I went with her until she was almost there. ‘Are you OK to go on now?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’ She stood and looked at me. It was too dark to see her face, but in the way she stood she looked solid, unmoveable. ‘I won’t change my mind, you know. I’ll tell my father about Mr Raynor. He’ll know the next step to take.’
I shrugged. ‘We all do what we have to do.’ A slight breeze had come up, a westerly, pushing the tide ahead of it, bringing the smell of the sea inland to where we stood. The mud was already wetter under our feet. ‘Take care,’ I said. ‘Are you sure you’ll be OK?’
‘Of course,’ she said. And she stomped off, heading directly for the lights on the bridge, unaware of a deep gully, already filling, cutting into the mud. Soon the water would surround her and leave her stranded. If she’d sounded less certain, less sure of herself, perhaps I’d have called her back.
But I didn’t. I made my way carefully back to the shore. When I was there I peered over the estuary, looking for a dark shadow, some evidence that she’d seen sense and moved to safer ground. A cloud covered the moon and I could see nothing. I shouted her name but there was no reply. I wandered back towards the party.
Someone had been scavenging along the shore and had pulled up a long piece of driftwood, white and smooth as bone, and had thrown it onto the fire. The flames danced again. Everyone was quiet now. There was no booze left. I approached the group with my arms full of wood too. I’d walked back through the trees, foraging as I went. They greeted me gratefully. Despite the mild night we’d be glad to keep the fire alight.
The cloud cleared briefly and we saw the moonlight reflected in the river. The tide was almost halfway full. Nobody missed Margaret. Nobody asked where she was. Soon after the party packed up. We retraced our steps. We went back to our ordinary lives. Lying on the floor in my friend’s room, eventually I went to sleep.
Margaret’s father phoned my parents early the next morning. In those days before mobile phones, communication was slower and I knew nothing about the call until I arrived home. My eyes were grainy through lack of sleep and my head ached. I was wearing the clothes I’d had on the night before and I hadn’t bothered clearing off my make-up. I had what my father called ‘panda eyes’.
‘Dr Hill phoned.’ My mother was easily impressed. She’d have loved being contacted by a doctor. ‘He wondered if you knew where Margaret was. I hadn’t realised you two girls were so close. Apparently she’d told her father that you were her best friend. That’s why he rang here.’
‘She was at the party,’ I said. The idea that Margaret had considered me any kind of friend was astonishing. ‘She left before I did.’
And that was the story I stuck to. Margaret had been at the party but only for a short while. It wasn’t really her scene and she’d decided to go home. I’d offered to go with her but she’d said she’d be OK. I stuck to it even after the high September tides washed up her bloated body. And eventually I convinced myself that it was true.
The relationship between Davie and Nell didn’t survive the summer. He decided he wasn’t born to be a teacher after all and went off to make his fortune as an actor. I saw him once in an episode of a Northern soap on the television, but the close-up of his face didn’t have the same affect as walking along the River Tweed today.
I sit in my house in the hills and watch the sky get light in the east. I still believe I can smell the mud.
Cath Staincliffe
* * *
Riviera
* * *
I never think of myself as a murderer. And it was never my idea. It was Geoffrey’s from the get-go. She was his mother. It would never have happened if it had just been me. Does that sound feeble? I suppose I was – feeble – for long enough. But killing someone – well, that wasn’t feeble.
At first it was just comments. Mutterings and murmurings about how Nora was an albatross round our necks and how she would live to get a telegram from the Queen just to spite him. I let it wash over me. Kept my own counsel. After the redundancy – that’s when it changed. He began working out all these elaborate plans. I thought he was joking for long enough but then it wasn’t funny anymore. Deadly serious.
Geoffrey’s always been one for those forensic programmes on the telly. Normally he’s a bit squeamish; he’d never watch an operation, say, and if he cuts himself shaving or even gets a spell in his finger from the garden he’s all theatrical sighs and wincing and pale sweaty brow. He can’t watch me quarter a chicken or clean a fish. But as long as there’s a forensic side to it, something to do with crime and punishment, then he’s happy as Larry; up to his eyeballs in blood and gore.
He turned to me one night after CSI, where they’d nailed this fella because he’d left dandruff at the murder scene, and he said, ‘She’d have to disappear.’
I stopped knitting (I was doing a lovely matinee jacket for the girl next door who was due soon) and I stared at him.
‘We’d have to get rid of the body … but we’d plan it first so that people expected her to go.’
I frowned. ‘Like she was ill or something you mean?’
‘No!’ He sighed and put on his patience-of-a-saint expression. ‘If she got ill and died we’d have to have a doctor and a post-mortem. The science these days–’ He broke off with a snort and waved in the direction of the telly. ‘People can think she’s died but actually we’ll have … disposed of her.’ He wasn’t smiling. I was waiting for a punchline – but it never came. ‘So,’ he pushed his recliner further upright and leant towards me, ‘we start off telling people Nora’s moved, gone to Filey–’
‘She hates Filey.’
‘Scarborough then, Whitby, wherever. Just concentrate, Pamela.’
He hates being interrupted.
‘Then a bit later we say she’s had a heart attack and died and she wanted her ashes scattering at sea.’
I laughed at that. It didn’t sound like Nora. She was nervous of water. I remembered when Geoffrey and I were courting and he was still living at Nora’s, the three of us had shared a holiday together. Torbay, the English Riviera. It was wonderful, the sun cracking the flags and the houses with palm trees and restaurants with lights outside and warm enough to eat al fresco. We even saw Max Bygraves, he had a big place up on the hills and we saw him in his Rolls; I think it was a Rolls but I’ve never been very good with cars.
Anyway Nora would spend all day on the beach building up to a dip, said she was waiting for the sun to warm the sea up. Then, when the beach was emptying and the water was still, she’d wade in until the water was up to her waist and stand there. Never went deeper, never got her shoulders wet.
Her brother had drowned when they were children. She told me that week in Devon, after dinner one night. Only time I heard her mention him. They lived up in Harpurhey, big family, nine of them in all. Harold, that was her little brother, he followed the bigger ones to the canal one day. They weren’t allowed to go in, it was full of muck and rubbish and god-knows-what from the mills, but the lads would dare each other and the big ‘uns would jump in until someone saw and chased them away.
Harold was larking about with a bit of old chain at the side and he just tripped. He sank like a stone. Only five. Those that could swim tried to find him while Nora watched from the bank. But he’d gone and they had to fetch his parents from the mill.
Nora had clamped her mouth tight then, when she was telling me, and wiped her eyes and smoothed the tablecloth and then started stacking the cups and saucers like she was at home. We used to talk a bit before Geoffrey and I got married, then it all changed.
‘She can’t swim,’ I pointed out, ‘she wouldn’t want her ashes in the sea.’
‘There wouldn’t be any ashes, would there?’ Geoffrey snapped.
I didn’t want to listen to any more of his stupid fantasies so put my knitting away and stood up.
‘We’d have to do it somewhere neutral, somewhere they’d never connect to us,’ Geoffrey said, following me int
o the kitchen. ‘Then dispose of… the evidence.’
‘How?’
He looked a little uncomfortable. ‘There are ways: quarries, dumps… easier if it’s in smaller sections.’
I’d an image of Geoffrey with my rubber gloves and a freezer knife. I shook my head. ‘And then what?’
‘We’d be able to sort all this out,’ he waved his hand round the kitchen. ‘Settle her estate…’
Estate? A two-up two-down in Ladybarn and a life insurance policy. I told Geoffrey. ‘Not without a death certificate, we wouldn’t.’
And he thinks he’s the clever one.
I really thought he’d seen sense after that. But then a few weeks later, when there was nothing on telly, he switched it off and came and sat next to me on the sofa. That was very odd. Well, both things were odd: the telly never went off, not before bed, and the sofa was my space really, he had his recliner. For a moment I thought he was going to tell me he’d met someone else or had cancer or something.
‘Pamela,’ he says, ‘I’ve worked it all out.’ And he launches into a big explanation. How we tell people that Nora is going to stay with us for a bit, that her nerves are bad, the house is getting too much for her, and then a few weeks later we tell them she’s very low and talking about doing something silly and the doctor’s worried. ‘Then,’ he says, ‘we need to find a believable way for it to look like suicide. She’s too frail to hang herself. And I don’t see how we could get a bottle of paracetamol down her.’
He was right, she ate like a bird, you could hardly grind it into her food.
‘Women usually do it in the bath,’ I said, ‘easier to clean up.’
He went white then. Combination of blood and nudity, I shouldn’t wonder. Got up and stalked out.
I thought if I kept raising obstacles he’d give up.
Next thing we had a run of bills: car insurance, MOT, the water rates went up, the TV licence was due. Geoffrey spent hours at the dining room table, sifting through papers, stabbing at a calculator and sighing.
One day after lunch I tackled him. ‘We could sell the house.’
‘What?’
‘We don’t need a place this size any more. Somewhere smaller, it’d be more economical, easier to run.’
‘This is our asset,’ he blustered, like I’d suggested he sell his body.
‘Well, maybe now’s the time to use it.’
‘It doesn’t work like that.’ Geoffrey always says this when he wants to stop you talking about something.
‘It can do. If you’d only just think about it!’ I knew I sounded shrill but it upset me. The way he never gave me any credit. I know I’m not well educated and I was never a manager or anything like that but I’m not stupid. Geoffrey thinks everyone who doesn’t agree with him one hundred per cent is stupid. I reckon I’d beat him in a proper IQ test, anytime. It was like that with Nora, we all knew Nora was a bit slow, she could barely read and sometimes it took her a while to grasp something new but she coped perfectly well. She’d raised Geoffrey on her own after his father died, and looked after him well and held a job as a machinist for over thirty years. She was still capable. But not according to Geoffrey.
‘Or Nora could sell up and move in here,’ I said.
‘What?’ He grimaced. ‘We’d all go mad!’
‘Why?’
‘Her wittering on and her bloody Bingo, she’d fill the place with cats and fag ends. She’s losing her marbles as it is…’
‘She could have her own room. We could make it en suite.’
‘En suite! She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.’ He could be very vitriolic and it wasn’t good for him; his face all red and spit in the corners of his mouth.
‘So? She’s not that bad. I wouldn’t mind. It would sort the future out for all of us.’
‘She’d ruin our lives and you know it. I can’t think why you even raised it as a possibility. It won’t be long till she needs constant care. Be a bloody nightmare.’
‘Better than murder,’ I muttered and left him to it.
I wouldn’t care but it wasn’t as if our position was desperate. Okay, there was no salary since his redundancy but if we budgeted really carefully we could manage on the interest from the savings plans he’d set up. The mortgage was paid off so it was only bills really. Granted there’d be no holidays and we’d have to keep an eye on the heating, perhaps trade the car in, but it was hardly as if we were going to be made homeless or go hungry.
I had one more go at him. Phyllis had told me about a scheme that she and Terry had signed up to when he had to go private for his op. In effect they’d sold their house to a building society but they could live in it for the rest of their lives. There was even provision for home nursing and the like. ‘It’s not as if we’ve anyone to pass it on to,’ Phyllis said.
Same as me and Geoffrey: we never had children, just never happened. Phyllis and Terry had a boy, Jack, but he died as a toddler. Flu, would you believe. I think of that every time we have our jabs.
So, I tried telling Geoffrey about this scheme but he just pooh-poohed the whole thing. Said he didn’t give a damn what suited Phyllis and Terry – they’d never had any business sense.
A week later Nora rang. She was in a bit of a tizzy and I couldn’t get a clear story out of her. She rarely rang us up, though to hear Geoffrey talk about it you’d think she was onto us every five minutes. I didn’t want to tell Geoffrey about it and get him on his hobby horse again so I told him I was going to walk down to the hairdresser’s. I don’t think Geoffrey would have noticed if I’d had my head shaved and had rude words tattooed on my skull, he’s that unobservant.
Nora was upset because one of her cats had died. She’d had him fourteen years, not a bad innings. But she’d had a shock: tapped him to get him off the ironing board and he was rigid. She couldn’t bring herself to put him out with the rubbish and she’d no garden, just a tub outside with a conifer in and she could hardly bury him in that. I told her I’d take him and put him in our border.
I made us some tea and we had a chat and she calmed down.
The place was a bit of a tip; everywhere thick with cat hairs and ashtrays full of cigarette ends but it wasn’t dirty. The cats were trained and she still managed to clean out their trays often enough. She’d seven of them left. Not counting Elvis who was now wrapped in a thick bin liner, in a shopping bag by the front door.
We’d never been all that close, Nora and I. It wasn’t really possible with Geoffrey daggers drawn. He’d made it clear once we were hitched that his mother was a cross to bear and the less we saw of her the better. But on the odd occasion that she and I got together it wasn’t so bad, she was never funny with me. Geoffrey claimed you couldn’t hold a decent conversation with her and that she was half-crazy but I never saw that.
Walking back up home I felt like I was carrying a weight with me – and I don’t mean the cat. There we were, me and Geoffrey, big house, big car, big garden. Big and empty. No cats, no kids, not even a goldfish. Got me down, thinking that.
‘Look at this.’ He passed me a brochure. ‘Palm Beach View. Paignton.’
‘What’s this?’
‘A holiday,’ he smiled. ‘Good job you had your hair done.’
‘We can’t afford…’
‘We can,’ he had a funny look on his face, like he was building up to a surprise. ‘Just a week.’
So we hadn’t won the Lottery then.
‘Me, you, my mother.’
‘Nora!’
‘She deserves a break.’
I realised then. My stomach went cold.
‘Geoffrey…’
‘Shh!’ He put his fingers to his lips as if I were a child. ‘It’s all arranged.’
‘But Nora – she might not want… there’s her cats.’
‘She’ll go.’
And she did. He rang her up and told her to sort out someone to feed the animals. He was false jovial, if you get my drift. ‘I want to treat the pair of you,’
he said, ‘you and Pamela. And besides there’s a third off next week.’ Which sounded more like it.
Nora probably thought I’d told him about Elvis and he wanted to cheer her up. As it was, he’d been out at the travel agents when I got back and I’d dug the creature a grave near the tea roses.
My stomach was upset so I just did omelettes that night. That was Tuesday. We were leaving on the Saturday. He kept quiet about it for the next day or two and I… well, I know it sounds pathetic but I was too frightened to ask.
Then he brings it up right in the middle of Coronation Street. He always does that, he knows it’s the one programme I hate to miss. If I tried to breathe a word when he was watching one of his precious documentaries I’d soon know about it.
‘It has to be an accident.’
‘Geoffrey, I don’t want to know.’
He stared at me then, over the top of his glasses. I felt close to tears and I knew that wouldn’t impress him. I sniffed.
‘Oh, pull yourself together,’ he raised his voice. ‘It’s our only option.’
‘No!’
‘Pamela, I know what’s best. Trust me.’
‘I don’t want to know.’ I put my hands over my ears and closed my eyes. I felt him stride out of the room and slam the door.
‘You look a bit peaky, love,’ Nora said when we picked her up from home. ‘Sea air’ll do you the world of good.’
Geoffrey kept the radio on which saved us from having to make conversation. Now and again Nora would join in with some tune she liked, humming along, and Geoffrey would switch to another programme.
The guest house was very nice. ‘Ooh, look!’ Nora cried when she saw the view from her room: the sea a petrol blue and the headland sweeping round. Her eyes were shining. ‘It’s perfect,’ she turned and smiled at me.
I could feel a headache coming on as I unpacked but I didn’t like to lie down and leave the two of them on their own.
Best Eaten Cold and Other Stories Page 17