The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

by Margaret Forster

  ‘You’ll be all right then.’

  ‘I’ve been for the bread, haven’t I?’

  ‘Have you done anything else?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Did you get it at Barkers like I said?’

  ‘I did – there you are, it says Barkers on the bag. If that isn’t proof I don’t know what is.’

  ‘Well then, Barkers is next door to the travel agents.’

  ‘I know it is.’

  ‘Did you call there?’

  ‘What for, you said a loaf and I got a loaf. Why should I call at the travel agents?’

  Rose let him think about that for a bit. While he was thinking, she got the lunch going and set the table. Stanley stood still looking stupid for a while and then sat down.

  ‘I suppose you mean about Australia.’

  ‘Give him a banana.’

  ‘No need to be rude. Well, there’s no hurry for Australia. I can go in there any time.’

  ‘Or no time.’

  ‘No need to go in on a roasting day like this.’

  ‘Or a cold one, or a windy one, or a wet one. Excuses, excuses, excuses. Eat your lunch.’

  ‘You’ve put me off, being nasty.’

  ‘That’ll be the day.’

  She watched him take the knife and fork up and begin to eat in his slow thorough way. It would drive Veronica mad.

  ‘It might be better to wait till next year,’ he said. ‘I was talking to a chap at the Club and he was saying they’re clamping down on these charter flights. You have to be careful, we could get caught.’

  She regarded him with quite naked contempt. Her face was ugly. It scared Stanley just to look at her.

  ‘Now what’s up?’ he asked. ‘You look enough to frighten the devil. I don’t know what’s got into you lately, you’re back to your old ways.’

  ‘I was reading in your paper about an old lady of eighty-two who lived in a room with no heat.’

  ‘Not that again.’

  ‘I’m seventy next birthday, I thought. I’ve twelve years. With a bit of luck you might fix up for us to go to Australia by then. If I’m dead you might get cheap rates for my coffin.’

  ‘No need to be sarky,’ Stanley said.

  ‘No need for anything,’ she said.

  He wished she would shout. That quiet voice was the one he hated.

  ‘How was Alice and little Amy?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t hide behind them.’

  ‘I’m not hiding, I asked a civil question.’

  ‘They’re all right.’

  ‘Did they have a good holiday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When’s she coming over? It’s a while since I’ve seen her. I expect she’s talking ten to the dozen.’

  Amy did come over, later in the afternoon. Rose kept out of the way, deliberately, watching Stanley with her. He was soon bored. His one ambition was to stay in his chair. He wouldn’t get up and look at anything, he wouldn’t get up to play, he wouldn’t fetch balls when they got stuck or chase butterflies or pick flowers. He was a dead loss. All he wanted to do was sit on his beam end. When she reckoned he was really fed up, when his bluff was called, Rose trotted out and launched herself into strenuous romps with Amy. How the child came to life! See, Stanley, she wanted to shout, see how she laughs, how her cheeks glow, how she jumps and claps her hands? You can’t do that, can you, you and your I-haven’t-seen-the-little-thing-for-ages. You’ve got no give in you, no go, no interest. For an hour Rose gave an exhibition of such amazing versatility that Alice was moved to look over the wall. There was no doubt Mrs P. was in her element entertaining Amy – more than entertaining, participating at a two-year-old level. No wonder the child adored her. Mr P., sitting in his chair, must be highly diverted.

  But Stanley was not. He was uneasy. Rose’s performance frightened him, that and her funny look over lunch. There was a shower over her head, as his mother would have said. There would be tears before nightfall at this rate, and just when she seemed on an even keel. What had gone wrong lately? Nothing. He couldn’t put his finger on a thing. The weather was lovely, she had her garden, she had him better and Australia to look forward to. Australia couldn’t possibly be it. She hadn’t mentioned it for ages till today. Anyway, he wouldn’t be rushed, not at that price. Besides, if she was sickening for something it might be wise to wait. Frank wouldn’t thank him for taking her out there not in A1 condition. But she seemed healthy enough – she couldn’t run round like that if she wasn’t. It was just in her ways she was odd.

  Odd. Queer. A bit funny. Stanley fought the words. It was Elsie who had first put the notion into his head. ‘Rose can be a bit peculiar these days,’ she had said, ‘a bit disturbed. You should get her seen to.’ He had been as close to furious as he knew how, but the observation had stuck. Elsie meant sick in the head. He had watched the same telly programme himself, about mental breakdowns. What he would have liked to have pointed out to Elsie – a busybody as Rose had always said – was that Rose had no pressures on her. That was the point. She might be a bit moody, a bit eccentric now and again, but she was stable enough. The chap on the telly had made it plain that it was pressure pushed people over the edge. They might get there themselves but pressure of one sort or another pushed them over and to get them back again you had to isolate and remove the pressure.

  Rose had everything she wanted. He was quite confident about that. Naturally, if Frank could have lived next door and Ellen the other side that would have been better, but this side of that kind of heaven she had everything she wanted. They led a quiet life which suited her perfectly. They had their little pleasures – the garden, good food, outings – they were quite content. No pressures at all. Health might be a worry, but he couldn’t see that it was, not really. She had her aches and pains, there were her eyes, but that was all. There was nothing to account for this lapse of behaviour, but that was assuredly all it was.

  All that evening Rose barely spoke to Stanley. She did her duties as she ought – a meal was provided, cleared away, washed up, tea given – and she spoke when she was spoken to. He could fault her on nothing, she took good care to see to that. Meanwhile, she hugged to herself her secret, endlessly debating when she should tell him. She was tempted to wait until the letter arrived, which could be anything up to two weeks the way the posts were. She pictured Stanley’s amazement as he read the letter: probably he would still be in bed when the post came and when he came down he would say, had he heard the postman and she would say, very casually, that he had and that there was a letter from Frank but she hadn’t had time to open it. That would surprise him but he would see it was still stuck down. He would open it, making a mess of the envelope as he always did, and then he would read the news and his mouth would drop open in that silly way and his lips move and then he would say she didn’t know what Frank had gone and done. That would be her big moment. She would say she’d known for two weeks and then what a retracing of the intervening time there would be.

  Well, it was one possibility. There were others. She could tell him now, but he didn’t deserve it. She could tell him tomorrow. If she waited longer than tomorrow she would have to wait two weeks. She couldn’t decide. Sitting watching him slumped in front of that goddamn telly she was waiting for a sign, and thinking that anyway she could tell Alice.

  ‘I don’t really think I want to go out tomorrow night,’ Alice said. ‘I’m too uncomfortable. I can’t sit still and I can’t eat and I don’t see the point.’ Tony shrugged. ‘I’ll drop the Pens a note,’ she went on, ‘otherwise I’ll have to talk to Mrs P. for hours telling her not to come.’ Listlessly, she picked petals off a rose. ‘It seems such an effort lately. She will go on about what I ought to be doing about Amy’s tantrums, it drives me crazy. And it’s such a strain letting her pretend she’s broad-minded and frank and honest when she’s so bigoted. Today she said was Charlotte a Catholic, and when I said I’d no idea she was full of significant nods. Makes me sick.’ />
  ‘What did Laura think of her?’

  ‘Laura hardly saw her – she jumped up like a frightened mouse and ran for it. She’s so annoying when she does that very humble person act. I can just imagine the rage she was in when she got home, persuading herself she’d been slighted when she was doing the slighting. Then in the garden – it made me feel ill watching her, she was hysterical rushing up and down with Amy, showing off like a child. I could see old Stanley didn’t like it either. I wanted to go and drag Amy away.’

  ‘But you can’t do that, it wouldn’t fit in with your image as a shining saint.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be horrible. I’m fed up.’

  They were sitting in their splendid sitting-room, idle. Outside the sun still shone but the garden seemed to have lost its charm for Alice that year. Everything had lost its charm. Looking at her, Tony thought that though the line of her pregnant body was beautiful as she lay on the sofa, her long sprigged dress dropping on either side, her face was drawn. She didn’t stand up to childbearing very well. He would be glad when the child was safely born and she regained her energy and bloom – except that itself only came back slowly.

  ‘Laura’s made a good job of this room,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t have done better myself.’

  ‘Tell her.’

  ‘She couldn’t care less whether I like it or not as long as it’s to her own Good Taste. Actually I think she must have had a minor lapse when she was organizing this floor and those curtains – it’s not her at all. That’s what I like about it.’

  ‘Mrs P. chose the curtains. Laura wanted plain white and I didn’t know what I wanted as usual and Mrs P. happened to be in the day I had to decide between the six samples Laura left and she just pointed to the brown and orange and I thought, she’s right. The funny thing was, Laura thought so too in the end. I cheated of course – I pretended I’d chosen them all by myself.’

  ‘I didn’t know Mrs P. was so decisive.’

  ‘Oh, she’s decisive. She makes all the decisions next door. Stanley just does what she wants.’

  ‘Like I do.’

  Immediately her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Oh now come on – it was only a joke.’ He came over to her and held her hands. ‘Hey, come on, I was teasing.’ But her tears fell without stopping. ‘I do exactly what I want to do,’ he said, ‘You’re the most unbossy woman I’ve ever met in my life. I was just trying to make a cheap joke.’ Still she cried and he had to let her and hold her until she had finished. He felt shocked and could not stop himself saying, ‘How could that make you cry so much?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s thinking about us being old, being the Pens. It’s so pathetic.’

  ‘But we won’t be pathetic, we’ll be lovely. You’ll be a gorgeous old lady and I’ll be a dapper old gent and it’ll make people feel good just to look at us, proper Darby and Joan stuff.’

  ‘One of us might die.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Alice.’

  She was crying again. ‘Rose might die and what would Stanley do? Imagine his life. Or Stanley might die and she’d just shut herself up like an animal.’

  ‘Now look – stop it – you’re getting ridiculously upset and it’s not all pregnancy blues. You’ll have to stop having anything to do with the Pendleburys if you’re going to let them get on your nerves like this. We never seem to talk about anything else except those two.’

  But she wasn’t listening.

  ‘It’s like you’ve always said, there isn’t any point to anything.’

  ‘That’s only half – there isn’t any point so you might as well enjoy yourself, be the complete hedonist.’

  ‘Like Stanley. Mrs P. is always saying all he does is enjoy himself.’ Her sobbing came on again like a gale.

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Tony, exasperated.

  ‘His – enjoying – himself – it’s telly and bingo – and – and – being nagged to death and a day at the seaside – oh it’s awful.’

  ‘Sounds lovely to me.’

  ‘Don’t say that! Don’t! Stop it!’

  Tony stared at his wife with total disbelief. Her face was scarlet, her features contorted, tears streamed from her eyes and she drummed her fists viciously on his arm. He freed himself and got up and went to the window. Such ugliness was unfaceable. He didn’t want to turn round until silence told him that she had composed herself. But he waited a long time. The sobs still came in gusts, and then there were long drawn-out hiccups and groans and endless snuffles and sniffs before the attack was over. When only the smallest of rustles could be heard he looked over his shoulder, determined, until he saw her, not yet to go to her. But when the extent of her misery showed itself in the damp hair and blotchy face and pinched mouth, he went across and knelt down beside her. She started to say she was sorry but he shushed her and eventually she went to sleep.

  He felt exhausted, as though he had done all the crying. What made him angry was that it was all about nothing. It disturbed him that Alice could be capable of such lack of proportion, that all this could have started from one innocent remark. She felt so deeply about even the most shallow things, that was the trouble, and hardly anyone guessed. Watchdog Laura, so intent on taking her mother’s place, knew and protected her sister in a way that had always surprised him. He had resented Laura’s care as interference until he realized it was genuine solicitude and then he was touched by it, though his ego was hurt when he appreciated that Laura only carried out her self-appointed task because she didn’t trust him to do it. She was right. He might love Alice but he couldn’t handle her at a time like this – he couldn’t give her confidence as Laura could. This distressed him. When an outburst was long over he had ventured to tell Alice how helpless he felt and confessed to her the pain his inadequacy caused him, but she was always embarrassed and liked to pretend it had never happened so they never got very far.

  Next door, the Pendleburys had their television on very loudly. He felt irrationally angry. Alice was asleep, they had no consideration – he longed to bang on the wall or ring up and complain. They took his wife for granted – she was always so bright and cheerful with them, so kind, so anxious about their welfare and they didn’t give a damn, not a damn. He found himself actually standing with his hand on the telephone until the sheer absurdity of his attitude saved him from himself. Alice was soundly asleep, nothing would waken her. He would be better occupied putting her to bed than giving way to such pettiness. Alice was never petty. Her understanding never failed to shame him. With some difficulty he managed to lift her off the sofa and on to their bed. She stirred but put her arms round his neck like Amy did and he felt happy and proud.

  Alice’s baby was born that night, two months prematurely. He lived for three hours and then died. Tony came home at midday like a man shell-shocked, carrying Amy in his arms. Her hands were clasped round the back of his neck and it was that which made him cry the minute they were home.

  Rose had rung Alice’s bell three times but there had been no answer. She could not believe it. Wednesday, eleven o’clock, and no answer. She had been stood up. The pain of it made her tremble. She charged off the doorstep as though jet-propelled and rushed round the corner to the shops where, in her distress, she bought a great many things she did not need. Coming back, she could hardly bear to look at No. 8. Her head down, she scurried past, hurt and upset. Alice had forgotten, probably gone out and forgotten. It was easily done, she supposed, though she had never done it herself, people did forget. But what could have made her forget? She wouldn’t call again – let Alice come to her senses and realize. Oh, she’d be round quick enough then apologizing, but the damage was done. She’d been treated like dirt, made to look small.

  She said nothing to Stanley. There had been such queues at the shops it had taken her the best part of an hour shopping. He thought she had been next door and she wasn’t going to tell him she hadn’t, why should she. He would just drive her mad thinking up excuses for Alice, as if
she cared. There were now so many important things that she couldn’t talk to him about that she had to keep her mouth firmly shut. Working helped, as it always did. She cleaned her kitchen cupboards out, singing loudly to drown her own thoughts. The singing was harsh, out of tune, but in the mood she was in she took pleasure in mauling the tune. She had been too happy this year. They – They, whoever They were – They had seen this and were cutting her down to size. She’d gone all sloppy after Stanley’s illness, really soft in the head, lost her wits as Elsie had tried to tell her. She’d overstepped the mark in trying to change. Change was all very well but it could be carried too far. She had got dependent on next door, that was it. Well, when Alice came she wouldn’t make a fuss. Definitely not – no sulking. She’d say it didn’t matter a bit and be gracious and laugh. But she had got the message, thank you very much.

  It did enter Rose’s head that it was very quiet next door and had been since first thing. Usually, there was a certain amount of noise, what with Amy running in and out banging the back door and Alice calling to her and crashing and banging as things fell over under the impetus of a two-year-old’s clumsiness. That morning, there hadn’t been a sound, except for her own clatter. Under cover of putting crumbs out for the birds, Rose surreptitiously looked up at the windows next door. They were all closed, all the curtains were closed – Amy’s bedroom at the top, Alice’s below and the kitchen blind. Now a little disturbed, but still aggrieved, Rose went to put empty milk bottles out though she knew the milkman had been and gone. His car was there. Furthermore, the three daily pints of milk still stood on the doorstep and the newspaper was stuck in the door. Now why hadn’t she noticed that before? She’d been looking the other way when she rang the bell, that was it.

  The situation needed rethought. Rose felt muddled. Something was up, that was clear. Perhaps she had been too hasty in her judgement, but whatever it was that had happened it wouldn’t have taken a minute to tell her. Her anger started working itself up again, just as Stanley came in from one of his silly errands. He immediately irritated her the way he stood in her kitchen looking like a bag of bones.