One night, soon after this, Dad came back from visiting Mrs Tapley and said he’d seen a car parked, without lights, at the end of the lane leading to our driveway. It had sped off as he approached, before he had a chance to distinguish its make or registration. As a precaution it was decided that I should be picked up from any late babysitting appointments, and Donovan was advised to curtail his moonlight rambles, and stay close to the house when he had his last smoke of the evening. In fact he was invited, repeatedly, to smoke in the house, but couldn’t be persuaded.
Christian was in favour of rounding up some of his fellow labourers from the Holiday Inn and staking out the area after dark. This was, he assured us, just the sort of job they would enjoy and excel at, some of them having already done long stretches inside for taking an overly physical approach to resolving grievances. Dad vetoed this suggestion in the strongest possible terms. ‘I’m sure if we’re sensible it will all blow over. A confrontation is the last thing we want.’
All this excitement provided a welcome diversion from my uneasy relationship with Donovan, which was characterised by electric awkwardness dressed up as perfect civility. I suppose he might have been taken aback by the dismissive tone of my reply. I hoped so. He certainly hadn’t felt inspired to continue the correspondence. In any case, there was now a distance between us, which I felt, stubbornly, it was not up to me to bridge, though of course he was ignorant of its cause. I don’t know how long I planned to sustain this impasse. There were times when I thought I’d behaved stupidly, and wasted a precious opportunity to advance our relationship. But then I thought of the photograph, and that woman, with her genuine-married-tits-and-clit, and my calcified heart hardened all over again.
Then the money from the charity jar disappeared, and that gave me something new to think about. Mum had taken the earthenware pot down from the top of the dresser, with the intention of bagging up her year’s collection of coins and taking them to the bank along with the Top of the Pew proceeds and converting the lot into a cheque for Christian Aid, and found the roll of notes – over £400 – missing.
Once the plausible explanation – that Dad, newly security-conscious in the wake of those phone calls, had taken the cash to the bank himself – had been discounted, Mum had turned the kitchen over, pulling everything out of cupboards and upending drawers. She seemed to be clinging to the hope that she might have sleepwalked one night, and removed the money to a safer place herself, without retaining any memory of the event. She said she’d once read something similar by Wilkie Collins, but Dad said nonsense, there was laudanum involved. I think she was clutching at straws, frankly. She didn’t seem in the least surprised when her searches produced nothing.
The uncomfortable conclusion, reached privately but never articulated, was that one of the household must have stolen the £400. Mum and Dad, who would never accuse, or even suspect anyone of theft without proof, remained publicly wedded to the view that there must be some innocent explanation, as yet obscure to our limited human wisdom, which would eventually, with prayer and patience, be divinely revealed. What they thought and discussed behind their bedroom door I never knew. In the meantime, Dad would have to make good the loss from his Death Fund – earnings he had put by from taking local funeral services when the rector was unavailable, with the aim of accumulating enough to cover the cost of his own burial, whenever required.
It was Penny who whispered the unthinkable. We were in the very same department store café where Aunty Barbara had treated me to prawn cocktail during our assault on the sales, taking a break from the arduous job of choosing Penny something to wear on her birthday. She had brought me along as a sounding board – God only knew why, given her views on my fashion sense. Only recently she had said, ‘It’s incredible that you’re brilliant at art, Esther. Anyone looking at what you’re wearing would naturally assume you were colour blind.’ I suppose my role was just to second her opinions, admire the things she liked, and disparage the things she didn’t, and this I was happy to do. Then, over chocolate fudge cake, the conversation came around to the missing money.
‘I hardly dare say this,’ Penny said, combing ripples in the fudge with her fork, ‘especially to you. But I keep having this horrible, nagging thought at the back of my mind that it was Christian.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he’s the one who needs it most.’
‘He’d never steal from Mum and Dad,’ I protested. ‘Or anyone, I mean.’
‘Maybe he was only borrowing it, unofficially, until he got paid, not thinking it’d be missed.’
‘So why didn’t he just own up?’
‘Because he doesn’t want your parents to know he’s in debt.’
‘Or put it back secretly, then? Instead of sitting back and watching Dad pay up.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s got a perverted sense that he’s entitled to it because your mum and dad have kept him short over the years.’
‘That doesn’t sound a bit like Christian,’ I said. ‘He’s not devious like that. He’s really kind – he’d do anything for anyone.’
‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Penny, shaking her head as if to dislodge these ungenerous thoughts. Maybe she felt a little chastened by my robust defence. Then she said quietly, ‘He has been known to do a little too much for some people.’
‘What do you mean?’ I had just taken a mouthful of cake, which I swallowed hastily. It seemed to land heavily and whole in my stomach, like a stone down a well.
‘I know you think he’s perfect. It’s only natural. But he isn’t: no one is, and you do people a disservice to imagine that they are. It means they’re bound to disappoint you.’
‘What has he done that’s “too much”?’
‘Well, he’s so sympathetic and friendly, everyone comes to him with their problems. Women, I mean. And sometimes he does a rather thorough job of consoling them, if you know what I mean.’
‘Oh.’ I did know, and all of a sudden Penny’s reluctance to return Martina’s calls or go to America without him made perfect sense. Poor Penny. At last I had discovered the advantage of being Christian’s sister: he could never be unfaithful to me. In fact, the more unfaithful he was to other women, the more enviable my position became. Even if Penny’s revelation could not shatter my image of Christian as perfect, it did nothing for my sense of the reliability of his sex, already fatally undermined.
‘Men are so horrible,’ I burst out, throwing down my fork so that it bounced off the plate and cartwheeled across the table, leaving a trail of chocolate crumbs on the white table-top. ‘Why are they so horrible?’
‘What’s brought this on?’
I could have confided in her then about Donovan. She might have given me some good advice and saved me from my own ignorance. But it was only secrecy that made it possible for me to behave normally in front of Donovan, something that would be impossible in the presence of a knowing witness. So instead I just said, ‘They don’t have real feelings, do they? Not like us.’
‘Well,’ said Penny, ‘it’s certainly true that they’re different. But they’re not all horrible all the time. I shouldn’t have said any of that about Christian. I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. Forget I ever said it.’ She had cleared her plate and was gathering herself up for another onslaught on the dress department.
‘You don’t really think he could have stolen the money?’ I said.
‘No, no. I never did. Not really. It was just my overheated imagination.’
‘I would have said it’s more likely that Wart might think he’s entitled to the money. He was in the kitchen that day when Mum put some cash in the jar. He might have felt he was just recovering a debt.’
This seemed to strike Penny with some force. Then she shook her head. ‘No. Wart wouldn’t stoop to that,’ she said, and I wished she could have expressed that sort of confidence in Christian.
I didn’t contradict her though, because I knew it wasn’t Wart. I knew very well who had taken the money, a
nd I was just waiting to see whether, given the right occasion, he had any intention of confessing.
33
THE OPPORTUNITY AROSE quite soon and without any contrivance on my part. The next time I babysat for the Conway twins it was, to my surprise, Donovan who arrived to fetch me home.
‘Where’s Dad?’ I asked. Not ungratefully, I hoped, but as a point of information. Anything out of the ordinary was now a cause for concern.
‘His car wouldn’t start. Battery’s flat.’
‘I’m sorry you’ve had to come out.’
‘I don’t mind.’ With great formality he opened the passenger door first and held it open for me. The inside of the car smelled of upholstery saturated with ancient smoke, like the saloon bar of the Fox and Pheasant.
‘I used to like walking home by myself at night before all this Janine Fellowes business started up,’ I said, making myself comfortable. ‘It’s such a pain.’
‘I thought you were scared of the dark,’ he said as we set off. ‘You still sleep with the landing light on.’
‘That’s different,’ I said, nonplussed to think that a habit I’d long ceased to think about had attracted his notice. ‘I’ve got this thing about waking up in a blackout. It started at the caravan when I was little. You know how dark it is there at night.’
‘The caravan,’ Donovan repeated. ‘I haven’t thought of it for years. I wonder if it’s still there.’
‘I don’t see why not. We used to go there every summer, until Grandpa moved in. The key’s still on a hook in the cloakroom.’
‘That was the last place I can remember Mum and Dad being happy. Before all the rows started.’
‘Did it affect you badly when your dad left? We were never allowed to mention it at the time. Divorce was one of those words, like cancer, that you could never say out loud.’
Donovan shrugged. ‘It wasn’t much fun when Mum was ill. I used to stay out later and later just to avoid going home. I remember once I got locked in the park, so I stayed there all night, playing on the swings by myself. I went to sleep on a bench in the bandstand like a tramp. The funny thing was I didn’t feel at all frightened or lonely. When I got home Mum hadn’t even noticed I was missing. That’s how bad she was. After that I did it again whenever I felt a bit low. I think I’d make a good tramp.’
‘It’s amazing you’ve turned out as normal as you have,’ I said, echoing Mum’s sentiments, and he acknowledged this faint praise with raised eyebrows.
‘It’s amazing I survived at all, considering some of the food I used to eat. I tried to cook for myself, but I hadn’t got a clue. I thought everything had to be boiled – sausages, pork chops, mince, you name it. I couldn’t understand why they never went brown.’
We had pulled into the driveway by now, but neither of us made any move to get out. Huge moths wheeled blurrily in the beam of the headlights, so Donovan flicked the switch off and we sat there in darkness. We were being so natural and friendly with each other that I almost forgot the electric fence of embarrassment between us.
‘You laugh about it now, but it must have been horrible at the time,’ I said, not wanting to bring the conversation to an end just yet.
‘There were some awkward moments when Mum was really out of it. One time when I was at primary school she’d been in bed for about a week and I couldn’t find any clean uniform for school, so I wore jeans and a football shirt with my tie. I was convinced I was going to get sent home or caned, but of course my teacher could see there was something going on at home, and I didn’t get into trouble at all. In fact it was the kids who dared to point out that I was wearing the wrong stuff who got told off instead, which was really weird. My teacher called round after school to talk to Mum, and Mum wouldn’t come out from under the bedclothes. So this teacher took all my dirty uniforms home with her and washed and ironed it and brought it round at the crack of dawn so I’d have something to wear. I was so grateful, because that was all I wanted – just to come to school and not stand out.’
As someone who had never worn quite the correct uniform, but only its closest jumble sale equivalents, I could readily sympathise.
‘I’m surprised she didn’t get a doctor or someone in to help your mum,’ I said.
‘She may have done. I can only remember the bits that happened to me.’
Inside the house the front room light went off and a face appeared between the curtains, peering out, and then withdrew again. Not yet, I pleaded silently. Don’t come looking for us yet. A moment or two later the bathroom light went on upstairs and I breathed again.
‘Perhaps you’d have been better off living with your dad,’ I said. He had always been the one with the big car and the big presents and the big wallet.
‘I did for a while when Mum was taken into hospital. But I never got on that well with Suzie, not surprisingly. I know there’s no one culprit in a divorce and all that, but Dad was the one who left, so naturally I blamed him. And I think he felt so guilty at the mess he’d made of everything that he was really uncomfortable in my company. He just got stuck into work and making pots of money, as if he could buy his way out of trouble.’
‘Christian and I always envied you all your flash toys. We’d probably have been a bit kinder if we’d known what a miserable time you were having.’
‘You weren’t unkind,’ Donovan said. ‘I suppose I was pretty unhappy,’ he went on. ‘But a happy childhood’s a terrible start in life: you’d never get over it. We all need a little disappointment.’ And he gave me a sideways grimace that was almost a smile.
‘I wonder if Mum and Dad knew all the details,’ I said. ‘You were always “poor Donovan” to them. Whereas you were always “rich Donovan” to us.’
‘I think they did. They were fantastic to me, better than my own parents. Your dad is such a good person. He’d give someone the shirt off his back if they asked. Before they asked, in fact.’
‘It’s his religion,’ I replied. ‘Love your neighbour as yourself, bless those that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and all that. Only he really believes it.’
‘Shh!’ Donovan put a finger to his lips. A fox had come slinking around the side of the house. It was a handsome, healthy-looking creature, with a lush, white-tipped tail, not one of those stringy, urban foxes with a mangy bit of rope for a brush. It must have detected movement from the car, as it stood very still and gave us a long, insolent stare. Donovan snapped the lights on and its eyes blazed yellow, then it shot across the lawn and away through a loose plank in the fence.
I’d never had such a serious and heartfelt conversation with Donovan: anything real was usually headed off by sarcasm. It was such a shame to spoil it, but I couldn’t afford to waste this confessional mood. I knew what I’d seen. I hadn’t imagined it, but I wanted to hear it from him.
It had been the day after the kiss, the note, the photo. I had my period, and I came downstairs to put one of my newspaper parcels in the boiler. This was a ritual that had to be performed in private, naturally, and I was in the habit of lurking in the kitchen doorway to make sure the coast was clear, then dashing in, checking that the boiler was alight, dropping the vile thing onto the burning coals, slamming the lid, and standing guard until it was reduced to ash. On this occasion I could hear someone in the kitchen. I peeped round the door and saw Donovan standing on a chair at the dresser. There was a roll of money in his hand. As I ducked into the cloakroom, I heard the scrape of the jar being put back on the shelf and the slap of Donovan’s feet on the tiled floor as he jumped off the chair, and then the back door opened and shut and there was silence. I gave it a minute or two before venturing back to perform the rite at the boiler. With characteristic self-absorption I didn’t give any thought to what Donovan was actually doing there: it was only later, when the money went missing, that the significance of the incident came back to me. At the time I experienced it quite differently, as a narrow escape from a double dose of embarrassment.
I looked out at the nig
ht sky, and the proud and lonely face of the moon above the treetops gave me courage. Donovan’s hand moved to retrieve the keys that still dangled from the ignition.
‘Why did you take the money?’ I said.
Donovan looked at me blankly. ‘What?’ He gave a nervous laugh, as if waiting for the joke to develop, and when it didn’t, he said, ‘You think I stole that money. From your mum and dad?’
Deflecting a question with another question is not quite the same thing as a denial, I thought.
‘Well, did you?’
‘How can you come out and say that? How can you even think it? After what we’ve been talking about. Don’t you know me at all?’
This wasn’t going quite the way I’d planned. I hadn’t allowed for counter-accusations in any of my mental rehearsals. I thought there might have been some pressing reason for him taking the money and I just wanted to hear it and understand.
‘Apparently not,’ I said. ‘I would never have thought you’d steal from us. And I would never have thought you’d deny it to my face.’ I risked a glance at him. He stared back at me with those acid green eyes full of hatred, the whole of his body tensed, and I thought of that other night-wanderer, the fox, standing there, not knowing whether to fight or run.
‘Well, I’ve certainly been wrong about you, Esther,’ he said in a hard voice that I’d never heard him use before. ‘I used to think you were about the nicest person I’d ever met. Maybe I was a bit rough with you in the garden, but, Jesus, it was hardly more than a kiss, and you enjoyed it, I know you did. And I wrote and apologised, quite nicely, I thought, and you sent me that cold, tight-arsed note and have been avoiding me ever since like I’m a leper. Fair enough, that’s up to you. But how you can sit there and accuse me of nicking four hundred quid from your mum and dad, who’ve taken me in again and again when they’ve got nothing and my own dad’s practically a millionaire . . . If I had four hundred quid of my own I’d give it to them.’ He was in such a spitting rage now I thought he might hit me and I flinched away, but he was just struggling to get his wallet out of his pocket. ‘Here,’ he scrabbled through it, pulling out notes. ‘Ten, twenty, thirty, fifty. There you are, have the bloody lot.’ And he threw them at me and jumped out of the car, banging the door so hard that the radio burst into life, the manic screech of bluegrass violins erupting like a coven of scrapping foxes. He strode off, not in the direction of the house, but back down the driveway into the lane, where he broke into a run. Off to find some ditch to sleep in, like a tramp, I thought spitefully.
In a Good Light Page 29