Gavin Miller served fruit and vegetables on his father’s stall. She could picture him even now, standing behind the pyramid of bright Spanish oranges, eyes and hands working over the fruit, tossing it deftly into brown paper bags, and, like his mum and dad beside him, every now and again calling out to the crowd the price of a pound of potatoes or carrots.
The first time she met him she asked for a cabbage, and he avoided looking her in the eyes, and it wasn’t till much later that he told her beautiful women could sometimes frighten men, make them great lumbering fools. So he handed her the cabbage and gave her sixpence change without really talking to her. And, because he interested her, she thought his reaction was because he found her uncouth and ugly, like her husband said she was. But every time she went to the market she would wait till the good looking young man with the Brylcreemed hair and shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbows was free of customers and darted in at the right moment to place her order with him, and him alone. She smiled openly at him, but still he would not respond. Of course she did not like to be away from home too long, because her husband was waiting for her. Not close by, for he hated shopping, but in the bookies. Time was limited.
Eventually the young man gave a banana to her son, picked out one of the biggest, and leant over to place it tenderly into his little hand.
“It’ll make you grow big and strong,” he said, and she was taken with the kindness that rang in his voice. “And I’ve slipped in a few extra for you too,” he said, handing her the paper bag.
For the first time in her young life she was speechless and choked with emotion. “They’re lovely bananas,” she said, rather pathetically.
As the weeks went by, he told her his name was Gavin. Gavin Miller. “They reckon we were millers – you know, like our surname,” he said, “but as far as I know we’ve always sold fruit and veg, ever since we can remember. I wonder what it is that makes a man change occupations like that, because someone must have decided one day that enough was enough, got to make a change, a new life, mustn’t they?”
Her husband occasionally questioned the increase in cooked dinners and the well-stacked fruit bowls, but he rarely complained as long as he was fed enough. Then one day she summoned all her courage to tell him that she had to visit the doctors with ‘women’s trouble’, something her husband would not bother to question or probe too deeply into, and she arranged to meet Gavin in the park, a bus ride away.
She peeled the potatoes and carrots before she left that morning, so that the meal would be half prepared for when she got in during the late afternoon, and hopefully, when he came home from work, he wouldn’t notice she’d been out that long. She kept her son off school so that he could come too, and the three of them walked on the grass, threw pieces of bread to the ducks that her son found so frightening. Gavin told her how one day he’d open a shop of his own, not a big thing, but one with his own name above the door in gold lettering, and he’d get a Bedford van with his name on the side, too. He made the idea sound positively thrilling. They argued lightly over where the apples should be displayed in their imaginary shop window, and eventually he gave in to her wishes. He bought them an ice-cream each from an old man who pedalled his ice-cream cart around the park, blowing his whistle. She happened to remark to Gavin that her son had never had an ice-cream, which made his face grow gloomy. But eventually he perked up and picked up a white goose feather from the grass. He held it out to her son.
“See this feather, eh? It’s a magic feather. How do you think the bird keeps up in the air like it does, eh? Because these things are magic, aren’t they? Especially the white ones. The white feathers have a magic all of their own. Well you just take this in your hand, like so, and it’ll bring you good luck and magic. Make sure you look after it.” He laughed at her little boy’s enraptured expression. He hung onto that feather all day, and then slept with it under his pillow for ages afterwards. He never threw it away.
It was the best summer she could remember. A summer measured in stolen hours in the park. They held hands and walked around the pond like a real family, with her son swinging between them. Once, only once, he kissed her, and blushed guiltily. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re married…”
She wanted to tell him everything was all right; it was, after all, only a kiss. But she too felt the sting of guilt and they remained quiet for long minutes afterwards. She would wish in the future that she had kissed him more, for it wasn’t long before her husband found out, or strongly suspected something, all of those summer moments being crushed forever, for she’d never see Gavin again.
“A friend saw you,” he said one evening. “As bold as brass, you tart, in the park. What the fuckin’ hell do you think you’re doin’? Have you slept with him? Have you? Eh? You have, I know you have, you bitch!” Each question mark accompanied by a slap to her face. She denied it, naturally, partly because it wasn’t true, there had been nothing physical between them, but more to protect Gavin.
But it was no use, not with him. She knew it wouldn’t stop at his beating of her. For days she felt the dread build up in her, thick and oily below the surface of her very being. Then he told her, many nights later, how Gavin wasn’t going to be able to be at his stall the next day. “Go ahead, go there, get your fruit, you tart. Ask his dad. Ask him where his son is. I tell you, the bastard won’t be hawking his bananas round for a long time to come.”
So she did just that, went to the stall as usual. And she saw by the look on his parents’ faces that something was dreadfully amiss. She didn’t have to ask them, she knew, and when she overheard a customer offer sympathetic words about Gavin, and witnessed his father’s tearful eyes, she turned from the stall and fled into the public toilets to weep in one of the closets there, her son tugging at her skirt as she sat on the toilet seat, trying to put toilet paper into her hands that cradled her head so she could wipe away the tears, and she horrified at herself for not having the courage to ask about Gavin for fear she’d hear something she didn’t want to hear.
Something she had caused.
So they moved to that horrid little house in that horrid little lane. And he kept her locked away, tightly supervised, morning till night, so that it might never happen again. But she found time to go out. Just enough time to arrange things, because there’s only so much abuse a body can take.
She waited for him. One night, far up the quiet lane whose opening began opposite the pub. Their house was tucked away far up this old lane that once ran a river of sheep, an old farmhouse that once belonged to someone in her husband’s family and which he’d bought cheap because it was a stinking, damp hovel, and she was tucked away with it, not allowed to go out to work, but cooped up with the washing, the sewing, the cooking and brief supervised jaunts to the shops for bread and eggs. There was no chance she could meet anyone out here. No more Gavins.
But this particular night she’d broken her rigid curfew, left her son indoors unsupervised, asleep in his bed, and though this alarmed her she fought it back to wait there in the warm summer air choked with the smell of grass and fresh-cut hay. No cars passed her. It wasn’t a main route for anyone. She didn’t even know where the lane went to, or what village or town lay at the end of it. It was of no consequence to her where it led, because it might as well have gone over a cliff, into oblivion, or straight to the gates of Hell, for all she cared, because in her mind it would always end at the gates of the house.
Eventually she saw him, a dull but strangely luminous shape staggering up the lane. Singing. The sky was undecided whether it should be dark or light, and it remained in a kind of perpetual dusk. Even at this late hour she plainly saw the road stretched out like a ribbon of lead, the high banks of grass, the gnarled hawthorn trees leaning over on both sides, almost forming a tunnel, and his figure weaving its insidious way towards her like a rat down a sewer pipe. She went to him and he didn’t exhibit the least surprise. He carried on singing, the smell of the pub clinging to him, alcohol laced with smoke. Sh
e didn’t speak, just took him and allowed him to lean on her as she led him up the lane towards the house.
“Bitch!” he said, and then resumed his tuneless song.
They both heard the sound of the car coming towards them, and then, as they glanced up, made out the beams of its headlights, looking like wartime searchlights, shooting up into the air as the car broached the hill in front of them. It crawled over the summit, the twin suns of its headlights blinding then so that they both had to shield their eyes. Then the car came to a halt about twenty feet away from them.
The purring engine soothed the night.
“What’re you fuckin’ doing?” he snarled. “What’re they fuckin’ doing?” he asked her.
Here she let go of him and walked away, going up to the car. When she turned and looked he was caught like a snared rabbit in the lights, an arm over his face against the glare, his shadow plastered black and opaque over the high bank behind him, and his body teetering as if the ground beneath him was the deck of a ship on rough seas. He was mumbling something to himself.
Then the car lurched forward and hit him with a soft thump. She heard his squeal of pain, or contempt, she couldn’t be sure, and he disappeared beneath the body of the car. She watched with her lips stretched thin on her beautiful face as the car reversed back up the lane, leaving him lying there to one side of the road. He moved, slightly, and moaned. Then the car sped down again, this time with more speed, and there was another soft crump. It didn’t stop this time but carried on down the hill, its taillights rounding a corner and disappearing from sight, only the soft hum of its engine carried aloft on the scented night air, corrupted slightly now by the lingering smell of exhaust fumes. With one last look at the dark hump in the road she turned and headed back up the lane, towards the house and her son who slept sound asleep, unknowing that the Devil had died and would trouble them no more.
Mrs Randolf’s eyes snapped open. She thought for a minute that someone was there in the church with her, and that whoever it was had somehow listened in on her thoughts, but realised it was only the clicking of the radiators and her imagination.
She was swamped by the terrible feeling, though, that if she lingered here something horrible would happen to her, and so she got to her feet and hurried from the cold of the church, admonishing herself for ever believing that such a silly place could help her in any way.
* * * *
26
Saturday
What had been his final thoughts? What murky depths of depression must he have sunk into to have taken a blade and slit his wrists while lying in a bathtub of soapy water?
“Oh, it’s terrible! Just terrible!” Mrs Radunski lamented, shaking her head. A small shop is as notorious for attracting local tittle-tattle as magnets are for attracting iron filings, becoming in time a sorting office for gossip, and the Radunski business handed tripe over the counter in more than one sense of the word. Mostly it was harmless enough, one neighbour telling exaggerated tales about another ‘in strictest confidence’ - that confidence usually broken with the next person’s order of a pound of mince. The news reached the shop within half an hour of the shop opening, and mere hours after the event.
Bernard was dead.
He’d bought two bottles of whiskey from the off-license in the evening, drank himself into a stupor, ran a hot bath, took the second half-drained bottle into the bath with him, and cut his wrists open after washing and conditioning his hair.
Poor grinning Bernard.
“That’s just awful!” Mrs Radunski went on, attempting to find different ways of saying the same thing while meaning this was one of the tastiest chunks of gossip the shop had ever had the privilege of serving from behind its counter.
Poor grinning Bernard.
Had he really meant it to go that far? Someone blamed the drink. Mr Radunski blamed Mrs Thatcher. No doubt mother would blame the genes. It seemed we were all trying to find cause and culpability, which is a game invariably set off by such a tragic event, and all manner of secure answers are offered, each one purporting to be the definitive. I for one blamed myself.
I hadn’t tried hard enough to fix him up with work at the DIY store; I could have persisted. I was too wrapped up in myself and my own problems. In the end I blamed Mr Boulton, too, for refusing him a job when I knew he could have done with the extra help. I scattered blame everywhere, like rice at a wedding. Or earth at a funeral. I cried. Secretly. It was strange how I missed him.
Shaggy-haired, lumpish, grinning Bernard.
We went round to Connie’s place as soon as we could. The mantelpiece and television, on which Bernard had watched his racing, was adorned to overflowing with condolence cards, which I found touching. There was the sweet smell of flowers. Ironically, perversely, the room looked far brighter and more cheerful than when I’d last visited Bernard there. Connie was just leaving off a telephone conversation and waved us in, thanking the caller for the card. “Yes, I’ll let you know,” she assured, cradling the receiver. She turned to us. The bruising on her face had turned an unsightly yellow, partly masked by makeup. I thought her mouth still looked a little swollen, but I couldn’t be sure. She came over to me and wrapped her arms around me. “Oh Collie, I’m so glad to see you!” she said, her breath hot on my neck. I glanced at Ruby uncertainly.
Max was sitting in an armchair tucked into the corner of the room beside a standard lamp whose pleated coolie shade reached over him protectively. His colourless face acknowledged us briefly, his mouth twitching in what might have been a smile or a grimace, but which settled instantly back into its ashen, ribbon-like strip. He turned his head away, plunging his attention wearily into a vase of flowers on the hearth. For all he didn’t like Bernard, I thought, he’d not slept well of late, because his eyes looked terrible, set into patches of dark grey skin like they were.
“We brought you these.” I offered a bunch of flowers and a card. “I’m so sorry.”
“They’re lovely, darling!” she said, taking the flowers from me and immediately setting about taking off the paper wrapping.
“He was a good man,” I said, which sounded so clichéd that I cringed inside. I was acting the part, like my relatives did at Uncle Geoffrey’s funeral. I marvelled at how easy it was to be sucked in. “I don’t know what to say,” I added, which was far more truthful. “I liked Bernard.”
“I have a spare vase somewhere,” she said. “I’ve just about used them all up. So many flowers! Aren’t they just lovely?”
“Why didn’t he say something?” Ruby ventured. “Why did he just bottle it up like that?”
Connie shrugged. “Who knows?” She was doing an excellent job of covering up her emotions, I thought in admiration. I felt like bursting into tears again.
“But not to leave a note or anything,” Ruby continued. “He must have felt so alone.”
“People are the funniest things,” Connie said flatly, retrieving a vase from a sideboard and sticking the flowers in it. “I’ll just fill this with water,” and she breezed into the kitchen. We heard the tap running.
“You OK?” I asked Max.
His head snapped up. “Course I’m OK,” his tone biting, then he appeared to regret it and said to Ruby: “How are you?”
She shrugged. “We’re doing fine,” she returned, but it sounded strained.
Connie came back in, the slender vase stuffed with flowers in one hand. “Well, isn’t this a thing. All three of you back together again, just like old times.”
I looked askance at her, bewildered. Old times?
“When’s the…” Ruby asked when an awkward silence fell. Death brings many an awkward silence.
“Wednesday,” Connie said matter-of-factly. “Did you know that’s the day he was born on? That’s so queer. You can go see him if you like. He looks so handsome. He’s laid out in his wedding suit. Remember how he looked in that? Lovely.”
Max rose from the armchair, and I heard him utter a tiny gasp of discomfort. It was obvious
from the way he favoured his left leg that he’d hurt himself on the lower back, maybe his leg. He made as if to walk past his mother, but she flashed out an arm and reeled him in. A pathetic look of acquiescence softened his features and his mother clasped him close, planting a kiss on his cheek. He avoided our eyes, the red wound of lipstick looking incongruous on his waxy skin.
“The house is going to be so different without him,” Ruby said, somewhat perfunctorily, I know, because she’d rarely set foot in the house and didn’t know it as intimately as I did. But I had to agree.
“We still have each other, don’t we, Max?” Connie chimed.
He shrugged off her arm, making it appear to be heavier than it actually was, a yoke, perhaps, and he hobbled painfully into the kitchen. I looked at Connie. She was arranging the flower stems, lifting one or two out of the vase, cutting off the ends with scissors. Humming to herself. She concluded by fluffing the flower heads as if they were woolly pom-poms, then bent to a bloom and sniffed in its fragrance. She sighed in contentment, and I thought she looked a perfect picture. A soft creamy patch lay on her chin, a reflection from the flower, a halo of light from the window framing her statuesque face. I watched her lips tremble. If I’d been an artist I would have been inspired to paint. It would have been my masterpiece, I’m sure. Woman with flowers. Or Aphrodite with Chrysanthemums.
“Is Max OK?” I asked quietly. “Has he hurt himself?”
Her eyes never leaving the flower she replied, “No, not really. You know how young men are, don’t you, darling?”
I did. And I didn’t. Ruby was wandering about the room picking up condolence cards and reading them, forcing herself to absorb the insipid verses and feign interested eyes. Outside, kids were playing in the street, football with a stone instead of a ball, shouting piercingly at each other. Laughing. And then the voices faded as if they were sounds from my own childhood memory. Connie and Ruby became engaged in a kind of ‘who sent the best card’ hunt, so I left them to it and wandered casually into the kitchen. Max was facing away from me, looking out of the window and leaning on the kitchen sink. I observed him shift his weight and flinch.
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