An Awfully Big Adventure - Beryl Bainbridge [65]
‘You’ve been seen,’ Freddie said. ‘According to George, Bunny saw her coming out of your basement. And I shouldn’t wonder if Potter hasn’t been on his knees peering through the railings.’
‘Bunny’s a decent man. I doubt if he’d say anything to harm me.’ O’Hara’s hook caught the rim of the mug. It tipped over, sloshing liquid across the photograph of himself astride a motorcycle. He dried it on his sleeve and said, ‘I’ve a snapshot at home of myself aged ten wearing an Eton collar. It could be her.’
‘You’re obsessed,’ Freddie told him. He wanted to take O’Hara to the Beaux Arts Club to drink him into sleep.
O’Hara refused. They both knew why. ‘I can’t help it,’ O’Hara argued. ‘I just feel she’s a part of me.’
He was writing a letter when Stella tapped at the window. He wasn’t, after all, immediately pleased to see her. He was a little tired of coaxing her into being friendly. Talking to her was like hacking a way through a jungle.
‘Is your father all right?’ he asked. ‘Is it a sprain or a break?’
‘I haven’t been home,’ she said. ‘And he isn’t my father.’
She was vitriolic about Geoffrey. She couldn’t understand how he dared to show his face after what he had done to Mr Potter. Why, he was boasting about it in the prop-room. And after the curtain call, when he was going upstairs to the extras’ dressing-room and had bumped into Mr Potter – she wasn’t talking at second-hand but had actually witnessed the scene – far from showing remorse he had confronted him as though he was going to head-butt him for the second time. Mr Potter had flinched. His monocle had plopped from his eye.
‘Geoffrey has his reasons,’ said O’Hara. You don’t know the full story.’
‘He’s unbalanced,’ asserted Stella. ‘He was drummed out of Sandhurst for shooting somebody.’
‘Don’t talk rot.’
She flared up, shouting that Geoffrey came from the privileged classes. He was a protected species. Mr Potter was a wronged man, a victim.
‘You’re speaking through your hat,’ he said. ‘Potter’s spent the last fifteen years harming people like Geoffrey. Hilary was eighteen when Meredith picked him up at the BBC Club.’
‘Him . . . ?’ she said, her face blank.
‘He never stood a chance. And there’s been a string of others. Why do you suppose he got thrown out of Windsor?’
‘You’re just jealous of him.’
He laughed.
She told him she was going and she wouldn’t be coming back. Not ever. ‘Thank you for having me,’ she said, grotesquely enough. She had tears in her eyes.
‘For God’s sake,’ he cried, exasperated, and was relieved when she left, slamming the door behind her. He had his letter to finish. Yet ten minutes later he felt he had treated her unkindly and regretted not having gone after her. Perhaps tomorrow, before the matinee performance, she would go with him to the news-theatre for a sandwich. She liked going there. He’d open up his heart to her, explain how much he cared. Trouble was, she’d probably refuse to go unless he trapped her into it. If he called at her house in the morning on the pretext of enquiring after Mr Bradshaw and asked her straight out, in front of her mother, to walk with him to the theatre, she’d have to accept. It would look odd otherwise.
He was pacing back and forth, mulling over what he would say to her, when the biology student knocked at his door for the loan of a shilling for the gas-meter. He was so damned humble that O’Hara was obliged to offer him a cup of coffee. Afterwards he slept badly, his mind swilling with nightmares. He was drowning in the lagoon, sinking beneath the ticking belly of the crocodile.
At midday he walked to the Aber House Hotel and rang the bell. A woman appeared in the area below holding a dustpan and brush. She asked what he was selling. ‘My name’s O’Hara,’ he said. ‘I’m from the theatre. I’m anxious to know how Mr Bradshaw is.’ He was down the basement steps before Lily could stop him. Flustered, she let him in.
Vernon was sitting in his armchair by the fire, his injured ankle propped on a telephone book. He hadn’t shaved and was at a disadvantage.
‘Nice of you to call,’ he said. ‘Bring a chair