The Loving Husband

by Christobel Kent

  A drunk in a playground, was what it boiled down to. He’d taken her to a place he used to go when he was a kid, the far side of Oakenham, he said. It had taken him for ever to find it and when they got there it was a lonelier spot than he’d remembered.

  ‘Lonely?’ she said, wondering at that. Lonelier than here?

  Nathan shrugged. ‘Overgrown. Tucked away behind houses.’ He’d looked thoughtful. ‘Not the kind of place they send their kids these days.’ He sighed. ‘Empty. That’s what I thought, anyway, but he was lying behind a tree, he was more or less comatose. You couldn’t see him straight away.’ He knitted his brow, staring into the grass. ‘I didn’t see him at all. It was Emme that found him.’ He pushed his empty plate back and looked away. ‘He’d pissed himself.’

  Emme had run back in blithely halfway through. ‘Did you tell her? Mummy, he said Daddy was his friend only he didn’t know his right name and he was crying. He had wet on his trousers, Mummy.’ She made a face, glowering, put her fingers in her hair to spike it up. ‘He had crazy hair, Mummy. He had a big beard, he was big like a giant.’

  ‘He knew you?’ She waited for Nathan to answer.

  He had laughed, that dry dismissive sound. ‘Drunks often think they know you,’ he said. ‘I persuaded him to get lost in the end. It took a while, he couldn’t walk straight.’

  He leaned down, elbows on his knees, and Emme ran to him. She put a hand on each cheek and stared into his face. He looked back, expressionless. ‘He smelled bad,’ she said.

  Fran quite quickly came to treat that whole evening as almost something she had dreamed. She consigned the smell and the hum, the bad man and the eerie light at the horizon, to things imagined or hallucinated, the uneasy by-product of pregnancy and loneliness and hysteria. The car parked under the poplars had seemed the most banal element of the dream, and the easiest to forget.

  Walking round the side of the Victorian schoolhouse, Fran saw the children working at low tables through the glass. The woman who’d talked to her about Martin, the farmer and his wife and shit in bags all over the house, Sue, was there. She was sitting outsize and hunched over a table next to a child frowning down at an exercise book. Classroom helper: the thought did something nasty to Fran’s stomach.

  Harry, Karen’s son, was on the table next to the window and he saw Fran straight away, his face lifted, eager, he made as if to wave but then sat on his hands instead, hunkering down out of sight of the teacher. He watched her, though, until she was out of sight round the building.

  She’d left Ben in the car, asleep in his seat. She hurried.

  Mrs Rayner was waiting in the reception area, gaunt and tired-looking. It can’t be great, thought Fran, looking anxiously around for Emme. Keeping school out here, nothing to see but a grain silo on the horizon, and the wind blowing horizontal from Siberia.

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘She’s fine,’ said the teacher, and sighed, removing her glasses and rubbing the bridge of her nose. ‘Under the circumstances.’

  And in that tiny moment Fran saw how it began: social services, questions asked, reports filled out. Just doing her job.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘She just wanted to pretend things were normal.’ The woman softened, fractionally. ‘I should have kept her at home,’ Fran went on, obediently. ‘I’ll do that, until—’

  ‘Just give her a few days,’ said Mrs Rayner. ‘She’s with the school secretary.’

  But at the door Fran hesitated. ‘I’d like to…’ she began. ‘I was thinking. I’d like to get more involved. Here, I mean.’ Rayner looked startled. ‘Classroom helper, I mean,’ said Fran quickly. ‘Help with reading. Spelling, you know.’

  The headmistress looked taken aback. ‘But you won’t be…’ But whatever she had been going to say, she changed her mind. ‘Thank you,’ she said instead. ‘Yes. We’ll look into that.’ And bent her head quickly back over her desk.

  Ben was still asleep when they got back to the car and Emme climbed in beside him obediently, leaning down to kiss his small hand lying limp in his lap, murmuring something to him that Fran couldn’t hear. She just shook her head when they got back to the house and Fran turned to look at her in the back seat. ‘Mrs Rayner said you were talking about the bad man, Emme. Darling?’

  ‘I just said that because I wanted to come home,’ she said, her mouth stubborn. ‘Can I watch Peppa Pig on the television, please?’

  The house was silent. On the kitchen table was another one of Ali Compton’s cards, propped against the salt cellar. Now that she was gone Fran missed her. She turned around and locked the kitchen door and bolted it.

  Emme ran past her into the sitting room and she heard a burst of chatter as the television came on. Fran set Ben just inside the hall in his car seat, asleep, and made a tray of Emme’s favourite food. Boiled egg, toast soldiers, little tomatoes, a chocolate biscuit wrapped in foil. A pear cut up into pieces.

  After ten minutes, though, Emme padded past Ben into the kitchen where Fran had filled the sink and asked to be put to bed. A corner of the foil turned back and a mouse-sized bite taken from it, the rest untouched on the low table in front of the television.

  It wasn’t even six, but it was dark outside. Fran read her three stories, and when she refused a fourth turned off the lamp and lay down next to her, looking at the light coming in from the corridor. ‘It’s all right, Emme,’ she whispered, and Emme’s head moved up and down, a small hand crept up and gathered her jumper in a fist, holding on. She lay still until the fist relaxed at last and Emme’s breathing was even and regular, thinking of Ben alone in the kitchen. How long did she have?

  They needed her: she had to make it all right. She had to make it safe. That was all she needed to remember.

  Ben was still asleep but his face was crumpled, as if he was in pain. What would happen to them if she couldn’t keep them safe? The grimace on Ben’s face faded, his small belly relaxed back in the padded seat. Fran stood up, moving stiffly at first, sink, dresser, table, dishwasher, one foot behind the other. Carefully she closed the curtains behind the sink. The bags of shopping were still on the floor where she’d dumped them. She started by putting the food away then moved on to the washing up.

  The stack of bills and letters sat on the side, waiting, reproaching her but the waste bucket under the sink was beginning to smell, so she took it to the yard bins. When she came back inside there the pile still sat: she could just put them away, out of sight. She tugged at a drawer in the farmer’s Formica-topped units, they were home-made, thirty, forty years old. Nathan wanted them kept: They’re practically antiques, he’d said, looking at them with an emotion she couldn’t share or understand. The drawer stuck: she pulled harder. She could hear Nathan in her ear, exasperated, Don’t.

  Out of the corner of her eye she checked, Ben in his car seat, still asleep, out of harm’s way, and then she tugged again, both hands. A fingernail splintered and the drawer flew free, spraying stuff everywhere, unopened bills, cards, photographs on the floor and on top of Fran as she staggered back and sat, hard, on the linoleum. The drawer landed on her shin with a crack and in his padded nest Ben gave a violent start and opened his mouth to wail. She lay back a moment, holding her breath, ready to sob herself with the pain in her shin, ready to lie face down on the dirty floor – but there was no cry and when she looked Ben’s mouth had closed again.

  Righting herself, Fran got to her knees over the mess and began to gather it up. Standing then, with the pile crushed against her, she stopped. She had heard nothing, but she felt the cold on the backs of her legs and in that instant she realised that she hadn’t driven the bolt home again coming in from the bins, she hadn’t turned the key. She stopped, she froze. She couldn’t move.

  On top of the pile of papers in her arms an old photograph with curled corners stared back up at her, a faded image. Behind her the door closed. She couldn’t turn around. She turned around.

  ‘Fran?’

  The voice shook. It was Ro
b. At last. She took a step toward him, she looked.

  He was so pale his eyes looked like black holes, the raw-boned hands that emerged from the sleeves of his all-weather jacket were freezing, trembling. It took her a second to understand that he was the one that was terrified, not her.

  Awkwardly she stepped towards him and put her arms around him. At first he stiffened and then she felt his head rest on her shoulder. ‘It’s all right,’ she said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  They’d been together not more than a month when Nathan had introduced her to Rob, leading her through the etched glass door of a Victorian pub buried away out to the east. They’d passed windswept plazas of new-build apartment housing on the way, the glass and steel towers of the city visible over the river, but the pub had been passed over for development and forgotten, sitting humbly on a corner between thirties tenements.

  And then there was Rob, squeezed into a velveteen corner with a pint in front of him, looking up, apologetic. Fran could remember the warmth she’d felt when Nathan said that, his hand in hers. It all felt so safe: the dusty down-at-heel gloom of the pub, the skinny best friend, not much more than a boy himself in his football shirt and anorak and oversized trainers. Poor Rob.

  ‘Here she is,’ Nathan said, and Rob hovered between standing and sitting, offering a hand. Nathan turned to the bar.

  ‘I’ve heard all about you,’ he said and she grimaced.

  ‘Do I pass?’ she whispered, apologetically. ‘Sounds like you’re the man I have to impress.’ And Rob had blushed and bobbed his head and smiled, quick, shy, unexpected, a wide child’s smile.

  Nathan came back, his hands full of drinks, and setting them down said, ‘What do you think of her then,’ he said, ‘my fiancée?’ And she’d just grabbed the glass and taken a drink, because she didn’t know if it had been a joke. Barely a month and he was calling her that.

  She couldn’t remember what they’d talked about: a build; some walking holiday Rob had been on. She remembered the look Nathan gave her though, a quick apologetic glance across Rob’s shoulders, then another one, exhilarated, when he saw she was up for it, yes.

  Rob had just made to stand up and buy a round when Nathan’s phone had gone off and looking at it he had said to Fran, ‘Got to take this, sorry, work.’ Then to Rob, ‘It’s Julian.’ Rob nodding, barely breaking his stride towards the bar.

  Whatever the call had been about it hadn’t taken long, because Rob hadn’t even set his round back down on the table when Nathan reappeared.

  ‘Everything all right?’ Rob had said, leaning down to the table with his hands on the glasses, looking up. And Nathan had nodded just once, brisk, then turned to her. She’d seen it then, a filament glinting in the dusty air between them, friends, brothers. It had shown her a Nathan she could trust.

  ‘Have you spoken to the police?’ she said.

  Rob was staring down at the stack of papers in her arms, then he was on his knees gathering the junk that had spilled from the drawer and putting it back in. Setting the pile down she put her hand on his shoulder and felt him take a deep shuddering breath, then he stood up, carefully set the drawer back on its runners and slid it in.

  ‘They got hold of me this morning.’ Rob leaned back against the closed drawer. ‘I was driving, I told them I’d call them back but they said to just come in when I got here.’ He put a hand to his head. ‘Tomorrow, I guess.’

  He’d always been skinny but he looked like he’d lost weight, his jeans hung off him.

  ‘Who do they think did it?’ he said, staring, haunted. ‘I asked on the phone, but the man didn’t really seem to want to tell me anything.’

  ‘DS Gerard?’ said Fran and he shrugged, helpless.

  ‘Was that his name? He said something about burglary. A break-in gone wrong.’ Rob looked around the room, confused, and she followed his gaze, registering how much order she’d restored. Rob looked back at her. ‘I didn’t like him. The man I talked to. He asked me about your marriage.’ He looked into her face, she saw he was on the edge of tears, or worse. Pleading. ‘Why would he ask about that?’

  ‘I suppose they have to eliminate me as a suspect.’ It came out rougher than she planned and she knelt to the car seat so as not to have him stare at her. Ben was shifting, arching his back as if uncomfortable, and gently she reached her hands in and under him, felt the damp under him and the nappy’s weight, smelled the hot reek.

  ‘Who is Julian Napier, Rob?’ she said from where she knelt, not looking up. She reached for the wipes she kept in the pocket on the back of the car seat, groped for the clean nappy there. Ben’s eyes were still closed but he drew his knees up, ready, his face clenched.

  ‘Julian?’ She heard him step back, wary. She focused on the task, down here in the dirt the sweetish smell in her nostrils: no matter what, this had to be done. Ben was her shield against the past, her future. They were, him and Emme. She opened the nappy, raised his legs quickly, wiped, pulled the dirty nappy out and slid the clean one under him. Saw something, in the nappy. Little scrap of blue, before she folded it on itself.

  ‘He’s a guy … Julian?’ Stuttering. ‘He’s the guy Nathan works for. He gave Nathan his first job.’

  Quick. On her knees still, she got it done: strip open the tabs, secure the nappy, off with the sodden babygro, vest underneath would have to stay, back and up holding Ben up under his arms, he raised his knees, face screwed up, his mouth opening. She turned him, sat, set him on her knee, pushed up the sweatshirt and he latched on. Then she looked from where she sat, suddenly calm, up into Rob’s face.

  ‘I want to help you,’ he said, almost a sob in his voice. ‘I want…’ but he was at the door, as if he wanted to run out.

  ‘So just a regular guy.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about Nathan’s work,’ said Rob, rubbing at his wrists, an anxious movement.

  ‘Then who does?’ she asked. ‘You’re the only one who knew Nathan, really knew him.’ The dirty nappy still on the floor. ‘It wasn’t a burglary. It wasn’t some random…’ She felt something contract in her chest, fear. ‘You’re all I’ve got, don’t you see? On my side.’

  He began to shake his head, ‘I don’t know what…’ he said, and she saw his raw, sore hands. ‘I don’t know what I can do.’ Fran put out her free hand, from where she sat she could just touch his sleeve. He looked lost, he gazed at her as if she might save him.

  ‘Nathan told me he was going to the pub twice a week,’ she said, focusing on Ben’s small hot head against her, the steady pull of his feeding. He kept the fear down, shrunk to a hard knot. Don’t think about that. Keep talking. ‘Only the landlady told the police she’d barely seen him since the week we arrived.’ Rob just stared. ‘Do you know where he was going, Rob?’ Fran didn’t wait for him to answer, she went on, talking and talking, like she’d been set free.

  ‘You know something, don’t you?’ she said, and she saw him flinch. ‘What was it, going through your head while you were walking back down from that mountain? What was Nathan into? All those conferences…’ She was ranting. Of course he’d been to the conferences. They had all the freebies – the mugs and the nylon laptop covers – but she couldn’t afford to stop now. ‘Was it something criminal?’ She found she needed to take a breath. ‘Who did he come back here for? He was never happy here. Why did he come back?’

  Stiffly upright, Rob set his hands by his side, against the drawer behind him. ‘Criminal? Who…’ and his eyes flickered, afraid. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  Who was he afraid of? Nathan? Afraid of that darkening look in Nathan’s eyes? Nathan was dead. She would have liked to get up, to stand and shake him, but there was Ben. She steadied her voice. ‘There was another friend, he talked about it. A man who ran a scaffolding business; Nathan said he was going to track the guy down. What was he called? Jeb, Jez, something like that?’ For a moment she thought he was going to faint, to slide sideways and crash to the floor, but she had hold of his sleeve, she wa
sn’t going to let up. He said something, so quiet she hardly heard it.

  ‘Bez,’ he said, then again, louder. ‘His name was Bez. Is Bez.’

  ‘A friend of yours.’ Barely perceptibly, he nodded.

  ‘Nathan told you, didn’t he,’ said Rob, ‘about the house.’

  ‘What house?’ Ben had stopped, but he wasn’t asleep. He pulled away, she could feel his eyes on her, waiting, but she didn’t look down, she tugged her sweatshirt to cover herself. She felt dirty, suddenly, sweat in her armpits, grey in the folds of her body.

  ‘We were just kids,’ said Rob and suddenly he seemed to be about to cry. ‘We were going to live there for ever. Nathan hated it at home, he said. Me and him and … Bez. We thought it would last for ever but it only lasted a summer, in the end. Nathan went to London, it all broke up.’ He was staring, his voice had become a monotone.

  ‘The place you squatted,’ said Fran. She could feel Ben’s eyes intent on her and she allowed herself a quick glance down. ‘What was it called again?’

  ‘Black Barn,’ he said, staring through her to somewhere far off. ‘Do you think it was something to do with that?’

  ‘Rob, are you all right? Are you … are you on something? You need to tell the police, you know that, you need to go and tell them everything, tomorrow.’

  ‘The police.’ Rob’s eyes came into focus. ‘Right.’

  ‘Where’s Bez now?’ Her hand still on his sleeve and he pulled away in sudden fright.

  ‘Don’t go after Bez,’ he said. ‘Bez is bad news.’ He focused with an effort.

  ‘Are you on something, Rob?’ she asked again, but he just shook his head.

  ‘Bad news, always was, when it all broke up, when Nathan went…’ He took a breath. ‘He lost the scaffolding business a year or two ago, because of the drinking. Then it wasn’t just drink. It was drugs. Serious drugs. He went AWOL, off the radar. No fixed abode.’