Death Lives Next Door. Gwendoline Butler

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СКАЧАТЬ such people. In her life she had had an inconvenient trick of picking up hangers-on in a way she could not quite account for.

      There had been the man in Monte Carlo. An unlikely place for Marion the austere to be, but she had been on a visit to an old sick aunt. In the intervals between listening to Auntie’s reminiscences of the Prince of Wales (she meant Edward VII, of course) and administering her medicine, she had escaped for long walks by the sea. The sea in spring there could be lovely and this had been in 1939 when people’s nerves were on edge and perhaps inclined them to do odd things, but she did not think this quite explained the man. She had noticed him looking at her first in the rose garden by the Casino: he had been looking at her expectantly as if he waited for her to speak. The oddest thing about him was that he knew where she lived; he was back there before she was, loitering again, expectantly. Expectant of what? Marion asked herself. Nothing that she was prepared to give anyway: he was a more rakish, selfish-looking man than Marion would have ever trusted herself to.

      And there had been others, faces in queues that had grinned and nodded at her; hands waved from doors that she had never opened; feet that seemed to expect hers to fall in step with them.

      Probably it was her appearance: Marion considered that she had a very usual, humdrum appearance; she was simply mistaken for someone else.

      Even Ezra had his place in this queue. She recalled the young earnest Ezra wearing his scholar’s gown over a duffle-coat so that he looked as square as Tweedledee. He had waited outside the lecture-room to speak to her after her justly celebrated, and often repeated, lecture on “The Myth of Guthrum”.

      Then she laughed.

      Perhaps it was unfair to number Ezra among them: admittedly he had seemed to know exactly what he wanted from her. A reference to a book she had mentioned in her lecture; was she certain she had got it right? Marion was certain; faced with such unusual assurance she was at first angry, then amused, and finally friendly. Afterwards she had understood that it was the assurance of utter ignorance; once Ezra had learnt the way around his world he would never have dared approach a lecturer with such a comment. By nature he had too little assurance, not too much.

      Marion shook her head; no, Ezra was something else again, and not one of the strange people who seemed to pop up in her life. After all he was still in her life, and the marked thing about the others was that after a time they disappeared. They lost heart, gave it up, and went.

      Or they had done so far. Unhappily this man seemed more persistent. She tried to laugh it off, to see it in its proper proportions. She told herself that some people had allergies, others had second sight, or what their best friends wouldn’t tell them, or some other social drawback; she had this.

      Only it had not happened for some time, indeed had never before happened in Oxford.

      Perhaps this was why for the first time she was taking it seriously instead of half dismissing it, as she had always done up to now, as imagination or coincidence.

      And also this man seemed so quiet but determined. She really couldn’t doubt that he was watching her, Marion.

      She was aware of him throughout the quiet routine of her day. She usually got up early in the morning, went down, got in the papers and milk, then returned to bed with coffee and toast. She slept lightly and badly and was always glad to begin the day again. Marion was an optimist; however tiresome yesterday had been, and however unpromising today looked, she always started off the day with a little glow of happiness. The man was never at his post in Chancellor Hyde Street as early as this, but by about eleven in the morning he had arrived unobtrusively and was watching her. Some days if she went off on a journey he followed, on other days she was able to leave him behind. He had, for instance, twice come after her to London and once when she went to the Midlands to give a lecture. It had occurred to her once or twice that it was a question of money whether the man travelled with her or not: when he had enough, he came; when he had not, he stayed behind. What she could not arrive at was his motive. She thought he was trying to observe all he could about her; he wanted to know exactly what she was like. “He seems to want to know if I am me,” thought Marion indignantly.

      She for her part was watching him, but she never could get very close. She had once, on Oxford station, taken her courage in both hands and marched up to him.

      “Well,” she said fiercely. “Do you know me?” She had been close enough to him then to see the slight jaundiced yellow under his pallor and to see the fine little lines round his eyes and mouth. He was younger than she was but still not young.

      He had said nothing, nothing at all.

      “Someone should teach you not to stare,” she had snapped, and she had felt herself grow red and cross.

      It was at this moment she swore she saw recognition in his eyes.

      Later she had looked at herself in her bedroom mirror and shaken her head. “Poor battered tired old Marion. Do you imagine you are still a femme fatale?”

      It had been one of her old bitter jokes to call herself a fatal woman. She had been fatal enough for poor Francis, in her fashion.

      From then on she had dismissed any thought of going to the police. She could imagine only too well how she would be received: the raised eyebrows, the sceptical smiles; the advice to see a doctor.

      She was under the care of a doctor in any case. Dear Dr. Steiner had been fumbling about, trying to find a cause and hence a cure for her headaches, for about a year now. “I can give you aspirins, Marion,” he had said. “I can alleviate the pains but we must find out what is causing them.” Marion had answered that she would be quite glad just to have alleviation. “It’s hindering my work, you know.” Dr. Steiner had looked at her for a long time before answering. “Ah yes, your work. You think a good deal about that?”

      Marion had nodded. It had been a rather one-sided conversation, as it was more or less bound to be, considering the doctor was peering down her throat with a light. “And do you dream a great deal, Marion?” This time Marion had shaken her head in a no. But it was not true; she did dream; she dreamt a great deal.

      She thought she could blame herself for this. There was another side to Marion of which her colleagues knew nothing, of which Ezra knew nothing, and of which the doctor knew nothing; she had another world, and it was this world which had triggered off her dreams.

      Every week she visited the children’s wards in the tall, old hospital near where she lived; she played with them, talked to them and tried to distract them. Boredom is a great hindrance to recovery. In this world she was a different person, she was slow moving, almost phlegmatic, calm. She was better tempered, too. So there was the academic Marion, the home Marion, the poetic Marion, and the hospital Marion. She had no name there; she was known as the Play Lady. Presumably someone, somewhere, in that great building knew her as Dr. Manning, but the name was lost.

      She valued this world of hers; she had found the entrance to it herself. She had gone to visit a friend and had wandered by mistake into the wrong ward. Her entrance was welcomed, and since Marion was at heart an entertainer, she could not help but respond. She amused them. She promised to return next week and she did so, and the week after. Very soon she was an accepted institution. She took them books, odd toys, and games, and wandered round from child to child. This period was the best time of all and would probably have gone on if some child had not discovered that Marion’s stories and talk were better than any book.

      She was missed when she was away. The children were accusing, with the unashamed egotism of those who know beyond a shadow of doubt that they are the centre of all possible worlds. “Why СКАЧАТЬ