She did not turn. ‘Fine, if you’ve come to apologize...
‘Let’s not start that again. Come here and sit down.’
She ignored him, but he came over, removed the dishcloth from her hand and drew her to a chair. Still wearing her washing-up gloves, she sat down reluctantly.
‘Please don’t say anything till I’ve finished what I have to say. OK?’
Suzanne eyed him sullenly, shrugged, and he took it for assent and went on.
‘The mess this morning – you believe I did it. No –’ as she opened her mouth to speak indignantly, ‘hear me out. I swear to you, by all I hold sacred – the Bible, my son’s life, if you like – that I did not do it. Neither of us think for a moment it was Ben.
‘You say you didn’t do it either, which, so help me God, is what I believed. You’ve been under a hell of a lot of strain lately, and you might – oh, I don’t know, be sleepwalking or something. Or setting me up.
‘But I’ve been going round and round this in my head. Let’s assume for a moment that neither of us did it. The logical deduction then is that someone else did, but as you pointed out a tad trenchantly this morning, there were no broken windows or forced locks.’
He paused, but she did not say anything. She was listening properly now.
‘Is there anyone, anyone at all, who could conceivably have acquired a key to this place? I know it sounds silly, but still –’
She stared at him. ‘Well, of course there is! I can’t believe you don’t know. How do you think the plants get watered when we go off on holiday?’
Taken aback, he said, ‘I don’t think I ever gave it a moment’s thought – though I do always ask the neighbours on either side to keep an eye on the house.’
‘We all have keys,’ Suzanne explained. ‘Lizzie, Laura, Hayley and me: we all keep keys to one another’s back doors. Someone’s always needing a repairman let in, or forgetting their own key, or something. Or we pop in, when someone’s away, to check on things…’
She trailed off, into a silence that became prolonged, as they both drew their own conclusions. Then Patrick said heavily, ‘In that case, Suzanne, I think you had better get on the phone and call them in. It’s you, or me, or someone else who’s been burning things and vandalizing things, and I choose someone else.’
‘You don’t understand, Patrick!’ she cried. ‘How can I phone up my best friends and tell them I don’t trust them any more? Women don’t work like that.’
‘Men do,’ he said grimly, and got up, going towards the phone.
‘Oh no, Patrick! For goodness’ sake, don’t! All that will happen is that we’ll lose all our friends overnight. I’ll think of something – just leave it to me.’
For a moment there, they had been communicating. Now Patrick withdrew.
‘As you wish,’ he said curtly. ‘I can quite understand that you would prefer to doubt your husband rather than your friends. Have it your own way. You always do.’
He walked out and left her sitting at the kitchen table, eyeing the wall-phone as she might have contemplated a harmless grass snake which had suddenly reared up and opened a flattened hood.
4
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Elizabeth, compulsively murmuring the placatory words, with no real hope that they would achieve their propitiatory object, ‘I’m sorry, I – ’
‘For God’s sake!’ Piers’s face was blotchy with temper and his bulging eyes bloodshot from the hangover he was suffering. He pushed his chair back from the kitchen table with a violence which would have overturned any less solid piece of furniture.
‘What’s the use of grovelling? It doesn’t help, you know. If you directed your energy towards getting things right beforehand, instead of all this snivelling about afterwards, these things wouldn’t happen. How the hell can anyone forget to stock up on Alka-Seltzer over Christmas?’
Because other people don’t drink so much that they need it. Because some people have used up more in the last three days than most people would need in a year. Because the last lot didn’t magically remove all your symptoms and you said you couldn’t think why I wasted money on them.
She said, ‘I’m sure the shop in Chorton will be open later, even though it’s Boxing Day. I’ll run over and get some then.’
‘And what’s the use of that? It’s now I need it, not in three hours’ time. Oh, forget it. It’ll just have to be the hair of the dog – and don’t go all pious about drinking this early in the day. This is all your fault.’
Even after he had lurched out, headed for the drinks cupboard in the games room, there was silence at the breakfast table. Peter and Camilla, the mechanical move-ments of their spoons from cereal bowl to mouth arrested, were pale and wide-eyed; Paula’s gaze was downcast, her expression veiled.
Elizabeth found that she was holding her breath, and released it slowly. They had survived the crisis, and the brandy bottle should buy an hour or two’s peace.
‘Come on, darlings, eat up your breakfast. Daddy’s not feeling well this morning, so he’s a bit cross.’
The words tripped off her tongue readily enough, with the well-honed instinct to protect, cover up. Perhaps it helped, perhaps it didn’t, but she couldn’t bring herself to think that saying to a six-year-old, ‘Your father is a drunkard and potentially violent,’ would help anyone.
With nervous obedience the two younger children went back to spooning up their cereal, but Paula looked up, her dark grey eyes flashing fury at her mother.
‘How can you?’ she cried. ‘You’re so dishonest – this whole family’s nothing but a sham! Why do you let him get away with it – this and everything else? Tell him to get his sodding Alka-Seltzer himself, why don’t you?’
Elizabeth winced. ‘Paula – ’
She jumped to her feet. ‘Oh, what’s the point? I can’t believe that anyone in the whole world can be so pathetic. If you would stand up to him, he wouldn’t behave like that. But you haven’t got the guts, and everything’s getting worse and worse and worse while you try to pretend that it isn’t happening. I’m going out.’
Helplessly, Elizabeth watched her slam the door. Somehow, she comforted Camilla, who had begun to sob, and bought the two of them off with morning television and chocolate bars. Probably it would only mean that they had rotten teeth as well as psychological scars, she thought drearily, but the instinct to sweeten life’s bitterness with sugary food lies deep in a mother’s soul.
Even Paula believed it was all her fault. It was ironic, really; Piers and Paula both despised her for apologizing when things went wrong, yet both, for different reasons, held her to blame for not putting them right. She blamed herself for a lot of things too, though no one could try harder than she did not to make mistakes.
If only she did have the guts to stand up to him, be a strong person, like Hayley or Suzanne who weren’t afraid of anyone. But then, if she’d had any sort of courage, she wouldn’t have married him just because he was so sure of himself that she couldn’t see how she could possibly refuse. She wouldn’t even have let herself be bullied by her father into going to the Young Conservatives’ Ball which had sealed her fate. Her wildest act of rebellion had been secretly voting for Labour ever since, which as a testimony to her strength of character said it all.
The serious problems, though, had only started after Mother Mac died, when his drinking began to take over his life. So far, he had never hit her publicly or where it would leave an obvious mark. She tried not to think about it too much, because there was so little she could do.
She had no illusions. If she left Piers, she would be on her own. However much she might have right on her side, he would be too strong for her. He wouldn’t really want the children, but he had the money to see to it that she didn’t have them, to punish her.
Her head began to swim, as it always did when she allowed herself to think about it. She must stop this, stop this...She was wiping the Laura Ashley oilcloth on the table free of crumbs and putting things away – how
odd, there was a smiling face in the sugar bowl this morning – when Suzanne phoned.
This was not a surprise. The phone-call to let off steam after a stressful family occasion was a ritual, and Elizabeth’s face brightened. Suzanne’s rueful descriptions of her in-laws’ Christmas foibles were always amusing, and today it was just what was needed by way of distraction. Her tone was conspiratorial as she greeted her friend.
‘Suzanne! You’ve survived then, have you?’
‘Survived? Oh – oh, yes. And thank you for the parties. We all had a wonderful time.’
‘Oh good,’ Elizabeth said, but her brow furrowed. That wasn’t Suzanne’s usual style.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked with some concern. ‘You don’t sound like yourself at all. Was it even more horrendous than usual?’
‘Er – no, not specially. It wasn’t too bad, I suppose.’
Suzanne gave a laugh but she still sounded distant, almost formal, and Elizabeth felt rebuked as if by the tone of her question she had presumed on a non-existent intimacy. But perhaps she was being over-sensitive.
‘Were Patrick’s parents on good form?’ she asked, more cautiously.
‘Yes, fine.’
This time there was no mistaking the constraint. She wasn’t imagining things; Suzanne was definitely keeping her firmly at arm’s length. Wondering wildly what she could have said or done to offend her, Elizabeth could only repeat hollowly, ‘Oh, good.’
‘Er – Lizzie –’ At the other end of the phone, Suzanne cleared her throat nervously. ‘I wonder, could you dig out the back-door key you keep for me? The thing is, the insurance company has started getting stroppy about the way we spray our keys around, so we’re having to get them back. Silly, isn’t it?’
She laughed, but the laugh did not ring true.
‘Yes,’ Elizabeth managed to say brightly. ‘It does seem silly, doesn’t it. But if that’s what they say, that’s the way it has to be, isn’t it? I’ll drop it round later this morning. I’ve got to go out anyway. OK? Bye.’
Cold with shock and dismay, she put down the receiver. Whatever could she have done, without realizing, that was so awful that Suzanne wanted to finish their friendship? Because she didn’t for a moment believe that tale about the insurance. Suzanne could hardly have got an urgent message from the company today, and if it wasn’t urgent, why not just ask for it the next time she came round? In any case, Suzanne had never been a good liar, and Elizabeth knew her well enough to be certain that she was lying now.
She searched her own conscience, but it was genuinely clear. There was nothing she had thought, still less said or done, that could have upset Suzanne. They had parted yesterday, as far as she could tell, on their usual affectionate terms.
Could it be that someone was making mischief, someone jealous or malevolent, anxious to undermine their friendship? Perhaps unfairly, her mind flew to Hayley Cutler.
They had never been close. Somehow, Elizabeth was never convinced that she was entirely to be trusted, though they had all had some good times together, and Hayley had the gift of turning a gathering of four people into a party.
Remembering those good times, her eyes filled. Next to her children, her friends had been the most important thing in her life which, she sadly recognized, had become otherwise joyless. With Laura – clever, elegant Laura whom she so admired – estranged already, and Hayley suspect, she would be poor indeed without Suzanne. If it were a misunderstanding, surely they could sort it out?
But something cold and proud and bitter within her whispered that a true friend would not have listened to mischief-making, and that any approach could only result in further humiliation. The same demon prompted her to the thought that if Suzanne wanted her key back, she should retrieve her own.
Her eye went to the drawing pinned to the kitchen noticeboard, which Milla had brought home from school last week. It portrayed a rather lopsided angel with a speech balloon which read, ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to all men’ in tipsy capitals. The angel’s crayoned grin looked ironic now.
There had been other Christmases when things had gone more dramatically wrong – several, in fact – but she never remembered one where there had been such unease on every side. She could not precisely pinpoint its source, but it tweaked at her nerves like a persistent toothache. From some hidden suppuration poison was leaking into their lives.
She wrapped her arms about her body, rocking to and fro in that expression of misery which is as old as misery itself.
***
The curtains in the games room were still closed, and the air was thick with the cigars Piers had smoked last night. The light suspended above the three-quarter size billiard table had been left on, leaving the rest of the room in shadow.
Piers was oblivious to its squalor. Sitting in the big club chair by the dead ashes in the fireplace, nursing a brandy, a queasy stomach and a sore head, he heard his wife talking on the phone and scowled. No doubt she was bleating to one of her friends about how badly she was treated by her husband. He’d noticed they were distinctly cool to him nowadays.
With one exception. He grinned evilly at the thought. It was a long time since anyone had come on to him like that – in fact, if he was honest, this was a first, and he wasn’t about to let scruples stand in his way.
He had felt liberated to be himself at last, in these few months since his mother died. She was a tough old bird, he reflected with a certain wary admiration, and while she might still descend from mercifully-distant Yorkshire and make him feel like the very unsatisfactory small boy she had always considered him, he had behaved, at least when she was around, with a certain circumspection.
But now, there were no controls. Lizzie couldn’t say Boo! to a goose, let alone No! to her husband, and he need no longer check the bullying impulse which her perpetual cowering stirred in him.
Bullying came as naturally as breathing to Piers. His father had been a hard bastard, whom he had admired and feared in roughly equal proportions, but never loved. He had looked forward to kicking ass in his own firm when choler and rich living had carried the old boy off to an early grave, but his mother would have none of it.
‘Th’art not half the man thi father was,’ she said gruffly, affecting the broad old-fashioned Yorkshire she knew enraged him. ‘Happen tha’ll not play ducks and drakes with my grandchildren’s money, and tha hast thi poor pretty wife to provide for, think on.’
And he had, as always, been unable to defy her. He had sold the business to Trucking Worldwide, and agreed to the financial safeguards her lawyers had imposed – astute enough, to be fair – and subjected himself to the constant humiliation of having been guaranteed a seat on the board without the guarantee that anyone would listen to a word he had to say.
No wonder he saw her death as liberation. And yet, and yet...He missed the old certainties and the luxury of safe rebellion; sometimes, in his more sober moments, he even felt frightened himself by his growing taste for violence.
He would certainly never have taken up with Hayley Cutler if there was the smallest chance that his behaviour might come under his mother’s searing scrutiny. She would have laughed in earthy amusement at the notion that a woman like that could find his charm irresistible, would have suggested...But it had been bad enough being forced to listen to her opinions when she was alive. He wasn’t about to let her start offering them from beyond the grave.
He was having to be careful, of course. Hayley was one of the group Lizzie moved around with, and he was smart enough to know that this spelled danger. A woman might be as ready for a roll in the hay as you were, then before you knew it she’d be yakking around the kitchen table to her best friend who would turn out to be your wife’s best friend as well and who would see it as one of the duties of friendship to enlighten her as to who was doing what and with what and to whom.
But somehow Hayley was an outsider, never properly within the charmed circle. None of them really liked her, that was the thing, and come to that h
e wasn’t sure how much he liked her himself, though that had nothing to do with the price of cheese. It wasn’t precisely for her personality that he fancied her.
He was flattered, of course. He was far from being the only man around who had the hots for her, but she had definitely singled him out, and he was revelling in the experience. Despite the purchasing power of serious money, he had been finding life dull and disappointing, and secret assignations certainly added spice.
The brandy was beginning to kick in now, and he started to feel a sort of woozy benevolence as his stomach stopped heaving. He would have another glass, just to make sure, and then he could snooze till lunch time. Lizzie should have got the Alka-Seltzers by then.
***
Elizabeth’s visit to Bentham’s had been brief and awkward. Suzanne had done her best to seem bright and normal, but she knew she had failed. She was paralysed by the awkwardness of her position; after all, in asking for the return of her key, she was actually saying that she believed her best friend might have trashed her kitchen, and she had always been hopeless about covering things up. Elizabeth was clearly offended; she couldn’t possibly blame her for asking for her own key back in exchange, and she just couldn’t think of anything to say.
It had been a dreadful morning. Patrick had taken Ben off clay-pigeon shooting, and she had suffered a jealous pang at this male-bonding exercise.
She had been left to make the phone calls, and the fact that this had been her own choice did not lessen her resentment. As a person who, on the whole, was as honest with herself as anyone ever is, she recognized that unforgivably what he had forced her to face was an unwelcome truth.
Hayley’s response to her request had been puzzling. She was always difficult to read, but Suzanne thought she was intrigued, rather than surprised or offended. The key had been posted through the letter box half an hour later.
Laura’s reaction had been quite different. After an initial gasp of obvious dismay, she had recovered herself quickly, babbling on about the ludicrous demands insurance companies saw fit to make nowadays. She promised that one of the girls would bring it round, then rang off abruptly.
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