A Rather English Marriage, page 22
She stood up and folded her arms. Her face had slammed shut like a door. ‘And my pleasure is to tell you, sir, that I’m giving notice. Not a week. On the spot. Here and now. I don’t take that dirty talk from nobody. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
Christ! thought Reginald, now what have I done? He sat up in bed and tried to look contrite. She was already walking out of the room, the offending bum moving with deliberate dignity.
‘I say, Mrs um, Aggie, I’m frightfully sorry. I do apologize. I take it back. You’re quite right…’
He heard her heavy step descending the stairs. Damn and blast the woman! he thought. Silly old Nanny. Big fat Nanny. Great big huge fat enormous Nanny. Bum. Tits. Don’t care. Lying down again, he tried to go back to sleep.
A few minutes later he heard the front door being unlocked. Had she changed her mind, seen sense and come back? He swung his legs slowly out of bed, creaked to his feet and unhooked his dressing-gown from the door. He peered over the landing balustrade. It was Southgate who was shuffling about down there in the hall.
‘Southgate! Where the hell have you been? Bloody nuisance!’ he complained. ‘Mrs Owsyerfather’s given notice.’
Roy lifted his head and looked up as though he hadn’t heard.
‘I need the car,’ he said. ‘My son is dead. I have to go and tell his wife. Her phone’s out of order. I must hurry. I need the car.’
Reginald grimaced at him, cupping his ear. ‘What’s that? Come on up here and address me properly. I can’t hear a bloody word you’re saying.’
Roy tipped his head up to where Reginald stood. His glasses glinted. He paused as though to gather strength, then spoke in a crescendo, ‘I said, Squadron Leader, MY SON IS DEAD AND I NEED THE CAR. I have to leave at once to tell his wife. NOW CAN YOU HEAR ME?’
Reginald clutched the wooden railing tightly. His head and heart were pounding. Entire bloody world’s falling to bits around my ears, he thought.
‘Take it,’ he said. ‘Awfully sorry. Rotten luck, old chap.’ He turned round and lurched back into his bedroom, climbed into bed and pulled the covers over his head.
*
Roy drove the great car as fast as he could along the winding, narrow road to East Grinstead and picked up the A22 into London. It would take him along the Brighton Road through Purley, amidst whose suburban streets his married life had begun. He tried to keep his head clear so as to concentrate on driving, but the words flew into his mind like darts. ‘Deeply regret to inform you … your son found dead … every precaution taken … a very determined attempt … absolutely no hope of resuscitation … will of course be a post-mortem … no blame can be attached to prison staff…’
The man would divulge no details beyond confirming that Alan had not hanged himself. So what was it? thought Roy: drugs, glass, a knife? Did he slash his wrists, my strong handsome son, and watch the lifeblood ebb out while he crouched secretly over his dreadful deed, fearful of interruption and rescue? Or was it his throat he cut, to make death quicker and more certain? What strength and desperation he would have needed to slice into his own flesh. Oh my God, the agony!
Hurtling through time and place, in the swishing silence of the car, Roy howled aloud. Oh Absalom, my son, my son! I wish it was me that was dead and with my Grace; me dead and Alan alive. The car’s padded interior absorbed his howls and only a few passing motorists noted that the face of the small man behind the wheel of the imposing car was clenched with tears. He hauled savagely on the wheel to overtake a dawdling caravan. As he swerved back into his lane, he saw another car approaching at speed, and the man’s panic-stricken expression as he flashed by. Roy pressed harder on the accelerator.
As the thickening conurbation of south London slowed him down and traffic lights brought him to a halt, he struggled to regain self-control. How shall I break the news to June, he wondered, if she hasn’t yet heard? Her phone must have been out of order, or cut off, for the governor of the new prison had read back her number correctly, but said he had been unable to get through. It was nearly noon: they wouldn’t have it on the news, surely? He switched on to listen just in case; but the news was all of recession and opinion polls, or events in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia; nothing about a prison suicide.
When he drew up outside her house and rang the bell, she opened the door to him immediately with a face as stricken as his own.
‘I know! I know!’ she said.
She stumbled ahead of him to the kitchen, where an ashtray spilled over with acrid cigarette stubs. From an open packet she extracted and lit another. He held her free hand tightly with his own and stared at her.
‘The prison rang the boys’ school,’ she said. ‘Alan must have made sure they had the number. I tried to ring you, but you’d gone. Oh Roy, I can’t believe what he done … He cut his throat. Drowned in his own blood.’
Her self-control had been rigid, her voice steady, but on the final words she collapsed into a wailing, gulping struggle which Roy could not bear to watch. He noticed several torn paper tissues Sellotaped across her arms.
‘What’s that for?’ he asked. ‘What happened? You burn yourself?’
She pushed up the sleeves of her shirt. Her arms were covered with wisps of Kleenex and dozens of tiny red slashes, some of them new, others fine lines of scabs, others no more than little veinlike scars. June glanced at them dismissively and knuckled the corners of her eyes. He could see no marks on her wrists.
‘It’s just something I do sometimes,’ she said, and her weeping hiccuped to a halt. ‘Don’t know why. Doesn’t hurt. Makes me feel better. Don’t worry: none of ’em’s deep. I did a few more after the head teacher came round this morning. Tissues are just to stop them making a mess. I suppose I wanted to know how he felt. You don’t feel a thing.’
She looked blankly at the lines and scratches. Roy felt himself being dragged into an undertow of strangeness and dislocation, of dangerous and unfamiliar currents that he did not understand, except that he knew June might at any moment lose control.
‘You’re out of cigarettes,’ he said woodenly. ‘I’ll go to the end of the road, get you a couple of packs. Back in a minute.’
He walked through the hall. There was chaos everywhere. The lounge was untidy, boys’ clothes scattered higgledy-piggledy over the torn and sagging furniture, the skimpy carpet curling up from the doorway for anyone to trip over. At this rate, he thought, the boys’ll get taken away from her, put into a council home. With the heaviness of absolute certainty he knew that, no matter what the upheaval, they must all come and live with him in his house in Tunbridge Wells.
A week later as Roy stood in the dining-room cleaning the five multifaceted windows until they sparkled with sunshine, he noticed a small dark-haired woman standing irresolutely in the road outside his house. She walked away and moments later returned. Roy waved uncertainly, in case she was one of Alan’s or Vera’s old friends from school. She lifted her hand in acknowledgement, and came up the front path. He opened the door.
‘I’m Sheila,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think anyone’d be here.’
She was dressed in black. Younger than June, but not by much.
‘You look like Grace, my wife,’ he said. ‘Alan’s Mum.’
‘I know. He used to tell me that as well.’
‘You really do,’ said Roy.
They crossed by St John’s and walked along Culverdon Road to the cemetery where Alan and his mother now lay buried, side by side. Grace’s grey marble tombstone was in place, shiny and new, deeply incised:
GRACE EDITH SOUTHGATE
DEARLY BELOVED WIFE OF ROY
AND MOTHER OF FREDERICK, ALAN AND VERA
1920–199O
Alan’s grave was still a heap of newly turned earth. The flowers piled above and around it were rotting already, except for one fresh vase of roses that Roy had placed there the previous day.
‘I never knew he had a brother,’ she said.
‘Little Frederick? He died when he was a baby. What they’d call a cot death nowadays. We thought it was the Blitz, all the upsets night after night, that he was too delicate to stand it.’
‘Poor little chap,’ said Sheila.
‘Can we go and sit down?’ asked Roy after a while. ‘My legs aren’t too good.’
They walked over to a bench in the corner of the graveyard, from which they could hear birdsong and the rumble of nearby traffic.
‘You didn’t come to the funeral, then?’ asked Roy.
‘I didn’t know if June might create a scene, or how you might feel about me turning up. It seemed best not to.’
‘The boys wouldn’t have known who you was.’
‘June would’ve known. We were both at the trial. She’d recognize me.’
They sat quietly for a bit; not weeping, but not inclined to break the silence that linked them.
Eventually Sheila said, ‘You were lucky. You picked right first time, you and your wife, even though you were so young. But Alan got it wrong first time. I don’t say June’s a bad woman, but she was wrong for him. He needs a lot of cuddles, a lot of looking after. She’s highly strung, by the sound of her; tough on the outside, but inside she’s all nervy. Don’t tell me if I’m right or wrong; it doesn’t matter now. But Alan and I, we were made for each other. We were soul mates. Made in heaven, our marriage. We knew we were going to get married, the very first week after we met. Both of us. Only trouble was, he didn’t tell me he was married already. He couldn’t bear his Mum to know, or you, that he wanted a divorce. He said you’d never get over it, never. He couldn’t bring himself to tell June about me, either. So we went ahead and had a quiet register-office wedding, just with my Mum and a few friends. All mine, of course. They liked him; said I’d been right to wait.’ She looked into the blue summer air, remembering. She even smiled.
‘Poor Alan! He got involved so deep, kept so many secrets, he couldn’t get untangled. I guessed after a while. Him always going away, never giving me a number where I could ring him. I asked him after six months or so: tell me honestly, have you got another woman, maybe another wife somewhere? It was a relief, I think. He said he’d tell her, ask for a divorce, but time went on and he never did. Then he said his mother was ill, and it’d finish her if she knew what he’d done. I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not.
‘In the end I found out where he lived, and went to the police. Yes, me. I thought all that’d happen would be they’d tell him to make his mind up which of us he was going to divorce. I wouldn’t fall pregnant till it was all sorted out, you see.’
‘I see,’ said Roy, thinking, She’s tough, this one, and straight.
‘Next thing I knew, he was arrested and charged with bigamy.’
She turned and looked at him bleakly, her face showing neither sorrow, nor guilt, nor grief, nor remorse; washed of all emotion except loneliness. She was very pale, her features small and fine. It’s true, thought Roy again: she really does look like Grace.
He put his hand over hers, and she placed her other hand over his. They sat there in one another’s clasp.
Finally she said, ‘I’m glad I met you. I’m glad I came. Don’t worry: I won’t come again. It’s all over now.’
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Get on with life, I suppose. What else is there? I’ve got a job; I’ve got friends. Only now I haven’t got Alan.’ She paused.
‘We really loved one another. I want you to know that. He wasn’t a bad man, or thoughtless, or weak. He couldn’t bear to hurt people. He couldn’t bear you and his Mum to see the end of his first marriage. You’d set him such an example, he wanted the same for himself. I understood that. I loved him better when I knew, not less.’
She stood up. ‘I’m going now. Goodbye. Thank you for talking to me. I shall remember this. I may come back, but I won’t trouble you again. Goodbye, Dad.’
Roy was reflecting, as he watched her upright, narrow figure walk away from him. A year ago my beloved wife, Grace, died. It is true that time heals. I should have told her that. In time, it doesn’t hurt so much.
Reginald, in his slippers and dressing-gown, was leaning over the banister rail shouting into the hall below.
‘Southgate! Southgate! Where the devil…?’
The rail pressed against his chest and shot fierce little pains under his ribs, making him straighten up and rub his abdomen. Christ knows, he muttered to himself, how the blazes I’m supposed to go solo. First that perishing woman storms out over nothing, and now the little berk’s disappeared. Pretty poor show … He heard Roy’s voice calling up to him.
‘Yes?’
‘Where the hell’s my breakfast? And the Telegraph? Has the post come? What have you done with my blue striped shirt? What about my bath? I’ve got a busy morning, I told you that last night.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ said Roy. ‘I’ve only just got here. I spent the night in my own house. Whole place needs to be spring-cleaned, sorted out…’
‘That’s all very well, man, but…’ Reginald was just about to ask, What do you think I’m paying you for? when he remembered that Roy was not, in fact, paid. He modified the end of his sentence to a grumble: ‘… but I have a lunch appointment in London. I have to get a move on.’
Roy glanced across the hallway at the long-case clock. ‘It’s not yet nine,’ he said, and as he spoke the letter-box rattled and a fan of envelopes fell on to the black-and-white tiled floor. He bent stiffly to pick them up and, pushing his glasses up his nose, began to glance through them.
‘Give us them, then,’ said Reginald irritably. ‘Bring them here.’
Roy climbed the stairs towards Reginald, handed him the letters, and went past him into the bedroom. It had a sweaty, fatty odour. He drew back all three pairs of curtains, opened the windows wide and pulled the bedclothes down to the end of the bed. For a moment the fatty odour was intensified. The smell of suppurating flesh had seemed to choke his nostrils ever since he had heard about Alan’s death. His senses gagged on the abundance of summer. Flowers, fruit and vegetables left one day too long would be close to bursting, pungent with ripeness, ready to rot. Roy walked into the adjoining bathroom and turned on the taps.
‘No answers to my advertisement,’ Reggie was grumbling as he came back into the bedroom. ‘Vicar can’t suggest anyone. Hospital say they can’t help. You must know of a charwoman? Twenty quid a week for a spot of hoovering, ironing the odd shirt? Little enough to ask. Make it twenty-five after a year.’
Roy felt an overwhelming urge to say, I’ll do it, sir. Give me fifty quid a week, all found, I’ll do everything, look after you and the house. He would have been happy as a butler – footman, more likely, never having grown above five feet six and skinny with it. He had never found deference a burden or an insult and he liked taking care of things, nice things, good things. He would enjoy polishing the Squadron Leader’s silver, his mahogany tables, hoovering his carpets and beating his rugs on the line in the sun. He would even enjoy scrubbing the stone flags of the kitchen floor or scouring the cooker. It was satisfying, physical work and he longed to submit to its routine, to hammock himself between Monday’s laundry and Friday’s stocking up the pantry, to feel secure against disorder by restoring cleanliness and decorum. Above all he wanted to turn his back on the chaos of June. June, poor June, with her disfigured arms and her scrunched-up face, dragging on one cigarette after another, just like Alan.
His mind veered sharply away from the thought of his son and he said, ‘All right if I leave your breakfast tray in the dining-room?’ trying to make it a statement rather than a question. ‘Then I can be getting on with your shirts downstairs. You taking the car, or train?’
‘Car,’ said Reginald.
When Reginald finally arrived at Rules, James Tidmarsh was waiting for him at the bar. He wiped the aggrieved expression off his face as Reggie entered, though he flinched at being clapped hard on the shoulder and hailed stentoriously.
‘Ah, Tidmarsh! What’s your poison?’
‘I’m afraid I never drink at lunchtime,’ James Tidmarsh began.
Reginald interrupted, ‘Nonsense, old chap! Absolute baloney! Two Glenmorangies,’ he said to the barman, adding with elaborate caution, ‘But you’d better make one of those a single.’
‘If you insist,’ said Tidmarsh, pained, ‘I’ll have a small pink gin.’
‘Hold it! Scrub the single! Make that a pink gin instead!’
‘Chin-chin!’ said Reggie, as their drinks arrived. ‘How the blazes do you cope with the air traffic round here? Lanes congested, parking impossible. Car’s halfway to Tunbridge Wells.’
‘I walk, on the whole,’ James Tidmarsh said. Conversation was halted by the arrival of a waiter at their elbow.
‘Would you care to look at the menu, gentlemen, while you wait for your table?’ He looked at them uncertainly, unsure which man was the guest and thus who should be offered the menu first.
‘My treat,’ said Reggie. ‘I insist! Mind you don’t bill me for your time, though, what? Come on: what’ll you have, Tidmarsh?’
James Tidmarsh would have liked a Dover sole and no starter, but Reggie overruled him. They had Arbroath Smokies with thin slices of brown bread, followed by poached fresh salmon with courgettes and sauté potatoes and a green salad. Reggie ate Tidmarsh’s potatoes, which Tidmarsh swapped him for his salad. Then they had bread-and-butter pudding, English cheese with cream crackers and Bath Olivers, and a bottle of Pouilly Fuissé, most of which Reginald drank. Midway through the meal the maitre d’ approached their table.
‘Mr Conynghame-Jervis, sir!’ he said. ‘It’s been too long since we had the pleasure. The ’83? Very good choice, a very nice year indeed. Glad we had your usual on the menu today, sir. Everything all right?’
‘Excellent, thank you, Mr Last,’ answered Reginald. ‘Excellent. Good to be back. You still do dinner?’
‘Certainly, sir. We look forward to seeing you again soon. Now, after this … coffee for you gentlemen? Brandy?’
‘Just coffee,’ said Tidmarsh firmly, wondering, What’s all this leading up to? Was that performance for my benefit? What does he want?
