Pieces of Justice
Page 5
On arriving at the party, each had been given a ticket for the mystery prize. A local paper was the beneficent donor, and a reporter had been sent to record the event.
Under cover of the excited murmurs, Janet asked. ‘Are you going to the pantomime? Mother Goose?’
‘I don’t want to,’ Timmy said.
‘But your family will make you?’
‘Mm, I’d rather see a film. Pantomimes are for kids.’
‘But we are kids. They treat us as if we were. Tell us what to do, what to think.’ Janet, aged seventy-one and a widow, looked sadly at Timmy, three years older, a widower who had lived with his daughter and son-in-law since his illness.
‘The winning ticket,’ Santa Claus called out. ‘Number thirty-seven!’
‘That’s yours,’ Timmy said, looking at the pale pink scrap of paper held in Janet’s thin, wrinkled fingers.
Janet went up to fetch her prize. It was a large white envelope.
‘Open it, dear,’ Mrs Baxter urged.
Janet did, and Timmy, looking over her shoulder, saw with amazement what the prize was: a week in Majorca for two. A great grin spread over Janet’s face. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘Will you come with me, Timmy?’
The Reckoning
On the morning of her husband’s seventieth birthday, a Thursday in September, Ellen Parsons rose as usual at seven o’clock. She washed quietly in the bathroom, careful as she moved about not to disturb Maurice, who still slept, a straggle of grey hair falling across bald pate and spotless pillow. After she had cleaned her teeth and inserted her dentures, three stark molars on a pink plate new last year, Ellen, in her woollen dressing-gown, went down to the kitchen and put on the kettle. While it boiled she laid the table in the dining-room: blue and white striped Cornish crockery, honey and butter, knife and fork for the egg and bacon Maurice daily consumed after his porridge. Odd that he never grew fat, she often thought.
This was the last time she would sit across the table from him, and she hummed under her breath as she finished her early routine. The kettle boiled, she made the tea, and carried the tray upstairs, setting it on the table between their twin beds. When it had had time to draw, she poured out two cups, one for Maurice and one for her, with two lumps of sugar in his. But it didn’t do much to sweeten him.
‘Tea, Maurice,’ she said, and took her own cup into the bathroom, where modestly she dressed out of his sight.
Maurice did not answer, but she knew that he would now sit up, yawn, showing his bare gums, belch, and drink his tea in gulps. She would return to the bedroom to do her hair in time to pour his second cup. By the time he was ready to rise, she would be downstairs cooking the breakfast.
She had decided to kill him in church one Sunday morning a year ago. The vicar’s text has been from Ecclesiastes: To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born and a time to die . . .
‘I have not lived yet,’ Ellen had thought. Her mind ranged over the forty years of her marriage and she saw herself as she was when she first met Maurice. Her father, a widower, had died after a long illness through which she had devotedly nursed him, never begrudging the toll of time and strength. Maurice, then junior partner in the firm of solicitors acting for her father, had called at the house to advise. Ellen, self-contained and composed as always, had offered Madeira and home-made sponge cake. Maurice had called again. He said she should decide nothing in haste, and recommended that she should keep the house for the present. Ellen, weary from the strain of her father’s illness, was glad to accept this counsel. Never one for idleness, she busied herself in the neglected garden and set about washing curtains and paintwork indoors. Maurice watched both her and the house revive under this treatment. One day he brought her some violets; another time, a book of poetry. She looked forward to his visits; he had such a sweet smile.
Soon she exchanged one form of bondage for another. She and Maurice, after their marriage, continued to live in the large Victorian house on the edge of the village, and here they were still, with the house as isolated as it had always been since the village had expanded internally, without enlarging its boundaries. Here their daughters, Jane and Priscilla, were born. Jane now lived in Australia; she had run away and married a young farmer of whom Maurice disapproved and they had immediately emigrated. Jane wrote happy letters and sent snapshots of their four children; she urged Ellen to come out for a visit and see her grandchildren, but Maurice would not go himself nor allow Ellen to go without him. Priscilla read sociology at university; now she worked in public relations in London. She seldom visited her parents, and when she did it was just for an afternoon when she would be accompanied always by a different young woman, usually frail and fair in contrast to her own dark vigour. Ellen did not like Priscilla very much these days, and she often thought wistfully of the solemn, precociously bright child she had been. Now she frightened her mother, but Ellen was used to fear.
Maurice insisted that his life should run smoothly. The smile that had once charmed Ellen was seen more and more rarely. Meals must be punctual to the second; children should be seen and not heard; arguments were not allowed; and only Maurice’s opinions might be expressed. During their short engagement, Ellen had anticipated long talks with him such as she had enjoyed with her father; reading the same books, Dickens and Trollope, for example, as her father had liked; and walking in the hills. But Maurice read only legal tomes and the biographies of politicians, and he did not like walking. In fact, it soon became clear that he liked nothing but himself. He worked hard and in time became senior partner of his firm; most nights he brought papers home to study. He was respected in the town.
When the girls grew older, Maurice gave permission for Ellen to join the Women’s Institute; it was a seemly activity for her, he said. She enjoyed the meetings for they brought her into contact with other women, the only company she had when Jane married and Priscilla went to London. No wonder the two girls left home as soon as they could, for their father allowed no parties and never encouraged their friends to visit the house. If any dared to come they were subjected to such an interrogation about their lives and views that few ventured there a second time. The only guests invited by Maurice were business acquaintances whom he took to his study for brandy. The Parsons did not entertain.
Ellen’s fragile links with other people dwindled after Maurice retired, for if they came to tea he would sit scowling and looking at his watch, finally leaving with some remark like, ‘See that dinner is on time, Ellen,’ in front of them, humiliating her.
But now all this would end. The resentment that had simmered for so long had boiled at last. She meant to go to Australia before she grew too old. The house was hers, and all the money that Maurice had made would be hers too.
The days of our age are threescore years and ten.
Ellen had read the words many times. Maurice had now ended his seventieth year and she was resolved. Despite constant complaint and a genuine bronchitic tendency, he was fit for his age; he had always been carefully tended. Ellen, though nine years younger, was not wearing so well. But she had made her plans with care and at last the time had come to carry them out.
The post brought nothing from either Jane or Priscilla. Jane would not have forgotten; she was meticulous over such things, but she must have missed the mail. What a pity Maurice would not now receive her card, Ellen thought, buttering her toast.
She gave him her present when he had finished The Times leader – a thick woollen dressing-gown. She had bought it with Ben, their jobbing gardener, in mind, for it would be unworn. Maurice thanked her without enthusiasm, saying he would have preferred camel colour to maroon. Ellen had known that Ben would like maroon better.
Breakfast over, Maurice went to his study and Ellen set about her chores. After she had made the beds and tidied round, she went into the garden and cut three marrows that were ripe; they would get old and woody if left on the plants. She carried them into the house and down the fli
ght of stone steps leading to the cellar. The door was locked and bolted. Ellen took the key from a hook above the lintel and undid the door. She laid the marrows on a shelf inside. Strings of onions already hung on the walls but otherwise the cellar was quite bare; it was dark, lit only by a tiny window high on one wall and covered with a strong iron grid.
The marrows deposited, Ellen went upstairs again; she shut the cellar door but did not lock it.
Now it was time for her weekly shopping trip to town. Every Thursday Ellen made this expedition, her one outing in the car. Maurice decreed that once a week was quite sufficient if she planned ahead; there was a butcher in the village, and the post office sold sugar, tea, and a few items in tins.
She got the car out of the garage, backing it up against the house so that the exhaust pipe was exactly opposite the cellar grid; a black, smoky mark on the surrounding brickwork showed that this was customary. But today she backed too far and broke the glass. She smiled as she switched off the engine and uttered a shriek.
Maurice had heard the crash. He came storming out of the house to inspect the damage to the car, which was nil; the exhaust pipe had missed the iron bars and gone straight through the glass. Ellen had practised this manoeuvre till she could have done it blindfold. She stood wringing her hands and apologising meekly while he castigated her for her incompetence; then, as Ellen knew he would, he went to discover what had happened in the cellar, for most of the glass had fallen inwards. She followed him.
Automatically he reached for the key and found it missing from its hook.
‘You’ve been down here this morning, Ellen,’ he accused.
‘Yes, Maurice. I brought those three marrows in. You told me yesterday to cut them.’
‘You didn’t lock the door. How many times must I tell you everything?’ he exclaimed, opening the door and striding angrily inside.
In an instant she had slammed the door behind him, turned the key and thrust the bolt across. For a moment she leaned against it, panting, her heart pounding. It had worked! She had spent so long devising her scheme, thinking of first one plan, and then discarding it for another: it must seem to be an accident. Now she could truthfully say when she was questioned that she had forgotten to lock the cellar after taking in the marrows and had returned to do it. How could she have known that Maurice was inside?
She hurried up the stairs before he had time to realise what had happened and begin to beat upon the door. In a few minutes she had started the engine of the car and left it to run, leaving the choke well out as it was cold. The rich mixture filling the cellar with fumes through the new aperture would make Maurice unconscious very rapidly; a mere five minutes in a closed garage with a high-powered car could prove fatal, she had discovered during her researches in the public library. Maurice was due for a much longer diet of fumes from their medium-sized saloon.
She left the car and walked away, for she could not have listened to his cries; soon they would cease. There was nothing he could stand on so that he could reach the grating; he would go to the door, and without a weapon he would not be able to break it open.
She went to the garage and took out the bottle of distilled water kept there. Very slowly she returned to the car, opened the bonnet and topped up the battery, her eyes away from the cellar. There was no sound apart from the car’s engine, which by now was warming up and beginning to run unevenly. She pushed in the choke. Maurice always insisted she warm the car up thoroughly before driving off; it helped preserve the engine, he said, though Priscilla mocked this theory and said with modern cars it made no difference. The battery topped up to her satisfaction, Ellen put away the distilled water and closed the garage doors; Maurice would never allow them to be left open while the car was out, although the garage was at the back of the house and could not be seen from the road. Then she went into the house. She could scarcely hear the car purring, its engine ran so sweetly. She went to her sewing-box and took from it the wad of leaflets about travel to Australia which had lain hidden there for weeks, under her embroidery. How should she go? By boat, she thought: a large and luxurious liner calling in at other places on the way. No one came to the door while she turned the pages of the brochures; no one ever did on Thursdays. In fact, visits from tradesmen were discouraged by Maurice, who cared for no form of caller.
Ellen had made a cake for the church bazaar and promised to deliver it before she went to town today. When she had finished dreaming over the booklets she put them away, fetched the cake, and took it up the road, two hundred yards, to the vicarage, where she stayed for a cup of coffee. It was pleasant, sitting in the vicarage garden in the September sunshine, and Ellen lingered there praising the late roses. When she reached home again the car was still ticking over, though it had got rather hot and the water temperature showed high on the gauge. Ellen moved the car forward so that the exhaust pipe no longer protruded through the cellar window. She laid a sheet of slate that normally covered the kitchen drain against the opening to keep the fumes inside. She heard no sound from the cellar.
Then she drove to town and did her shopping.
When she returned more than an hour later she removed the slate and replaced it over the drain, leaving the engine of the car running. She unloaded her parcels and put them away. Finally she opened the garage doors and put the car inside, having allowed another good supply of carbon monoxide to enter the cellar.
It was now time to prepare lunch, and for once it would not matter if the meal was late. How wasteful, she reflected, peeling Maurice’s usual two medium-sized potatoes and slicing runner beans fresh from the garden. She had made his favourite pudding, crême caramel, the day before: a birthday treat. She put the grill on for the chops. Soon she would have to start looking for Maurice. She could spend some time searching the house and garden, and then go up the village to enquire if anyone had seen him. She needn’t think about the cellar until later, much later; perhaps she need not think of it at all, until she told the police that he was missing. That was the part she dreaded: finding him. But he would be dead; most certainly by now he had been dead for hours. His age and his bronchitic chest would have sped him on his way, and he would not have suffered long. Only his hands might be torn and bruised if he had clawed at the cellar door. He would be lying on the threshold, she was sure; in fact she might not be able to open the door against the weight of him the other side.
She dished up the meal and put it in the low oven. Then she went upstairs to wash and do her hair before calling him, as she always did. Her hairbrush was placed bristles downwards on the dressing-table, and she never saw the sleepy wasp among them as she lifted it. She felt only the sharp, searing stab of the sting above her temple as she began to use the brush on her limp, grey hair.
She became giddy almost at once and stumbled to her bed. Three years ago she had been stung on her arm, fainted, and recovered only because Maurice had been there, seen her cyanosed face and called the doctor instantly.
This time, he could not save her.
Such A Gentleman
It was the dahlias that reminded me. This morning I went into the garden to cut some for the house; just now they are at the height of their blowsy glory, standing bright in the beds, bending against their supporting stakes in the late summer bluster that has sprung up in these past days after a long, still, hot spell, and smelling tangy. They have a defiant air, brazenly glowing, looking too vigorous to fall victim to the first blackening autumn frost.
It was on a day like this, ten years ago, that it happened. I had been in the garden then, too, ferreting out strands of bindweed, aware only of the sun on my back, the sigh of the wind, and the strong scents of the blooms around me, all thought suspended. Through the open window I heard the telephone ring, and went to answer it, muttering crossly at the interruption, kicking my muddy boots off by the kitchen door before entering the house.
It was Edmund, my godson. He asked me to come over, at once. It was urgent. His voice sounded calm, but it was ten-thirt
y on a Wednesday morning, and Edmund should have been at the office.
‘Is something wrong?’ I asked.
‘I want to talk to you Phyllis. It’s important,’ he said.
Then why won’t you come to see me, I wondered irritably.
But one had a duty to one’s godson and I had promised his mother. So I went.
Helen Rossiter and I had been childhood friends; we went to school together, were married within weeks of each other and were parted only when the war came. Helen’s husband was in the RNVR. She went to live in Scotland, in a remote cottage within reach of where he was based; she remained there for two years, alone for most of the time except during her husband’s brief leaves, and until Edmund was born. Then his ship was torpedoed, and there were no survivors.
Helen and the baby came back to Speyton, where they lived with her parents for the rest of Helen’s life. She worked in a local munitions factory until the war ended; after that she did part-time work in a welfare clinic until her illness forced her to retire.
I was away from Speyton for much longer, at first with my husband, and then, after Dick’s plane was shot down and he became a prisoner-of-war, with the WAAF. Once, I came back to Speyton on leave and saw Helen for the first time since she was widowed. Her face was pale and lined, and her hands were cracked and stained, partly, I suppose, by her work in the factory, but also by the hours she spent in her parents’ garden, digging for victory. She grew quantities of vegetables and kept hens and a goat, in order that Edmund might be healthily nourished despite food rationing.
He was an amiable child, with large brown eyes and sandy hair. I was not accustomed to small children, but he appeared to enjoy my company. I wheeled him out in his pram to watch the trains pass at the level crossing by Speyton junction, and he waved joyfully at the engine drivers who always waved back. We used to meet Helen at the bus stop as she returned from the factory, and Edmund did his best to spring out of his confining harness in his eagerness to greet her.