‘When, eventually, I became ill both my doctor and my solicitor said that there must be a separation. Her brothers told Carrie that if she didn’t agree I’d take her to court and chance going through with a divorce, too, and so, after four years, I was what you call free. Yet, during that period, I was physically ill and my asthma attacks returned; but I managed to go back to teaching and through Gilly’s son my desire to live returned because I found there were different people in the world, even people who didn’t like horses’ – he smiled – ‘and those like Gilly and Natasha who repay small kindnesses with lifelong gratitude. So there you have my history. Life went on, bearable, but only just at times until, as I’ve impressed on you, the seventeenth of August.’
Hannah put her arms about him and brought his head onto her shoulders, and in a soft voice she said, ‘And here am I, moaning about my life.’
‘Oh’ – he put in quickly now – ‘you certainly had something to moan about with that man. He’s a sadistic individual, and that’s putting it mildly.’
She in turn now asked, ‘Have you seen her since the separation?’
‘Only once. I was about to board a train, at the Gare du Nord in Paris. Apparently she and Alex were waiting for the arrival of some friends when she caught sight of me, and anyone who didn’t know anything about her would have imagined from her greeting and the way she spoke that she was the most sane and charming person alive. “Why, darling!” she effused, “how lovely to see you again. Are you arriving or leaving?” And when I said leaving, she came back with, “Oh, can’t you put it off for a day or two? It would be lovely to have you to stay. We’re waiting for the Parkinsons . . . you know them. Wouldn’t it be lovely if he stayed, Alex?” And Alex said to me very quietly, “Hello, David.” And when I answered, “Hello there, Alex,” she cried at her brother, “Make him stay! It’s ages since we had a talk. What about it? Come on. Come on, David.”
‘She’d gripped my arm, and I recall saying quietly, “The train’s about to leave, Carrie; I must go.” And at this her charming attitude changed and, her voice rising, she almost yelled, “In one of your moods, are you? When did you ever do anything I wanted?”
‘It was a good job that Alex had fast hold of her at this point, for as I went to step up into the compartment she screamed at me, “Coward! Sadist! I’ll get you one of these days for what you’ve done to me.”
‘You can imagine the interest I aroused in that compartment. There was a long journey before me and I spent it mostly in the corridor.’
‘She . . . she sounds dangerous.’
‘Oh, she’s dangerous, all right. If it wasn’t for her brothers she would have been in a psychiatric hospital long before now, like her sister. When she’s normal there could not be a nicer person; the trouble is one didn’t really know when she was in a normal condition, for a wrong word or any fancied slight could trigger off one of her so-called turns.’
‘How long ago was that meeting in Paris?’
‘Oh, four years, and I’d hope it’ll be another four, or fourteen before I see her again. But then’ – he now caught hold of her hands – ‘from what you’ve told me today you could apply for a divorce tomorrow, and you wouldn’t feel any compunction in divorcing him now, would you?’
‘Oh no. Compunction indeed! I’d gladly do it tomorrow.’
‘Well, then, in that case I too would have to brave the elements, and file for a divorce. The time we’ve been parted would surely make things very easy, and there’d be no need to bring up her insanity as a plea, because I wouldn’t want to hurt the family unnecessarily. Just think’ – he jerked her towards him and held her tightly – ‘this time next year we could be together; no short weekends, no fleeting Thursday evening hours. We could be together for good and the days would be our own. We could do what we liked with them.’
Her gaze was cast downwards, and no matter how she tried, her imagination wouldn’t follow his. But she could see them together, though as yet only in this room . . . in this house. The inner voice on this occasion remained quiet.
Of a sudden she snuggled her face into his neck and when she murmured, ‘I love you, love you, love you,’ in answer he put his hand gently on her head, saying, ‘And I you, and every hair of your golden head.’
Chapter Eleven
At just on eleven o’clock on Monday morning Hannah found herself walking behind a nurse down a long narrow corridor, and the nurse was saying, ‘Mrs Drayton is expecting you. They’re in the annexe.’
She was now ushered into the small but well-furnished sitting room that gave on to a double French window and a private stretch of garden.
The nurse went to one of two doors at the far end of the room and, tapping on it, she said, ‘Your visitor has arrived, Mrs Drayton,’ and the answer came clearly to Hannah: ‘Thank you, Sister, I’ll be there in a moment.’
When the nurse who had now become a Sister had left the room, Hannah stood looking out of the French window, but when she heard the far door opening she turned to see Mrs Drayton, dressed in a smart blue two-piece suit, entering the room.
‘Good morning, Hannah. Are you admiring our garden?’ Before Hannah could give any reply Mrs Drayton went on, with a slight laugh, ‘We call it our garden because over the past few years we’ve seen such a lot of it and it’s so pleasant to sit in, quite private.’
‘Yes, it looks a lovely garden, and so sheltered.’
‘Yes, it is, very sheltered. Do sit down, my dear. Do sit down.’
Hannah sat down on a two-seater couch, and Mrs Drayton took a chair to the side of it. They were within an arm’s length of each other, which they hadn’t been for years, and Hannah noticed that although the older woman hadn’t seemed to age, what had altered was her voice. It had a less stringent tone; in fact, she told herself, it could almost be called warm. She now watched Mrs Drayton lay her hands palm on palm on her lap, then look towards the tall windows as she said, ‘D’you know, Hannah, as one gets older one’s opinions rarely change. If they were strong in one’s young days they remain strong, perhaps’ – there was a wry smile on her lips now as she added – ‘through perverseness if no longer through conviction. Another thing that seems to become more solid with the years is your opinion that nothing can surprise you . . . or no-one. You’ve dealt with all kinds of people through business and pleasure; you tell yourself that no facet of another’s character have you ever judged wrongly. Oh, no; you know people. Well, Hannah, I must admit that the reason you are sitting here now is that I have definitely been proved wrong, as has my husband. There’s an old-fashioned saying that I could quote that describes our feelings: we are cut to the bone by our discovery that we have been wrong, so terribly wrong.’
She now changed the position of her hands before going on: ‘I think I’d better start at the beginning of how this has come about. You see, Sister is leaving’ – she nodded towards the door through which Hannah had entered the room – ‘and she has been so good to us over the years. This is the annexe, you know.’ She now lifted one hand and spread it outwards before returning it to its place on her lap. ‘It has two bedrooms and this very comfortable little sitting room. The bathrooms are adjacent to our bedrooms, and then there is the addition of this very sweet garden; but topping these, the nursing here is very good. The Pines is noted for the professional staff it always employs, so I thought it would be very nice to give Sister some personal effect, such as a piece of jewellery, as a private going-away gift. But on Friday, when we arrived for this present stay, I found that I had come away without the piece. It was still in my jewel box. Now, as you know, Mrs Beggs is my housekeeper and she holds all the keys, except for the one to the safe, and my jewel box was in the safe, so there was nothing for it but for me to go home on Saturday morning. Now it hasn’t been a rule, it has just happened, that once we’re settled here we don’t go back to the house until my husband is well
enough. If I want anything I just phone for Mrs Beggs to bring it. But in this particular regard I had to go home myself. So I ordered a taxi; but I was somewhat surprised when, outside our gates, I saw another taxi waiting there. I therefore asked my driver to drive round to the back of the house. Looking back I don’t know why I didn’t get out of the taxi and just walk straight up to the front door, because Mrs Beggs rarely goes out on a Saturday morning. It is in her routine to do a little baking and as the daily woman doesn’t come on Saturday she’s always there to take any phone calls. And so I was made to wonder.
‘I always carry a set of spare keys in my handbag, the habit of a lifetime, so it was quite easy for me to unlock the garden gate, then the conservatory door, and enter my house that way; but I must confess that, being intrigued by the taxi and whoever might be visiting, I went in very quietly. Our conservatory is L-shaped and the farthest door leads into the hall. Well, I heard a voice coming from there and I made my way towards the door, but I didn’t go through into the hall, I stood and I listened, and as near as possible I will tell you what I heard. It was Mrs Beggs on the telephone. She said, “I had to get a taxi because, besides the odds and ends I baked today, there’s enough other stuff to keep you going for a week.”’
Mrs Drayton now took from her cuff a handkerchief and dabbed at the moisture on her upper lip before continuing. ‘There followed a silence. Someone at the other end was talking; and then Mrs Beggs said, “It’s this postnatal business. You know what it was like last time and you also know it goes. Anyway, I must go, too. Tell Humphrey to be at the gate in about fifteen minutes. I won’t come in because you never know when she decides that she wants something. Anyway, dear, it can’t go on forever. And, Daisy . . . ”’
Mrs Drayton now spread out both her palms towards Hannah, saying, ‘I couldn’t hear what was said next. It must have been in a very low voice or a whisper, but it ended with, “His leg’s in a bad condition, so you tell Humphrey what I said. Bye-bye, dear. Bye-bye.”’
Hannah said nothing. She sat looking at this elderly woman who might be nearing eighty but certainly didn’t look it, except that the expression now on her face was one of pain when she said, ‘Your husband, my dear, when he was a boy, was our dear Humphrey. He was the son I was never able to give my husband, so therefore it has been with great difficulty I’ve had to make my husband realise that his dear boy is a liar, a cheat, an immoral man, and I can say that at this moment I think of him as every inch a scoundrel.’
‘Please don’t distress yourself, Mrs Drayton.’
‘Distress myself, my dear? I am dumbfounded; yet I’ve had my doubts for a long time. You see, I know Daisy. D’you remember Mrs Beggs having a daughter named Daisy?’
‘Yes, I do; and I remember she married your gardener, the younger one.’
‘Mrs Beggs,’ said Mrs Drayton now, ‘was supposedly left a widow with a very young daughter when I engaged her as housemaid. I soon found out that she was lying; she’d never been married. The child was illegitimate. But in spite of our views of them, as you know, I kept her on because she was a good worker and she needed a home. At first she repaid my kindness with her work and loyalty. That was until her daughter came on the scene at seventeen. In the meantime, she’d been brought up by an aunt. Now at that time Humphrey was a young and impressionable man, and Daisy was a flirtatious girl. I didn’t know that an association between them was being encouraged by Mrs Beggs, but when we saw how things were shaping my husband decided that Humphrey should do another year of accountancy training before joining a firm in London, a firm with which my husband had been associated.
‘Well, in the meantime, Miss Daisy was lost for male company and she set her sights on the gardener, just to pass the time, I think, until Humphrey returned. But being who she was and the young gardener who he was, she became pregnant. He married her, but when she lost her baby he walked out on her. I can’t tell you whether or not they were divorced, but Mrs Beggs was very indignant about all this and supposedly cast off her daughter for good and all. One thing was very plain, though – Humphrey was greatly distressed by the girl’s marriage, and for a time we thought he was going to have a breakdown. Then time passed and he took a post in London, and it was there that he happened to meet you. Now you are a very presentable girl and I could understand his being attracted to you, but’ – she smiled here – ‘I had, as I think I made plain to you and very tactlessly, my dear, I am sorry to say, something against blondes. You see, at one time I was director of our company, and if there was ever any trouble it was always’ —she smiled again – ‘with a blonde. The blondes seemed, to my mind then, to break up marriages as a yearly pastime, so we weren’t at all pleased with Humphrey’s choice, although at first there was nothing in your manner or bearing that gave us cause to dislike you. Not until about a year after you were married did Humphrey’s weekend visits become chequered. Before this he had been so glad to come home and spend time with my husband, mostly talking business, I must admit, and so we used to look forward to the weekends. Then it emerged that Humphrey’s wife was, as all blondes are, a flighty piece.’
She now leant forward to Hannah, saying, ‘Forgive the assumption, Hannah, please, but if you’re told a thing often enough you can’t help but believe there’s no smoke without fire. Whereas he had seemed to keep you in control, you were beginning to demand all his time, and he was obliged to entertain you on a Saturday. The only time he could call his own was his Thursday evening bridge game with his associates at the office.’
Hannah had now pulled herself to the front of the couch and was holding her face with one hand.
‘Then there were the Sundays,’ Mrs Drayton continued. ‘Sunday mornings apparently were spent at your sister’s. Sometimes he managed to avoid having lunch there, when he would come on to us. But then he would have to pick you up at about six o’clock because by that time apparently you had had more than enough of your coarse brother-in-law and their four children.
‘And then, my dear, there was your extravagance. Now, he never asked after the first loan, which quite truthfully he said he could not see himself ever being able to pay back. Of course, in the first place my husband had pooh-poohed the idea that he should ever think about paying him back. But following this there would be times when he was very worried about your extravagance. You had a habit of running up bills. You would order goods, unnecessary articles for the house. You were always changing curtains and things like that and at the best shops; so on such occasions a cheque was always pressed into his hand, from my husband, I may say, because I did not agree with his loaning or giving, and there were times when I dared to suspect something wasn’t right. And lately, of course, you have been buying the most expensive clothes, and he’s been receiving the bills. Now, my dear, don’t mind my saying this, but that is a very expensive suit you have on, may I ask – and please forgive me if I’m wrong – whether he bought that for you?’
Hannah was on her feet. ‘Mrs Drayton, he has never bought me a single decent thing to wear during our marriage. I’ve had to beg him for enough money for a summer or a winter change. He didn’t want me to go out to work, but he didn’t give me money for clothes or anything like that, and he saw to all the housekeeping. What money I had was from my occasional spare-time secretarial work; and just lately I was paid two hundred pounds advance royalties on my children’s book, which is going to be published.’
Mrs Drayton was now on her feet. ‘You’re having a book published, my dear? Oh, my dear. May I ask you, Hannah’ – Mrs Drayton was now holding Hannah’s hand – ‘would you come into the bedroom and repeat this to my husband, as well as all that you have told me?’
‘Yes. Yes, I will if you think it wise and won’t upset him too much.’
‘He cannot be more upset than he is already, my dear. Come along.’
Mr Drayton was propped up in bed, and over his legs was a cage supportin
g the bedclothes. He was very thin and certainly looked his age, which she understood to be about eighty-five.
‘Here’s Hannah to have a talk with you, George.’
‘Good morning, Hannah.’
‘Good morning, Mr Drayton.’
‘Sit down here, my dear.’ Mrs Drayton drew a chair up to the head of the bed, adding, ‘He’s slightly deaf in his right ear.’
‘George, Hannah has been telling me that she’s going to have a children’s book published.’
‘A book published? My dear, my dear; this is amazing. When did this happen?’
‘Oh.’ She smiled at the old man now, saying, ‘I can give you the exact date; it was on Thursday the seventeenth of August. That is when it happened; at least, when I took it to the publisher.’
‘Oh, that’s surprising. That is surprising.’
‘And she was given a two-hundred-pound advance, George.’ George Drayton looked up at his wife, saying, ‘Two hundred pounds! That’s very good for a children’s book. Who’s the publisher?’
‘It’s a Mr Gillyman. He only publishes a few books, as he says, and he is—’
The Thursday Friend Page 19