Pieces of Justice

by Margaret Yorke

  In the local supermarket, she had noticed the woman from Number 43 buying gin and sherry – such a lot of it, several bottles every week. The woman’s face was flushed; she was one of those who watched television in the afternoons.

  Neatly and painstakingly, Mrs Bellew cut the words from Home and Gardens. The paper was pleasanter to work with than ordinary newsprint, which made one’s fingers inky.

  Does your wife take her empty gin bottles to the bottle bank? Mrs Bellew enquired, in careful composition. Her messages were always terse, just enough to sow disquiet.

  Dick Pearson showed his wife the letter when he tackled her. There were tears and recriminations as Barbara confessed to feeling useless and lonely while the children, both now teenagers, were at school all day. Dick didn’t want her to go to work; his was an income adequate for their needs and a mother’s place was in the home; besides, she had no proper qualifications.

  Now he felt shame. Busy chasing orders for his firm, which dealt in manufacturing equipment, he had failed to think of her, even to talk to her when he was at home. But for the anonymous letter, he was thinking, she could have ended up like Mary Fisher.

  Had there been a letter there?

  He could not ask, but both he and Barbara wondered.

  Mary Fisher left the hospital at last. When she came home, her mother resumed her visits, and Barbara Pearson, trying to redeem herself, also took to calling round. The two women began to discuss launching a joint enterprise, catering for private parties – even, perhaps, business lunches in the local town. Both were skilful cooks.

  The idea burgeoned. They had cards printed and put notices in the local paper. Then they distributed leaflets.

  ‘That woman at Number 17,’ said Barbara. ‘She always looks so elegant, but she must be getting on. I wouldn’t mind betting she’d appreciate a bit of help when she entertains. And she might have well-off friends who’d use us, too. Let’s go and see her.’

  Mary, wrapped in her own misery, had barely noticed Mrs Bellew. She thought she looked stuck-up.

  She went to call, with Barbara.

  Mrs Bellew, unaccustomed, now, to company, recognised them both and at first she did not want to let them in. But Barbara said they needed her advice, and so, reluctantly, she admitted them.

  In her elegant living-room, Barbara described their plan.

  Mrs Bellew said she never entertained now, but had done a lot during her husband’s lifetime. She waxed eloquent about milles feuilles and chicken supreme.

  ‘You should join us,’ Barbara enthused. ‘Your experience would be invaluable.’

  Six months ago, Mrs Bellew might have considered it; she knew all about well-chosen, balanced menus. But now she was already wondering how she could bring them down, for she had learned to hate success.

  Mary had problems concentrating these days. Her attention wandered, and she picked up a magazine from the coffee table in front of her, leafing idly through it. Mrs Bellew saw what she was doing, rose swiftly and removed the magazine from her grasp as if she was a child touching a forbidden object. Without a word of explanation, she put it in a drawer and soon the interview had ended.

  ‘Wasn’t that odd of her?’ said Mary as they left. ‘But it was rude of me, I suppose, to look at it when we were meant to be talking. Sorry.’

  ‘She was ruder,’ Barbara said.

  ‘There were holes in it,’ said Mary.

  ‘Holes?’

  ‘Sort of like windows. Pieces cut from different pages.’

  ‘Recipes cut out?’

  ‘No. Bits in the middle of a story,’ Mary said.

  Barbara had seen the letter sent to Dick. He alone of all the recipients in Windsor Crescent had shown it to its subject.

  Next Friday, Mrs Bellew went, as usual, to the supermarket in the local town. Barbara was also there. She had often seen the older woman buying her one packet of butter, her small portion of frozen food, and had vaguely pitied her. Now, she was curious; she’d thought a lot about the mutilated magazine. Whoever had written that letter to Dick had either seen her buying drink or disposing of her empties and so was local, though the letter had had a London postmark. So many small tragedies had happened lately in the area; other people might have been receiving letters too.

  Watching Mrs Bellew study prices on some chops, Barbara selected two pairs of tights she did not want. She scarcely thought about it as she passed behind Mrs Bellew who was stooping forward, peering into the freezer chest, her wicker basket gaping on her arm. Barbara, not even worrying in case she was observed herself, dropped the tights into it, and moved on.

  They might not be discovered. Nothing might be done about it if they were, especially if Mrs Bellew proclaimed her ignorance of how they got there.

  Far off among the cereals, Barbara missed the small commotion at the door as Mrs Bellew was led away for questioning.

  The Breasts of Aphrodite

  A group of tamarisk trees clustered together in the coarse grass between the bungalow block and the sea, which today was whipped into small stiff waves with narrow white crests. At sunset, the sturdy pollarded trunks of the trees stood out black against the pinky-gold sky and the shining water, their branches entwined like interwoven limbs topped with feathery foliage. Several hundred yards from the grey pebbled shore a fishing boat trawled its nets, the vessel pitching and tossing among the hollows of the vivid blue sea. There was not a cloud in the wide pale sky, and today the humped outline of the Turkish coast, only ten miles distant, was just a grey haze on the horizon.

  On loungers outside the low white building where each apartment tapered off from its neighbour to give an illusion of privacy, Lionel and Eileen Blunt lay toasting in the sun, Lionel in shorts, Eileen in a trim one-piece suit which to some extent restrained her generous curves. Behind them their bungalow was orderly, all trace of their picnic lunch tidied away, no clutter of possessions strewn about the cool bedroom where the twin beds reposed pristine, their fresh white sheets undisturbed since the maid’s earlier attentions.

  ‘Fancy! No blankets!’ Eileen had marvelled when they arrived two days ago.

  ‘Too hot, dear. You’ll not need one,’ said Lionel in a worldly way.

  Before making the reservation, he’d closely questioned colleagues at work, taking every precaution against booking them into an unsuitable hotel: you heard dire tales of holiday disaster, and Eileen would not take in her stride any imperfection in the arrangements. Why should she? A holiday was for pleasure and refreshment.

  The Blunts usually went to the Lake District or Cornwall each September. As their circumstances improved over the years, with Lionel secure though no longer rising in the hierarchy at the bank, and Eileen safe in the county planning office, they had progressed from the bed-and-breakfast accommodation of early years to comfortable three-star hotels with bathrooms en suite and usually tea-making facilities too. Eileen had resisted the lure of foreign travel: something to do with their honeymoon in Majorca where she had not liked the plumbing nor the night-club in their hotel, which on their one visit after dinner had given her a headache.

  They’d married late, both thirty-five at the time. Lionel, until then, had been the support of a widowed and delicate mother, and Eileen, one way and the other, had somehow missed out on marriage. They’d met, prosaically enough, when Eileen had enquired about opening a high interest deposit account at the bank and Lionel had taken immense pains to advise her wisely.

  Now they had been married ten years, and Lionel, to surprise her, had come home one February day with a bundle of brochures and a tentative booking made for two weeks in a Greek holiday paradise where, in your own private bungalow, you could forget the world amid palm trees and bougainvillea. The hotel had been recommended by the assistant branch manager at the bank, who had been there the year before and had allayed Lionel’s fears about any defects Eileen might not enjoy.

  ‘I’d thought St Mawes this year,’ had been Eileen’s response. There were palm trees there,
if Lionel was so set on them.

  ‘We should go abroad, while we’re in our prime,’ said Lionel stoutly. ‘One day we’ll be too old.’ And won’t have been anywhere, he added, silently. ‘We’d be sure of the sun,’ he told her. ‘That would set you up before winter, dear. You know you’ve been peaky lately.’

  They’d both had flu, a nasty variety leaving them coughing and aching for weeks afterwards.

  ‘Well, if you’d like it, dear, then of course we’ll go,’ said Eileen. She was fond of Lionel, who had caused her not a moment’s anxiety since he rescued her from spinsterhood.

  The decision made, she applied herself to preparations for their expedition with her usual efficiency, laying in extra supplies of anti-mosquito lotion, antiseptic cream, sting remedies and bismuth mixture.

  ‘You’d think we were going to Timbuctoo,’ said Lionel at work, feeling a trifle disloyal as he revealed that the spare room bed at 3, The Crescent was already neatly covered in travel necessities laid out for packing. Eileen had made herself two new sundresses; she liked sewing and did gros point tapestry in the evenings while Lionel watched television. His mother had knitted a lot; he liked to see a woman work creatively with her hands.

  There were no little Blunts. None had arrived, and since Eileen never referred to the matter, Lionel concealed his own disappointment. They never discussed such subjects and even now, after moments of intimacy, were both embarrassed by the inevitable loss of dignity involved. Eileen, in particular, attached great importance to outward appearances and was always so neat; there was never a thing out of place at home, everything washed up immediately after use and put away, cushions plumped up and newspaper tidily folded. So that now even the holiday bungalow was in apple-pie trim.

  It wasn’t like that at the Dawsons.

  You could have knocked Lionel down with a feather when there, in the queue at Gatwick, stood Bill and June Dawson, he in jeans and anorak, she in a pink cotton jumpsuit, her unruly mane of curly, copper-coloured hair cascading down her back.

  The Dawsons, with their three children, had moved to The Crescent two years ago. Their furniture was a hotch-potch collection acquired from junk shops over the years; watching them unload it from a self-drive hired van one Saturday, Eileen had felt quite ashamed on their behalf of its shoddiness. The children, who usually had dirty faces and often snivelling noses, were plump, happy and confident; never shy.

  ‘Their manners are atrocious,’ Eileen had said, when, after debating the matter because the newcomers were so shabby and down-at-heel in appearance, she had gone over to speak words of welcome as became the senior wife in the group of six identical houses. She found the children all sitting round the kitchen table eating bread and jam with no plates, just in their fingers, which were grubby to say the least.

  Lionel, an only child, thought it sounded rather fun. As time went on he had made friends with the young Dawsons, mended their bicycles – all bought third, fourth, or fifth hand and not checked for safety before use – and, when they went on holiday or to see their grandparents, he looked after their hamsters and rabbits. The Dawsons had gone camping in France every year since their marriage – sheer folly, Eileen thought, when they still lacked a decent three-piece suite and the children wore clothes bought at jumble sales. Eileen was an excellent cook and she often baked jam tarts or gingerbread men especially for the Dawson children, whom she suspected of being fed solely on chips and baked beans. She had wondered if June would be offended if she were to make the small girl a dress as a Christmas present; the child, who was four, always wore her brothers’ outgrown and patched trousers and old felted sweaters. Lionel’s main recreation was making models of men o’war throughout the ages, and both the small boys were intrigued by his work though their sister was too young to show much interest. They often came round to examine the construction in progress, leaving behind a considerable trail of dropped sweet papers and, it seemed to Lionel, an echo of laughter.

  But now here the Dawsons stood, in line for the flight the Blunts were catching, and alone, without their children!

  ‘That is who I think it is, isn’t it?’ Eileen whispered, fumbling for her spectacles.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Lionel said. No one but June could have hair that colour, tumbling in such sweet disorder down her back.

  ‘They never said!’ Eileen’s tone was accusing.

  ‘Where are the children?’ wondered Lionel.

  ‘Well, they won’t be going to the Bella Vista,’ said Eileen dismissively. It was far too expensive for the impecunious Dawsons. Bill was a freelance photographer and how they managed to keep up their payments on the house in The Crescent, Eileen did not know.

  But indeed they were! Lionel could make out the labels hung on Bill’s camera bag.

  ‘Surprise, surprise!’ said June, who detected no reservation in the tone of either Blunt neighbour as they uttered cries of greeting and recognition.

  It seemed that her father had won the holiday in a sweepstake on the Derby and had presented it to them for a second honeymoon. By coincidence, the hotel allotted as the prize was this one so carefully researched by Lionel months before, and the only date for which it was available was now.

  ‘We can lose each other out there,’ Eileen decided as they checked in their luggage and were given adjacent seats across the aisle of the plane.

  But it hadn’t worked out like that. Their bungalows adjoined, and much time was spent spread out among the oleanders and hibiscus bushes soaking up the sun within a few yards of one another.

  And June lay there topless!

  Eileen was appalled. Apart from themselves, there was the gnarled old gardener who moved about adjusting the range of the sprinklers which daily soaked all the vegetation. Even Lionel did not know where to look when June spoke to him, as she often did. He tried not to notice her small, high breasts with the amazing, huge dark nipples. You’d think with all those kids they’d be different somehow. He began dreaming about them at night, even moaning once in his sleep.

  Eileen woke him at once.

  ‘Sh, Lionel,’ she admonished. ‘You were making a noise. Bill and June will think—’ but she would not say what they would think if they heard these abandoned sounds through their wide-open windows. She pressed her own lips tightly together when Lionel was overwhelmed with ardour. It would never do for Bill and June even to think they’d heard anything remotely ‘like that’, and she hid her own head in the pillow when it became clear that the other couple were turning to good account June’s father’s gift.

  ‘There’ll be another mouth to feed next year, you mark my words,’ Eileen declared, and even Lionel thought that would be excessive, costs being what they were.

  ‘Why don’t you strip off too?’ said June on the third morning.

  ‘I’d be ashamed,’ said Eileen austerely.

  ‘Why be coy about your body?’ said June. ‘You’ll feel so free, and it’s only natural, after all.’

  Eileen blushed furiously.

  ‘I’m not slim like you,’ she answered.

  It was true. Looking at them, you would think Eileen was the mother of three, not the lithe young woman whose skin was already the colour of honey. Eileen suspected she lay about half-naked in their untidy garden whenever the summer sun shone instead of cleaning the house or preparing a wholesome meal. Still, in spite of her disapproval, even Eileen could not help warming to the girl whose fecklessness was in such contrast to her own capability.

  That first night the two couples entered the restaurant together and were placed at neighbouring tables by wide windows which were open to the terrace on these balmy nights. Subsequently, the Blunts ate early after a drink in the bar which overlooked the huge blue-tiled swimming-pool. The Dawsons had brought their own duty-free liquor which they consumed on their bungalow verandah. The Blunts had usually almost finished their meal by the time the younger couple arrived, both rather tiddly by this time and with June’s appearance drawing warm smiles of welcome from Spiro,
their waiter.

  It was Bill who suggested that for part of the holiday they should share the hire of a car. In that way they could explore the island properly without being herded along on a tour.

  There were archaeological sites to inspect and natural beauties too, valleys and gorges of renown; and they could seek out hidden isolated beaches. Lionel, who was apprehensive about driving on the wrong side of the road since he had never done it, leapt at the idea, aware of how such freedom could enlarge their explorations. The costs for a week, shared out, would not be enormous, and Bill could do all the driving.

  In their rented Fiat they visited an ancient excavated city set on a hill amid pines and fragrant herbs. They entered tiny white-washed churches whose ornate interiors were redolent with the scent of incense. In one village an old lady beckoned them into her house and displayed photographs of seaman sons and indicated her own bed, high against one wall. She gave them sprigs of myrtle and offered them bottles of oil, and they left her three crumpled fifty-drachmae notes, Lionel wondering if they had given her enough. They ate at tavernas by the sea or had picnic lunches on the beach, buying huge tomatoes, fresh cucumbers and fruit and rather dry rolls, drinking the rough local wine. And they found deserted coves where June stripped off all her clothes and hedonistically bathed naked in the warm sea.

  Eileen, by this time, had begun to slip the straps of her bathing dress over her broad, fleshy shoulders as she lay on the sand, a straw hat over her face, sleeping off the wine which seemed to pack a hidden punch, or perhaps it was the air that made her feel as if she was floating away; she hadn’t slept so much and so deeply for years. When the others were all in the sea, she at last daringly pulled her top right down and June was correct: she did feel a sense of liberation. She intended to restore herself to decency before the swimmers returned, but she dozed off. Waking, blushing, she heard Bill’s camera click.