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BRIEF but repeated mental excursions into the past being the hobby and the habit of the many, Mr Bisham often forgave himself for indulging it. He was also of the variety who found singular fascination in revisiting scenes from his past, if circumstances made it reasonably easy and attractive. If he passed through Putney, his head always turned towards a particular road and a big house on the far corner. One day, he realized, he might be revisiting the house where he lived now, a solitary figure in a brown overcoat and long white beard, staring sadly at the past which was still safely Now. Mr Bisham liked to dream, and he was decidedly introspective. He never knew whether it was a good habit or a bad one. Perhaps, like most habits, it had its good and bad points. The subconscious mind made a fascinating study, didn’t it? The mind had such depths, you could explore and explore, and it didn’t matter much where you were or what you were doing. You could watch yourself. He was standing in his bedroom-cum-study upstairs at Tredgarth now, watching himself as he had been standing behind those strange velvet curtains in a strange house. There he had stood, with his heart thumping as it always did, and his senses aware of the exotic. As a matter of fact, under the tension, he had thought of quite ridiculous things, such as liking Saturday nights, and hating rugger, but liking soccer and his prep school. It was odd. And now, standing in his bedroom, and looking at the necklace in his hands, instead of concentrating on the rare beauty of it, and regretting that he dare not give it to Marjorie for their wedding anniversary, or for her birthday, or for Christmas, or for any other time, he suddenly started thinking about the two and sixpenny necklace he had given to Celia that time, and for just the same kind of reason. Locked up in their flat, he had had emeralds and turquoise brooches and sapphire pins by the dozen; but they were dynamite. He thought now, as he had often thought then: ‘She doesn’t know, and she must never know.’ And as he made no money out of it, he had regretted not being able to buy a safe. Yet, he thought now, was there any reason why he shouldn’t buy a safe now? He was Ernest Bisham, the famous announcer, and surely it would not be odd for Ernest Bisham to own a safe? One of his most distinguished colleagues owned a fruit farm! That was no more curious than a safe? Besides, he surely owed it to Marjorie? She must never be hurt. He owed it to Bess, and she must never be hurt. Poor old Bess, who believed in him so, but who didn’t really know him at all. Marjorie didn’t know him either. How could she? A woman had to know all about a man—or feel that she knew all about him. And he well knew that it was because she didn’t feel it that things were not quite right between them.
But where this was true of Marjorie, it was not true of Celia. Celia had no brains, and very little perception. She was just a sex machine. She would probably have been thrilled if she’d ever tumbled upon the truth about him! She adored the pictures! Indeed, it might have saved them! But, if Marjorie ever found out? He often imagined her horrified expression, with Bess, haggard, in the background. Old Marjorie would cry: ‘Whatever do you do it for, Ernest?’ He would smile and say regretfully: ‘I can tell you why I started it, Marjorie! And perhaps the reason is still the same! I wanted to!’ ‘Wanted to!’ they would cry in horror. Then he might say there had never been any money in it, but it had saved him a few times, financially, in a small and sordid way. Now, he might say, he did it partly because he found it irresistible, and partly because in his present exalted position the thrill was so intense through the risk being so much greater; moreover, opportunities for meeting the wealthy had never been quite so splendid before he had become an announcer. He now met rich eccentrics, and rich widows—well, too often. And some of them were very talkative. This did not make it particularly easy, but it made it both attractive and possible.
He stood looking at the proceeds of his latest robbery, and thought how nice his wife would look in some of it. How thrilling it would be to see her face light up if he gave her the pearl necklace that might have cost him so dear. There was something to solve here, it was galling. This necklace would have been wasted on Celia. But Marjorie would be a perfect setting for it. She had height, and grace, and she had a really lovely throat.
Hearing someone moving in the house, he put the valuables back in a copy of the Sunday Times and locked it away in a deep drawer in his desk. He kept thinking how much he would like to give Marjorie the necklace. But it would be the act of a lunatic. The papers were full of it, not forgetting photographs. The worst must never happen, and he felt so sure it never would, providing he used his brains. Fate didn’t suffer fools, and he had always conceded that. He thought of Marjorie when he had given her the puppy. He had suddenly seen that there could easily be love between them. Imagine giving her the product of the adventures that ran the risk of costing them both so dear! When he gave her the puppy, she had looked up with such a lovely expression, like an excited child. She was sensitive.
Locking the drawer and putting the key in his pocket, he sat down in his armchair and idly took up the newspaper. His latest adventure was spread about wherever there wasn’t any war news. He sat frowning and wanting to think about Marjorie and the future, but his thoughts were flooded with memories of Celia—and the past.
Mr Bisham, amidst the stress of present problems, found it comfortable to tell himself he ought never to have met Celia. In the same way, it was comfortable to think that Marjorie ought never to have met that dreadful fellow Captain Bud. One of the first things she had suggested was that she and Ernest should tell each other everything they thought conducive to a successful second marriage. To this he had agreed; and whereas he had told her everything except the darkest secret in his life, she had told him absolutely everything. But if you were going to say that all couples who made dreadful marriages ought never to have met each other, it wasn’t going to get you anywhere. So perhaps it was better to think how character forming it was, or how character damaging. It was a kind of fast trick pulled by Life, or Fate, which had a perverted sense of humour at times; it was rather like a man who knows you are sincere and so pulls a fast one. It was true that later on it could make it up to the victims, who lay flat on their beds feeling rather tired. Life was a great one at timing, too, better than the very best actor. These little jokes always happened at the psychological moment; either you were broke, or desperate in some other way; Fate waved a wand shaped like a devil’s tail—and the trouble began. And the worst of it was it could go on and on; for, easy as it always was to get into trouble, it was perfectly frightful trying to get out of it. It was like trying to reland on a rocky coast when the storm was at its height. As a boy, Mr Bisham thought that his one and only bit of trouble was likely to be his father. He had much in common with Marjorie, for his mother had died before he had been old enough to know her, and for some hidden reason which even Bess didn’t know, Mr Bisham Senior had kept no photographs of her and never spoke of her. Even more queerly, Bess had herself been banished the Putney house when still a girl, and sent to a relative in far away Norfolk. Ernest knew nothing of her existence until he was adult, so strange were the ways of fathers. He never even contemplated enquiring about his mother, for his father was a formidable kind of man who didn’t go in for talking. He went in for silences. He was very high up in one of the Ministries, and his work in the Great War appeared to have been of a vital and secret nature. There were clues of various kinds that he had made the name of Bisham a very strong and reliable one, and perhaps it was the very knowledge of this that had perversely inspired Ernest to his unusual hobby, which he had first regarded, sinfully, indeed, as a profession. There were plenty of clues, too, that people were afraid of Mr Bisham Senior, and this also seemed to be a sort of challenge. Clerks would call at the Putney house, moving rather furtively, and they would timidly ask if they might be ushered into the Presence. And one of them always asked, pale, ‘What kind of mood is he in this morning, young man?’
The house in Putney was square and formidable itself, cold through unnecessary coal economy, and all the doors seemed frightened to open. Where the Bisham relations hid, never came to light, and it was only later that he discovered Norfolk was the place. The only touch of humanity at all was old Mrs Clarkson and a series of charwomen who crept about with buckets to do the doorsteps. They stayed till they could stand the silences