by Morag Joss
‘That’s extraordinary,’ said Sara, when Sue allowed her to look. ‘It is him. I saw him that day we went to the Healing Arts. Before I met Cecily and you in the Tea Room. He doesn’t look too well, does he?’
Derek and the dark woman had made their way up the queue and were being shown to a table just behind and to one side of Sue, affording Sara a perfect view of Pauline’s back and Derek’s face, which was tired and unshaven. He looked ravishingly unhappy.
‘Must be the wife,’ Sara mouthed across to Sue, as the dark woman, without looking at the menu, gave her order to the waiter who had pulled back her chair and was helping her into it. The trio’s unvarying mezzoforte made eavesdropping out of the question, but from the frequent nodding and jerking movements of her head and Derek’s mute middle-distance staring, it was clear that she was finding plenty to say, and in a vein that was deeply wounding to him. He was further sobered by the arrival of lemon tea for him and whipped hot chocolate and a Bath bun for her. In hushed, clipped tones Sara related all that she could see to Sue, who had no idea what to make of it but knew where her duty lay.
‘Look, I think maybe I should go over to Larkhall. Do you mind? He was definitely meant to be with Cecily this weekend. I’m sure of that because she checked with me to make sure I wouldn’t be there. Well, he’s here, and that means Cecily’s probably on her own. Look, do you mind? We could do a run on Monday morning; will you be up for a swim? Right, see you then. I am sorry, but I owe it to her, I know how she feels. I should just check.’
She stood up and with a weak grin gathered up her bags. ‘And, er . . . Paul might have rung.’
Sara dismissed her generously and only afterwards noticed that her lovely Ray-Bans were still sitting on the tablecloth. She could give them back to her on Monday. She sat on, slightly numbed by the sensation of having been caught up and dropped in the passing of Sue’s emotional maelstrom. She tried to feel indignant. She had never exactly invited herself into Sue’s confidence in the first place, but realised that she must have sent out the signal that she was prepared to be confided in. And she realised too that in this she had not been generous, but had herself been the needy one. She had indulged some need of her own to observe, since she could herself no longer feel, that tension that was stretched taut between these two incompatible people, the pull of their inarticulate wranglings and their Byzantine misunderstandings. It had been like watching two people, one blind and the other deaf, trying to knit with one needle each. And there was something else, something even more obvious and pitiful in this realisation, which was that no amount of vicarious interest in the furies and passions of others could ever restore the vital kick to her own life, in which it seemed the death of feeling had been so final. It really could not matter to anyone if she sat on and drowned her innards in another quart of coffee, discarded by someone with places to go and people to see.
The trio’s last chords straggled into welcome silence and they trooped off the platform to a clatter of applause. Derek was using this little diversion to break off from listening to his wife, sitting back and clapping unnecessarily. The woman was looking round blankly, clearly not having heard a note. She was intent on resuming her monologue which, with the trio gone, Sara could now hear. So what did it matter if she had become an emotional parasite, feasting on the eavesdroppings of other people’s agonies? She fixed her eyes on the folds of the pink and green window drapery and listened hard.
‘...own fault because no one would be surprised to see you have a heart attack . . . gross . . . her all the way there, in fact...sorry for her, sitting there all miserable...black eyeliner, tears . . . down her face . . . ring me up at five a.m. humiliating...both of us . . . half the night...that place . . . oh, well out of it . . . comfortable cubicle.’
Derek’s wife paused to spoon up some of the froth on her hot chocolate and Derek seized his chance.
‘It wasn’t comfortable. It was frightening. I was on my own in there and when I woke up there was no one to explain what was going on. I thought I was dying. I didn’t dare move and I called out and nobody came. What was I supposed to think?’
‘Don’t ask for my sympathy. What about me? First I know is being called into the cubicle . . . young doctor... smug little...next bit would make me laugh if I hadn’t been so humiliated.’
Derek sat back, looked over his shoulder then back at his wife and hissed, furious and imploring, ‘Shut up.’
She had no intention of shutting up. She went on, raising her voice in a cruel impersonation. One or two people turned to look.
‘Oh, you were brilliant. “Please be frank, Doctor. How bad is it? No euphemisms. I want the truth.” Remember saying that? Remember me and what’s-her-name and the doctor round the bed? And him smirking, smirking and saying what you had was so rare they’d never seen another case in the entire hospital? But if you “followed advice” you need not fear a recurrence? Remember? God, I’ll never forget it.’
Derek’s head was in his hands.
‘Oh, and then the next bit was good. Your frightened little face and one hand creeping up to your armpit. “Oh, my God, what’s happened? Have you operated? Why have you shaved my armpit?” ’
She laughed without mercy. People at several tables were now listening more or less openly.
‘And in comes the nurse with that kidney dish and says, “I’m afraid we’ve had to remove a lump, Mr Payne. It’s big.” Your face! And the registrar saying, “Oh, yes, I’m afraid it was big. But fortunately not malignant. A benign lump. A big, benign lump of toffee, in fact.” Grinning all over his face! God! To fee! A lump of chewed toffee in a kidney dish! I could have killed you.’
She stopped for breath and looked round. Her audience, trying to look nonchalant, were instantly shamed into resuming their own conversations. Sara studied the chandelier closely and a nervous peace was restored. Derek was scowling with concentration at the remains of his wife’s bun while she produced a handkerchief and patted impatiently at her nose.
‘Derek, I had a long think, sitting in that place half the night, and I’ve decided a few things. I’ve decided that I will stay with you, on the following conditions. First, and starting right now, you will lose weight. Second, after the way you’ve been carrying on, you owe me something, starting with a decent weekend. This one. So you are going to go to that silly little tart now and finish it once and for all, while I go and book a room at the Royal Crescent and have a rest. Then you can pick me up and take me to lunch at the Olive Tree. Salad for you.’
She paused, no doubt searching for the means to inflict maximum damage. ‘And then you can take me shopping starting’ – and for the first time a smile came into her voice – ‘at Droopy and Browns. Yes. And then? Well, tea perhaps. Nothing to eat for you. And later, dinner at, hmm, I think probably the Hole in the Wall. And then we’ll see.’
Derek stared past her, trying to convey a lofty disassociation from his surroundings. His face had the faraway, otherworldly look of a defecating Labrador.
But she had not finished. She raised her voice again. ‘Because, Derek, I have had to drive for three hours in the middle of the night and sit for another two in Accident and Emergency, and then be ridiculed in front of the entire medical staff, all because my husband is a bloody idiot who has a panic attack and hyperventilates and faints and has to be sedated because when he’s asleep in some floozy’s bed a lump of toffee falls out of his mouth and gets stuck in his bloody armpit .’
She tipped back her head and drained the last of her chocolate. ‘And consequently, Derek, none of the foregoing is negotiable. Understand?’
As far as Sara could tell, he did seem to.
CHAPTER 27
WHEN HE WAS able to sit up he looked round the room and saw that most things had been broken. He believed he remembered them both falling hard against the shelves, scattering all the books and papers and the boxes and pots which now littered the floor. A table had been overturned and two of its legs broken, and the television
set lay screen-side down with a deep crack where the back was now coming away. Water spread across the carpet from a smashed vase. The curtains had been ripped down from the wall and were strewn in a heap with their poles, knocked from their hooks, lying across. He noticed the small dark drops that had been sprayed up the wall from his own nose, where one of the man’s first blows had landed. He touched his nose gingerly and satisfied himself that it was not broken. Looking down at his chest he saw that there was a lot of blood, his own blood, on his clothes. But his jacket was dark, and nobody, even if they noticed the stains, would guess they were blood.
Looking around once more in the strange silence his eyes took in the man lying on his back on the crumpled bed. Lie there, pig, it’s your own fault. He had had to struggle hard. He had not known what strength he possessed until he had had to stop him, until saving his own life had meant ending his, as it had turned out. But he had been right to defend what was his. He had been right to be angry with the man for pretending to help him and then trying to strip him of everything he had. But he had killed him. And then there were all the other things that would catch up with him now. All the other things. He must cover everything up, at least get everything covered up for long enough to get away. The only thing was to get away. He must get away now, even though it was daylight outside. He was surprised at how clearly he could think, and how separate and remote he felt from the events of the past few days, separate even from the pain that he was now feeling mainly in his ribs, his raw hands and his swollen face. He stretched his body carefully as he gathered up the curtains. The poles were not broken and he replaced them easily on the wall brackets. Then he draped the curtains over the poles and pulled the material across to conceal the destruction from the outside. Next he went into the kitchen to clean the blood from his face. It was when he heard the splash of water from the tap that he realised he had a raging thirst. He turned his face up and drank greedily from the flow. The water hitting his dry throat helped him control the shaking of his hands. Back in the room he picked out his things from the wreckage. He would take only his one bag. He would take only his own stuff and leave the rest; he would leave the gun. Lock the door. Keep the curtains pulled across. Walk. Think. The van would be no use. Walk past the van. Stop shaking. Keep walking. Get to the edge of the trees. Keep down, keep calm and think.
CHAPTER 28
AN ANSWER TO Sara’s enquiry, the junior assistant at the health spa declared that Sue had not come in. ‘Mever so sorry, Miss Selkirk. I think she must be ill.’
‘Oh. It’s just that I was meant to be running with her this morning. Did she leave a message?’
But she had not left a message; in fact she had not phoned at all.
‘Mind you, I’d of rung if it was me,’ he said primly. ‘Definitely. Doesn’t take much to ring, does it? Just to let you know.’
‘She must have forgotten about the run. Does Paul know how she is?’ Sara asked.
‘Mever so sorry, can’t ask Paul. ’S’Paul’s long weekend off. Don’t think he’s on again till tomorrow breakfast. Sorry. I would definitely of rung, if it was me.’
Remembering Sue’s suspicion about things being stolen at Fortune Park, Sara thought better of leaving the sunglasses at the desk. They could easily be lifted from behind the counter when the staff were busy.
In the early evening she telephoned Olivia. ‘It’s nothing urgent, but I’ve got Sue’s sunglasses. She left them in the Pump Room on Saturday and I was going to give her them today. Anyway, could you tell her I’ve got them safe? Is she better? And how’s Edwin?’
Olivia hadn’t seen her niece since Saturday. ‘I did think she’d be staying for a bit but I really only ever half expect her. She tends to come and go. I thought it was all off with Paul, at least it looked that way on Saturday morning. Obviously I picked up the wrong end of the stick. If she’s not with him, she’ll be at Larkhall. And Edwin’s fine.’
‘Yes, all right, I’ll try her there. Oh, by the way,’ Sara said. ‘Who’s Churchill? When we had tea together, Edwin said something about Churchill and I couldn’t work out what he meant. I don’t think it was Winston. Do you know what he meant?’
‘Churchill?’ Olivia thought for a few moments. ‘Oh, Churchill . Churchill is the firm that installed his stairlift. Churchill’s Stairlifts, as endorsed by Dame Thora Hird, I think I remember. That’s all. He loved your visit, by the way. Would you come again? Could you perhaps manage lunch on Wednesday? He usually has a sandwich around one.’
‘Love to,’ Sara said. ‘Actually our last conversation got interrupted and there are things I want to talk to him about. Wednesday’s fine. Give him my love.’
She tried the Larkhall number and got no reply, so it was likely that Sue was with Paul, making the most of one of their doomed new starts. They might even have slipped off somewhere for a day or two in the glow of reconciliation, Sue simply sneaking a day off work because she was, for once, having a lovely time.
CHAPTER 29
THE NEXT DAY Andrew pedalled up through Northend feeling the heat of his row with Valerie cool as he went higher. The row had come on unexpectedly, and he was still feeling a mild surprise, not just at the way it had arisen but at its unprecedented conclusion. If anything, things had been going just marginally better, probably because work had been keeping him away from home. And Valerie had actually encouraged him to make love to her last weekend, had quite actively given him to understand that she would allow it, and he had begun to imagine the start of a new and happier phase for them. He had understood, although as a man he accepted that he could never completely understand, that motherhood was the most demanding, difficult, exhausting and debilitating thing that any woman could undertake. Valerie had not only told him this but amply demonstrated the truth of it as well. But on Saturday night she had actually suggested that if he wanted to ‘get physical’ then that would be acceptable to her. It had been such a long time since she had used the phrase that he had almost forgotten how much he disliked it.
In the event, the knowledge that Valerie was not the woman he wanted to make love with had made it unthinkable that he ‘got physical’, but it had led him to wonder, with the youngest approaching her sixth birthday, if Valerie might now be getting over the postnatal depression that she said her GP, a man, had failed to diagnose, and to hope that after more than five years of uninterrupted nights she might be starting to feel less permanently fatigued. Most of all he had hoped that he might soon be allowed to come out from under the cloud of reproach that had hung over him ever since he had first begun to oblige Valerie by reliably impregnating her with the children she had insisted she wanted. She always referred to them as ‘her’ children, and they were, all three of them. Andrew was sometimes not sure if he quite liked them, with their adept pleading for things, although he loved them with his whole heart.
But the real reason for Valerie’s offer of compliance on Saturday night had become clear first thing this morning, when the lorry had rolled up. He had gone out and told the driver that there was a mistake. But the driver had his delivery address and delivery time, and would not be deflected.
‘I’ve got it down here, so I’m obligated, see? You’ll have to ring them up if you want to query it. Office opens at ten. I’m not authorised, see?’
So he had been unable to prevent the driver from dumping seventy concrete paving slabs, three hundredweight of cement and half a ton of sharp sand in their back garden. Valerie had been taking the children to school and when she got back he had already been on the telephone to arrange for the whole lot to be picked up again, reloaded onto the lorry and taken back to Homebase. With an unctuous smile that had instantly made him wary, Valerie had explained that it was she who had placed the order. Materials, patio, for the building of, the task she had allotted him for August, designating all his leave, his free weekends and his evenings for its completion. Without asking him. Because she wanted a patio.
He pedalled on. ‘But I don’t want a patio,’ h
e had said. ‘I don’t want a concrete, suburban patio with white plastic tubs of patio roses and floral patio furniture and all this pathetic pretence that we are a happy, spontaneous, nice little nuclear patio family.’
She hadn’t understood, or had pretended not to. She had given him that condescending oh-men-what-do-they-know smile. ‘It’ll be lovely for barbecues,’ she’d said, in her that’s settled-then voice.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ he had shouted. ‘Why won’t you listen? Do you think that what is wrong with us is going to be fixed by a fucking patio? With a barbecue and a few burgers from fucking Sainsburys? ’
‘Oh, you snob. You disgusting snob,’ she had screamed.
And that was when it had got really ugly. But somewhere in the midst of the torrent of her enraged abuse, which had ranged from his coldness, his snobby tastes, his stupid job, his horrible cello and that smug snobby bitch in St Catherine, he had realised, with a sensation that made him half believe he was floating, that she was probably right, and that he did not care what she thought of him. He had been smiling when she finally stopped shouting, and then he had simply left the house to go to his lesson. Cycling up Northend, he was a happy man. He knew he shouldn’t be, that he should not be able to walk out of fourteen years of marriage and, when it came to it, would not do so unscathed. But the guilt and pain could wait. They would come, no doubt, with the logistics and operational difficulties of splitting the household, but the decision to leave, the decision itself had a kind of clarity which was making him happy. He realised now that he had been living for a long time with the vague knowledge that the thing with Valerie could not go on indefinitely. There would be no more rows of today’s sort because he had left her, although, of course, he still had to move out.