by Diane Janes
‘Didn’t she say her grandfather died around VE Day? That’s 1945, so if he was ninety, that would mean he was born around 1855, but if he was only in his sixties, it could be as late as 1885. Goodness, I see what you mean. Oh dear! Sorry to swerve like that.’
Wendy stifled a gasp as the car narrowly avoided a collision with a cyclist while Joan’s mind had been preoccupied with questions other than the road ahead. When she could breathe again, Wendy said, ‘The microfilm would send you bonk-eyed. It might take days to cover all those years. There must be a shortcut?’
‘Do you think there’s a real book? A history of the village, I mean? There might be something in the local interest section of the library.’
‘I’ve never noticed anything like that. Oh, I know!’ Sudden inspiration made Wendy’s voice rise. ‘I could ask Tara to ask her friend’s father about it. The one who put me on to the census. I believe he knows quite a lot about local history. You know,’ she added, ‘I was a bit surprised when Peggy said that Dora was going back in the direction of Green Lane when she saw her. To think that she was almost home and never made it.’
‘It’s strange what she had to say about the man, too,’ said Joan. ‘Perhaps the other witness – the old lady with the bad eyesight – was right. He might have turned off and had nothing to do with it. But that doesn’t make sense, does it? It’s always the sinister stranger on the lonely path. And he wasn’t identified, was he? An innocent person would have come forward.’
‘I’m not so sure. A lot of people mightn’t want to get involved. And if all he saw was a girl pushing a bike along a track, he might think, what’s the point? I can’t tell them anything they don’t already know.’
On balance, Wendy decided it best not to mention the visit to Peggy’s in front of Bruce. He had such a lot on his plate at the moment. On the other hand, she would have to explain at least some of the details to Tara if they were going to enlist the help of John Newbould via her friend Helen. Best mull it over, she thought, and not do anything right away.
‘Do you think the papers will go a day between now and the wedding without printing something about this blessed engagement?’ Bruce turned a page of the Saturday morning paper, spreading the sheets wide, then folding the whole newspaper into a smaller shape which could be accommodated more easily on a corner of the breakfast table, while he indulged in a weekend treat of bacon and eggs.
‘I suppose it’s because it’s Prince Charles and she’ll be the queen one day. And it makes a change from the unemployment figures.’
‘A chap at work said he’d only been put up to marrying her to distract people from what a mess the country’s in.’
‘I like Lady Diana.’ Katie looked up from a bowl of cornflakes. ‘She’s very pretty.’
‘A dumb blonde,’ said her father. ‘You’d have thought Charles would have gone for someone with a few more brains. I mean, what does she know of life? A young girl of nineteen? She’s barely a year older than Tara, for goodness’ sake.’
‘Who’s barely a year older than me?’ Tara, still in her dressing gown, entered the kitchen in time to hear the tail end of the sentence.
‘Lady Diana,’ Wendy explained. ‘I’m doing bacon and eggs, Tara, do you want some?’
‘Uggh, no thanks. So what about me and Lady Diana then?’
‘I was just saying to your mother that she’s far too young and inexperienced to be getting married – particularly to a man who’s so much older.’
‘I don’t see why.’
Oh dear, Wendy thought. First thing on a Saturday morning when Tara was barely out of bed was not the best moment to take issue with her on anything.
‘Well, you would see exactly what I mean if you were a bit older yourself.’
No, no, Bruce, Wendy wanted to say, but it was already too late.
‘It’s older people who have got the world into such a mess,’ Tara said, not even looking at Bruce as she reached into the fridge for the juice. ‘If she’s in love with Prince Charles – though why anyone would be, I can’t imagine – then of course she should marry him. Younger people know a lot more than older people think they do.’
‘Tara, please don’t take that tone with your father.’
‘He’s not my father. I do wish you’d try to get your head around that.’ Tara had moved from the fridge to the counter, where she poured some juice into a glass.
‘Irrespective of blood lines,’ said Bruce, ‘you shouldn’t be speaking to anyone in that tone of voice. Not me or your mother. And while you’re living under my roof, you’ll show some respect.’
‘Or else what?’ For the first time since she had entered the kitchen, Tara looked Bruce straight in the eye. ‘Go on …’ she goaded. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
‘Tara, please … we were all just sitting here, having a nice family breakfast …’
‘And it’s all been spoiled by the cuckoo in the nest.’ Tara shrugged. ‘Well, don’t worry, I’m not stopping you. Carry on with your nice family breakfast.’ She invested the final words with contempt.
‘For heaven’s sake!’ Bruce exclaimed, but Tara had already gone, leaving the juice carton out on the counter. Wendy automatically turned away from the stove to put it back in the fridge.
Katie rose from the table and sidled out after her sister.
‘Katie!’ Wendy called. ‘What about your bacon?’
‘I don’t want any, thank you,’ came a voice from the hall.
‘But you said … oh for goodness’ sake, now I’ve cooked far too much. Bruce, Jamie, can you each eat another rasher?’
A few minutes later, Wendy said, ‘You shouldn’t take any notice of her. She’s on edge over her exams.’
‘Her exams are weeks away.’
‘You know,’ Wendy said, when Jamie had finished his extra bacon and she was left alone at the table with Bruce, she still finishing a bacon sandwich, he lingering over a second coffee while he read the paper, ‘this all started when you objected to her seeing that builder boy.’
‘Of course. My fault as usual,’ Bruce grunted, not bothering to look up from whatever he was reading.
‘I didn’t mean it like that. I just think he’s at the root of all this trouble. I think she’s carried on seeing him behind our backs. There’s someone she rings, someone she’s always a bit secretive about. If I come through the hall sometimes, when she’s on the phone, her voice changes and she shuts up sharpish, as if it’s a conversation she doesn’t want me to hear.’
‘She’s eighteen. There’s probably a lot of conversations she doesn’t want you to hear.’ He lifted the paper, shook it back into shape and turned another page. ‘As for her continuing to see that John, or whatever his name is, why would she bother to keep it a secret? She was pretty defiant about it when I first challenged her.’
‘She’s put Birmingham down as her first choice.’
‘It’s a good university – and it’s near to her father too.’
‘It’s also where he’s all set to go to the Polytechnic.’
‘Birmingham’s quite a big place, Wendy. It’s not like them both being in Bishop Barnard, you know. Oh …’ He paused, his attention clearly caught by something he had spotted in the paper. ‘Talk of the devil … or devils, I suppose, in this case. That other labourer of Broughton’s, Peter Grayling …’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, the trial finished yesterday and he’s been found not guilty.’
‘I didn’t even know the trial had started. I suppose that’s good then.’
‘What’s good about it?’
‘It means he didn’t do it and now he’ll be set free.’
‘Good God, Wendy, you can be so naïve. All I can say is what a good thing it is we’ll all be moving away from here very soon.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Don’t you get it? This chap knows the layout of the house and exactly who lives here.’
‘But he’s been found not g
uilty.’
‘There’s no smoke without fire, not in cases like this. The difficulty they’ve had all along in bringing it home to him is that they’ve never found the body, but the police wouldn’t have made an arrest if they hadn’t known it was him. You’ll need to be very careful with security when I’m not here. No forgetting and leaving the back door unlocked all night.’
‘That was only one occasion.’
‘Well, you’ll have to be very careful,’ Bruce repeated.
She had hoped to have a day free from all mention of Bruce’s impending departure, but they were right back on it again, she thought. It cast a cloud over everything, coloured every conversation. One more week as a family, before Bruce took up his new post, which would mean staying with his parents during the week. At least he would be home at weekends.
When they assembled to kiss Bruce goodbye on the front doorstep a week later (all except Tara, who was out with friends), Wendy experienced an awful sense of foreboding. Suppose he was killed on the motorway and never made it? It was quiet on Sunday afternoons, but even so …
‘Don’t forget to ring me when you get to your parents’ house,’ she said.
He did ring, but it was Tara who happened to answer the telephone. From the sitting room, Wendy caught a perfunctory exchange before Tara rang off and popped her head around the door.
‘That was Dad.’ (It was funny, Wendy thought, the way Tara attempted to make a point of addressing him as Bruce, but as often as not forgot herself and still called him by that old familiar label.) ‘He just called to say he got to Granny’s OK.’
‘Is that all?’
‘What were you expecting him to do? Declaim from Shakespeare or recite the Magna Carta? He’s only been gone a few hours. He said something about going out for a walk, to stretch his legs after the drive.’ Tara withdrew, shaking her head theatrically, as if in wonderment at the stupidity of parents.
Alone in the sitting room, Wendy considered the TV schedule and found nothing of interest. Katie joined her and they played best of three games of draughts (later extended to best of five) before it was her bedtime. At nine thirty she took Tara a cup of coffee in her lair, but Tara had settled down with her books and her headphones and was clearly not disposed for a chat. Back downstairs and mindful of Bruce’s warnings, Wendy checked that all the doors and windows were locked. She returned to the sitting room, wondering if the children felt the same sense of absence as she did. Did they feel any less safe now that Bruce was gone? And what would she do, supposing some maniac were to break into the house while she was there alone with just the children? She opened the sitting room curtains a crack and looked out on to the drive, the furthest end of which enjoyed sufficient illumination from the street lamps to confirm that it was empty. The rest of the front garden was in deep shadow. There was no moon and the high hedge and trees obscured the light which spread freely down the drive. Half-a-dozen crazed axemen could have been lurking unseen.
‘Stop it,’ she said to herself. ‘This is The Ashes. It’s your home. There’s nothing to be afraid of here.’
Monday began like any other, with the usual struggles to get everyone up and out on time: Katie being slow and sleepy and losing her socks; Jamie fretting over a missing toy car instead of focussing on eating his breakfast; Tara impossibly grumpy and best avoided. Jamie was the last to leave, collected at the door by Andrew Webster and his mother. Wendy and Andrew’s mother had arrived at an arrangement some weeks previously, whereby they took it in turns to walk the boys to school and collect them at the end of the day, and it happened to be Mrs Webster’s turn.
Left to her own devices, Wendy cleaned the kitchen floor to within an inch of its life and was about to turn her attention to the stone flags in the hall when she glimpsed the sad-eyed Morisot through the open dining room door. She had never liked it but hadn’t wanted to upset Bruce by removing it from the position he had chosen. It didn’t look right there – in fact, it was downright depressing – and since he wasn’t around to see that it had gone … She marched decidedly into the room, reached up, took a good hold on either side of the frame and carefully lifted the picture down. She carried it across to the window and, not without difficulty, held it up at different angles, but it failed to transform itself into the image that had so captivated her when she had first set eyes on it in the shop window. She could not imagine how it would fit in with the sort of modern property that Bruce now appeared to be set on acquiring. Her picture, her grandfather clock … the new dining suite? Probably all sorts of lovely things would be thrown onto the bonfire for which his career had laid the foundations. She supposed she shouldn’t mind. They were only things. Family was what mattered … but oh, it felt so wrong, so very, very wrong to be leaving this house.
She stood, hesitating, before the window, picture in her hands, not seeing the daffodils bending on their stems in the breeze which was raking across the garden. She decided to put the picture in the study. Bruce would notice it was gone when he came home at the weekend, but she could make up an excuse, or even replace it temporarily. She carried it into the study, where it would be out of the way. No one ever used the room for anything. It was, as Bruce had said, just wasted space, its doors mostly kept closed. It provided a natural shortcut from the rear passage to the front hall, but Wendy had never noticed anyone using it as such, and she herself invariably walked the long way round, passing the entrance to the cellar and turning the corner by the kitchen door. Ever since Bruce’s explosion over Joan and her half-remembered ghost story, it had never seemed politic to query why everyone else avoided the study, but as time passed, she had been forced to admit to herself that the room had a slightly unpleasant atmosphere. Perhaps because it was not quite large enough or light enough to make a good study. Perhaps because the dark green and white wallpaper made it feel a bit claustrophobic.
She managed to manoeuvre the door open while continuing to grip the picture in both hands, entered the room and bent to prop her burden against the end of the bookshelf. As she did so, the previously indefinable sensation of something unpleasant in the room finally crystallized. It was a feeling she had experienced once before, many years previously, when she had been at a dance with some girlfriends while Robert was away at university. One of her friend’s brothers had persuaded her to dance with him, and afterwards, when she slipped out to the ladies, he’d been waiting for her in the passage. He’d said something to arrest her progress, then made a grab, pressing his body aggressively against hers, his beery breath contaminating her mouth as he’d managed to land one kiss before she pulled away. The feel of his hands on her back, hot and clammy through the thin cotton of her summer frock, had nauseated her. She shuddered at the recollection. It must have been more than twenty years ago, but it came back to her now, as clearly as if it had happened only moments before. She drew back from the room, shutting the door. Her heart was racing. Ridiculous, of course. The blood must have rushed to her head when she bent to put the picture down – and the picture itself must have been heavier than she’d thought, to make her feel all giddy like that. She abandoned her plans with the mop and bucket in favour of a cup of coffee in the kitchen. All was well in there – everything was safe and normal. A listener’s dedication was being read out on Radio Two. She put on the kettle and made herself a coffee. She would have a chocolate digestive with it, if the kids had left her any. She smiled as she noticed the way the fridge hummed to itself when Johnny Cash began to sing about ‘A Thing Called Love’. No wonder she was a bit on edge, she thought, with all this change in the air. Bruce must have been quite nervous, starting his new post. Not that he ever showed anything like that.
There was plenty to keep Wendy busy through the day. The ironing pile alone was enormous. Three shirts per day, courtesy of Bruce’s job, the younger children’s school uniforms and, judging by the amount of items belonging to Tara, her eldest must be changing her clothes at least three times a day! When the children came home from school she gave
them fishfingers and chips for tea by way of a treat (their meals usually involved proper vegetables, which canned baked beans were not). They weren’t showing any particular signs of missing their daddy, she thought. And tonight she would allow herself no licence to indulge in silly fantasies about hatchet-wielding maniacs lurking in the garden. Just to show herself that she wasn’t scared, Wendy made a point of using the study as a shortcut when she went to check that the back door was locked.
She had thought that Bruce would ring and tell her how his day had gone, but he didn’t. Perhaps he was waiting for her to call and ask. After all, he knew she wasn’t really reconciled to the move. She decided it would be a nice gesture to take the initiative. It wasn’t quite ten; he wouldn’t have gone to bed yet.
Bruce’s mother answered. ‘Wendy? Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, perfectly, thank you. Can I speak to Bruce, please?’
‘He’s not in, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh.’ She tried to smother her disappointment. She could hardly have been expected to know that he wasn’t there, but she felt, foolishly, as if she had been caught out in not knowing.
‘He went out at about eight for a drink with some of his colleagues.’
Wendy noted the use of ‘colleagues’. It was the sort of word Bruce’s mother liked. It gave her son status to be consorting with ‘colleagues’, rather than just the chaps he worked with.
‘Was it anything important? Something Digby and I could help you with?’
Digby. Wendy thought for perhaps the millionth time what a good thing it was that Bruce’s parents hadn’t been tempted to name their son after his father. ‘No. Everything’s fine. I just thought I’d have a quick chat, that’s all.’
‘Are you and the children all right?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Good, good. Well, I’ll tell Bruce you rang, shall I?’
‘Thank you, yes. Are you and Digby OK?’
‘Mustn’t grumble. Give our love to the children, won’t you? Tell them how much we’re looking forward to seeing them.’