Masters of the House

by Robert Barnard

  She said it as if evaluating the performance of a new quiz show host. Matthew and Annie looked at each other as the service began. There would be no need to use the side door after the service. They could just tag along with Mrs Wainwright if the priest didn’t know her well. He would assume they were with her, were her children. The two began murmuring a prayer.

  The service, even with a new priest leading it, seemed familiar and comforting. It was a still point in a shifting, uncertain, uncomfortable world. To say and sing well-known words seemed like something to grip onto. When the service was over they trooped out in Mrs Wainwright’s wake, and outside in the sunlight they shook hands with the priest.

  “Hello, Mrs . . .”

  “Wainwright.”

  “And . . .?”

  “Matthew and Annie.”

  “Hello, Matthew and Annie.”

  That was all. It was dead simple. Outside on the steps leading to the road they looked around for people to talk to. But Mrs Wainwright stepped in with a better solution.

  “Why don’t you come back with me and have a cup of tea and some cake?” she asked. “My husband’s away on business, and I’m quite lonely in that big house.”

  “Oh, I don’t know . . .” Annie began.

  “You go,” said Matthew. It seemed an ideal opportunity. “I’d better be getting back to Dad. The littlies get a bit much for him after a while.”

  So Matthew started off in the direction of home. People clustered around St Joseph’s greeted him in a friendly way, and one of them said, “Tell your dad we miss him at the Irish Club.” That made Matthew think, as he speeded up to get home and assure himself that all was all right with the youngest ones. The Irish Club would be the ideal place to pick up any gossip that was going round about Mrs O’Keefe and her activities. On the other hand, he could hardly go along there on his own. Though they did from time to time have children’s parties. . . .

  Annie, meanwhile, had started off with Mrs Wainwright. The substantial semis in the vicinity of St Joseph’s were much in demand by Catholics, some of whom went to service at their church every morning. In the two-minute walk home, Mrs Wainwright picked up a neighbour, Emily Porter, a voluble spinster who lived with her aged father and kept house for him. Mrs Wainwright said that since her husband was away on a business trip she was relieved of the burden of the traditional Sunday roast. “It’s nice, of course, but nice to give it a miss as well.” Together they all settled down in the kitchen for tea and cakes and biscuits.

  “I was glad to hear that your dad’s coping all right,” said Mrs Wainwright, filling a kettle and fetching down tins of this and that. “He looked so poorly at the funeral.”

  “He was very upset,” said Annie. “And he’s never liked funerals. But he’s coping fine.”

  “Mrs O’Keefe says no one’s set eyes on him,” said Emily Porter.

  “Well, they wouldn’t, would they? He’s mum and dad to us now,” said Annie, thinking of the mumbling wreck in the little bedroom upstairs, more a child than a parent. “Mrs O’Keefe did come round one day, but Dad was out.”

  “Well, you want to watch that one,” said Miss Porter with gloomy relish, wagging a finger. “She’s probably out to get her claws into your dad.”

  Annie was conscious of an excess of tension in Mrs Wainwright’s back as she stood at her kitchen unit slicing up dark, fruity cake. That in itself told her something: Mrs Wainwright knew about her father and Mrs O’Keefe or at least had heard rumours, while Miss Porter had not.

  “Oh, she’d never manage to do that,” Annie said. “Dad’s not got over Mum’s death yet.”

  “Still, you want to watch out,” repeated Emily Porter, oblivious to her hostess’s disapproval. “She’s shameless, is Carmen O’Keefe. Remember a couple of years ago, Mary, when it was Joe Foster she was after? Well, she was more than after. They hardly made any secret of it. People saw them all over the place, practically bolted together. Everyone thought it disgusting. And him a good Catholic, and a married man with kiddies.”

  “Mrs O’Keefe has a husband, doesn’t she?” Annie asked.

  “Oh yes—Rob. He’s on the oil rigs. It’s when he’s away for long periods that she gets up to her tricks. Or mostly, anyway, because he’s a bit of a fool. It’s been going on for years—there’s a long line of men that have known more about her than they ought to, and we only know of the Catholic ones. I think it’s disgusting she still comes to church.”

  “She doesn’t very often,” said Mrs Wainwright, turning round to set out plates on the kitchen table. “She wasn’t there today, though her mother-in-law was.”

  “Oh, is Connie O’Keefe over?” asked Emily Porter. “That must mean Rob is back from the rigs. She’d never come over just to see Carmen. They put up a front, but they don’t get on. Maybe she’ll keep her in order while she’s here.”

  “And maybe she won’t,” said Mrs Wainwright, tight-lipped.

  “Yes, you’re right. Easier said than done. That big, strapping husband can’t do it, not when he’s around, so I don’t suppose Connie can make much impression.”

  “I don’t know what we’re talking about Carmen O’Keefe for,” said Mrs Wainwright, bringing the teapot to the table.

  “Oh, it was just her asking everybody if they’d seen Annie’s dad,” said Emily Porter, still oblivious to the tension. “Seemed odd to me, like she was interested in him. You keep your dad on the straight and narrow, Annie love.”

  Then they dropped the subject, and Annie was glad. She felt she had learnt quite enough and was beginning to feel awkward. She had never quite come to terms with the fact that she had a father who had affairs. It seemed all wrong to Annie, an upsetting of the proper order of things.

  Back home, putting together a cold Sunday lunch (“Summer’s coming—salads are nice in summer”), she said to Matthew, “She’s telling everyone she hasn’t seen Dad. And asking around to see if anyone else has.”

  Matthew thought, face screwed up.

  “Are they taking it seriously?”

  “I don’t think so. Not yet. They just think he’s busy—as he would be if . . .”

  “If he was taking care of us like he should be. . . . But it shows she’s suspicious herself.”

  “Yes. But we pretty well knew that.”

  “What else?”

  “She’s had a long line of . . . boyfriends. Everyone seems to know a bit of scandal about her. Miss Porter didn’t know anything about her and Dad, but Mrs Wainwright did, I’m sure.”

  “She’ll be on the ‘wives and mothers’ circuit. It’s them who’d be particularly concerned.”

  “Yes. Mrs O’Keefe’s husband is away most of the time. He’s on the oil rigs.”

  “Do you mean she’s pretty open about it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Matthew thought.

  “So there’s no chance of . . . using any information like that to make her keep quiet?”

  “No. They say she’s blatant. They said her mother-in-law is here at the moment, so she might be a bit more careful what she does. That might give us a breathing space.”

  “But that’s all it is, isn’t it? We’ve got to be realistic. At some stage she’s going to get really suspicious that no one’s seen Dad.”

  “Unless she loses interest. Someone like that might . . . she might just go on to another man.”

  But it was an unsatisfactory situation, and both of them felt it. It was like living on borrowed time, hoping against hope. There was now, indubitably, someone who suspected that something odd was going on in the house in Calverley Row. She couldn’t know—she must realise that it was perfectly possible that Dermot Heenan now hated the very thought of his affair with her and had forbidden the children to let her in, as they said—but she had smelt a rat. And Matthew, for one, suspected that she was not the type to leave well alone.

  So they went on with their unnatural life with fear in their hearts. Their deception had now become routine, like the ho
usework and the cooking and the supervision of Jamie and Greg. Things outside the set routine were apt to be forgotten, as Matthew realised one Sunday when he went to fetch the younger ones from the back garden and stood there surveying it, realising that it was on the way to becoming a wilderness.

  “We can’t let it go like we have done,” he said to Annie. “People will start talking.”

  That was the great danger. Their fear was the middle-class fear of fifty years ago: that people would talk about them.

  “I’ll do all the house duties today,” said Annie. “You do what needs to be done in the garden.”

  It was deciding what needed to be done that was difficult. The lawn was the easy thing: It needed cutting. It probably needed other things done to it as well, but getting it cut was the obvious first step. Matthew got the old hand mower out of the shed and gave it a rough going-over. There had been rain a couple of days before, so the going was hard; but it was a job he’d done quite often before, and he made some kind of a fist of it. Then he raked up the clippings and took them to the rubbish heap at the bottom of the garden.

  But what to do next? He knew the rosebushes should have been pruned long since, but he couldn’t find the scissor-things that you should do it with. He got a carving knife from the kitchen and hacked away with it for a bit, but when he had done over one bush, he surveyed his efforts and decided he was doing more harm than good. He got the kitchen scissors and cut off the dead flowers from the daffodils and tulips. Then he got the small garden fork and—after much doubt and indecision—got down on his knees and started weeding. Some weeds he recognised, some he gave the benefit of the doubt, and some flowers fell victim to his efforts. The important thing, he decided, standing up and surveying his efforts, was that the garden should show some evidence of work having been done on it. In fact, his efforts were noticed.

  “Hello . . . er . . . Matthew, is it?” came from the next-door garden.

  “Hello, Mr . . . er . . .”

  “Lovely day, isn’t it? Just right for that sort of work.”

  “Yes, lovely.”

  The exchange was characteristic of their relations with the neighbours they hardly knew. Matthew was glad that they hardly knew them, but glad, too, that he had been observed going about the ordinary business of living. The light was fading, and he decided to call it a day. As he washed his hands at the kitchen sink, he noticed he had left the knife on the window ledge outside. But Annie called him from the dining room to see a really clever drawing of Greg’s, and he forgot all about it. When Annie drew the kitchen curtains, as they drew all the curtains in the house every day, it was dark outside and she did not see it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  A Discovery

  “ANNIE!” Matthew called urgently up the stairs about nine o’clock that evening. Annie came out on to the landing from the bedroom Jamie shared with Greg. He had cried out in his sleep while she was putting Greg to bed, and she had taken him in her arms to soothe him.

  “What’s the matter?” she whispered down the stairs.

  “Did you hear anything?”

  “No. Jamie woke up, and I was talking to him a bit to get him back off. What kind of thing?”

  “I was in the front room, but I thought I heard something from the back. Like voices, or a voice. A sort of shout. Then, like something falling.”

  There was silence upstairs, then Annie came down to him, her face screwed up with consternation.

  “Are you sure?”

  “No. I suppose it could have been from next door. But we don’t hear much from there.”

  “Who’d be round the back at this time of night?”

  “It could be her, spying on us.”

  “Why spy on us so late?”

  “Because the lights are on. She could have been peeping through gaps in the curtains.”

  “I don’t leave gaps in the curtains. You know that. Anyway, she wouldn’t have seen anything. . . . But why would she shout?”

  “I don’t know. I think we should go and look.”

  Their eyes locked, fearfully; then they went to the kitchen. Matthew went to the back door and shouted, “Who’s there? Is there anybody there? What do you want?”

  There was no sound that they could distinguish. There was still the hum of traffic from the Leeds to Shipley Road and from the Ring Road.

  “It can’t have been anything,” said Annie. “Can’t we just forget it?”

  “No. It’d be worse not knowing if there’s anything there. I’ll go out and you guard the house.”

  “No, I’ll come.”

  They looked at each other again; then Matthew unlocked the kitchen door which let onto the path round to the back of the house. He peered out.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “You said round the back.”

  “Yes.”

  His legs felt like lead as he stepped through the door and onto the path. As he started round to the back garden, Annie came behind him and took his hand in hers. He stopped and pressed it. As they came to the corner of the kitchen wall, they peered into the murk, and then—

  “Christ!” Matthew’s gaze had fixed on the little patch of light under the kitchen window. “It’s her!”

  He had recognised the tight yellow blouse she had had on when she had pushed her way into the house. He ran down to her, his heart beating intolerably. She was lying scrunched up, her face lolling down onto the stone-dashed path and—cymbals clashing in his ears—he tried to turn her over. Her breast and side were disfigured by a monstrous red gash, still oozing blood. Matthew cried out, then tried to suppress his cry and stood up, leaning his forehead against the wall, his stomach retching. He sobbed and sobbed, keeping it as quiet as possible by instinct. Then he ran into the house, followed by Annie. As she locked the back door she heard him running upstairs and knew he was going to the lavatory. She stood in the kitchen, wondering, fearful, then went through to the living room, as far as possible from that terrible object.

  When Matthew came down she saw that he had washed his face, but he still looked white and drained.

  “We’ve got to think what to do,” he said.

  “What can we do? We’ll have to call the police.”

  He looked at her, perfectly still. It was a while before he spoke.

  “You realise that will be the end? There’ll be no alternative then. They’ll have to take us into care.”

  Annie bowed her head and started to weep.

  “Why is this happening to us?” she sobbed.

  Matthew felt a new excess of bitterness.

  “Because Dad failed us all. . . . I don’t think we should go to the police.”

  “But how can we not? The body out there . . .

  “She’s dead now. She’s no threat to us any longer. And nobody’s going to connect her with us. She’d had a whole string of boyfriends. If her husband found out . . .”

  Annie looked up sharply.

  “Matthew! Do you think that’s what happened? She came to spy on us, and her husband had found out about her and Dad, and followed her and—”

  “Someone did, didn’t they? It could have been him, or it could have been one of her boyfriends.”

  “Who had a knife with him?”

  Matthew shuffled.

  “Not necessarily. I left the kitchen knife on the windowsill this afternoon. I think . . . I think it’s under the body. . . . I think I saw the handle.”

  “Oh, Matthew!”

  “As soon as she’s found here the police will find out about Dad. You do realise that, don’t you? They’ll want to talk to him and they won’t take no for an answer.”

  “I know.”

  “I can drive the car.”

  “Don’t be silly, Matthew. Of course you can’t.”

  “Yes I can. Dad taught me to back it into the drive and then to put it back in the garage.”

  “I know, but that’s not driving. You couldn’t drive it on a real road.”

  “I could.” />
  “Anyway, it hasn’t been driven for months.”

  “Yes it has, you know it has. I put it in the drive a fortnight ago to make it look as if Dad had driven it somewhere.”

  “You said it was difficult to start.”

  “But it started. It’ll start again. There’s petrol in it, plenty of it.”

  “But, Matthew, on a road. With other cars . . .”

  “We’d wait. Wait until there’s hardly anything on the road. Midnight or later.”

  “Wait here? With . . . that out the back?”

  “Why not? She’s not going anywhere.”

  It was a remark totally uncharacteristic of Matthew. Brutal humour had never been his line. It would have distressed their mother. They both of them seemed to realise the change in them, because they looked at each other and simultaneously burst into tears, Matthew bending forward and crying into his lap.

  “What’s happening to us?” asked Annie again, through her tears.

  Matthew straightened up.

  “We’ve got to keep control. Of ourselves. Of what happens to us. If we can get rid of her, she’s gone from our lives.”

  “Where would we put her? Would we just leave her? Or should we try to hide her? Bury her?”

  She said it with an expression of concentrated thought on her face. Matthew recognised her words as a watershed. Suddenly it was on. It was decided. They would not call the police. They would somehow try to get rid of her. Annie looked up at him and recognised the change in her position. She wasn’t quite sure how it had happened, but now she agreed with Matthew that that was what they must do. They had no alternative.

  “Bury her, I think,” Matthew said. “There’s that big ploughed field on the way to Greengates.”

  “But . . .” Annie sat for a moment, picturing the place. “We’d have to park the car by the road and get . . . it out and over the wall, even before we started burying it. There’s cars going past on that road all the time. Even if we managed it, the headlights would pick us out while we buried her.”

  “That’s true,” agreed Matthew. Then he pondered for a bit. “What about the little wood by the supermarket? It wouldn’t be so easy digging there, but I could do it.”