Copyright & Information

Something To Hide

First published in 1965

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Nicholas Monsarrat to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
1842321560	9781842321560	Print
0755140214	9780755140213	Kindle
0755140257	9780755140251	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Nicholas Monsarrat was born in Liverpool, the son of a distinguished surgeon. He was educated at Winchester and then at Trinity College, Cambridge where hestudied law. However, his subsequent career as a solicitor encountered a swift end when he decidedto leave Liverpool for London, with a half-finished manuscript under his armand £40 in his pocket.

The first of his books to attract attention was the largelyautobiographical ‘This is the Schoolroom’. It is a largely autobiographical ‘coming of age’ novel dealing with the end of college life, the ‘Hungry Thirties’, and the Spanish Civil War. During World War Two he joined theRoyal Navy and served in corvettes. His war experience provided the frameworkfor the novel ‘HMS Marlborough will enter Harbour’, and one of his best knownbooks. ‘The Cruel Sea’ was made into a classic film starring Jack Hawkins. After the war he became a director of the UK Information Service, first in Johannesburg, then in Ottawa.

Established as a sort after writer who was also highly regarded by critics, Monsarrat’s career eventually concluded with his epic ‘TheMaster Mariner’, a novel on seafaring life from Napoleonic times to the present.

Well known for his concise story telling and tense narrative, he became one of the most successful novelists of the twentieth century, whoserich and varied collection bears the hallmarks of a truly gifted master of his craft.

‘Aprofessional who gives us our money’s worth. The entertainment value is high’- Daily Telegraph

Chapter One

Carter saw the girl from a long way away, as one always could on a clear evening, with the sun behind one’s head slanting down the highway. Even at a distance, she was a forlorn figure, picking her way painfully along the grass edge, turning her head briefly as the car ahead of his whipped past, then turning back again to plod onwards; and as his own car drew near, he saw that she was indeed forlorn.

She was limping; her shabby coat flapped round her bare legs like a flag of surrender; her long yellow hair hung limply across her shoulders. Just before he passed her, she turned again, and signalled hopelessly, and he had a glimpse of a pale, pasty face, and a mouth open, saying something, calling out something. A hitch-hiker, a girl down on her luck … He thought, as he usually did: Why should I stop? and then, for no reason at all save pity, he changed his mind.

Against his better judgment (since hitch-hikers sometimes pulled out guns and turned into bandits, and girls made trouble anyway), he braked, and drew his car on to the gravel verge, and waited for her to catch him up.

It took a little time, because she walked heavily and awkwardly, and she was obviously bone-weary; his distaste grew as he saw what he had stopped for. She did not look like a bandit, but she did look like a nuisance; a girl running away from home, a girl escaping from a reformatory, a girl no one wanted any more … He would have started his car again, and left her flat-footed; but by now he felt ashamed to, and in a moment it was too late.

Carter opened the opposite door as she drew level. Close to, she looked like a real loser. The pallid face, framed by the overload of yellow hair, was thin and pinched; her flapping coat was threadbare and stained by the weather, and her sharp-pointed shoes, once white, were cracked and scuffed to a dirty grey.

She had never even been pretty, he decided, with sudden impatience and dislike; now she was a mess, and he was stuck with her, on that silly kind of impulse which made other men give their loose change to street-corner drunks, or rescue stranded cats from trees, or vote for the underdog … But he need not be stuck for long.

He said briefly: ‘Want a lift?’ and she bent and peered at him, not smiling, not changing her expression, and answered ‘OK,’ and climbed awkwardly into the front seat. She could have said ‘Thank you,’ thought Carter, irritated again, as he put the car into low gear and edged over on to the highway. Of all the people he might have stopped for, it was just his luck to pick an ugly girl who didn’t say thank you.

The girl sighed heavily as she settled in, and then slumped back and let her head fall to one side, as if she were going to sleep. Wonderful, thought Carter, working through his gears till he was up to traffic speed again; now I’m running the sleeping-car service … More out of annoyance than anything else, he asked, rather loudly: ‘Where are you heading for?’

She must have been alert, in spite of her dead-alive air, because she answered straight away: ‘Down the road. As far as you’re going.’

It sounded too vague for comfort, and too binding at the same time. Whither thou goest, I go, he thought, and reacted immediately, defensively.

He let two faster cars pass him before he asked, still trying for some sort of communication: ‘Don’t you live around here?’

He glanced sideways, and saw that her eyes were now closed, and her hands folded in her lap, in a manner so settled, so resigned, that he grew wary again. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before he was really stuck with her. He tried, once more, to sort out the riddle.

She opened her eyes, and jerked upwards. ‘Questions!’ she shot back, with sudden, surprising venom. ‘Every time, questions! All I want from you is a lift. OK?’

‘All right,’ he said, and smiled in spite of his annoyance. She really was a dead loss, but he had known this sort of savage mood in himself, and could recognize it. ‘No more questions, then. You’ve got yourself a lift.’

It was grudging, and sulky, but at least it closed off the scene. The girl relaxed again, as if sure that she had made her point, and Carter went back to his driving.

He drove slowly and carefully, as he always did; it was all that his shabby, seven-year-old car was good for. Once or twice he glanced at the girl, and then glanced no more, because there was really nothing to see. She seemed to be asleep, and with sleep the pallid, featureless face had grown younger, shedding some of its sulky toughness, some of its defences.

Her true age, he decided, was probably not more than sixteen. But she had not become any prettier, for all this softening process; she remained what she had been when he picked her up – a dull girl, an ugly girl, a girl unloved and probably unloving.

He could feel sorry for her, but not too sorry. It did not matter, now, that he had wasted his time and trouble giving her a lift; but he was glad that he would soon be rid of her. It had just been a silly thing to do; one of those silly things that needed to be put right, as soon as the chance came up.

She slept, and he drove, all in silence. Once she stirred, with a sharp movement, and her hands in her lap tightened protectively, in a way which reminded him of something – but the something slipped away before he could identify it.

It took him nearly an hour to get to Stampville, and dusk was falling as he slowed for the outskirts of the town. The change in the engine note must have woken her, for he presently noticed that she was sitting up, and her eyes were open.

She looked round her, rather warily, taking in the street lamps, the shops closed for the night, the thin traffic of the market town.

‘No,’ answered Carter. ‘I’m about five miles farther on. Along by the river.’

She nodded, and seemed ready to settle down again. It was not what he had planned, and he said, as firmly as he could: ‘I’d better drop you off here. If you want to go on, you’ve more chance of picking up a lift somewhere in town.’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered shortly. ‘One of the service stations, maybe.’

He opened his mouth again, ready with another argument, and then he changed his mind. The more he argued, the more he could become entangled, caught up in her problems. The quickest way was to take her as far as he could, and then cut the thing off, with good reason and no alternative.

He said, indifferently: ‘Have it your own way,’ and shifted gear for the approaching corner, and drove on out of town again.

Five miles was five miles, as she had said; a weary trudge for walkers, a ten-minute breeze even in a slow car. Presently he was easing down again, preparing to stop; and as he did so the girl made a curious sound, half a groan, half a sob, and turned her face away from him as if she were trying to go into hiding.

‘Sure.’ But she was shivering, and her voice had tightened, as if it were now an effort to speak. ‘Sure. I’m OK.’

The car rolled to a halt, beside a line of half a dozen rural mailboxes, and a gravel track leading down into trees.

‘This is my turn-off,’ said Carter, with finality. He really must close this thing up before it got out of hand. If she was ill, then she was ill, and shouldn’t be walking around and hitching lifts. He wasn’t a doctor, and he didn’t intend to set up in practice, on this or any other night. ‘I’ll say goodbye.’

There was a long silence, broken by a big truck thundering past at high speed, rocking his car as the shock wave of its advance hit them. The girl sat where she was, tense, withdrawn, staring straight ahead of her into the dusk, perhaps summoning up the courage to get out and face it. He was not surprised, only annoyed, to hear her say: ‘Can’t I stay?’

‘Just for the night,’ she said. ‘I’ll sleep outside, in the car, if you like.’

‘No,’ he said again. ‘That wasn’t the deal, and you know it. You wanted a lift, I gave you a lift. This is where it stops.’

He reached across, prepared to push open the door, prepared to do anything to be rid of her; and as he did so, her hands lifted and she threw open her loose coat, in a curious gesture of revelation – like a salesgirl, like a lecturer demonstrating.

During that split second of warning, he had been expecting many things – a scream, a pantomime of assault, a wild physical appeal, even nakedness – and his frightened mind, running ahead, had been ready to deal with them. But he had never expected what he now saw. Under the flapping disguise of the coat was a cheap, wrap-around skirt and a bulging smock; and under the smock a girl who, clearly, could not carry her child for very much longer.

She watched him as his glance took in the facts – the facts of life. She gave him time to be jolted. Then she said in a harsh, almost accusing voice: ‘I told you. You’ve got to help me.’

Chapter Two

Carter did not really begin to think again, in any coherent sense, until he and the girl were inside his house, and the curtains drawn, and his privacy – their privacy – secured. Until then, all he had to goad him was a series of swift, scary snapshots of what might happen if he did not give her shelter. They had started from the moment she said: ‘You’ve got to help me.’

He could push her out of his car, and she would have her child by the roadside, and it would be dead, and the girl as well, and it would all be charged to him, and the words BRUTAL ABANDONMENT would be there for everyone to see, in large black type … He could take her to a hospital, and see her through an area vaguely labelled ADMITTING, and thus get rid of her – until a large and formidable woman in a white uniform asked him: ‘Mr Carter, what is your relationship to the – ah – mother-to-be?’

He could drive her a few miles farther on, and there eject her, and be clearly seen in the headlights of another car, arguing loudly, using force … He could deliver her to the nearest police station, and hand her over, and then, just as he was leaving, the sergeant – again a large and formidable character – would say, deliberately: ‘Just a minute, you! Do you usually pick up sixteen-year-old girls on the road at night?’

He could get rid of her in any other way, and still be involved. He could give her money, and later try to explain why. He could buy her a bus-ticket, and then be identified as the last man to see her alive. He could, out of the goodness of his heart, escort her into the lobby of a hotel, and a week later a policeman would walk right into the town hall where he worked, and say, in front of everyone: ‘Carter, we know you took her to this hotel. But why did you leave her there?’

He could do any of these things, and somehow escape notice, and still be cornered by a blackmailing brother following fast behind.

For all sorts of reasons, he did not want to get involved any deeper than he was already. It was quite enough, it was more than enough … He had a job to keep, a small reputation to preserve, a preference for peace and quiet, a dislike of the police. For all sorts of reasons, it was easier to do as she asked, and take her in. Just for the moment, just till he could sort the thing out.

That was as far as his thoughts had brought him, when they stood and faced each other in the curtained room. He did not even know if he was safe now; though it was dusk, someone might have seen her getting out of the car, going up the pathway to the house. They were always watching his house for girls, ever since his wife went away. Good neighbours, nice people … A man could live alone, in a small house on the river bank, with his nearest neighbour a hundred yards away, and still do every damned thing under the limelight.

That was as far as he had thought, except to recall, with sick anxiety, what she had said when they were getting out of the car. He had asked when the baby was due, and she had answered almost jauntily, as if it did not matter one way or the other now that she was sure of shelter for a little longer: ‘I guess, any time.’

Any time … Watching her as she stood in the middle of the room, her coat off, he could believe it. It was something he knew absolutely nothing about, something he had only encountered in domestic crisis routines on television, or in newspaper stories about babies being born in cabs (stork WINS RACE); he was lost, and thus entirely vulnerable to the sort of panicky pressure which had made him waver, and then retreat, in the first place.

He had said, then, that she could ‘come in for a bit’; now she was in, and clearly it was going to be much more difficult to get her out again than it had ever been in the car. Unless he thought of something quickly, she would be staying the night – that much was obvious; and at the moment he could think of nothing except that, for the first time in more than a year, he had a girl in his house, and this time the girl was pregnant, and seemingly destitute, and he did not even know who she was.

With some idea of regularizing things, of catching up with the normality he felt he must regain, he said: ‘I’m Jack Carter.’

It sounded slightly ridiculous even as he said it, but, apparently, only to him. The girl, who was looking round the room with quick, calculating glances, answered offhand: ‘I’m Jo-Anne Broom.’

The grimace which passed across her face as she answered him was really one of the most unpleasant things he had ever seen. It seemed to express, in a fleeting moment, all the things she was not – not married, not protected, not safe from the world and its cruelties, not part of anything that counted; and, at the same time, it told of other things in her mind which he could only guess at – her rage at the world of squares which had her on the run, the sisterhood of other, prettier girls who somehow managed to make it to the altar, practically as good as new, the boy or man who had done this to her, and then chickened out.

Carter was, indeed, only guessing; he was over forty, and could not know the jargon of revolt; but there had been a look on her face as she asked, derisively: ‘Are you kidding?’ which gave him something like a peephole into hell, where the losers sneered upwards at the only thing they had to mock – the pious masks of the winners … He would never reach this ugly, lost girl, and he could be glad of it. But that, once again, did not solve the problem which was his own, here and now. This girl was not quite lost, because he had given her a reprieve. She was under his roof, and likely to stay there until he pushed her out again.

He seemed farther than ever away from this as she sat down on the long sofa by the fireplace, and put her feet up, and asked: ‘How about you?’