by Diane Janes
The drink driving case came before the magistrates a couple of weeks before Christmas. The bench was unmoved by Wendy’s explanation of a single mistake in an otherwise unblemished decade of driving, or the notion that the loss of her licence would cause difficulties for her during the occasional periods when her husband’s work took him away from home. Having listened, stern-faced, they handed down a ban of twelve months, while Wendy stood in the dock, trying not to cry. She supposed that she ought to be cross with Joan – as Bruce was – for unthinkingly encouraging her to drink and drive, but it wasn’t as if Joan had done it on purpose. I have to take responsibility, Wendy thought. It was my own stupid mistake.
It was a nuisance, no doubt about it. Bruce had to take her supermarket shopping now, and missed his Saturday afternoon football match to accompany her on a foray into Middlesbrough for Christmas presents. He didn’t openly complain, but she knew what he was thinking.
The Christmas shopping went much more smoothly than Wendy had anticipated and by eleven thirty they were laden with bags and had already ticked off most of the items on her list.
‘Let’s go and have a coffee,’ she suggested. ‘I know a nice little place just round the corner, well away from the plastic cup and hamburger fraternity.’
‘Good idea.’
They were passing a shop which advertised ‘picture framing, quality paintings and personal service’ when Wendy stopped abruptly. With bags in both hands, she was unable to point. ‘Look,’ she said, nodding towards a painting propped on the easel which formed the centrepiece of the window display.
The picture was of a young woman in a full-length dress, who was smiling down at her sleeping child. The woman’s face had a wistful quality to it, Wendy thought. And the child looked utterly peaceful, cocooned from the world by the transparent draperies of its crib.
‘Oh Bruce! Isn’t it lovely?’
He nodded. ‘Very pretty.’
‘I wonder if it’s an original. I’d love to know who painted it.’
‘I should think it’s a print. I can’t see a price on it.’
‘It’s quite big. And it’s a posh shop, so it’s sure to be expensive.’
‘I’ll go and ask.’
To her surprise he dumped his bags on the pavement and entered the shop, disappearing immediately among the various items on display inside. He returned two or three minutes later.
‘Is it very expensive?’
Bruce laughed. ‘Horribly. But at least I’ve found out what you wanted to know. It’s a print of a painting done by a French woman. Morisot, the chap said her name was, from a French school apparently.’
‘A woman,’ Wendy said thoughtfully, taking a last long look at the picture, as Bruce adjusted the shopping he was carrying before they set off again in search of caffeine.
Though Bruce was forever watching the pennies, the balance of Wendy’s legacy and the equity from the house in Jasmine Close meant that they were comfortable enough for regular treats, and it crossed Wendy’s mind that he might have arranged to buy the painting as a Christmas present for her, but there was no tell-tale flat, rectangular present under the tree on Christmas morning and instead she simulated appropriate excitement over her favourite perfume from Bruce and thanked his parents profusely for their misguided gift of a sandwich toaster (of rather more benefit to the children than to herself, Wendy could not help thinking). Only when all the other gifts had been opened and the sitting room floor was covered in torn paper and bits of sticky tape, did Bruce take her by the hand and lead her across the hall and into the dining room, where he had secretly hung the Morisot reproduction on the chimney breast late the night before.
Wendy was speechless. She could only turn and bury her face in his chest, as Bruce’s parents and the children crowded into the room behind them. It was the clearest possible sign, she thought, that she had been forgiven.
The celebrations were such a success that if Bruce’s mother considered anything sub-standard, she did not think to mention it. Christmas lunch was perfect, there was no squabbling over Monopoly or Charades, and no one cavilled about joining in with the Boxing Day walk, regardless of what was showing on television. When Tara insisted on telephoning ‘Bob’ and his family on Christmas morning, no one made a big thing of it. It was only after Bruce had set off to drive Tara and his parents to the station – the senior Thorntons homeward bound, Tara on another trip south to see in the New Year with Robert and his family – that Wendy had a real opportunity to stand before the fireplace in the dining room and have a long, uninterrupted look at her picture. She had read somewhere that the positioning of a painting is all important. It had to be hung in the right light, and surely that must be the explanation here. The painting was evidently in the wrong place. How else to explain the way the woman’s expression was so sad, the way she looked so tired as she rested her face against her hand while she watched over the sleeping infant? It was only when Wendy gave her full attention to the child, lying unnaturally pale behind the drapes, that she suddenly understood. The baby was dead.
Silly, she told herself. It’s just the light.
She decided to put off stripping the bed in the guest room until tomorrow. Nor would she get the hoover out and deal with the day’s shedding of needles from the tree. (A real tree was all very well, but it did dry out fearfully quickly in a room with the benefit of both central heating and a log fire.) It was still the holidays – the more so with the departure of Bruce’s parents – and she was entitled to a break. She would go and make herself a well-deserved cup of tea. She paused to glance in at the sitting room where Jamie sat cross-legged on the rug, watching some old adventure film – Jason and the Argonauts perhaps? The 7th Voyage of Sinbad? It was such a lovely scene, she thought. The room decorated with their own evergreens, the tree dripping with baubles and twinkling fairy lights. The Ashes lent itself to moments like this. There had been a scattering of snow on Boxing Day – nothing to get excited about, not enough for a snowman or a snowball fight, but enough to outline windowsills, to make the view from the gate like something from the front of a Christmas card. She had always known the house would look wonderful at Christmastime.
The kitchen bore evidence of the season too, dotted about with the detritus of that period between Christmas and New Year. A discarded novelty from a cracker lying on a windowsill, the big platter which they only ever used for the turkey standing out on the surface, waiting to be put away on a shelf that only Bruce could comfortably reach, and a part-eaten box of cheese biscuits, for which there was no space available in the cupboard, standing alongside it. When she opened the fridge, she was confronted by various clingfilmed leftovers which no one was ever likely to eat. Who wanted cold stuffing?
As she shut the fridge door, milk in hand, she glanced around the room and smiled. It had come to life, she thought, this once sad, neglected building. Their very first Christmas here. Full of warmth and happiness, just as she had imagined. ‘Thank you, house,’ she said.
‘Mam!’ The urgency of Jamie’s yell sent her racing back to the sitting room, still holding the container of milk.
‘Oh my God! Jamie, get back.’
For a few seconds she stood transfixed in the doorway, staring at the surreal site. Where a few minutes before there had been one fire cheerfully burning in the grate, the original now had a fellow, a much smaller blaze, centred on the hearth rug.
‘Quickly, to me.’ She beckoned her son urgently as he skipped across the room to join her. ‘Run upstairs,’ she ordered. ‘And tell Katie to come down. Then you are both to go straight outside. Both of you, do you understand?’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to put out the fire.’ I have to, she thought. If I don’t do it right away, it’ll get across to the Christmas tree and that will go up like a torch and set the whole house ablaze. Having sent Jamie on his way, she raced back to the kitchen, grabbed the biggest vase from the cupboard and filled it with cold water. As she ran
back up the hall, she heard the children’s voices on the landing.
‘Hurry up!’ she shouted. ‘Get out of the house!’
In truth, the fire on the rug was a small one. A single vase of water quenched the most serious flames, though it created a billow of smoke, through which she could still see glowing embers. She passed the children in the hall as she was dashing back to the kitchen. ‘Get outside,’ she repeated, not pausing for discussion or explanation.
A second vase full of water appeared to extinguish everything, but she made sure of the job, retracing her steps another three times. By now the sitting room was full of smoke – or more likely steam – and an unpleasant smell of charred carpet filled her nostrils. The place where the fire had been was marked by an irregular blackened patch on the rug, with the soaked, charred remnants of a couple of Christmas cards lying on top. The rug was a goner, but apart from a mark on the carpet underneath, once the smoke had cleared, there was no other damage. The house, the children and everything else had been saved, but her heart was still hammering in her chest. It could so easily have been different. Imagine if Jamie had not been in the room to give an immediate alarm.
‘It’s not worth trying to claim on the insurance,’ Bruce said, as he inspected the scene. ‘We’d be better off just replacing the rug. That will hide the mark on the carpet and be cheaper than having to pay the excess on the policy. What I can’t understand is why the fireguard wasn’t in front of the fire.’
‘I suppose the last person to put a fresh log on forgot to replace the guard. But I still don’t see,’ Wendy continued, ‘how the fire got started in the first place.’
‘I should have thought that was obvious. A draught must have blown a couple of cards down off the mantel shelf and they caught light. There should never have been cards standing on there in the first place. It’s an obvious fire hazard.’
‘So obvious,’ Wendy said, ‘that you never thought to mention it until after the event.’
‘It’s no use arguing with you about how you want things arranged,’ Bruce retorted.
‘Oh, naturally it’s my fault!’ Wendy turned to Jamie, who was hovering in the hall behind them. ‘Jamie, you must have done something, just before the fire started. Were you jumping about? You won’t be in trouble – we just need to understand how it began.’
‘I wasn’t jumping about. I wasn’t even moving. I was lying on the rug, watching TV and then I heard a crackle and when I looked round, the rug was on fire, right behind my feet. I jumped up then, because I was scared my feet were going to get burned.’
‘That really can’t be true,’ Wendy said. ‘Those cards have been standing there for two or three weeks without falling down. Why would this mysterious draught happen all of a sudden this afternoon? And why would the cards bounce into the fire and then out again on to the floor? Just when the fireguard happened to be out of the way. Jamie, please tell me the truth. Did you move the fireguard after I’d left the room?’
‘No, I didn’t. I’m telling the truth. Perhaps it was the bad lady.’
‘What bad lady?’
‘The bad lady who chased Katie. In the dream. Or maybe the nasty man …’
‘That’s enough of that nonsense,’ said Bruce. ‘Why don’t you run upstairs and play for a bit while I talk to Mummy.’ He closed the door of the sitting room, closeting himself and Wendy inside. In a lower voice, he said, ‘Did you see the fireguard in place before you left the room?’
‘I don’t honestly know. It’s usually there when the kids are around. When I picture the room, I see it there, but that’s because I’m expecting to see it, if you know what I mean. But Jamie must have been responsible. Maybe he was chucking something around and it knocked the cards into the fire. Perhaps he tried to rescue them by dragging them out on to the rug, only now he’s afraid to own up. I expect it was all just an accident.’
‘Well, I hope so. Otherwise we’ve got a budding arsonist on our hands.’
‘Jamie’s not an arsonist, Bruce. Don’t overdramatize.’
‘And what’s all this about bad people?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The bad lady who chases Katie, and the nasty man.’
‘Katie must have told him about those dreams she had.’
‘You’re sure no one else has been talking about ghost stories? Putting ideas into his head?’
‘If you mean me, then of course I haven’t. Give me some credit. As if I would tell Jamie a thing like that!’
‘Do you think Katie’s still having those dreams?’
‘How on earth should I know? She hasn’t said anything to me about them and I don’t see the point in stirring it all up again by asking her. It was probably just those couple of times. Don’t forget that she woke Jamie. He probably asked her about it.’
‘I suppose so.’ Bruce looked doubtful. ‘Anyway, I suggest we go out tomorrow and see if we can replace that rug. We don’t want to sit looking at a black mark on the carpet. There might be something in the sales.’
‘What about Jamie? Shouldn’t we try to get to the bottom of how the fire started?’
‘Better to leave it. If he did it by accident, he isn’t going to admit it. If he did it on purpose … well, we might have a problem on our hands … and I suppose it could have been a freakish accident – a door closing somewhere, creating a sudden draught.’
Wendy was about to point out that no one had closed a door at just that moment, but she decided that Bruce was right. It would be best left alone.
Once the Christmas festivities were over, they didn’t use the dining room again until Bruce’s birthday in January. Wendy had cooked his favourite gammon steaks and they opened a bottle of Gran Ponte Spumante, which even Katie and Jamie were allowed to taste, using two of the little coloured liqueur glasses that Bruce had won years ago on a tombola. After they had finished eating, Bruce helped her to carry things through to the kitchen (the wheeled trolley had yet to be purchased) while the children dispersed to use the telephone, watch television and play with a racetrack respectively. When he’d placed his stack of plates safely on the draining board, Bruce turned and put his hands on Wendy’s shoulders. ‘Leave all this,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a secret to share with you.’
She smiled up at him, responding to his mischievous tone. ‘Ooh … good secret or bad secret?’
‘Very good secret.’
‘Come on then, tell me.’
His smile became a grin. ‘I’ve been promoted.’
‘How lovely! Congratulations!’
‘Effective from April. District Director for Leicestershire.’
‘Leicestershire? Won’t that involve an awful lot of travelling?’
‘Not once we’ve moved down there.’
‘But I don’t want to move to Leicestershire.’ The words were out before she could stop them.
Bruce’s smile faded. He adopted the patient tone which she recognized as the one he used for the children, when they didn’t understand the finer points of their maths homework.
‘Darling, you haven’t had time to think about it yet. It’s my fault for springing it on you like this. Once you get used to the idea you’ll love it. It’s a real step up the ladder. Quite a lot more money.’
‘But you don’t have to say “yes”? I mean, they can’t make you go, can they? You said it was a secret. It’s not official yet, is it?’
‘I had the official offer today. Naturally I wasn’t going to turn it down.’
‘You mean you’ve accepted the job? You’ve been negotiating for a job in Leicester behind my back and you’ve accepted it without even consulting me?’
‘I didn’t want you to get all stirred up for nothing. It’s a brilliant opportunity. We’ll be able to afford a lovely house down there, somewhere handy for my parents in Ashby.’
‘Any advantages of living somewhere handy for your mother completely escape me.’
‘As well as more money, I get a company car. That means we could easily a
fford a second car, so you could have a little runaround of your own.’
‘Great. I suppose you’ve forgotten that I’ve lost my licence.’
‘Driving bans don’t last forever. You’ll be back behind the wheel before the end of the year. We have to look to the future.’
‘And what about the children? They’ll have to change schools, leave all their friends behind.’
‘Good heavens, they’ll soon make new friends. Now is as good a time for a move as any, before Katie starts senior school. And Tara will be going to university in September, so it won’t make much difference to her. She’ll come home to Leicester in the holidays instead of Durham.’
‘But she’s in the middle of doing her A-levels.’
‘She’ll be sitting them well before we actually move down there. The move won’t be instantaneous. There’s this place to sell, and you know how long it takes for house sales to go through these days. We’re sure to become involved in some interminable chain.’
‘So it’s all decided then?’ Wendy asked angrily. ‘We’re definitely going. The master has spoken.’
‘Look, Wendy, I know this has taken you by surprise and maybe I should have mentioned before that I was going for it, but you have to understand that if I turn this down, it puts my career into a siding, possibly permanently. I can’t afford to pass up an opportunity like this at my age.’
‘But you’re only forty-one.’
‘Exactly. I’m still young enough to move up again, if I take my chances. If I don’t, I’m going to get stuck at the same level, bypassed by younger men. I know you don’t really understand things like this …’
‘But I thought you were happy doing what you do now. It’s not as if we actually need more money. Not really.’
‘People always need more money. You moaned last month when I said we couldn’t afford a microwave oven without dipping into savings.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Well, on the new salary, you can have as many microwave ovens as you need.’
‘But only if I go to Leicester.’
‘Come on, Wendy. You always knew we might have to move. We’d never have met at all if I hadn’t been transferred up here. You must try to see this from my point of view.’