This Way Out

by Sheila Radley

  Overtopping the hedge were the chestnut trees that stood in a group in the meadow beyond, their candles still yellowy-green but promising an outburst of white. Further away, lower in the dip, were the greyer-green tops of the willows that grew beside the brook. Then the land rose again, vivid with winter barley, towards a pink-washed farmhouse backed by late-leafing oak trees on the far side of the little valley. Further still, the flint tower of Doddenham church stood up against the wide East Anglian sky.

  It was a pleasant outlook. Unspectacular, quintessentially rural, utterly peaceful. The only movement—apart from wind-blow, the darting birds, clouds skittering across the sky, and Sam the beagle scouring the hedge-bottom for rabbits—came from infrequent local traffic on the minor road that crossed the far slope on its way between Wyveling and Doddenham.

  Today, though, the view from the tall window was partly obscured by a swathe of fabric in a swirling, leafy design of blues and greens and lilacs that complemented the plain blue-grey of the wallpaper. Christine, balanced on a stepladder, her prosthesis riding higher under her blouse than her remaining breast, was stretching up to hang a curtain.

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’ Derek protested, hurrying forward. ‘My love, what are you doing?’

  ‘Exactly what it looks like,’ said his wife cheerfully. ‘I finished making these new curtains this morning and I wanted to get them hung before you came back from the conference. Do you like the colour?’

  ‘Yes, it’s fine … but why on earth couldn’t you have waited for me to hang them? Come down this minute, Chrissie, and let me finish the job. You’ll hurt yourself if you stretch up like that.’

  ‘No I shan’t. I have to do stretching exercises to strengthen my shoulder, so I might as well be productive about it. If you want to help, you can put the hooks in that other curtain for me.’

  Derek had always reckoned to do his fair share of the routine household work. He’d had plenty of practice during the long years when they were training Laurie to feed and dress herself, and again since Christine’s operation. But putting hooks in curtains had never before come into his province, and he hated jobs that were self-evidently fiddling. Besides, he wasn’t sure how the hooks fitted into the tape, and masculine pride inhibited him from asking for instructions. And anyway, his right hand was still painful.

  ‘Sorry, darling. I’ll have to leave that to you, my fingers are a bit swollen. I managed to shut my hand in a door.’

  ‘Honestly, Dee …’ Christine scolded him affectionately, leaving the curtain half-hung while she sat down on the steps to take a rest. She looked tired, as she so often did now, but unusually cheerful. ‘How did the conference go?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said brightly.

  ‘And how was the hotel? The Haywain?’

  Derek assured her that the hotel had been fine, too. He couldn’t hope to put the place and its alarming new associations out of his mind, but he had no intention of talking to her about it. ‘And how have you been, my love?’

  ‘Oh, such a wonderful thing has happened!’ Christine’s news was obviously of more interest to her than the hotel. ‘I’ve met someone else in the village who’s had a mastectomy. I don’t suppose you know her – Sylvia Collins from that thatched house on Church Hill. I only knew her by sight, and I had no idea she’d had the operation. But we started chatting yesterday morning while we were waiting for the library van, and then she invited me to tea.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Derek, genuinely pleased for his wife but finding it difficult to sound enthusiastic when his own new acquaintance was so alarmingly on his mind. ‘Nice for you to make a friend who’s in the same situation.’

  ‘It’s more than just “nice”!’ Christine’s eyes were brighter than he had seen them for months. ‘I can’t tell you what a relief it is to be able to talk to someone who knows all about it. Sylvia had her operation two years ago, and she’s feeling really well now. She’s encouraged me to join the Mastectomy Association – I was given all the leaflets about it before I left hospital, but I just didn’t want to know at the time – and we’re going to work together to raise funds for the Yarchester Hospital scanner appeal. Oh, you can’t imagine how wonderful it is not to feel isolated any more! Not to feel desperate about being a lop-sided freak …’

  Derek reached up to her. ‘My dear stupid girl – come on down from those steps, you’ve done quite enough for today.’

  He caught her carefully in his arms and held her close; deliberately close, so that she couldn’t see his expression. Absurdly, perhaps, he felt injured by what she had just said. It was the first time, in the whole of their married life, that Christine had suggested that they were not an emotionally self-sufficient couple.

  He was well aware that it was only the warmth of his wife’s affection that had kept him going, through the daunting years when they were bringing up their handicapped child. In loving return, he had done and said all he could to help Christine come to terms with her mastectomy. With a marriage bond as strong as theirs, he had thought that it was his support that sustained her; that he was giving her all the reassurance that was necessary. But apparently not.

  ‘Of course you’re not a freak,’ he protested. ‘Haven’t I made that clear to you? God knows I’ve tried.’

  She smiled at him and stroked his face. ‘You’ve been marvellous, Dee. And that’s something else that’s cheered me up – realizing that I’m so lucky to have you as my husband.’

  Partially appeased, Derek rubbed his cheek against the warmth of her hand and kissed her palm.

  ‘Poor Sylvia didn’t just have cancer to cope with,’ Christine went on. ‘She had an unfaithful husband as well. She’s divorced now, but I suspect that money’s a problem. All the same, she’s so positive and amusing and encouraging that she’s made me feel ashamed of my miseries. The way she tells it, every other woman in Suffolk is walking round with only one boob!’

  Unbidden, the recollection of the magnificently whole young woman who had pressed accidentally against his arm on the day of the traffic jam surfaced in Derek’s consciousness. A faithful husband in thought as well as deed, he dismissed it immediately and concentrated on what his wife was saying.

  ‘So I’m determined that I’m going to be positive too. I’m going to beat this cancer, and you and I are going to live to a ripe old age together. Aren’t we?’

  ‘We most certainly are.’

  It was mutual bravado, of course. For his part, Derek was still entirely pessimistic about Christine’s life expectancy. But at least he felt reassured that they were still the same invincibly bonded couple. It was not they who had changed, but their domestic circumstances. If something had come between the two of them during the past few months, worrying and frustrating him to such an extent that he had given Christine the impression that he didn’t understand how desperate she felt, he knew exactly what it was.

  Or rather, who.

  He could hear his mother-in-law now: moving about their house, destroying their privacy, consuming what little might remain of their life together …

  ‘Is everything all right, Dee? Your eyes look very heavy, and your breath’s slightly off.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Unable to face her scrutiny, and unwilling to offend her with his breath, Derek let go of her and turned away to pick up his briefcase. ‘My hand’s been painful, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, and I’d forgotten about it! Let me see.’

  ‘No, it’s all right.’ He tried not to sound irritable. ‘I’ll hang those curtains for you later. I’m going to change, and then take Sam for a walk.’

  His wife sat down at the table and began to fix the hooks on the other curtain. ‘You’d better work up a good appetite,’ she said. ‘Mother’s cooking supper.’

  Derek’s stomach contracted, as it had been doing at intervals all afternoon; ever since he’d been called to the telephone during lunch at the Haywain, and heard Hugh Packer at the other end of the line.

  ‘No hard feelings, Derek,�
� Packer had said cheerfully. ‘Just wanted to let you know that I’ll keep in touch. I’m ringing from your part of the world, by the way: Breckham Market. Happened to be coming in this direction this morning, and what should I see but a signpost to Wyveling, so I took a small detour.

  ‘Nice village you live in, Derek. Very nice-looking property you’ve got. It’s vulnerable, though – you know that, of course. A prospective burglar, say, could approach it from the back along the field path and get into the house and out again without being seen. I think we ought to do something about that as soon as possible, don’t you? We must meet within the next day or two and make arrangements.’

  Derek had told him to go to hell.

  ‘Don’t be like that!’ Packer had said. ‘You’ve got a problem, and I’m offering to solve it for you. All you have to do is stay out of the way for an hour or two while I do it. What could be simpler? Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be in touch.’

  No wonder, Derek thought, that his breath was bad. What was stirring his gut and sending a sour taste up into his mouth was panic.

  ‘I don’t want one of your mother’s heavy meals,’ he burst out, hearing – without being able to control it – the crack of anger in his voice. ‘I can’t eat it, not after a conference lunch. Why the hell can’t she stay in her own room and leave us alone?’

  Christine stared at him over an armful of curtain. ‘All right, Derek,’ she said, audibly controlling her own irritation. ‘No need to make a major issue out of a chicken and apricot casserole. If you don’t want to eat it, don’t. I didn’t ask Mum to cook it – she insisted, and I’m not going to waste my energy arguing with her. After all, she’s only trying to help.’

  ‘Help be damned,’ said Derek bitterly. ‘If she really wanted to help, she’d –’

  He stopped in mid-sentence, irradiated with unaccustomed hope. Of course! He drew a deep breath and then let it out slowly, feeling his tensed-up muscles relax. There was no need for him to go on agitating about his mother-in-law. Enid had just been made redundant.

  Derek supposed – he could only suppose, since she had never offered him an explanation – that when Christine had allowed her mother to stay on at the Brickyard it was because she was in need of feminine moral support after her operation. That was why he had felt unable to refuse Enid house-room. Now, though, the situation had changed.

  While he was away at the conference, being pressured by Hugh Packer into imagining that the only way of getting rid of his mother-in-law was by conspiring to have her murdered, Christine had been making a new local friend. A friend, what’s more, who’d had the same operation, and would therefore be able to support her far more effectively than her mother ever could.

  Enid was no longer needed! She could start packing her bags right away, and he would take her back to Southwold on Sunday. End of problem, thank God.

  End of nightmares; end of the evil persuasions of that bastard Packer. Oh, thank God. Thank God!

  But when Derek seized his wife’s hand and made the eager suggestion Christine turned away from him immediately, and all she said was, ‘No.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Why, Christine? Just tell me why!’

  Set-faced, his wife fixed another hook in the curtain tape. ‘She’s my mother, isn’t she?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? It’s not as if she’s ancient, or incapable. She doesn’t need you. And now you’re feeling so much better, and you’ve found a new friend, you don’t need her either. It’s not even as if you enjoy each other’s company. You don’t get on with her as well as I do.’

  ‘If you get on with her so well,’ Christine retorted, ‘why are you so anxious to push her out?’

  What could he say? Because I’m desperately afraid that you’re not going to live much longer? Because I want us to be alone together during what little time we’ve got left?

  He drew a steadying breath, and tried to be patient. ‘My love, I know how fractious you and your mother get with each other. I want to save you from stress, so you can concentrate on getting well – that’s all.’

  ‘Thank you, Derek,’ said Christine composedly, ‘but I don’t need that kind of help.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake.’ His veneer of patience had cracked. If he hissed his exasperation, rather than shouting it, it was only because he was ashamed to be rowing with Christine and didn’t want her mother to hear. ‘Can’t you understand? All right, it’s not you I’m thinking of, it’s me. I resent the fact that our lives are no longer our own, and I want to get rid of your mother because I’m sick of having her in the house. So now you know.’

  His wife looked up from the curtain. Her eyes were troubled but her chin was firm.

  ‘I’m sorry you feel like that. You’ve always been so nice to her that I hadn’t realized … But it doesn’t change my mind. I’ll tell Mum to keep well out of your way in future, but I’m not going to ask her to leave the house. And it is, after all,’ she reminded him, standing up, ‘as much mine as it’s yours.’

  They stared at each other, breathing anger. ‘If that woman stays,’ Derek threatened, ‘I won’t be responsible for the consequences.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘What I said. I won’t be responsible for – for whatever might happen.’

  Christine’s look of anger changed to something verging on contempt. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, turning away to fold the finished curtain.

  ‘I mean it.’

  He longed to be able to unburden himself to her: to tell her what a mess he’d got into with Packer, to ask for her help in extricating himself from the man’s influence. But that would be to admit a weakness, and what would Christine think of him if he revealed that to her? Besides, he could hardly expect her to go on loving him if she knew that he had even trifled with the idea of killing her mother.

  No, confession was out. It would ruin his relationship with Christine. And their happy marriage – what few years, or months, of it might remain – was after all the most important thing in his life.

  The only way he could save himself from Packer was by removing Enid from the house. It was such a simple solution to the whole problem that it ought to be easy enough to accomplish. But Christine had a mind and a will of her own. He knew that confrontation was useless.

  ‘Please,’ he coaxed, trying the alternative tactic. ‘I want to live with you, not with your mother. Is that so strange? Isn’t it what you want too? She can always come and visit us – but please, Chrissie, make her go back and live in her own home.’

  His wife refused.

  Derek slammed out of the house and took long savage strides down the back lawn and through the picket gate in the hedge. Then he paused for a moment, screwing his eyes against the concentrated final rays of the sun. The grazing field that sloped away in front of him to the Wash brook was brilliantly green under a rain-dark evening sky. An earlier shower had brought out the smells of pushing vegetation, and of the mud that oozed from the beaten earth of the field path he was standing on.

  He was, he realized, still wearing his grey flannel suit and black shoes. After the row with Christine he hadn’t thought of stopping to change, and he certainly wasn’t going to go back to do so now. He reached behind him to slam the garden gate shut, felt an obstruction, and heard an anguished howl.

  ‘Oh, Sam, you stupid old mutt. All right, I didn’t mean to squash you. Come on then, if you must.’

  Better to take the dog anyway. That was what he had planned, on the drive home, so as to have a credible reason for covering the ground where Packer had been that morning.

  He turned to the right, with Sam lolloping ahead of him, tongue out, stern happily high. Derek hadn’t been along the field path for some considerable time. The beagle had been Laurie’s pet – hence its tartan collar, unsuitable for a hound, but her own choice – and walking it had never been his responsibility.

  He felt deeply ashamed of the row with Christine, their first since her illness. Th
eirs had always been a perfectly normal happy marriage, enlivened by arguments and the odd shouting match, and enriched by reconciliations; but when Christine’s cancer was diagnosed he had believed that if only she were spared he could never be angry with her again.

  He still felt angry, despite the shame. How could she be so obdurate? Even though she had no idea that her mother’s life was on the line, surely she could see that her attitude was affecting their marriage?

  Or didn’t she value his love any more?

  They hadn’t actually made love since her operation. At first, of course, she had been too unwell; later she had felt sore, and inclined to nausea. Now, although her chest was no longer tender, she felt too weary. Derek prided himself on being a considerate husband and lover, and he had no intention of trying to rush his wife. He was quite prepared to be continent until she regained her interest in sex. All the same, it was galling that she didn’t appear to realize the additional tension that this generated in him. If Christine were really considerate of his needs, surely she would understand that the least she could do for him would be to relieve him of the presence of her mother.

  But if she wouldn’t, she wouldn’t. Derek knew his wife too well to imagine that he could make her change her mind. And if she wouldn’t –

  He felt choked with anxiety as he remembered that Hugh Packer must have walked that same path a few hours earlier: invading his territory, spying on his domain, probing his defences.

  Packer was prepared to carry out the proposition, there was no doubt about it. Derek could of course refuse to co-operate; he intended to refuse … but he wasn’t sure how long he could hold out against so great a temptation.

  Besides, he felt sure that Packer wouldn’t accept a refusal. The man would keep on at him, on and on until the pressures became insupportable. Unless he could get Packer off his back, he would almost certainly be driven to connive at his mother-in-law’s murder.

  That was why ridding himself of Packer had now become Derek’s first priority, and why he had come out on this walk. Surely, unbalanced though the man undoubtedly was, Packer had enough sense of self-preservation to realize that his scheme would have to be abandoned if anyone had seen him in the village that morning. And surely he must have been seen?