‘Oh Ralph!’ Grace Carstairs sniffed the pink dianthus clouded in sprays of gypsophila. ‘How do you always manage to remember what my favourite flowers are? Thank you. You’re much too kind to your old mother-in-law.’
‘And why wouldn’t I be, Grace? Come on, let’s find a vase for them.’
Joyce made a mock sound of throwing up as she watched them walk into the hall. Hand resting on Ralph’s arm, her mother was swallowing another dose of sycophancy not realizing the poison it contained. It was grotesque the way she played the simpering coquette when he turned on the charm, flattering her with attentiveness that she lapped up as he carefully polished the image of the ideal son-in-law — and therefore perfect husband. Joyce had to admit he was clever; flowers one week, an hour chatting in her room the next. Now a morning run to Ipswich to shop, now dropping her off for lunch at Lillian’s on his way to golf and stopping for a cup of tea on the way back. Meticulous about birthdays and the anniversary of Daddy’s death (his secretary must remind him), and spending the last few minutes on Sunday evening saying goodbye to her before returning to town — and was there anything he could get for her in London? Joyce wanted to scream at the sickening hypocrisy; within a couple of hours of kissing her mother’s cheek and telling her to take care, he’d be groping Gabriella as she … Joyce physically shook herself to dispel images that bit deep with jealousy and humiliation.
‘What a lovely man Ralph is … He reminds me so much of Daddy, so thoughtful … Lillian’s absolutely besotted with him. She never sees either of her sons-in-law from one year’s end to the next, poor dear … Thank you for marrying him, darling; he’s an absolute poppet.’
No he’s not, Mummy. He’s a bastard and you’re too stupid — no, not stupid; too innocent, bewitched by the act, to see it. He’s using you. You’d never believe me if I said I wanted to leave your adored Ralph because he’s an unfaithful, cruel, manipulative sod. You’d suggest I went to see the doctor, then tell Lillian it must be the menopause — and she’d be on your side. Apart from Fay, nobody knows, and her sympathy doesn’t help because I envy her. Do you know what he said to me the night I cracked and told him to get out of this bloody house? He asked me if your heart would be able to stand it, because he’d make damned sure you believed the lies he’d tell you. And he smiled when he said it. That’s your poppet, Mummy, that’s the man you tell all your friends I’m so lucky to have married. He’s keeping you contented because he needs you to stay alive. How old are you now? Seventy-four. And Granny Kitty’s quavering heart managed to keep beating for nearly ninety years — so how long have I got left of my sentence? Or do I just go out of my mind first?
She heard Ralph whistling as he came downstairs; a few pounds on flowers and ten minutes putting them in a vase before settling Grace in her chair with a book gave a very good return. She’d stay in her apartment for the rest of the day while he went for an afternoon’s networking at Newmarket, coming home when it suited him. He’d lie in on Sunday morning — Grace would say he needed it; her own dear Ronald had always complained that London was exhausting — have lunch, make a few calls from his study, pack the shirts Joyce would have washed and ironed and head back for Camden. When the children were small, she’d arranged family outings, daring him to betray her promises that Daddy would be with them, but after Rupert had left home and as Annabel became more independent that weapon had gone. She’d given up insisting on being taken out to dinner on Saturday nights because they had always deteriorated into resentful, hollow silences, chilled by indifference on his side and loathing on hers. What sort of people don’t talk to each other when they are out together in public? Those who are badly married. How Joyce spent her week was irrelevant to him, and he was certain she would never hit back by taking a lover. Mummy would be horrified if he found out and told her — which he would — protesting how good a husband he had been, unable to comprehend how she could be so cruel to them both. Joyce often wondered if there were other women caught in the same trap. Parents lived so much longer now, the wives usually longer than the husbands; was Ralph the only man who’d had the calculating duplicity to see how offering his mother-in-law a dowager apartment would cost him virtually nothing and enable him to put a hammerlock on his wife? Short of killing him — a regular fantasy, frequently with maliciously added pain — Joyce despaired of an escape, yet despised herself for what was being done to her. She even had to continue the pantomime of sharing the same bed with him because Mummy would be appalled at any other arrangement; for her obedient generation of women, a wife not sleeping with her husband was unnatural, and how could her daughter possibly not want to spend the night warm beside so kind and generous a man? In fact, Ralph slept in the adjacent dressing room, functional and soulless as a motel room, while Joyce lay alone in the king-size bed they had chosen together at Harrods, joyously coupled on immediately after it had been delivered and on which Rupert and Annabel had been conceived.
‘Are you having lunch?’ she asked coldly.
He glanced at his Rolex. ‘If it’s not too long.’
‘It’s cold. Ten minutes.’
‘Fine. Thanks. Want a hand?’
She looked surprised. ‘What’s come over you, or are you just trying to save time?’
‘Just yes or no.’
‘All right. You can lay the table. Thank you.’
It struck her that she was unable to remember when they had last had a real conversation, an exchange of thoughts. On opposite sides of the abyss at the bottom of which lay their marriage, dead dreams and decayed ruins of what had once been love, communication now involved no more than basics: these bills have arrived; I need my evening suit cleaned; don’t forget we have to attend Rupert’s Parents’ Day; Fay’s invited us to dinner on … Can you make it?; Annabel needs new skis for that school trip; I’ll be out of town Tuesday and Wednesday … This is the number if you need it; I’m getting Meredith’s in to clean the pool; oh, here’s a hundred quid for your birthday. Buy yourself something, I’ve no time to shop in town.
He’d laid out knives, forks and two glasses of water; no condiments, napkins, place mats or the fruit bowl. Immersed in the Daily Telegraph sports pages, he appeared irritated as Joyce pointedly disturbed him while she completed the table, but neither of them spoke. She sat down and they began to eat, the only sound that of cutlery against porcelain, cold and metallic.
‘What’s the new chap at Windhover like?’
Puncturing the silence, the question startled her; as long as the books showed the right sort of income, Ralph never asked about how she ran the cottage.
‘Fine. Why?’
‘Just wondered. He’s staying for several weeks, isn’t he? What does he do all day?’
‘How should I know?’ There was an unexpected feeling of protectiveness, of not wanting Ralph to be any part of it. ‘He’s paid the full balance if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘There’s no need to get tetchy.’
‘I don’t get “tetchy” about things any more, Ralph. I’m just not used to you taking any interest. Read your bloody paper.’
‘What the hell’s the matter with you? I wasn’t looking for a fight. I was only —’
‘Shut up!’ Joyce pushed her plate away fiercely and stood up. Lunching together had long been a farce, but she was suddenly sick of it. ‘What’s the matter with me? How long have you got? Try everything!’
Seeing him shrug and return to the paper, stabbed more acutely than it had done for months. Whenever she turned on him, he withdrew, beyond attack because he controlled the ultimate deterrent. He didn’t look up as she sighed with weary frustration and walked out, tears fretting her eyes.
For once the garden offered her no comfort; its perfection for what? It was only a place where unhappiness could be temporarily masked by colour and scent. She tore off a rose, the pain of tearing thorns unfelt, and began to pull it apart. He loves me not … he loves me not … he loves me not … Christ, get real! You’ve put up with
it this long, you’ve hammered something out, it can’t last for ever … just die, Mummy! Let me get my hands on his throat and … She sobbed violently. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that … Yes I did … God in heaven! I’m forty-four years old and hate myself for allowing him to make me so unhappy. Will I be old before I have the courage not to give a damn about how I behave and what people will think? Don’t kid yourself. By that time you’ll have let yourself be defeated so often, you won’t have any strength left to fight with. You’re pitiful.
From the front of the house she heard Ralph’s Mercedes start up and crunch over the gravel; she was usually granted at least a goodbye, however casual. The afternoon and evening seemed to stretch for ever towards the night.
She sat by the pond, picking up tiny stones by her feet and tossing them into the still water, concentrating on the ripples shimmering across the surface, mind emptied because thoughts were too painful … He had been here with her the other day and she had felt — not happy, but at ease, in control … flirtatious? Inelegantly she sniffed and used the back of her wrist to dab her nose. But he was attractive — and alone — gentle and somehow wounded as well. They shared experience of pain. She leant back in the chair, her mind drifting, her eyes closed against the pulsating sun as it wanned her body. What would it be like to be stroked by those beautiful hands, kissed by those slender lips that she had seen tremble with what she felt must be heartache? Fantasy wove pictures; not just sex, but affection, shared time, comfort … She moved her images to Cromlix House, the sumptuous country-house hotel in Scotland where she had once stayed. The Lower Turret Suite with its immense canopied bed and long Edwardian dressing mirror that could be positioned so they could watch themselves as … Walking hand in hand through the estate, amused by rabbits in the twilight … Talking to other guests over coffee and liqueurs in the plump armchairs of the drawing room after dinner … Tea brought to them on a silver tray in the morning … Climbing in the Trossachs above Loch Katrine …
‘Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid.’ Alarmed, a bluetit fluttered away as she spoke aloud to herself. She sat upright, gazed blankly down the garden, then stood up and went back into the house. He had his own life and was just passing through hers, renting the cottage to write his book. Anything else was la-la land, even though it was … No. Stop it. Some women might set out to seduce him for their pleasure and amusement — younger ones, certainly — but these were pathetic erotic daydreams that belittled her even further. She turned on the radio and got on with the ironing.
*
Ralph returned shortly before ten, in time to go up to tell Grace that he had put money on a horse for her and it had won. Thirty pounds to buy herself a treat. Sleep well, I’ll see you tomorrow before I leave. Joyce heard him whistling softly as he came downstairs; she was sketching, half curled up on the drawing-room sofa. She turned over the page of the pad as he walked in.
‘Jerry and Suzanne were asking after you.’ His voice had a sibilant alcoholic lisp. ‘She’s going to call you. Invite you to lunch.’ Only short sentences were within his mental grasp.
‘I can hardly wait,’ she murmured. Before she’d met Suzanne, Ralph had said she would like her; Joyce had found her an egotistical airhead with a husband who could bore for the universe. Ralph hadn’t caught her response as he headed for the drinks cabinet and a nightcap gin.
‘What’re you drawing?’
‘Nothing. Only passing the time.’ She closed the sketchpad. ‘Anyway, I was just about to go to bed. I assume you’re staying up to watch the match.’
‘Did you record it?’
‘No, but if you remember you put the video on timer … It was a draw, by the way. One-all. It was on the news.’
‘Shit. You’ve spoilt it.’ He sounded like a peeved child.
‘My heart bleeds. Goodnight.’ The tiny victory of inflicting irritation made her feel better.
In bed, propped against pillows, she opened the pad again, frustrated at what eluded her. The hair was good, and the jawline, but the eyes weren’t quite … She erased with a soft rubber, concentrating as she lined and shaded again. She rarely attempted portraits; faces held qualities that called for skills not needed for sketching flowers or old buildings. How did you draw gentleness and that sense of timidity? She held the paper at arm’s length, stared at it for a moment, then spontaneously kissed it before letting her head flop back.
‘And you walked into my life exactly one week ago,’ she murmured. ‘Christ, how desperate has that bastard made me?’
She leant over the edge of the bed and slipped the pad beneath it, switched off the lamp and lay down. Sleep finally smothered imagination until she was disturbed by Ralph coughing as he passed through; the dressing-room light came on, then vanished as he closed the door. Defensively hardened against rejection, she was bewildered over why she should suddenly begin to weep.
*
Menace of cloud-gloomed countryside enveloped Jowett; black shadows within grey, ghost-insect lash of branches across his face, crackle of undergrowth beneath his nervous feet. There were no street lights along the road from Finch to Tannerslade Farm and once he had climbed the fence by the gate to creep along the hawthorn hedge on the other side of the track leading to the house, darkness had drawn him to its centre; he was scared of using his torch, revealing his presence. At one point he froze at the thought of mantraps, vicious half-circles of toothed-steel jaws that snapped together to bite immovably into calf and shin. Surely they were illegal now … but if your family had been slaughtered by intruders you would not be bothered about that as you protected yourself. He crouched down and scrabbled until he found a long stick and probed the grass in front of him, night blind and terrified of unseeable dangers, then gasped in pain and panic as he slipped into a dry, shallow ditch, panting as he stumbled.
Looking back at the road, he realized he must be almost opposite the farmhouse and he stepped across the ditch, forcing foliage aside to peer through the hawthorn. Curtains glowed at the window and his eyes, now adapted to night, could make out details. The barn where the old man had been shot was still there, and in his mind he saw again the frantic little girl running to be brutally tossed aside by death; then the woman, just standing at the door until she crumpled and fell. He felt an unexpected sense of detachment, like a warlord surveying a town he had blitzed into silent mins, broken bodies no longer real people. This was the killing ground, where he had been too helpless with terror to stop Giles’ madness and was therefore a part of it.
It was impossible to analyse if returning had helped; could unpunished men who had been guards at Auschwitz or Treblinka achieve anything by seeing again the huts and gas chambers? But that was Cambridge intellectualism, the cloistered mind contemplating the mysteries of human evil. Within yards of where he skulked against the hedge, a man, two women and two children had been slaughtered; that was the hideous reality.
He let the branches close and sat trembling for a few moments before creeping away. He’d been back, but had found nothing there.
Chapter Seven
Head bowed, Joyce found her attention focused on the tapestry kneeler as the congregation prayed for all those in need. It was one she had made herself; the angular, stylized figure of a winged man, a traditional representation of St Matthew. That’s what going to church had come to mean to her: not faith or fear, but a place where her talents had some use and she had social value, a balm against loneliness. So sin — or at least what were becoming constant thoughts of sin — didn’t enter into it any more. The death of God had been widely reported in the sixties; now everybody was allowed to find Him — or Her — for themselves. So she could negotiate personal terms. It could not be wicked to love, or indeed to make love, and if nobody got hurt it couldn’t be classified as sin. It was remarkable how easy a lifetime of conditioned obedience could now be equivocated away.
‘Give us this day our daily bread …’ No longer able to kneel in comfort, Grace sat beside her, head lowered, deliberately
raising her voice when she could not hear Joyce taking part.
‘… and forgive us our trespasses …’ she picked up instinctively. And I have certainly been trespassed against. For the rest of the service, she forced her mind to behave.
*
‘Joyce, I’ve finally finished that damned bodice. You wouldn’t believe the trouble I had with it! When can you come for a final fitting?’ Pouncing hen-like through the crowd outside the porch, Sarah Merriman scrabbled in her bag for her diary. ‘Oh, hell. Next three days absolutely hopeless. Thursday evening? No, scrub that. I’ve got that wretched woman who wants a dress for her daughter’s wedding … Friday. Morning. Not before eleven, though. If you can’t make it then, I’ve got to go out straight after lunch, so it would have to be the weekend — next thing you know, it’ll be the pageant. We’ll never get everything done in time.’
‘I can make Friday morning,’ Joyce assured her. Every year, the Pegman Pageant was a major crisis in Sarah Merriman’s life; every year she swore she would never do it again; every year she did.
‘Marvellous.’ She looked round agitatedly as she scribbled. ‘Have you seen Jeremy? He promised to let me know about those loudspeakers he’s borrowing from some sports club. It’ll be a total farce without them … Carol! Don’t rush off! We need two more knight’s costumes, and …’ She plunged through a group of people, panic fluttering about her.
‘What a very nice sermon.’ Grace sounded contented.
‘Yes.’ Joyce took her arm. ‘A new variation on number seven.’
‘Don’t be such a cynic. Jeffrey’s a marvellous vicar.’ They began to walk down the sloping path to the gate. ‘I liked the way he related it to how children learn in school. You can understand that. The problem with some of the parables is that —’
Joyce had stopped listening; he had just walked past them.
‘Mr Jowett!’ He turned, as if startled that someone should recognize him. ‘I didn’t see you in church.’
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