Free Trusted Like The Fox by James Hadley Chase Page B

hesitation.
    There was something about Ellis that impressed her. She knew he was no ordinary man in spite of his mean, ratty face and his shabby clothes. His ruthlessness lifted him out of the common rut, and to her mind made him a member of the ruling class that always inspired her with awesome respect. His sudden collapse, his fear of pain, and his present helplessness had aroused her pity, and now she felt she couldn’t possibly desert him. She was in his debt, she told herself: he had helped her; it was her turn to help him. She knew that he would have shown her no mercy had their positions been reversed, but that didn’t matter. She wouldn’t have expected any other treatment. She had said truthfully that no one had ever been kind to her. In that bitter sentence she had summed up the story of her past life.
    Ever since she could remember, Grace had been unwanted. Her mother, Lucy, married at the age of seventeen to a man twenty years her senior, had been wild and undisciplined. She was attractive and without morals and had a weakness for men. She married George Clark, a dour, narrow-minded railway signalman, when she discovered that she was pregnant. The father of the unborn child could have been any one of the dozen young men with whom she had been associating. She hoped that George Clark would be deceived into thinking the child was his, but Clark was not quite such a simpleton. He provided a home for the child, Grace, when she was born, but he made certain that his wife should not forget that she was a ‘fallen woman’, and consequently Lucy could scarcely bear the sight of the child, who spent an unhappy, unloved and lonely existence.
    Ten years later, Lucy, sick of Clark’s continual accusations, went off with a prosperous bookmaker. Enraged, Clark vented his hatred on Grace. She was then a skinny, white-faced little girl of ten and she ran the small house as best she could, went to the local Council school and lived in terror of her foster- father, who flogged her with his razor strop regularly once a week to impress on her her mother’s wickedness.
    At the age of sixteen Grace got a job as a typist in a printer’s shop not far from her home. Although the beatings had ceased when she reached the age of fifteen, her fear of her foster-father remained. She was not allowed out after eight o’clock at night, never allowed any boy friends, and somehow did not make friends with other girls.
    At eighteen she was earning two pounds a week as a shorthand-typist to the local accountant, but when the war came she threw up her job and without consulting her foster-father, joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force as a nursing orderly.
    Oddly enough, this independent action delighted Clark, who was a keen member of the Home Guard and at that time obsessed with the spirit of patriotism. He suddenly became proud of his daughter, and Grace, longing for any kind of affection, forgot her past fears of him.
    When she came home on leave, Clark took her everywhere, introducing her to his friends, showing her off in her uniform and boasting proudly that she had run away to join up.
    “A chip off the old block,” he would say, grinning from ear to ear. “Just wot I’d “ye done. Used to wallop ‘er backside for ‘er when she was a kid, and look at “or now. She’s a real good girl, and I’m proud of ‘er. It just shows you, don’t it? Look at ‘er mother! Bad blood don’t count if you bring ‘em up right, and that’s wot I done.”
    Then without warning, Clark had a heart attack, and the doctor warned him that the next attack would probably be fatal. This death sentence was too much for Clark, and he became morose and fearful. He sent a long, hysterical letter to Grace, ordering her home. She was granted seven days’ compassionate leave and found Clark in bed, almost afraid to breathe.
    Grace had an inspired talent for nursing, and she immediately set about making Clark comfortable, reassuring him and fussing over