The first thing Gwendolen thought of when she woke up was Mr. Singh's revelation. Mr. Singh htmself was not for her and she knew it, while Stephen Reeves was. Momentarily she had been carried away by his looks and his charm but, anyway, she didn't approve of cross-cultural marriages-miscegenation,they had called it when she was young-and the wife was a considerable stumbling block. The unknown and unseen Mrs. Singh she dismissed as a "tottering native woman in a veil." What Mr. Singh had told her now excluded almost everything else from her mind.
While she was absent, and not only absent but ill in the hospital,that man, that lodger, had been in her garden, twice been there, and dug holes in the flowerbeds. Once upon a time, in the days of Chawcer prosperity, a real gardener had attended to horticultural matters, the beds had blossomed with lupins and delphiniums, zinnias and dahlias, the shrubs had been trimmedand the lawn mown to a velvet carpetlike texture. To some extentGwendolen saw it like that still, or she saw it as allowed togrow a little shabby, but nothing that a handyman and a lawnmower wouldn't set to rights in an hour or so. And into this small paradise the lodger had ventured with a spade-almost certainly her spade-and dug holes. He had gone into the garden and dug holes without her permission, without even attemptingto get her permission, and in order to do so musthave passed though her kitchen, her washhouse, probably depositing the thing in the copper on his way. Why had he? To bury something, of course. Possibly, no, probably, he had stolen something of hers, something valuable, and buried it out there until he could find a receiver of stolen goods. She would have to go all over the house, finding out what was missing. Rage returned, banging in her blood vessels. It was no wonder that, now she was wide awake, she felt distinctly strange, her head swimming and her body very weak.
For all that, she would very likely have attempted the stairs,taking them slowly and with rests at every landing, but for Queenie "Winthrop arriving as she was making up her mind. She heard the door open, hoped it might be the lodger to save her climbing fifty-two stairs, and had her hopes dashed by Queenie's voice calling, "Yoo-hoo, it's only me."
Gwendolen wondered how long they were going to keepthis up, she and Olive, calling on her with presents every day.For weeks perhaps, for months. Forever? She didn't want anymore chocolates, cereal bars, pears, or grapes. The bottle of port Queenie took out of her shopping trolley was far more acceptable and Gwendolen, cheering up, actually thanked her friend.
"I hope I'm not becoming an alcoholic," she said. "I'm sure I would if you and Olive had your way. Of course it's my lodger who has driven me to it. I never used to drink anything stronger than orange juice."
She had been going to tell Queenie about the encounter with Mr. Singh and what he had unwittingly revealed to her. But somehow she didn't want to discuss her neighbor withQueenie or anyone else and she couldn't describe the lodger'scrimes without involving Mr. Singh. Instead she said, "I really don't like to ask. It's something of an imposition. But could youbring yourself to go upstairs and knock on his door and tell himI would like to see him this evening at six? Please," she said,though it went against the grain. "I have several matters I mus tbring up with him."
"Well, dear, I will if you don't mind waiting a bit. I've still got to catch my breath after walking all the way here. I waited and waited for a bus but it never came. I'll go up before I go. I promise. Now shall I get you something to eat?" Queenie looked longingly at the bottle. "Or a drink?"
"Ye could both have a small glass of port."
"We could, couldn't we? After all, it's Sunday."
"Surely it's communion wine one drinks on a Sunday,not port."
"Possibly, dear, but not being a churchgoer I wouldn't know.Shall I be mother?"
Gwendolen shuddered. "It's fortified wine, Queenie,not tea."
She thought this habit of bringing a present to a sick friend and then expecting to share it, deplorable. But even a lifetime of rudeness hadn't taught her to drink exclusively in front of someone else. She watched Queenie pouring measures she considered too liberal into the wrong sort of glasses, raised hers and said what the professor used to say in like circumstances,"Your health!"
A snack of cheese and biscuits, fruit, and a slice each of the carrot cake, an offering from Queenie's elder daughter, was eaten off trays laid with ancient yellowing lace-trimmed cloths found in a sideboard drawer. "You look as if you might drop off to sleep at any moment," Queenie said.
"The thing isn't the only matter I have to complain to the lodger about," said Gwendolen as if she hadn't spoken. "I was expecting a very important letter while I was in hospital. It should have come here and apparently it didn't." She had nointention of disclosing much about the nature of this letter orits sender to Queenie. "I suspect Cellini of tampering with it. "She had long dropped the "Mr." "Unless you or Olive havebeen interfering with my post, which," she added in a moreconciliatory tone, "seems unlikely."
"Of course we didn't, dear. Where would this letter have come from?"
"The postmark would probably be Oxford. And now I really do want to sleep so perhaps you'd go upstairs to the lodger. Sixo'clock he's to present himself."
Queenie lumbered up the stairs, looking longingly at the telephone as she passed it. But she would only have had to lift the receiver for Gwendolen to hear it and be down upon her like a ton of bricks. For all her seniority, Gwendolen had bette rhearing than she had. On the first landing she removed her punishing high-heeled shoes and, taking deep breaths, struggledon, shoes in hand. If he wasn't in she'd have something tosay to Gwendolen. Her friend needn't think she had a prerogativein rudeness. Two could play at that game.
He was in. He came to the door with a cardigan tied roundhis shoulders and his feet bare. "Oh, hi. What is it?"
Ever since she was fifteen Queenie had believed, and acted according to her belief, that if you want anything out of a man, if you simply want to exist in his presence, you must be extravagantly polite, sweet, winning, and even flirtatious. It hadn't contributed to her comfort, but to the happiness of her marriage it had. "Oh, Mr. Cellini, I'm so sorry to bother you and on a Sunday too, but Miss Chawcer says will you be an angel and give her just five minutes of your time at about six o'clock this evening. If you'd just pop down and have a word with her. I'm sure she won't keep you, so if you could… "
"What's it about?" "
"She didn't say." Queenie flashed him an enormous toothy smile of the kind some man had once told her lit up her whole face, and proceeded to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. "You know what she is, Mr. Cellini," she said, betraying Gwendolen without knowing she was doing so, "awfully fussy about every little thing. Not that you'd think so, would you, from the state of this house?"
"Too right." Mix wanted to get back to the video he'd made.a couple of weeks back of Man U playing some Central European team. "Tell her I'll be there around six. Cheers, then."
When she got back to the drawing room Gwendolen was asleep. She wrote on a scrap of paper. Mr. Cellini will come at six. Love, Queenie.
Up in the top flat the football remained unwatched. Taking the message without much thought; Mix had gone back inside and become an immediate prey to misgivings. She must have found the thong, he thought. Someone had and who morelikely than old Chawcer? He must think up some reason for its being in the copper and the only one he could think of, that he had been doing a girlfriend's washing because her machine had broken down, was obviously not feasible. Who washed in antiquated holeslike that anymore? What was wrong with the launderette? Anyway, it wouldn't account for the fact that he shouldn't have been in her washhouse.