part of two hundred pounds of Pa’s money. And Pa could be vicious mentally as well as physically. He might quite well have demanded it back and, if Sid failed to pay up, put the police on to him. She wondered what sort of job Sid could have got with the Municipality of Montreal. It sounded quite important, which was surprising, as his education had been no better than her own. Still, he had a streak of their father’s hard forcefulness in him, and he might have struck lucky.

As for ‘writing again soon’—definitely not. She could tell her mother nothing about the life she was really leading, so what was there to write about? She would send her another five pounds now and again, in
a plain envelope, but she had no intention whatsoever of entering on even an occasional exchange of letters.

Within a fortnight Linda had both taken over the household and had insisted on being run in by Miss Adams, to replace her as Rowley’s secretary. Although she had failed to master shorthand, she was a competent touch-typist, and took his letters straight on to the machine. Naturally, the strange symbols and fantastic calculations Rowley used to work out his problems on nuclear energy were as meaningless to her as they had been to Miss Adams; but she typed out very neatly the essays he wrote in longhand, and filed all his papers efficiently.

During August Rowley gave several small dinner parties to introduce Linda to his friends. She slipped easily into her new role as his hostess and they all soon accepted her as a pleasant new acquaintance.

Eric twice stayed the night and plainly showed his liking for his new ‘niece’. Each time he came he brought her flowers and gave her an avuncular kiss on the cheek. The more she saw of him the more attracted to him she became, and there were times when she had difficulty in putting out of her mind that it was of him she thought every time Rowley made love to her. Several times she decided that she must try to break herself of this habit; but by then it had become such an essential part to her giving herself unrestrainedly to Rowley that she found she could not do so without imagining herself to be in the younger man’s arms.

In September Rowley took her to Venice. For Linda their stay at Cipriani’s was another revelation. They spent their mornings either in or by the splendid swimming pool, and lunched and dined on the garden terrace looking out toward the Lido. In the afternoons
they went ashore to visit the galleries and the many beautiful churches, then listened to the bands in St. Mark’s Square, outside Florian’s and Quardi’s, while drinking Camparis before returning for dinner.

In January they went for three weeks to Nice, where Rowley hired a car to take them for expeditions up to St. Paul de Vence or to Cannes, Beaulieu, St. Tropez and Monte Carlo. Walking along the Promenade des Anglais in the winter sunshine, she became more radiant than ever, and wherever they went heads turned to look at her.

In May they went to Paris. The chestnut trees were in blossom, the girls gay in their new summer dresses. They lunched and dined in the best restaurants, went to night clubs, visited the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the Conciergerie, where Marie Antoinette had been imprisoned, the Sacré Cœur, the Invalides, and drove out to Versailles and Fontainebleau.

Between their stays on the Continent, their life in London continued happily. They regularly gave little dinner parties and were asked back in return. Rowley’s friends became hers too, and now and then she went shopping or to a cinema with their wives.

The only jarring note in their existence was Tuesday nights when the Spilkins still always came to dinner. As Elsie had lived in the house most of the years while she had been growing up, Rowley still behaved like a father to her. For his sake Linda endeavoured to get closer to her, but in vain. They had nothing whatever in common; Linda was a born enjoyer, Elsie a dyed-in-the-wool do-gooder. Her husband was obviously subservient to her and eagerly endorsed all her opinions.

Eric continued to come to the house on average about twice a month, to dine and sleep. Sometimes there were other people dining, but more frequently
Rowley and Linda were alone with him. Owing to these evenings, when the two men talked of old times, she had long since come to know all about Eric’s past.

She learned from Rowley that Eric had lost his parents tragically while still in his teens. They had both been burned to death in a fire and he had no other relative than the sister whose daughter Linda was supposed to be. The shock of his parents’ death had caused him to have fits of depression, to become introspective and unable to make friends easily. It was on account of his being such a lonely young man that Rowley had taken him under his wing and acted as an affectionate older brother to him.

A few years after the war he had made an unfortunate marriage. He had learned too late that the girl was hopelessly unstable. She drank too much and then proved easy game for any man she fancied. When Eric had told her that he meant to divorce her, she had threatened to commit suicide. He had not believed her, but she had carried out her threat, after drinking nearly a bottle of whisky, by driving her car over a cliff near Beachy Head.

All this added to the fascination he had for Linda. Not having been born until after the Second World War, none of her contemporaries had been in it and decorated for bravery; so, from the beginning, she had regarded Eric as an almost mythical figure, and endowed him with a halo. That he should have overcome his early inability to mix happily with others and turned himself into a model of self-assured light-heartedness was, she felt, an equally courageous feat of a different kind. The knowledge of his spoiled youth and tragic marriage aroused in her the motherly feelings that play so large a part in woman’s nature. These,
combined with the physical attraction he had for her, resulted in his never being far from her thoughts, and she was convinced that she would never meet another man who so completely fulfilled her ideal of what a man should be.

That second summer, on two occasions, first in June and again in August, when Eric proposed himself for the night, the dates happened to coincide with those when Rowley was going on one of his trips to Shrivenham. But he insisted that that made no difference—Eric must come just the same.

On both occasions Linda and he sat up till the small hours, replenishing their drinks from time to time and deep in conversation. They were evenings of perfect companionship and when they said good night after their first long session together, he said:

‘Linda, you’re a girl in a million. Old Rowley was damn’ lucky to have met you that night on the train. You’ve made a new man of him.’

On the second occasion he actually took her in his arms and kissed her on a small mole she had under her left ear, not passionately but very gently and reverently, as though she were something sacred. She let him do so without protest, and when she got up to her room she found that she was trembling. She now had no doubt at all that Eric was in love with her, and she had known for a long time that she was desperately in love with him.

The happiness of that knowledge was mingled with a sadness that nothing could come of their love, for she had no intention of being unfaithful to Rowley, and felt quite certain that Eric would not make things difficult for her by trying to take advantage of the fact that she was obviously attracted to him.

In September she and Rowley again went to Venice. It was on their fourth day there that, while swimming in the pool, he had his first heart attack. Two other men fished him out, and a doctor who happened to be present dealt with the situation. Rowley was put to bed, and Linda, seized with terrible distress and anxiety, did everything possible for him. For a week she nursed him devotedly, then he was declared fit to travel and, to her immense relief, she got him safely back to England.

He was soon fully recovered, but from then on had to be careful not to exert himself. His doctor warned him that in future sexual intercourse might prove very dangerous to him. When Rowley told Linda this, she said at once that he must not come to her room any more.

With considerable diffidence she took the opportunity to broach a subject that had been worrying her ever since he had had his coronary, and said:

‘Darling, I hate even to think of such a possibility, but if you had died in the pool, or do so from another attack, I’ll be back where I was eighteen months ago, when you took pity on me in the train. Even worse off, in fact, because apart from the terrible grief I’d feel at losing you, having been so wonderfully spoilt by you I’d be even less capable of making both ends meet in an ill-paid job, and I wouldn’t have a penny.’

He pressed her hand. ‘Don’t worry, my sweet. For months past I have been meaning to make a new will, to ensure that you are well provided for. I’ll put it off no longer, and see to it next week. And I’m sure you know that although we can no longer sleep together I love you as fondly as ever.’

Nevertheless by early December he felt so much like
his old self that he asked her to let him. She was very loath to agree, but she had become so accustomed to enjoying his caresses that, during the past ten weeks, she had sadly missed them; so, with considerable anxiety, she gave way.

They were both very careful not to let themselves become over-excited, and no harm resulted. But they decided that it would be wise to restrain themselves to once every few weeks.

In February they went to the south of Spain and, after a fortnight idling in the sun, went on to Madrid, Seville, then Granada. There Rowley had his second attack. It was due to their having failed to get a taxi down in the city, so they had walked back up the long, steep hill to the Granada Palace Hotel, with its marvellous view over the valley.

Again Linda suffered torments of anxiety, but again Rowley recovered and she got him home safely. After a few weeks he was once more as spry as ever. But now they took a firm line. Visits to Linda’s bedroom had become too great a risk, and they resigned themselves to agreeing that these should take place no more.

March, April, May and June of 1971 went by, for Linda with a growing sense of frustration. During the first thirteen months that she had been Rowley’s mistress, in spite of his age he had, owing to his experience as a lover, not only satisfied her but, as she thought of Eric, aroused her passions to a pitch that she had never known during her brief encounters in the barn with Jim.

Throughout the autumn that followed Rowley’s first coronary, she had sadly missed the revels in which they had indulged at least once a week. Then, from December until February, there had at least been their
monthly sessions to look forward to. The two months of continence during the autumn had been bad enough; but now it was over four months since she had known the delights of being made love to.