A Death to Remember

by Ormerod, Roger

  Why not? Everything should be in perfect order. But phonecalls to Orton’s office had met polite stalling, and later, not so polite stalling. I could have served on him a notice to produce, which would have left him no option, but I tried to keep a cool breeze moving. I decided to try a personal, unannounced visit. In his office his secretary politely intercepted me. ‘May I help you, sir?’

  This woman, I decided, could help me at any time, simply by smiling at me. I explained, and she phoned through to him. Orton came out from the back. It was the first time I’d met him.

  I suppose suspicion is part of an accountant’s life. As they have to rise above it, it’s not surprising that they have an air of superiority. So it was with Orton. He was slim and straight-backed, a severe looking man in his early thirties, about my age, but it was carving channels in his personality. He wore his hair too long, flaunting its early greyness like a flag. It framed craggy features and a grim mouth. He was sleekly dressed in expensive fawn slacks and a brown leather jacket, hardly suitable for an accountant I’d have thought, but on him it merely indicated that he was a style-setter and therefore a man who’d be right on the ball with every new development in accountancy. He lifted his head at me, staring down his long nose.

  ‘What the devil’s this about?’ he asked.

  I explained that I merely wanted access for ten minutes to the books he was holding for Emmett Industries.

  ‘It’s not convenient. After lunch...’

  ‘I’d prefer to clear it before.’

  This seemed to amuse his secretary. He swivelled his head at her, frowning.

  ‘It is lunchtime,’ she pointed out.

  Perhaps some signal passed between them. He gave a short laugh. ‘Then take my secretary to lunch, and see them afterwards.’

  She was reaching for her handbag. I felt they’d done the same sort of thing before. It would give him a clear hour.

  ‘Suppose I see the books now,’ I suggested. I glanced at her. ‘You don’t mind waiting for ten minutes?’

  She pouted at me. Amusement was still in her eyes. She shook her head, and there was an impishness about her that told me she was deliberately annoying her boss. ‘I can wait,’ she told me.

  Orton simply looked at her in a way that should have shrivelled her. Then he turned away, and the fact that he left his door open I took to be an invitation. I winked at her, and followed him.

  Whatever he might have feared, I found nothing wrong with the wages records. In five minutes I’d spotted the discrepancy that was worrying the computers our end, and how it had come about.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘So perhaps we can now go to lunch,’ he said sourly, and clearly he meant himself and his secretary. But I wasn’t going to lose out on such a chance. I went out to where she was waiting and said: ‘Let’s go.’ She laughed out loud.

  Her name was Valerie Marchant. As soon as I heard the name I understood the relationship between her and Orton. Henry Marchant was the town’s biggest industrialist, and also her father. She would have no need to work. But you know what it’s like these days; they want independence. So poppa had farmed her out. No doubt Orton was his firm’s accountant, and it would have been easy to persuade him to take her on. But don’t get the impression she was a drag on Orton’s efficiency. Val had taken secretarial courses. She could play sweet music on any computer you placed before her, and electronic typewriters almost bowed to her.

  So there we were in Nancy’s restaurant, and the more I discovered about her, the more sure I became that I should have taken her to somewhere more grand. Later, I realised that would have been a mistake. She could always fit in neatly with any situation; she was so used to money that she didn’t even consider what it was buying, like the millionaire who can afford to wear baggy trousers and a torn sweater, because he no longer has to make an impression.

  Sadly, I didn’t work this out until after we were married, and after her father’s death. What I had taken to be her flirtation with independence was no more than a rejection of the polished and empty personalities of the young men who clung to her father’s coat tails in the hope of preferment. She was looking for a man who didn’t have to crawl.

  That lunch was the first of many, of dinners and concerts and theatres. I barely had time to realise that the Cliff Summers who whirled her around was not the man who had walked into Orton’s office.

  I’ve mentioned the opposition I’d encountered in my job. I suppose I’d developed a surface personality to oppose it. A smile achieved more than a scowl. It was an insincerity that had leaked into my life without my realising it, and perhaps I presented this face to Val. We laughed together like idiots. Each was drunk on the other’s personality, and basically it was all false. She courted me, and I courted her. Were we going to do that by exhibiting our hidden faults?

  Early on I realised that Orton himself had his eye on her. This became obvious when I began to call too often for her at his office. He snarled at me silently, his hatred in his eyes, and I smiled back at him. I could afford to.

  Talking about affording, this wild and forceful affair of ours was costing me more than I could manage. It was almost in desperation that I asked her to marry me.

  ‘I can’t afford to go on like this,’ was what I said.

  She laughed at me. I know now that she didn’t understand what I meant. She knew the job I did, and that the salary would be in much the same bracket as hers with Orton. She simply assumed that both jobs would be abandoned and we’d live together on her income from shares in daddy’s company. I simply assumed we’d live on our combined salaries. That’s perfectly true. I had thought of her wealth as a drawback when it came to trotting her around in the manner in which she clearly intended to remain accustomed.

  During the three months that this courtship lasted I realised that Orton had developed into an enemy. He didn’t come to the wedding. This was one of those huge society affairs, in which I just happened to be a minor component. Her father had barely spoken to me. All her life, Val had had what she wanted. Now she wanted me, so he handed her over. Literally, he gave her away. Then we went to live in the house on Woodstock Heights he’d bought us as a wedding present. Correction – bought her. The house was in Val’s name. We had a honeymoon on Corfu, and returned to that wonderful house, and our marriage fell apart.

  We relaxed, you see. We were seen by each other as we were, and it wasn’t pleasant for either of us. She had not realised that I’d taken annual leave for our honeymoon. She had assumed I’d resigned. I hadn’t realised that from that moment I was expected to do nothing, nothing but parties and bridge evenings and trips to the Med on Hector’s yacht. Nothing. I wanted to do something. Had to. It was what life was all about. You’ll say that in the Civil Service I was doing nothing – well...nothing you could hold up and say: I did that. So maybe that was why I liked the Inspector’s job. Anyway, I insisted on carrying on with it.

  Oh...the fury! Then why had she worked at Orton’s office, I demanded, believing it to be a true analogy. She sneered at me. I was nothing, she told me, and didn’t ever want to be anything. I shouted at her. And so on...

  She wanted to buy me a BMW 525. ‘At least look like somebody.’

  I went and bought the Volvo, looking like somebody, and yet still my own self. Or so I thought.

  During the following six months I began to wonder who exactly that self was. What I wanted was to be with Val every minute of the day, which I could well have done if I hadn’t been so stupidly stubborn. The snag was that Val’s life didn’t fit into my pattern. Her day began with our evening meal, which more often than not was taken at someone else’s home, and went on with assorted roistering through to the small hours. This treatment gradually wore me down, until I became no use to the Civil Service during the day, and not a bit of use to Val during what was left of the night.

  It was at this stage of my deterioration that her father collapsed at his desk from a heart attack, and was dead before
they got him to hospital.

  Suddenly, Val’s considerable income as a minor shareholder became a huge one as a director and major shareholder. My continuing to work became purely stupid. No longer was it necessary to use Hector’s yacht; we had one of her own. I could have gone about my inspectorate duties in a chauffeured Rolls, if I’d liked. Great fun that would’ve been, putting in a claim for travelling expenses on a Rolls plus chauffeur. I very nearly tried it, just to watch Claud Martin’s face when I put the claim under his nose. But refrained. I’d been careful to keep any outward evidence of Val’s money away from the office. Nevertheless, there was resentment. I could feel it in the atmosphere. They knew, you see.

  Yet still I went on with it. Stubborn, that was me.

  ‘I don’t care about your silly job,’ said Val one day. ‘I’m taking the yacht round the Grecian islands next month, and we’ll be away for at least six weeks. So...do what you like.’

  There was no possibility of taking six weeks’ leave. I decided to let her get on with it. By that time, the issue had grown to the point where our whole future relationship rested on my decision. I refused to go.

  She went. It was a blessed period of rest for me. During that six weeks I again had cause to request Michael Orton to produce a client’s books. He wasn’t at his office. It was firmly closed. He’d gone to the Med on Val’s yacht. Not her sole guest, mind you, as there were eight or ten of them, along with a crew of captain and three crewmen. But all the same, I knew we were coming to the end of it.

  She returned, slim, bronzed, her teeth white against her skin, her hair crisp in a style I hadn’t seen before. Very Greek. It suited her black hair. I asked had she enjoyed it. She said she had. She made no comment that I’d moved into another bedroom.

  I went out of her life with only the smallest of flurries. It was obvious that Orton was poised to move in. I still say it was coincidence that during that last few months my work at the office seemed to involve a growing number of firms for which Orton was the accountant. Our paths crossed professionally far too often, and of course he made matters as difficult as he could for me.

  This in itself was suspicious. What he didn’t appreciate was that my official interest was confined to wages records, not full company accounts. Whatever I saw was always in order. I was not even qualified to examine company accounts with any hope of understanding them. So that, whilst I had suspicions that all was not as it should have been, any finagling was outside my sphere of interest.

  In the end, he took on an assistant, a young and fiercely competent man called Colin Rampton. I thought the prime idea was to present Rampton as a barrier between us. My dealings from then on were exclusively with Rampton.

  One evening I quietly packed my bags and loaded them into the Volvo, told Val I was leaving, and left. It was as unemotional as that. Aunt Peg welcomed me, and asked no questions. Life went on, until the divorce, the decree absolute, and the assault on me on November 16th.

  Everything seemed to come to an end at that time. When I left the convalescent home I was like an aged baby, looking out on a brand new world.

  I was therefore not sure it was a good idea to trespass into the old one.

  9

  When I drove up to the house on Woodstock Heights I hadn’t seen Val for over three years. She had not visited me at the home, had not communicated in any way.

  She was still living in the same house, mainly, I thought, because her mother was the resident ruler at the grand pseudo manor-house her father had built. Woodstock Heights looked much the same. The gravel drive up to the house was just as neat and weed-free, the paintwork seemed fresh, though the same colour, the dog was new. He came out to stand by my car door, a golden retriever, and by heaven he’d remembered, though I hadn’t. Laddie. He’d been two years old when I’d last seen him.

  As I crouched down to him I felt a stab of conscience, that he’d been completely wiped from my memory, when there’d been a time during which he’d been the only one I could communicate with. I almost got back into the car and went away, so strong was the emotion that clutched at me. I hadn’t realised how much that last year there had cost me, that I’d so crawled within my own skin that even Laddie had been forced out. How straightforward life must be for dogs, their affection unforced and undeviating.

  I straightened. Val was standing in the front porch.

  ‘Clifford!’

  She said this with a dying tone at the end, tailing off, as though I’d been naughty and had to be reprimanded.

  ‘Hello Val.’

  ‘Come along in. Let’s have a look at you. I heard you’d come back, but I didn’t think...you’re looking well, Cliff. It is good to see you.’

  If that sounds different from the woman I’ve been telling you about, it’s because she was. I might have overstressed her practicality and self-sufficiency, because it was mainly these qualities that had overcome me. Now she was more human; she looked at me as though I might still have something to offer her. She was untypically unsure of herself. She actually fluttered.

  ‘I was having tea. Come along through. If Laddie’s worrying you, I’ll send him out.’

  ‘He’s not worrying me.’ That sort of worry I could take and absorb.

  ‘I’ll just ring for another cup and saucer.’

  So now she had a maid, probably also a full-time cook and a gardener. In my day there’d been a daily, and caterers had looked after things if we threw a dinner party. I stood, looking round the lounge, as she’d always called it. She had not altered a thing. Still it had that air of delicate grace, the pink and white sugary sweetness that I’d at first disliked and later relaxed into. I’d enjoyed the sweeping view from the wide windows, of the garden sinking away, with the town a misty spread in the distance. Her room. Her house. I wondered whether Orton had tried to influence her regarding the decor and furnishings. If so, he’d failed.

  ‘But sit down,’ she said, aware that I was still standing. ‘You know you can make yourself at home.’

  This was very close to saying it was my home. In the old days she’d have put a slightly cynical tinge to her tone when saying such things. Now there was nothing but sincerity.

  I sat, not deliberately looking at her, but all the same paying her closer attention. A wet nose nuzzled my palm.

  She was thinner. Val had always been slim, that sleek, smoothly-flowing figure of hers being her pride. Now she was almost painfully thin. I wondered whether she’d had an illness. Something like that showed in her face. The high cheekbones seemed more prominent, the large eyes were deep-set and bruised, the line of her cheek, down to a chin that had always been too sharp, was now indented. I detected that her make-up attempted to minimise this.

  ‘I can’t make myself at home, you must realise that,’ I said gently. ‘You’ve lost weight, Val.’ This because I suddenly felt an anxiety about it.

  The maid brought in another cup and saucer, and a plate of tiny sandwiches, with a fresh pot of tea. The same silver tea service, I saw. Val had had time to prepare her answer, an excuse to lower her eyes.

  ‘I’m being very active these days. Squash, golf. I walk a lot, with Laddie.’

  A completely changed life-style, then. ‘It suits you.’

  She handed me a cup, and a small plate to perch on my knee. I felt like a visiting curate. ‘That’s a lie, and you know it,’ she said. ‘We change. That’s how things are.’

  ‘Yes. We change.’

  Then there was a short period of silence.

  ‘And you?’ she asked. ‘How is it with you, Clifford?’

  When she used my full name, that meant intimacy was banned. I was supposed to provide a formal answer.

  ‘I manage. Things are falling back into place.’

  ‘But there’s not even that wonderful job of yours,’ she said, with only the smallest hint of bitterness.

  I laughed. ‘That’s true. Strange how things go, isn’t it.’

  ‘And...’ She lowered her voice. ‘Financi
ally?’

  ‘All right, thank you.’

  ‘You know you could...’

  ‘No!’

  Then I looked down and selected a sandwich. I’d been too abrupt. What stood between us was the ridiculous fact that I could have claimed maintenance from her, over our divorce, a situation my solicitor had explained, but from which I’d shied away.

  ‘If you say so,’ she murmured.

  She was so different! I didn’t know how to handle it. She could have lifted a phone, and my bank account would have bulged with eagerness. I expected an argument over this point; the old Val would’ve given me one. The new one conceded that it should be as I said. But a spark still smouldered.

  ‘You were always so weak,’ she said sharply.

  ‘Complaisant,’ I agreed. ‘That was the word you most fancied.’

  ‘But I’m not going to quarrel about it.’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘You must drag along in the gutter, if that’s how you want it.

  ‘I’m not going to plead with you.’

  ‘I’m not in the gutter, Val.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘And having you plead with me would be more than I could stand.’

  She stared at me, her brows gathered together and her eyes dark. I smiled at her. She almost flinched. Perhaps it was a smile she recognised.

  ‘In my present weakened condition,’ I explained.

  At last I’d coaxed a laugh from her, almost as free as the laughter of our early days. The triumph was that we were laughing at ourselves.

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t come to match words with me,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or simply to see me.’

  ‘Don’t denigrate yourself, Val.’

  ‘Oh, big words now.’ She seemed unoffended. ‘Then what?’

  ‘One or two things. I don’t seem to be able to locate them, and it was just possible they were here...’

  ‘But how could they be...’ Between us hung three years since I’d set foot in that house. ‘What things, for instance?’