by Joan Smith
‘Can’t you ask your mother to stay with you?’ she asked weakly.
‘Mummy would just make things worse,’ Veronica protested. ‘In her eyes, a broken marriage is the worst sin a woman can commit. She’d just go on about what a fool I was ever to split up with Hugh. She doesn’t understand - not like you do, Loretta.’
Loretta shifted uncomfortably. Veronica was appealing to her as a sister. How could she possibly turn her down? If she did, and Veronica made an attempt on her own life, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. ‘All right,’ Loretta said, resigning herself to her fate, ‘what do you want me to do?’
‘Could you possibly spend the evening with me?’ Veronica asked, her voice as insubstantial as a small child’s. ‘I mean, you don’t have to stay the night. Just the first two or three hours after everyone leaves?’
Loretta agreed that she would. But it would be the last time, she promised herself. She would take with her a copy of Spare Rib and, incongruous or not, suggest that Veronica use it to find some sort of women’s group. ‘What time will it be over?’ she asked, anxious to arrive after the mourners had dispersed. It had crossed her mind that Andrew Walker might be among them, and she did not want to be forced into explaining how she came to know the dead man’s widow.
A handful of people would be coming back to the house, Veronica told her, but she expected them to be gone by five. Loretta promised to arrive an hour or so later, and consoled herself with the thought of her weekend in Paris. She was going to need it.
Expecting heavy traffic on the M40, Loretta set off from London much earlier than she needed to on Thursday afternoon. She arrived at the Oxford ring road just after five, and decided to head into town to kill time. Her route took her past Puddephat’s college, and reminded her forcefully of her encounter the previous weekend with Jamie Baird. She was suddenly filled with rage: how dare he treat her like that, rushing out of her flat without a word of explanation? With little thought for the vehicle behind her, which had to brake to avoid a collision, Loretta pulled into a space between two cars and parked the Panda on double yellow lines. She would go and remonstrate with him.
She got out of the car and locked the door. Then she paused. Was she not on the verge of making an even greater fool of herself? After all, what would be left for her to say if Jamie simply insisted that he had changed his mind? She was about to get back into the car when she began to berate herself for her cowardice. Why shouldn’t she go to his room as if nothing had happened and ask what he intended to do about his article for Fem Sap? That would at least demonstrate that, far from suffering agonies as a result of his rejection of her, she had put the entire episode behind her.
Looking quickly to left and right, she threaded her way through the traffic to the other side of the road. Her resolve faltered momentarily when she spotted the florid countenance of Des Koogan peering from the college gateway, but he stepped back to let her pass with an unusual degree of civility. He even volunteered directions to Jamie’s room, as well as its number. Perhaps, Loretta speculated, he was a decent enough sort when he wasn’t being pestered by reporters. Following his directions, she climbed the stairs to the first floor of a modern annexe behind the great hall. Stopping outside a door which bore Jamie’s name, she knocked before she could get cold feet.
‘Just a minute,’ his voice called, and then the door opened. Jamie paused on the threshold, a smile fading from his face. He fell back into the room, the utmost consternation apparent on his face. Irritated by this reception, Loretta followed him into the room. She was already regretting that she had embarked upon this adventure, but now she was here, she was determined to go through with it. She waited for him to invite her to sit down. When he didn’t, she began to speak with forced brightness.
‘You’ve got a nice view,’ she said, walking to the window and looking out at the great hall. It was an inane remark, but she could not bear the silence any longer. She turned to face him. He had always been pale, she thought, but now he was looking absolutely deathly. What did he think she was about to do? Rape him? She concealed her anger. ‘I can’t stay,’ she assured him. ‘I just happened to be in Oxford, and I thought I might as well drop in to ask about your article.’
‘Article?’ he repeated blankly. She began to wonder whether he was mentally retarded, or taking drugs. He was standing in front of a cork noticeboard, and she caught sight of a photograph over his left shoulder. It showed a girl with freckles and reddish hair, standing outside what looked like another Oxford college. A new explanation of his odd behaviour occurred to her. Maybe he had been telling the truth about his relationship with Puddephat, and this young woman was his girlfriend. Was it guilt about her that had prompted his precipitate disappearance from her flat on Sunday? It even crossed her mind that the girl might be due to arrive at Jamie’s room at any moment - which would explain why he was so nervous. As if reading her thoughts, he moved to one side and blocked her view of the picture. ‘I hadn’t given it any thought,’ he said wildly, running his hand abstractedly through his hair. ‘I’ve been very busy. I didn’t think there was any hurry.’
‘Oh, there isn’t,’ Loretta said. ‘It’s just that I’m off to Paris this weekend for a meeting of the collective. I wanted to let them know when to expect it.’ Jamie was not to know that Fern Sap might well cease to exist in two days’ time. When he didn’t respond, she decided she had tortured herself long enough. ‘Well, it sounds to me as though I’d better leave it for the time being,’ she said sternly. ‘You can get in touch when you’ve done it.’ And pigs might fly, she thought silently. She walked past him to the door, and let herself out.
In the corridor, she gave a deep sigh. She must have been mad to come here, she told herself. As she went down the stairs, she looked at her watch. It was just after five thirty. It should be safe now to set off for the Red House. The idea filled her with relief. Whatever the evening held in store, it couldn’t be worse than the scene she’d just been through with Jamie. When she got back to the car, she discovered she’d been given a parking ticket.
She had timed her arrival perfectly; there was only one car parked in the drive of the Red House, and that was the Citroën belonging to Veronica. Loretta parked behind it, wondering how Puddephat’s widow had stood up to the afternoon’s ordeal. Funerals tended to liberate all sorts of emotions at the best of times, and that of a murder victim had every reason to be even more fraught than most.
She knocked at the front door, and it opened immediately. Loretta had the impression Veronica had been waiting behind it - at least someone was glad to see her. The first thing she noticed was that the other woman was wearing an extraordinary combination of sober clothes and bright pink jewellery. Her black jacket and pleated skirt were very much what Loretta had expected, but a shocking pink enamel rose nestled in the tie neck of her grey silk blouse. Her earrings were smaller versions of the same design, and had been chosen to match the colour of her spectacles. Didn’t she own another pair? Loretta wondered. The effect was disconcerting, as though Veronica had not been able to decide whether the day’s events were a matter for joy or sorrow, and had hedged her bets.
‘Loretta, so good of you to come,’ Veronica was saying, stepping back to allow her into the hall. ‘And absolutely on time. Did you have a good journey?’
She might have been welcoming a guest to a small dinner party, but Loretta guessed that she was seeing the role Veronica had chosen to get her through the afternoon, and hoped she did not intend to keep it up all evening. The kind of small talk demanded by so polished a display of manners had never come easily to her. On the other hand, if Veronica has suddenly developed this degree of self-control, it might allow her to get back to London relatively early in the evening. She followed the other woman into the drawing-room, taking the seat she had occupied on her last visit to the house.
‘Sherry?’ Veronica offered, pointing to the decanter already waiting with two glasses on a side table. Loretta accepted, and wai
ted for Veronica to take a seat opposite her.
‘How did it go?’ she asked nervously when the silence between them had stretched to uncomfortable proportions. The question sounded all wrong, as if she were enquiring about the success of a job interview, but she could not think of any other.
The effect of her words was dramatic. Veronica put her glass down abruptly, removed her spectacles, and gave way to a prolonged bout of weeping. Black streaks appeared on her cheeks as her mascara ran, and she made the mess worse by dabbing ineffectually at her eyes with her fingers. Loretta spotted an open packet of paper handkerchiefs on the sideboard, and brought them over to her. Veronica took them, and blew her nose.
After a while, her sobs subsided. She sat forward, twisting a crumpled tissue in her hands. ‘I didn’t cry all afternoon,’ she said apologetically. ‘I suppose it had to come out sooner or later.’
‘Of course,’ Loretta soothed her. She found tears easier to cope with than the brittle politeness with which Veronica had greeted her.
‘It went very well, in the circumstances,’ Veronica went on. ‘The vicar had a word with the photographers, and most of them did keep well back from the grave. He gave a marvellous oration. Very moving.’
Loretta said nothing. She was not a Christian, and she doubted whether the vicar’s words would have consoled her in the way they had Veronica. ‘Have you eaten anything?’ she asked, seeing her lean over to refill her sherry glass.
‘I had a sandwich,’ Veronica said vaguely. ‘And a scone. I may have had more than that. I’m not sure.’
There were no signs of food in the room, and Loretta marvelled at how quickly the debris had been cleared away. Then she realized her mistake. Veronica would undoubtedly have employed caterers for the afternoon. And the event had probably taken place in the village hall, not in the house. ‘Can I make you some tea?’ she asked, anxious that Veronica should not consume too much alcohol on an empty stomach. Veronica nodded, and led the way to the kitchen.
It was a large room with pine cupboards and a split-level cooker. Veronica waited passively by the door, wiping away occasional tears, while Loretta filled the kettle and emptied the teapot. Half a dozen empty glasses on the draining-board revealed that a small group of mourners had come back to the house after the wake. Loretta wondered how many glasses of sherry Veronica had got through before her arrival. She had to ask where the tea caddy and cups were kept, and each time she spoke she had the impression that she was interrupting a lengthy internal dialogue on the part of the other woman. She found a tin containing biscuits, home-made by the look of them, and added it to the other things she had assembled on a tray. Veronica allowed herself to be shepherded back to the drawing-room, and resumed her seat. She accepted a cup and saucer from Loretta, but stared blindly into the cup instead of drinking from it.
‘I feel empty,’ she said as Loretta sat down. ‘I don’t think I really believed he was dead until this afternoon.’
Loretta was unsurprised. She had encountered this reaction before in the recently bereaved. She waited for Veronica to go on, thinking it would do her good to talk about her feelings.
‘In the church this afternoon, it suddenly hit me that he was gone. He’s never going to come to this house again. It seems … incredible.’ She paused.
Loretta wondered whether Veronica had given any thought to her own plans. At their first meeting, she had spoken wistfully of taking a course - some sort of social work, Loretta thought she had mentioned. Now might be the time to encourage her. She was about to raise the subject when Veronica spoke again.
‘Did you know my husband was a homosexual?’ she demanded suddenly. Loretta was taken aback. She had not expected the conversation to take this turn, and it made her very uncomfortable. Given Veronica’s background, her attitude to homosexuality was unlikely to be an enlightened one; the break-up of her marriage, presumably as a result of Puddephaf s tortured sexuality, was certain to have strengthened her initial prejudice. It was a subject on which it was impossible for them to agree. At the same time, Loretta feared that in her present emotional state, Veronica would interpret anything less than total support as a declaration of hostility. While she struggled to devise a reply which would divert Veronica’s attention to safer channels, the other woman spoke again. ‘That’s why I threw him out,’ she said abruptly. ‘I found out he had been seeing … a boy. I found out because he came here,’ she added, refuting the unspoken implication that she had been spying on her husband. ‘Can you imagine how I felt? He was sixteen or seventeen, this person. He worked in a local garage. At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about, what his connection was with Hugh. After he left, Hugh … told me. He wasn’t the only one, apparently. There had been several of them. It had been going on for years. Behind my back. Oh, Hugh said he still loved me. He was desperate to go on living with me.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Discreet homosexual dons who stick to their own kind are one thing. It’s quite another if they happen to be interested in … boys. He was terrified people would find out. It suited him to have a nice respectable wife who was too naÏve to ask questions. He went berserk when I told him to go.’
For the first time, Loretta felt a pang of sympathy for Hugh Puddephat. She had always thought the age of consent for gay men a ridiculous anomaly, and he had been a classic victim of it.
‘I blame myself for what happened next,’ Veronica continued. ‘I behaved very badly. I wanted to hurt Hugh as much as he’d hurt me, and I didn’t care how I did it. I wasn’t very discreet when people rang here for Hugh, people who didn’t know I’d thrown him out. And of course they began to talk. Hugh was at his wit’s end. And he used one of his students as a smokescreen. She had a crush on him, you see. Melanie Gandell, her name was, I could never forget it. Hugh was so worried about the rumours I’d caused that he went out of his way to encourage her. She took it seriously - Hugh could be very charming, he could make you feel really special.’ There was a faraway look in Veronica’s eyes, and Loretta guessed she was remembering her own courtship. ‘In the end, she became rather a nuisance. Hugh had to tell her … what he’d told me. She killed herself.’
Loretta’s brief sympathy for the dead man evaporated. He was extremely lucky that none of this had come out at the inquest, she thought. Deliberately using an impressionable girl in such a way was unforgivable.
‘Hugh was devastated by her death,’ Veronica went on. ‘He came here and told me all about it as soon as it happened. He blamed himself dreadfully. He really did,’ she added, sensing Loretta’s scepticism. So that was how he got Veronica to accompany him to the inquest, Loretta was thinking. Hugh Puddephat had certainly known how to look after number one. ‘We were on better terms afterwards,’ Veronica said. ‘We used to go to the theatre together in London. I even thought he might have … got over it.’
Loretta shifted uneasily. As she had suspected, Veronica regarded homosexuality as an illness, something that could be shaken off. She said nothing.
‘Some time this year, it was in June, he even suggested that we spend a weekend together in Paris,’ Veronica said dreamily. ‘He wanted to stay in the flat where we spent our honeymoon - it belongs to an old friend of ours, someone who was at college with Hugh.’ Loretta’s ears pricked up: was she about to discover the truth about Veronica’s trip to Paris? ‘I borrowed the keys from Andrew,’ Veronica said. ‘Hugh hadn’t spoken to him for ages, and said it would sound better if I asked for them. He came here to collect them - he was going out a day earlier than me, you see. And then, about ten days before we were due to go, he cancelled the whole thing. He never explained why. I thought he’d got cold feet.’
Went to Paris with someone else, more like, Loretta thought cynically. It sounded to her as if the entire business had been a deliberate ruse to get hold of the keys on Puddephat’s part. He had almost certainly copied them, and sent the originals anonymously to Andrew. But why go to all that trouble? Something disreputable, she was sure. She felt a surge of sympath
y for Veronica.
‘I didn’t hear from him for a while,’ the other woman went on. ‘I though I’d leave him to sort himself out.’ Hope certainly does spring eternal in the human breast, Loretta thought wonderingly. Had it never occurred to Veronica that her husband really was a lost cause? ‘He rang up again some time in August,’ Veronica added. ‘He said he had to talk to me and I thought…’ She tailed off. What she had thought was all too painfully clear. ‘Anyway, when he got here he was very excited. I’ve never seen him so agitated. He told me he’d fallen in love. Yes, with a man,’ she added. ‘Or at least, a young man. He didn’t tell me anything about him, except to say he wanted to live with him as soon as he was old enough. He said it was what he’d always wanted, but he’d been afraid to face it. He even apologized for marrying me, said it has been a terrible mistake. He seemed to think living with this man would make everything all right. And then he …’ She stopped, and Loretta wondered what was coming next. ‘He said he wanted to have a baby, and he wanted me to be the mother.’ Seeing the amazement on Loretta’s face, she spelled it out more exactly. The idea was that they’d both come here, and we’d all drink champagne, and then … That way, you see, they wouldn’t know which one of them was the father. Hugh would move in while I had it - he said he was fonder of me than any other woman, so he’d like me to be its mother -and eventually he’d go off to live with his lover, baby and all. I would be able to visit it, of course. He wanted me to agree before he mentioned it to his lover. It was going to be a surprise for him.’
Loretta sat in appalled silence. Of all the things she had ever heard about Hugh Puddephat, this was unquestionably the worst. She had never encountered selfishness on such a grand scale. He must have been mad, she thought. And what about the lover, what would he have thought about it? Puddephat had apparently taken his acquiescence just as much for granted as Veronica’s. She spoke her thoughts aloud: ‘He must have been mad. There’s no other explanation.’