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CONTENTS
The Woman in the Wardrobe
A Business Partnership
Little Terror
Breakfast Television
What’s in a Name?
Sisters
The Injured Party
Just Another Kidnap
Blown Up
A Process of Rehabilitation
Holy Living and Holy Dying
The Oxford Way of Death
Daylight Robbery
Happy Release
Death of a Salesperson
My Last Girlfriend
THE WOMAN IN THE WARDROBE
It was after the funeral, when the relatives and friends had gone and the house felt cold and empty, that Geoffrey Harcourt felt his loss most keenly. The beginning of my aloneness, he thought. It was Monday, too, the start of the school’s half-term holiday. Of course he could go along to the office: there was always work for a headmaster to do. But that would only be exchanging one emptiness for another. There were friends he could visit, but he knew that their avoidance of him was partly from the kindliest of motives, partly to spare themselves awkwardness. Geoffrey was a reticent man, not one to hawk around his sense of loss.
The vicar had told him how it would be, and he had been right. In fact, the vicar phoned him that evening, knowing how low he would feel after the funeral. Geoffrey had been listening to Mahler. He had always said that Mahler was getting to be that bit overrated, but in his current state the Ninth said things to him that it had never said before. The things they said were not comfortable things, though. He got more comfort from his chat with the vicar.
‘Try to keep busy,’ the vicar said in his normal voice, which was a comfort after all the hushed tones. ‘There must be lots of books around the house that were Helen’s rather than yours. The library would probably be grateful for them. Good second-hand clothes are always in demand, particularly in hard times like the present. We at the church could get rid of them for you. I don’t mean that you should wipe the house clean of all reminders of her—heaven forbid! But you’ll be glad in a month or two’s time that you don’t have those things still to do . . . You’re not brooding on this man, are you? The driver?’
‘No,’ said Geoffrey truthfully. ‘There doesn’t seem much point. I’d like to see him caught and banned from driving for life, but beyond that . . . We don’t even know it was a man, by the way . . . We don’t even know it was a Honda. That was just the witness’s impression—a silver-blue Honda . . . No, I’m truly not brooding over him. It’s just the emptiness.’
‘I know, old chap. As I say, just try to keep busy. I’ll come round in a few days and see if you’ve got anything for us.’
So for the rest of the evening Geoffrey combed through the various bookcases that dotted the house. He found twenty or thirty books—novels, travel books, books connected with the sociology course that Helen had been doing at the City Polytechnic. He made them up into a rough parcel, and told himself he would ring the library next day. Certainly the activity had kept his mind occupied.
In the morning, after breakfast—the time of day when he and Helen had been most entirely together—he decided to tackle the clothes. Really he could not see that he need keep anything at all. He shrank from asking any of his or Helen’s relatives if they would like anything, and he was quite certain they would in any case refuse. Helen’s interest in clothes was strictly utilitarian: she bought what would wear well, what was suitable for a headmaster’s wife. There was no sentimental feeling involved. His mind was crowded with memories of Helen, but what she had worn on those occasions he would have been quite at a loss to say.
He put two old suitcases on the bed and opened the half of the wardrobe that contained the drawers. He piled underclothes and nightgowns, tights and hats into one case—and though he did it quickly and expertly he was surprised to find when he had finished that he was nearly crying. Should he make himself a cup of coffee? No. He would finish first. Ten minutes would do it easily.
He threw open the other door. His first emotion was merely a dim kind of puzzlement: something was not quite right. It was only after a few seconds that the full impact hit him. Here were all the clothes that he—absent-mindedly—knew so well: dresses, suits she had worn to school functions, the three-quarter length gown she wore to their very occasional dinner-dance. But here too . . . He went forward and fingered them wonderingly.
In the darkest, innermost part of the wardrobe were clothes he had never seen. Clothes he could never imagine Helen wearing. They were bright, sensuous clothes, in rich materials—silks, cashmeres. He kept feeling them, as if that would make them real. He could not take his bewildered eyes off them. These were the clothes of a woman of the world: smart, fashionable clothes. He had seen women dressed like this in Bond Street; he could imagine the woman who owned them in the stalls at Covent Garden, dancing at the Dorchester. That evening dress—it shimmered; it was positively glamorous.
He shut the wardrobe door sharply, and leaned his head against it for a moment. Then he went downstairs to make that cup of coffee. He sat down at the kitchen table to drink it, and tried to collect his thoughts.
He rejected almost as soon as it entered his head the idea that she was storing the clothes for a friend. What friend had she that would wear clothes like that? Why would she be asked to store only the expensive, fashionable clothes? No, they were Helen’s. She had known that, short of her being very ill, he would never think of looking in her wardrobe. What did she want them for? Did she wear them during the day while he was at school? Did she float around the house in a dream of aristocratic elegance, imagining herself at cocktails in Mayfair, dancing the night away at some aristocratic sprig’s twenty-first? It seemed so unlike Helen. His wife had been a competent, down-to-earth, no-nonsense woman. So he had always believed.
He steeled himself to go back to the bedroom. He took the clothes from the wardrobe, ran his hand over their softness, felt their textures, admired their cut. He was no expert, had always had to remind himself to comment on his wife’s appearance if they were going out, but these clothes seemed to him immensely stylish: they were the sort of clothes worn by women who were rich, confident and attractive. Helen had inherited a house in suburban London when her mother died, and had sold it at the current inflated prices. The problem was not where she had got the money from. It was why she had felt the desire.
That afternoon he rang the City Polytechnic. He got on to the Admissions Secretary at once.
‘Hello. My name is Geoffrey Harcourt. I’m ringing about my wife, Helen Harcourt.’
‘Oh yes, I remember her well,’ said a friendly female voice. ‘We had many good chats when she was deciding on her course.’
‘I think she told me about them. I’m afraid she’s dead.’
‘Oh dear. I am sorry. Had she been ill for some time?’
‘It was a road accident. A hit-and-run driver.’
‘How awful. It must have been a terrible shock for you.’
‘It was. I just thought I’d ring to inform you, so you can take her off your books.’
There was a pause of fully three seconds before the woman said: ‘Yes, of course, we’ll do that. And once again, I am sorry.’
Geoffrey knew what that pause meant, knew what the woman had been about to say, and had stopped herself from saying: Helen had not been on their books for som
e time.
His night was awful. He lay on the double bed they had shared, feet away from the wardrobe. Nightmarishly it seemed to him that in the wardrobe he had discovered another woman, a woman who was his wife and was not his wife. Helen had had another life unknown to him, in which she was glamorous, fashionable, even seductive. It was as if some sudden crisis or involuntary action had revealed to him a side to his own nature of which he had always been unconscious. Helen was not like that, he kept saying to himself, had no desire for that kind of life. She was, she had, said the wardrobe.
By next morning he knew he could not leave things there: he had to know. He had a grey, old-fashioned Puritan conscience. What his discovery was whispering to him was that somehow he had failed Helen. Still more that meant he had to know.
Over breakfast, feeling furtive and grubby, he went through Helen’s cheque-book and the monthly statements of her credit card company. So far as he could see there were no hotel bills. When Helen had started staying overnight on Thursdays (‘There are so many evening activities that I’m missing out on, and British Rail has practically cut out all the trains after nine’) she had told him she had found a little bed-and-breakfast place in Bloomsbury that was clean and cheap. There were no cheque-stubs to bear this out. Nor were there cheques made out to more glamorous hotels. There were, though, largish sums on the statement: they were paid to Harrods, Selfridges, and a shop called Amanda’s, which was in Knightsbridge. The clothes, obviously.
His mind honed in on the sociology course. They had discussed it quite a bit at first, hardly at all recently. The subjects had become too esoteric, and besides Geoffrey had the natural contempt of the academic mind for such a subject. It had been a one-day-a-week course, aimed at part-time students and people with special needs. When she had started she had gone on Wednesdays. Some way into the first year she had said that the day had been changed to Thursdays. But wouldn’t that have been immensely disruptive of the students’ arrangements, and wouldn’t the timetable readjustments have been difficult or impossible? She had changed to Thursdays because . . . But no. Best to put any such thoughts aside. Stick to facts. Keep a firm grip on reality. He had to look at the newspaper to establish that the day was in fact Wednesday.
He took the car up to London. He couldn’t face the sympathy and inquiries of the people at the station. At Carbury, the small Essex town where he lived, everyone knew everyone. He drove to the City Polytechnic, then round and round it for twenty minutes until he saw a car pulling out. He nosed into the parking space, and walked into the Poly. In the foyer he prowled around until he found the notice-board with the timetables. With his practised headmaster’s eye he skimmed over the mass of detailed information (so many courses, so little knowledge) till he came to ‘Sociology (Special Needs)’. If Helen had continued she would now be taking—had said she was taking—the third-year course.
He was right. The course was on Wednesdays. The group was currently engaged in a seminar on The Battered Child Syndrome in room 347B. They would be out at twelve o’clock. He took the lift up to the third floor, and walked through the tedious, anonymous corridors. More like a business firm or a rather run-down hotel than a place of education, he thought. How had Helen fitted in here? Had she ever felt at home? He stationed himself near 347B, feeling like a novice plain-clothes policeman.
When the seminar broke up the students trailed out looking bored. It was difficult to imagine how a terrible, touching subject like battered children could be made boring, but the lecturer seemed to have managed it somehow. About a third of the students were the normal college-age young, others were in their twenties or thirties, the rest Helen’s age or older. He picked out a sympathetic woman of about forty and went hesitantly up to her.
‘Excuse me, I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for someone who knew Helen Harcourt when she was a student here.’
The woman turned and smiled.
‘Oh yes, I knew Helen.’
‘Well?’
‘As well as anyone here, I suppose. Those of us who’d reached the forties mark tended to get together between classes. Why?’
‘I’m her husband. Helen died in a road accident last week.’
‘Oh dear. How tragic. She was so gay and vital.’
‘Look, would you let me buy you lunch? Is there anywhere around here?’
‘I’ll let you buy me lunch, but in the canteen. It’s not too bad. I don’t know what you want of me, but it can’t be worth the price of a restaurant meal.’
Over two plates of shepherd’s pie and peas Geoffrey put his cards on the table.
‘Since my wife died I’ve discovered things about her that I never knew before. I didn’t know she had given up her course here, for example, and there are . . . other things. She had a life, for one day a week, of which I knew nothing. Please believe it’s not anger or pique that makes me feel I have to know. You won’t be betraying Helen in anything you tell me. I just want to find out how I failed her.’
The woman nodded.
‘I can understand that. But truly I know nothing that could “betray” her in any way. We weren’t that kind of friends, and she was only here for a term and a half, you know.’
‘That’s what I guessed. Why did she give it up? She seemed so enthusiastic at first.’
‘Oh, she was. We all were. But the teaching is not too good, and some of the subject areas seem just plain potty. I remember Helen once said to me that she wondered whether it was a subject at all . . . In fact, quite a lot of us wonder why we go on. Just to get a bit of paper at the end, I suppose.’
‘And that was the reason she stopped?’
‘I don’t know the reason she stopped. But she was expressing boredom, and then one week she wasn’t there. She never came again.’
‘I see. Tell me, did she have any special friends?’
‘Well, we’re all quite good friends. The young ones tend to keep to themselves, but they’re really quite kind to us . . . I see what you’re getting at, of course . . . There was a man . . . Oh dear, what was his name? There was a Polytechnic party and dance, early in second term that year . . .’
‘Yes, I seem to remember. Helen took the car and drove back very late. I was asleep when she got back in.’
‘I’m sure it meant nothing special, but she danced a lot with this man. He gave up the course about the time she did, I think, which is why I can’t remember his name. He was five or six years younger than Helen, but they seemed to find each other a lot of fun. His business had collapsed, but he was hoping for a job with ICI on the personnel side. This course was a sort of stop-gap. As far as I remember, he got the job and stopped coming.’
‘There’s nothing else you can remember about him—about them—that might suggest—’
‘That they were having an affair? That is what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Oh dear, I do feel this is a betrayal . . . To an outsider it seemed so much more, at that stage, a matter of a shared sense of humour than an affair. I remember once, when we were all sitting talking in here, this man gave us a marvellous account, with miming and accents and all, of this hotel in Bloomsbury—the Durward, that was it—where they still do real old-fashioned teas, with dainty sandwiches and tea-cake and muffins. And they have dancing after dinner with a Palm Court Orchestra, and lots of faded elegance. I remember your wife laughing till she ached, and saying: “Just like Bertram’s Hotel. I’d love to see it.” And this man promised to take her one day . . . What was his name?’
‘Would anybody else remember?’
‘They might do.’ She looked around and darted to a table with three or four older students. ‘His name was Roger Michaels,’ she said when she returned. ‘He’d owned a small toy factory, but the recession had closed it. And it was ICI he went to.’ She leaned forward very earnestly. ‘You do realize I’ve no evidence—’
‘Oh, of course. It could be someone else entirely—someone she met on the train, for instance. It could be no one. By the way, what did he
look like?’
‘Dapper. Well set up, but not tall. Lively, always darting here and there. Lots and lots of jokes.’
I’ve never been good on jokes, thought Geoffrey sadly. It seemed as though some great weight was pressing on his back, squeezing the breath out of him. How I failed her, he thought. He had known his wife had been kind, generous, considerate. Now he also knew she had craved colour, gaiety, laughter. How totally he had failed her.
It was still early afternoon when he got back to his car. He rather thought he had enough information to track down this Roger Michaels, but first there was something else he could try, to see if he was on the right scent. Helen’s friend had been right when she said what they were talking about was an affair. The clothes were the clothes of a woman in love. But was Michaels the man? He drove to Bloomsbury, and once again drove round and round before he found a parking space. Then he marked time in Dillons and Foyles until it was four o’clock, and tea would be served at the Durward.
It was overpoweringly genteel, like Harrogate in the ’thirties. A pianist played Gershwin and Ivor Novello, quite softly, and the sandwiches and cakes nestled in lacy doylies on silver baskets. Only the staff were wrong: a heterogeneous collection of nationalities. Geoffrey was lucky: he had a genial, pot-bellied Cypriot with an East London accent. When he was half way through his tea he fished from his wallet the photograph of Helen, taken on holiday the year before in Verona, and beckoned the waiter over. His first reaction was to shake his head.
‘No. No, I can’t say I have . . . Wait! Wait a minute, though. I think that must be Mrs Rogers, so called. Yes—I’d bet my bottom . . . Mind you, she looks so different there. Quite dowdy, really, as if she’d tried to de-glamourize herself. Our Mrs Rogers . . . What is this all about, mate? Private detective, are you? I suppose it’ll be the real Mrs Rogers, or whatever her name is.’
‘When are you off?’
‘I finish at six, thank Gawd.’
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