Across the street a grey, gaunt building with wide steps is lit up, its open door revealing uniformed figures in a hallway. Albert pauses, as he often does here: the women of the Salvation Army are congregating for their soup run, a few of their male colleagues standing by in case protection is necessary. The figures move or stand still in conversation, heads bent close, gestures made. They’re quiet people, Albert considers, except when a hymn is called for. More than ever, in his defeated mood tonight, he wants to be one of them, to wear their regimental colours, to be told what to do and then to do it.
Another plane goes over, lights flashing on its wing tips.
The woman who was humiliated in the car park comes into his thoughts; he wonders if she lived or died. Joey Ells could have died, Miss Rapp said, even without water in the tank; it stood to reason she’d slip, the steps half gone, the slime. He wonders where Miss Rapp is now. ‘Rapp’s off,’ Joe Minching said the day she packed her bags. Mrs Hoates went pale as putty the time Joey Ells broke her legs, but then she was herself again. Bev’s probably dead.
It wouldn’t surprise him if Miss Rapp has joined the Army, if at this very minute she’s going out on a soup run. Albert nods to himself and sees Miss Rapp, gangling and scrawny, her hair untidy, in the woman’s version of the red and blue uniform he covets. He’d like it, being able to talk to Miss Rapp again, to tell her how it wasn’t all that nice when people laughed at the big man on the streets, and that Mrs Biddle is afraid to open her door to callers in case the social services attempt to counsel her, that Pettie’s in a plight. He hears the music and the tramp of feet and sees himself walking beside Miss Rapp, both of them in the red and blue. In the end they talk only about Pettie, sharing the worry.
*
She fears the dog may roam at night, but there is only silence when she listens. The air is colder than it was. The stillness is different from the stillness of the lanes and fields.
Cautiously she pushes open the door in the wall. If the dog comes she’ll call its name and pat its head, the same’s she’s done a dozen times. But only a black cat darts from her path.
A fading moonlight casts grey shadows in the greyness before dawn begins its mellowing of the house’s bulk.
Windows gleam then, curtains showing in some. Contours sharpen, trees and shrubs reclaim their colours. Lawns do not come green, but an insipid yellow. Borders and heather slopes lighten. Rooks scavenge for leather-jackets.
In the summer-house there are deckchairs against a wall, croquet mallets and croquet balls, a slatted table folded with the chairs, sun-glasses on a windowsill, a tray with Gordon’s gin and other bottles on it, a coloured umbrella in a corner. Outside, on a white iron table, its round surface an openwork pattern of flattened roses, two empty glasses have each attracted a wasp, motionless now. Near the brick-sided cold-frames, potatoes have been dug, their haulm withered on the dry earth.
She pokes about the cobbled yard. There is the car she has seen the couple in;
Subaru
it says on it,
Justy
. The other car is his – the one that in a dream he drew up beside her, near the graveyard. There’s nothing of the old woman’s anywhere, neither a car nor anything else.
At half past six the post van comes. She leaves the garden then, to watch from the doorway in the wall, and sees the first curtains pulled back. At twenty past seven a newspaper is pushed through the front-door letterbox, another brought round to the back. At five past eight a milk float comes; voices speak in the yard. The dog lollops up to her to sniff damply at her legs, then pads off to the ragged grass beneath the trees.
Hungry now, Pettie remains. The woman in black clothes crosses the yard. The hall door opens and is left like that.
Anyone could slip into the house. Anyone could pass through the hall, could take possession of the silver fowls on the dining-room table and then skulk away. It is typical
of him that he doesn’t think of that, typical of the person he is.
When he appears she wants to go to him, to say she knows he has guessed there wasn’t ever a ring, to tell him all the truth. But no good would come of that, and instead she watches while he carries a deckchair from the summer-house. The old woman spreads her familiar, differently coloured rug on the grass and moves the chair he has erected for her. He goes to the house and returns with his baby.
While miles away, all morning, a chain-saw whines, Pettie watches the woman she has come to hate. She watches her turning the pages of her book, standing up to attend to some need of the baby’s, then settling herself in her chair again. She has a white hat on, wide-brimmed, to protect her from the sun, and dark glasses to protect her eyes. Her head droops once or twice, but then she is alert again.
Calm now and yet excited, unaffected by her hunger, Pettie waits, but all that day the moment does not come.
Four days go by, during which Maidment is unaware that his eavesdropper’s role is shared. Nor does Zenobia know that she is regularly observed lingering in the sunshine after gathering herbs. Thaddeus is ignorant of a passion that will not be stilled. Mrs Iveson knows nothing of her detestation. Her death in midday sunshine, her death in the dark of night, coming to her in sleep, her death most suddenly in the hall, on the landing, on the stairs, catching her naked in her bath, touching a half-spoken word, arresting the movement of an arm: she does not know this has been real, before it shrivelled away to nothing. She does not know a greater reality remains, a single chance that gathers strength with time.
Over lunch on the fifth of the days that pass – consommé, oatcakes, cheese, coffee – the conversation in the dining-room, usually conducted along similar meal-time lines, includes a variation.
‘I’m glad I came,’ Mrs Iveson confesses, seeking to convey more than the words imply, yet not too much.
‘And I am that you did.’
‘Are you, Thaddeus?’
He smiles and reassures her. Listening, she wonders if her daughter knew him better than she does now. Or was there always, for Letitia too, a reticence that is the shell of his protection? Mystery in a person is attractive: more often
than not it is its presence that inspires the helpless, tumbling descent into love. When Thaddeus was a stranger to her, as he was before this summer, it was always incomprehensible that Letitia appeared to sense something of the mysterious in him: it is less so now. Mrs Iveson cannot tell her son-in-law that she likes him better, although he knows, of course, that once she did not like him at all. To say what she has said already is as far as she can go today, and probably ever.
‘We haven’t quarrelled.’ Thaddeus smiles away the word that doesn’t belong, for it is ludicrous that they should quarrel, neither by nature being the kind to. He wonders if she knows that, for his part, he nurtures no animosity towards her and never has, although aware of her misgivings as regards himself. ‘I doubt we ever shall,’ he adds, preferring to say that than to touch upon his feelings.
‘When I first suggested a nanny for Georgina, and later when I suggested our present arrangement, I felt you could not at all have managed. Perhaps, though, you could have.’
‘It’s better for Georgina to have someone as a mother.’
‘If it’s a strain, you must say.’
‘And of course so must you.’
‘All this is much more than something for me to do. It is everything, but that should not come into it.’
‘It does come into it, because you are who you are, because Georgina is your child too.’
They hover, like uncertain birds. They skirt emotion, steer clear of words that might drag it out of hiding. Thaddeus’s hands are occupied, slicing cheese, his concentration guiding the slow movement of the knife. Her eyes unwavering, fixed now on the sliver cut from the Etorki, Mrs Iveson does not speak. Then, suddenly, she says:
‘You made Letitia happy.’
‘Don’t people in marriages try for that?’
‘People in marriages are often wretched.’
Cautious again, they do not say more. On the table in the hall the telephone rings and Maidment, passing with the coffee, settles the tray on the table’s edge, one hand still holding it. As he lifts the receiver he wonders if – as several times recently and still a puzzle – there will be no response when he speaks. But a woman’s voice says at once:
‘Mr Davenant?’
When Thaddeus comes the same voice tells him that Mrs Dorothy Ferry has asked if he might be contacted and informed of her admission.
‘Admission?’
The name of a hospital is given. ‘Mrs Ferry’s comfortable, Mr Davenant, but there is cause for some concern. I rang at once.’
‘That was very good of you. Thank you.’
‘I’ll give you our address, sir.’
‘Yes. Please do.’
He listens and is told, informed that in the circumstances he may come at any time. Directions are given, should he care to do so. ‘This afternoon would not be inconvenient for us, Mr Davenant.’
‘There is some urgency?’
‘We would not advise delay, sir.’
In the dining-room, when the conversation as it was is not resumed, Thaddeus says he’ll be out for a bit, explaining that someone has been taken into hospital, not giving details.
‘I’m sorry’
‘Yes, so am I.’ And he wonders as he speaks if once
he would have so promptly agreed to make this journey. Reflecting further, he knows he would not; and knows that making it now is another response to the influence of death and the sentiment it trails.
Twenty minutes later, hanging clothes on the line in the yard, Zenobia sees the blue Saab backed out of the garage. Through glass and vine leaves, drawing on his after-lunch cigarette behind the conservatory, Maidment observes it halt for a moment on the tarmac sweep, the passenger door pushed open. On her way from the dining-room, Mrs Iveson hears Rosie called.
The hum of the engine fades and then can not be heard. Pettie listens for the sound of the car returning – something forgotten or some sudden change of plan. But nothing disturbs this dead time of the afternoon.
*
‘My dear!’ Mrs Ferry greets her visitor from bright white pillows, her effort at jauntiness collapsing before it has a chance. ‘My dear, I didn’t think you’d come.’
Her voice is weak, a croak that is a whisper also. She tries to smile. She pushes out a hand.
‘It’s homey here,’ she says. ‘A little place is.’
‘Yes, I noticed.’
‘Can’t stand the big ones.’
‘I’m sorry you’re not well, Dot.’
‘Dear, I haven’t been, you know.’
‘You said.’
‘You didn’t go along with it.’
‘Of course I did.’
‘I couldn’t blame you, dear.’
Again there is the effort at a smile, but something collapses
in Mrs Ferry’s face and from beneath closed eyelids tears run on cheeks that are innocent of make-up, the first time Thaddeus has ever seen them so.
‘You rest now, Dot. Don’t try to talk.’
‘A pity we didn’t tie our loose ends together. A pity we didn’t get round to it.’
Her voice fades, is hardly audible when it returns, solitary words rising out of a jumble to hang there meaninglessly, the names of men, items on the menu at the Beech Trees, childhood words. In the small hospital they have given her a room to herself, to which a nurse now brings two cups of tea. She takes one away, realizing at once that her patient cannot manage it. When Thaddeus has drunk some of his he says:
‘I think you’d like to have a sleep.’
‘You pour us a drink, dear? He has to see the tax man. He won’t be back.’
Children are playing somewhere, a distant sound, muffled by double-glazing.
‘Come back to bed, Thad.’
A sister bustles in, brisk and jolly, her manner filling the little room. She takes Mrs Ferry’s pulse. ‘Lovely,’ she says, then motions Thaddeus to the door. ‘Your mother’s quite poorly,’ she says more quietly.
‘Actually she’s not my mother.’
‘Oh, I thought they said – a friend, are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s not too bright. There’s been sedation, of course.’
‘I understand.’
‘She’ll know more about herself when she’s had a sleep. She lives on her own, we’re to understand?’
‘Yes, she’s on her own.’
‘You can always tell. I’m sorry about that little error.’
‘I’ll go in a moment.’
The sister nods and goes herself. Mrs Ferry’s murmuring continues when Thaddeus returns to her bedside. It ceases when she opens her eyes. Slowly a smile begins, then wearily languishes.
‘Your wife,’ she says. ‘I often think about that kindness.’
‘I’m a widower, Dot. I wanted to tell you that.’
‘A what?’
‘A widower.’
‘Never, dear. He married a Lytham lady. Still clonking along, the pair of them.’
‘No, Dot, it’s –’
‘June eighty-eight, the registry in Lytham. Funny, how some people make a go of it.’
She closes her eyes, then with an effort opens them again.
‘The pancreas. They say – it’s not so good.’
‘It’ll be all right, Dot.’
‘You’ll take me to your lovely home, will you? Will you, Thad? I always wanted that.’
‘Of course.’
‘Butter side up, Thad. I always knew you’d settle butter side up. I used to say to Oscar, I said to Chef. “Good-looking boy,” Chef said. Well, you know what Chef got up to.’
Thaddeus doesn’t, but nods all the same.
‘It’s final, you know,’ Mrs Ferry murmurs. ‘You know that, Thad? This lovely summer and it’s final.’
‘Of course it isn’t.’
‘I liked it best at Blackpool. I never thought I’d like a
place like Blackpool, but I did. Time we were naughties there, you and I.’
He does not deny the claim, only wondering if for the moment he is someone else for her, or if the confusion’s in her memory.
‘I wanted you, Thad. Oh, my dear, I wanted you so.’
‘You had me.’
‘Not ever. A boy you were. To this day, Thad. Pour us a drink, dear.’
‘In a moment. Just rest a while.’
‘You think he knows? You think they told him? The day he married me he said he was the luckiest man on earth and all I did was lead him a dance. You tell him that from me? You tell him I’m sorry, Thad?’