You Owe Me Five Farthings

by Jane Anstey

  Rose stopped. “Really?” Light dawned on her suddenly. Liz must have applied for that job after all―and got it. “How amazing.”

  “It’s a big secret,” Robert told her hastily. “But you won’t tell, will you, Mummy? I wish we could go to Oxford, too. It sounds wonderful. Chris and Bethan were telling me about it.”

  “I’m afraid we’ll have to stay where we are, Robert. Besides, you don’t want to change schools yet. You’re happy at St Martin’s, aren’t you?”

  “Ye-es,” agreed Robert doubtfully. “But Chris and Bethan are my friends. I don’t really like the others all that much. They laugh at me when I say the wrong thing, and I never know what to talk to them about anyway. I’ll miss Chris and Bethan. It won’t be the same without them.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say that Robert would make new friends soon enough, but she swallowed the remark and held his hand more tightly. That was easy to say. But he didn’t make friends easily, and he might quite genuinely be lonely when the twins had gone. She thought suddenly of her plans to send him to Northchurch College, for secondary education, where Simon could keep an eye on him. But now even that was in the dust, for Simon was moving on.

  Robert hopped up the steps to the rectory door and pushed the bell. “You and Mr Hellyer used to be really good friends once, Mummy,” he rattled on. “Do you think, if you asked him very nicely, we could go and live with him in Oxford? Then I could go to the same school as Chris and Bethan, and you could be friends with him again. Dad isn’t here anymore,” he pointed out, as footsteps were heard approaching the door from the rectory side. “So he couldn’t mind now, could he?”

  Speechless, Rose watched her son hop nonchalantly over the threshold and disappear with Lorna down the corridor to the playroom, where presumably the twins were awaiting him. She put his overnight bag down in the hall; then, before either Liz or Jeremy could appear to ask her in, or enquire after her health and wellbeing, she turned and fled.

  The news that the Swanson family might leave the area was filling her with dread as she thought about it, though it was stupid of her not to have been prepared. She had known about the job application, after all, and it was obvious that Liz might apply and––clever person that she was––might be appointed. She was glad for Liz, of course she was. But she couldn’t help looking at the situation from her own point of view and wondering why she always seemed to have such bad luck. Looking back on the past few months, she felt that hostile and malevolent forces had been ranged against her from the start: Robert’s ordeal and the revelation of Clive’s adultery, the fracturing of her friendship with Simon for the sake of her marriage and Robert’s emotional security––and then Clive waltzing off without her to a completely new life, leaving her with the shards of their relationship, which she valued not at all. And now Simon was leaving and perhaps the Swansons, too. What would she and Robert do without them?

  But I do have Robert. At least for now. It was the first time she had thought about it that way. Up till then, as long as Robert was safe and happy, she had felt nothing could disturb her. She remembered reflecting a few weeks ago what a lonely wasteland her life would be if her marriage failed, after all she had done to try and sustain it for Robert’s sake. Now she saw that it was worse than that. She would have to be mother and father to her son for years, and plumb the depths of her emotional resources to do it. But in the end, when he grew up, she would be alone.

  ~ * ~

  In the playroom, the conspirators gathered round Robert. “Did you tell your Mum? What did she say?”

  “I did my best,” said Robert, not without pride. “But Lorna answered the door before she could say anything. Still,” he said hopefully, “I expect she’ll think about it, don’t you?”

  “Well done, Rob,” said Chris. “You’re the super-hero this time.”

  He switched on the old computer they used to play games on in the playroom. “We’re going to have a new desktop computer as well as Mum’s laptop. I should think Mum must be going to be paid lots of money in this new job.”

  “We’ll be rich,” added Bethan, her eyes sparkling.

  “We never will,” retorted Chris. “Dad will be bound to spend it on someone else, or give it away. You know what he’s like. Besides, he thinks it’s good for us to be poor.”

  “Mum won’t let him,” said Bethan in a confident tone. “Mum will make him give us extra pocket money.”

  “And maybe we can go on summer holidays,” said Chris, joining in with his twin’s daydream. “Real holidays, on a plane.”

  Robert thought this sounded mad. “But if you’re living in Oxford, why would you want to go on holiday? It sounds like the sort of place you could be happy in all the time.”

  “Nowhere’s good to be in all the time,” Bethan told him.

  Robert ignored this. “I don’t like holidays on a plane much myself. We used to go on them once, but it was really boring. I liked the cottage we went to this year better.” He paused. “I do hope Mummy will go and see Mr Hellyer and ask him if we can come to Oxford, too. I hope she won’t just chicken out.”

  ~ * ~

  Jeremy had arrived at the rectory door too late to greet Rose before she made her escape and could only watch her retreating back move speedily down the rectory drive away from him. He opened his mouth to call after her and closed it again, his sense of having failed her yet again weighing heavily upon him. Liz emerged from the drawing room to find him standing disconsolately by the open door with a gale of wind blowing past him.

  “Remy, there’s a terrible draught coming in here. What is it?”

  She looked at Robert’s overnight bag, parked in the hall near Jeremy’s feet. “Was that Rose?”

  “Yes. She’d gone by the time I got here.”

  “Don’t worry too much, Remy,” Liz comforted him. “If she chose to leave without speaking to us, that isn’t your fault.”

  “I wish I knew how we could have helped her more,” he said, a weight of misery descending on him again. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have opposed her relationship with Simon in the first place. Perhaps she would be happier now if she’d left Clive instead of the other way round.”

  “And disrupted poor Robert’s life afresh? How could we have advised her to do that, Remy? And you couldn’t have encouraged her in adultery, now could you?”

  He sighed. “I suppose not. But there’s Robert, too. He’s too dependent on her, Liz. And she on him. It can’t be healthy.”

  “Well, Robert’s here with us at the moment,” she pointed out. “And you can always talk to him if you think it might help him. But honestly, Remy, he seemed as happy as a sandboy last time I saw him. And he loves playing with the twins.”

  “I suppose so. I still think I could have done more for Rose—”

  “You take too much on yourself,” Liz told him briskly. “And anyway, things aren’t always how they seem.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed, brightening. Even if I’ve failed Rose, God will not.

  He looked at Liz. A new chapter in his life was beginning, which owed nothing at all to his own efforts. He put his arms round his wife and gave her a warm hug. “Liz, you’re a marvel. What on earth would I do without you?”

  Thirty-five

  Without a car, reflected Rose, thinking through her options furiously as she walked home from the rectory, it wouldn’t be easy to get up to Two Marks before dark, even though the light was lasting later every day. Yet this was her last chance to see Simon before he left. He might be angry; he might reject her. But at least she would have seen him, told him―asked him―what? She could hardly put the idea to him as baldly as Robert had suggested. But she could ask him if there was any hope for them, any second chance to be had.

  Suddenly she couldn’t understand why she had left it so long. Robert would have been willing to live with Simon right from the beginning. He hadn’t needed the stability she had tried to give him by staying with Clive. Simon would have looked after him––
looked after them both, if only she had had the courage to realise her marriage was over. All along, the opportunity had been there, but she had been blind and hadn’t seen it. She hadn’t believed that she deserved happiness, that was the problem. Hadn’t believed it was possible to do anything but give up everything that mattered to her. And now, would it be too late? I don’t know. But I have to try.

  In spite of those bolder thoughts, she found herself quailing, not so much at the thought of the long walk in the gathering dusk as at the reception she might receive when she arrived. Simon might turn her from the door with words that would sear her, words it would be impossible to forget. Her memories of his farewell to her at East Knoyle were sad ones, but he had been gentle to her and made her feel valued and loved still, even though she had not dared to respond to his tenderness. She didn’t want to have that gentle farewell spoiled, overlaid in her memory by bitterness. Don’t be stupid, she found herself thinking. It’s over. Leave it alone.

  Yet she couldn’t help remembering that moment when they were ringing for the service the previous Sunday when she had been sure there was still hope, that love hadn’t died for him either, that it wasn’t really over at all. Supposing there was a chance that Simon might open the door and let her in, open his arms and welcome her into them? If she missed that chance, this time it really would be the end, and she would never know if they could have loved each other as much as Simon had once believed, as much as she had once hoped. What might have been, that would be all that was left. I can’t live with that.

  She unlocked the house door and went inside to find her walking shoes. Dolly got up and asked to accompany her, but she told the dog to go back to her basket. She couldn’t take a dog on this wild goose chase.

  I mustn’t think too far ahead, she told herself, as she reached the fork in the road where the lane turned off for Two Marks, while counter-arguments and imagined conversations with Simon hummed through her mind like wasps round a litter bin. After all, Simon might not want her any more, might not want Robert (or Dolly for that matter―he had said he would make a room for Robert, once, but they hadn’t thought about poor Dolly). This whole mad enterprise might all be her imagination―and Robert’s.

  It wasn’t only her idea, she reminded herself, firmly. It was Robert’s, too. Robert wanted to follow his friends to Oxford and had hit on this ridiculous notion as a means to do it. She sighed. This conversation she was having with herself about it was ridiculous, too.

  She wondered if she should go home and phone Simon, so that he had a chance to think about it, to say “Don’t come” or “It’s too late” or even just “I’m busy packing.” She almost began retracing her steps along the muddy lane, but then she changed her mind again, taut and tense and uncertain––on the one hand in the grip of some crazy compulsion that was driving her towards Simon, but on the other not quite mad enough to avoid being visited by sane reasonable thoughts that told her she simply could not walk three miles on a wet spring evening to arrive on Simon’s doorstep utterly unexpectedly. He would think she had taken leave of her senses, and quite rightly. And what then? It would be too dark to walk home safely along the lanes by that time, and she had forgotten to pick up her torch. Simon would have to bring her home in the car, probably in an uncomfortable atmosphere of unspoken rejection and misery, and it would all be awful.

  She argued with herself all the way. Twice she turned and walked back a few yards, but each time her feet betrayed her and reversed direction, taking her irrevocably towards Two Marks, towards the Mecca of Simon’s cottage.

  It was dusk when she arrived, and she was relieved to see his car parked in its normal place against the hedge and lights on in the cottage windows. Classical music poured out at high volume through the ancient glass. The curtains were drawn back, and she could see Simon silhouetted against the wall lights on the far side of the room. Her heart lurched in her chest as she knocked at the door. The music was muffled by the heavy oak of the door and the curtain hanging behind it.

  There was no reply to her knock, and she wondered whether he had heard it above the strains of strings and brass. Greatly daring, she lifted the latch and pushed it open, the curtain swishing gently across the wooden floor as it moved back. Unmuffled now, the music assailed her ears like a blow and she recognised the dramatic strains of Swan Lake.

  The room was littered with open packing crates stuffed with paper-wrapped bundles of crockery, folded towels and linen, lampshades and curtains. Dresser drawers and cupboard doors stood ajar, their contents waiting to be stowed in their turn. Simon stood in the middle of the room, his arms full of papers. He hadn’t seen her, and now she was here, she didn’t know what to say or do.

  He must have felt the draught from the open door, for he looked up and saw her framed in the doorway. “Rose!” He sounded dismayed.

  What had she expected? That he would drop everything, quite literally, and run to her with his arms open wide? And what would she say if he did? My husband has deserted me, so I’ve come to you. Might Simon look at it that way? Not as the last, unlooked-for chance of happiness that it truly represented for her, but merely the grasping at the prospect of a meal ticket or a means of emotional security to replace the marital bonds she had lost. How could she stop him from taking it like that?

  For a few moments, both of them stood stock still, staring at each other, while the wind flapped the curtain and ruffled a pile of papers on the chair.

  “Come in and close the door,” he said at last, impatiently. “You’re letting the rain in.”

  Not very encouraging, but at least he hadn’t asked her to leave. She closed the door behind her quickly, but she still couldn’t find the words to say what she wanted him so desperately to hear.

  “I’m leaving,” he told her at last, indicating the packing cases. “I’m moving out tomorrow.”

  “I know,” she replied stupidly. “I heard. That’s why I came.”

  He stared at her, seeing for the first time the damp curls clinging to her head, her sodden shoes and coat. “Did you walk here?”

  “I can’t drive,” she reminded him.

  He dumped the papers he was holding on the table and moved a pile of linen from the nearest chair. “You’d better take that wet coat off and sit down.” The tone of his words was exasperated rather than inviting.

  “I won’t stay,” she said, her throat constricting, a chill spreading through her that had nothing to do with being wet. She was too late. He had made up his mind to say goodbye to her, and nothing would change it. He had a new job, he had sold the house, and there was no way back.

  But she still couldn’t quite bring herself to turn and walk out of the door and set off home again through the rising storm.

  “The night of the ball,” she said, suddenly not knowing quite why the memory came to her. “Do you remember? You asked me where you stood. Whether Clive had left me.”

  He turned. “Of course I remember,” he answered, roughly. “You said you couldn’t answer me then. And then later, when you did tell me how your life had been with Clive, somehow we didn’t speak about anything more.”

  “Because you knew, really,” she said, her eyes fixed on him. “When I came here that evening―for the tower meeting―we didn’t have to say anything. You knew where you stood.”

  He smiled ruefully at that. “I suppose I did. In the end.”

  “But we never finished that conversation,” she said, emboldened. “Did we, Simon?”

  “No.” His voice sharpened. “If the phone hadn’t rung when it did…If Robert hadn’t disappeared...We thought someone had kidnapped him, didn’t we? And in the end, it was only a boys’ lark.”

  There was a pause.

  “But everything was left up in the air,” he went on at last, with frustration. “We never finished anything, did we? Except the whole relationship―that night in the churchyard when you said you couldn’t leave Clive.”

  “I remember,” she said steadily. “But now Clive
has left me. He wants to be a monk––or at least he thinks he does. But anyway, he isn’t going to live with us anymore. Our marriage is over.”

  Simon looked at her in silence. “And that changes everything?” he asked at last. She couldn’t read his expression, but the words sounded sarcastic, angry, sceptical of her sincerity.

  Her heart sank, but she couldn’t stop. “Of course it does.” She gripped her hands into tight fists so hard that her knuckles went white and her nails dug into the palms of her hands.

  He turned away to turn the sound down a little on the amplifier. “I’m not a toy you can pick up and put down, you know.”

  He found a packing case with some space in it and lowered the linen carefully inside. His face was hidden from her, but she saw his whole body tauten as he waited for her answer. Somehow she must find the right words to turn the situation round, to make him understand.

  “You never were my toyboy,” she said at last, smiling, mining some humour from the words he had used.

  He laughed, but the laugh still had a bitter edge. “I didn’t get much chance to be, did I? You chose your marriage.”

  “No! Simon, that’s not fair. That’s not true. I chose Robert.”

  Simon straightened up and picked up the papers he had laid down on the table. I mustn’t be bitter, he thought. It isn’t fair to her. It must have been just as awful for her as it has been for me.

  And now Clive had left her. What a loser he was. What a shit.

  He looked at her. “And what choice are you making about Robert this time?”

  She swallowed, and he wondered what was coming next.

  “He suggested I come to see you.”

  He found himself smiling at the absurdity of it. “Robert suggested it?”

  “Yes.” Her voice sounded small and apologetic. “He wants to go to Oxford like the Swanson twins. Liz has got a job there―did you know? So he thought of you. He asked if we could come and live with you so we could go to Oxford, too.” Her voice wobbled. “Silly, isn’t it?”