The Habit of Widowhood

by Robert Barnard

  “Hello, Jennifer. How’s your mother? I haven’t seen her for ages.”

  “She’s all right. . . . Well, not really. She’s got this nasty bruise.”

  “A bruise? How did she get that?”

  “You know. . . . That man . . .”

  “Man? The one that’s stopping with you?”

  “Her boyfriend.”

  “Well! I thought he was a cousin or nephew or something!”

  I stared at the ground, and Mrs. Horrocks went on her way, shaking her head. I congratulated myself that I had not even told her a lie, though I was quite willing to if necessary. I did later in the day when I went specially to see Miss Forster and tell her. She also shook her head.

  “If only your mother had come to see me, dear. We could have talked it over. Perhaps I should go and pay a call on her.”

  She did, later that day. My mother called her an interfering old bag when I got home that afternoon, and Miss Forster told me the next day that my mother had insisted that she collided with a door.

  “Such a silly story. As if she just couldn’t be bothered to make up a better one. I’m beginning to be quite worried about you.” She added: “If you should ever need a home, Jenny dear, you can always rely on me.”

  The next thing that happened was that the police came for Jimmy. They came on a Saturday when he was deeply absorbed in the Flintstones or Corky the Cat, and after a bit of talk in the living room they took him away. I suppose he was “helping the police with their inquiries,” which I always thought was a silly phrase: I couldn’t see Jimmy as a Dr. Watson. My mother said: “The bloody police. They always pick on past offenders.” I shrugged and said: “Seems a sensible place to start.” She got very ropey.

  The annoying thing was that by late afternoon Jimmy was back and wanting to know what had happened to Corky the Cat. The police had hoped to pin a pilfering raid in Kettlesham on him, but the night it had occurred he had been with my mother in Barstow, at the pub where they had met, and where they were by now fairly well known. Right man, wrong job. I conceived a low opinion of the local police which I have had no reason to alter since.

  I need hardly say that the arrival of the policemen, and their going off with Jimmy, had been observed by the whole neighborhood, most of them cleaning their cars or clearing up leaves on their front lawns at the time. I began to be showered with looks of pity when they passed me in the street.

  It was now approaching Christmas. My mother had had no more accidents that showed, unfortunately: she was clumsy but not absolutely incapable physically. The thought of Christmas with Jimmy, and the endless diet of television pap aimed at people with a mental age often, was not pleasant. I said:

  “I think we should go away for Christmas.”

  It was typical of my mother that she had never thought of the idea of going away for Christmas for herself, and typical too that once it came up it appealed to her immensely: no fuss of cooking, decorating the house, stocking up with goodies. The burden reduced, in fact, to buying something for me (I always told her what I wanted), and this year something for Jimmy (almost anything in the clothes line would be acceptable, since his wardrobe was an Adidas bag). My mother said, uncertainly:

  “But where do you go, if you go away for Christmas? What do people do?”

  “They go to hotels. There’s one in the paper tonight offering a three-day Christmas away-break, at Seccombe.”

  “It would be nice.”

  “A hundred and fifty pounds in all, children at half price.”

  “I suppose I could manage that.”

  “Jimmy would need some new clothes,” I pointed out.

  “Oh, that’s all right. I was thinking of kitting him out for Christmas anyway.”

  Jimmy did not look particularly gratified or even interested, and he didn’t say what he was thinking of getting her: it depended, presumably, on what he could pick up.

  “I could ring them and book,” I said.

  I have a very adult voice, and an excellent vocabulary. It was always best to do things like that myself, since if I left it to Mother it would probably not get done. After some thought I booked us in as Mr. and Mrs. Wildman and Jennifer Burton (child). Child of a previous marriage, I impressed on my mother.

  “I don’t know why I should lie about being married to Jimmy,” she complained. “Nobody cares these days.”

  “They would care at a hotel in Seccombe,” I said, and added nastily: “It looks bad enough as it is.”

  That, as it turned out, was putting it mildly. The clientele at the Devonshire Arms at Seccombe were fiftyish or over, twinset and pearls if they were women, tweeds and pipes if they were men. Middle-aged women with toy boys were not part of their mental world. They gave the impression that they had spent their lives choking off unwanted familiarities, and it seemed as if the whole point for them of celebrating Christmas in a hotel was to show that they knew how to Keep Themselves to Themselves. Jimmy in a suit and tie only meant that the temperature was nine below instead of ten below. Any communication there was occurred between the men in the bars, where it was established that the “marriage” of Jimmy and my mother was recent, and I was not his child. It was immediately assumed I was an illegitimate product of my mother’s gay youth, and I was “poor-deared” by the kindlier of the women there, and pointedly ignored by the beastlier. Any attempts at jollity at our table (and Jimmy only tried two or three times) lowered the temperature in the room still further.

  It didn’t worry my mother. To care what other people think of you, you have first to notice. She ate the food, which was conventional but good, drank the odd glass of wine, leaving the rest of the bottle to Jimmy, and generally seemed to have quite a satisfactory time of it. They spent a lot of time in bed, but as there was television in each room they could well have been watching The Sound of Music.

  I had announced from the beginning that I wanted to go to Hatherton Towers. That is the point about Seccombe. It is a very snooty little town, but the nearest stately home has been turned into an enormous leisure park and funfair—a sort of Disneyland without the class. If my mother had known anything about me at all she would have found it surprising that I should want to go anywhere as childish and vulgar as Hatherton Towers, but she didn’t and when I asked she just nodded. I needn’t have bothered insisting, in fact: Jimmy was determined to go anyway. It was aimed at his mental age.

  We went on Boxing Day. It had been closed in the run-up to Christmas and on The Day itself, but on Boxing Day families start shaking themselves out of their overfed torpor and getting out and about. Normal families, I mean. My mother swore about the steep admission charges, but the man at the ticket office explained that the price covered all the amusements and sideshows. “The little girl will have a whale of a time,” he said. I shot him a glance that should have shriveled him, but he’d already gone on to smarming over the next family.

  Well, Hatherton Towers had all the forced jollity and unforced vulgarity that I had expected, but I made myself go on a few things, and Jimmy capered around like a five-year-old, and would have gone on everything if there’d been time. I bided my time for an hour or so, until I saw what I wanted, and when I saw it I bided my time until the crowd moved in another direction, then I pointed.

  “I want to go on that.”

  That was a super-high slide, snaking its way down round a central tower.

  “Great!” said Jimmy, rubbing his hands and dancing toward it.

  “You go,” said my mother. “There’s no bloody lift. I’m not climbing that ladder.”

  “Come on,” I said, pulling her. “I’m not going up there with him on my own.”

  Grumbling, cursing, she started up.

  “Come on,” shouted Jimmy down to us. “It’s going to be a great slide down! You’ve no energy!”

  “Too bloody right!” shouted my mother back. “I’m thirty-eight. I grew out of this sort of lark when I was fifteen.”

  The sound of their voices penetrated bac
k to the odd family on the ground. It was the best I could do. I’d given up hope of organizing a public row. Their temperaments were too similar. The word “sluggardly” would describe it best.

  Jimmy was already at the top when we reached it. There was a waist-high fence which offered adequate protection for children. Jimmy was rubbing his hands at the top of the chute. My mother looked over the railings. “Christ Almighty!” she said (she was inclined to blaspheme). “All this bloody way up just to go down again.”

  A second later she was on the ground, spread-eagled out, with a crowd gathering round her. A second or two later Jimmy arrived at the bottom of the chute to find her already dead. I meditated whether to go down on the slide, which was obviously the quickest way, but it would have given the impression of heartlessness, so I began screaming instead.

  I must say I never expected Jimmy to be accused of murder. I had underestimated forensic science. My mother had fallen plumb downwards on her face, and there were marks on her back that could only have been caused by a hefty shove. The police had assumed it was an accident, but once the report came through they had no hesitation in arresting him, and the case was so straightforward that it was quite swiftly brought to trial. I gave evidence that they’d had a bit of an argument on the way up, and implied that this was par for the course. I said I’d seen nothing on the top platform because I’d been looking over the railings on the other side.

  The Defense, a pushy young man supplied on Legal Aid, went in all directions in his unconvincing attempts to save Jimmy. I was not in court, of course, but I had all the gen passed on to me by school friends. (Miss Forster tried to protect me by keeping the newspapers from me—I’d asked to go to her as soon as I knew my mother was dead—but, of course, in a school everything gets out.) First the Defense tried to shake the forensic evidence, but the expert said there was no way it could have been an accident. Then they tried to argue that Jimmy had found an easy berth, and there was no way he was going to ruin it. The young man pointed out that he was a criminal of the most petty: he had had two periods of probation, one involving community work (unsatisfactorily performed), and one three-month jail sentence, all for shoplifting and petty pilfering (so much for breaking and entering—Jimmy couldn’t have summoned up the nerve to break and enter to save his life). Defense pointed out that he had never been involved in violence, and the police had to agree with this. The police, in fact, seemed quite to like Jimmy, but they pointed out that he was an immature individual, was involved in a long-term relationship for the first time and had acted on the spur of the moment. That was why they were willing to reduce the charge to manslaughter.

  Defense then turned, gingerly, to me. I was young, and resented my mothers new affair, and perhaps was afraid of her lover. Prosecuting Counsel vigorously objected. If the emotions were felt at all, they would not have been a motive for murdering the mother, but for murdering the lover. (Did they really think I was such a dumb cluck as to commit a murder for which I would be the most likely suspect?) The forensic expert was recalled and expressed the view that it was most unlikely that a girl of thirteen would have the necessary strength to inflict the blow that had sent my mother over the parapet (so much for experts).

  I must say I did wonder whether the police would do tests on the slide—whether they would find out that Jimmy could not have pushed my mother over and then arrived at the bottom a second or two later. But then, people’s memories are not reliable where time is concerned, particularly at moments of crisis. And as I said, the local police are not all that bright.

  So Jimmy was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to nine years. With remission for good conduct (and I can’t see him having the nerve for anything else) he should be out in three or four years. I sometimes worry about this, but, after all, by then I will be at university, and what could he do if he found out where I was beyond accuse me? I just don’t see him having the energy.

  On the whole, living with Miss Forster has worked out very well. When my father comes on his twice-yearly visits his face has an expression of relief on it, that someone could be found to take me on and relieve him of the responsibility. Miss Forster fusses a lot, is much too protective, but after my childhood this makes a nice change. It’s true that recently there have been signs of something else that I certainly don’t like—trying to get too close to me, touching me unnecessarily, that sort of thing. There’s a teacher at school who’s taken a big interest in me since my mother’s death. Her family is grown up, so I could go and live with her. I wouldn’t have to go to extremes with Miss Forster—just a few allegations to the police or the social worker who visits now and then would do the trick. I wouldn’t think of doing anything more drastic. It would be unfortunate if people began to associate me in their minds with violent death.

  IF LOOKS COULD KILL

  When Sam and I married everybody said it was a mésalliance. On his part, of course. His people stood around eyeing off my people at the reception, and they hardly bothered to hide their scorn. My people were not very numerous. There was my mother and Auntie Florrie, both there for the booze. There was my best friend Val and a few girls from work who were hardly more than “friends for the day.” And that was about it. I have always preferred to go through life unencumbered.

  His people, Sam’s, ranged from the comfortably off to the discreetly rich. They were Jewish, though few of them were Orthodox, as over the years they had Englished themselves determinedly. The men wore the right suits for a wedding, the women wore the right dresses and everyone wore the right expression—that of trying to put the best face on a disaster.

  “They’re wearing their Titanic expressions,” I said to Val.

  “Snotty-nosed bunch,” she said. “What have they to sneer at?”

  “I’m not their class, I’m not their race, and I’m not their religion,” I pointed out.

  That was it, really. The whole reception consisted of my people trying to get the lion’s share of the drinks and eats, and his people making it clear that in marrying me Sam Kopinski had let down not only his family but his whole world.

  “We must hope for the best,” his sister said to me as a hired caterer poured her a second glass of champagne. “Sometimes a marriage of opposites turns out surprisingly well.”

  “We are rather the long and short of it,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding. “Anyway, we’ve given it a good trial, so we’re pretty sure we’ll be able to make a go of it.”

  The look she gave me made it clear that that was not the sort of thing that was said at weddings in Kopinski circles.

  Physically, as I say, we made a pretty funny picture walking down the aisle. Sam was about five foot two, with a figure that could best be described as squat. He looked like a frog who’s been in the hands of a circus trainer. His features were—unlike most of his family’s—splendidly Jewish, and he rejoiced in it. “Why try to look what you’re not?” he used to ask. “If I tried to look Eton and Oxford I wouldn’t succeed, and it would be a confidence trick if I did.”

  I, on the other hand, was—still am—a fine figure of a woman, to use the old-fashioned term. Five foot nine, good firm figure, incredibly well-shaped legs. I’d look good in any East End pub, and I’d have blokes coming up to me if I was on my own. In fact, that had been the story of my life since I was a well-developed sixteen.

  “I hate the way his family’s looking down on you,” said my friend Val to me in the ladies’, as the wedding wound down to its final whimper. “It’s Sam who’s getting the best deal, marrying you.”

  “Course it is,” I said calmly, piling on the lipstick. “It’s no fun having a little runt like that scrambling round on top of you.”

  I should have checked the cubicles. His sister emerged and marched out, her face rhododendron pink.

  “Ooops!” I said. “Naughty me!”

  You will have guessed by now that I was not making a marriage of love. Probably you will have assumed that I married Sam for his money, but t
hat wasn’t in fact the heart of the matter. Oh, I could spend money with the best of them, and enjoy myself while I was doing it, but what I really loved, and love, was the process of making money. I liked managing a business, watching it grow, adding more businesses, amalgamating, leading at the end of it all to a business empire. I knew I had a wonderful commercial brain. Whatever happened, I would prosper in the world. By marrying Sam I merely cut out the first rungs of the ladder, starting out at a point where I could give adequate opportunities to my gifts.

  I had worked in one of Sam’s little chain stores, all called Occasionals, when I was a teenager. I’d left for a spell in a big London department store, where I had learnt to hide my commonness under a genteel mask when the occasion demanded—though never getting rid of the hardness that went with the commonness, for that would have been fatal to my ambitions. When I was twenty-four, and ready for my first moves up the ladder, I met Sam again in an East London pub, the Old Mare.

  “Well, hello, Mr. Kopinski. Long time no see!”

  His eyes lit up at the sight of me. Sam was always excited by large, well-formed women, particularly young ones. But having smiled, he frowned.

  “Lovely to see you again too, Miss . . . er, I don’t quite remember your—”

  “Your Walthamstow branch. I was just a slip of a thing. Remember now?”

  “Ah yes! Miss—”

  “Hayton. Maggie-Lou Hayton.”

  “Of course,” he lied. “I remember you well. Always knew you’d go far.”

  So that was how it had begun. I should add that I’d gone to work at Occasionals because I saw the chain’s potential, and I’d never changed my opinion while working in central London. Furthermore I knew the Old Mare was Sam Kopinski’s favorite pub, and that he was always there early on a Wednesday evening, which was why I was there to meet up with him. You have to make your chances in life, that’s what I believe. Waiting for them to come to you is for wimps. The first move was mine, and mine was all the running thereafter.