She looked round the table, beaming. “He’d got lost, poor sweet, hadn’t you, Edwin? He thought it was a short cut, a lot of people do, but actually you can’t get into the gardens from that path at all, it only leads to the golf course, and to the Botanical Centre …”
“So Sally kindly directed me back on my tracks, and I was able to make a thoroughly respectable entry by the front gate —” Edwin took up the tale; and then, turning to Daphne: “No, I’m afraid I don’t know anything about Richard’s movements. As Sally says, nothing was planned, I just came on spec. And how glad I am that I did … Such a delightful morning, in such delightful company …”
His spirits, I could see, were quite recovered from the breakfast-time gloom, and throughout the meal he and Sally kept up an increasingly flirtatious exchange of banter, highly entertaining to both, though less so, I could see, to Daphne, whose look of quiet disapproval deepened. Apart from a few polite remarks necessitated by her role as hostess, she spoke scarcely at all.
Only when we were alone together in the drawing-room after lunch — Sally and Edwin having undertaken jointly the apparently onerous task of settling Barnaby for his afternoon rest — did she put her unease into words.
“I do hope, Clare,” she said, “that Sally’s behaviour hasn’t upset you? Do let me assure you, it doesn’t mean a thing. She has this flirtatious way with her, but it’s just high spirits really, and she does it with anyone when she’s in the mood; it’s part of her nature. She’s like a child, you know, in many ways, and she doesn’t always quite realise the impression she’s making. I’ve tried to have a word with her now and again, but of course, as mother-in-law, I have to be so very careful. One must never, ever, seem to criticise. And of course, I do know that she’s absolutely devoted to my son really. There’s nothing actually to worry about …”
Here she glanced down, restlessly turning her wedding-ring round and round on her white, shapely finger.
“But all the same, I don’t like outsiders getting a wrong impression. As mother-in-law you can’t win. If you intervene … or if you don’t intervene … it’s difficult … One’s solitary, well-meaning self pitted against the whole, vast Mother-in-Law as Interfering Monster image. And in my case it’s further complicated by the fact that my son has chosen this rather hazardous profession and devotes himself to it heart and soul. There are many occasions when I can’t help worrying about him, but I mustn’t show it, or talk about it, because Sally herself doesn’t worry at all. She seems immune to anxiety in any shape or form, and so my worry comes across as a sort of mother-hen fussing. Right now, for instance, Richard not being back yet. Sally’s not bothered in the least. ‘Something’s cropped up,’ she says, and no doubt it has; but what? Apart from anything else, he’s expecting several important phone calls today — there was one from Tokyo just before lunch, and they seemed very put out, in a Japanese kind of way, when I had to say he wasn’t here …
“I don’t know; perhaps I do worry too much. Perhaps, given the nature of Richard’s job, it really is better to be like Sally. Actually, I think he loves her to be like that … I’m sure he does. A worrying kind of wife wouldn’t suit him at all. Tell me, Clare, do you worry about your husband when …?”
But our discussion of the pros and cons of worrying over our loved ones was abruptly halted by the crashing open of the drawing-room door by an outraged Barnaby, shoeless, and with flaxen curls tumbled all over his scarlet tear-stained face.
“’S’not fair!” he raged. “Granny, tell Mummy it’s not fair! She says it’s not three o’clock yet, and it is three o’clock …!”
By this time Sally too had appeared in the doorway, likewise somewhat dishevelled.
“Barnaby, you shouldn’t come asking Granny the time when I’ve already told you the time. It’s …”
“’Tisn’t!”
For a moment, deadlock supervened. Neither of the adults seemed to know what to do next, though the ball was clearly in their court. By now, I had divined the nature of the dispute: Barnaby’s afternoon rest was scheduled to last until three o’clock, and here he was, at barely half-past two, throwing down the gauntlet.
“Now, look, Barnaby …”
“Barnaby dear, don’t you think you’d better …”
“Listen, Barnaby, if you’ll come and finish your rest like a good boy, then when you get up you can have a …”
“Sally, dear, are you sure it’s a good idea, bribing him with …”
The controversy being thus raised to the more lofty heights of the moral and ethical issues involved in child-rearing, Barnaby’s tears dried on the instant. His eyes darted with professional aplomb from one to the other of the disputants, like a spectator at a tennis match. He didn’t mind who won, the game was the thing, every second taking them nearer and nearer to the witching hour when afternoon rests come to an end.
Game, set and match to Barnaby. By ten to three, it was obviously not worth while to force, lure or bribe him back to his bed; and so here we all were, out in the sunshine again, Sally sprawled on a rug and Edwin, sitting cross-legged at her side being, at Barnaby’s insistence, the Prince to her Sleeping Beauty. An easy role while it lasted, for whenever the small producer tried to introduce some action into the scene, he was sharply reminded by the leading man that the princess had to sleep for a hundred years before anything happened, and it wasn’t a hundred years yet, now was it?
Even Barnaby found this a difficult assertion to refute, and so comparative quiet reigned, during which I found the mounting uneasiness of the last few hours coming to a head.
Why hadn’t Richard come home at the time expected? Why hadn’t he phoned? How come he hadn’t even arrived at his office this morning? Why — and this, of course, was the huge, dark question looming over my meditations — why had his mysterious disappearance coincided so exactly with Edwin’s allegedly unpremeditated visit to the Barlows’ home?
Coincidence? Don’t be silly! You know there must be a connection.
But a sinister one? Quite unbidden, and indeed in defiance of common sense, a picture flashed into my mind of Richard’s body half-hidden among the tall dusty nettles and the dangling autumnal curtains of traveller’s joy which must surely line the margins of that footpath at the far end of the garden. In my vision, blood was soaking into Richard’s white shirt (did Richard wear white shirts? I couldn’t remember from our one and only meeting, but anyway, that’s how it indelibly was in my imagination) and blood had dried on his jacket. His face I couldn’t visualise, never having seen a dead person (such sheltered lives we lead, amid the slaughter and mayhem of our TV screens). Nor could I visualise the wound from which the blood was flowing — never having seen a wound either — nor imagine with what kind of a weapon it could have been inflicted. A penknife? Well, yes, Edwin possessed a penknife, but would that be adequate for the scenario which my imagination was conjuring up? Had he, then, slipped our breadknife? — carving knife? — into his briefcase before hurrying — so swiftly, so furtively, a bag of nerves if ever there was one — out of our house this morning?
What would be the next scene in the drama?
The TV screen, of course. We would be sitting, Edwin and I, side by side, safely home just in time for the six o’clock news, on which the murder of the distinguished journalist Richard Barlow would take pride of place. Sidelong, I would be glancing at Edwin’s face: sidelong, he would be glancing at mine; a penny for your thoughts … No, no, a penny would not be the appropriate coin at all, at all …
Sally was laughing at something Edwin had just said, and I was brought back to reality with a jolt … Lying back, eyes half closed, sunbathing in the last of the autumn sunshine, Edwin presented a persona impossible to slot into the role allotted by my fevered imagination. So laid-back he looked, so contented, so — I have to say it — so trivial a person; he just couldn’t be the perpetrator of huge crimes, any more than he had been capable of huge deeds of daring. Angry, frightened, caught in a very tight corner
indeed as a result of his own lies and deceptions, he might well have fantasized Richard’s death; might even have devised wild, imaginary plans for bringing it about: but when it came to the point — Ah, no! Not my Edwin!
And, after all, was there not another, and perfectly innocuous explanation for Richard’s sudden disappearance today? Quite possibly, he had caught sight of Edwin lurking around the neighbourhood this morning — as by Sally’s account he had undoubtedly been doing — and had resolved to get the hell out of the house before some sort of embarrassing encounter was forced upon him.
Of course! What could be more understandable?
All the same, this didn’t explain why Edwin had come here so furtively, so unannounced in the first place. If not to murder Richard, then to do what to him?
To threaten? To plead? To bargain? And then, finding the bird flown, and himself irretrievably spotted lurking on the footpath, he had done the only sensible thing — had turned the whole thing into a casual social call. And a singularly pleasant one, as things turned out. And why not? Such innocent fun as it all was, the two of them basking idly in the sunshine under a dazzlingly blue sky framed by the massed loops and curves of multi-coloured autumn foliage.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
Barnaby’s shriek of welcome was the first indication to any of us that Richard was home again, safe and sound, making his way swiftly across the lawn towards us. Sally and Edwin, sprawled side by side on the rug, both lurched to a sitting position far more guiltily than the actual situation warranted; Edwin, in particular, looked as if he had seen a ghost.
For a few seconds we were all struck motionless, as in a game of Grandmother’s Footsteps, while Richard, despite his slight limp, came on apace, albeit encumbered by the clutching, squealing Barnaby.
CHAPTER XVI
We drove home almost in silence, Edwin and I. My mind was in a turmoil of suspicion, panic, and an overwhelming reluctance to confront Edwin about anything at all. Not now, anyway. Maybe the perfect time would be presently? It often is.
And Edwin’s mind? In a turmoil too, I have no doubt, but the actual ingredients of that turmoil I could only guess at.
That moment of confrontation with Richard on the Barlow’s lawn had not, after all, resulted in a stand-up row. Richard had behaved impeccably. In accordance with his creed, the host-to-guest relationship was given absolute precedence over the victim-to-murderer one (if that indeed was how he already saw it?). He greeted me and Edwin with polite correctness and with no sign of surprise at our presence, and he endorsed without flinching his wife’s eager suggestion that we should stay for tea.
The tea-time conversation centred, naturally, on Richard’s day-long absence. There had been a problem with the car, he said, he had needed the help of the AA to get it to a garage. From there, he had phoned the office explaining his delay, and asking them to ring his home to say he wouldn’t be back for lunch …
“And they didn’t, of course,” broke in Sally. “It’s that new girl of yours, darling, that June Somebody, she’s always forgetting things and muddling messages. And you can’t wonder, because do you know what her boyfriend said when he broke it off with her …? I mean, if you have to break it off with someone, you can at least …”
“Darling! The things you know!”
Instead of being irritated by the foolish irrelevance of the interruption, Richard was beaming round at us all.
“Sally’s marvellous! Everyone confides in her about everything! She knows more about the girls in our office after a two-minute telephone conversation than I’ve learned in ten years of daily contact! Don’t you, darling?”
His eyes feasted on her as she giggled her appreciation, her bright hair falling across her face as she relaxed yet more deeply into the armchair in which she was curled.
We were having tea in the drawing-room, the sudden chill of the autumn evening having swept in icy shadows across the lawn and driven us indoors. Daphne was pouring tea into delicate china cups — Rockingham china, I think — and she had paused when Sally began speaking. Unlike her son, she had been irritated, I could tell, by the girl’s irrelevant interruption, but was making a more or less successful effort not to show it.
“Well, never mind,” she said now, “You were all right, Richard, that’s the main thing. But what was wrong with the car? It was serviced only a month or so ago, wasn’t it?”
Richard shrugged.
“I know. Most annoying. I must have a word with them at our own garage. It was the brakes, actually: most remiss of whoever was responsible; there could have been a nasty accident. When I think how it might have happened when Sally was driving, fetching Barnaby from the nursery, or something … I feel quite sick …”
Discussion of the brakes followed. What could have caused such a sudden failure? How could it have escaped notice earlier?
“They’ll be able to tell me more tomorrow,” said Richard. “At a first glance, the chap said, it looked as if they’d been tampered with, but …”
“Those boys!” broke in Sally. “That wretched gang who went round stealing petrol caps last summer … you remember? Just for the hell of it — they couldn’t possibly have had any use for them!”
“Those were cars left out in the road,” pointed out Daphne. “Since we always put our car away in the garage, I don’t see how anyone could have …”
“But the garage doors weren’t locked,” here broke in Edwin. “A gang of boys could easily have …”
The sudden stillness must have made him realise what he was saying; with clumsy haste he struggled to get out of it.
“I mean,” he stumbled on, “one doesn’t always lock one’s garage doors, does one? Not if one’s in a hurry, I mean … if one is going out again very shortly. Or one can forget …”
“So one can,” observed Richard drily. “One is capable, it seems, of all sorts of things, isn’t one?”
Here Sally rushed in to save the situation — though whether, at this stage, she realised there was a situation to be saved, I shall never know. “It was me, Richard darling! It was my fault, I’m terribly dreadfully sorry. I left the doors unlocked! After I’d brought Barnaby back from the play-group yesterday, I thought I’d be going out again straight after lunch, you see, it was my aerobics afternoon, but then Maisie rang up to say it was cancelled because of Gwen’s husband having to go into hospital. He’s had this trouble with his sinuses, you see, and they were going to do tests, but they’d had to put the appointment forward, and so …”
“And so my naughty little Sally didn’t lock the garage doors!” said Richard, smiling, shaking his head. “Really, darling, you should be more careful …”
But no, she shouldn’t, his look said. He loved her to be like that, despite inconveniences such as fatal accidents due to faulty brakes.
“My wife leads a charmed life,” he smiled. “Whatever silly thing she does, it always works out all right in the end. Like now, for instance. Here I am, alive and well, am I not, in the teeth of all the disastrous possibilities? She’s like that — her charmed life extends to everyone in contact with her. It’s amazing! In spite of which, do, please, darling, lock the garage in future? Even if the aerobics class isn’t cancelled. OK?”
Very OK, evidently. Sally, overwhelmed with sheer happiness at having so effortlessly delighted her husband with her carelessness, promised faithfully that she would be more careful in future, indeed she would: while Daphne, lips firmly and diplomatically closed, poured second cups of tea for us all.
Soon after this we left, Edwin and I, Richard playing the perfect host to the very end, even to the extent of expressing the hope that we might meet again before long.
On a seventeenth-century duelling-ground, with pistols? Or where? I shuddered when I thought about who it was who would inevitably lose.
And so we embarked on our silent drive home.
How much did Edwin know that I knew? That I suspected, rather — I mustn’t let myself admit that I knew anything.
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br /> Though of course I did: and before the evening was over, I was to know more.
CHAPTER XVII
I wonder how many marriages have been saved — or at least had their break-up postponed — by television? Not many, you may say, if you go by the divorce statistics: but who knows how much worse these figures might be without these structured respites from one-to-one communication? The relief to me and Edwin of being able to switch on a programme about the balance of payments deficit the moment we walked into the house was indescribable: from that moment on, neither of us had to say anything.
I know the experts tell us that the stepping-up of communication between the partners is the prime recipe for improving a bad marriage: I’m sorry, but it’s a lie. As a way of enriching yet further an already happy marriage — maybe: but as a recipe for saving an unhappy one it’s a total non-starter, for in nine cases out of ten it’s communication that has got them into this trouble in the first place. If only she hadn’t told him that she found Shakespeare boring, then maybe he would never have been alerted to the other symptoms of her execrable taste: the flight of pottery ducks across the bedroom wall and the appearance of tomato ketchup on the table at every meal might well have passed unnoticed. And if only he’d never confided to her that he was sick to death of hearing about starving children on the radio, then it is probable that she would never have started on that dossier of non-compassionate remarks uttered by him, and from which she can quote with such good effect whenever he refuses to do something that she wants done.
The truth is that unhappy marriages come about in large measure as the end result of a prolonged exercise in communication: in particular, the communicating of unflattering truths on a wide variety of topics, ranging from the correct handling of a tube of toothpaste to the squandering of the family fortunes on drink or self-awareness courses. In these sort of cases, ‘Least Said Soonest Mended’ would be my proverb of choice. Certainly it has long seemed to be the right proverb for me and Edwin: provided we kept off sensitive subjects, such as almost everything, we have been able to rub along pretty well for a lot of the time.
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