by Judy Astley
‘Not much actually happened, not actually,’ Tom muttered. ‘Things just got ever so slightly out of hand.’
Heather felt ridiculously inclined to giggle like a smutty child at his choice of phrase and put it down to nerves. ‘I wouldn’t do anything to put you at risk.’ he added.
‘Oh thank you so much for that. Goodness I am grateful.’ She resorted to heavy, heartfelt sarcasm. ‘Actually I don’t know what to be at all. There’s probably a helpline one’s supposed to ring for bloody counselling about this sort of thing,’ she said, sitting heavily down on the bed and wondering when they would all be grown up enough to accept that romance was just a shimmering layer on the top of otherwise fairly murky water.
Tom shifted warily towards her. ‘God I’m sorry. I’m not surprised you’re angry. I mean I would . . .’
Heather got up and paced to the window and back. ‘Would what? Be slightly miffed if I trotted off for a spot of girls-together afternoon fun with, oh, who? let’s say Julia Merriman.’ No, let’s not, she suddenly thought. Her mouth started twitching into an involuntary smile at the very idea and she turned away to play with the curtain. She accepted that justified outrage at Tom was watered down by her own guilt, but couldn’t allow it to be further diluted by an intrusive sense of farce as well.
‘No I mean you and well, anyone else. Unfair I know.’ She heard him sigh and waited for him to move on to explaining.
‘It was just rather flattering, at first. But then of course as soon as I’d shown a bit of interest, it was all too intense.’ He grinned nervously, as if afraid to gauge her reaction, ‘Hughie is simply looking for Captain Right. It couldn’t possibly be me.’
‘Poor Hughie,’ Heather commented, returning to sit beside him on the bed, ‘you’ve hurt him.’
‘I’ve hurt you. And I’m sorry,’ he said, reaching across and touching the back of her neck carefully as if afraid she’d flinch and recoil. I’d have hurt you, too, terribly badly, if things had gone the way I’d planned, she told herself, but not him. Tom, sensing that his sins might eventually be forgiven, if not forgotten, smiled at her looking, she thought, rather like a grateful child let off a naughty deed by his mummy. But I’m not his mummy, Heather thought, wondering if all wives had to put up with an element of this. In some men, she knew, it took the form of boyish little questions like ‘Have I got a clean shirt?’ or regarding the sharing of domestic chores as ‘helping’. In Tom, right now, it was a matter of off-loading guilt – clearing out his emotional toybox and waiting for Heather to tell him he was such a good boy. ‘Bloody Hughie,’ he declared suddenly, as if, confession safely over, blame could now be successfully reallocated. ‘Why ever did he have to go blurting it all out to you?’
‘Do you mean that simple phrase: “what I never knew could never have hurt me?”’ Heather asked, feeling at a loss in the face of such blatant naivety. How new to deception he must be. In which case, how much luckier she, with her trunk-load of untidy secrets, was than Tom.
Tamsin came round to see Suzy about last-minute arrangements for the night on the island just as she was getting ready to go to the funeral. Suzy wore a dark blue pinafore dress which looked, she thought, terrific with a T-shirt under it, but completely, humiliatingly infant-school with the white blouse and Peter Pan collar that her mother insisted she wore. She sulked down to the hall to talk to Tamsin, who snorted with laughter at her.
‘What do you look like?’ she said. ‘You look about nine!’
‘It’s only for a couple of hours. Gran thinks being smart shows respect.’ The dress would never feel the same again, she thought miserably, whatever stunning little top she wore underneath it. She’d forever associate it with these awful bulbous sleeves that were just a tiny bit, uncomfortably too short when the horrible pearl buttons were fastened.
‘Yeah but . . .’ Tamsin, in violet leggings and a bottom-covering Take That! sweatshirt, looked her up and down as if she’d never seen anything like it.
‘Anyway what do you want?’ Suzy asked her, keeping her hovering on the doorstep in case Delia came and saw her and made a fuss about Visitors at Such a Time. The cars would be coming any minute.
‘You still on for tonight?’ Tamsin asked anxiously, as well she might be, Suzy judged. ‘It’s all fixed, Simon’s organized it and everything. Don’t forget your torch or your lantern and that. And bring some food.’ She stopped and giggled slightly. ‘Don’t come dressed like that, will you? I mean your chances with Simon are already zero, you don’t want them to go down to a minus.’
Suzy glanced round the hall behind her. No-one was on the stairs, no sign of her gran or parents. ‘Look Tam, I’ve got to go now. Er . . . oh yes, my new lamp and loads of chocolate, they’re in here, come in and take them with you now if you like.’ She invited Tamsin in, opening the door and listening carefully for household noises. She pointed to the dining-room door, knowing the chocolate bait would be completely irresistible. ‘It’s all in there, on the table. Bye . . .’ And so she was halfway up the stairs before she heard Tamsin screaming and everyone else came running.
‘Yes!’ she whispered loudly to herself in the safety of her bedroom, punching the air with the satisfaction of sweet revenge.
Heather sat in the back of the Daimler between her mother and Tom, feeling hot and sticky in her navy silk suit. She was aware of the soapy scent of her deodorant, which made her feel as if she was getting clammy under her arms. Delia, in a hat made entirely of bluish feathers that Kate was horribly sure were magpie, glared through the windscreen ahead at the hearse containing Uncle Edward, furious that the cars were too pale a grey instead of the more traditional black. American influence, she assumed. Heather was glaring at the driver – a thoughtful undertaker who, having carefully supervised the removal of the coffin from the house, had polished the dining-room table with what looked disgustingly like a much used handkerchief and left the room smelling strongly of Silk Cut.
Heather turned her unholy thoughts towards Iain, who seemed to have disappeared from her life again. Not a word since That Night. He must have realized she was practically throwing herself at him and gone into hiding. Or just gone – the film people were now in the process of breaking camp. Maybe in the restaurant he’d had a glimpse of the contents of her handbag, caught sight of the lacy black edge of her favourite bedtime-fun knickers and been frightened away. All evening he’d seemed to be on the edge of saying something that needed saying, but hadn’t got round to it. Perhaps the word he’d had such trouble with had been ‘Goodbye’, though she couldn’t think why – he hadn’t had any problem with it the last time they’d separated.
At the crematorium, only Kate looked as if she was having appropriate soulful thoughts about the sad transience of earthly life. Her face looked sorrowful and pale, and she listened to the short service with her oval face tipped sideways, like a serene Madonna in a holy portrait. Big gruff men in black overcoats and dark suits made up the numbers from Edward’s British Legion, along with a bearded gingery warden from his sheltered housing who had brought along several of his neighbours in a mini-bus. Tom was fidgety, and Heather guessed he could hardly wait to get back home to the Test Match on TV. Suzy, she could see, wasn’t concentrating at all on the procedures, but was reading the waxy marble plaques dedicated to the memories of the district’s worthier citizens. When the awful theatrical moment came, of the purple velvet gold-fringed curtains swishing back and the coffin, whirring and clicking on its conveyor belt, trundled through the doors, Suzy gasped loudly and gripped her mother’s hand. Heather put an arm round her and patted her gently for comfort, but Suzy stretched up and whispered to her, ‘It looks just like a puppet theatre, doesn’t it?’
‘Well that’s over, then,’ Delia announced as Tom unlocked the front door and they all went in, casting off hats and jackets as they went, and gladly abandoning them on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
‘Drink, I think,’ Tom declared, heading for the kitchen.
‘Just a small sherry for me, please,’ Delia said. ‘Then I think it should be the will.’
‘Have you got it then?’ Heather asked, pulling off her shoes with a sigh of great relief.
‘He gave it to me a couple of weeks ago, once he knew.’
‘Oh. You never said.’ Heather wondered why she hadn’t mentioned the will, then realized it was probably because being the trusted possessor of it made her feel important, needed.
‘No, well . . .’ Her mother was looking shifty, as if she’d steamed the envelope open and taken a sneaky look already. Delia, still in her magpie hat, sat very upright on the sofa by the open French doors and thought that this really ought to be more formal, perhaps gathered round the table in the dining-room, where she was well aware that Heather did not, for the moment, like to be. She fished her reading glasses out of her handbag, opened the large buff envelope, and began to read the complicated formal bits about being of sound mind, followed by a couple of charitable bequests and then ‘. . . the residue to be divided equally between Katherine Melissa Bellingham and Suzannah Victoria Bellingham—’
‘What?’ Kate, who had not been showing any signs of listening, interrupted abruptly. ‘Me and Suzy?’
‘Ssh,’ Heather said, ‘listen to the rest first.’
Delia took her glasses off slowly, folded the document and said, ‘But there isn’t any rest. That’s it. £5,000 to the NSPCC, £1,000 to the Lifeboats and the rest to Kate and Suzy. He was fond of children.’
Tom cleared his throat and took a long sip of his beer. ‘Clearly,’ he said, impressed.
The question that hovered unspoken was eventually asked by Suzy. ‘How much exactly does “residue” mean?’ she said, scarcely more than whispering.
When Suzy finally escaped from the house and hauled her tent into the rowing boat she felt as if she’d won the National Lottery. ‘I’ve got a hundred thousand pounds. Probably about that anyway,’ she told a passing pair of ducks. ‘I’m rich.’ She wasn’t allowed to tell anyone; Gran had said money wasn’t for talking about, but she felt a lot more confident about being interesting with Simon. She had a secret, and it was more intoxicating than the sherry she’d been allowed after the funeral.
There was the sound of a lot going on at the island as she rowed along to it. It was getting dark, just, and her mother had said the usual annual thing about nights starting earlier, which was so depressing and made them all think about going back to school and the winter beginning. She looked over her shoulder as she rowed, and could see that there were more than just Tamsin, Simon and Tam’s beloved, awful, Shane. She could smell woodsmoke, too, which made her think of bonfire night and being cold enough for gloves. Kate appeared on the bank, at the end of the garden, waving and calling to her, and she had to go back and get her. Kate had loads of money now too, and although Suzy would normally have felt inclined to ignore her and just go on rowing, now she felt linked to her by this peculiar secret and the odd generosity of this uncle they didn’t know.
‘Why do you think he left it to us?’ Suzy asked Kate as she clambered into the boat.
‘Don’t know. I suppose it’s because we really are the only people in his family. He could have left it to a dogs’ home.’
‘Margot would have liked that,’ Suzy commented.
Kate giggled. ‘She would wouldn’t she? She’s so lovely, old Margot.’
‘Funny thing to say. As if you’re going to miss her or something. You’re only going to the sixth form college, not boarding school or the moon.’
Kate trailed her hand in the water and splashed it up and down like a toddler making waves. ‘Mmm. Maybe. Perhaps I don’t need to now.’
‘What about your A-levels?’
‘What about them? People get by without them. Specially if they’ve got money.’
‘Dad says it’s not that much.’
Kate laughed, her teeth very white, Suzy thought, in the dusk. ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he, in case we get silly and rush out and buy a Mercedes each.’
‘I wouldn’t want one.’
‘I might,’ Kate said thoughtfully.
Simon lurked behind a tree on the island watching Kate’s arrival. He stepped forward to take her hand and help her out of the boat, hoping she wouldn’t realize he’d been hanging around and waiting for her. She looked so fantastic, he thought, all that ripe-corn hair and a silly little black wispy dress that was going to be much too cold for her later.
‘You made it then,’ he said, cursing himself for stating the stupidly obvious, but continuing to hang on to her hand.
‘Hey what about me?’ Suzy yelled, furious to be left to deal with the oars and the ropes by herself. ‘I’m not a ferry,’ she complained, while Kate looked blankly back at her as if not quite understanding what her role in the safe mooring of the boat should be.
‘Oh I’m sure you can manage,’ Kate said with a smile, ‘you’re amazingly capable.’
‘Amazingly stupid,’ Suzy muttered, securing the rope to an overhanging branch and stamping off with her tent and bag in search of Tamsin and whoever was making all the noise just beyond the first line of trees. Bugsy was upside-down, swinging from a branch and trying to drink lager from a can. Most of it went down his face towards his forehead and hair, but the over-loud way he roared with fury and frustration told Suzy that he’d probably got quite a lot of it inside his body already. Darren was perched higher up the same tree, chucking twigs at Bugsy and aiming for his nose. Simon and Shane prodded at the little fire that Suzy thought didn’t look safe – it looked too spread out, without any stones to mark its edges and stop it spreading over the dried-out ground and the leaves that were already starting to fall. She hoped she wouldn’t be the only one who’d keep a careful eye on it.
‘Another three boat loads are coming!’ Tamsin squeaked with excitement next to her, looking out towards the slipway below the pub just up the river, ‘It’s going to be a real party. Darren’s brought a sound system with loads of batteries so we can have it really loud, and there’s stacks of drink.’ Tamsin was looking amazingly like Orville the puppet duck in a green fake swansdown jacket. Suzy had a fleeting thought that this might look just like pondweed if it should accidentally happen to get terribly wet.
She felt cross and betrayed, her game, her lovely Swallows and Amazons sleep-out, in ruins. ‘You said, you promised it would be just us and Shane and Simon,’ she accused Tamsin.
‘Well, you weren’t too happy with that if I remember rightly,’ Tamsin replied smugly. ‘I’d have thought you’d be pleased. Safety in numbers. Anyway, you can always go home if you want to. After that disgusting trick you played on me this morning, you should be glad I even let you come here at all.’
Suzy smirked, remembering Tamsin howling, her face seasick-green and wild-eyed with terror, fleeing from the sight of Uncle Edward’s corpse in the murky half-gloom of the dining-room that morning. Her face had been almost the colour of the bizarre jacket she was wearing.
From the terrace outside the pub, Heather, Tom and Delia picked at their salads and watched Lisa Gibson’s tightly-skirted bottom waving in the air as she attempted hopelessly to get into a small boat in high-heeled shoes. She shrieked and giggled and fell on one of her friends, who dropped an oar in the water and swore loudly. The boat was leaning and rocking, girls yelled and squealed and laughed, and eventually the overloaded craft pulled away from the pub steps and moved precariously off towards the island and the source of a great deal of unaccustomed noise.
‘Call that music!’
‘Should someone get the police?’
‘Are they allowed to have parties over there?’
Disapproving remarks from pub patrons filled the air around Heather, and she could see Delia looking from one speaker to another, her face expressing her agreement with their comments.
‘It’s only a bit of fun. Better than trashing the village hall,’ Tom said softly, collecting glasses and going back into the bar to get them all a refill.
/> ‘Your children are out there,’ Delia said to Heather, waving her hand vaguely in the upstream direction. ‘Surely you don’t want them associating with, well, rough people.’
‘They’ll be OK, it’s just the village kids. They should mix more locally, I’ve been thinking. And it’s not as if it’s just Suzy. Kate and Simon are there, too.’
Delia thought for a moment, neatly cut the last piece of tomato on her plate and said rather pointedly, looking round swiftly to see if Tom was on his way back. ‘Well at least Kate is with people more her own age. We should be grateful for that.’
Heather bit her lip and stopped herself from responding with something cutting and hurtful. Her mother had had a trying day. A funeral, to Heather and Tom, was still thankfully a rare experience. To Delia and to those elderly dignified men at the crematorium, it was probably increasingly and depressingly the usual social thing.
‘I think they’ve got a barbecue going over there,’ Tom said, coming back with drinks. ‘I’m sure I can smell sausages. Perhaps it would have been fun if we’d joined them,’ he added, looking glumly at the sulky faces of his wife and mother-in-law.
‘This isn’t really a day for having fun,’ Delia reminded him.
Back in their own garden later, Heather and Tom wandered down to the river and looked along the water to the island where they could just make out figures moving in silhouette against the trees and firelight.
‘I don’t suppose Suzy will want to stay out too long with that lot,’ Tom commented, putting his arm round Heather.
‘No, I expect you’re right. She and Tam would have been better spending the night in the treehouse if they wanted a bit of peace.’