there.
â Winslow, Matthew. Frmr. Whitescar . . . Bellingham 248 .â
The entry was marked, faintly, in pencil.
I said, trying to keep my voice flat, and only succeeding in making it sound sulky: âYes, I looked it up. It puzzled me, because your brother had said he owned the farm. It isnât an old directory, so when you first spoke of âthe old manâ, I assumed he must have died quite recently.â
She didnât answer. She shut the book, then leaned back in her chair and looked up at me, with that calm, appraising look. I met it almost defiantly.
âAll right, I was interested before. Who wouldnât be? After that business on Sunday . . . oh, well, skip it. Call it curiosity if you like, Iâm only human. But my heaven, thereâs no reason why it should go further than curiosity! This â proposition â you appear to be suggesting, takes my breath away. No, no, I donât want to hear any more about it. I canât even believe youâre serious. Are you?â
âQuite.â
âVery well. But can you give me any conceivable reason why I should be?â
She looked at me almost blankly. There it was again; that merciless all-excluding obsession with their personal problems. âI donât understand.â
I found that I was reaching, automatically, for another cigarette. I let it slip back into the packet. I had smoked too much that evening already; my eyes and throat felt hot and aching, and my brain stupid. I said: âLook, you approach me out of the blue with your family history, which may be intriguing, but which can really mean very little to me. You propose, letâs face it, that somehow or other I should help you to perpetrate a fraud. It may mean everything to you; I donât see how, but weâll grant it for argumentâs sake. But why should it mean a thing to me? You tell me itâll be âeasyâ. Why should I care? Why should I involve myself? In plain words, why on earth should I go out of my way to help you and your brother Con to anything?â
I didnât add: âWhen I donât much like you, and I donât trust him,â but to my horror the words seemed to repeat themselves into the air of the room as clearly as if I, and not the tone of my voice, had said them.
If she heard them, she may have been too unwilling to antagonise me, to resent them. Nor did she appear to mind my actual rudeness. She said, simply: âWhy, for money, of course? What other reason is there?â
âFor money ?â
She gave a slight, summing, eloquent glance round the room. âIf youâll forgive me, you appear to need it. You said so, in fact to my brother; that was one of the reasons why we felt we could approach you. You have so much to gain. You will forgive my speaking so plainly on such a short acquaintance?â
âDo,â I said ironically.
âYou are a gentlewoman,â said Miss Dermott, the outmoded sounding perfectly normal on her lips. âAnd this room . . . and your job at that dreadful café . . . Youâve been over here from Canada for how long?â
âJust a few days.â
âAnd this has been all you could find?â
âAs far as I looked. It took all I had to get me here. Iâm marking time while I get my bearings. I took the first thing that came. You donât have to worry about me, Miss Dermott. Iâll make out. I donât have to work in the Kasbah for life, you know.â
âAll the same,â she said, âitâs worth your while to listen to me. In plain terms, Iâm offering you a job, a good one, the job of coming back to Whitescar as Annabel Winslow, and persuading the old man that that is who you are. You will have a home and every comfort, a position, everything; and eventually a small assured income for life. You call it a fraud: of course it is, but itâs not a cruel one. The
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