It seems quite ridiculous to me now that all that longing, all the sobs and sighs, should have been over Henry Bygone. Weak Henry, a man filled with unforgiving kindness, a passionless person.
The other day I heard him reading aloud to Gloria from the Guardian as they sat together at the kitchen table. He was shaking his head in disbelief at the story of a man who shot his wife because she had left him for a younger lover. The man dispatched her with a bullet, and then shot himself.
“Whatever that is, it’s not love,” Henry said.
As I said, passionless. It was obvious to me that the fellow couldn’t let someone else have the person who was his by right, couldn’t himself go on living without the wife who had vowed to be faithful, to be his alone.
But, to Henry, the story was beyond the realm of what he understood of human nature. He couldn’t grasp that someone could feel so devotedly about the thing he loved, that he would kill to preserve that love. I can see now that Gloria’s claim to Henry was a lucky escape for me.
14
THE MUSHROOMS ARE UP. One day there’s no sign of them and the next there they are, strange hoary little aliens, fairy-story things. There are more of them than I have ever noticed before. I can tell that this will be a good season for them. All that winter rain, I suppose.
The urge to get on with my plan is hot in me. These past weeks it has often felt like just a dream, something that might never come to fruition, but the sight of those yeasty little heads has confirmed to me it will be done, and done soon.
Henry, usually the first to herald the mushrooms’ arrival, hasn’t mentioned their appearance yet. I don’t think that I should; it might look a bit suspicious later. I know that he’ll get around to it, though. He can’t resist the idea that they are free for the taking. And he doesn’t like waste, so I wait.
Now that it comes to it, and despite my studying, without the book I am not sure that I can tell the difference between the edible and the poisonous varieties. That’s good, I suppose. They are so similar that I feel confident that Henry won’t notice the ones I sneak into his crop. By the time they join his, he won’t be inspecting them, his mouth will be watering, his mind on how he will cook them.
I’ll wait until he has chopped them up on the thick butcher’s block he uses, and then I’ll get him out of the room on some pretext or other and add my special little present.
I don’t any longer feel the least bit sorry for Henry. None of this would have happened if he hadn’t walked into my life, and then so eagerly into Gloria’s. It is all his fault, talking Mother into leaving them the house, pushing me out, acting like some jumped-up squire.
The other night, as I sat on the bench in the garden, I looked up at the house and saw him pause at their bedroom window. A waning moon was out, shedding a pale light, but I’m sure that he didn’t see me. I sat very still, and the bench, obscured by the twisting branches of the rose arch, is only partly visible from that window. I watched him draw the curtains against the night, against me. I was suddenly full of fury. He inside Pipits, me out; quite the wrong way around. Bloody interloper.
I don’t fear God’s wrath for what I am about to do to Henry; and I won’t seek absolution. I never ask anything of God, not the tiniest thing. What is the point? If he does exist, he is a cold God, not in the least bit interested in me. You only have to look around you to question his existence. I can vouch for the fact that there’s no such thing as fairness, and the injustices I suffer keep coming. Now, what kind of example is that if you are looking for followers? If God does exist, which truly I doubt, I cannot see that he is any better than the devil. If he does exist, perhaps they are one and the same being, the shadow and the light.
* * *
“HENRY, THERE’S SOMEONE AT your studio door,” I say, looking out of the kitchen window, a nice touch of surprise in my voice. “Oh, they’ve gone around to the back now.”
“Really?” he says, joining me at the window. “I’m not expecting anyone.”
“Perhaps it’s a new customer.”
“Maybe,” he says, taking off his apron. “I’ll go and check. I’ll only be a sec, Betty.”
“I’m not staying,” I say. “Only popped in to see Noah.”
“Gloria’s taken him to be weighed,” he says, heading to the door.
“Oh,” I say, as if it’s news to me.
Of course it’s not. I always know what they are doing. They write it down in the diary they leave on the hall table, the one Henry’s mother sends them every Christmas. She has good taste for a housebound pensioner; it is always the V&A one, so beautifully illustrated.
Things are working out well, Gloria at the surgery and Henry jumping to my commands. If Gloria had been at home, it would have made it harder for me to contribute to Henry’s delicious meal, which is to be a risotto. He is so predictable. The mushrooms are all nicely chopped on the board, ready and waiting.
So much of luck is about timing, a minute here or there, a missed plane, left or right at the crossroads, and your fate is decided. If I hadn’t taken Henry home on that sunny day, or if the weather had been gloomy, rainy, perhaps, would Gloria have glowed quite so radiantly? If I had whispered my love for Pipits in Mother’s ear, as Gloria and Henry had dripped their neediness, would the house be mine now?
I don’t expect Henry will succumb right away. The information I’ve gathered claims it will take between six and twelve hours, rather like food poisoning, which I suppose it is. A simple case of food poisoning that could happen to anyone.
Earlier this morning I watched Henry from a vantage point in our woods as he stooped to gather the mushrooms for his lunch. Since the fungi first appeared, I have taken to morning watching in the woods. I needed to know when Henry started his picking. It was a relief to see him there with his basket, all eager, checking the pictures in his book, making sure. He has been so preoccupied with testing out the design for a new line of wavy-edged bowls that I was beginning to fear he would let the complimentary harvest go to ground this year.
When he had gathered enough of the copious crop, he left, whistling to himself. Henry has a way of doing so in moments of contentment, a tuneless sort of fluting. It would be beyond irritating if it weren’t for the fact that it lets me know where he is.
I wondered if he was aware of being watched. He showed no sign of it, but we are meant to sense it, aren’t we? Sense the watcher. I leaned against one of the big self-set trees of heaven and kept him in sight as he strolled across the meadow swinging his basket, until he disappeared around the side of the house.
I know his habits well. He will put the basket down next to the Aga to allow the damp mushrooms to dry off; then he will go to his studio to work. At around twelve fifteen he will return to the kitchen and start to cook.
On normal days he cooks something up for lunch for himself and Gloria, an omelette perhaps, a dish of oily pasta. During mushroom season, though, Gloria makes do with cheese and biscuits, or some leftover thing from the night before, while Henry indulges in his love of fungi. He calls himself a foodie. Greedy, more like.
I suppose I could just have sneaked into the house and added my mushrooms to his while he was in his studio. I think, though, that if the mushrooms were seen whole, there was the chance, however slight, that he may have noticed a difference in the color of the gills, of the firmness of the flesh. To be sure that Henry would accept them as his own, I had to slice them and replace some of his with some of mine. No sense in being careless.
Once Henry, swinging his laden basket, had made it back to the house, I slipped on the plastic gloves I had bought in preparation and began gathering up the Amanita virosa that I had identified, with the help of the book, growing underneath the beech trees in our woods. I couldn’t take the chance of poisoning myself through my skin, so the gloves were necessary. The virosa is quite the little serial killer. Commonly called the destroying angel, it must be handled with extreme caution.
The mushrooms had the strangest
scent, new potatoes with a trace of almonds, although I’m pleased to say that it has faded to almost nothing since I picked them. When I first saw them a couple of days ago, nudging their conical caps up through the moss, I thought they would be hard to disguise. Today though, I see with relief that the caps have opened up to mimic their nearby edible neighbors.
I put them carefully into a plastic bag and stored them in the pocket of my jacket. Then I waited until I was sure Henry would be back at work on his bowls before leaving my spot in the woods and strolling back through the meadow.
Early on there had been fog in the village, a grayish haze hanging low over the houses, but with the clouds thinning, the sky was coming up clear. It was a pleasant walk, past the swimming hole, past the ancient horse chestnut tree and the big elm that survived the disease that felled so many of its kind. Our childhood swing, the wooden seat rotten now, hung lopsidedly from one of its lower branches, creaking as it swayed in the breeze. I looked at my watch. Henry wouldn’t be preparing his lunch for at least a couple of hours. Time for me to shower, time for a prelunch gin.
* * *
I WATCH HENRY LOPE toward the studio in search of the nonexistent caller, and hear him sing out a cheery “hello” to the empty air. I quickly put my gloves back on, open the bag, and tip out the virosa. I refill the bag with a good quantity of Henry’s mushrooms and shove it back into my pocket. Then I slice mine and shuffle them through his prepared pile. Tumbled together they look innocent, so innocent that even I, having glanced away, now can’t tell Henry’s harvest from my own.
As I leave through the front door, I hear him coming through the kitchen. It occurs to me that, if things go according to plan, I might never see him again, not alive, anyway. I hear him clank down a pan on the Aga’s burner, hear the knife tap on the board as he slides the mushrooms into a pan. He begins his whistling.
I walk to Cold-Upton’s surgery intending to meet up with Gloria. I don’t want to be anywhere near Henry. There is no telling how long he will be symptom-free. It could be some hours, but nothing is certain. I gave him a hefty portion of the virosa, so it might happen fast.
I’ll greet Gloria and walk with her at a sluggish pace, tell her I’ve just remembered that I need to buy some milk as we pass the garage. I’ll take my time while she waits for me. The longer we are out, the less chance Henry has of getting help should things happen swiftly.
Gloria isn’t in the surgery, though. The receptionist says that she has gone to have a coffee with the other mums in the tearoom attached to the back of the village shop. It is a regular thing, apparently.
I am put off by the thought of those mums with their boring talk of sleepless nights, their impatient babies always needing something: a drink, a cuddle, a feed; such insistent little creatures, bantam gods tugging at their mother’s chains, demanding to be adored. Besides, whenever I have come across those women in the village, they seem ill at ease with me. I am the daughter of the big house, after all. I have an aura of sophistication that makes them nervous. They like Gloria, of course.
It is fortunate that she is with them, using up time. I buy a packet of tea from the shop and wait for a good twenty minutes outside by Noah’s empty buggy before she appears.
“Hello, you two,” I say. “It is such a lovely day, I thought I’d share the walk home with you.”
“That’s nice. How did you know we were here?”
“Oh, I needed some tea, and I saw Noah’s buggy.”
Noah is halfway to being asleep in Gloria’s arms, but he’s fighting it. He seems to drift off, then just as Gloria relaxes he gives a start, a little whimper, and she sets to rocking him in her arms again. She whispers to me that he is about to go and lowers him gently into the carriage, covering him with a soft new blanket. Blue. Alice’s pink pashmina is nowhere to be seen.
Gloria asks me if I want to come to Pipits for lunch.
“I’m sure Henry will make enough for two,” she says. “Or there’s some soup I made yesterday. Mother’s recipe.”
She often cooks from Mother’s recipe book. It is one of those big hardback notebooks you can buy cheaply from any stationers. Why it should be Gloria’s and not mine is an indication of her desire to grab everything. She has never offered me so much as a photograph from the house. It hardly matters, though; I wouldn’t accept her handouts anyway. When I take over, it will all be mine, and everything in its proper place.
I don’t cook much, it’s true, but I will enjoy every page of that book, so redolent is it of my childhood. Splashes of the food Mother cooked decorate the pages, and the notes she made stir the memory of my early years at Pipits.
Gloria’s favorite. Betty’s favorite. Remember it must be butter not margarine, it is the only way Betty will eat it. Tried this yesterday and both girls loved it. We ate this salad outside on the terrace and were visited by a sparrow; it thought my homemade bread so lovely that it cheekily perched on the table to take a share from the board.
Gloria says she feels Mother’s presence when she makes her meals. She’s convinced that Mother watches over us. I hope not; I don’t like the idea of being watched over, or of Mother hanging around to spy on us.
I say no to lunch, that I am not hungry, which is the truth. Gloria waits outside the garage while I buy milk, pushing Noah’s stroller back and forth with one hand. When I come out, she asks if I’m sure about lunch. I say that I am, and a few yards on we part, she to head to Pipits, me to Alice’s house with my fingers crossed.
I am on alert all afternoon, waiting for the phone to ring, for a distraught knocking at the door, but all is silent. At dusk I light Alice’s wood-burning stove and burn the gloves and the bag full of Henry’s mushrooms. I had meant to do it earlier, but the hours seemed to slip away with my thoughts elsewhere. They are gone in an instant, in a puff of sooty smoke that leaves an acrid scent in the air. I feed wood to the fire and watch it catch, watch the flames turn from blue to orange and then settle to a red glow. Still no word.
I sit by the stove and attempt to read one of Alice’s books, Howards End, but my mind keeps wandering, and the words wriggle and swim away, like tadpoles in a pond.
I make a pot of tea and then decide on gin instead. I haven’t eaten for quite a while—I remember having a sandwich earlier, Marmite I think, but I don’t remember when—so I make some toast and am generous with the butter. Even with the gin to help it down, I am finding it hard to swallow.
Shortly after six o’clock, the waiting is really beginning to get to me, and I am debating with myself about whether or not to pay Gloria and Henry a visit to check things out, when the phone rings. It is Gloria. She blurts out through sobs that Henry has taken ill. I can tell she is distraught.
“Really ill,” she says. “We thought it was just flu earlier, but it’s not, it’s something terrible. You have to come and look after Noah. I’ve called for an ambulance.”
As I walk in the dark to Pipits I hear a siren in the distance. It gets louder as the ambulance takes the hill through the village. Can this really be happening? My heartbeat amps up as I listen to its shriek. I am excited, thrilled at the thought that I have, by my will, brought this about. I turn through Pipits’ gate and have to stand aside in order not to be mown down by the ambulance as it speeds toward the house.
Gloria is standing at the open door with a panicked look on her face. Tears salt her cheeks, little rivulets of them are running into her hair, sliding down her neck. Even in despair she is beautiful.
“Oh, Betty. Thank God,” she says, pulling me through the door.
Two paramedics jump out of the ambulance and unload a stretcher. Gloria is asked for Henry’s symptoms. One of the paramedics asks her name and then the pair of them repeat it in every sentence as though they are talking to a child. She might as well be, so eager for comfort is she from the big strong men. They tell her not to worry but to try and remember all of the symptoms that Henry is displaying.
“Bloody diarrhea,” she says. “And stom
ach pains, bad stomach pains. And vomiting, too.”
“Good girl, Gloria,” they say. “Well remembered, Gloria. Anything else, Gloria?”
“He’s a funny color,” she wails. “And he can’t breathe properly.”
Henry is put on the stretcher. He is scrunched up in the fetal position, moaning a little. There is terror in his eyes, and his skin has turned a peculiar color, some phosphorous shade between yellow and green. I can smell the sick on him: new potatoes and almonds.
“Oh, Henry,” I say. “What on earth has happened?”
I put my arm around Gloria and tell her not to worry. She whimpers a little, then follows Henry on the stretcher into the ambulance, calling out instructions to me.
“Noah’s awake in his cot. I’ve expressed two bottles of milk for him. They are in the fridge, and there’s more of my milk in a jug on the same shelf. I’ll phone as soon as I know anything.”
I hear the pain bleeding in her voice. It astonishes me that in an emergency that might well see her husband out of this world, Gloria has had the forethought to express her milk for Noah. I suppose that progeny comes first, no matter what.
The ambulance guns down the drive, clipping the gate on its way out. I hear the siren wail as it takes the bend on Church Street, then grow fainter as it passes the pub opposite the cricket pitch. The sound dwindles to a soft moan as it leaves the village and heads toward the city, and to the hospital.
Caught up in the moment between the thought of what is and what might be, I shut the door against the night. I switch the lights off and stand in the hall looking out past my reflection through the darkened window, at the immense cloud-mottled sky.
When I go to Noah in his cot, he is walloping the air with his hands and legs, making happy little gurgles. We look at each other, and he blinks his eyes and smiles. I leave him there and go to the kitchen. I will be the good sister and clean up for Gloria. I put on her silly pink rubber gloves with the fake fur cuffs, empty the rubbish bin, bleach the countertops, and put a used mug into the dishwasher that is loaded with the crockery from lunch. I switch it on and it gives a little shudder before starting its cycle.
The Beloveds Page 14