A Banquet of Consequences

by Elizabeth George

  “This is nothing to do with Sharon, so you best keep her out of it, Caro.”

  Her expression was arch. “You’ve actually become a bigger fool than you were when I married you and I hardly think that’s even possible.”

  “Mum.” Charlie was coming into the sitting room from the kitchen. He bore a tray with three mugs, tea, and the rest. He’d excavated for some chocolate biscuits, with which he’d circled the edges of a plate the centre of which held a sectioned apple. He set this on the coffee table in front of the sofa and said to his mother, “That’s not exactly helpful just now.” And then to Alastair, “Have you phoned a solicitor?”

  “What need have I for a solicitor?” Alastair asked. Charlie was being mother with the tea and the mugs. He drew over the smallest of three stacking tables, putting a mug upon it and administering milk and sugar. This, he indicated, was for his mother, and he placed the table next to an armchair at a distance from the sofa as if with the intention of keeping her and Alastair apart. “I’ve not done nothing,” Alastair said. “So what’s the point of ringing up someone and telling him . . . what? That I’ve done nothing but the coppers are here and what should I do next?”

  “It’s always best . . .” Charlie handed a mug to Alastair and indicated that he was to sit on the sofa. It came to Alastair that his stepson was in therapist mode, but he knew it was going to take more skills than Charlie possessed to smooth the wrinkles in this marriage. Charlie said to him, “Look . . . You mustn’t talk to the police again. Really. I know you want to help and that’s quite admirable—”

  “He wants to help me to my grave,” Caroline said. “And so does she, Miss Butter Wouldn’t Melt. God, I ought to divorce you just so you can see what she’s really been after all along, Alastair, which isn’t you. It’s this.” She flung her arm in a wide gesture that took in the room. “It’s this place, this business. It’s the money the business brings in, how we’ve built it from barely nothing, and now she’s too happy, isn’t she, to step in and enjoy the results of our work.”

  Alastair gaped at her, so incredulous was he. Charlie began to say something, but Alastair interrupted. “You’re a bloody mad cow, that’s what. You’ve done nothing. It’s Sharon an’ me built this business. Oh, you were good for two months of work, weren’t you, but then it was the boys, always the boys, and how they kept you too busy and ‘Alastair, I can’t be everything to everyone,’ when you and I together . . . That was the deal and you well know it.”

  “The deal? What are you saying, that marriage is some kind of deal?”

  “Mum . . . Alastair . . . This isn’t going anywhere useful,” Charlie said mildly. “If both of you will take a moment to—”

  “I’m saying,” Alastair cut in, “that we agreed if we brought the boys to Dorset, if I sold up everything in London—my shop, my work, my house—that we would work together to build a life here, only I was doing all the work along with Sharon. You understand that? With Sharon and her never saying a word about anything but never a word specially about you and your television programmes and your magazines and your women’s meetings and your takeaway food in place of proper meals because you were far too busy, weren’t you, with your ‘boys.’ And that was it, wasn’t it, Caro? They were always your boys, no matter I was a proper father to them.”

  “Be quiet, both of you!” Charlie raised his voice to get their attention, then went on more quietly with, “Everyone’s nerves are raw. When people are in this state, they say regrettable things that have far too much weight. You need to let your passions cool because in this kind of state, there’s absolutely nothing to be gained that—”

  “So just go to Sharon. Go!” Caroline’s voice rose above her son’s. “I do not care any longer. It’s always been about you at the heart of things. It’s always been what Alastair wants, what Alastair needs, and never a single thought for anyone else. Oh, you pretended to be a proper father to them. And you pretended you were reluctant to leave London because there was so much you ‘loved’ about your stupid work. And all along we both knew the truth is that I lifted you out of a real tip, and it was only because of my divorce from Francis and the money I got off him that we were even able . . . Oh, you and your ridiculous business. Some pathetic shopfront in a part of town that no one would ever think about visiting when anyone with any sense at all would have a stall in a market—”

  “Listen to yourselves,” Charlie said. His was the voice of reason. “This is exactly what people do in this kind of state. It’s a case of slash, burn, and take no prisoners. Mum, stop it. Alastair, stop it. You’re both worn out. You’re both frightened.”

  “I’m not feared of nothing,” Alastair said. “The coppers want to look round this place? Let ’em, I say. They want a search warrant for a deeper look? Even better.”

  “Because it’s gone, what you used, isn’t it?” Caroline said. “No. It’s not gone. Sharon has it.”

  “Don’t you say her name another time,” Alastair warned her. “I swear to you, Caro, if you start accusing that decent, loving, God-fearing—”

  “Cocksucking,” she snapped. “Can I add that to the list?”

  He lunged towards her. Charlie leapt between him and Caroline, upsetting the small table that held Caroline’s tea. She cried out, “Do you see what you’ve made me come home to? Don’t you know what will happen if you leave me here, with the two of them planning and scheming against me?”

  “Christ, Mum,” Charlie said. “You don’t know that. You don’t know anything. Nobody does. Just that someone somehow managed to put something into your toothpaste and that’s the limit of what we—”

  “You’d like it as well!” she hissed. She rose, advancing on him. “That would be exactly your style.”

  Charlie took a step back from her. “Jesus,” he said. “What are you saying?”

  “Me,” she said. “Dead. Out of your life so that you can scurry over to India’s pathetic little house and reduce yourself to whatever that little cunt wants you to be in order to get her to return to you. And you can’t do it yet, can you, because as things stand I’ll fling myself in front of a train before I let you lower yourself to beg and grovel and be less than a man because that’s what she wants, don’t you understand that? And I won’t allow that, I will never allow that, I won’t have you end up like Will, with me standing by and seeing India do to you what Lily Foster did to your brother.”

  She finally took a breath, her chest heaving. The silence among them was shattering because in it her words took on a power that was fueled to ever greater heights by everything that had passed before she spoke them.

  Charlie was the one to speak. “Lily made my brother happy,” he said with some dignity.

  Caroline gave a short laugh. “Oh for God’s sake. You’re as big a fool as your stepfather. God in heaven, why am I surrounded by such pathetic men?”

  Which was when Charlie left them. He said only, “I’m not discussing India with you, Mum. And clearly, there’s nothing I can do here,” and he was gone.

  Years of living with her had told Alastair what to expect next: the on-the-edge-of-a-knife alteration in Caroline that was soon in coming. Where one might consider a further rampage as a distinct possibility—launching an attack upon the nearest person, overturning tables, crushing the glass of photographs beneath her feet—he knew that this would not be her way. She stumbled back to the chair that Charlie had arranged for her. She sat there, looking stunned at his departure, as if someone had slapped her hard across both cheeks. Her eyes filled.

  “Why do I hurt the people I love?” she said. When Alastair did not reply—for what, indeed, was there to say in answer to such a question—she began to weep. “What’s wrong with me? I didn’t intend things to turn out like this. I didn’t want my life to turn out like this. Oh, I wish I’d been the one to use that toothpaste. I wish I’d shoved the entire mess of it down my throat. The world would be
a better place now if I’d done that. That’s what you think, isn’t it, Alastair?”

  He said, “I don’t think anything, Caro.”

  “Ah, well . . . Yes. That’s exactly what I’d expect of you.”

  So he left her. He’d made this drive to Thornford. He had to cleanse himself of all that had gone on with his wife and his stepson.

  He entered Sharon’s house. He’d seen her car, so he knew that, at last, she was at home. There was music playing from the kitchen where she kept a radio tucked towards the back of one of the work tops. He followed the sound of it, and there she was. He merely watched her for a moment.

  She was cleaning her cupboards. Everything had been removed from them and was now arrayed before her. Wisely, she was turning each package and tin to examine its best-by date. As he stood there, she tossed into the nearby rubbish bin a small half-filled bag of coconut.

  He said her name.

  She shrieked, turned. She clutched her throat. “Such a fright!” she said. “I didn’t hear you come in. And you’ve caught me in the midst of such a mess.”

  “Autumn cleanup?” he asked her.

  “That’s exactly what,” she said. “Has something happened, Alastair? Because how you look . . .”

  “You’ve not had my messages about the coppers?”

  “Oh yes, I did get the message.”

  “And you know not to let them inside. You’ve no need to. They’ll make you think there’s a need, and they’ll make you think it’s owed them. But you’ve not got to do a single thing.”

  Sharon’s face softened. She tied the strings of the rubbish bag, and she carried it to the door, placing it in the dust bin outside. She turned back to him and her expression was as fond as it had ever been. She said to him, “It’s how you care for me.”

  “What is?”

  “Why I’m yours.”

  He felt completely unburdened when he heard those words. He crossed to where the radio was, and he turned the knob to shut it off. In the silence it seemed to him that he could hear not only his own heart but hers as well, and it seemed to him that they beat in unison.

  He said to her, “That, my girl, is the only music I ever need to hear.”

  21 OCTOBER

  THORNFORD

  DORSET

  For the first time, Alastair hadn’t left her. Instead, he’d thrown duty directly out of the window. He’d put the morning’s baking into the hands of his assistant, and he’d remained with Sharon the whole blessed night.

  He felt no guilt. Nor did he feel even a twinge of concern that the bakery’s goods might not be quite up to the mark as a result of his failure either to oversee or to have a hand in every step of their creation. There were too many other emotions to be feeling, and supreme among them was what he could name only as triumph. This involved a rightness to everything that was now going on between Sharon and him.

  Caro he’d left to her own devices, whatever they were going to be in the aftermath of her return from London. Sharon he would leave no more.

  They’d walked out into the garden in the fading daylight upon his arrival, and there they’d watched the farmer in the fields behind them. They’d listened to him whistling to direct his border collie in the gathering of the sheep and the herding of them. They’d commented on the skill and the partnership of man and dog.

  After that, they’d had a simple supper: chops and a salad. Alastair realised then that he should have stopped somewhere along the way to purchase a bottle of wine, but he hadn’t done as he’d been in so much of a rush to get to Sharon. She declared it was of little matter.

  Then to bed and lovemaking, during which time he began to understand that Sharon brought out the best in him in all ways but especially in this. And he knew it was the same for her because she’d whispered, “It’s never ever been like this,” and he’d declared that this was how it would always be with them. She’d chuckled at that and he’d said, “I swear it.”

  She wondered when he did not rise at two in order to get back to the bakery for the early morning’s work. He told her that he wasn’t leaving, that he wanted to be with her for the rest of the night.

  He hadn’t expected to sleep so well. It had been so many years during which his sleep was a broken thing, interrupted by the baking, interrupted by Caro, interrupted by his own restlessness. He’d supposed he would sleep only fitfully and spend most of the night merely enjoying the sensation of Sharon’s warm body next to his. But instead he’d fallen deeply and almost immediately to sleep, and he’d stayed asleep.

  He awakened just after five. For a moment he panicked, forgetting both where he was and what his intention had been: to allow his assistant to man the ovens. His heart slammed him into purpose, and he was about to leap from the bed when in the mirror opposite he caught sight of Sharon. That was all it took to calm him.

  She slept the sleep of the innocent, curled on her side, her fists tucked beneath her chin. On her face a faint smile reflected whatever dream she was dreaming.

  He eased from the bed and reached for his clothing, careful not to awaken her. He realised he needed to bring more of his belongings here so that he would be comfortable until such a time as he was entirely free of Caro. A dressing gown would be nice, he thought, a pair of slippers as well. A cardigan for the autumn evenings.

  He descended to the kitchen, where he could see the sky above the farm’s fields was beginning to lighten. He saw movement at a distance from the house, a light bobbing in the direction of the great stone barn as the farmer began his day. He decided he would do the same: begin his day. And it would start with an extraordinary breakfast for Sharon, no typical English breakfast this but something memorable that used his skill. He’d make her a batch of succulent breakfast muffins, he thought. He’d accompany them with an omelet of cheese and mushrooms, he’d include a fruit salad and fresh squeezed orange juice, and if she rose before he managed to finish his work, he’d insist she sit at table and talk to him while he worked.

  He chuckled at himself as he set about on his search for everything he would need. Of course, he was assuming and well he knew it. Did she have cheese? Did she have mushrooms? Was there fruit for a salad or oranges for juice?

  He heated the oven and browsed till he found her electric mixer, a bowl for his muffin ingredients, a baking pan to hold them. Well and good, he thought, and he went from there to assemble the rest of what he would require. Lemon and poppy seed muffins, he reckoned, melting onto the tongue along with creamery butter.

  He fetched eggs and butter from the fridge. He rustled through the neat cupboards and brought out the flour, the sugar, and the salt. But then he couldn’t find baking powder, and he muttered in frustration over this as he gazed out of the window, saw the steady light shining from the farmer’s barn, and tried to work out what he could bake without baking powder to help the concoction rise.

  His gaze fell on the dust bin just outside to the right of the steps that led to the garden. Seeing this, he recalled Sharon upon his arrival, cleaning her cupboards industriously and tossing items that had passed their best-by and use-by dates. Perhaps, he considered, there was baking powder among them. If the best-by date wasn’t too far in the past, the powder would probably do just fine.

  He flipped on the light above the door and went outside. Within the dust bin was the rubbish bag into which Sharon had been discarding items from her cupboards. He unfastened this and began to riffle through what was within. He was in luck because a container of baking powder was upended—but not spilled out—inside an open bag of rock-hard brown sugar. He rescued it, holding it up under the light to see the date upon it. To his surprise, it was one month away. Excellent luck, he thought. Shar had made a mistake.

  He heard a rustling nearby, and he looked up quickly to see that one of the farmer’s sheep had wandered close to Sharon’s garden and was nibbling upon the longer grass that grew
at the base of one of the fence poles. The animal was just beyond the fence, but the light of the day had now increased and in it the laburnum tree showed off its long brown pods. A trick of shadows made it difficult to tell how close the laburnum tree was to the fence, and Alastair wondered about its proximity to the sheep and whether its pods were dangerous to them, and he considered how he should speak to Sharon about this as it wouldn’t do to have one of the farmer’s animals poisoned as the ill will involved would hardly be worth the tree’s brief beauty in the spring.

  And then. No crash of thunder, no rise of dramatic music playing, no bolt of lightning. He simply knew.

  He’d rung her. He’d left a message: both on her mobile and on her landline. He’d told her the coppers were on the trail of a poison and they’d been at his house to talk about it. He’d advised her, hadn’t he, not to let them into her house because she didn’t have to let them into her house, and they certainly could not search the place without a warrant. He’d told her this.

  She’d had no idea from that that he would come to her in Thornford. He hadn’t known he would come to her. It was Caro’s madness that had driven him to Sharon last evening, and when he’d arrived it was to find her . . . He tried to call into his mind the images of what he’d seen upon his arrival, and it was an easy thing to do because it seemed that every image he had of Sharon in the last few months was branded into his memory and consequently simple to bring forth. Last evening’s image was especially simple: Shar in the kitchen and what she’d been doing.

  As he saw this image, Alastair tried to make the cleaning of her cupboards a completely innocent thing. But there was no getting away from what he had in his hand just as there was no getting away from the laburnum tree, which she hadn’t planted until her children were old enough to understand the deadly nature of the tree’s long pods. And those pods hung from it now. Announcing themselves, they were.

  Alastair carried the baking powder container into the house, a sickness coming over him. He set the container onto the table, sat, and considered what to do.