by Susan Sallis
He said, ‘So you came to ask me about it.’
‘I’d forgotten the lake would have come under your jurisdiction. The man who was driving the digger mentioned it.’
Another pause. My hands started up, turning and twisting the door knob this way and that.
He said, ‘See if there’s any tea left. Pour yourself a cup and bring a plate of cakes. I need to think.’
I stood up, put the door knob very carefully on to his table and crossed the room to the trolley. The nurse appeared with hot water and I put about a cupful into the teapot and poured tea like black treacle into two cups. All the fancy cakes were gone, but there were buttered buns on the bottom tray, and no one had touched those. I took the whole plate and went back to Jinx’s corner and was rewarded by a tiny smile. He shovelled two spoons of sugar into his tea and we both tucked in. I knew he would always dislike me, but even enemies sometimes form a cautious alliance. He wiped his mouth on his handkerchief – there were paper napkins all over the place – and said, ‘I reckon it’s something simple. Trivial. Like carving initials on a tree. Something like that.’
I nodded. ‘Could be. But why would anyone bring it all the way up the Tump and somehow get into my bungalow and leave it on the table?’
‘Don’t fool yourself, woman. You pocketed it that night, or the second time you went down.’
I flushed. ‘I think I would remember. It was firm enough to take my weight – save my life, perhaps – I would have had to go down there with tools and chip away for ages. There would be signs now of damage on the wall. There’s nothing.’
‘So what do you think? David chiselled it out and brought it up as some kind of token?’
‘You think it was put there in the first place as a token, so that’s not such a ridiculous idea!’ I could feel my face grow hot.
‘So you do think it was David’s ghost? You do think that he tried to polish you off, just as you polished him off? Then brought you a bloody love-token?’
‘Don’t keep accusing me of – of – that. You admitted yourself that it’s not true. I was in the car with him—’
‘And you wish it had been you, don’t you? Your conscience has been at work ever since, and now this scenario is taking place. Put two and two together, Mrs Vivian Venables. You and I are the only ones who know your real state of mind. No other car was involved. The investigators could find nothing wrong with your car. It careered off the road and into a tree. Full stop.’
‘You think I did it purposely?’ I could feel tears on my face; they were hot.
‘I think you are forgetting – deliberately forgetting – something in this particular equation. Perhaps you are also forgetting that I am now the only other living person who knows about it.’
‘I have to go—’
He made no attempt to stop me, this time. As I tried to find a place on the table for my cup and saucer, he said in a low voice, ‘Your friend Mrs Hardy has told me how you run. Every day you run like a crazy woman around the town, along the coast, into the Mendips. You can’t run for ever. Is that why David brought you the bloody door knob? To force you to stop and face up to it?’
I grabbed the door knob and thrust it into my pocket. I heard him sigh sharply. Then he said, ‘No fool like an old fool, I suppose. I ought to let you run yourself into the ground but . . . see if Juniper Stevens is still alive. She was born that year, 1922. See if you can get anything out of her.’
I barely heard him. I was almost through the door when he called out, ‘If you stop running long enough, come and let me know.’
I ran down the Tump, and through my own gate set in the middle of the beautifully trimmed conifer hedge. I locked the front door behind me and went straight into the kitchen and put the door knob carefully on to the table. If only I had not gone to see Jinx I could have explained away what was happening now. Somehow. It need not have been anything at all to do with all the terrible business of this time last year. It could have been my special Someone trying to reassure me that he understood. Understood everything. And that I could . . . maybe . . . stop running, and have boiled eggs for tea, and be interested, really interested in dear Mrs Hardy’s twin grandchildren. The enormous effort I had to put into not remembering that moment of consciousness as the firemen started to cut me out of the car and I knew that I was alive . . . the effort was exhausting in itself. I put my hands over my face and gasped for air. The only thing to do was to run. I went back into the hall, put on my mac, unlocked the door and . . . went.
It was ten o’clock when I got back, and I had reached that state of numbness that would get me through the night. The light was flashing on the answer machine and I ignored it while I hacked bread and cheese and made tea. Then I had a shower and put a hot-water bottle into the bed. And then, in case it was Mrs Hardy, I pressed play. It wasn’t until her voice spoke that I realized it was getting on for midnight.
She said, ‘It’s me. Mrs Hardy. That was a lovely thing you did, taking those flowers and presents to Della like that. I knew they was from you and I could tell her as much that very evening. So she knew.’ There was a pause; I could hear her breathing and it was ragged. She cleared her throat and went on strongly, ‘I wasn’t intending to tell you, Mrs Venables. You got enough unhappiness. But you might hear from someone else at the nursing home and wonder why I didn’t let you know. Poor Della died on Friday. Her mum was with her. It was something to do with her blood pressure. Tom thinks it was his fault.’ There was another pause. I realized she was giving me time to pick up the phone, and of course I hadn’t been there. She coughed again and said quickly, ‘I’ll try to slip in soon. We’re all right here. Don’t worry. Take care of yourself.’
She was gone.
I went to bed, and at last I wept properly. Not for myself, or from fear, or guilt of any kind. I wept for Mrs Hardy and her husband and her son and the twin babies who would never know their mother. The strange thing was that just when I thought I had better get up and make some more tea or something, I fell asleep. It was past nine o’clock when I woke to hear the front doorbell. I knew it would be Mrs Hardy. I didn’t bother with a dressing gown. I opened the door in my pyjamas and gathered her into my arms, and wept again.
Seven
IT WAS MONDAY morning; six o’clock and very dark. Mrs Hardy made tea and took it upstairs, then brought it down again because Hardy never drank tea in bed unless he was ill. ‘And I en’t ill, my maid, nor can afford to be, with the Lammertons needing their roof tiles fixed after last week’s storm.’
They sat – crouched – elbows on table, tea held in both hands. ‘It’ll soon warm up,’ Mrs Hardy said irrelevantly. But he nodded.
‘You could’ve laid in a bit this morning.’ He looked at her. ‘Not very comfortable at Tom’s place, was it?’
‘It was fine. I couldn’t find anything and the cooker was difficult. But I gave the whole place a good clean. Funny, I always thought Della was a good housekeeper.’
‘She was on her own there so much of the time. She needed someone to tell her what to do and when to do it.’
‘And she was pregnant, too . . .’ They glanced at each other. They knew it was unfair to hand all the guilt to Tom on a plate, yet, for the moment at least, there was no way they could criticize Della.
Mrs Hardy sighed sharply. ‘Anyway, it gave me something to do. I couldn’t be at the hospital till two o’clock.’ She sighed again. ‘I would have liked to have done some cooking, though. I could have left Tom a couple of tins of my rock cakes. He always liked my rock cakes. I remember when he came home from university and nearly ate us out of house and home, I told him his stomach was like a colander, and he said to make him a batch of rock cakes cos they’d fill holes in colanders any day of the week!’ She sighed gustily. ‘Should’ve told old Jinx that one, when he was on about colanders.’
Hardy smiled and said gently, ‘Why don’t you go back to bed, my maid? It’s not seven o’clock yet.’
‘That’s fine. I want to le
ave early so’s I can pop in to see Mrs Venables before work.’
‘You’re not going to work?’ He was appalled. ‘You only came home Sat’day!’
‘You heard me phone Matron. They’re short on the morning shift. An’ I got a shopping list as long as your arm. I can do it on the way home, pop it in my bicycle basket and be back before dark.’ She leaned over and touched the back of his hand. ‘I got to keep going, Hardy. You know that. Tom didn’t want us there. He needs to be . . . separate for a bit. Just a day or two. Then he’ll come here, and as soon as possible he’ll bring the twins down . . . Says he’ll be glad of us at the funeral.’
He looked down at her fingers; the wedding ring was worn down to a thin band. After a while he nodded.
Vivian’s story
We sat at the kitchen table and Mrs Hardy made the tea; I couldn’t seem to staunch my ridiculous tears. She wiped her eyes now and then, but she didn’t break down properly again.
‘I know now why you kept such a stiff upper lip all that time last year,’ she said, setting mugs on the table and putting milk and sugar within reach. ‘There’s so much to think about, so much to do. When this happened I wanted to see you – be with someone who knew what loss and grief was all about. Didn’t mean to upset you like this. I’m real sorry, Mrs Venables.’
‘Don’t be.’ I had another go at clearing my nose, and was reminded of father-in-law, who had trumpeted like an elephant into his enormous handkerchiefs. ‘I’m sorry to be so – so – weak. I just cannot believe it, somehow. You and Mr Hardy . . . I really don’t know you, yet I feel so close to you. You’ve been a faithful friend all these months . . . I didn’t even realize your Tom was a doctor . . .’ I kept stopping and blowing again. ‘So wrapped up in my own unhappiness . . . all that joy and now . . . this.’
‘Joy. You’re right. It was joy.’ She poured boiling water into the pot and her glasses steamed up. ‘And some of that has got to still be there. We got to get in touch with it again. Cos of they twins, and cos of Tom.’ She rubbed at her glasses as she came to the table with the teapot. ‘Oh, we’re happy enough, Hardy and me. And we’ve had our joyful moments. Course. But babies are different. They bring work and trouble by the shed-load. But on the other side of the scales is the joy.’ She looked at me. ‘You was cheated out of that, Mrs Venables, wasn’t you? I did hear you was pregnant and lost it in the crash.’
‘Do most people know that?’ My voice sounded like something from the Wailing Wall.
‘Some. They reckon the coroner knew and that’s why you was never called nor nothing.’ She pushed a steaming mug towards me. ‘People are mad, aren’t they? As if you would do a thing like that deliberate, baby or no baby.’ She sipped her tea and then de-steamed her glasses again. ‘It was a terrible thing to happen to you. And what happened to Della was terrible, too.’ She sighed. ‘She threatened suicide when Tom left her. If she’d known . . . dear Lord.’
I could imagine what Mrs Hardy’s neighbours and friends would make of this. Tom left his wife when she was pregnant, and she died in childbirth.
I said quietly, ‘Poor Tom.’
She looked up and saw that I was no longer crying, no longer wailing my words. She said, ‘Damage is done. Della’s dead and Tom is coming home.’
I thought about this and nodded. ‘What about the babies?’
‘Della’s mum isn’t up to looking after twins.’ Mrs Hardy looked down into her tea. ‘It’s for the best. Tom needs those babies more than ever now. He’s done so well, Mrs Venables. So well. We knew he was a clever lad, but . . . he’s a doctor. A doctor! Everyone proud of him. And then, along comes Della and falls in love with him, and she’s having a rotten time at home, and he makes her happy, but then he also – somehow – makes her dependent on him so that she don’t think she can live without him. And he marries her. And then, can you believe it, then, he falls in love. And not with Della, neither.’ She swigged the rest of her tea and took the mug to the sink. ‘Poor Tom. Della, too. Said she couldn’t live without him – and she couldn’t, could she?’ She was crying now. Washing up fiercely and crying the same way. ‘But her death isn’t Tom’s fault. She would have died whether he loved her or not. I made them say that in front of him. Don’t know whether he took it in or no.’ She dried her hands and drew on her gloves.
I took my cup to the sink and washed it. I said, ‘How will you manage? Two babies and Tom to look after?’ I wasn’t shocked. Just like me he was responsible for the death of his . . . spouse. But the woman he loved was not dead.
‘He says he’ll stay at home and see to them himself. He’s got no idea. It’ll take both of us. I was going to retire from the nursing home, anyway.’
I said, ‘I’ll help you.’ Then I held my breath, terrified I’d stepped out of line. Mrs Hardy had been patient and kind with me for a whole year. Had that given me any right to shove myself into her affairs? And why was I trying to do so – was it some kind of therapy for my own grief and guilt?
She pushed the cuffs of her gloves under the sleeves of her coat and said nothing for ages. I still held my breath.
She said, ‘Let’s take it gently. Tom might not want anyone to help him, not even his mum and dad. But . . . p’raps it could work. If he gets a job here – and he will want to work – well, I could do with an hour off here and there.’ She gave the tiniest ironic smile. ‘I’m nearly sixty, you know.’
‘And I’m forty-one.’ I grabbed at the chance to lighten everything. I went to the door with her and we cheek-pecked each other. ‘I bought the book. You know, the film we saw last month.’
Mrs Hardy smiled again. ‘I enjoyed that. We’ll have to do it again. Gets me away from the sport on the telly.’
‘Me, too.’ And I laughed. And after a surprised moment, so did she.
I spent time in the garden, and thought about the young man who had rushed past me in the waiting room of the maternity unit so recently. A much-loved, clever son of ordinary, probably rather bewildered, parents. They would not have pushed him, but he would still have wanted to make them proud. And the local school here, how they would have loved this boy! What a credit to their teaching! They would have pushed him all right; nurtured him, coached him, pulled every string they could. He would never have felt alone, and even when he landed up in Cheltenham he was only fifty miles from home and all that support. And then there had been Della, who had adored him, who had been unhappy at home and had needed him desperately. So he had married her.
I wasn’t trying to find parallels; I didn’t want to think of myself as another Della. I had found the strength to leave Dad and his symbolic belt a long time ago. Once Mum died there had been no doubt in my mind that I would leave home as soon as possible, and I always felt Mum had made it easy for me. Dad would have put every possible obstacle in the way of university, but he thoroughly approved of having a teacher for a daughter. I got a place at Bristol, and was well established ten years later when David came into my life.
No parallels at all. Nor with Tom Hardy. I had not fallen in love with anyone else. I had not.
Nevertheless I understood that Tom would always carry a weight with him now. I also understood that he was not free to run as I ran. He had two babies.
It started to rain, and I stood for a few more minutes, face upturned, licking the drops from around my mouth as they fell. I still did not know the sex of the twins, just as I would never now know the sex of my baby. I wondered for a dreadful second what would have happened if that baby had lived. I gasped and fled indoors.
I had assumed that Mrs Hardy would not stay to do her shift, but would hand in her notice and go straight home. But the bell ping-ponged after lunch, and there she was, looking much better for her morning on duty. She was due for a visit to the hairdresser, and the overgrown curls refused to be contained within her headscarf. I could see she might have been really pretty when she first met Mr Hardy.
She said, ‘I wasn’t going to bother you again, but that Mr Jinks has been yappin
g at me since his lunch. He has to be fed, you know, else he won’t bother. He told me you been to see him Sunday.’
‘Well, yes. It wasn’t a good idea—’
‘It was my idea. And I think it was good. He hasn’t been so chatty for ages.’ She followed me into the kitchen, but shook her head when I picked up the kettle. ‘Got to get home in case Tom’s arrived. Though I think Hardy would have phoned me at work . . . don’t know.’ She looked at me sadly. ‘I don’t know anything any more. Everything has gone from my grasp.’ I could see how awful that must be for her; she had always been in control.
She said, ‘I know he’s a cantankerous old fool – Mr Jinks, I mean – but underneath it all he has got a heart. I think he was sorry for some of the things he said to you.’
I swallowed. ‘Did he tell you what he said?’
‘Not really. Just said he’d been a bit “straight”. So I can guess. But he did mention old Juniper Stevens. She lives down by me, you know. One of they cottages by the river. With her daughter and son-in-law. She’s knocking on a bit, early eighties, but she’s still with it. They – the daughter and her hubbie – want her to come to Tall Trees, and she could do worse. Old Jinx wants you to talk to her. I could mention it to her, if you like.’
I was going to shake my head very definitely, but then I didn’t. Mrs Hardy wanted to be helpful; it was her nature to be helpful. I said that would be very kind of her. I found myself telling her a bit about the wretched door knob. To my surprise she was interested. Taken up by it. She looked like my staunch Mrs Hardy again.
‘How did it get on the kitchen table, then?’ she asked, her eyes wide.
‘I’ve no idea. But it’s definitely the same door knob I used to lever myself out of the lake that night. D’you remember, I was all scratched and bleeding and you bathed my feet with vinegar?’
‘Course I remember. I thought it was a fall – well, it was a fall!’ Her eyes widened still more. ‘And it just appeared here, like that?’