A Lovely Day to Die (9 page)

“I am,” I interrupted; but Theresa carried on as if I hadn’t spoken, psychoanalysing Miss Fry and her repressed urges, her fantasy sex-substitutes, until, to tell the honest truth, I was nearly asleep.

I got the gist of it, though. Miss Fry for all these complex reasons that I hadn’t really listened to, now had me cast as friendly neighbourhood rapist, whose life-style consisted of first persuading innocent girls that the cottage they’d rented for the summer was haunted, and then offering to come and protect them from the ghostly visitations of the night …

“That’s an idea!” I interposed, tightening my arms round her. “Grrrrrrrr … rrrr! Whoo-ee-oo! Come on! Be terrified! Don’t you recognise a ghost-noise when you hear it? And you an expert on Village Superstitions ..?”

“Silly!” She struggled free of my embraces; and a few minutes later, we went indoors to make tea. And even now, when I know all too well, and with exact and dreadful clarity, exactly what was to
follow, I still have to say that that pot of tea we took out into the garden was the most delicious I have ever tasted. Boiling hot, as tea should be, and yet refreshing as iced-water on this scorching afternoon. I remember, too, what fun we had while we drank it; laughing, throwing bits of grass at each other, and generally fooling around.

And that night, for the first time, Theresa did not send me away when dusk fell.

*

How can I describe what happened next? Where can I begin? Not with our love-making, because it still hurts to remember how marvellous it was, and how close it seemed to bring us, beyond anything I had ever experienced. Perhaps the place to begin is afterwards—just a few minutes afterwards; half an hour at most.

“Let’s make some tea,” said Theresa, swinging her legs out of bed and feeling around for her slippers on the dusky floor. “I always seem to feel like a cup of tea at this stage.”

From the depths of the bed, I murmured something, which was neither yes nor no. It wasn’t that I disliked the idea of a cup of tea; it was just that I wanted to go on lying here, feeling perfect, for a bit longer. And I wanted her to go on lying here, feeling perfect, too.

But already this was no longer an option. Once one of you has said “Let’s make some tea,” then they’ve said it, and there is no going back. Theresa found her slippers, and padded off out of the room; and as for me, I pulled the blankets up a bit and simply went on lying there, utterly content, watching the stars coming out one by one through the small dusty square of the window. This is it, I remember thinking. This is what life is all about. This is total, absolute happiness.

From where I lay, I could hear Theresa moving about downstairs … the faint clink of crockery … the thump of the big kettle … the opening and shutting of a dresser drawer … the nostalgic, heart-warming sound of a woman’s footsteps back and forth across a kitchen floor.

And then, suddenly, I heard her scream.

I was out of bed and down those stairs before she could have
drawn a second breath; and I found her, not in the kitchen, but in the “parlour”—that gloomy little front room that by day was bathed in eternal dim green light from the rampant vegetation over the windows, and which now, by night, was almost completely black, only a thin tracery of moonlight finding its way through the tangle of leaves, and throwing a sort of silvery basket-work of light across the old, warped boards. By this faint, irregular illumination I was just able to make out Theresa’s figure—still whitely naked; she had not troubled to add a dressing-gown to the slippers when she got out of bed—crouched in a corner of the room.

“Darling!” I cried, stumbling towards her through a dim cluster of intervening furniture. “Darling, what ..? Who ..?”

By now I had reached her, my hand was on her shoulder, and I was aware that she was shuddering from head to foot, racked (as I thought for a moment) by violent sobbing.

But it was laughter. The relief was almost as big a shock as the screaming itself had been. I half shook her, in a mixture of thankfulness and indignation.

“What the
hell
..?” I began.

“I—I’m sorry, darling,” she gasped, between paroxysms of laughter, “but it was so
funny,
you see! First finding this awful great knife”—here she brandished before my eyes an evil-looking weapon nearly a foot long, and glinting dreadfully in the moonlight—“It was in the dresser-drawer. I’d never seen it before, it really gave me a shock; and then, suddenly, I couldn’t help myself thinking—Miss Fry!” Here she was once more overcome by giggles. “Poor old Miss Fry, if only
she’d
found it! She’d have been absolutely certain that it was the very weapon with which you threatened me when you raped me this evening ..!

By now, I was laughing too. I found myself catching her mood, and in a moment—both of us still stark naked—we were giggling and fooling.

“Your honour or your life!” I yelled, in a melodramatic,
villainous
sort of voice, brandishing the knife in mock-savagery. “You are at my mercy, gentle maiden! Tonight I shall have my will of you ..!”

Her screams were most convincing; as also was her portrayal of a panic-stricken virgin defending her honour. Louder and louder she shrieked, dodging in and out among the shadowy furniture, while I followed in mock-pursuit. A chair went crashing over … then a vase. The sound of splintering glass sobered me.

“Enough, darling!” I exclaimed, reaching out a restraining hand towards Theresa, who was still shrieking, and darting hither and thither, as though quite carried away by her own play-acting. I tried to grab her by her arms … by her waist … but each time she somehow slithered from my grip. I began to feel alarmed.

“Enough, Theresa! Really!” I repeated urgently. “We’ll be smashing the place up if we aren’t careful! And if you keep screaming like that, they really will think I’m raping you …”

“Of course they will,”—Theresa was suddenly standing
motionless
, completely quiet and controlled—“That’s the whole idea. And unless you promise me, here and now, to give me two thousand pounds …”

At first, naturally, I thought she was still fooling.

“… And cheap at the price!” I cried gaily; and added, laughing: “What a shame that our own dear Miss Fry wasn’t at the window watching our little skirmish just now! She’d have had me in jail on a rape charge before I could have said ‘Extenuating Circumstances’!”

“She was; and she will;” Theresa replied quietly. “I saw her face at the window just exactly when you started chasing me round the room with the knife … the timing was perfect. You see, I knew it would take her just about that long to get here on her bicycle after she heard my first scream. Sounds carry well in the country, you know, especially at night.

“Besides, she’s been expecting it … ever since I told her about your weird rape fantasies … all that stuff about the
fourteenth-century
jurymen … in your own handwriting …

“Yes,
of
course
it was a rape fantasy … what do you
think
they’d have done to her, those twelve enraged mediæval peasants? They’d have raped her, naturally, before they murdered her, if only to make sure that she’d go to Hell. Anyone knows
that
much about the
Middle Ages—certainly Miss Fry does, though I daresay she’s too much of a lady to put it into words … Oh, she understood all right … and she agreed with me that a young man with his mind stuffed full of such peculiar fantasies could easily become
dangerous.
If ever you threatened me, she said, or frightened me in any way, then I was to scream out, as loud as I could, and she’d be here on her bicycle within a couple of minutes … And she was, too, just nicely in time to see everything she needed to see, and to go for help. By now she’ll have roused half the village … and so you really
will
hear that tramp, tramp, tramp of avenging feet, won’t you? You thought it was all nonsense, didn’t you ..?

“And so which is it to be, my dear? Six years for rape? Or two thousand pounds by tomorrow afternoon? And don’t tell me you haven’t got it! That bloody best-seller of yours …”

Which was, of course, exactly where she’d miscalculated. No doubt the thing had worked well enough on the poor harmless old vicar, whose whole livelihood was put in jeopardy on that unlucky day when he’d innocently shown her those interesting old bones in the crypt. I recalled that stunned, unbelieving look in his eyes as he stumbled back from handing over the hush-money that Monday morning: he’d never believed before in the power of Evil, but he did now, all right.

And so did I. In how many remote villages … on how many other gullible vicars, and besotted young men, had she played this same trick, complete with the non-existent “thesis”?—or maybe with some other ploy, according to the educational level of her victim?

“Well, which is to be?” she demanded once more, her white naked body staight as a candle among the shadows. “I can tell them we were just fooling … or I can tell them—the other story! Choose quickly. They’ll be here in a minute … or less …” And indeed, I could already hear the crunch of tyres, the clamour of voices, at the end of the lane. Already, the first of the headlights were sweeping across the garden.

“Quick! Make up your mind!” she hissed; but of course my mind was already made up.

For the Reverend Pinkerton, surrender may have been
inevitable
; his whole career was at stake.

But mine wasn’t. And that was just where Theresa had gone so very wrong in her calculations—and not merely through believing my cock-and-bull story about the best-seller, either. Naturally, I don’t
want
to serve a prison sentence on a false charge of rape, any more than I wanted to have my heart broken and my faith in human nature shattered for ever; but, by God, if that’s the way it goes, I really
shall
have a best-seller on my hands, right slap in the mainstream of Social Realism at its starkest.

Or maybe, now I come to think of it, I might try my hand at an old-fashioned Gothick.

Why ever not?

S
HE WOULD NEVER
have believed that widowhood would suit her so well. She would have said, if you’d asked her, that she was one of those unassuming, dependent little women who would be lost without a man to lean on.

And now here she was not feeling lost at all, not the least bit. It was amazing—and, in a way, rather disturbing.

Oh, she had mourned for Harold at the time, of course she had. She had cried bitterly at the funeral, and for quite a while afterwards, too, recalling, tearfully, all the nice things about him, like the square set of his shoulders and the way he would call out, “Emmy, I’m back!” as he came in at the front door. Silly, really, because how could he not be back if he was calling out?—But somehow cosy, all the same; and—yes—she’d missed it.

What had been rather awful, though—and it still made her feel guilty whenever she thought about it—was the number of things she
didn
’
t
miss: the appalling number of small, everyday routines which were, quite simply, easier and pleasanter without him.

Lunch, for instance. She could have it on a tray now, just a cheese sandwich with perhaps a tomato, eaten in the sunshine under one of the windows, or with her feet up on the sofa, listening to “Woman’s Hour”. Since his retirement, Harold had always expected a proper, sit-down lunch at the dining-room table, rounded off by a proper pudding. Emmy herself didn’t care for puddings, and though she’d never resented the extra trouble at the time, it really was a relief, now, to know that she would never have to think about stewed apple, or suet, or custard, or hot jam sauce, ever again.

There were other unexpected little treats, too, incident on the solitary state. She hardly dared enumerate them, even in her own mind, so quickly had she found herself actually enjoying them, with Harold scarcely cold in his grave.

Reading in bed. Having the radio on while she dressed. Buying sliced bread. Leaving the crockery upside-down on the
draining-board
all day, instead of drying it and putting it away after every meal. All these things had irritated Harold, and so of course she’d mostly refrained from doing them; but, my goodness, what a relief it was now to relax her guard and do exactly as she liked! No, “Emmy, dear, do you
have
to ..?” resounding in her ears, ever again.

Ever again. Ever. Never. Words to wring the hearts of most widows, and bring tears to their eyes—it was awful how often, for Emmy, they brought instead a furtive little lift to her spirits, a tiny, guilt-ridden rejoicing at yet another small anxiety removed, another small burden laid to rest for ever under the green grass and the faithfully tended flowers on Harold’s grave.

Of all the small burdens—and indeed “small” was entirely the wrong word, because for Emmy it wasn’t small at all—the burden of the Summer Holiday had been quite the most oppressive. The relief she’d felt—about two or three months after the funeral it must have been—when it had first dawned on her that there was now no reason at all why she should ever go on holiday again—ever!—was something she would remember—albeit guiltily—to the end of her days.

April it had been—Harold had died in February—and Emmy, drawn by the first real sunshine of the year, had dragged one of the deck-chairs from its winter quarters and set it up on the lawn. And it was as she sat there, face upturned to the soft spring warmth, filled with a vague sense of newness, of dim, unexplored
possibilities,
that it occurred to her, quite suddenly and without warning, that
this
year she would be able to sit out on the lawn like this and enjoy the sunshine
every
day,
all summer long! She didn’t have to go on holiday at all!

The relief, the joy of it was breath-taking. Usually, by now—by mid-April—the shadow of the Holiday had already fallen. Already, Harold would be all of a fidget about visas, passports, hotel bookings, car-ferries, rolls of film, baggage regulations, Night Flights, Regular Flights, Cheap Flights, Tourist Flights, Standby
Flights, Charter Flights—the lot. And, naturally, as a good wife, it was her duty to fidget with him, not only about all these shared worries, but also about those other, personal worries that were hers alone.

Her hair. To perm or not to perm, and if so, then how soon? A couple of months ahead, to give it time to settle, or try to fit it somehow into that final frantic week so that there should be no risk that it might grow out?

And clothes. Holiday clothes were a nightmare all on their own at her age. Every year it was the same: every garment she possessed was either too dressy, too dowdy, or made her look like
mutton-dressed
-as-lamb. And so, year after year, with gritted teeth and sinking heart, off she would drag herself to the West End, in and out of the lordly great shops where, under the withering eye of some flawlessly enamelled assistant, everything she tried on was either too dressy, too dowdy, or made her look like
mutton-dressed
-as-lamb.

And so it went on, one dreadful problem after another, all through May and June, the loveliest months of the year, spoiled and darkened by these mounting preparations, these ever-
escala
ting
anxieties from which there could be no escape, no reprieve; unstoppable save by one thing only—the arrival of the dreaded day.

The terror lest the mini-cab they’d ordered wouldn’t turn up. Or that it would take them to the wrong terminal. Suppose their luggage didn’t get put on the plane. Suppose they arrived too late … that fear of arriving too late always haunted her dreams for days and weeks beforehand. Then there was the fear that the plane, once they were finally on it, would fail to take off … that there would be something wrong with it. Or that it
would
take off, and that there would be an air-crash—or sometimes, in her final desperation, that there wouldn’t …

Had Harold himself really enjoyed it all? She’d never known, because she’d never asked him, any more than he’d ever asked her. A Summer Holiday was something you simply
had
every year, like Christmas or an attack of ’flu. You never thought of questioning it.

On the other hand, though, maybe Harold
had
actually enjoyed it? Certainly he’d enjoyed showing his slides the following winter—but at the time? Mostly, he’d seemed bored; no doubt that was why he kept booking them on to those awful coach-trips to somewhere or other to look at something, and to have a cup of tea which you couldn’t enjoy for fear that there mightn’t be a Ladies on the way back.

*

But this summer—for the first time ever—it didn’t have to happen! She would be free! Free to sit in her beloved garden, among the birds, and the wallflowers and the roses, day after golden day, planning nothing, worrying about nothing, with no grim deadline looming, no fearsome departure date casting its black, lengthening shadow across the bright days. For the first time in all her adult life she could spend the whole long summer as she had always yearned to spend it, tending her flowers, watering them, and sharing with each one its moment of glory as the season waxed and waned. This year she would miss nothing, not the delphiniums, not the peonies, not the dahlias scarlet and mauve and gold. She would be here to pick the strawberries as they ripened, and the blackcurrants; she would be here to harvest the lavender, to gather for wine the great white elder flowers, big as dinner-plates, at the very peak of their perfection …

*

It was barely three weeks later when the blow fell.

“You must have a holiday, Mother,” her daughter-in-law Vivien announced one Sunday lunch time. “Geoff and I have been talking about it, haven’t we Geoff, and we’ve decided that you must come with us this year. No, Mother, don’t argue, Geoff can afford it easily, he feels it’s the least he can do—after all, he
is
your only son. A holiday is just what you need after that dreadful winter you’ve had …”

“But … but, Vivien dear, I don’t really ..!”

“Mother! I said, don’t
argue!
We won’t take No for an answer, will we, Geoff? You
must
have a holiday. Harold would have wished it—you know he would!”

Would he? Would he? And even if he would, did she have to go
on
doing things that Harold wished, now that he was dead and gone? She’d done the things he’d wished for the best part of thirty years—wasn’t that enough?

Feebly, she tried to fight back.

“It’s … it’s sweet of you, dears,” she said, putting her knife and fork carefully together, “I really am very grateful … such a kind thought … but, you see, the thing is …”

Well, what was it? Rack her brain as she might, Emmy could think of absolutely nothing. Simply to say, “I hate holidays, I always have, and I’ve resolved never to go on another one as long as I live,” was, of course, out of the question. People
don’t
hate holidays. It’s just not done.

“Mummy, why isn’t Grandma finishing her chicken?”
interposed
seven-year-old Angie, whose sharp, beady eyes had been noting every nuance of her grandmother’s discomfiture; “Grandma, why aren’t you finishing your chicken?”

“Hush, dear,” remonstrated Vivien, but there was no real reproof behind it, you could tell. Vivien secretly relished, Emmy was sure, Angie’s talent for spotting small flaws and inadequacies in her grandmother’s ménage, and calling attention to them. It had become almost a family sport, at Emmy’s expense.

“Why are Grandma’s forks all yellowy instead of bright?” she’d asked earlier in the meal; and before that, wandering into the room where the three grown-ups were drinking sherry:

“What are all those dead flies for, Grandma, on the window ledge in the spare room?”

It would be like that all through the holiday.

“Mummy, why is Grandma going to the toilet again? She’s only just been …”

Emmy forced herself to swallow another few mouthfuls of chicken; but the taste of defeat was everywhere. She was cornered, and she knew it. It was all
arranged,
you see, the hotel booking, the air ticket, everything … They’d meant it as a
surprise,
a lovely surprise …

“Oh,
please,
Mother, stop being so difficult. What do you think
people would
say
if we all went off on holiday without you at a time like this? Oh, Mother, don’t be so
tiresome!
Of
course
you need a holiday!” Of course … of course … of course …

*

By the end of the afternoon, everything was settled. At one point, looking out into her tranquil, sunlit garden, her joy in it already spoiled for weeks and months ahead, actual tears came into Emmy’s eyes, and she had to blink them away quickly before Angie could ask in her sharp, shrill little voice, “Mummy, why is Grandma crying?”

Not that it would have mattered. They’d merely have thought that she was crying for Harold, as a proper widow should, and that’s what they’d have told Angie.

“She’s crying for poor Grandpa,” they’d have said, in suitably hushed tones, and would then have changed the subject quickly before Angie could pipe: “Why is she?”

*

She didn’t cry for long. The idea came to her quite suddenly, only a few days after the visit; but of course to start with she had to keep it to herself, hugging the relief and the joy of it close to her breast, secretly, while answering appropriately, and with pretended enthusiasm, the kindly remarks of friends and neighbours:

“Beginning to get excited about your holiday I’ll bet!” said one; and another, “It’ll do you a world of good, a real holiday is just what you need!”

And Emmy smiled at them all, and nodded, and went on watering her young tomato plants, almost bursting with the secret joy of knowing that, after all, on July 11th she
wouldn’t
be leaving them, just when the first thrilling green fruits were beginning to swell in the sunshine.

*

It was on July 9th that the plan had to be put into action. Geoff had brought over her air-ticket several days earlier, all tucked neatly into a crisp blue folder, together with lots of Travellers’ Cheques and brochures and things, and she had put it all carefully away, with her passport, in the top left-hand drawer of the bureau.

Now, as the afternoon of July 9th waned towards evening, she took the documents out, passport and all, wrapped them in a plastic bag, and took them into the kitchen, the door of which opened straight into the garden. Already, earlier in the day, she’d dug the hole, on the far side of the lavender-bush where it wouldn’t show; and presently, after sunset and before the moon rose, she slipped out into the sweet, scented garden, and popped the package into its little grave, stamping the earth well down above it.

Then she returned to the kitchen, brushing loose soil from her hands, her heart thumping with such a mixture of excitement, trepidation and triumph as she had never known.

*

“But Mother, how
can
you have lost them?” shrieked Vivien down the phone. “I don’t understand … What did you take them to the Post Office
f
or
..? Oh, God, I’d better ring them at once … let’s pray that someone responsible has found them and handed them in …”

But the Post Office hadn’t got them, nor had the Bank, or the Supermarket, or the Cosy Coffee House, or any of the other places where it occurred to Vivien that her idiotic mother-in-law might have left them.

“Whatever did you take them out
for
?”
Vivien kept asking, distracted, in between these fruitless phone-calls; and she treated with the scorn it deserved her mother-in-law’s wavering account of having transferred them to her handbag “so as not to forget them in the last-minute rush.” How neurotic can you get?

“I suppose, if they’re
not
found,” Emmy ventured at last, making every effort to keep the jubilation out of her voice, “if they’re
not
found, I won’t be able to go, will I? Not without my passport or anything ..?”

“Oh, nonsense!” But Vivien was clearly rattled. She’d been round here all afternoon, with Angie at her heels, searching the house in every cranny, without, of course, any success. Naturally, it never occurred to her to look in the garden, and so Emmy wasn’t really worried.