A Perfect Spy

A fit of fury seizes her: “Me up at four in the morning for the milking and falling asleep over my accounts at midnight!” she shouts as sleepy heads turn to her from other tables. “And that stupid husband of mine lying warm in his bed in Truro signing it all away behind my back while your father sits by his bedside playing the saint to him, Magnus. And my Alastair needing a pair of shoes to walk to school in, while you’re living on the hog there with your fine schools and your fine clothes, Magnus, God save you!” For it turns out, of course, on John’s death, that for reasons outside everyone’s control the great trust fund has suffered a purely temporary problem of liquidity and can’t pay the twelve and a half percent plus profits after all. It can’t refund the capital either. And that to tide everyone over this sticky patch, John Wentworth took the wise precaution, just before his death, of mortgaging the farm and land and livestock, and bloody nearly his wife and child as well, so that nobody will ever want for anything again. And had given the proceeds to his dear old pal Rick. And that Rick has brought down a distinguished lawyer, name of Loft, all the way from London with him, just to explain the implications of this smart move to John on his deathbed. And John, to please everyone as usual, has written out a special long letter all in his own hand, assuring whom it may concern that his decision has been taken while he was of sound mind and in full possession of his mental faculties and was not in any manner subjected to undue influence by a saint and his lawyer while he was lying gasping out his last. All this in case Peggy, or for that matter Alastair, should later have the bad manners to dispute the document in court or try to get John’s nine thousand pounds back, or should otherwise show a lack of faith in Rick’s selfless stewardship of John’s ruin.

“When did all this happen?” says Pym.

She tells him the dates, she tells him the day of the week and the hour of the day. She pulls a wad of letters from her handbag signed by Perce and regretting that “our Chairman, Mr. R. T. Pym, is unavailable, being absent indefinitely on a mission of national necessity,” and assuring her that “the documents relating to the Freehold of Tamar Rose are at present being processed with a view to acquiring a large Figure in your interest.” And she watches him with her mad cold eyes as he reads them by the light of a street lamp while they sit huddled on a broken bench. She takes back the letters and returns them to their envelopes lovingly, careful of the edges and the folds. As she continues talking, Pym wants to close his ears or slap a hand over her mouth. He wants to get up and run to the sea-wall and throw himself over. He wants to scream “Shut up!” But all he does is ask her, please, I beg you, if you would be so kind, don’t continue with your story.

“Why not, pray?”

“I don’t want to hear it. It’s not my business, this part. He robbed you. The rest doesn’t make any difference,” says Pym.

Peggy doesn’t agree. She is flailing her Irish back with her Irish guilt and using Pym’s presence as the excuse to do it. She is talking in a gush. It is what she has been waiting to tell him best.

“And why not — seeing as the bloody man possesses you anyway? If he’s already got his filthy arms around you sure as if he had you in his fancy bed with the frills and the fancy mirrors”—it is Rick’s bedroom in Chester Street she is describing—“seeing as he’s already got the power of life and death over you and you’re a foolish lonely woman in the world with a sickly boy to care for and a bankrupt farm to mind, and not a soul but the stupid bailiff to say nice day to for a week at a time?”

“It’s enough to know he’s done you wrong,” Pym insists. “Please, Peggy. The rest is private.”

“Seeing as he can beckon you up to London first-class, send the tickets, just with a flick of his fingers the moment he gets back from his national necessity, because he thinks you’re going to put the lawyers on him? Well, you go, don’t you? If you haven’t had a man for two years and more and only your own body to look at withering in the mirror every day, you go!”

“I’m sure you do. I’m sure there was every reason,” Pym says. “Please don’t tell me any more.”