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“Give them a good view while I’m about it,” he thought grimly.
To his surprise the windows of the taxi were lit up as if in answer. He peered across, shading the pane with his hand. The taxi’s fare was a solitary man in a di
“That’s someone I know,” thought O’Callaghan with a kind of languid surprise. He tried for a moment to place this individual, but it was too much bother. He gave it up. In a few minutes his chauffeur pulled up outside his own house in Catherine Street and opened the door of the car.
The Home Secretary got out slowly and toiled up the steps. His butler let him in. While he was still in the hall his wife came downstairs. He stood and contemplated her without speaking.
“Well, Derek,” she said.
“Hullo, Cicely.”
She stood at the foot of the stairs and watched him composedly.
“You’re late,” she observed after a moment.
“Am I? I supposed I am. Those fellows jawed and jawed. Do you mind if I don’t change? I’m tired.”
“Of course not. There’s only Ruth dining.”
He grimaced.
“I really can’t help it if your sister likes to see you occasionally,” remarked Lady O’Callaghan tranquilly.
“All right,” said her husband wearily. “All right.”
He glanced at her inimically and thought how tiresomely good-looking she was. Always so perfectly groomed, so admirably gowned, so maddeningly remote. Their very embraces were masked in a chilly patina of good form. Occasionally he had the feeling that she rather disliked him but as a rule he had no feeling about her at all. He supposed he had married her in a brief wave of enthusiasm for polar exploration. There had been no children. Just as well since there was a taint of insanity in his own family. He supposed he was all right himself. His wife would have brought out any traces of it, he reflected sardonically. Cicely was an acid test for normality.
She walked away from him towards the drawing-room. At the door she paused for a moment to ask:
“Have you been worried at all by that pain today?”
“Oh, yes,” said O’Callaghan.
“What a bore it is,” she murmured vaguely, and went into the drawing-room.
He looked after her for a moment and then crossed the little hall and entered his own study, a companionable room with a good fireplace, a practical desk and deep square-angled chairs. Cedar logs blazed in the grate and a tray with glasses and a decanter of his particular sherry waited near his particular chair. She certainly saw to it that he was adequately looked after.
He poured himself out a glass of sherry and opened his afternoon post. It was abysmally dull. His secretary had dealt with the bulk of his letters and had evidently considered that these were all personal. Most of them were so marked. One writer begged for money, another for preferment, a third for information. A typewritten envelope had already been opened by his secretary. It contained an anonymous and threatening message and was merely the latest of a long series of such communications. He picked up the last letter, glanced at the envelope, raised his eyebrows, and then frowned. He finished his sherry and poured out another glass before he opened the letter and read it.
It was from Jane Harden.
From Jane. He might have known he wouldn’t hear the end of that business in a hurry. He might have known he was a fool to suppose she would let him go without making difficulties. That week-end in Cornwall — it had been pleasant enough but before it was over he’d known he was in for trouble. Damn it all, women were never fair — never. They talked about leading their own lives, said they wanted to get their experience like men, and then broke all the rules of the game. He glanced again over the letter. She reminded him that she had “given herself” to him (what nonsense that was. She’d wanted it as much as he had!), that their families had been neighbours in Dorset for generations before her father went bankrupt. He flinched away from the imputation of disloyalty which, since he was a tolerably honest and conservative man, made him profoundly uncomfortable. She said he’d treated her as though she was a suburban pick-up. He wished fretfully that she had been. She wrote that she was going to a post in a private nursing-home. Would he write to her at the Nurses’ Club? Up to this point the letter had apparently been written with a certain amount of self-control but from then onwards O’Callaghan saw, with something like horror, that Jane’s emotions had run away with her pen. She loved him but what had she left to offer him? she asked. Must they both forget? She was fighting for her soul and nothing was too desperate. There was a devil tearing at her soul and if she lost him it would get her. She added again that she loved him and that if he persisted in ignoring her she would do something terrible. With a sudden petulant gesture he crumpled up the sheet of paper and threw it on the fire.
“Blast!” he said. “Blast! Blast! Blast!”
There was a light tap on the door which opened far enough to disclose a large nose, a vague mouth, a receding chin, and a gigantic ear-ring.
“Affairs of state, Derry?” asked a coy voice. “Affairs of state?”
“Oh, come in, Ruth,” said Sir Derek O’Callaghan.
CHAPTER II
Introduces a Patent Medicine
Friday, the fifth. Evening.
During the following week the Home Secretary followed his usual routine. He had become more or less accustomed to the attacks of pain. If anything they occurred more often and with increasing severity. He told himself that the day after he had introduced his Bill, he would consult a doctor. Meanwhile he took three tablets of aspirin whenever the pain threatened to become unendurable, and grew more and more dispirited and wretched. The memory of Jane Harden’s letter lurked at the back of his thoughts, like a bad taste in the conscience.
His sister Ruth, an advanced hypochondriac, with the persistence of a missionary, continually pressed upon him strange boluses, pills and draughts. She made a practice of calling on him after di
“I shall ask Nash,” she said, “to say we are both out.”
He paused and then said uncomfortably:
“I don’t think I quite like— ”
“I too,” said his wife, “find myself bored by Ruth.”
“Still, Cicely — after all she is exceedingly kind. Perhaps it would be better— ”
“You will see her then?”
“No, damn it, I won’t.”
“Very well, Derek. I’ll tell Nash. Has your pain been worrying you lately?”
“Quite a lot, thank you.”
“That, of course, is why you are irritable. I think you are foolish not to see a doctor.”
“I think I told you I would call in John Phillips as soon as this Bill was through.”
“It’s for you to decide, of course. Shall I ask Nash to take your coffee into the study?”
“If you please.”
“Yes.” She had a curiously remote way of saying “Yes,” as though it was a sort of bored comment on everything he uttered. “Good night, Derek. I am going up early and won’t disturb you.”
“Good night, Cicely.”
She stepped towards him and waited. By some mischance his kiss fell upon her lips instead of her cheek. He almost felt he ought to apologise. However, she merely repeated “Good night” and he went off to study.