Last Act of All

by Aline Templeton

  Even so, she could claim no premonition as to the scope of Neville’s next disastrous enterprise.

  *

  The vicar’s hands were black as he turned round from groping in the open flue above the stove, and across his face a sooty streak had given him a Hitler moustache.

  The three children, jostling to get the best view of what was going on, shrieked raucously, and their mother laughed too, but to Peter Farrell’s anxious ear the tone of her laughter was almost hysterical.

  ‘But can’t you see what’s wrong with it, Peter?’ Perhaps the tears in her eyes were still tears of laughter, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ he said wearily, wiping his hands ineffectually on a rag. ‘We’ll have to get a man to come and take a look at it.’

  ‘And what are we going to do for baths and heating meantime? Nat! Nat, will you get out of there, you naughty boy! Now look how filthy you are, and how I’m going to get the soot off your school shirt with cold water, I don’t know. Oh, just go to your rooms, all of you, and see if you can manage to keep out of trouble for ten minutes.’

  There was an astonished silence. Clean clothes had never been an obsession of Marcia’s, and curiosity was considered sacred evidence of an enquiring mind. While the vicar was not sure that intellectual stimulation was invariably the primary motive for messing about with things, he was as unsettled as the children by their mother’s uncharacteristic reaction.

  ‘You heard what your mother said,’ he pitched in, with an assumption of authority, ‘off you go,’ and to his surprise, they obeyed, with only Tamara whining, ‘I don’t see why we should go to our rooms, just because Mum’s in a filthy mood,’ as she shut the door.

  Marcia turned, looking stricken. ‘Oh, she’s quite right, Peter. That was entirely unfair. I was punishing them for my own unhappiness. I’d better—’

  He grabbed her hand, incidentally covering it with soot, though neither of them noticed. ‘Look, sit down. Never mind them; it might do them good to think of other people’s feelings, just for once. I’ll make you a cup of tea.’

  Blinking back the tears of sheer misery, Marcia for once did as she was told. ‘I can’t bear it, Peter; no heating, no hot water, and it’s going to be one of the coldest nights of the year, they’re saying. I’m sorry to be so feeble, but it was just that I had really counted on not having to cope with another winter of this. Double-glazing and proper central heating, by now, I thought…’

  Farrell, warming the pot, chose his words carefully. His wife had been defensive on this subject before.

  ‘Did – did Fielding give you any clear indication of when he would actually be lending us this money?’

  Marcia’s face flamed into two unbecoming Dutch doll patches of colour.

  ‘How could I speak to him again, Peter, when I told you he said that Helena and that fancy solicitor of hers were simply bent on bleeding him dry! His accountant’s hardly going to encourage him to go making deferred-payment, interest-free loans in a situation like that. But he did say he wouldn’t forget. “Now I’ve put my hand to the plough,” he said, remember? And I said I didn’t know why everyone always thought they had to quote scripture to the vicar’s wife, and he laughed.’ She smiled herself, reminiscently.

  ‘But now Helena’s managed to get Edward into her clutches, perhaps we can hope she’ll take her claws out of poor Neville. I trust him absolutely, you know, to do whatever he can.’

  She sipped tea from the mug, rimmed with greasy black fingerprints. It seemed to do her some good; after a moment or two, she blew her nose fiercely.

  ‘Well, I’ll just have to soldier on, won’t I, and trust in the Lord to see us through.’

  She managed an unconvincing smile, but as her husband turned to fetch his own tea, added, ‘But oh, Peter, I really don’t think I could bear it, if there was no end to this in sight.’

  Seeing himself as at the same time helpless and responsible, he found he could say nothing. He felt awful about it, simply awful, as he so frequently did about almost everything.

  *

  ‘Do you know what your ex-bloody-husband has done now?’ Chris Dyer shouted. ‘Do you know?’

  It was a Thursday afternoon in April; opening her front door, Helena took an involuntary step back at this verbal assault. It was despite an inner cringing that she managed to sound unruffled.

  ‘No, I don’t know, Chris, but I can’t imagine that shouting at me will help.’

  ‘Sorry.’ It was a perfunctory apology.

  ‘I think you should come in.’ Helena led the way into the sitting-room. ‘I think we’d both be better to sit down.’

  She sat as she spoke, but Chris was too overwrought to follow her example. He strode about, conducting a taurine progress past the delicate porcelain collection which had belonged to Edward’s mother.

  ‘He’s hi-jacked Harry, that’s what. And does he have the decency to tell me face to face?’ He glared at Helena, then answered himself. ‘Well, of course not. He knows he’d have got this,’ he doubled up a massive fist, ‘straight in the middle of the face he considers his fortune. I hear of it from my assistant producer — and he’s fit to be tied, as you may imagine. But Neville’s gone mad — stark, raving mad. I think he’s got a death-wish, and he won’t be satisfied till he’s reduced everything to rubble. But I’ll be damned if he’ll destroy my life without paying for it.’

  Helena was listening with growing bewilderment. It was plain enough that there was some major upheaval going on in their television world, but she did not see how it affected her. Surely he could not want her to intercede with Neville; Chris would hardly be naive enough to expect results from that.

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying, Chris, and I certainly don’t see what I can do about it.’

  He stopped short, whirling to face her ‘Ha! that’s rich! It’s not what you can do about it, my lovely. It’s what it’s going to do to you.’

  For the first time, she felt real disquiet. ‘For heaven’s sake, Chris, stop striking poses, sit down, and tell me simply and clearly what this is all about.’

  At last he told her.

  *

  When Edward came in, his eyebrows rose as he paused on the threshold. In another man, this would have been a violent exclamation of astonishment at seeing his wife, not only entertaining, with apparent equanimity, a man she cordially disliked, but holding a large Scotch in her hand at five o’clock in the afternoon.

  It was clear, however, that here was trouble of some kind, and he crossed to kiss her first, then, perching protectively on the arm of her chair, nodded coolly. ‘Afternoon, Dyer. This is an unexpected pleasure.’

  Helena’s face was white and shaken. ‘You’d better tell him, Chris.’

  It was simple enough. Neville, Chris said, had become increasingly restive about the storylines on ‘Bradman’. Harry, he claimed, was being shown in an unsympathetic light and he started to blame Chris whenever he felt Harry was getting what he termed a bad press.

  Chris had, in fact, paid little attention. The network was satisfied, the ratings were terrific, and Neville had his own success so bound up in Harry that he could not afford to walk off the set.

  He had therefore been completely unprepared when his assistant producer, gibbering with rage, phoned from London to tell Chris he had just been carpeted by the Head of Light Entertainment, waving an embargoed press release to say that Neville was pulling out of the television production of ‘Bradman’ and — wait for it — making a Harry movie instead.

  Edward, listening intently, interrupted at this. ‘But surely he can’t do that? Surely you have him under contract?’

  Chris groaned. ‘Only for one series at a time. When you’re as hot a property as Neville, you can dictate your terms. And his agent was smart enough to keep the character of Harry as Neville’s property — they insisted on that, right from the start — and frankly, Neville was Harry. The public would never have accepted a substitute if Neville
had quit.’

  ‘Go on, Chris.’ Helena had drunk more than half the whisky in the big crystal glass.

  It got worse. Neville wanted more scope, but they weren’t queuing up to offer finance even for a low-budget film. So — ‘And this,’ said Chris maliciously, ‘is where it suddenly becomes your business’ — he had decided to liquidate everything and put up the money himself.

  ‘Straight from the horse’s mouth, I got this. Naturally, I got on the blower, and there he was, incredibly pleased with himself in that bloody insufferable way he has. He’s going to sell everything, right down to the shoes on his feet, and put everything into a Bradman Trust. That way, he has no money, and no one can make any claims on him. According to him, anyway.’

  ‘That’s Stephanie,’ Helena interpolated, her knuckles white round the glass. ‘Chris asked him about Steph, and all he said was, “It won’t do her any harm to forget about that fancy school. I didn’t have ponies and gracious living at the local comprehensive.”’

  Edward’s arm went round her shoulders. ‘Perhaps we can manage something—’ but Helena cried in fury, ‘Why should you? Why shouldn’t Neville support his own child? It’s only to feed his appalling, overweening vanity, and I don’t see why you should be sacrificed.’

  ‘So he’ll be selling Radnesfield House.’ Edward was troubled. ‘Well, I only hope he can be persuaded to take care who he sells it to. The village needs someone who will have the right ideas.’

  Dyer sneered. ‘Oh, he’s been careful, all right. That, Radley, is the cream of the jest. He’s got an offer with god knows how many nothings on the end from a developer who has the planning department in his pocket. They’ve been looking for a new development area. Three hundred executive homes, they reckon, including the acreage of the Home Farm. So George Wagstaff will be ready to plant a ploughshare in his skull. And won’t Radnesfield be pleased? The Old ‘Uns, as they always put it, will be whizzing round in the graveyards like spinning tops.’

  *

  On Friday afternoon, Sandra was in the stuffy little office behind the petrol pumps, going through the garage accounts. She had always had a good head for figures and it saved Jack the expense of a book-keeper. But today she was finding it hard to concentrate.

  It was still brilliant with Neville, of course it was. There were a million women who would give anything to be in her size fours. And when she was with him, it was still as romantic and fantastic and exciting as ever.

  But somehow, she was uneasy. Neville made all the right noises, but sometimes he left her without a word for days, and then reckoned she would come running. And the trouble was, she did, didn’t she?

  And then there was Jack. Jack had stopped giving her the third degree, but he’d stopped making love to her, too. He was a different person these days, surly and bitter instead of sharp and quick and funny the way he used to be. She felt really bad about that.

  The other thing that was getting to her was the thought of the future. At the start, she’d been happy to live for the moment, but now she was wondering unhappily where this affair was leading. Could she bear it if he dumped her, and she was left with nothing but a ruined marriage? Or even no marriage at all. Jack sure as hell wouldn’t put up with this for ever.

  Impatiently she shook her head, and was tapping figures into a calculator when Jack came into the office. He came round to stand silently in front of her, leaning on the desk.

  She would not look up until she had finished the column of figures. When she did, he was regarding her with an unpleasant smile, his face too close to her own.

  She drew back. ‘Whatever’s got into you, Jack?’

  ‘So you haven’t heard.’ He laughed harshly, and stood up. ‘You wouldn’t be looking like that if you had, would you?’

  ‘Heard what?’ She composed her face into a hard, defensive mask.

  ‘Your precious Neville. Selling up and going away, isn’t he? Oh, didn’t he tell you? Well, that’s tough. Perhaps he doesn’t think you mattered that much.’

  She bit her lips together. She wouldn’t reply, she wouldn’t react, she wouldn’t!

  ‘Sold to a developer, he has. Five hundred houses, they say, going to fill the village with strangers.’

  ‘Good thing too, as far as I’m concerned.’ She picked up a sheaf of invoices, pretending to study them.

  ‘He’s got a lot of people not very pleased with him, come to that.’

  Her ‘Oh?’ was as indifferent as she could make it.

  ‘Jenny Bateman’s dad’s not very pleased with him. Been carrying on with her, it turns out — ooh, six months or more. The silly little bitch burst into tears when she found out he was going, and told her mum. Her dad’s taken a strap to her, and they’re saying Vic Ede’s doing the same to his wife, for much the same reason.’

  It wasn’t true, it wasn’t true! She wanted to put her hands over her ears, blot out the hateful stories Jack was making up.

  ‘Talking about seeing if he’s got a taste for a bit of rough music, they are. Not that I’d have anything to do with that kind of thing. I wouldn’t have any call to, by what you’ve said. Though they do say actions speak louder than words, don’t they?’

  Then he bent down, till he was only six inches away from her averted face; she could smell the beer on his breath. ‘You poor, silly, dirty little cow,’ he said with venom, and left, slamming the door so that the plate glass rattled.

  She did not move after he had left, for a long time. She sat, with head bent, staring unseeing at the accounts for spark plugs and shock absorbers and replacement fan belts, and slowly her smooth, white, manicured hands curled into little scarlet-tipped claws.

  Chapter Seven

  There was an almost tangible atmosphere in the car coming from London to Radnesfield on Friday afternoon. Lilian, in lilac mohair, was hunched in her seat, her mouth curved down in pettish lines. Every so often she threw a smouldering glance at Neville, which seemed only to have the effect of deepening his contented smile.

  At last, finding silence unrewarding, Lilian spoke. ‘You won’t have a friend left in the world once you’ve done this, you know. And you won’t have a wife, either, because if you go on with this lunacy, I shall walk out.’

  Neville threw back his head to laugh with genuine amusement. ‘Now, my sweet, aren’t you being just the tiniest bit impulsive? It might be wiser to wait and see how successful I am first. Think how utterly infuriating it would be if you left me just before I made a real killing.’

  She checked noticeably at the suggestion, but only for a moment. ‘Everyone knows you’re going to fail,’ she said scornfully. ‘You’re nothing on your own, nothing — without Chris, without me.’

  It nettled him to spite. ‘Now that, blossom, is true self-delusion. Didn’t I mention it? Even for the TV series, even for “Bradman” as it stands, we had all agreed you’d served your turn. Death or divorce — we hadn’t decided which, but you were definitely being written out of the next series.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’

  Neville shook his head. ‘True, alas. Ask Chris if you don’t believe me. You were starting to cramp Harry’s style, and his public wouldn’t stand for it.’

  He shot a sideways glance to assess the effect of this barb. The look of purest hatred she directed at him was clearly satisfactory, since he shouted with laughter once more.

  ‘It had occurred to me to wonder whether any emotion you felt was genuine, and now I know, don’t I? Damage your interests, and you’ll fight like a wildcat. Is that right?’

  She only glared at him, relapsing into a seething silence. All right, so it might suit her to play the dumb blonde, but he didn’t have to treat her as if he believed it, did he? She was his wife, after all, entitled to be consulted about their joint future. That patronizing bastard had made it clear he didn’t rate her enough even to sweet-talk her once he had made up what he was pleased to call his mind. He had got a lot to learn, and he was about to learn it painfully, if she had anything to d
o with it.

  As tough, grubby little Lily O’Connor with her scouse accent and her buck teeth, she had needed resourcefulness and determination to get where she wanted to go, not to mention the courage to get in the way of her father’s drunken fists so she could get her teeth fixed on the National Health. He’d landed in gaol over it, too, which just went to show that you shouldn’t underestimate children and dumb blondes.

  Milking situations was her big talent. It had needed to be. And if you wrapped self-interest round you like a comfort blanket, life became a whole lot simpler. In the end, everyone stopped expecting all the fiddly boring gestures to other people’s concerns and it saved a lot of hassle. It left you free to concentrate on getting what you wanted.

  So now the question was, what could she get out of the present mess? She didn’t care a stuff about Neville; didn’t begin to understand him, in fact. ‘My wife doesn’t understand me.’ He’d used that corny line often enough, but then she hadn’t tried, had she? Other people’s hang-ups were deathly boring — until, as now, they posed a threat.

  She had suffered, all her life, from what she simply called The Dream. It happened when she felt stressed or vulnerable, this dream where she stood outside, naked, in a biting wind with frost on the ground and a cold merciless moon shining in the night sky. She couldn’t move, even to rub her arms or huddle for warmth, with the breath which was freezing on the air in front of her face beginning to freeze in her lungs until at last she would wake, gasping and shivering in terror. She kept brandy at her bedside, and a thick folded mohair rug; she would sit, swaddled, until the warm searing of the drink reassured her and the tears of fright dried.

  For a moment, now, she caught a glimpse of a bleak future, and felt that familiar cold paralysis of fear. But she hardened her mind against the image. He would find he had a fight on his hands, even if she wasn’t yet sure of the best way to go about it.