‘. . . so she went to the surgery first thing in the morning and she said, Doctor, Doctor, is there something radically wrong? Whenever my husband makes love to me, he puts his ear to my chest and hears music. Unbutton your blouse, my good woman—’
‘Good Lord,’ cried Edward, greatly excited. ‘I heard that joke only this morning.’
‘Perhaps you should tell it then,’ said Simpson.
‘It’s jolly good,’ Edward told Muriel. ‘I’m not sure how it ends, but this woman goes to the doctor because she—’
‘I’ve lost the pudding,’ said Binny. She rose from the table and went into the kitchen to look inside the cupboard.
‘Won’t it be in the oven?’ asked Edward. He shambled after her, holding his trousers up with his hands.
‘I didn’t put it in the oven,’ said Binny.
Edward called loudly, ‘She’s lost the pudding,’ but Muriel was standing beside her husband with her hand resting on his shoulder. They both appeared to be discussing the picture of The Last Supper that hung on the wall.
‘Have you looked properly?’ Edward said. He bent down and peered inside the oven.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Binny. She squatted beside him and whispered, ‘I thought you said he was an ass. I think he’s attractive.’
‘Is he?’ Edward was surprised. Simpson was small and swarthy and he was losing his hair. ‘Well, I’m no judge of that,’ he said bleakly, and managed to smile. He was consumed with jealousy.
‘He played footsie with me under the table,’ hissed Binny. ‘The moment we sat down.’
Edward could think of nothing to say. He felt old and tired. He struggled upright and looked down at her, as she rocked backwards and forwards on her haunches in front of the oven. He wondered what he was doing in this dark room, suffering. ‘I simply can’t understand how you managed to lose the pudding,’ he said. Oh, how he loved her! He confessed it to himself with an anguish that he had never known before. He wanted to put on his coat and leave the house without a word, but he knew he would only succeed in punishing himself. She couldn’t run after him and he wouldn’t be able to return until tomorrow. She would remain with the Simpsons and list his deceptions and conceits. Far into the night they’d discuss the blemishes of his body and the defects of his mind. They would know he was a silly man.
Excusing himself, he walked down the dark passage to the bathroom and locked the door. He looked at his watch and saw it was five minutes after ten o’clock. Helen would be home at eleven by the latest. He wished he hadn’t gone on to that Miriam woman about his garden; describing his wife sitting on a striped deckchair in the sunshine had made him feel uncomfortable, disloyal. There were things he hadn’t said. It wasn’t only his home-grown vegetables that gave him a sense of achievement; it was having Helen there to appreciate them that counted. Not in a million years would Binny tell him the peas were firm and sweet, and economical into the bargain.
He drew the bolt on the outer door leading to the garden, and flung it wide. The rain bounced on the concrete yard below. Beyond the high wall rimmed with pieces of broken glass, there were cultivated lawns edged with trees; behind the sycamore leaves and the apple blossom, lights shone in the houses. He stepped gingerly on to the little wooden veranda and leant on the rail. The party wall was crumbling in places. The rambling rose in next door’s garden, old and fiercely stemmed, clung to the perished bricks and snaked in an impenetrable thicket along the top. He had tried to encourage Binny to see the possibilities of a town garden. It’s no good, she’d said. I can’t be bothered. He didn’t think he would have done very much himself, for all his talk – a few dwarf roses, a Climbing Caroline, some bulbs in spring. There wasn’t the scope for landscape gardening on a grand scale.
He was startled at that moment by a loud knocking on the front door. He gripped the rail of the veranda tightly and stared down at the dark pit of the yard. Who in hell’s name could it be? He felt the beat of his heart accelerate wildly. The most dreadful coincidences leapt to his mind. Helen had driven someone home from her meeting, male or female, someone taken frightfully ill – no, not frightfully, they’d have called an ambulance, just unwell. This sick person happened to live in Fulton Street, and damn and blast she hadn’t wanted to go home straight away but had decided to visit a friend. That was it . . . this female was often taken ill and this friend of hers had the right sort of medicine. Even now, Helen was on the step supporting this god-awful invalid, and Binny was insisting that both of them should come inside . . .
He looked desperately about the yard, searching for a way of escape. He couldn’t climb over the rambling rose; he’d be ripped to pieces. Nor could he manage to straddle the four foot of stout chicken wire that the neighbours on the other side had added to their wall to keep out Binny’s children.
He strained his ears listening for voices at the door, footsteps up the hall. His hair was so plastered to his head with rain that drops ran down his cheeks like tears. The house was silent. After a while he relaxed, thinking he must have imagined the sounds. The city was never quiet at night, just as it was never entirely dark. He could see the glow of light that the streets beyond the houses threw up against the sky.
He must break with Binny – the strain was becoming too much for him. He had enough to do as it was, answering phone calls, coping with clients, studying the latest changes in the tax laws. After a tiring day in the office and a visit to Binny in the evening, it was a miracle he didn’t drop dead from sheer exhaustion. Sometimes when he returned home, dark rings under the eyes and clothing sprinkled with cat hairs, his wife – allowing her cheek to be brushed by his lips – would suggest that he was doing too much.
Binny had threatened to part with him often enough. Separated from her, he would be like a ship wrenched from its moorings; rudderless, he would be engulfed by enormous waves of grief. He’d have his heart torn out in the process. Binny said No, it wouldn’t be like that at all: more like a rowing boat rocking a bit when somebody stood up too quickly. After a couple of seconds the boat would right itself and sit perfectly still: not even a ripple on the water. Of course she was arguing with him at the time – foolishly he’d mentioned some client of his who was having a rough time on twenty thousand a year – and only saying it to hurt him.
For a moment longer he stood staring out at the dripping trees. Then he stepped back inside the bathroom. He rubbed his head vigorously with a towel and, unable to find a comb, raked his hair into place with his fingers. He felt better now, less emotional, restored by the night air. He would take Simpson on one side and suggest they start making excuses about leaving. Perhaps Simpson’s back could play him up. He wanted to eavesdrop outside the kitchen door, in case Binny was discussing him, but the house was old and the floor boards creaked at his approach, so he walked straight in.
Alma Waterhouse was lying on the sofa in a deplorable condition.
7
T
o be fair to Alma, she hadn’t wanted to come into the house once she knew Binny had company. She only desired to look at a familiar face and then lie upon the step, quietly weeping.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Binny. ‘I can’t let you stay outside in this state.’
‘No, no, darling,’ cried Alma selflessly. ‘You go back to your party.’ She leant against the railings and slid slowly downwards.
Vexed at this dilemma and not sure what to do for the best, Binny was suddenly aware that they were not alone; she peered into the shadows of the hedge. Mrs Montague was behind the bins again with a friend.
‘No, you mustn’t,’ called Binny. ‘Go away at once.’ She seized Alma by the front of her coat and with difficulty pulled her upright. Supporting her round the waist she hauled her up the steps. Mrs Montague lived further along the street with another friend, who drank a lot; at night he fell unconscious rather than asleep. Mrs Montague was forced, as she confided to Binny, to take her pleasures where she could, and there wasn’t a hedge outside her house. As she was over sixty and far from sprightly, Binny was shocked by her behaviour.
‘I don’t want to be a burden to you,’ said Alma, once inside the hall. ‘A smile would have been enough.’
‘Don’t make a noise,’ whispered Binny. ‘These people won’t like it.’
Sniffing, but more composed, Alma entered the kitchen. The warm room, a captive audience, the sight of wine bottles on the table revived her spirits. On being introduced to the Simpsons she smiled indulgently and said, as though pacifying two small children, ‘Now, darlings. Isn’t this nice?’
‘She ought to take that coat off,’ Muriel advised. The woman looked as if she’d been dredged up out of the river.
‘I was just passing,’ Alma said, ‘And I thought, why not pop in on poor little Binny?’ She turned to Simpson. ‘I’ve been terribly worried about her, darling.’
‘Where else have you popped?’ asked Binny. Everything depended on the mood Alma had been in before she started drinking. If she’d felt initially cheerful, and vomiting could be avoided, then she wouldn’t prove too difficult to manage.
Alma ignored her. She was wearing her old coat of mock leopard skin and a silk scarf with bedraggled fringes. A false eyelash, partially adrift on her left lid, hung at a raffish angle over one eye; she appeared to be lewdly winking. She spoke again to Simpson, who was appalled by her. He felt that at any moment she was about to say something that might incriminate him. ‘I’ve been so worried about her, darling. She’s not herself. Wouldn’t sit down, wouldn’t have a little drinkie . . . must rush off to the shops. And when we got to the shops, she never went near them—’
‘I had to go to the bank,’ said Binny crossly.
‘But you didn’t stay in the bank, darling. I saw you. You ran in and you ran out. I passed you in a taxi five minutes later and you were down a side street behaving very oddly.’
‘Take your coat off,’ snapped Binny. ‘This minute. And be quiet.’
‘You could have got run over, darling. Waving your arms about like that.’ Alma clung to Muriel’s elbow to steady herself. ‘She keeps thinking she’s on television, you know.’
‘I don’t do any such thing.’
A plaintive, almost childlike expression came over Alma’s face. She allowed her lip to tremble. She whispered loudly to Muriel. ‘She’s cross with me. You’re not cross, are you? I’m only showing concern.’
‘I’ve no reason to be cross,’ said Muriel, feeling inadequate.
Alma tottered on her feet and squinted reproachfully at Binny ‘Why didn’t you say your sister was coming? You’re so secretive, darling.’ She and Muriel, joined together at the elbow, took a few little lurching steps across the room.
‘You know perfectly well it isn’t my sister,’ said Binny. She stood behind Alma and, jerking the coat from her shoulders, laid it over a chair. Alma was wearing a little red dress with an inch of torn petticoat showing. She spun round with a cry of distress, wounded by the exasperation in her friend’s voice and alarmed at the savagery with which her outer garment had been removed.
Muriel put her arms about Alma. Murmuring sympathetically, she began to pat her back. Simpson was astonished. Once at Christmas, his eldest sister Jessie had grown tiddly on vodka and lime. Apart from a fiery complexion and a tendency later to be argumentative at bridge, her inebriation was hardly noticeable. But Muriel had remarked upon the incident for months afterwards, saying how ugly it had been, how positively disgusting; one would have thought poor old Jess had run amok with a samurai sword and spewed up all over the carpet.
For a moment the two women remained in an embrace. When they drew apart there was a slightly malicious smile on Alma’s face. She said sorrowfully to Binny, ‘I’ve gone through fire and water getting here. I thought you needed me.’ She collapsed into a chair and laid her cheek against the tablecloth; her hair, darkened by the rain, trailed in the debris of the meal.
‘Perhaps a pot of strong coffee would be in order,’ said Simpson. For some reason he was irritated beyond endurance at the sight of his wife seated beside that boozy female, stroking her bowed head with a tender smile on her lips. And where the devil, he wondered, had Freeman disappeared to?
‘I haven’t got a sister,’ Binny told him, going through into the back room to fill the kettle at the sink. ‘I’m an only child. She knows that perfectly well.’
‘An only child,’ repeated Simpson sentimentally, limping from cupboard to draining board in search of cups. ‘How lonely that sounds.’
Alma began to complain about the difficulties she’d encountered coming to Fulton Street. ‘Those pigs,’ she said loudly. ‘Strutting about in their uniforms making their dirty insinuations. If I had my way I’d put them against the wall and shoot the lot of them. I’d shoot the bastards.’ She raised her head and banged her fist angrily on the table.
‘Stop it,’ cried Binny, running from the stove and removing the vase of carnations out of her reach. ‘You’re knocking food all over the carpet.’
‘What pigs?’ asked Simpson. ‘Who does she mean?’
‘She doesn’t like policemen,’ said Binny. ‘Her sympathies have always been with the criminal classes.’
‘Asking me my business,’ Alma said indignantly. ‘Demanding to know where I’d been, where I was going. Wanting to take down my address. Crawling along the kerb beside me in their nasty little car, trying to intimidate me.’
‘They’re only doing their job,’ protested Binny. ‘They probably thought you were a battered wife.’
‘Oh darling,’ cried Alma, eyelash askew and cheek dimpled with the imprint of bread crumbs. ‘How little you know. They’re not out to help me. They’re far more corrupt than those poor souls robbing jewellers shops and things. I know them. I know them.’
‘Come now,’ said Simpson sternly. ‘We were broken into last year while we were away in the South of France, and the police were marvellous, absolutely first rate.’ He looked at his wife for affirmation and was outraged to see that she was now holding Alma’s hand.