Throughout this recital Thanet had once again unexpectedly been filled with compassion for Charity. He imagined her romanticising the sordid encounter at Easter until it took on the aura and intensity of a grande passion, transforming this shallow, callous youth into everything that was noble and desirable in a man. He saw her eager hopes dashed as the days and then weeks went by without a word in reply, pictured her last attempt to recreate reality from fantasy in her bid to join Williams for the weekend, her shattering disappointment when she at last received the longed-for letter … And then, to cap it all, the mounting panic as she realised that her period was overdue …
‘And it was soon after that she drops her little bombshell,’ said Williams.
‘Told you she was pregnant, you mean?’
‘Yeah. In a bloody telegram, no less. Probably afraid if she sent a letter I’d chuck it straight in the bin without reading it.’
‘Claiming you were the father, I presume?’
‘You bet. You could’ve knocked me down with a feather … Oh no, I thought, you’re not pinning that one on me, no matter how hard you try.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘What would you have done? I scarpered, of course, moved back home. I knew she’d never find me down here and I was pretty sure I could get my old job back.’
Thanet believed him. It was, in fact, precisely what he had expected Williams to do.
‘Just one last question, then. Can you give us an account of your movements last Monday evening, between nine and eleven pm?’
‘Between nine and eleven,’ repeated Williams, frowning with concentration. ‘Monday …’ Abruptly, his face cleared and a slow grin spread across his features. ‘Is that when she …?’
Thanet could see what was coming.
‘From eight till midnight I was playing in a group at a disco, here in Cardiff.’ His fingers jauntily thrummed imaginary strings. ‘Guitar, Inspector. Go ahead and check.’
They would, of course, thought Thanet as Lineham took down the details, but Williams was so cocky in his relief that it would obviously be only a matter of routine. It really did look as though the Welshman was out of the running.
He said so to Lineham as they walked back to the car. ‘We’ll get Cardiff to check for us, in the morning.’
Lineham did not reply and Thanet looked sharply at him. The sergeant’s face was closed, brooding.
‘What’s the matter, Mike?’
‘You knew, didn’t you?’
‘Knew what?’
‘That Williams would be here. That’s why you were so determined to come.’
‘Not knew. Guessed, perhaps.’
‘How?’
Thanet shrugged. ‘I just tried to think myself into his shoes, work out how he would react … It was very much a long shot.’
‘But it came off,’ said Lineham gloomily.
They had reached the car.
‘Shall I drive for the first half?’ Thanet hoped that Lineham would take the hint and drop the subject. He really didn’t feel in the mood for another session of breast-beating by the sergeant.
‘I don’t mind.’ Lineham obediently got into the passenger seat and sank into a silence which lasted until well past the Severn Bridge.
‘Well, Mike,’ said Thanet eventually. ‘What do you think? Think he was telling the truth, about Charity being sexually experienced? Incidentally, odd about that letter, isn’t it? That it never turned up. I really did expect to find it in the bag Charity left at Veronica’s.’
‘Hmm?’ Lineham made an effort to rouse himself. ‘She probably tore it up. After all, it wasn’t exactly the sort of letter to cherish, was it? She was probably furious he’d given her the brush-off.’
‘True. Anyway, do you think he was telling the truth?’
‘About her sex life, you mean? Yes, I did. Didn’t you?’
‘Yes. But of course, if he was, the question is, who?’
‘Difficult to see how she ever had the opportunity.’
‘I agree. Mrs Hodges can’t have known anything about it, or she’d have mentioned it, I’m sure.’
‘Might be one of the masters at school, sir?’
‘At a girls’ school, Mike?’
‘With respect, sir, I think you’re a bit out of date. You often find masters in girls’ schools these days. As a matter of fact, Louise and I met a master from Sturrenden Girls’ Tech at a party recently. Teaches history.’
‘You’re not going to tell me he wears pebble-lensed specs?’
Lineham smote his forehead in mock self-admonition. ‘Why ever didn’t I think of him before? Of course he does!’
‘All right, Mike, cut out the sarcasm. You’re right. If there’s one master at the Tech, there might be more. We’ll get on to the school first thing in the morning.’
‘What about the Bible classes?’
‘I told you, there are only two boys, and they’re much too young. There’s Jethro, of course. He often saw her home, apparently—and come to think of it, he’s just the type to have a yen for little girls. Inadequate, probably sexually deprived … And his wife’s enough to make any man impotent. Yes, the more I think about it, the more likely it seems. It could explain why Mrs Jethro hated Charity so much—and why Jethro himself was so on edge, when I saw him …’
Thanet settled down to concentrate on his driving. At Membury they stopped again to refresh themselves with a cup of coffee and a substantial snack. Thanet, aware that it would be too late to ring Joan when he got home, tried to contact her from a phone booth in the service station complex, but without success. Once again, she was out. He gritted his teeth as he slammed the receiver down. He felt as though she was daily floating further and further away from him, like a balloon cut loose from its mooring, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
Now it was his turn to sit in brooding silence and Lineham, preoccupied no doubt with his own anxieties, made no attempt to break in upon his reverie until they were approaching Maidstone.
‘Isn’t that lightning ahead?’
‘I didn’t notice.’ But a moment or two later Thanet saw the distant flicker for himself. ‘You’re right, Mike. Looks as though there’s a storm coming up.’
Now he had something else to worry about: Bridget. She’d always hated thunderstorms and invariably woke up if there was one during the night. He began to pray that he would get home before it broke. His mother-in-law could sleep through anything.
He made it in the nick of time. The first really loud clap of thunder came as he was running his car into the garage and by the time he emerged the first heavy drops of rain were falling. In his hurry he had forgotten to shut the gate and, cursing, he sprinted back down the drive to do so. He wasn’t going to risk a repeat of yesterday’s performance, with Ben.
By the time he reached the front door the rain was hammering down and his hair was plastered to his scalp. In the hall he tilted his head, listened intently. Was that a cry? Yes, there it was again.
‘Mummyyyy …’
Peeling off his wet jacket as he went, he took the stairs two at a time as outside the lightning flashed and, a second later, there was a deafening crash of thunder. He tossed his jacket in the direction of his bedroom door and went straight into the children’s room.
‘MUMMYYY …’
Bridget was sitting bolt upright in bed, hands pressed hard over her ears, eyes tight shut, face screwed up. Ben, who had inherited his grandmother’s knack, slumbered on undisturbed.
‘Sprig …’ Thanet plumped down on the bed beside her and gathered her into his arms. Hers at once coiled themselves around his neck and she burrowed her face into his shoulder.
‘Daddy …’
He began to stroke her hair with soothing, rhythmic movements. ‘Hush darling, it’s all right, Daddy’s here. Don’t cry, it’s all right …’
Lightning flared and, simultaneously, there was a thunderclap so loud that Thanet’s eardrums rang and the house shook. Torrential rain la
shed against the windows.
Bridget’s body convulsed and she gave a little cry, clung to him even more tightly.
‘Don’t worry, darling. It’s quite safe.’ He fervently hoped that this was true, that his mother-in-law’s house had a good earthing system.
‘The house … It trembled.’
‘This house has stood here for hundreds of years, love, and it’s going to stand for hundreds more …’
He continued to administer comfort and murmur reassurances while the storm raged overhead and presently the intervals between lightning and thunder began to lengthen as it drifted away. Gradually Bridget quieted and, exhausted by the tensions of the last half an hour, closed her eyes and relaxed against him. When he judged that she was almost asleep, Thanet began to ease her gently down into the bed.
‘Don’t go ’way, Daddy,’ she said sleepily.
He told her that he would stay just a little while longer but that the storm had moved away now and that yes, if it returned, he would come to her again.
Suddenly, shockingly, she opened her eyes wide and in them there was the painful honesty of someone who at last faces a long-evaded truth.
‘Mummy’s never coming back, is she, Daddy?’
‘Sprig!’ Weakness buckled his legs and he subsided on to the bed again. ‘Of course she is! In just over two weeks now she’ll be home for good. Whatever makes you say such a thing?’ Into his weary brain sprang the question: has she heard something I haven’t?
‘Because she doesn’t love us any more.’
‘Darling, that simply isn’t true! Of course she loves us.’ But the statement had chimed in so exactly with his own fears that he knew he’d sounded unconvincing. For Bridget’s sake he tried again. ‘You know she does.’
But Bridget was shaking her head, her eyes solemn. ‘If she did, she wouldn’t have gone away …’
‘Sprig …’ Thanet put his arms around her and lifted her into a sitting position once more, conscious of a sudden spurt of anger against Joan. How dare she cause such insecurity in their beloved daughter? And how dare she put him once again into the impossible position of defending something which, in his heart of hearts, he found indefensible?
Since Joan had started work they had had to deal with many uncomfortable questions from the children and for Thanet, especially, it had been difficult to find convincing answers. For the first ten years of their marriage Joan had apparently been content to remain a housewife, and it had come as a rude shock to find that inwardly she had long been hankering after a satisfying career of her own. Fortunately Thanet had seen the light in time and, having realised that if he persisted in opposing Joan he would most surely lose her, he had at last capitulated and given her his support.
But all along, deep down inside, he had known that, given the choice, he would have preferred it to be otherwise and at a time like this, when his own doubts and fears were more profound than they had ever been, it took an almost superhuman effort to attempt to convince Bridget that hers were unjustified.
But for her sake he did his best, only to find that when at last he crawled into his lonely bed, his own anxieties had proliferated, hydra-like.
Suppose Bridget was right, and Joan wasn’t coming back. This might explain why she’d been so elusive of late. Perhaps Bridget had overheard a fragment of conversation between her mother and grandmother, on the telephone.
Or—and in some ways this thought was comforting, in others it made him feel even worse—was it possible that his own anxieties over Joan were becoming so powerful that he was unwittingly communicating them to the children? He had heard of such things happening.
What a responsibility children were, he thought as he tossed and turned, a truly awesome responsibility. You embarked upon ‘having a baby’ without ever really considering that the baby soon becomes a toddler, a child, an adolescent, that it will make impossible demands upon your patience and tolerance, stretch your financial resources until they snap, and bring to an end for ever the twosome for which you abandoned your bachelor state.
He loved Bridget and Ben, couldn’t begin to visualise life without them, but there was no doubt that bringing up children was uphill work most of the way. Not just physical work, though in the early years that was demanding enough; equally wearing were the endless decisions to be made, decisions in which mundane things like food, clothes, toys and television programmes became inextricably bound with ethics and morality, so that you were constantly struggling to define your attitudes and justify your behaviour in an attempt to communicate your values to your children.
Then there was the vexed question of discipline: to punish or not to punish? And if so, how? To what degree? It was all so difficult, so complicated. It was much easier, he supposed, if you had a rigid code to follow, like Pritchard. For Pritchard everything was white or black, right or wrong, good or evil. Pritchard would never have to stop and ask himself if he were doing the right thing. Though Pritchard’s religion must be cold comfort to him now, when he had lost the daughter he had alienated by it.
Once again Thanet found himself wondering exactly what had happened during that week seven or eight years ago, when Charity had been kept home from school. Whatever it was, it had changed her radically from a lively, mischievous child whose unacceptable behaviour had no doubt been an over-reaction against too strict a discipline at home, into little more than a zombie. No, not a zombie, he corrected himself, for underneath Charity’s rebellion had continued. She had simply bided her time, waited until she had gathered sufficient strength to deal her father a mortal blow, sharpening prematurely the only weapon she possessed, her sexuality.
Furthermore, Thanet was convinced that whatever Pritchard had done to her during that week had not only changed her outward behaviour and steeled her antagonism towards him, but had also taught her some bitter lessons which had soured her expectations of life and destroyed her chances of enjoying good relationships with others.
He had to find out what had happened and before he finally fell asleep he determined to put it high on the list of the next day’s priorities.
15
Next morning Thanet was riffling hurriedly through the reports which had piled up during yesterday’s absence when Doc Mallard put his head around the door and said, ‘Got it!’
Thanet glanced up abstractedly. ‘Morning, Doc.’ Then, as he took in Mallard’s air of suppressed excitement, ‘Got what?’
Mallard glanced back over his shoulder. ‘Ah, morning, Sergeant.’ He opened the door wider and advanced into the room, followed by Lineham. ‘How’s your wife?’
‘Much the same, thanks, Doc.’
‘I heard she’d gone into hospital early. What’s the problem, exactly?’
The two men chatted about Louise for a few moments and Thanet, anxious to be off, waited with as much patience as he could muster. At last there was a suitable hiatus and he put in quickly, ‘Got what, Doc?’
‘Jethro Pritchard. You know I kept on saying the name rang a bell? Well, I finally remembered.’ Mallard clasped his hands behind his back and gave a self-satisfied little bounce on the balls of his feet.
‘Remembered what?’
‘Can’t recall the details, I’m afraid. Not surprising, really. Must have been all of—oh, twenty years ago, I’d say.’
‘What must have been?’
‘The Court case.’
With difficulty Thanet refrained from saying, ‘What Court case?’ The little doctor, he realised, was enjoying keeping them in suspense. But he did wish he’d get on with it …
Mallard glanced from one attentive face to the other and said, ‘Very unsavoury it was, that I do remember. Something to do with little girls … Yes, I thought that would interest you.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Good gracious, I’m late for surgery already.’
‘But …’
Mallard flapped his hand. ‘Sorry. Told you, can’t remember the details. Can’t do all your work for you, can I?’
‘Thanks, Doc,’
Thanet called after his retreating figure.
He and Lineham looked at each other.
‘Bible classes, indeed!’ said the sergeant.
‘Let’s not jump to conclusions. What I don’t understand is that Pritchard—Charity’s father—must have known about this conviction. And in that case, why on earth did he trust his brother to see Charity home?’
‘Perhaps he thought that being his brother, and her uncle …’
‘Bit naive, don’t you think?’
‘Perhaps Jethro convinced him he was on the straight and narrow. After all, if all this happened twenty years ago and he’s not been in trouble since …’
‘But we don’t know that, do we, Mike? Anyway, I think the first thing is for you to go through the files, find out exactly what happened. We can’t tackle him until we’re sure of our facts. You’d better get someone to give you a hand. I really must be off. I only dropped in to the office for a few minutes, just to see if anything important had cropped up …’
‘You don’t call this important?’
‘Yes, of course it is, but the point is, I’ve been wanting a chance to get hold of Charity’s mother alone, and on the way in this morning I saw Pritchard in the street, heading for the town. I’d like to catch her before he gets back.’
‘How do you know he wasn’t on his way to work? Oh, of course, he told us he didn’t have to go in for the rest of the week, didn’t he. Right, then. Is there anything else you want me to do? I know I’ve got to check with the school, see if there are any other male teachers …’
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