Free The Man Whose Dream Came True by Julian Symons Page B

giving him money to pay for things, nor did he really resent being ordered about, but somehow it put their relationship on a footing which he did not feel they had reached. In the night she moaned for him and asked again and again if he loved her, but in the daytime she behaved as though absolutely certain of his dependence on her. What was the end of the situation, what did he want to happen? He was not sure himself.
    On Saturday morning he came down just after eleven, feeling weary but looking smart in a very pale sports jacket with dark blue trousers and elegant grey suede shoes. The honeymoon couple were going home and Widgey was at the entrance to tell them goodbye. There was no sign of Violet. Widgey beckoned him with a grimy forefinger and he followed her into the parlour, which was untidier than usual. Half a dozen small receptacles were brim-full of ash and stubs, playing cards were littered over the table as if a midnight poker game had been broken up by a police raid, small bits of orange peel were scattered on the side board. Widgey herself was wearing an old grey skirt fastened by safety pins and a dirty blue pullover. The contrast she presented to his own elegance was somehow uncomfortable.
    ‘Sit down.’ He sat in one of the stiff rexine covered chairs at the table. She rolled around the cigarette in her mouth, perhaps a sign of embarrassment, then suddenly emitted a powerful stream of smoke from her nose, like steam coming from a horse’s nostrils. ‘How long are you staying?’
    The question took him aback. It was something she had never said to him before. But she did not wait for an answer.
    ‘I’m fond of Violet, known her a long time. What about you?’
    ‘How do you mean?’
    She made an irritated gesture, cigarette in hand. Ash fell to the floor. ‘What are you going to do?’
    He began to feel annoyed. Was he to be blamed because a woman fell in love with him? He moved his shoulders.
    ‘Harrington had some sort of engineering firm. She still owns it. She’s got plenty of money, only stays here for old times sake.’ What was she getting at? ‘You going to marry her?’
    ‘I don’t know. She might not want to.’
    ‘She’d eat you, boy, she’d eat you up alive. Don’t do it.’
    ‘It’s my business.’ He said it with a sharpness he did not intend.
    Widgey did not answer but she turned round and he was startled to see tears in her eyes. In the next moment he felt the pricking behind his own eyes, lowered his head and moved towards her. Then she was in the old armchair that had always stood in this room, his face lay on the rough texture of the grey skirt, he was sobbing and she was stroking his hair. He had the common sensation of thinking that the whole incident had happened before, and then he remembered that this was so, that there had been a time in childhood when he had been lost for a couple of hours on the beach and had been brought back by a policeman and been scolded, and had then dirtied his pants. Rejected by his father and mother he had run into the parlour, flung himself weeping into Widgey’s lap and pressed his face into the roughness of her skirt. It was as simple as that. He wiped his eyes, got up.
    ‘You’re right, it’s your business,’ she said huskily. ‘I’m telling you, that’s all. Have you got to get married?’
    ‘I’m not pregnant.’
    ‘You know what I mean.’
    ‘I told you I’m not in any trouble.’
    ‘You will be one day. I was looking at the cards.’
    ‘Oh, the cards.’
    ‘Don’t laugh at the cards.’ Her face as she said this, thin, small and malevolent, was witch-like. ‘And about Violet. Remember what I said.’
    ‘It might be nice to be eaten up.’ He giggled. ‘By all that money.’
    She shrugged. The effect of the conversation was to make him feel that he would marry Violet if she said yes to him. Widgey, he thought, has never been short of money. But he knew that this was unjust, that she would never have done anything