by Tim Jeal
‘So bloody what?’ She stubbed out her cigarette in the wash-basin and added, ‘Coincidences do just happen.’ A slight pause before she said, ‘In any case, even if I’d expected Charles, why did I need you to think I’d gone to the dentist? I could have answered the phone with him on top of me.’
‘You told me you’d be at the dentist to rule out any chance of my coming back from work early.’
She shook her head as though trying to clear it.
‘I’m sorry, but I don’t have to be in the flat for you to come back early.’ She gave him a mocking smile and added, ‘Would you have been lonely without me?’
‘I’d lost my key. I asked you to get me another but you didn’t.’ He paused to emphasize the point. ‘I couldn’t have got in, if you’d been out, so I wouldn’t have come back early.’ He stared at her triumphantly.
Diana looked confused for a moment, but then suddenly she gave a little gasp of comprehension, as though some profound mystery had been revealed to her. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement.
‘It all goes back to that bloody dentist. Well, doesn’t it?’
‘You made him up, like other things.’
‘But the dentist really matters. Right?’
Derek did not deny it. Diana had reached for her handbag and had soon emptied its contents onto the bed. Derek saw her purse, keys, compact, lipstick and a mess of letters and paper. After hastily sorting through it all, she turned the bag upside down and shook out a couple of envelopes from a side-pocket. Derek watched her impassively. Just another pantomime to convince him that she had really made an appointment and had been unlucky enough to mislay her vital appointment card. She looked around the room, as if hoping that some object or garment might give her a clue.
‘What coat was I wearing when I went to see him last?’ Her excitement was still as intense. The effort she was putting into her act brought back Derek’s anger.
‘It’s summer; are you likely to have worn a coat?’
She went over to the fitted cupboards and slid back the doors. He saw her pull out her red raincoat and start turning out the pockets; a handkerchief and a few bus tickets. From the other pocket she produced an empty packet of cigarettes, the programme for Giles’s Open Day, several scraps of paper, receipts they looked like, and something else: a small white card. She handed it to Derek with a cry of triumph. He turned it over in his hand and read: ‘Dr H. M. Dulfakir, BDS, DOrthRCS, Dental Surgeon, 37a Onslow Crescent, London, S.W.7.’
Derek’s head was throbbing painfully; he could hear the blood thundering in his ears. Diana was looking at him with concern.
‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ he shouted. ‘Of course I’m not all right.’
‘Now do you believe me?’ she whispered.
Derek covered his ears with his hands and tried to think. Anything that would catch her out, anything.
‘Your face,’ he blurted out suddenly. ‘How come you had make-up on your face?’
‘What?’ She sounded frightened by the intensity of the question.
‘When Charles came to the flat. How come you had make-up on your face when he arrived? You didn’t know he was coming; that’s what you said. People in bed with headaches don’t put on make-up.’
‘I must have put it on when I went out to get him tea.’
‘You keep your make-up in the teapot?’
‘I must have gone to the bedroom. I told you, it was weeks ago. Do you remember every time you clean your teeth?’ She sounded more alarmed than angry.
Derek had jumped up excitedly.
‘I’d remember if my mistress suddenly arrived and I hadn’t shaved. I’d remember shaving in those circumstances.’
‘Your memory may be better than mine, it doesn’t prove anything more than that.’ Her alarm was giving way to exasperation.
‘Another thing,’ Derek went on wildly, ‘because you made an appointment doesn’t mean that you intended keeping it. You did it all to fool me.’
‘Ring him,’ she shouted, shoving the card in his face.
Derek shook his head and let out a long sigh. Already he had forgotten the sense of his last remark. He walked over to the window and rested his weight on the ledge. Far across the bay the evening sun picked out the white sails of a yacht heading for the open sea. For a moment he imagined himself on board, watching the land slipping away and hearing the slight thud of the waves against the hull. He felt Diana’s hand on his shoulder and turned to see her looking at him strangely.
‘You’re mad,’ she said. ‘I’ve only just seen it. You want me to have had an affair. You pretended to be upset about Charles and me, then when I prove you’re wrong, you treat it as a tragedy. You ought to be jumping for joy; instead you look at me as though I’ve shot you.’
Derek could think of nothing to say. He was still too shocked to be able to collect his thoughts.
‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ she asked with a mixture of exultation and incredulity.
‘Probably,’ he conceded in a stifled voice. ‘Turn a man’s house upside down and don’t be surprised to see him walking on his head.’ The desperation in his voice got through to her at once and she took his hands in hers.
‘But why didn’t you tell me about your fears? Why did you have to wait till you couldn’t cope any more?’
‘You wanted a different person,’ he said, ‘that’s why. Good God, didn’t you make that clear enough when you stopped doing anything to the flat? You despised me enough already without my going to you and whining about whether you were having an affair.’ She took his head in her hands and cradled it as she might have done a child’s. ‘I was afraid that if I told you what I suspected you might feel forced to leave me.’ He took a deep breath and sobbed, ‘I thought that I’d go mad if you left me. I believed I wouldn’t exist.’ As he finished speaking he felt her freeze for a moment before she pushed him away. She was staring at him coldly, every vestige of tenderness gone.
‘If that’s true what does it make me?’ she demanded emotionally.
Derek looked at her in astonishment. Seconds before he had felt relief, peace and love. His confession had brought him such a sense of well-being and tranquillity that at first he wasn’t able to take in what had happened to change her mood so thoroughly.
‘Perhaps I’d better tell you what it makes me then, since you’ve evidently lost your tongue as well as your wits.’ She paused dramatically before shouting, ‘A monster. A woman who bullied and degraded her husband so much that she destroyed him; making him her helpless shadow.’ She became calmer and asked him quietly, ‘Isn’t that what you implied?’
‘I didn’t mean to,’ he whispered.
‘That’s very decent of you. The fact is you like humiliating yourself. A great joke to begin with, the scholarly sage deferring to the wishes of his half-wit wife.’ She sat down on the edge of the bed and folded her arms. ‘A pity it became a habit; a pity for me at least. Fine for you. It saved you the bother of having to think about what you said to me. When in doubt agree.’
‘That isn’t quite fair,’ he protested.
‘Is it fair to tell your wife you’ll go mad if she misbehaves?’
‘A moment ago you were blaming me because I didn’t tell you sooner.’
She didn’t bother to answer him, but went over to the dressing table and started to brush her hair with brisk businesslike movements. Then she turned and said impatiently, ‘If we’re going tonight, you’d better start looking for your cat and getting Giles’s bicycle onto the car.’
‘When in doubt agree,’ he replied under his breath, and then out loud: ‘You wouldn’t like it if I refused, would you?’
She got up and came over to him and rested her hands on his shoulders. ‘You know, Derek, I’ve just been thinking.’ She narrowed her eyes slightly and shook her head. ‘You thought I was having an affair. So instead of mentioning it to me, you arrange to come and stay with me and my supposed lover. Not only that, you ask your father al
ong and bring your son and your cat.’ She raised her eyebrows and let her hands fall from his shoulders. ‘If’s that’s an example of sane Derek, mad Derek might be an improvement.’ She walked to the door and looked back at him more with pity than anger. ‘The car won’t pack itself,’ she said.
*
For almost an hour after leaving the house, Derek felt nothing at all except emptiness, as though every thought, feeling or emotion had been sucked out of him. The sky was a paler blue and towards the horizon he could see a slightly green tinge. The sun was a lot lower now and the air was cooler; but what would it matter if the grass changed to purple and the trees spouted orange leaves? Nothing would blot out the past few hours. Derek had walked about a mile down the road before turning back. Walking was better than sitting; walking was doing something after all, even if his feet seemed as remote and distant as the trees and the sky.
When he got back to the house Derek saw his car in the drive. Better find that bicycle. He began looking without putting much effort into it. Ten minutes later, having found no trace of the missing machine, he realized with a jarring shock that although subsequent events had stretched time unnaturally, his last conversation with Giles had actually taken place earlier that day. He went into the hall and was shocked to see that the clock showed eight o’clock. No trace of his earlier desparing detachment was left as he ran into the kitchen in search of Mrs Hocking. With an unpleasant falling sensation in his stomach, he learned that Giles had left just before ten and had not returned to lunch, nor had he taken any food with him.
The boy’s deliberate indifference came back to him with painful clarity. Giles had seemed stable enough, but it was quite possible that he had concealed his real feelings, that the whole act of not caring had been no more than a mask. Easy to forget that even trivial disasters are felt so keenly in childhood; and an unwanted and unnecessary confession of adultery was hardly trivial. Derek had a sudden vision of Giles riding his bicycle with deliberate carelessness; saw him drifting round a sharp bend on the wrong side of the road into the path of an oncoming lorry. Or was he floating face downwards in the sea, or lying crumpled at the foot of a rocky cliff?
Derek was standing staring at the phone in the hall when Diana came up to him. All her cool detachment had gone; she looked pale and shaken.
‘You can’t find him either? It’s so unlike him going off.’
Derek took her arm gently. Then he gave her a comforting smile.
‘He’ll be back soon. Boys are like that. They get carried away and can’t imagine their parents might worry. When I was his age I went off to Brighton for the day and didn’t get back till after midnight. I was amazed when my father sent me to bed in disgrace.’
Diana was tugging at her hair distractedly.
‘Why the hell did we leave him? Why?’
‘If he’s not back by nine, we’ll ring the police.’
‘Is it our fault?’ she cried suddenly.
‘Perhaps,’ he replied, wondering how he could have let the boy go off on his own earlier in the day. Waves of shame flooded through him.
‘I never showed enough interest,’ she moaned. ‘You were so much better, Derek.’
If she knew about the morning, thought Derek; if she ever knew … Giles, aged four: freckled face, snub nose, hair a redder red, no glasses. An eager, inventive child with so many private words. Potato was tubby, oranges ornies, chutney chucketty. Diana saying: He’s far too old for that baby talk, and: It’s ridiculous a boy his age having to sleep with his baby blanket. Derek the one who understood. Good Daddy, bad Mummy. Diana saying angrily: You keep on undermining me. Always Mummy who has to say no to him. Derek felt tears forming. He put his arms round Diana and they held each other.
*
When Charles returned from the doctor’s, with four stitches in his chin, he seemed surprised to see his guests still in the house. At first he was angry but when he heard about Giles a temporary truce was patched up. Mrs Hocking was told to provide a cold supper.
They ate in the kitchen, mostly in silence. Derek only picked at his food and Diana seemed equally lacking in appetite. Charles didn’t open any wine but fetched some brandy afterwards. When his thoughts became too disturbing, Derek studied the plates on the heavy mahogany dresser and vainly tried not to hear the hollow ticking of the large Victorian wall-clock. Charles poured out three glasses of brandy and then started to peal a peach with meticulous care. Diana suddenly pushed back her chair with a harsh scraping noise on the flags.
‘I’m sorry but I can’t just sit here. We ought to ring the police now.’
Charles put down his knife and said gently, ‘It might be worth trying the hospitals first. There aren’t many. If he hasn’t been admitted we’ll be able to discount the idea of a road accident.’
A quarter of an hour later Charles came back. It occurred to Derek that he was enjoying his rôle of capable man of action. Maligned by his ungrateful guests, he was still enough of a good samaritan to do all he could for them.
‘Well, no news at any of the hospitals. I’m on the phone to the police in Penzance. I’ve given them a description and they’ll circulate it.’ He turned to Diana. ‘What was he wearing this morning?’
Diana’s lips were trembling. She screwed up her eyes as though desperately trying to remember and then shook her head.
‘It’s awful. I’m not sure. Jeans, I think, and a yellow sweater.’
‘Navy jeans, a pale blue T-shirt and a fawn jersey,’ muttered Derek. ‘I think he was wearing sandals.’
‘Anything to identify him? Name-tags on his clothes?’
Diana let out a loud sob that seemed to surprise her. Her eyes were quite dry.
‘He only has name-tapes on his school clothes. These were holiday things.’
When Charles had gone back to the phone she started crying uncontrollably. Long low sobs that came from the pit of her stomach and shook her with each spasm. Derek came and put his arms round her. After a minute or two she dried her eyes with her sleeve, smearing mascara across her cheek.
Before Charles returned, Angela came in looking hot and angry. She glanced at Derek and then started to eat what was left of her brother’s helping of chicken.
‘I had to walk back,’ she complained with her mouth full. ‘Somebody might have waited for me.’
‘Giles is missing,’ said Derek quietly.
‘God, I’m sorry.’
For a moment Derek was frightened that she was going to say more, but, before she could, Charles came in again.
‘The police are going to contact the local coast guard. He may have been cut off by the tide or got himself stuck up a cliff. If there’s no sign by morning they’ll get a naval helicopter out to look for him.’
‘It isn’t happening,’ moaned Diana.
‘No need to get worried till midnight,’ said Charles soothingly. ‘To tell the truth the police thought we were a bit over-anxious getting them in this early. But better safe than sorry.’
A little later Charles and Diana went down to Tregeare to ask in the pub if anybody had seen Giles; Angela would stay in the house in case he phoned or turned up in person, and Derek had made up his mind to go down to the beach and search along the shore for a couple of miles.
When Charles and Diana had gone, Derek went upstairs for an extra sweater. On his way through the hall Angela stopped him and handed him a torch.
‘I’m sorry I said what I did this afternoon,’ she said quietly.
‘You weren’t to know.’
She kissed him lightly on the cheek as he walked out into the darkness.
*
Derek picked his way over the rockery towards the edge of the strip of woodland which separated the grounds of Charles’s house from the shore. The yellow beam of his torch stabbed out a narrow field of vision: too narrow, he thought. He switched off the torch to gauge how well he could see by the light of the crescent moon and a sky filled with stars. For a while he stood still and waited for his eyes
to acclimatize. Have to go carefully.
Ahead the trees reared up: an unreal black wall like a giant cut-out against the paler sky. To the right, where the trees were less dense, he could see the far side of the estuary floating indistinctly like a long dark cloud on the silvery water. As his eyes grew used to the darkness, he was able to pick out more detail. The wall of trees was soon no longer impenetrable, for now amid dark leaves he could glimpse the grey bark of trunk or branch. Just ahead of him to his left he could make out a tangle of brambles; a few moments before it might have been a large holly bush or a dense clump of bamboos. The path too had become clearer and he could see a faint white line where it twisted away until obscured by the dark shadows of the trees.
But as he walked deeper into the wood he could make out very little. The prevailing wind had bent the oak trees so that their branches formed a dense and flattened canopy above him. At times pools of moonlight were so rare that he had to use his torch, and then the utter hopelessness of his search became cruelly obvious. He shouted the boy’s name several times and waved the torch above his head but there was no answer, only the whispering of leaves stirred by the slight breeze. Derek trudged on across a small clearing overgrown with straggling elders. As though it was remotely likely that Giles should be sitting in a wood half a mile from the house, as though, if he could light the entire coastline with powerful arc-lights, he would find him. A long way away he thought he heard a fox bark. Occasionally twigs fell and branches creaked. Once, a small animal scuttled past with a rustling scratching sound. Weasel, stoat or rat—he didn’t know or care. Stories in the papers came back to him; children who had not been seen for years and parents not knowing all that time whether they were dead or alive. Pathetic yellowing photographs in shop windows: ‘If you have seen Christine, Sandra, Clare …’ Derek imagined himself coming to Cornwall at weekends, wandering through resorts, asking in hotels and beach shops whether Giles had been seen. Could he take a room, get work on a paper round, deliver milk or serve in a store? Would people ask him where he came from or suspect that he’d run away? Wasn’t it obvious that they would? And yet children, boys and girls in their early teens did run away and stay away. Visions of Giles being kept by an ageing homosexual, or stealing from shops, or sleeping rough.