But Steve had rallied.
‘What right have you to shove me around?’ he demanded, squaring up to the intruder, bravely, Mark decided. ‘And how do I know Tom is your dad?’
Like Mark, Steve was frightened, but he had recognised a bully. If the man proved to be a villain, he and Mark could run out of the house fast, and get help, then be heroes. If, however, he was Tom’s son, a whole new situation existed. Had Tom sent for him because of Steve’s cheating over money? He drew breath, preparing to defend himself, getting ready to counter-attack.
Tom had now turned red, an alarming purply shade.
‘It’s all right, Steve,’ he said, and to the man, ‘You never let me know you were coming. Should you be here at all?’
‘Of course, as you’re not well,’ the man replied. ‘I’ve only just heard about your illness.’
‘You should have warned me,’ Tom said.
‘I thought you’d enjoy the surprise,’ said the man. His manner had grown quieter. ‘Who are these kids?’
‘They’re my friends,’ said Tom. ‘They do my shopping and keep me company. Steve and Mark.’
‘You can go now, kids,’ the man told them. ‘And there’s no need to mention my visit.’ He tapped his nose with his finger. ‘It’s no one else’s business.’
Steve thought that made sense. Mark never talked about Tom anyway.
2
Richard Gardner was travelling back to Haverscot from his office, which was south of the river, a large anonymous building where corporate insurance was handled. His working hours were calmer than his time at home, and he was wondering what sort of reception he would receive that evening. Sometimes Verity was out at evening classes; she was studying a form of meditation this term, seeking tranquillity. She left the boys alone if he was not back when it was time for her to leave; she said that they were old enough. Justin was thirteen and Terry was eleven; they were her children by an earlier marriage.
If Verity were at home when he returned, she might greet him with moist, sticky kisses, twining skinny arms around his neck; or she might remain silent, dishing up a meal that was nearly inedible – burnt or almost raw, or part of some new diet fad she had decided they should follow.
‘For your good, Dickie,’ she would say when the menu was bean sprouts or tofu, or both, and she would burst into tears if he shuffled the unpalatable food round his plate, planning to abandon it and look for bread and cheese when she had gone to bed.
On other evenings, she would greet him with a tempest of tears and accuse him of having a mistress, deceiving her, and of planning to turn her and her children into the street.
Until recently, this had been a baseless charge; now, though, there was Caroline, hard-headed and shrewd, a colleague with better career prospects than Richard, and not the marrying type, as she had told him when their casual friendship metamorphosed into an affair.
Once, Richard had hoped to be the conventional father in a happy family with two or three children, a comfortable house in the country, and a pretty, affectionate wife who would be content to give up whatever work she had been doing to stay at home looking after all of them – perhaps resuming a career when the children were no longer small. But it hadn’t worked out that way.
Like many of his contemporaries, Richard, at university, had made the most of the new sexual freedom of the Sixties until, disastrously, his girlfriend, Karen, had declared that she was pregnant.
Neither had considered an abortion, recently made legal, nor adoption. They had been a couple; they would marry. The wedding had been an affair of white satin and tulle with a marquee on Karen’s parents’ lawn in Hertfordshire; she had been princess for a day, while everyone decided that it was an occasion for rejoicing.
Anna was a fine, healthy baby, much loved by them both, and for several years it seemed that success would follow this shaky start, but Richard, working hard, hoping to climb his professional ladder, was, said Karen, dull, and she hated life in London. They moved out to the country; she began to ride and go to agricultural shows where she met the man whom Richard, to hide his hurt, called ‘The Jolly Farmer’, and who had several hundred acres and a farmhouse in Somerset.
When Anna was six her parents separated, and after their divorce Karen married her farmer and had three more children.
During the years that followed, he had tried to keep contact with Anna, whom he maintained financially with willing generosity. At first he drove down to Somerset every other weekend; gradually, though, as the little girl’s life developed with new friends and then her two half-brothers and her half-sister, Richard saw how his visits were beginning to affect her, to interrupt her social life and to cause her problems of loyalty. She was fond of her stepfather, who had provided her with a life which she enjoyed. Richard’s visits grew less frequent and were tailored to suit her diary. For a while he took her on holiday each summer to a hotel catering for children, suggesting she should bring a friend, and this worked for several years; it was Richard who could no longer bear the strain of getting to know her again every year. The holidays had stopped when she was thirteen.
She was twenty-six now, and working as assistant purser on a cruise ship. Richard saw her when she had shore leave, but that was seldom; if she came to stay, the pleasant, confident, pretty girl was a stranger. It was easy to believe they were not related at all.
Richard had hoped that he and Verity would have children of their own but this did not happen and now, as her depressions, interspersed with elation, grew more frequent, he was thankful. He believed that heredity had more effect on character than upbringing and environment. Musicians bred musicians, and actors’ children went into the theatre, not simply because they were surrounded by music and drama from infancy; the talent lay in their genes. In Verity’s elder son, Justin, he saw the same mood swings and sudden bursts of temper, and it alarmed him.
Verity’s moods were getting worse and were less predictable. Richard had devised various ruses to avoid spending too much time with her: he had a workshop in the garden where he carved figures and animals. He’d given Verity a swan; once, he’d thought she looked like one, with her long neck and her way of pointing her head upwards. She’d knocked it off the shelf where she kept it, and its neck had broken. Richard had taken it away to mend, but had left it in two pieces in a drawer where he kept some of his tools.
Leaving the train at Haverscot, he saw a thin, pale young woman whom he had often noticed on the train. She always read intently, never looking up from her book, and Richard wondered who she was and what she did. Tonight, in driving rain, she hurried from the station while he went to fetch his car. She looked malnourished: was she a starving student? Richard reminded himself not to get interested in anyone who might be a lame duck. Verity had been one when he met her, stranded with a puncture by the roadside with her two small boys. He had changed the wheel for her, pumped up the flat spare, and followed her home to Reading to make sure she arrived safely. She had seemed so forlorn and helpless, standing there with the wheelbrace in her hands as she ineffectually sought a means to jack up the car, tears rolling down her face.
At first she had said that she was a widow, but he soon discovered that her husband had left her and the boys, and gone to work abroad. The boys had told him; they remembered their father. Richard could have been on the brink of bigamy, he thought later, but soon after he met her there was a divorce because her husband had wanted to remarry.
She had lied about that, and she had lied about her name. She had been christened Vera, after an aunt, but had elected to be known as Verity: no great sin, perhaps, but an embellishment. She was good at disguising the truth.
These days, people did not set such store by marriage. This saved trouble if things went wrong: there were fewer legal hurdles to negotiate. If he hadn’t married Verity, he could have left her when her accusations and her tantrums became so extreme, but he had wanted to provide security for her and to build a family, and had bought a large, solid ho
use in which to do so. Merrifields was a solid Edwardian structure, set in a quiet road not far from the church, its acre of garden running down to a field which bordered the river, where willows grew along the bank. Richard was still improving the garden, creating leafy corners, and bowers where climbing roses sprawled; this, like his woodwork, was a solace to his troubled soul as he pruned and sprayed, clipped and weeded, prising out every errant interloper.
Verity had said she wished to grow salads and vegetables on which to feed them all, but two rows of lettuces which quickly ran to seed the first summer were the limit of her achievement; Richard, though, now cultivated a productive kitchen garden and had joined the local horticultural society. Verity, meanwhile, had turned an upstairs room into a studio and there she covered canvases with tortured landscapes in heavy greens and purples, always tempestuous in composition. She had told him that she had planned to be a designer before she had the boys; he never fully understood what had prevented her, for she was in her late twenties when Justin was born. For her, marrying Richard was an upward move. He soon learned that she had debts and was threatened with eviction. She had told him this when he arrived one evening to find her swallowing pills, washing them down with gin. He’d called an ambulance.
She’d been expecting him. It was not a serious attempt at suicide, but, temporarily bewitched, he had felt enormous pity for her. He had stayed overnight, looking after the boys while she was in hospital, had taken them with him to bring her home next day, and was ensnared. For a few brief months he felt all-powerful, necessary to them all.
After their wedding, Verity declared that the boys must assume Richard’s surname and think of him as their father. They all went on the honeymoon to Corsica, though her parents had suggested that the children should stay with them. At five and seven, they were too old to accept him easily and they began to idealise their real father, although they never heard from him and he made no contribution to their upkeep. The boys had managed to forget the noisy arguments they had so often heard, and their mother’s tears. Now, though, when she lapsed into fits of weeping, they were convinced that she was crying for their father.
Richard took each day as it came, training himself to live within small frameworks: the office, and his colleagues there; his home with its tensions which he shed each morning like a jacket, and resumed again at night. He began to work longer hours quite regularly, partly to delay his return and partly to make the evenings when he went to Caroline’s flat less conspicuous. Then, as winter approached, he joined a choir which met on Thursdays at eight o’clock to practise for a Christmas concert. At Easter they would do Elijah.
Verity had no singing voice nor any sense of music. She did not encourage her sons to learn an instrument, though Richard thought they should at least have the opportunity. Neither progressed beyond the recorder at school, but when Justin sat down at Richard’s piano, he was able to play by ear tunes he had heard on, the radio or in television jingles. Richard was impressed by this rare gift and wanted to nourish the boy’s innate ability, but Justin rejected all such help. Any idea produced by Richard was anathema to him and he became increasingly rebellious as he grew older. Maybe it was natural, Richard would think wearily. Justin resented what Richard had tried to do for him: useless to expect gratitude. That was an uncomfortable emotion.
What would have happened to them all if he had not rescued them? Would someone else have come along? Perhaps. Verity had had an appealing bruised air about her when they met and, like Richard, she had been rejected. Coming together had seemed, at the time, healing for them both. Now, Verity simply looked angry when she was not weeping. She accused him of burying her in the country and stifling her talent, but he never saw her attempt any design work, although that could be done anywhere, as he pointed out. She spent long hours painting her sombre pictures – Richard thought they represented the torment in her soul and were some sort of safety valve; at least while she was painting conflict, she wasn’t setting fire to things or creating mayhem.
Once, she had set his books alight, his collection of Everyman classics and his reference works. She had done it one Sunday and he had smelled the smoke and put it out before the fire had spread to the curtains or the furniture in his study. His books were badly damaged, however, and some of them were ruined.
He’d had smoke alarms installed everywhere afterwards, and put fire extinguishers on the landings.
She hadn’t repeated that, but she’d wreaked other forms of havoc – scraping marks on his desk, a valuable one inherited from his father and worth a lot of money, and she had smashed a Meissen figure he had bought at a sale when, before meeting her, he had had an affair with a woman who was a collector, but they had broken up before he could give it to her. Once, when Richard was playing the piano, Verity had come in with a kettle of boiling water and poured it over his hands. He’d reacted quickly, knocking the kettle from her grasp and moving away, so that although he had been painfully scalded, he had saved the piano keys from serious damage and himself from worse injury. While he did so, water had spilled over Verity’s flowing cotton skirt and thin, bare legs, so that she was also hurt.
She’d cried then and, for once, had said that she was sorry and she didn’t know what made her do it. Richard believed her remorse was genuine as he led her upstairs, sponged her legs with cool water and made her change her skirt. She wanted to make love then: she often did, after such scenes, but this time Richard’s own scalded, blistering hands demanded his attention and he would not be won round.
Bandaged awkwardly, he gave in later.
It was soon after this that his affair with Caroline began. To be with her was so restful. They had always got on well at work; she was capable and assertive but never needed to challenge Richard, whom she liked and saw as no threat of any kind. He often wondered how they had ever become so intimate. She sometimes gave him a lift to Paddington, which was near where she lived, and occasionally she asked him in for a drink. He always accepted, because to do so meant he won a domestic reprieve by catching a later train. It was pleasant in her large, ground-floor flat. Her sitting-room had pale gold curtains and two huge sofas covered in cream brocade; her bedroom, he discovered later, was a peaceful place with mushroom-pink curtains and calm seascapes on the walls. Making love with her was not a fight; it was, he began to understand, a mutually rewarding encounter, unalarming and enriching rather than exciting. He did not pine for her between their interludes together, but he often thought about her.
Caroline had been hurrying off this weekend, going down to the country, she said, visiting friends, not telling him who they were. He felt mild curiosity – he would have liked to have gone with her, he thought: spent a casual weekend, free from stress. Instead, he had to face Verity and the boys.
As he drove through the town in the heavy rain, he saw the pale girl hurrying along, a small umbrella over her head. Where was she going? Where did she live? He slowed the car: if he offered her a lift, would she cry ‘rape’ and flee? Probably, he decided, sighing; it would be folly to try. Current fears had put an end to such kindness among strangers.
He had had such high hopes when he bought Merrifields. There was space for them all – a room each for the boys, and a playroom where they had their toys at first, and now a computer and their own television, a retrograde step, he felt, but taken in the interests of avoiding discord. Justin had a compact disc player in his room. Terry was so far content with the simple stereo system which they used in their playroom. Richard, in his workshop, could escape the noise and, because the house was old and solid, built by a prosperous Edwardian tradesman, his study was almost soundproof. It would all have been much more difficult if they were forced to live in a cramped box attached to a row of similar boxes on each side. No wonder murder was done when people were forced to live like battery hens, denied personal space.
Verity had recently given up cooking, which was an improvement on earlier days, Richard thought. She shredded vegetables and grated
cheese for the boys, who were not satisfied with such fare. When Richard came home they demanded pizzas from the shop that delivered or to go down to the fish and chip van which came three times a week to the square. Richard thought growing boys needed plenty of protein and fruit, and at weekends he roasted meat or made thick, nourishing stews and steamed puddings which they loved. They were often punctual for these meals and had been known to praise them.
This evening there was peace. Verity was in her studio; she discouraged interruption. The boys were in their playroom watching television. Richard decided to assume that everyone had eaten and made himself an omelette. There was lettuce in the fridge, and he found a tomato, slightly squashed, on the floor where somebody had dropped it and left it to rest in peace. There was cheese, and he thawed some frozen bread in the microwave; Richard had invested in time-saving equipment.
Verity appeared just as he had finished eating, and made a scene because he had not gone up to her studio to say that he was back.
‘You’ve made it clear that you don’t like being disturbed when you’re working,’ he replied.
‘I could have been dead for all you cared,’ she raged, and he thought, yes, you could.
Richard had never allowed himself to think like that before. He made a business of putting the plate and cutlery he had used in the dishwasher, and wiping down the sink while he fought to put himself into a more charitable frame of mind, but as he did so, Verity sprang at him and began clawing at his neck and shoulders, screaming that she hated him.
He swung round quickly, which wrong-footed her and she stumbled against the table, catching her hip on a corner. That hurt, and she doubled over. Richard left the room, not shutting the door on her, not leaving her completely cut off from an audience.
What was the matter with her? Why could she not enjoy her life, her security, her children? She often said that all she wanted was to be happy, yet she was the one who made happiness impossible.
Serious Intent Page 2