The Burden of Proof Read online

  He’d stopped before Computer Gargantua and something about it seemed to strike a chord. After a while, he realised it wasn’t dissimilar from the one he and another chap had signed Joshua Reynolds and sent along for consideration in the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition. His attention had wandered from the painting to the girl who stood before Machina Pantagruel.

  She was tall, slender, black-haired, beautiful and very composed. She’d known he was staring at her and had taken only sufficient notice of the fact to show she wasn’t going to run away and scream for help. A smile on his part, a joking reference to actionable painting, and the introduction was made.

  Margaret dabbled in art herself, but purely as a hobby. She tried to understand modern paintings because she believed there was an affinity between herself and the artists, due to the fact that her grandfather had been a very minor R.A.

  She and Roger had first slept together twelve days after meeting in the art gallery. The act was pleasant and was frequently repeated. Margaret began to take an interest in Reton Park Hall — he took her there once — and quite correctly she decided the one person who’d never become a bosom pal of hers was Patricia. She’d presumed that Patricia didn’t like Roger’s becoming mixed up with someone socially inferior. In that, she was thinking in tune with the type of person she’d always despised. Patricia’s fear was for Reton Park Hall.

  *

  The country club at Hamleton had originally been a stockbroker’s house. The two downstairs rooms in front had been knocked into one to offer a combined dance floor and bar. Upstairs were five guest bedrooms. The couple who ran the place were realists who knew that if they asked for the marriage lines of every couple who stayed the night they’d be out of business within the month. They always called the woman Mrs., even when the wedding ring had been forgotten.

  Margaret and Roger frequently stayed at the country club. The bar was pleasant, the beds comfortable. In March, when the wind outside was whipping the branches of the trees backward and forward and the thick cloud was scudding across the sky in a never-ending blanket, Margaret sat on the bed of room number three.

  She wore a smart two-piece suit, a hand-embroidered blouse, stockings, and black shoes with stiletto heels.

  Roger lit a cigarette. “It’s blasted cold tonight.”

  She removed her earrings, stood up and crossed to the dressing table on the top of which she put the earrings. “What’s the matter, Roger?”

  “Who says anything is?”

  She took off her coat and placed it on a plastic coat hanger. “Something’s worrying you — you’ve been like a cat on hot bricks all evening.” She undid the buttons down the front of her blouse and then unzipped her skirt. She stepped out of the skirt. “Has Patricia been ticking you off for sleeping away at nights?”

  He watched her remove her blouse. Here was one pleasure you couldn’t ruin.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me, Roger?” She pulled her slip over her head.

  He crossed to the lopsided table and stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray advertising Haig’s whisky. “I’ve met someone who’s going to mean a lot to me, Margaret.”

  She became quite still for a moment and the cold air cut around the bare flesh between her brassiere and underpants. She reached up behind her back and undid her brassiere. “Do I know her?”

  “Elizabeth Wheeldon.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “She’s a nice girl.”

  “I’d hardly expect you to say otherwise.” She stepped out of her pants. Naked, she was very beautiful and very desirable.

  He watched her climb into bed and pull the bedclothes over herself. Her blue eyes were focused on his face.

  “Is it sudden, Roger?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I’ve known her a little while now, but you can call our newly-discovered relationship sudden.”

  She shifted her gaze and stared into the far distance. Finally, she said, “I’m glad you’ve told me.”

  He shifted his position on the chair.

  “Does she know about us, Roger?”

  He shook his head.

  “You’ve been sensible as you’ve always been! Why shock her when you don’t have to? I envy her, Roger.”

  He crossed to the bed and sat down on it.

  She suddenly laughed. “Odd to find there’s a streak of decency in you.”

  “Decency?”

  “I’d have been quite prepared to find you waiting until tomorrow morning to tell me the news, in case I refused to have anything to do with you tonight.”

  He grinned nervously. “There’s no fear of your doing that.”

  “You don’t dislike yourself, do you?”

  “Never had cause to.”

  “All the girls have always fallen down in rows before your charm?”

  It had all become rather a joke.

  “Really, I suppose, Roger, I ought to feel flattered you managed to give me as much of your time as you have.”

  “I always go for the most attractive.”

  “Am I more attractive than Elizabeth?”

  “You’re very pretty,” he said.

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Stop asking questions.”

  There was a short silence.

  “Are you coming to bed, Roger?”

  “Try to keep me out.”

  “I probably would if I thought I’d have any success.”

  He hadn’t met her again until May. He’d gone into Prestry to order a new Nuffield tractor. The farm had needed new machinery for years, but there’d never been any chance of buying it until the papers had picked up the romance between Elizabeth and himself. All of a sudden, credit became elastic. The firm of agricultural merchants had been pressing for a settlement of an old account, and pressing hard, but after the photos in the papers they’d not only agreed to his having a new tractor on credit terms, they’d also tried to interest him in a dung spreader, a trench digger, a grass cutter, a hay rake, and a hedge cutter.

  He’d left the offices, stepped out onto the pavement and come face to face with Margaret. No matter what she wore, she looked attractive. She’d had on a simple summer frock that probably came from Marks and Sparks but she’d made it look a thousand pounds. There was a sudden, but only momentary, stab of regret inside him because she was so attractive.

  “Roger!”

  “Well I’m damned.”

  She linked her arm with his. “Give me a coffee and tell me how Squire Ventnor’s getting on.”

  “I’ll do better than that and offer you lunch at The Chinese.”

  “Sir, you couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

  They walked to The Chinese. The restaurant, two years old, was run by a family of Malayans, who offered good service and excellent food. No other restaurant owner in Prestry had thought of doing these two things and in consequence The Chinese prospered.

  Roger ordered for both of them. “Why aren’t you working?” he asked, as the waiter left them.

  “We had a rush job last week and three of us had to labour all through Saturday so they gave each of us an extra day off this week. A firm in Germany has brought out a new transfer machine and the bosses want all the details.”

  “And what’s a transfer machine when it’s at home?”

  “This one takes a rough casting in at one end and pushes it out at the other as a finished engine block after twenty-three separate operations have been carried out and so many dozens of holes have been bored. Fit a few pistons and things and there’s your car engine.”

  Two dry sherries were brought.

  Roger raised his glass. “Cheers, Margaret.”

  “Cheers, Roger… Happy?”

  “Very.”

  “You’re not officially engaged yet, are you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “The papers aren’t leaving the public in much suspense, though. I read all about the beautiful friendship. Squire of Breton Pass, they called you.”

  �
�Was that the report that referred to the baronial mansion set in the rolling parkland?”

  “Yes… I didn’t realise at the time that she was one of the Wheeldons. Rolling in money, I suppose?”

  “None of the Wheeldons starves.” He offered her a cigarette. “The papers naturally exaggerated things.”

  “Divide what they said by four and I still wouldn’t say no. It must be nice not having to worry about the exchequer anymore.”

  He looked at her to see if any spiteful bitterness lay behind her words, but he could read nothing from her face.

  “Don’t bother to consult your conscience, Roger, I was never naïve enough to think it could be marriage.”

  He didn’t try to deny it. “How’s your love life?”

  She began to revolve the stem of the sherry glass between forefinger and thumb. “I’ve been acting as father, mother, and spiritual advisor to an artist. I’ve known him for months and one of these days he’s going to get somewhere, but until he does he needs to be told he’s brilliant five times a day to help him keep going… He absolutely hates the Establishment and gets really red in the face when he talks about you — calls you a tory Gauleiter. I laugh at him and that makes him worse.”

  He finished his sherry. “Did you say you’d known him for months?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you and I were…”

  “I met him just before I first met you, Roger.”

  “You never told me about him.”

  “Of course not. Annoyed?” She laughed quietly. “You men all think alike. You reckon you’re entitled to tread as many paths as you want but your women are only allowed one.”

  The waiter brought plates and three bowls filled with prawns fried in a piquant batter, bamboo shoots and rice.

  Roger thought about the artist and discovered a feeling of aggrieved jealousy.

  *

  Elizabeth Wheeldon was very happy and very much in love with Roger. She had blue eyes and a round face topped by light-brown hair and she was pleasantly attractive rather than a beauty. Her body was already showing vague signs of the plumpness that would inevitably overtake it later in life. There was a calm charm about her and, when with Roger, an extra sparkle that was worth more than conventional beauty.

  Her father was a wealthy man — so wealthy that many people said he’d become interested in the mechanics of money to the exclusion of any other interest or emotion. His wife had died two years after Elizabeth was born, but no one other than himself knew how much that had affected him.

  Elizabeth possessed a love of the country and of history when it consisted of bricks and mortar, and she was intensely loyal. She and Roger would form a remarkably well-assorted couple. He owned Reton Park Hall and the will to preserve it, she had the money to make his efforts effective. Her paternal aunt had left her a fortune and her father gave her a considerable allowance.

  She knew Roger’s Chelsea days had been rather hectic — when the papers had picked up their romance in the gossip columns the hoary old chestnut of the bath-towel party had been aired once more — but she was very pleased not to inquire into them. She assumed his past was finished just as if, had she had one, hers would have been.

  She frequently spent the day at Reton Park Hall since Patricia Ventnor was able and willing to discuss and help in the marriage plans. They got on very well together. Patricia liked her for herself, and perhaps even more so because the estate had been saved. Patricia would almost have welcomed Lucrezia Borgia on those terms.

  Lunch on Sunday, July first, two days after the engagement had become official, was cold. Mrs. Blately, the daily help, never came on Sundays.

  They were halfway through the ham, salad and potatoes with dill when the telephone rang. Roger stood up. “Who the hell’s ringing at this hour?”

  “Try finding out,” suggested Patricia. Elizabeth smiled. It had taken her a little time to appreciate the warmth of feeling that lay underneath Patricia’s words when she spoke to her brother.

  He crossed the kitchen floor — Sunday was eating-in-the-kitchen day — and went out into the passage and then through to the corridor that gave access to the office. Along the corridor was a green baize door, one of the few remaining relics of the days of servants.

  The office was a jumble of filing cabinets, stacked files, loose papers, and a desk smothered in more papers. Modern farming demanded almost as much paperwork as artificial fertiliser.

  He lifted the receiver. “Ventnor speaking.”

  “Roger?”

  He recognised the voice. “Margaret — ”

  “I must see you this afternoon.”

  “Hell, Maggie — ”

  “You’ll have to tell her it’s business. One of your prize cows has sprung a calf.”

  He heard the sharp, high-pitched laugh. “What’s the matter?”

  “I’m in a God-awful jam. Four o’clock at the country club.”

  “Not there.”

  “Afraid of being recognised? Pick me up outside the flea pit.” She rang off.

  Chapter 4

  He picked her up in the estate car. As they drove off he looked quickly at her face. Her expression was tight and there were lines about her mouth he’d never seen before.

  “Give me a cigarette, Roger.”

  “In my left-hand coat pocket.” He changed into high and made the lights just before they turned. A hundred yards farther on, a bus came out from the pavement and forced him to brake sharply.

  “I’m preggers,” she said abruptly.

  Instinctively, he glanced sideways at her. “Nothing showing yet,” she snapped.

  “Are you certain?”

  “Of course I’m bloody well certain. I’ve missed out twice now and been as sick as a dog in the mornings.”

  He increased speed and overtook a car bearing learner’s plates with a woman driver who was struggling to overcome her husband’s attempts to teach her.

  “Did you say two months?” he asked.

  “Relax, Roger, I’m not slapping a bastardy order on you.”

  “Who’s the father?”

  “My tame artist.”

  “Does he know?”

  “Of course he does. And to save you having to put any more questions, he won't have anything to do with it. Says his art’s more important and that he’ll never allow his flame of genius to be extinguished by a squalling brat… Sounded like an unproducible play from the thirties.”

  He turned right into the wide road that led through the richer half of Prestry to the country. “You can go to court and force him to lend a hand.”

  “Care to go on and explain how I can hope to squeeze anything out of him when half the time I’ve even had to pay for the food he eats? He likes his wine too much,” she added wildly. “I’m not going to have the kid, Roger, I’m not going to have it. I can’t go through life with a bastard round my neck. I want to get married and have a home, so what happens when I have to introduce my son to a prospective husband?”

  “You could always have it adopted.”

  “God, you men!” she said contemptuously. “You make it all sound so easy. What happens for the next seven months? Do I tell everyone I’m just suffering from the wind?”

  The houses were now scattered among fields and in the main they were the homes of people rich enough to be able to afford privacy but who didn’t want isolation.

  “You’ve got money and friends, Roger. Find out where I can go and have the thing seen to. I know damn well you don’t feel safe sitting next to me because Elizabeth might be hiding in the boot, but you owe me something.”

  He turned to tell her that he owed her nothing because it was all over and done with, and he saw that she was crying.

  When she spoke again there was no trace of hysteria in her voice. “I’m not going to have it, Roger.”

  He wished he could drive her back to town and leave her, satisfied it was none of his business. But she claimed he owed her something and he wasn’t sufficiently self
ish to disbelieve her.

  *

  Roger stared through the window of the London train and watched the succession of fields of corn and grazing land. A day wasted. The men were planting up a field of kale and he should have been with them. They worked better when he was there, not because they slacked whenever they could, but because they were independent of mind and resented any suggestion they were being worked by a man who sat on his backside all day long.

  It was strange that he could now think of the home farm in terms of ten years. In ten years’ time the number of milking cows would be doubled and the flock of sheep trebled in size; all the old pastures would be turned in and the land would be down to modern fast-growing lays; some of the woodland would be ripped out and the land changed into arable; the hundred acres of scrubland on the west boundary would be under the plough; the farm buildings would be repaired and extended — all thanks to Elizabeth.

  A lot of people thought he was going to marry her because of her money. They were wrong. She shared to the full his love of Reton Park Hall and what it meant, and the fact that she had money thus became an excellent thing that was merely an ancillary to the mutual attraction between them. He’d never marry her simply because of the money even if he might never marry her without it.

  He reached London and was amused to discover how strange it now seemed to him — London that had once marked the boundaries of civilisation. Too many people, too many vehicles, too much useless hurry, too much dirt. He telephoned for a minicab because it was cheaper and it drove him deep into London suburbia.

  He knocked on the door of 81, a detached house set in a large garden. A young woman in a white coat answered it. She studied him briefly, then said, “Surgery hours are posted by the gate.”