The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

by Margaret Forster

  She had, next day, her one and only row with Charlotte about them. Driven to confide in someone – Tony would not be confided in on this taboo subject – she in desperation blurted out to Charlotte how worried she was about Mrs P. It was, she knew, a mistake – Charlotte might brightly ask you what was worrying you but she never meant it – but once she’d started she had to continue.

  ‘I know she’s moping in there thinking nobody cares.’

  ‘But you’ve been in, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And invited her to the party?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well then she can’t think you don’t care.’

  Charlotte smiled with satisfaction at her neat, tidy solution.

  ‘It takes more than that,’ Alice said. ‘She’s so dreadfully unhappy.’

  ‘She’s always struck me as just rather a bad-tempered old woman – always so sour. She looks like a cross frog.’

  ‘Maybe there are reasons why she looks cross.’

  ‘Nobody has to look cross. Everyone can manage a smile surely?’ – and Charlotte smiled to show how they could manage it.

  ‘No, quite often people can’t,’ Alice said, flushed and obstinate.

  ‘Mr Pendlebury does, poor old man. It must be dreadful for him putting up with her.’

  ‘It’s worse for her putting up with him – he doesn’t help her at all, he just wants a quiet life.’

  ‘I should think so too.’

  ‘Well, I don’t. I mean, if you love somebody –’ Alice flushed even redder, knowing one didn’t talk about love in everyday contexts ‘– you want to make them happy and help them get out of their depression.’

  ‘He should pack her off for a week somewhere. They’re not poor are they?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Well, that’s what he should do. I’ll tell him next time I see him.’

  ‘It wouldn’t really help. It’s inside herself, the trouble. She’s gone all her life with these feelings of persecution and –’

  ‘Oh goodness me, I must go, I’ve got to go to the hairdresser.’

  ‘I’m sorry I bored you.’

  ‘You didn’t bore me, you just bore yourself. I’d forget about it, if I were you.’

  ‘I know you would, but you’re not me, that’s the point.’ A quick, brittle smile and Charlotte left it at that.

  It was, anyway, impossible to forget. Quite apart from anything else, the banging started. Every night, about ten o’clock, there would be a horrible crashing against the wall where they had the sofa – a great, persistent thumping that went on and on. Not even Tony could ignore that. Alice was sure the Pens must be trying to attract attention and became unbearably anxious about them, so much so that Tony said he would ring up and find out, but as he went to the phone the banging stopped and they heard loud, angry voices instead. Tony said he couldn’t now ring up – people were entitled to have arguments. It became a nightly occurrence – loud bangs for up to half an hour followed by loud voices. Tony was amused, Alice terrified. He made jokes like Stanley at last taking the stick to Rose which Alice hated. They decided the banging was caused by a poker or some other solid, hard instrument being knocked against the old chimney that the Pens had never boarded up. They themselves had removed the fireplace and there was now a ventilation brick at the bottom of the chimney breast through which the noise was coming. It was impossible not to hear some of the words being shouted after the banging subsided, and they scared Alice most. The Pendleburys were a respectable, elderly couple who never, ever swore – beyond a mild ‘damn’ – and held it in abhorrence, yet distinctly, among a jumble of speech, could be heard ‘bloody’ this and ‘to hell’ that and ‘Christ knows’ and other harmless, mild but unmistakably bad language.

  Then, in February, the power cuts began, first only a couple of hours in the morning then another two or even three in the afternoon, and finally up to three lots of three hours each every day. The banging stopped, the shouting ceased, and instead, for hour on hour, Alice sat rigid listening to an endless wail. The wailing rose and fell, rhythmic, persistent, sometimes breaking off only to start again after a few minutes. ‘I can’t stand it,’ Alice said after the third evening, ‘it’s terrible, awful – we’ve got to do something, I don’t care if it is interfering.’

  ‘Perhaps they haven’t any candles,’ Tony suggested. ‘I expect they’re in the dark and freezing cold.’

  ‘Of course they are – that house is like a morgue even with their miserable little electric fires on. What do you think it’s like now?’

  ‘I’ll take some candles round.’

  ‘And that paraffin lamp – we can manage without that.’

  ‘We might need that if –’

  ‘I don’t care! Go on, take them, go on, Tony.’

  He went, at once, groping his way along the palings till he got to their hedge. The street looked pretty with all the candles flickering. In the Pendlebury windows no light of any kind shone. He knocked and rang but there was no answer. He couldn’t go back to a half hysterical Alice with candles and lamp still in his hands. Kneeling down, he peered through their letter-box but there was a wooden box behind blocking any sound. He’d shout till doomsday and they wouldn’t hear. Then he thought perhaps they were scared to answer the door whereas they might answer the phone, so he went back and rang them. The telephone rang and rang – they could hear it – but was never answered.

  ‘Oh this is ridiculous,’ Tony said, bad-tempered. ‘What’s the point of carrying on like this?’

  ‘Please,’ Alice pleaded.

  He rang again and after five full minutes, just as he was about to hang up, Stanley answered.

  ‘Hello, Mr Pendlebury,’ Tony said, cheerfully. ‘It was me ringing and knocking.’

  ‘Oh,’ Stanley said, quite calmly, ‘we wondered who it was.’

  ‘I was bringing you some candles and a paraffin lamp.’

  ‘Oh. That’s very kind of you.’

  ‘Do you need them? Would you like them?’

  ‘No, we’re all right.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have any lights on.’

  ‘No. We don’t need lights really. Not much point is there? It isn’t as if you can do anything.’

  ‘Well, it helps to see your way about.’

  ‘We don’t mind about that.’

  ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you then.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  Tony put the receiver down. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said, ‘the old bugger – you’d think I was after him instead of trying to help. That’s the last time I’m making a fool of myself for you. They can not for all I care.’

  ‘They’re in total darkness,’ Alice whispered, ‘just sitting there, in the dark, crying.’

  ‘Stanley wasn’t crying. He was quite perky.’

  ‘They must be so cold – and no telly and no light – oh God.’

  ‘Shut up about them. It’s entirely their own fault.’

  They went to bed soon after, before the power was restored. Miserable, Alice stared at the ceiling in the candlelight while Tony undressed. It was so dramatic when the lights went off, so cosy being without them. But not next door. Next door, power cuts were a return to the Dark Ages in every sense. They might as well be in a cave, crying with fear while outside monsters prowled and there was no magic fire to keep them away. She began to cry herself and had to turn away so Tony would not see. He blew out the candle and got into bed beside her. They lay, drowsy, lightly breathing, bodies warmly touching – until with the most ugly suddenness there was a crash outside and another crash, and they both clutched each other and sat up. ‘I’ve had enough,’ a voice cried, ‘I’ve had enough.’ It was cracked and strained, a voice produced against tremendous odds.

  ‘It’s Mrs P.,’ Alice whispered.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Outside – in the garden. The noise was the door banging.’

  Tony got up and went to the window.
He could see nothing in the absolute blackness.

  ‘She must have gone in again.’

  ‘No – listen.’

  They heard swishing sounds and sharp cracks as twigs snapped underfoot.

  ‘She must be in the garden.’

  Tony strained to make out any shape below. His breath steamed up the window pane and he kept having to rub it clear with his pyjama sleeve. His feet were cold and numb on the floorboards. Just as he was about to let the curtain drop, he saw a white, loose blob moving about in the next-door garden, floating this way and that, indistinct but unmistakable. He closed the curtain a fraction more as the moon came from behind a cloud and lit Mrs Pendlebury’s swaying figure. She began shouting again, raising her fists in the air and stretching it seemed to the sky.

  ‘I’ve – had – enough!’ she shouted. ‘Why can’t you leave us alone? Two seventy-year-old folk – why can’t you leave us alone?’

  ‘Don’t get up,’ Tony said, sharply, and got back into bed himself. ‘She’s crazy – try not to listen.’ But they listened as the threats began.

  ‘It’ll be the police tomorrow – that’s it – I’ve had enough, I’m fetching the police, they’ll get you, they’ll have you –’

  ‘Rose?’ Stanley’s reedy voice cut into the shouts. ‘Rose? Are you out there? Come in – come in.’

  ‘I’ve had enough, it’s the police tomorrow –’ The rest was lost in muffled crashes and bangs and one final slam of the back door. Their ears ached in the reclaimed silence.

  ‘He’ll have to get a doctor now,’ Alice said.

  ‘Of course he will.’

  ‘What do you suppose she meant, about the police?’

  ‘Just wandering. She probably thinks someone’s trying to murder her.’

  ‘What will they do?’

  ‘The police won’t do anything – but Stanley won’t send for the police. He’ll get the doctor and they’ll put her on sedatives.’

  ‘Poor old woman. Do you think we should –’

  ‘We should keep right out of it. It’s just as well this happened – it’s forced Stanley’s hand. She’ll get the medical treatment she needs now and Stanley will get some peace.’

  Peace was a long way off for Stanley as he struggled with the demented Rose. His one aim had been to get her inside at all costs – in the house and the door locked and bolted and then he could breathe easier. It only needed somebody to hear her like that and they’d have her in the loony bin faster than lightning. She didn’t seem to realize this, she thought everyone understood she was just a bit irritable.

  ‘You should watch your tongue,’ he said, when he had her inside, ‘it’ll land you in trouble. Now come to bed and be sensible. You’ll get your death of cold wandering about like that in your nightie.’

  But she stood with her back to the door, arms folded, her face somehow swollen and her eyes brilliant in the middle of its puffy redness.

  ‘I want the police,’ she said, her lips seeming to have difficulty with the words, which came out thickly as though she was drunk.

  ‘Don’t talk ridiculous. What’s all this about the police? I don’t know what’s got into you.’

  ‘I’ve had enough, they’ve broken things, they’ve stolen things, they’ve spied on me and interfered with my papers –’

  ‘What papers? What the devil are you on about?’

  ‘Frank’s letters and things, they’ve been at them, I know how I left them and it wasn’t like that, it could only have been them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Those Orams, that’s who, I never trusted him, it’s him and her but he put her up to it, he came in and rifled through my things, he –’

  ‘Stop it!’ said Stanley, almost growling with anger. ‘Do you hear me? Now shut your mouth, I want no more of that talk, it’s wicked and dangerous. I don’t know what idea you’ve got into your head but you can get it out, now.’

  She was weeping, shaking with sobs. Stanley felt drained. She leant heavily on him as he half dragged her upstairs and into bed, and then he crawled into his own bed and tried to shut out the noise of her crying. It went on and on until, his sympathy spent, he wanted to hit her or put a cushion over her head, anything to stop that moaning. He hoped, with his talent for going off the minute his head touched the pillow, that sleep would obliterate what his conscious mind could not, but for once in his life he stayed awake. There was too much to think about. Rose would need watching. He wouldn’t be able to let her out of his sight if she was liable to come out with drivel like that. Why had she gone off on that tack? What had the Orams said or done? They were her friends, Alice was like a daughter. It didn’t make sense. Perhaps he ought to let the doctor have a look at her, perhaps she needed a tonic to buck her up. It would be a terrible job getting her down to the surgery but even worse getting the doctor here without telling her and if he did tell her she would refuse to let him in. Perhaps that might be a good thing. Could the doctor after all be depended on to understand Rose? Might he not take it too seriously and have her taken away? It might be better just to let things ride, for the moment.

  Stanley let them ride not just for the moment but for the next few weeks. The day after the scene in the garden he met Alice and knew at once, the way she asked how Rose was, that she’d heard. He said she’d been a bit under the weather but was fine now and when Alice said shouldn’t she perhaps see a doctor, he laughed quite convincingly and said that would be a lot of fuss about nothing. But he held the doctor over Rose all the time. If she started crying or shouting or banging he told her straight that he was thinking of sending for the doctor and it worked a treat. She shut up straight away. During the power cuts he wasn’t so hard on her – he let her snivel away because he felt like snivelling himself with no telly on. The house was so cold that he wasn’t surprised she went to bed – he felt like doing it himself but hung on hoping to get at least the late TV shows. She was better off in bed with her hot water bottles anyway – it kept her out of mischief.

  Everything went quite well until one morning, a week or so later, when he was filling in his football pools. There was no power cut and he was nice and cosy with the fire on full blast and a schools programme on telly and a cup of tea at his side when he heard Rose shout, ‘Stanley – come quick – oh, this is too much!’ He felt bitter that she had to interrupt him now and waited, hoping she’d come and tell him whatever it was, but the shouts continued and he reluctantly got up and put a saucer over his tea and trudged off to find her.

  She was standing in the living-room, her hand flat against a pane of glass.

  ‘What’s wrong now?’ he said. ‘What’s up? What’s all the noise about?’

  ‘Look,’ she said dramatically, ‘look what they’ve done now – I thought I heard a noise in the night, it was them, him, doing that.’

  Stanley looked at the pane of glass. She had taken her hand away and was pointing at it. He felt, more than anything else, a deep embarrassment.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing wrong with the window.’

  ‘Nothing wrong? Is smashed nothing wrong? Look, I cut my hand feeling it.’ He knew without looking that there was nothing wrong with her hand.

  ‘Have a cup of tea,’ he suggested, ‘there’s still some in the pot. You sit there at the table and I’ll bring it in.’

  He was pouring the boiling water into the teapot to freshen what was left of the tea when she screamed and half the water went over his hand, scalding it.

  ‘What now?’ he said.

  Her hands were spread out on the top of the table. It was a round, mahogany table, highly polished.

  ‘Look, look,’ she said, ‘it’s all scratched, oh, how could they, how could they, they’ve taken a knife to it, such wickedness, such vandals, oh it’s too much – look Stanley, feel it, feel it – it’s ruined – fetch the polish, fetch the duster.’ He brought them. She polished the polished table frantically.

  ‘Do you think that’s better? Do you think th
ey’ve gone a bit?’

  ‘They’ve gone completely.’

  ‘No, no, they’re still there, oh what will it be next, what next?’

  Stanley felt sick. There was a great to-do for another hour afterwards but finally he got her to concentrate on the pie she was making for lunch and when he saw she was absorbed he left her and returned to his cold tea. He sat and supped it, regardless. Nausea had dried his throat out and he would have drunk anything. He hadn’t bothered arguing with Rose – experience had by now shown him that was no good. Better to let her run on and agree with her and then direct her interests elsewhere. But he couldn’t keep doing that, not all the time, and suppose he wasn’t here when she had one of these fits, suppose he was at the Club or out for a newspaper or doing the shopping? That was another thing – doing the shopping. He’d always been a bad shopper. Even if she just sent him for a half a pound of butter he always managed to get the wrong sort, but now she insisted he did all the shopping, on his own. She wouldn’t go out, absolutely refused. He had to toil backwards and forwards with heavy bags while she sat at home waiting to find fault.

  The sickness in his stomach had gone. He sat there with a Bito in his hand, fully intending to think things out and decide once and for all what must be done, but the trouble was he couldn’t keep his mind on the problem. It was always the same – his eye caught this or that and he became distracted and found, later, that he hadn’t been thinking about Rose at all. He was always hopeful that nothing else would happen and amazed when it did. Listening to his wife singing away in the kitchen he felt again that everything would blow over, otherwise how could she sing like that? All she needed was patience and he had plenty of that. It suddenly struck him that Rose might not remember what she said when she had one of her funny turns, and acting on the spur of the moment he went through to the kitchen.