Judgment Day (17 page)

She had new clothes on and she'd done something funny to her hair, it had streaks in it and looked tidier. She'd brought him a model aircraft kit and a
Blue Peter
annual.

She kept on about Dad. When had he come? Did he go in the house? What did he say? There was an edge to her voice; she didn't say “Dad,” she just kept talking about “him.” Martin felt as though he were in some dark room with murky shapes you couldn't quite make out, presences you'd rather not know about. It was worse than lying in bed hearing them shouting at each other. He said, “What's wrong, Mum? Why's Dad gone away? He will come back, won't he?” She went upstairs and when he followed
her she snapped at him not to trail around after her, it got on her nerves. Later, from the garden, he looked toward the house and saw her face at the window, and it was all screwed up and red, as though she were crying. But she couldn't be, grown-ups don't cry. After a while he climbed over the fence to Mr. Porter's and played in the shed that Mr. Porter had cleared out for him. Mr. Porter was going to put some shelves up when he could get hold of some wood, so he could set up his models there. Mr. Porter said maybe there'd be a bit more space than back in his own room. It was true, there would. Actually, Martin realized, Mr. Porter hadn't ever seen his room, he'd never been into their house, which was funny since he'd always lived next door. Martin didn't think he'd want him to, in fact; it would be embarrassing, somehow.

The house was all right again now she was back, it didn't lurk any more, it hadn't that frightening empty feeling. In the evening, when they were watching telly he said, “You aren't going to go away again, are you, Mum?” She was eating a chocolate (she was always eating chocolates, since she came back, she kept saying, “Christ, I'll get so fat,” and then she'd reach for another}. She didn't answer for a minute and then she said I dunno, maybe, I've not thought really, maybe we might go for a holiday in Spain with Auntie Judy, that'd be nice, wouldn't it? “And Dad?” he said. “When Dad comes back, d'you mean?” She didn't answer. Have a choc, she said, holding out the box, go on, before I hog them all.

School would start again tomorrow. He didn't suppose he and Tom Paling would be friends at school, you couldn't really, with Tom only being seven and a half. But he hoped they'd go on playing at home, it was better than
being on his own. The Palings' house was funny: it was all bright and light and Mrs. Paling sang when she was doing the washing-up, songs he'd never heard of, not pop, peculiar songs. And she talked to Anna and Tom—and him, come to that—in a funny way, as though they mattered, as though they weren't just children. He wasn't sure if it was embarrassing or nice.

*  *  *

Sydney washed up the breakfast things: one bowl, one plate, one cup and saucer, spoon, knife, teaspoon, teapot. He saw Martin go past, heading for school; he saw the Paling children scurry across the Green; he saw Sue Coggan pausing to adjust a daughter's drooping sock. He swept the kitchen floor, ran the vacuum over the hall and the lounge. Then, it being overcast but fine, he went out into the garden: carrots to be thinned, hoeing, some rough edges that needed a going-over.

Halfway through the morning Shirley Bryan appeared at the fence. “Thanks ever so much for keeping an eye on Martin.”

Sydney inclined his head. “That's all right.”

“No, I mean it, it was really kind. It took a weight off my mind, I can tell you.”

Sydney made a vicious stab with the edge-trimmer.

“I said to my sister, well, one thing, I don't have to worry about Martin, with Mr. Porter being so kind. He'll be all right.”

Sydney, his back half-turned, shoveled loose earth and grass roots into the trug. He lined up the string against the edge and stabbed downward once more.

“At that age,” said Shirley Bryan, “they don't take in a
lot, do they? Just as well. I'm feeling a bit better in myself now, I'm sleeping all right and frankly if Keith walked in this minute I'd as likely give him a clip about the ear as burst into tears. My sister said, look, Shirley, face up to it, you've been at each other hammer and tongs for years now, this has been coming for a long time, let him go off with his fancy piece and good luck to him…”

Sydney picked up the trug and began to walk down the path toward the compost heap.

She moved along the fence parallel to him. “… Not that I see it quite that way, I suppose it's pride as much as anything. And if he thinks I'll go fifty-fifty on the house he's got another think coming. Anyway, the thing is, I'm a lot better in myself, my morale's up a lot”—she patted her hair, tweaked at her dress—“like Judy says, I've got my life in front of me, there's no point in sitting about weeping. And Judy's going off to Marbella on a fortnight's package with Rick, that's her boyfriend, and this other bloke, and they said why not come along, bring the kid too, it'll take you out of yourself.”

Sydney emptied the trug, put it down and straightened up. He looked over the fence at the Bryans' rank and brimming garden, where all things contended and the more strident elements won: elder and couch grass and bindweed and thistle. He looked at Shirley Bryan. He said, “You'll take the boy with you, then?”

“That's right. He'll amuse himself on the beach, he won't be any trouble, and there'll always be someone to keep an eye if we want to go off to discos and that—it's a two-star hotel, it should be really nice. Rick's friend's in the car-rental business, he's got this firm in north London. His marriage went bust too, Judy says.”

Sydney cleared his throat. “If the boy's not all that keen—if he's not set on going, that is—he could stop here with me.”

Shirley stared. “Are you sure, Mr. Porter? That's ever so kind. I don't know … Fact is, it wouldn't be all that much fun for him, I daresay—tagging along with the four of us. I mean, I said to Judy, well, he's no trouble, he's a quiet kid, always has been, but the fact is we'd be a lot easier without him.”

Sydney said, “Ask him what he'd like.”

“Yes. Yes. I'll do that. It's really kind. You're sure?”

“It's a question of what he'd like. The boy. It's up to him.”

*  *  *

“Thank heaven,” said Clare, “for full-time compulsory education.”

“Have they been getting you down?”

“Oh, not really. I dote on them, as you well know. More coffee? What are you doing today?”

“Gingering up British industry. At least that will be the intention.”

“How nice it must be to live in the real world. I shall be arranging for the delivery of frock coats and agricultural smocks from a theatrical costumier.”

“Ah. The pageant. How's that going?”

“Engagingly dotty. Nevertheless, I now know more about the cost of temporarily wiring and spot lighting the interior of a parish church than anyone in central England.”

“You must be heaven-sent, from their point of view.”

“There are those that have their doubts. Miss Bellingham
would gladly see me consigned to hell—I should imagine she's been putting in a word or two in the right quarters about that already. And George Radwell is a problem.”

“I can see he would get on the nerves.”

“It's not just that. I'm afraid he has inappropriate feelings where I am concerned.”

“I beg your pardon, love?”

“He would like,” said Clare conversationally, “to go to bed with me.”

Peter laughed, at length.

“I'm glad you take it so lightly.”

“Do you want me to have a stern word with him?”

“No, thank you. I shall manage.”

“You must admit, it's amusing.”

“Oh, hilarious. Here am I, who might be thought of as fairly privileged, and there is he.”

“A Church of England vicar,” said Peter, “though admittedly not among the affluent, would not usually be thought of as deeply deprived.”

“I wasn't talking about his income. Or mine. I was talking about being inadequate and knowing you are inadequate and failing to attract anything more vital than indifference from other people and probably knowing that too. And having presumably the normal instincts toward love and lust and other kinds of emotional participation but apparently neither wife nor children nor family nor friends. Nobody ever goes into the vicarage except on church business.”

“I thought you didn't like him.”

“I don't think I do. That doesn't preclude guilt.”

“Guilt, with you, my girl, is a form of self-indulgence.”

“It's a good thing I'm fond of you,” said Clare, “or I'd clock you one.”

“Why not just accept things and be thankful?”

“Some of us,” she said sweetly, “are more complex in our responses,”

He got up. “Well, prosaic fellow that I am, I'd better get stuck into the daily round. I hope you manage to fend off your admirers. Mind, I don't blame them, as I've often pointed out myself your…”

“Go away,” said Clare. “Go and get on with some industrial mismanagement.”

She sat in the empty kitchen, reading the newspaper. A ten-mile traffic jam on the M
₄
made the front page; elsewhere, more briefly, fire killed five children in a Nottingham terrace house, hundreds died in Indian floods.

Later, she looked out of the window at the Green and saw that the two tasteful slatted cedar litter bins had been overturned and their contents flung around the grass. The motorbike boys had been through again in the night. She had woken to hear them roaring past—once, twice, three times, circling the Green. She had got out of bed, infuriated, with vague notions of telephoning the police, and had seen their lights disappearing in the direction of Spel-bury; the smell of high-octane fuel drifted in and she closed the window. From across the landing Thomas called out and she went into his room.

“What was that noise?”

“Nothing. Some motorbikes. Go to sleep again.”

He was barely awake. He rolled onto his side, eyes closed. “I love you.”

“Good,” she said. “I love you too.”

He sighed, asleep already. He had been playing with his
models and lay, apparently without discomfort, in a midden of miniature bulldozers, fire-engines, racing cars, and cement mixers. She removed them and went back to bed.

Looking now at the rubbish-strewn Green, she thought about these nocturnal visitations. They seemed like the unleashing of some elemental force, sinister and uncontrollable. It was hard to reduce them to the reality of a few restless, frustrated, destructive youths. The same people, no doubt, as handed her a pound of mince and four chops across the butcher's counter, or brushed against her in the supermarket, re-stocking shelves.

Presently she went out and righted the bins, cleared up the mess.

In the afternoon, when the children were back from school, Martin Bryan came across to play with them. After a while Clare found him sitting alone on the back doorstep. He looked white.

“Are you O.K., Martin?”

“I've got a stomachache.”

“Come and sit down inside for a bit.”

He huddled into a corner of the sofa, chewing his lip.

“Perhaps it's something you've eaten.”

He shook his head. “I often get stomachaches. Usually they go away.”

“Does your mum know about them?”

He muttered something, his head down.

“Would you like a book to read?”

“Could I put the telly on?”

“Of course.”

He lay there, staring at the set. Clare, at the desk, wrote to her parents and dealt with some bills. When she looked across at him again she saw that he had fallen asleep,
slumped across the arm of the sofa, a thin child in jeans that were too baggy for him and a T-shirt from which grinned an inane face below the caption SUNNY JIM.

*  *  *

“Martin's dad,” announced Thomas, “has given him the most
fantastic
bike. It's got three speeds and a racing saddle and those bent back handlebars. It's
fantastic.
It's bright red and it cost more than fifty pounds. His dad had it sent from the bike shop in Spelbury. Martin didn't know he was going to get it. His dad's got to go away for a long time.”

“Aren't you going to finish those sausages, Anna? Milk, Tom?”

“Three speeds. And dynamo lights.”

“That is not,” said Clare, “a fantastic bike. A fantastic bike would have wings and be able to talk. Kindly treat the language with respect.”

“Fairy stories,” said Anna smugly, “are fantastic.”

Thomas glared. “Copycat. That's what Mum said, you don't know it by yourself. Copycat, dirty rat!”

“Shut up.”

“This bike, this
fantastic
bike, has dynamo lights and special clips at the back for a carrier.”

“Fantastic is things that aren't real, like fairy stories. So ha ha!”

“Hush,” said Clare, “both of you. Turn your minds to something else, such as dessert, for which there is a choice of ice cream or stewed apricots, or conceivably both.”

And she goes to the fridge, thinking with grief of Martin, who has a shiny new bike with three speeds and a racing saddle, and, with love and indulgence, of Thomas, who
has a rusty old three-wheeler and does not know his own good fortune.

*  *  *

George. Not Mr. Radwell. George. They had stood there in the church, chatting about this and that, he holding the end of a tape measure for her, and she had called him George. “George,” she had said. “Of course I quite see your point, George.” He had told her, face to face, no mincing words, what he felt about her way of looking at things, and she'd said well, of course, George, but I see it like this … They'd had an interesting discussion, on a different level from the sort of thing he usually met up with. She'd been wearing a blue skirt and a sort of red shirt that pulled out when she reached up to measure something, leaving this slice of bare skin, bare soft skin. He would only have had to put a hand out and he could have touched it.

“Weston-super-Mare. Or Bournemouth.”

He jumped.

Mrs. Tanner stood over him, thrusting a cup of tea. “I was saying we're reckoning on a holiday this year, seeing as I'm so much better. You're not quite with me this morning, are you, Vicar? I've sugared it for you.”