‘It’s Barry. The police won’t have believed him about the gun,’ he said.
‘Do you believe him?’ May asked. The stone – a large one – had only just missed her, and if it had struck her she might have been quite badly hurt. There was the shower of broken glass, too, which could have caused injury, flying into the room.
‘I do,’ said Wilfred. ‘Oddly enough. But I’ve no idea who can have taken it. It’s my fault for leaving the place open to everyone.’ But they always had. The farmworkers came in and out, and the family. ‘The police must have been too heavy on Barry,’ Wilfred added. ‘I’ll see him. If he apologizes, and mends the window we’ll say no more about it.’
‘You’re probably right,’ said May. ‘If the boy isn’t believed he’ll begin to think he may as well do a few of the things he’s accused of. But Barry has always been a good lad.’
‘He is – he’s got some rum friends, though,’ said Wilfred.
Barry, confronted, admitted what he had done.
‘I was mad at that sergeant,’ he said. ‘He wouldn’t believe I hadn’t nicked that gun.’
‘Well, breaking a window and causing a lot of damage – perhaps even hurting someone, you might have done that – isn’t going to make anyone more likely to think you’re telling the truth, is it?’ Wilfred asked.
‘Suppose not,’ muttered Barry.
‘We’ll forget about this, but you’ll pay for the repair – in fact, you can put the window back yourself on Saturday morning,’ said Wilfred. The lad worked for a builder, didn’t he? Then let him put some of his trade into practice.
Until Saturday, the Hunts endured a kitchen window patched up with cardboard and sellotape. Barry mended it in the morning. He knew the punishment was just but he bitterly resented Wilfred’s intended kindness: he was sure, too, that the police would go on leaning on him about the gun until it was found. And he didn’t see how it could be.
That afternoon, riding his motorbike, he sat on the tail of a family saloon heading innocently for a safari park; Barry was going to meet some friends, and he was impatient, since half the day was over already. With his engine snorting behind the car, he waited for a chance to overtake. The man driving the saloon, a father of three, with all his family in the car and their picnic tea, could see the scarved and helmeted figure in his mirror, much too close, and he knew it was there when he saw two cars approaching, one overtaking another. He had to brake, or there would be a head-on collision, and if he braked the youngster behind him would cannon into them.
He braked slightly and pulled to the left, though he was already well to his side of the road. He caught the kerb edge and his car went into a spin. Barry zoomed on, and the overtaking car pulled back to its proper position. The driver of the family car just managed to regain control without leaving the road.
Barry rode on, regardless.
As they drove back towards Blewton, Robbie tried to think of a plan. What would another man do now, one who had been around? If he took Wendy to a restaurant – perhaps stopped at one on their way – he would simply deliver her to her door again, and get no further. Not that he was certain he had the nerve to advance; it would depend upon her; the slightest rebuff and Robbie knew he would flee. But if what one heard was true, girls were all on the pill these days and took it as natural to round off an evening in bed. Robbie found it hard to believe that Wendy acted so indiscriminately, but unless he made the opportunity he would never find out how she would react to him.
‘What about dinner?’ he asked. ‘Where would you like to go? I believe the Riverside Hotel is nice.’
Wendy said at once, ‘It’s far too smart for me to go there dressed like this. Why don’t you come back to my place? We could get something at a take-away place – there’s a Chinese one near me.’
‘Good idea,’ said Robbie, he hoped calmly, as his heart soared. ‘I’ll get some wine on the way.’
He bought two bottles of claret; one might well not be enough. Wendy raised her eyebrows as he carried them back to the car, smiling.
‘Two,’ she said.
‘If we don’t drink them both tonight, there’ll be another time,’ Robbie said, looking, she thought, quite debonair and really not at all old. He was much better company than an arrogant young man like Philip Grigson, and he had been very solicitous for her comfort, much more than Terry ever had been.
They spent some time at the Chinese take-away place choosing the right mix. Wendy seemed to know quite a lot about Chinese food but Robbie was almost totally ignorant; she seemed, also, to be a regular customer. Robbie wondered who else she entertained with spare ribs and fried rice.
When they got back, Wendy put the containers of food into the oven to keep warm while she laid the table and found glasses. Robbie went down to the bathroom on the floor below. It was a narrow, gloomy room with a brown lino floor and a white enamel bath that had a long brown stain under the hot tap. He thought of his own little shower room with its bright tiles. A proper mistress should live in appropriate style, he reflected. He could give her an allowance from his salary, if he left Isabel. She wouldn’t miss his contribution to their expenses; she was always saying how insignificant it was.
Wendy had bought a new bottle of sherry and they started with that. She put a pile of records on the record player and turned out all the lights except the standard lamp in the corner. There were two tall blue candles on the small dinner table. With the reflection from them, and with the glow from the gas fire, it was snug. Robbie sat with his sherry in the larger chair and wondered how to begin.
It started during the meal. Their knees touched under the table and Wendy did not move her leg away. Robbie felt an excitement he had not known for years, perhaps had never truly known, because this time he was aware of what was happening. He did not know what to say to Wendy but that did not seem to matter. She chattered about her mother’s home in Scotland, with the farmer she had met on a cruise.
‘I think he had gone on it to find a wife after his own died,’ she said. ‘I was very worried, at first, about my mother. But she seems happy. I quite like my stepfather.’
Robbie described the death of his own mother when he was a child. They were both semi-orphans, and it was a bond. When they had finished eating there was still some wine left in the first bottle. They stacked the plates in the sink behind the curtain, and put the foil containers in the garbage bin; with this sort of meal there was very little washing up. Then they wandered back towards the fire and the nylon sheepskin rug on the hearth. Robbie topped up their glasses and sipped from his. Then he put it down. He could not kiss her with it in his hand.
Wendy made it all very easy.
9
‘You look terrible,’ Isabel said when she came downstairs on Sunday morning to do her weekly patrol. After her leisurely rest-day breakfast in bed, she would descend and stroll round the house with a fresh cup of coffee in her hand, deciding what must be done by the cleaning woman the following week, and if there were any particular tasks for Robbie. She would go back to bed then, read the Sunday paper, and remain there until Robbie was out washing the cars or, if the weather was wet and he had to leave them, in his workshop. She only glanced at Robbie when he put down her tray if she wanted to utter some command.
Robbie did feel tired, it was true, but he was elated. He had made successful love – and it was a sort of love – to Wendy not once but twice during the night, only leaving her at three in the morning. It required a supreme effort to go then but he made it; if he succumbed to slumber how would she explain his presence in the morning to the other tenants? They had clung together on her divan, the duvet pulled over them, in the warm glow of the gas fire, and he whispered to her that he had never known such bliss in his life.
At one point in the night, while they rested, they had an interesting discussion. He had told her she need not be worried; he was infertile. ‘How do you know?’ Wendy asked at once. ‘Did you have a test?’
He had not, but Isa
bel knew that their inability to have children was not her fault.
‘How can she be so sure?’ demanded Wendy. ‘Has she had one?’
‘Of course not,’ said Robbie, shocked.
‘Well, she can’t know, then,’ said Wendy, and added, for she knew he needed encouragement. ‘There’s nothing wrong with your performance, Robbie.’
These words had an instant effect on Robbie.
‘It was never like this with Isabel,’ he murmured into her neck, at one point.
It was a sort of madness, he thought, when he was once again in his own bed at 49 Claremont Terrace, but it was wonderful. With one wild act he had broken out of his timid acceptance of the half life he had lived all these years. Briefly, even the woman lying in hospital was forgotten.
But he ached in unusual places when he got up on Sunday morning, and his lips felt bruised. It would be as well to let a day or two pass before he performed those magic but unaccustomed movements again. He did not answer Isabel’s remark, but poured himself another cup of black coffee, and when he had drunk that, he went out to wash the cars.
He gave Charlie the fire engine that morning, and, after some thought, the toy pistol. That was the safest way of getting rid of it. He locked the rest of the things he had used in the robbery back in the cupboard.
Charlie’s mother came out to speak to him. She was a tall, thin girl with slim hips and legs that looked as if they had been poured into her tight jeans. With her corkscrew curls of blonde hair she looked, Robbie thought, about fourteen. Her small, round breasts thrust out a skimpy sweater. Robbie did not remember noticing them before.
‘You shouldn’t keep giving Charlie presents,’ she said. ‘He likes helping you.’
‘I like to give him things,’ said Robbie. ‘I get most of them with coupons, you know.’
‘Well – don’t spoil him,’ said the girl, who was thankful to have her son so usefully occupied. She went back to her husband. ‘Old Robbie next door gave me quite a look just now,’ she said. ‘Never thought he had it in him.’
‘Watch it, love,’ said her husband. ‘Middle-aged lust can be a terrible thing when it starts to stalk the streets.’
‘Where’s lunch?’ Isabel asked later, when there seemed to be no sign of roasting meat or vegetables boiling.
‘Make your own if you want some,’ said Robbie. ‘I’m going out,’ and he drove off to The Bell at Warburton, where he had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Chinese food, though satisfying at the time, did not sustain.
When he returned, he could hear the radio on in the sitting room. Isabel must be in there, reading Vogue or Harpers, a thing she often did on Sunday afternoons. There was a smell of baking: scones, he thought, sniffing. That meant Beryl was coming to tea.
Robbie crept upstairs to his room without being heard. There, he flung himself on his bed and closed his eyes, to conjure images of the night before. In a few minutes he fell into an exhausted sleep.
He slept for nearly two hours. Yawning, stretching, he looked out of his attic window at the garden. What a lot of work he should be doing in it, if he were not leaving. It would be nice if he could stay here, at the top of the house, on his own, without Isabel.
He went downstairs and made himself some tea. The trolley, with Isabel’s and Beryl’s used cups and plates on it, stood in a corner of the kitchen. There were some shortbread biscuits on a plate but either Isabel had put away whatever she had baked or it had all been eaten. Robbie did not want anything she had touched: the biscuits, factory made, were impersonal.
He took a large mug of tea and four biscuits out to his shed, where he settled down to work at Wendy’s coffee table.
Some time later he heard Isabel calling.
Let her call, he thought, planing a leg. He did not answer, and after some minutes she came to the door.
‘Didn’t you hear me?’ she demanded. ‘You’re wanted on the telephone. It’s that farmer friend of yours. He said it was very important, about some gun he’s lost. I told him you wouldn’t know one end of a gun from another but he insists on speaking to you.’
She was already walking away while she spoke.
Robbie had forgotten the shotgun, still locked in his cupboard. He followed Isabel up the path to the house. Her dark hair was lacquered into position; her wool two-piece made her body look like a square box. He knew that strong elastic contained her heavy rump. Now he knew, too, that she had never had any sexual allure, at any rate for him. He had clung to her as a sick man might clutch at a competent nurse.
Wilfred explained what had happened and asked Robbie if he had seen the gun when he was at the house the previous weekend. It was his XXV, he explained, the shortest barrel allowed by the law of the country, twenty-five inches, and he used it mostly for rabbits in woodland.
‘I’m sorry, Wilfred,’ Robbie lied fluently. ‘I didn’t look at your guns. It might have been there, or then again, it might not. I wouldn’t have noticed. When did you miss it?’
‘About ten days ago,’ Wilfred said. ‘I’ve told the police, and they think the cowman’s son must have taken it, but I’m sure he didn’t. He’s denied it and I believe him. I’m afraid the police might lean a bit too hard on him if it doesn’t turn up.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Robbie. ‘Well, who do you think has taken it?’
‘God knows. The place is always open, as you know, and May’s been away. It could be some lad passing by.’
‘Anything else missing?’
‘No.’
‘Some casual passer-by would be more likely to look for money, wouldn’t he?’ said Robbie.
‘Yes. But it could be someone after a gun, who knew there’d be one here,’ said Wilfred.
Just in time, Robbie realized he must not comment on the keys. The less he seemed to know about Wilfred’s habits, the better.
‘Sorry I can’t be of any help,’ he said.
‘I didn’t think you would be,’ said Wilfred. ‘It was just a chance. Might help to pinpoint when it happened.’
‘You do get a lot of callers, don’t you?’ Robbie said. Men were always coming with forms, or delivering feed or seed. ‘It could have been any of them, couldn’t it?’
‘Well, if one was a villain, yes,’ said Wilfred. ‘I suppose the police will talk to them, the regulars, anyway. But it’s hard to believe that any of them would do such a thing. Most of them have been coming here some time.’
‘You read these extraordinary things in the paper,’ Robbie said.
‘The police think Barry might have sold it to some scoundrel or other,’ said Wilfred. ‘Might be the chap that robbed your bank.’
‘That was a pistol,’ said Robbie.
‘Well, he might be part of a gang,’ said Wilfred. ‘Anyway I expect there are plenty of villains about looking for such things, if we only knew.’
‘I expect so,’ Robbie agreed.
‘Well, sorry to bother you,’ said Wilfred.
‘That’s all right,’ Robbie answered. ‘Sorry I can’t help. I hope it turns up.’
‘I don’t see how it can,’ said Wilfred. ‘I’m worried about Barry.’
Robbie had thought vaguely of returning the gun to Wilfred’s study some time when the house was empty but it might not be easy to find such a moment, when no one was around to see him. He could dump it somewhere where it would soon be found; there would be nothing to connect him with it in any way. He must just be sure not to leave it where it could be found by someone irresponsible.
He could hear the yak-yak of the two women’s voices coming from behind the sitting room door. Perhaps if he wasn’t around they’d set up house together: and he might go to Greece with Wendy.
In the evening he walked down the road to the call box on the corner to telephone the hospital.
Wendy slept soundly after Robbie left her in the early hours of Sunday morning, and she rose late, singing to herself as she brewed a mug of instant coffee and poured cereal into a bowl. The plates from their evening meal
were in the sink; Robbie had mentioned the washing up, apologetically, as he left. She thought he must be a very nice husband: kind, and so dependable. His home life wasn’t very happy, clearly, and she supposed it must be difficult to have a wife who was so much more successful than he was. The business about the baby, or lack of one, had shocked her; extraordinary that Robbie had accepted his wife’s verdict without question; no young man would unless his wife had had exhaustive tests. It showed how old he was, or how he had failed to move with the times. He hadn’t seemed old in the night, just endearingly diffident. They were both lonely; there was nothing wrong in offering comfort, of a sort, to one another, and kind Robbie could never cause her any harm.
As she sat in the bus going to visit her friend Ella, who was married to a veterinary surgeon and lived fifteen miles from Blewton, Wendy thought about him, and where their interlude of the night before might lead. They’d have to be very careful, if they went on, not to be discovered by their colleagues at the bank. There was no future in it, but for the present it was consoling; she felt happier than for a long time. Wendy decided not to look ahead.
Her friend Ella met the bus and drove her to the country cottage where she lived with her husband and two small sons. Ella was intrigued about the bank raid and wanted to hear all the details. Wendy told her a little about what had happened, and disclosed that she had been the cashier who was held up at gunpoint.
‘Weren’t you terrified?’ asked Ella.
‘There wasn’t time to be,’ said Wendy. ‘It was all over so fast. It was more frightening afterwards, really thinking about it and what might have happened.’ And sitting in the police station looking at pictures of known villains to see if she could recognize the raider.
Ella’s two sons were playing a chasing game in the garden. They wore scarves round their faces and cowboy hats on their heads, and both had pistols. When the children came in to lunch they laid down their guns on the kitchen sideboard. Idly, Wendy glanced at them. One was shiny, silvery-looking; the other was a dull pewter colour, with a short snout. It was exactly like the gun that had been held in that gloved hand so menacingly four days ago.
Death on Account Page 8