Part 8 (1/2)

'Six months?'

'People don't pick up where they left off after six months.'

'I'm sorry if I hurried you. But, you know, I didn't want to pretend. To court you, woo you, all that - degrading stuff.'

She played some more with the umbrella tip. 'What are we talking about?' Before he could say anything, she raised the umbrella as if to parry something he was about to do. 'Don't use that word. Don't sentimentalize. I'm not sentimental; neither are you. Neither of us knows what ”love” is.'

'I was going to say - we could get married.'

'Never. Never, never. I'll go on the street again before I'd do that. You've picked the wrong woman, Denton. I need s.p.a.ce around me. I need emptiness - n.o.body else with me. It's the only way I can deal with - perhaps with myself, much less the rest of you.'

'Then - what?'

'Then whatever we make of it. Time, Denton, it takes time; don't hurry me and don't hurry yourself. It'll come clear or it won't. You said you want to be with me; yes, I want to be with you, I saw that yesterday, I saw the possibility of it - I never thought I would, never thought there was room for anybody but myself. But I'm not going to promise you anything. I can't promise you anything. I don't want to trick you.'

'I'm not going to court you, Janet.'

'Thank G.o.d for that, then.' She straightened. 'Let's walk.'

'So what you've said is that you're not shutting me completely out.'

'Denton, I've let you in deeper than anybody in my life! Don't you understand?'

He put a hand out, touched the rain cape. It was the tentative move a man makes to see if he can go further; she must have recognized it for what it was, but she neither protested nor encouraged him; their eyes locked; he kissed her; she surprised him with a kiss that was pa.s.sionate but short, and she said again, 'Let's walk.'

When they came down the few wooden steps, he saw a solitary figure farther along the Embankment turn away and look at the river.

'Man's following me,' he said. 'He's a policeman. I know the rubber raincoat.'

'What have you done?'

He laughed without humour. 'It's a long tale.' He began to tell her about Albert Cosgrove.

They walked for an hour, then, finding themselves in Oxford Street, went on and turned into Church Street and to Kettner's. She surprised him again by making no objection to dinner; he had thought that she didn't want to be in public with him, but there was nothing to that. They were both hungry, ate hugely of the French food, drank a bottle of wine, laughed. It can be like that, first a kind of ultimate talk on which futures hang, then lightness, even light-headedness, an emotional exhaustion, even with things left unsaid.

They talked about other things. She told him she was leaving the Society for the Improvement of Wayward Women. She was going to put her mother in a better home; she wanted to find herself a new place to live. She would remain, however, aggressively independent: his hint that she might live with him made her briefly angry.

So much had happened that he was confused about what he had told her and what he hadn't. He realized only afterwards, when she looked confused by something he said, that she knew nothing about the mystery of the letter found in the Wesselons. He told her now about the note in the painting, the young woman named Mary Thomason; about Aubrey Heseltine, the art dealer, Geddys.

'What have you done about the woman?'

'Went to see Munro - it seems like weeks ago. It's not his bailiwick. '

'Did you go to the Slade?'

'Where Geddys said she was a student? No. I'm sure they wouldn't talk to me - give information about a woman to a man who isn't a relative, even a friend?'

'They'd give it to me. I'd tell them she had applied to the Society for clerical work and we lost her address.'

'Would you? When?'

'Tomorrow. Tomorrow?'

'Yes, tomorrow, yes-'

'Off on another wild hare together, Denton?'

'The last one did all right, didn't it?'

She touched the scar on her face. 'Is there a monster this time?' She had told him once that she believed that all men hated all women.

'I hope not.'

She smiled. 'Well, it's something we can do together while we're - coming towards each other.'

She wouldn't let him see her home. There was no repet.i.tion of the kiss, which, he was sure now, had been a mark of punctuation, not a statement. He saw her into a hansom and watched it roll away into the rain. So, he saw, did his police follower, now a thin man in a baggy tweed.

Time, she had said. Taking their time was ludicrous for two people of their ages. It was all of it ludicrous - men, women, kissing, emotional exhaustion, waiting. But probably inescapable.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Next day, he met Janet Striker in front of University College in Gower Street on a walk in the now-flowerless gardens near the college entrance. People, most of them students, were going around them. She had already been to the offices of the Slade.

He said, 'I had a with Munro about her. The divisions and the coroner have never heard of Mary Thomason. That means she didn't report anybody trying to hurt her, and her corpse hasn't turned up.'

'Good, because we're going to talk to her landlady.'

'You got her address?'

'The Slade people wanted to be helpful. It wasn't easy - the fact is, it was months ago, and she seems to have made very little impression, and students leave all the time. I did learn that she was on a list to do modelling, so she probably needed money.'

'In the-Without her clothes on?'

Janet Striker laughed. 'No, clothed. Nude models are a separate species, it seems.'

'Why did they think the Society for the Improvement of Wayward Women wanted her? Did you suggest she was wayward?'

'No, I suggested we were interested in starting an art cla.s.s for our women. They didn't question that - even gave me the names of other students who might want to teach.'

'Had she told them she was leaving?'

'A note, purportedly after she'd gone home. Somebody brought it by, they thought - they didn't remember. I asked about her friends. They knew nothing, of course - it's only an office. They suggested I see a man named Tonks who teaches drawing. Of course he isn't here just now. Shall we go?'

'You seem eager enough to enter into my project.'

'I told you, it's something we can do together.'