For One Night Only

by W W Walker

  It had been on a night like that one when Marigold had popped over to talk to Constance. Eddie was nowhere in sight. ‘Down the pub,’ Constance told her. When she asked where Gladys was, uninterested, Constance had tossed her head towards the lounge. Marigold knew there was no love lost between the two of them and she’d assumed that Gladys was a docile and deaf old biddy who worshipped the ground her son walked on. How wrong she was.

  That night, she and Sandra had chatted about the new resident, Kiki Cutter. They’d disapproved of her single girl status, living alone and working her way up the career ladder. They thought it was shocking. That was the end of ‘79.

  Eddie had come home early, and a little worse for wear. Marigold could see it in his bloodshot eyes. He talked in a way that was offensive to Marigold, but at the time she put it down to him being drunk as a skunk. Constance had whispered to her, ‘You’d better go.’

  Marigold resisted, wanting to prove to Constance that she wouldn’t be intimidated by any man, drunk or not. Then Eddie shoved her. ‘Go home,’ he said.

  It was the most humiliating treatment she’d ever received, and she’d intended to relate the whole tale to Wilbur when she got home. But she never had. Because the next minute, Constance was on the floor holding her face after Eddie had slapped her. Marigold had rushed to her side. Constance was crying, holding her cheek. Gladys came out of the lounge and saw her on the floor. She looked at Eddie, seemingly unperturbed by the commotion he’d caused, then she walked past them and went upstairs, not saying one word on the matter. Marigold had never told Wilbur about the event because she knew he would have prevented her from going over there again. He may even have hit that Eddie.

  Earlier, after they’d left No.7 to walk along the eight towards Eva’s house, Marigold brought up that night to Gladys. Their arms were hooked together, walking slow and steady. “Why didn’t you do anything?” Marigold said.

  “You have no idea how much I was tortured by looking the other way,” she answered. “I’ve seen him abuse her so many times, it broke my heart watching her struggling to survive that pointless marriage. She took it like a true survivor, and I have always admired her for it. She’s strong, with great fortitude. People don’t see her that way, but I see it. I saw it whenever he knocked her down and she got back up again.”

  “And yet, you never said anything?”

  “Like what? He never listened when he was a boy. He watched his father do the same thing to me. There was nothing I could have said that was going to change him. He was raised watching an abusive relationship, and he carried it on to his own home. He wasn’t clever enough to make his own history. He was weak like his father.”

  Marigold contemplated her words as they walked silently for the rest of the way. She was amazed at how close the two women were now. They had bonded within minutes of Eddie’s demise, and in their conspiracy, they would be forever in each other’s lives. How wonderful for Constance, to have a mother like her. They could face everything together now, side by side, giving each other comfort and strength. Marigold almost envied them.

  Now she was resolute to remain strong and help them through the road ahead. More importantly, she would go to the ends of the earth to keep Constance out of jail.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  He had watched the whole thing.

  When he saw that busybody from No.2 go along the eight with her torch, he wanted to jump out and grab her, drag her into the bushes and pulverise her with a rock. But he wasn’t ready. And it would have been too messy.

  As he watched her go into No.7, to while away the time, he thought about his mother. His throat constricted and he shuddered with revulsion and ecstasy all at the same time.

  After father had left, and Drake had become ‘the man of the house’, one of his duties was to throw a canister of disinfectant down the cellar steps to disguise the rancid indescribable smell wafting up. He knew it was his father’s body rotting down there, and he often took pleasure in imagining his white, wrinkled, rotting face as it floated in the stinking water that flooded the cellar.

  Every week, on a Friday night, he would take the key and open the cellar door. At that time of the evening, Mother would go into the front room to watch TV, staying out of the way, while Drake shook out the contents of the bleach canister and spewed it down the steps to the bottom. It was very effective, because, instead of having a whiff of father’s rotting corpse, the clean smell of bleach would waft up, giving the air a whole new appeal, smelling like the public swimming baths.

  Mother never mentioned the cellar, except for one day when she’d complained about the rising damp. They were in the kitchen eating porridge when she saw the blackness in the comer of the outside wall, near the back door. “We’ll have to get that cellar sumped, Drake,” she’d said.

  He looked up from his bowl with his spoon in mid-air. “No, I told you, I’m in charge of the cellar and I won’t let anyone go down there.”

  “We won’t have any choice soon. The damp will keep on rising, I reckon.”

  “Let it.”

  “We can’t do that. It’ll affect the whole house.”

  “I don’t care. No one is allowed down there. I have the key, remember.”

  “But Drake…”

  That was when he dropped his spoon filled with lumpy porridge and slapped himself across the face, three times on the left and twice on the right. She’d seen him do it before, but only when he had turned away from her, but that day was the first time he’d faced her and done it. She looked shocked and terrified at the same time, which Drake thought was the most empowering thing to happen to him. Yes, he was in control and he liked it a lot.

  “Drake,” she said. “I know what you did.”

  “What did I do?” He’d picked up his spoon and shovelled the porridge into his mouth.

  All he heard was her silence.

  Now, tonight, when he watched Marigold coming out of No.7 with her stupid torch, he saw her go next door to No.8 where the Butler’s lived (used to live!!). He watched her as she opened the garage door, sidled down the side of the car to the back entrance. She’d knocked and called out, but no one answered. Of course, they didn’t! He watched her come back out and walk around the side to the greenhouse. That was when things started to get good. She opened the door and shone her torch inside and when the light hit the cat, she’d dropped her torch and ran with her tail between her legs, back to the house next door. What a laugh! thought Drake.

  That’s when he’d gone in and removed the hanging cat. There wasn’t much blood since he’d killed it before he hung it up. It had allowed him a good position to cut its belly from the neck to the navel. When Marigold saw it, her face was a picture. Drake had enjoyed every moment of it.

  He’d watched the whole scene from the side of the greenhouse and when she came back with her friend from No.7, they hadn’t noticed his face, staring through the glass in the dark. If they had shone their torch his way, they would have had the fright of their lives. That would have been funny.

  Instead, they’d left, going into the house looking for the Butlers. He could see them through the kitchen window shining their torches inside. Then it went dark and he knew they’d gone upstairs.

  He’d watched with much anticipation.

  When they came running out, screaming their socks off, Drake had smiled to himself and thought, soon the night games would begin.

  End of part 3

  Part 4

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Constance had waited for Marigold and Gladys to knock on the door or Eva’s house. She had a job to do and she needed to do it while everyone was inside at the party. It was all part of the plan, they’d concocted.

  She had her torch in hand when she began her descent down the cliff steps to the beach. It was a hazardous journey in the dark, but she needed to go down there before the tide came back in.

  They’d planned the whole thing, talking it through…about how Constance would relate the tale to the po
lice.

  ‘We waited all day and night for Eddie to make contact after we’d assumed that he’d run off…’

  “Wait,” Constance interrupted, “What about the car? If he was going to ‘run off’, why wouldn’t he take the car”

  The question had hung in the air like a pregnant pause, until…

  ‘It broke down the night before after he picked up his mum from the care home. The brakes or something…’

  “We could cut the brake wires,” said Gladys.

  “Good idea,” said Marigold.

  ‘We waited to hear from him…’

  Gladys stopped them again. “How could he go anywhere…if the car didn’t work?”

  Another pause.

  In cahoots, the three women churned the details over in their calculating minds, as if they were watching a detective show on the television.

  “Columbo would see right through this,” Gladys said. She looked as if she was about to panic. Her face had turned white and her lips were sagging as if she had no bottom teeth. She looked drained, physically exhausted.

  “He could have walked.”

  Gladys shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Her hands were shaking, not from old age, but from nerves and extreme tension. The whole experience was taking its toll on her and Constance wondered how much more she could take. “No, this isn’t making sense,” Gladys had said. “Let’s go back to the beginning.”

  Constance had a fresh idea: ‘Eddie wasn’t feeling very well. He decided not to go on the golfing trip and to stay in bed all morning. After lunch, when he felt better, when the tide went back out, he decided to go and have his regular daily swim. He never came back and then the power went off so we couldn’t call anyone.’

  She stopped and looked at the other two women. They gawped at her as they contemplated if the story made sense.

  “What about the wetsuit?”

  ‘We found Eddie’s wetsuit in the greenhouse next door. We thought that perhaps the killer had taken him there, removed the wetsuit, bashed him over the head, and then pushed him over the cliff.’

  Silence.

  “Wouldn’t we have seen something…heard something?”

  ‘It must have happened when it was dark because we never saw anything. We didn’t hear anything, because we’d taken a nap…because the stress of worrying about Eddie had exhausted us.’

  That means we’ll have to get the wetsuit back,” Gladys said.

  That’s when the three women looked at each other and sighed.

  Now, in the dark, Constance was making her way down the steps leading down to the beach. She’d dig up the wetsuit and as soon as she planted it somewhere in the greenhouse, she’d quickly change and then go to the party, to start creating her alibi.

  In the house, Marigold helped Gladys into the lounge and lowered her into a comfortable armchair. She shouldn’t be there. She should be tucked up in bed with a hot water bottle, but the alibi was important if they were going to save Constance from spending the rest of her life in jail.

  “Can you get her a glass of water, please?” she said to Eva. The other women were standing up, hovering over her, fussing. Gladys looked like she was ready to pass out.

  “What’s happened?” one of them asked.

  “She’s had a shock.”

  The women waited for Marigold to relate the tale.

  She couldn’t have known they were happy that, at last, something had happened to liven up that damn party.

  Kiki watched and observed. What on earth was going on? Why was that old lady there? She looked like she should be put to bed with a couple of Valium. Her speckled, wrinkled hands were trembling so hard, she couldn’t possibly hold a glass of water. Her pallor was ashen, like she’d just seen a ghost and her eyes were glassy yellow as if she hadn’t slept for days. Her bottom lip trembled and sagged with no substance, and her tired cheeks, lined and discoloured, hung at the sides of her face making it appear as if she was slowly melting.

  Eva barged past with a glass of fresh water in her hand. Marigold took it from her and held it to the old lady’s lips. She closed her eyes and sipped.

  Kiki watched Marigold’s face. She was another one who looked exhausted. She was trembling too, but hers was adrenalin led. She eyes were bright and engaged, darting about at the women crowding around the armchair, looking as if she wanted to shout at them to stand back.

  “What’s been going on?” asked Jade. Marigold looked up at her and frowned. Then she looked to Eva and frowned again. Her mind was distracted for a moment, and Kiki suddenly knew why. The woman called Jade was the woman Marigold’s husband had seen in the shed at their anniversary party.

  Kiki wanted to smile. The evening was certainly getting lively.

  She’d never seen Marigold so concerned for another human being. She was in the moment, in charge of someone else’s wellbeing, in a kindly way, not interfering or poking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. She was caring and compassionate, her movements filled with empathy for the old lady sipping the water.

  “Who is she?” Jade asked.

  “This is Constance’s mother-in-law.”

  “So, where’s Constance?” asked Eva.

  “She’ll be here soon. She’s just getting changed.”

  Constance took the steps slowly. They were wet and the wind seemed like a force ten gale. Of course, it wasn’t, but if it picked up, she’d have a hard time staying on the steps. She hung onto the ledge like a life line, putting both feet on each step before taking the next, like a child taking the stairs for the first time.

  She finally reached the bottom where she was hit by a spray of sea water that knocked her onto the beach. On her hands and knees, she picked up her torch and looked about for the hole she’d dug, wondering what the hell she was doing there.

  What a day it had been, and it wasn’t over. She still had to put some things in place, and she still had to get changed, and she still had to go to that stupid cocktail party. It was becoming too much. She was finding it hard to cope. Then she thought about Gladys and how brave she’d been, and she thought about living the rest of her life without the man who had dragged her down into the same pit he had dwelled in. Only then was she inspired to get up and complete the task in hand, whatever the cost.

  She dragged her feet along the sand to the place where she’d buried the wetsuit. How ironic that the garden shovel she’d accidentally left behind, now acted as a marker. ‘X marks the spot,’ she muttered to herself.

  The tide was coming back in, only half the beach was visible. She had to hurry. It would take no time at all for the cove to be flooded. She fell to her knees and grabbed the spade sticking up from the sand. She started digging. Two-feet down, she touched rubber when a black sleeve poked up as if it was Eddie’s arm rising from his sandy grave. It failed to move her. She was resilient of anything Eddie had to offer now. She pulled on the sleeve, and heavy with sand, the wet suit finally slid out of its pit. She pulled it into her arms and embraced it. She should never have buried it in the first place. What the hell had she been thinking?

  Then, before she could get to her feet, a wave came out of nowhere and showered her with freezing cold seawater. She closed her eyes to the impact, waiting for it to retreat, but then she opened them when she felt something hit her.

  A foot.

  She wiped the water from her face and stared with her mouth agape. At her side was the naked corpse of her dead husband, Eddie.

  That’s when Constance, muffled by the sound of the night-tide, screamed and screamed and screamed as if she would never stop.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “everyone,” Marigold announced, hoping they’d all just stop speaking and asking so many dumb questions. She was on script and she needed to say her lines.

  “Quiet,” Eva yelled, but it was directed mostly at Jade. She squeezed Marigold’s shoulder and sat on the arm of the chair next to Gladys. Gladys was leaning her head back, trying to regain her breath. Kiki had put herself on
the floor next to Marigold, and Rhianna was kneeling down next to her. That left Jade who was standing against the doorframe with her arms crossed and Tammy who stood a distance from them all, next to the fire.

  Marigold began.

  “As you know, Eddie didn’t go on the golfing trip. He was feeling poorly, so he stayed in bed all morning.”

  Eva nodded. She knew only too well that Eddie had made his excuses and that Roger had complained about Eddie letting them down.

  “Anyway, around about lunchtime, he felt a lot better, so when the tide went out after midday, he decided to go for his usual swim.” Marigold’s eyes were fixed on Eva’s face. She needed to fix them somewhere, so Eva’s face was as good as any. “When…”

  Rhianna piped up. “Yes, I remember seeing him,” she said.

  Marigold shifted her gaze to the young girl with the ponytail. “What?”

  “I saw him swimming. He was naked.”

  Marigold didn’t know what to say. They hadn’t allowed for any witnesses seeing Eddie out in the bay. Besides, she couldn’t have seen him…he was dead. Oh, god. She must have seen his body. It must have been floating on the sea in the bay, looking like he was out there swimming. Oh God.

  Wait, she thought. It doesn’t matter. If the girl thought she saw him out there swimming, that only served to support their story. No, this is good. It’s good!

  “But it couldn’t have been him,” she said.

  The blood on Marigold’s face must surely have drained away.

  “The person I saw was swimming quite early this morning. It couldn’t have been the man you’re talking about. You did say he went out after midday.”

  Damn Marigold thought. A plot hole! “Anyway,” she said, carrying on with her story. Everything else would have to be explained later. She just needed to say her lines. And they all needed to shut the hell up. “When he didn’t come back, Constance and Gladys got worried and decided to call the police.”