Death of a Literary Widow

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Not so you’d notice,’ said the woman. ‘I’m worried about what’ll happen to him when I go.’

  ‘Oh–you are going, then?’

  ‘Too right I am. I’m not getting any younger. Can’t throw my life away, can I? I need something with a bit more life.’ It was not entirely clear whether she was complaining about her milieu or her companion. ‘What I’d like would be for him to go back to that first wife of his.’

  ‘Viola?’

  ‘That’s the one. I said the same to one of his boys when he was here.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem very likely. He doesn’t talk of her with any affection.’

  ‘Not to you, he wouldn’t. That’s his pride. If you’d heard him talk about her when he’d had a few you’d think different. You’d think the sun, moon and stars shone from her eyes.’ She folded her arms over her ample bosom and completed her piece of Tin Pan Alley sentiment. ‘If you ask me, she’s the only woman in the world for him.’

  CHAPTER XII

  WALTER MACHIN’S DAUGHTER

  THE INQUEST was hardly more than a formality, the verdict an inevitability. The coroner had not got where he was by thinking, and he showed no inclination to start on this occasion. If the police said they were satisfied that the death was accidental, that was good enough for him, and should be good enough for the jury. It was.

  The due processes having been gone through, there was nothing to prevent Hilda Machin being buried according to the rites of the Christian church whose doings she had cared remarkably little about during her lifetime. Greg was extremely interested to see whether Viola Machin would be represented in the flesh or the flower at the interment, and he got permission from his Principal to take the morning off and attend. ‘You were good to the old thing during her lifetime,’ he said, ‘so you may as well trot along. It’s all local history, isn’t it? Oswaldston’s going to be living off Walter Machin for a few years.’

  As it turned out, the Machins were there in force, solemn in the church, gloomy by the graveside. It was a chilly May day, with grey skies and a wind which seemed thirsty for another death. Viola Machin, nevertheless, seemed impervious to it: she stood in bosomy grief, in a becoming coat of umber shade, dabbing her eyes at the pathetic bits of the service; Desmond, in a heavy black coat, managed only an insurance agent’s decorous grief; and Hilary looked as if cheerfulness might keep breaking through–which would probably, after all, be what Hilda would have liked most.

  Rose seemed still to be genuinely upset. She had lost a good deal of her bloom and bounce, and looked as if the sentiments of the burial service kept stabbing her to the heart. Her husband, Bill Clough, seemed awkward and unsure of himself: his suit fitted badly, and he looked like a comic who has unwisely accepted a serious part in provincial rep. He continually looked around him, as if for advice, then dropped his eyes to his shoes. There was another relative from Hilda’s side of the family with a feeble grasp on life and reality, who kept muttering remarks like ‘To think she should be the first to go’, and ‘Well, who would have thought it?’ At the end of the ceremony she tottered off to the bus, looking as if she had every intention of popping in to the local when she got home and livening everyone up with a steady dropping of ‘To think our ’Ilda should go before me’ remarks.

  When it was over Viola swept up to Rose, took her impulsively by the hand and murmured words of comfort. Rose showed signs of both anger and tears, and Viola swept on ahead towards the churchyard gate to avoid such an embarrassment. Desmond, after the briefest of mutters, hurried after her to tuck her into the car. Hilary lingered, and managed to seize on a moment when Bill Clough was talking to Greg to exchange his low words with Rose. It was odd, but Greg noticed Bill Clough’s eyes following them sharply: he was saying nothing to the purpose so there was no reason why he shouldn’t watch them, but Greg, following his lead, did wonder whether Hilary’s mutterings were not of a rather different kind from Desmond’s. More–what? To the purpose? More personal, perhaps?

  At the gate of the churchyard Rose turned to Greg.

  ‘Would you like to come home for a drink? I didn’t want to ask the others, because they were nothing to Mam. But she was fond of you–she’d like to think of us having a drink on her.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Greg. ‘I think I could manage a quick one.’ Local history, he said to himself. Bill Clough bumbled around them, telling his wife she mustn’t catch cold, and Greg had the notion that Rose’s invitation had not been welcome. He stepped out the short distance to the Clough home with added determination.

  They were met at the front door by a delirious spaniel, who clearly had no idea of funeral decorum, and they proceeded into the front room, where Bill Clough switched on a bulging orangey imitation-coal electric fire, and then went to a horrible drinks cabinet–all plastic and flashing lights. The room seemed to speak nothing of Rose and everything of Bill–or was that, Greg wondered, just his own biased assumption? Rose went to fetch ice and tonic water from the kitchen.

  ‘What’ll you have, then?’ asked Bill heartily, and then, with his odd alternations of mood on him: ‘What’ll it be?’ quite mournfully, and looking bewildered at the array of bottles.

  ‘A Scotch, please–plenty of soda,’ said Greg, and settled down with it into the sofa.

  ‘I must say I’d have been happier,’ said Rose, when everyone was suited and they had all sunk into their chairs, ‘if Viola had kept away. If I’d thought of it I’d have sent her a message: You won’t be welcome.’

  ‘Eh–that wouldn’t be on, Rose,’ said her husband. ‘You couldn’t have done that.’

  ‘I could have, and all,’ said Rose. ‘Or Hilary could have kept her away.’ Greg saw Bill Clough blink agitatedly and look sharply at his wife. She paid no attention to him. ‘Everybody knows the two of them had an almighty row that evening,’ she went on. ‘If Mam was upset that night it was Viola’s doing. She should have had the decency to keep away. I nearly choked when she came up afterwards.’

  ‘What did she say?’ asked Greg.

  ‘“I miss her every moment of the day,”’ quoted Rose, imitating Viola’s genteel contralto tones. ‘ “I know just how you must be feeling.” Condescending old bitch.’

  ‘Of course, she probably does miss her,’ said Greg, to be fair. ‘Old people miss their old opponents–they’ve nothing to fight any longer.’

  ‘If what I hear is true she’s sharpening her claws on her daughter-in-law these days,’ said Rose.

  Her husband, looking hard at his glass, said: ‘You ought to keep on the right side of her, any road. There’s the question of the money from the books.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Rose doubtfully. ‘Well, I have to admit that there she hasn’t behaved too badly. We are sharing the royalties–the same arrangement she and Mam came to. That Desmond came round–she sent him–and he discussed it with me. Right cheesed off about it he seemed, too. That’s probably why she sent him–she knew it would cut him to the quick. That’s a nasty piece of goods.’

  ‘You think he’s out for what he can get?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. Everyone knows that. He doesn’t try to hide it. That’s why he’s not doing so well at the moment: people like you to put up some pretence that you’re interested in something other than money, even if you are in the insurance business. It doesn’t occur to him to.’

  ‘ ’Appen he wants to get his hands on the money from your dad’s books,’ said Bill Clough, looking around him with eager interest, as if he had made a discovery.

  ‘Of course he wants to get his hands on it,’ sighed Rose, not bothering to look at him. ‘But he won’t as long as Viola is alive. And he hasn’t the least idea of how much it will come to. I could tell that from the way he was fishing around–he got that panting, thirsty expression on his face. He does, you know, when money is in question.’

  ‘Did you tell him anything?’ asked Greg.

  ‘Not on your life. I’m not fond of Viola, but I wouldn’t want her murdered
in her bed. He’d do it for ten quid, let alone for this little lot.’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew him so well,’ said Bill Clough.

  ‘I’ve heard all about him,’ said Rose.

  ‘Anyway, you don’t know yourself what they’ll bring in, do you, Rose, so you couldn’t have told him anything?’ said her husband after a pause, when his pathetic, bewildered-puppy air had intensified.

  ‘Don’t I ever,’ said Rose, with her old energy. ‘I talked to Mam before she died. They’ve sold American rights in both of the novels, film rights in The Factory Whistle and they’re being translated into quite a few foreign languages. Viola and I will get several thousand each–and it’ll go on.’

  ‘You never told me this,’ said Bill plaintively.

  ‘Didn’t I?’ said Rose, not as if it had slipped her mind, but as if he had. ‘Still,’ she went on, ‘we shouldn’t be talking about money.’ She leaned over to Greg. ‘I want to thank you for all you did for Mam. I never worried about her this last year, you know, because I knew you dropped in and kept an eye on her. It’s meant a lot to me, and I know it did to her.’

  Greg was once more conscious of Bill Clough’s eye on him–watchful, anxious, distrustful. What’s he afraid of, he wondered? What’s he got against me? He said: ‘I failed her, really, at the end. I was only down there at the Spinners’, but I didn’t get to her in time.’

  ‘You couldn’t have known. Nobody could,’ said Rose. She sat hunched in thought.

  ‘Ee, it’s nobody’s fault,’ said Bill Clough, falsely cheerful. ‘And she had a good life, when all’s said.’

  ‘She had a hard life,’ said Rose sharply, not looking at him. ‘It’s no joke being left with a young child to bring up on your own. It wasn’t then, specially.’

  ‘How did it come about?’ asked Greg, neatly insinuating his toe into the opening. ‘Was it by mutual agreement? Had the marriage been breaking up before the war?’

  ‘According to Mam, Viola went and grabbed him as soon as he was demobbed,’ said Rose, smiling a little at the memory of Hilda’s version. ‘Manhandled him into her bed.’

  ‘But there must have been something before that . . .?’

  ‘I suppose so. One thing Mam said suggested it had been going on for some time. . . . Years.’

  ‘What was that?’

  Rose continued looking down at her glass. ‘I’d rather not say. . . . But, of course, Dad had had all sorts of minor affairs, and that hadn’t broken up the marriage. Mam knew as well as anyone that he wasn’t naturally monogamous.’

  ‘I’ll bet Viola made sure that he was,’ said her husband, with feeling.

  ‘Of course Mam said he never was the same after he married Viola. She would, naturally. He certainly never wrote anything more, so she was right to that extent. And there’s stories around the town . . . ’

  ‘What sort of stories?’ asked Greg.

  ‘About her nagging, spying–you can guess. I’m not bothered about it myself. I hardly remember him, and I think what he did to our Mam was foul. Just when we were expecting him home–to phone and tell her like that. But I expect that was Viola’s doing . . . ’

  ‘Some men are weak,’ said Bill Clough sagely.

  ‘I wonder how your mother could ever have come to live with Viola,’ said Greg.

  ‘Oh well–it was convenient, that was all. They met up because of the papers. Viola said she was going to sell the house, because it was too big for her (Hilary had just moved out), and she found the stairs difficult–so what was she to do with Walter’s manuscripts and stuff, which were legally Mam’s? Mam was just about to be rehoused by the council, and didn’t fancy being so far out of town. So they moved in together. It was convenient, as I say. . . . Also, I think Mam kind of fancied the idea. . . . It was odd, sort of exciting.’

  ‘Yes, that figures,’ said Greg. ‘That’s what I thought must have made her do it.’

  ‘You make your mam sound a right oddity,’ protested Bill Clough. Rose ignored him.

  ‘She’d been a bit bored,’ she said. ‘She’d had the odd little–well, not affair, exactly, but romance. But it wasn’t anything much, because you had to be discreet in those days, specially if you had a child. It wasn’t like now.’ Her husband’s gooseberry eyes shot in her direction, then looked at Greg, who lowered his noticing eyes to his knees and thus looked, if he could have seen himself, the picture of guilt. ‘Then I’d moved out, when I had a job with a doctor in Blackburn, and she was very bored, I think. Moving in with Viola gave life a bit of spice, a bit of–danger. Well, not danger, of course, but you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Greg.

  ‘She’d have hated being in one of those old people’s flats, and they’re miles from the centre. She was a quarter of an hour away from us here, but still, from Viola’s you can practically see this place. It made her feel more in touch.’

  ‘Oh, can you see Meadowbanks from here?’ asked Greg innocently. ‘Did you see the fire? That must have been awful.’

  ‘Oh no, I didn’t see it. I didn’t know anything till the police rang. You can’t actually see the house quite. And I was in all the evening.’

  ‘Not quite all evening,’ said her husband. ‘You took the dog out, remember. As usual.’ The words seemed weighed carefully.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Rose. ‘I took Sally for a walk. But I didn’t notice any smoke.’

  But at the word ‘walk’ Sally had started putting up a tremendous performance, and the party broke up.

  On the way back to the College Greg said to himself: That husband of hers is all het up about something. He’s watching like a cat by a mousehole. He suspects something. And if those glances at me meant what they looked like, it could be plain old-fashioned sex. Or was there something else as well?

  In the corridor of the College of Further Education Greg passed his Principal, who caught a whiff of his breath, and said: ‘Funny thing: local history’s the only subject I know that always seems to involve alcohol. Stick with it, Hocking my lad.’

  CHAPTER XIII

  WALTER MACHIN’S SON?

  THE OSWALDSTON Arts Club had an exhibition room, which they called the Lowry Gallery, in the upper storey of a disused warehouse not too far from the centre of town. The Arts Council sometimes sent round wispy collections of this and that, the Club had an exhibition of its own once a year, and now and then individual members had shows. The new renown of Walter Machin and the heady publicity which had resulted for the town in which he lived, had suggested to the Arts Club committee (a mixture of the local genteel and the local far left) that a retrospective of the work of his stepson might neatly capitalize on the widespread interest.

  Hilary Seymour-Strachey had readily agreed, for, though he had not his brother’s absorbing and exclusive interest in money–still, he always had a use for it, and the thought was beginning to occur to him that he might soon have a woman and child to support, in addition to himself. He upped the price of all his unsold pictures by twenty-five per cent, borrowed a few old ones from their owners, and painted some large, meretricious canvases to make a splash. The exhibition was ready.

  Greg had seen the posters around for some days, and on the evening before opening day he made it his business to pass by the warehouse and go in, for he was a paid-up member of the club, and it seemed easy enough to fake a mistake about the members’ viewing day. It was a hot May evening: the children on the streets around the gallery were lightly clad and quarrelsome, and the sunlight was streaming into the upper room where the exhibition was displayed. Greg went quietly up the stairs and saw Hilary Seymour-Strachey, in his shirt-sleeves, gazing, grunting, altering positions, and generally acting like a first-time mother.

  It was, in fact, rather a delightful exhibition, and Hilary was obviously rather delighted with it. Suddenly amid the grunts and petty adjustments there would appear a great big smile on his face as he contemplated certain of the pictures. The ones that pleased him most were in fact covert
parodies of the work of the committee members of the Oswaldston Arts Club–the unconsciously phallic abstracts painted by the vicar’s wife (who would certainly stand in front of Hilary’s effort for some minutes and then say: ‘Now I find this one most awfully interesting’), the screaming reds and oranges symbolizing revolutionary outrages of the local school-master, whose private life was as blameless as his politics were extreme. Hilary’s own pictures, the ones he took trouble over, were all of Oswaldston, and took their colours from its greys, dirty reds and beiges, their shapes from its straight, monotonous streets and square houses. What made them less than first-rate, yet also made them popular locally, was the touch of theatricality and exaggeration, the desire to impose, which was very foreign indeed to the character of Oswaldston as a town.

  Greg stood in the doorway, and took in the man and his work. Then, finding himself suddenly observed when Hilary swung round to compare one canvas with another by the door, he coughed apologetically and made a feint of backing out.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I thought today was members’ viewing day.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Hilary abstractedly. ‘Tomorrow the galahs descend, and squawk, and flutter their plumage.’

  Then he went back to contemplation of one of his local scenes, his broad shoulders hunched in the vivid purple shirt, his head pressed forward. Greg thought he was going to fail in his object, and began to close the door, but suddenly, as if to prove the retentiveness of his painter’s eye, Hilary turned round again to him, took a good look, and said: ‘Weren’t you the chap that was at the funeral? Hilda Machin’s funeral?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Greg casually: ‘I remember seeing you there.’

  ‘Mother’s mentioned you too. Didn’t she get you to be go-between between her and Hilda?’

  ‘Something of the sort,’ admitted Greg.

  ‘You carried some genteelly worded threat, I suppose? And some less genteel raspberry in reply, I imagine.’