The younger couple passed Mrs Watson’s chair, and the woman saw Mrs Watson drop her hibiscus sprig into her bag.
At dinner, Mrs Watson sat not far from the quartet. Ready to be pleasant, she smiled across at them but was ignored as she consumed her lobster bisque, her gnocchi, her chicken, then her chocolate mousse.
Leaving the dining-room while the four were still eating, passing behind the younger woman’s chair, Mrs Watson heard her speak.
‘That woman was stealing sprigs from the plants,’ she said in a thin, clear voice. ‘I saw her do it. An hibiscus shoot today. What will it be tomorrow? A pomegranate, do you suppose? Perhaps she could grow one from the fruit.’
‘Charlotte, don’t! She’ll hear,’ shushed the mother, whose own voice was more penetrating than her daughter-in-law’s.
‘Who cares?’ was the answer. ‘It should be reported. If every guest did it, there would be nothing left. She’s like those people who come to Ferbingham. They’ve stripped whole sprays from the mulberry, and some of the choicest shrubs are decimated. We’ve had to put notices up and we may have to employ special patrols.’
Mrs Watson, moving slowly, had heard most of this. So they lived in Ferbingham, did they? She had visited that garden and she had a shoot from the well-known mulberry rooted and beginning to sprout. Ferbingham was a Tudor mansion opened on certain selected dates in the year; Mrs Watson knew that the elder couple had moved to the dower house some years ago, leaving their son to manage the estate.
She made up her mind that night. The supercilious Charlotte should be this year’s victim. Every time she went away she chose one, and had been foiled only once when her target had left before she could carry out her plan, leaving no time for a substitute to be picked. Mrs Watson never returned for a second visit to any hotel, however enjoyable her stay; it did not do to retrace one’s steps lest a second incident might seem more than coincidence.
Last year, in Montreux, vulgarity had been the trigger. She had felt shame, witnessing the brash conduct of a couple who, as they acquired money and the spurious status it bought, had not acquired manners to match. This year it was an excess of conceit and condescension that were significant.
Last year, near a cable-car station, there had been a fatal fall from a cliff. No one had suspected the white-haired widow – Madge had abandoned her gold rinse years ago – who reported witnessing the fall of being its cause. The man had strayed away from his wife: the side of the mountain was steep and the sudden shove totally unexpected.
This year opportunity and method might be less easy.
Mrs Watson stalked her prey and heard them order a taxi to visit the Botanical Gardens which, she knew, were high on a hillside; she had been there already, herself.
Mrs Watson was there an hour before they arrived. She had walked round seeking possible hazards and admired lilies and orchids, glossy scarlet anthurium which looked waxen, strelitzia – the birds of paradise flowers – the pendulous trumpets of datura, which was a poisonous plant. She leaned on the walking stick she often carried – a versatile accessory – and gazed across the ravine dividing the hills to where the distant sea shone blue. There was no cruise ship in today and, late in the season as it was, there were few visitors to the gardens that day. Then she saw the elderly mother approaching along a side path, pausing to gaze at various plants; she was with her son. Looking about, Mrs Watson saw no sign of Charlotte or her father-in-law. Perhaps they had decided not to come?
It proved to be so. She watched carefully, making sure they were absent: so much the better for her purpose. The old woman and her son – his name was Hugo, Mrs Watson had heard it spoken – consulted the labels attached to various plants, moving slowly to a viewpoint where, protected by a low stone parapet built less than a yard from the sheer drop beyond, one could gaze in safety at the vista. She made an entry in a small red notebook where she had listed plants seen and identified. As she wrote down the name of an unusual cactus – she did not like cacti – fate played into her hands, for Hugo, ahead of his mother and approaching the spot where Mrs Watson was waiting, called out to the old lady.
‘There’ll be a wonderful view here,’ he told her.
‘You go ahead,’ she replied. ‘You know I don’t care for heights. I’ll wait for you near those lilies we liked. We might note some varieties and see if we can order the bulbs.’
She turned and walked down a cobbled path, vanishing from sight round a bend, and Hugo advanced towards where Mrs Watson stood. She surreptitiously dropped her notebook over the parapet and, before uttering small cries of distress, leaned over to poke at it with her stick till it lodged in a small bush on the edge of the ravine.
Hugo, ever civil, although aware that this was the woman his wife had seen snipping cuttings from plants in the hotel garden, made concerned enquiries as to what was wrong.
‘My references,’ cried Mrs Watson. ‘My check list of names – flowers I’ve seen and identified, to report to my local flower club. I’ve dropped it. So silly of me,’ and she leaned over the parapet gazing at the spot where, only just out of reach, the small notebook reposed.
‘It’s important, is it?’ asked Hugo.
‘Vital. It’s the only record I’ve got,’ Mrs Watson declared. ‘I have to give a talk to the group when I get home.’ She looked at him. ‘You’re very tall. Couldn’t you reach it?’
‘Hardly,’ said Hugo, with a grimace. ‘I might simply knock it over the hillside down the ravine.’
‘I’ll climb over and get it,’ said Mrs Watson. ‘Perhaps you’d just hold my arm while I do so, to steady me?’
‘I can’t let you do that,’ exclaimed Hugo, looking aghast at Mrs Watson, five foot two inches tall, and no longer young. ‘I’ll have a go. My arms are longer.’
‘Oh no!’ Hand to mouth, Mrs Watson demurred.
Hugo, carried back to boyhood days of derring-do, swung one leg over the low wall, then the other, crouching, now out of sight of anyone who might come towards them. The ledge was narrow, but though he held the wall at first, he found he could not reach the notebook without releasing his grasp. He had just seized it when he felt a sudden jab in the small of his back. Mrs Watson, pushing with all her might, had feared she would lack the strength to make him lose his balance, but she succeeded, and uttering only a strangled cry, he tore at a bush which broke off in his hand as he hurtled towards the valley.
Mrs Watson held back her piteous cries and shrieks for a few vital seconds, making sure he had fallen satisfactorily and fatally far before raising the alarm. When retrieved, Hugo’s body bore a great many bruises, and the sharp round one caused by the ferrule of her walking stick aroused no special interest. She said, with truth, that he had insisted on climbing over the wall to rescue her notebook which most foolishly she had dropped.
‘I tried to persuade him it was of no consequence,’ she declared, weeping gently. ‘But he insisted.’
The notebook was still clutched in his hand. It contained, as she had said, a list of a great many plants but it was not just what she had seen on the island; it was of more significance, for each plant noted was special. The oleander was a memory of Crete, and an accident in a swimming-pool; an agapanthus meant a fall at Lindos. A gentian reminded her of Lausanne and sleeping pills in brandy, followed by a lakeside walk in the dusk. There were others.
The cactus should represent Hugo.
It didn’t do to mock at widows. Their ranks increased all the time. Now it was Charlotte’s turn.
Who would be next?
The Last Resort
Mrs Robinson dressed carefully for the journey up the Rhine. Setting off from Heathrow, she wore her brown and navy check tweed skirt – not an expensive one, although when he gave her the money for it, she had told Roderick that it cost over a hundred pounds. The truth was that she had bought it at a chain store. Roderick liked her to be well-dressed; it was part of her image as his chattel. She understood her role. With the skirt, she wore what looked like a silk
blouse, and her pearls. These were genuine, left her by her mother, but now worth very little. A camel-hair jacket covered all these items.
She had to admit that Roderick had never been mean, as long as what was bought could be appreciated by others. For many years he had worked for an organisation with offices in West Africa, Mexico and the Far East, and had spent more time abroad than at home. He had been well paid for his labours, and enjoyed a good pension. While he was away, Mrs Robinson—Lois—had raised two sons and a much younger daughter, Angela, who was now attached, without benefit of marriage, to a guitarist named Barry. They travelled around with other musicians performing in clubs or wherever they could get engagements, to the horror of Angela’s father, who condemned her domestic situation as immoral. Angela, renamed Cat, sang with the group, and a photograph of her, wearing a leopard-like catsuit, ornamented their posters and the sleeves of the few records they had made. Roderick had convinced himself that drink or drugs, probably both, provoked the group’s noisy energy; he had disowned Angela. Mrs Robinson knew that cheap wine was Barry and Angela’s only stimulant, and that in modest amounts. Using cunning, she had visited them in Paris.
After Roderick retired, the Robinsons began travelling in Europe, which he had seldom visited, his business trips taking him much further afield. A habit of restlessness had developed within him, and after a few weeks of playing golf and studying the Stock Exchange, he would fret until he could pack and be off. Now, with no business associates, he required company, and his wife must provide it: who else? They had been to Spain, to Germany, and several times to France, but after a few journeys on their own, they joined escorted tours where ill-chosen hotels or disappointing excursions could be blamed on the organisers, not on Roderick’s selection. And there were people to impress, new audiences for his opinions on the day’s events or anything else he wished to talk about.
Last year in Paris, Mrs Robinson had found Angela and Barry living in an attic in a cheap area, where they had an outlook across the roofs towards the towers of Notre Dame. The Robinsons’ programme for the day had included a visit to Fontainebleau, and that morning Lois had said she felt unwell. Roderick, as she had known he would, went off without her, and she had won her chance to visit Angela.
When she arrived at the flat, she was warmly welcomed by Barry, who had three days’ growth of stubble on his chin, but that, Mrs Robinson knew, was current fashion. Nevertheless, it prickled her cheek when he kissed her, and she wondered briefly how Angela felt about it. Her first impression of their one room was of colour: bright cushions, a vivid bedspread thrown over the divan; next, she noticed the cheap furniture, the damp walls. They had rented it from another musician now in America, and would be there for a further fortnight. They had some other bookings, but it was clear that their future was insecure. When they had enough put by, they said, they wanted to open a guest-house of their own in Spain, where Barry would entertain the visitors with songs. Would it ever happen? Mrs Robinson looked at Barry, with his tangled mane of rich brown curls, and saw the kindness in his eyes and their soft expression when he glanced at Angela, whose own blonde hair was cropped to fit like a skull-cap round her small head. Barry’s real name was Bartholomew and he was a vicar’s son. Mrs Robinson knew that they lived in the hope of realising a dream, but what was wrong with that? Maybe they would achieve it; in the meantime, they had love.
There was no love between her and Roderick; she knew that now, knew also that the illusion of it years ago had been just that: a fantasy. But she had not missed the experience, for she had been married before. Her first husband had been killed soon after the invasion of Normandy. He had stepped on a mine and was blown to pieces. Lois had loved Teddy deeply, but they had had only a week’s leave together, which had left her pregnant with Thomas, who was now a plumber in Australia. Occasionally, when subjected to a particularly severe reproof from Roderick about her failure to fulfil one or another of his requirements, Lois would wonder what life with Teddy would have been like. They had scarcely known each other, meeting at a dance in the town where she lived. At the time, she had been a clerk in the local office of the Ministry of Food; it was essential work and exempted her from being called up so that she could live at home and look after her father. Her parents’ house had been hit by a bomb in 1942, and her mother was killed. Her father had been badly injured and had lost a leg. The house itself had been shored up and made habitable, and here she had remained, her circumstances little altered until Thomas was born. Her father had made no objections to her hasty marriage; he had married his own wife during the First World War and understood the need to clutch at happiness. It had worked out for them; why should it not work out also for their daughter?
The young widow, her father, and the baby Thomas were happy enough for more than a year, and then Lois’s father died suddenly in his sleep. There was not much money left, but mother and baby had a home. After a while, Lois found work at a nearby hospital where there was a créche arrangement, and there she met the convalescent Roderick, who had had pneumonia. Years later, during a quarrel, she discovered that a girl to whom he had been engaged had married someone else by whom she was already pregnant; at least she hadn’t foisted another man’s child on him, the furious Roderick had said, when revealing this history.
‘I didn’t foist Tom on you. You said he was a dear little chap,’ wept Lois, but even as she spoke, she recalled how Roderick had laid out Tom’s precious little cars – bought second-hand because there were few new toys in those days – in regimented rows for the child to play with. Only with hindsight did she realise that Tom had not been allowed to let them range freely about or be used as tanks and lorries.
‘No. They are cars, and must be parked so,’ Roderick would say, disciplining Thomas before he was three years old. ‘A boy needs a father,’ he had declared, offering his hand but never, as she later understood, his heart.
He had assessed the potential value of the property she owned, the bomb-damaged, temporarily repaired small house on the fringe of a south coast town. When they sold it, the money went into Roderick’s account and was used to buy another in his name, in a Midland suburb near his new firm’s offices. That had appreciated and they had moved again, to a bigger place appropriate to their improved status, and so it had gone on but she was now dependent on Roderick for every penny.
No longer, however, for she had been cheating him for years, building up a nest egg by fraudulent accounting for her clothes and other expenses, and by economical housekeeping. She had milked Roderick of many hundreds of pounds, planning her escape, and she meant to achieve it on this holiday which, after the flight from Heathrow and a night in Cologne, would continue with a trip up the Rhine. Somewhere on the journey she would have an opportunity, and when it came, she must seize it bravely or it would be too late; she was getting old.
Had he been different when he was young, she wondered, watching him across the table in the ship’s restaurant. They were travelling with a group of people professing interest in ancient buildings, and they had disembarked to visit cathedrals, churches and occasional castles in the towns through which they passed. With them was their courier, Kay, a trim woman, no longer young, who was adept at defusing friction among her small group. At intervals she also took on the burden of plain Miss Smythe and blowsy Miss Howard, who were each travelling alone and unfortunately had not taken to one another. Roderick ignored them, apart from ostentatiously allowing them to precede him through the doorway. He did not ignore pretty Mrs Clifford, just over five feet tall and as slim as a twelve-year-old girl; he supervised the loading and unloading of her baggage, and nightly included her in the Robinsons’ bottle of wine. She lapped all this attention up as though accustomed to it, as, indeed, she was. She had been married three times, divorced once and widowed twice. Now she was looking for someone new, but had not found him on this holiday, for all the men were married and she preferred the unattached. Mrs Robinson could see, in Roderick’s manner towards Mrs Cliffo
rd, traces of his short-lived concern for her and Thomas; it was all false. Meanwhile, his preoccupation gave her breathing space and she could concentrate on strategy.
Mrs Robinson had been told that Strasbourg would be spectacular, the pierced spires of the cathedral a marvel to behold. Her chance might come there, she thought; she knew they had some distance to walk from their parked coach. Roderick would sit with her in the coach, his bulk uncomfortably close, but he would be watching for Mrs Clifford, waiting to hand her down. Lois would be prepared to slip away, if she could.
That morning, he questioned why she carried her small zipped holdall when the day was warm and dry, but she did not answer. In the bag was a change of underwear, spare tights, a toothbrush, and a fat bundle of travellers’ cheques which represented all her savings.
She watched Roderick and Mrs Clifford walking ahead of her along the narrow street towards the cathedral. They had driven round the town, admired the buildings used by the European Parliament, and stood gazing at the timbered houses, so ancient and historic, in the centre of the city. The guide had said that Strasbourg was spared destruction in the war because the United States Command had already decided to have its headquarters there. Forward planning, thought Mrs Robinson, just like Roderick’s. And now, her own.
After their marriage, he had not been demobilised for some time and was stationed in Germany, where it was never suggested that she should join him. She and Thomas carried on as before, but she was no longer a widow and there was more money. Soon there was also Julian, now an accountant in Manchester. Mrs Robinson did not like to remember her honeymoon with Roderick, so different from her few nights with Teddy; Julian was the result of that experience.
He’s like a tank, running over everything that’s in his way, regardless, she thought in the years that followed, and was thankful for his frequent absences overseas. Sometimes he was gone for months, and though wives and families could accompany their husbands on some postings, Roderick, to her great relief, never proposed that his should do so. She was happy while he was away, but when he returned he cross-examined Thomas and Julian about the details of their lives since last he saw them. Thomas never said a lot, but Julian could be led into revelations of maternal mismanagement – running out of eggs, failure to equip him with the right sort of shoes for school, seeing too much of neighbours whom, he sensed, his father disapproved of. Tiny betrayals were easily contrived.
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