Her face went from a shade of pink to blood red. ‘You must be in trouble.’
‘Somebody’s going to kill me.’
‘Oh, when?’
It was the best thing she’d heard in years. ‘I’ll fix you up with a nice seat in the shade as soon as I know. You seem in a bad mood today.’
She put the iron down and turned away. I knew from the change in the contours of her shoulders that she was crying. An earring fell off as she said: ‘How could you do it to me? How could you?’
I’d always thought that what the eye didn’t see the heart didn’t grieve over, so had she, by some magic message system, heard about my ten-minute grapple with Alice Whipplegate, or my brief encounter with Agnes in the New World? ‘How could I what?’
‘Do that to Maria, and then bring her here.’
‘I took pity on her, the same night I brought her. What the hell do you mean?’ I was arrowing into a pit of fatigue. ‘I thought I’d come home to my everlasting love. But I’m not staying. I’m off. I’ve had my bellyful.’
‘You’ve had your bellyful, have you?’ She wiped her eyes and took off the other earring. ‘You’re a treacherous, lecherous beast. You had the cheek to bring Maria here when she was pregnant, and you thought you’d get away with that, did you?’
I staggered back. I really did, hitting my head against the closed door. ‘Pregnant?’
‘I suppose you didn’t know,’ she jeered. ‘You fuck women as if babies still come from under bushes. And you pick them when they aren’t on the pill. It’s the only way you can do it. You walk along the street playing a game called “Is She On The Pill, Or Isn’t She?” — and all those who aren’t, you fancy. Oh, what a rat you are. Why did I ever meet you? — me, who comes from a good family and had a very religious upbringing?’
‘You didn’t tell me that when I first met you.’
She was crying again. ‘You didn’t ask me.’
I laughed. It wasn’t hysteria. It really was funny. ‘I had no idea Maria was pregnant.’
‘Well, she is.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘She slept with me after you left because she was in terror of the man she’d worked for. She kept thinking he’d come and get her. Then one morning she was sick all over the bed.’
I sat down. ‘Maybe it was a tin of salmon.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘Put the kettle on, and let’s have a cup of tea,’ I said.
‘This isn’t the Blitz. Put it on yourself.’
I tried to kiss her. ‘Are you sure you didn’t make her pregnant?’
She was a big woman, and the fist at my shoulder almost spun me off my feet. I put myself in a state of defence: ‘If you believe I made her pregnant you’ll believe anything. Did she tell you I did?’
‘She doesn’t say anything. But she’s in love with you. Whenever your name’s mentioned she looks ecstatic. You think I’m an idiot? It’s just one of your tricks.’
I put the kettle on and spread a slice of bread with good Dutch butter. ‘It’s my fault she’s here, that’s true. Trust a fool like me to bring somebody home like that. But how was I to know she was up the spout?’
‘If you didn’t know, who could?’
I spoke with my mouth full. ‘We’ve got to ask her direct.’ I took her by the arm. ‘Come on.’
In the living-room Maria was leaning close to her knitting, as if short sighted, black hair covering the side of her face. Her luscious figure was so visible I almost wished I had made her pregnant. If I went to bed with her I’d never want to get up again. The way I looked at her did nothing to convince Bridgitte that I was not responsible for her condition, and the smile Maria gave when she realised I was in the room only doubled the proof of my responsibility. ‘Maria, Bridgitte tells me you are going to have a child.’
She stood up, and put her half finished baby shawl on a chair. ‘Yes.’
‘Whose is it?’
She smiled, and pointed to both of us. ‘Your baby.’
I regretted there wasn’t a snowstorm outside that I could turn her into, thick wet flakes piling up beautifully all over the inhospitable soil. ‘Maria, you know it’s not mine. It can’t be, now, can it?’
Bridgitte actually stamped. ‘You’ll do anything to make her deny it.’
Maria’s dark and doll-like face screwed up as if to have a good cry. ‘You take baby. A gift.’
I’m sure she was an intelligent young woman, and we weren’t too far behind in our powers of perception, but her lack of English, and our turning against each other when in a crisis tended to confuse the issue. ‘I’ll take her to my father’s place.’ I didn’t know what else to say.
‘Not to that monster,’ Bridgitte cried.
She was right. It was an unreasonable suggestion, pregnant — oh God! — with disaster. He would make her write a Portuguese novel, then find a translator and pass it off as his own. ‘He wouldn’t molest a pregnant woman, though.’ I wanted to defend him against such outright rottenness though didn’t really see how I could. Bridgitte still did not get the drift of what Maria meant, so I decided to be a little more forthright, even if only to clear my good name, and asked as tactfully as I could:
‘Maria, who fucked you?’
She stopped crying, and looked at me so intently with her shining brown eyes that I knew she was staring into space. ‘Who fucked you, then?’ I shouted.
Bridgitte, both hands to her ears, looked at me with contempt and horror.
‘Mr Jeffrey,’ Maria said.
‘Jeffrey who?’
‘Har-lacks-stone’ — or Horlickstone, something like that.
‘The man you worked for?’
She nodded, and fell onto the carpet in a dead faint. We struggled upstairs with her and, on the landing, I edged her towards the spare room. ‘She sleeps in my bed,’ Bridgitte said.
‘Our bed, you mean. What for?’
She switched on the overhead light to tell me. ‘Because I don’t want to sleep with you. Because I like to sleep with her. Because Maria likes it as well. Isn’t that enough?’
‘Have it your way.’ I was appalled that she didn’t trust me even now. She saw me sloping into Maria’s room in the middle of the night to have it off with her. I’d never felt so offended. I pushed them into what had been described in the estate agent’s information sheet as the master bedroom, and went back to the kitchen to find it filled with steam from the boiling kettle. Enough water was left for a pot of tea. I poured Bridgitte a cup when she came down. ‘How is she?’
‘All right.’
‘Do you believe me now?’ I tried to kiss her, but she still wouldn’t have it.
‘You’ll have to go and see this Mr Horlickstone.’
‘What good will that do?’ I asked. ‘He’s married. He’s got four kids. And nobody would be able to prove anything.’
‘Then I’ll go and see him. I’ll take the shotgun.’
I trembled, knowing she would do it. Man shot dead in the prime of life by Calamity Jane. The newspapers would love it. Any number of photographers would descend on Upper Mayhem. My face would get on the front pages. The lads in Canada would know where I lived. Most of all, I couldn’t stand the thought of Bridgitte getting six months for murder.
‘I’ll do it,’ I promised.
‘Tomorrow?’
‘I’ll go now. I’ll take the car and be there by dawn. I’ll pull him from the new au pair’s bed and execute him against the ivy-clad garden wall. He’ll love it.’
She thought I was being serious. ‘You look tired. Do it tomorrow.’
I had no intention of moving anywhere for a few days. After more bread and butter I went into the damp bed in the spare room and slept till three the next afternoon, a big white whale chasing me eternally through hanging fronds of seaweed. Bridgitte tried to trawl me out about eight, and came up with tea at ten, but even her imagination must have told her I had to sleep myself out.