This Way Out (9 page)

Derek's address –
The Brickyard, Wyveling, Breckham Market, Suffolk
– gave no clue to the house's whereabouts in the village. The name, in iron letters screwed on to a plaque on one of the brick gateposts at the entrance to the yard, was not conspicuous. Hopeful that Packer had blown his own scheme by asking for directions, Derek had made casual inquiries on his way home. A colleague, he invented, had promised to leave some documents at the Brickyard but hadn't done so. Had a stranger by any chance stopped to ask the way to his house from the garage? From the post office? From the newsagent's? From the village shop? From the Five Bells?

Apparently not.

Instinctively, Derek had avoided describing the stranger to anyone. He couldn't bring himself to analyse this wariness, but something in the unexplored darkness at the back of his mind prompted him not to give anyone an opportunity to associate him with Packer.

Just in case.

Derek had decided to walk in the field path because it was far more likely that a stranger would have been noticed there than in the village itself. The path passed the end of a dozen other gardens as well as his own, and he hoped to see at least one of the other residents, either gardening or dog-walking, and introduce the subject of strangers into a casual, neighbourly conversation. But there seemed to be no one about at all.

He paused, frustrated, at a fork in the path. Ahead of him was the churchyard wall, cushioned at its foot by mounds of celandines and overhung by lime trees whose new leaves were bursting out of their pink scales. Above and beyond the trees, the clock on the flint tower of the church showed eleven twenty-seven, as it had done ever since the Cartwrights first arrived in Wyveling; but in fact it was past seven o'clock, and the sun had set. Presumably most people were eating supper or watching television. He and Sam had the path to themselves.

Sam …

Derek looked round, his anxiety abruptly changing course. The sturdy little tri-coloured dog, treasured by Christine as a living link with their dead daughter, was nowhere to be seen.

Panicking, not knowing which fork of the path to take, Derek called and whistled and called again. He knew that he ought to have brought the dog out on a lead, because it had no road sense at all. Oh God – it if had gone to the right, out into the village street … or to the left, down through a spinney and out beside the Five Bells on to the Doddenham road, and had been killed, Christine would never forgive him.

He began to run. First along the short path to the streeet, then back to the fork and down through the spinney, his light shoes sliding on mud, his hands – bruised or not – grabbing at saplings to keep his balance.

There was no sign of the dog on either road. He scrambled up the bank again and ran back the way he had come. ‘
Sam
…
Sam
!'

Then he saw the beagle. Evidently it had picked up a scent: nose to the ground, tail up, it was working its way down the field towards the distant brook. Derek swore with relief, and skidded to a halt.

If he'd thought before he started running, he might have known where to find the animal. When he and Christine had bought the beagle for Laurie they had thought of it simply as a Snoopy dog, the live counterpart of the endearing cartoon character that their daughter had learned to identify. But it was of course a hound, a hunter. It was now too elderly and cosseted to catch anything faster than a baby rabbit, but while it was on a scent he might as well give up calling because it wouldn't take a blind bit of notice of him. Its hunting instinct was too strong.

Field sports had never appealed to. Derek. His natural sympathies were with the hunted. He had read somewhere that hares, the quarry of beagle packs, are so fast and elusive that they have a greater-than-even chance of escape; but as he watched his sturdy, persistent hound, he couldn't believe it.

Beagles, he recalled, are bred for stamina. Moreover they hunt in packs. It seemed to him that the odds must always be against the lone quarry and on the hounds, backed up as they were by an organization of huntsmen.

Just as, when a murder was committed, the odds were that the police, with all their resources, would eventually hunt down the murderer.

Shaken by the analogy, Derek came to a decision. It was crazy of Packer to think that he could kill Enid Long and get away with it. He would have to be stopped. And the only way Derek could feel sure of stopping him was by turning Enid out of the Brickyard whether Christine agreed to it or not.

He shouted angrily for Sam through the gathering dusk. The beagle, having lost the scent, came trundling back up the field panting and grinning unrepentantly. Derek slipped his belt through its collar and hauled it back to the Brickyard, intent on a confrontation with his wife that he knew he had to win.

‘I want a private word with you, Christine.'

He had found her and her mother in the kitchen, having one of their spats of irritability over the supper table. As he stood in the doorway of the room, momentarily dazzled by the lights, he felt as verbally reckless as though he were drunk. Fear of Packer's influence, and of his own powerlessness against it, had eroded his behaviour. He didn't speak the words, he snarled them, and he took a grim satisfaction in the look of shock on the women's faces as he did so.

The air in the kitchen seemed to be impregnated with the alien richness of the casserole Enid had cooked. Its thick spicy smell nauseated him; it was, he convinced himself, the final provocation.

‘
Now
,' he heard himself shout, glaring at his astonished mother-in-law and jerking his thumb at the door. And after a moment's hesitation, Enid went.

‘Derek!' Christine protested. She rose to face him. On the table between them, the remains of her mother's casserole began to congeal on the plates. ‘What's wrong?'

There was a strange, heated, prickling sensation on the top of his head, as though his fermenting emotions were trying to burst through his skull. ‘You
know
what's wrong. That bloody woman. I've had enough of her, do you hear? She is not going to go on living in this house any longer.'

‘It's as much –'

‘I'm not arguing with you about it, and I'm not begging for your co-operation, either. I've gone past that. She can start packing her bags, because I'm going to drive her back to Southwold first thing on Saturday morning – whether you like it, madam, or whether you don't.'

The insulting tone of his voice appalled him, but he knew that it was fear that was putting the words into his mouth. If he couldn't get her mother out of the house, he dreaded what would have to happen.

‘Yes, I know what you're going to say,' he went on with a sneer. ‘This is your house just as much as it's mine. Good old Percy, for leaving you enough money to go halves when we bought it. But halves means
equal
rights, and you've already had more than your fair share. I've been pandering to you because of your operation, but now you're well again we're going to do what
I
want for a change. Enid is out.'

Christine's face was white. She looked scared. ‘I
can't
tell her to go, Derek. Please don't ask me.'

‘I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. If you won't shift her, I'll do it myself. I've always been nice to your mother, right? Well, that's finished. I'm sick of being Mr Nice. From now on I'm going to make her life so bloody unpleasant that she'll be only too thankful to clear off. Is that the way you want it?'

For a few seconds they glared at each other. Then, with a sob, Christine dodged round the kitchen table and fled out into the hallway and up the stairs. Derek raced after her, putting his shoulder against the bathroom door just as she was about to bolt it against him.

‘Well?' he demanded fiercely, switching on the light. But her stricken face filled him with remorse. He hesitated for a moment, then stumbled towards her holding out his arms.

‘Oh my love – I'm sorry, I'm sorry …'

Her body was tense, unresponsive. Her forehead was hot against his cheek. ‘If only you'd tell me
why
, Chrissie,' he groaned, stroking her hair. ‘If only you'd talk to me about it.'

He guided her to the edge of the bath and sat beside her, one arm across her rigid shoulders. She kept her eyelids lowered and said nothing. She had stopped crying, but her tears had left snail-tracks of dampness on her face.

Despairing of helping her in any other way, Derek reached for a tissue from the box. As he tenderly wiped her cheeks he said, in the affectionate half-scolding, half-joking tone he had always used to Laurie when she had a runny nose: ‘Where's that girl's hanky?'

Christine lifted her head immediately. Her eyes seemed to be the very dark blue of an infant's, unfocused and unfathomable.

‘You do still think of her?' she said.

‘Think of her? Of
course
I do.' Derek sought for something to say that would ease his wife's tension. ‘That's what I was doing this evening, when I was out with Sam. Who else but our Laurie would have insisted on putting a beagle in a tartan collar!'

His wife was frowning. ‘Yes – but
how
do you think of her?'

‘With tremendous affection. You know that. You know how cut-up I was when she died.'

‘Yes … But afterwards, Dee – when you'd got over the shock – were you secretly glad?'

So this was the key to Christine's problem. She suspected him of being thankful that Laurie had died, and so she had been using her mother as a way of punishing him. Relieved that he now understood, Derek tried to find an answer that would satisfy his wife without actually letting her know that she was right.

‘I do feel, with hindsight, that her death was probably best for Laurie's own sake,' he said carefully. ‘She'd be seventeen now, if she'd lived. Physically a woman, but mentally always a child. I was worried about her long-term future, Chrissie, about what would happen to her if she were to outlive us. So I can't honestly say that I wish she were still alive – but for heaven's sake, I wasn't
glad
that she died. How could you think that of me?'

Christine rose to her feet and walked slowly over to the washbasin. ‘I didn't really think it,' she said in an expressionless voice. ‘You're a good man, Derek, I know that.
I'm
the one who's guilty. I'm the one who was glad when Laurie died.'

She picked up the cleaning cloth and the bottle of Ajax, and began to work on the basin.

‘When Laurie was a baby, and the doctor confirmed the Down's diagnosis, I prayed that she wouldn't survive. I used to go to her cot when she was quiet, hoping to find that my prayers had been answered and she'd died in her sleep. But then I gradually realized that her handicap was my own fault. I'd brought her into the world damaged, so I owed it to her to love and look after her. And that's what I did – and intended to go on doing.

‘When she died so unexpectedly, it came as a terrible shock. I certainly wasn't glad at the time, because I felt as though the purpose of my life had been taken away. It was a long while before I could get used to being without her. But then we went for that lovely skiing holiday –'

Christine's busy cloth slowed. She lifted her head, and Derek saw in the mirror that her eyes were closed. Her tone grew lighter.

‘It's all so vivid, still. There I was, skiing confidently down a mountain slope … warm sun, crisp snow, the scent of the pines … and I was completely happy. I felt young again, and carefree for the first time in fifteen long years. I'd got my freedom at last! I can remember shouting my relief aloud:
Thank God. Thank God she's dead
.'

Christine paused. ‘And that,' she continued in a matter-of-fact voice, resuming her burnishing of the taps, ‘is what accounts for my cancer. They say it's a stress-related disease, and I'm sure they're right. I know quite well that mine was brought on by the guilt I felt because of being glad that my daughter had died.'

Derek started to protest against such unscientific thinking, but his wife seemed not to hear.

‘That's why I won't send Mum back to Southwold. Goodness knows I don't
want
her to stay here – she irritates me beyond measure. But this is my way of trying to atone for my wickedness.

‘I'm terrified of secondary tumours, you see. I'm terrified that the cancer is spreading silently inside me, and that I'm going to die. But I truly believe that as long as I go on punishing myself by giving up my freedom for Mum's sake, then I've got a hope of surviving.'

She put down the cleaning cloth, turned, and looked compassionately at Derek. ‘Don't think I don't know how hard it is on you, Dee. It seems so unfair to punish you as well. But what I tell myself is that it might be even harder for you if I were to die …'

Anguished, he reached out to her. Christine put up a hand to ward him off.

‘You do understand?'

He nodded.

‘And you'll support me? Please? After all, Mum can't live for ever. She's noticeably frailer, and at her age she could be carried off quite quickly by a heart attack or something. I don't want to sound callous but I hope she will be, for her own sake as much as ours. She's always been so independent and active. She must secretly dread the thought of deteriorating into a helpless old age, and I hope she doesn't. But please, Dee – promise you'll help me by letting her stay with us for the rest of her life?'

Derek promised.

‘Small world!'

Derek had half-feared, half-wanted to hear that voice again; but not so soon, not the following day.

He had forced himself to blank off his personal problems while he kept an appointment with the manager of the Saintsbury branch of Lloyd's Bank to discuss life-assurance-linked mortgage options, though a knot of anxiety in his stomach had prevented him from accepting an invitation to lunch. He had walked out of the bank, briefcase in hand, thinking of nothing but the administrative follow-up to his visit. But as soon as he saw Packer standing on the pavement grinning at him, his fears broke through to the forefront of his mind.