‘His food? The dishes?’
‘They’re in the sink.’
She poured what was left of the hot water over them and looked in vain for some washing-up liquid. She discovered a tiny wire-mesh basket attached to a long handle and containing scraps of soap and whisked this vigorously around the bowl, drumming up a few bubbles.
‘I threw the meat away. It was starting to smell. Don’t worry if you’ve run out. I can easily get more.’
‘That’s all right. There’s some in the cupboard.’
She washed up quickly, constantly looking over her shoulder and smiling, anxious not to break the contact between them. Then she mopped things dry with a near-transparent tea towel. She found the dog food, plus a single tin of winter-vegetable soup, rather rusty and with a faded label. She heated this in the saucepan she had used to make the tea. All this while she kept up a murmurous stream of chatter, seemingly to herself but loud enough for Rex to hear. Now and then, to reinforce the link, she would ask a question, appearing unconcerned as to whether or not he responded.
When the soup was warm she looked around in vain for a non-canine bowl. In the end she poured it into a Pyrex casserole, placing this, together with a spoon, on the table.
Rex said, ‘I feel very strange.’
‘I should think you do. I’ll bet you haven’t eaten for days.’
‘No.’ Rex avoided looking at Montcalm. Just spooned some of the soup into his mouth.
Immediately the dog barked, a deep, rumbling woof, and lolloped across to where Sue was forking out some meat. He rose on his back legs, easily reaching the draining board, where he rested his huge paws and waited, slobbering with excitement, as she topped up the pile with some biscuits. She put the dish on the floor. A blink and it had vanished. This procedure was repeated twice more.
A lead was hanging over the banisters in the hall and Sue picked it up. Almost knocked flat by a delirious dog who had seen immediately which way the wind was blowing, she struggled to hook the lead to his collar.
‘I’m going to take him for a run now.’ Even as she spoke she guessed that the ordering of her pronouns might prove to be extremely optimistic.
‘Yes, oh yes,’ cried Rex. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much, Sue.’
‘Try and finish your soup,’ said Sue. Wrapping the lead several times around her wrist she opened the kitchen door. As she turned to leave she added, ‘And when I get back we must talk.’
Amy was draping greyish sheets over an old clothes-horse in the outhouse. She had just fed them through the rubber mangle, which had got a lot of the water out but by no means all. Even on lovely summer days she was not allowed to hang the washing in the garden. Honoria said it was common.
Amy straightened the second sheet, smoothing out as many wrinkles as she could, for they were very old, a linen/cotton mixture, and absolute hell to iron. Then she carried the old wicker basket back into the kitchen and started to think about food, for it was nearly one fifteen. There was an unopened tin of luncheon meat and, in the fridge, some cooked cauliflower and a heel of hard cheddar. She took down a packet of rice and thought about a risotto. The watery Marmite plus an Oxo cube would do for stock. If she could just find an onion . . . God, it was all so depressing.
It was strange how, if you were warm and happy, the smallest amount of the plainest food satisfied. She and Ralph had sat together on the sun-baked steps of their tiny house in the Spanish mountains and eaten bread and olives and drunk rough red wine and it had been enough.
Sometimes Amy could still feel his arm around her waist. The weight of it; the way his wrist rested on her hip, the light pressure from the palm of his hand. And she remembered how round and firm his shoulder had felt when she rested her head there. And how sweet the line of his neck before the flesh had fallen away from his poor bones.
She found an onion in a twist of old newspaper. A bit on the soft side and sprouting green, shiny shoots, but it would have to do. Amy took out the chopping board and got down to it. The juice made her cry. At least, if her sister-in-law came in, she would have a good excuse.
Honoria hated blubbing. Hated any sort of weakness. In the terrible final days of Ralph’s life, when anguish and despair had affected Amy to such a degree that she had become temporarily deranged and had had to be sedated, Honoria had not faltered. Day and night she had sat with her dying brother, pointlessly spooning sustenance into his mouth, closing her eyes when he slept and waking, as if by magic, the moment his opened.
It was Honoria who had talked to the doctors, arranged for the body to be transported, organised the funeral, chosen the stone. Amy simply stumbled after in a druggy, pain-filled haze. If she had not been so totally incapable she surely would not have ended up at Gresham House. Perhaps it was then, thought Amy, scraping the onion into a saucepan, that Honoria had begun to truly despise her. Not that Honoria ever evinced the slightest surprise at the lack of backbone and moral fibre displayed by her brother’s wife. It was, she silently implied, no more than one would expect from a person of inferior pedigree, for the only true nobility was the nobility of the blood. When Amy had first been introduced Honoria had behaved like an Edwardian duchess whose son had got secretly engaged to a base-born Gaiety girl.
Apparently (or so Ralph had said) their father had been even worse - a great admirer, like more than one upper-class Englishman in the thirties, of Adolf Hitler and his pursuit of racial purity. Before she had properly understood the strength and virulence of Honoria’s ruling passion, Amy had foolishly taken issue when the idea of marriage between different races was being vilified, had spoken of melting pots and world harmony and how, whatever our colour and creed, we were all human beings.
Honoria had explained at length, with cold patience, that such an attitude was not only sentimental and ill-informed but completely against the will of God. Eagles and ostriches and sparrows were all birds, but you never saw them being so foolish and ill-disciplined as to try and mate with each other. Nature had organised matters to perfection so that each feather, eye, beak and claw was repeated to perfection
ad infinitum
. Only man thought he could improve on this flawless system. After all this it was a mere hop, skip and a jump to how efficient Nature was at disposing of the weak, lame, halt and those who had somehow not managed to repeat themselves to perfection. At this point Amy had switched off.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Oh!’ She almost dropped the pan. ‘You made me jump.’ Aware that she sounded nervous and uncertain, Amy then became resentful. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’
Honoria stood in the doorway. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that she occupied the doorway. She stared at Amy with unbroken concentration, then repeated herself.
‘Lunch.’ Amy hated being stared at. ‘I’m making lunch.’ She seized a wooden spoon and started agitating the slivers of onion. ‘Won’t be long.’
‘It’s quarter past already,’ said Honoria.‘You’re late.’
Amy never knew why it was that moment she chose to rebel. Afterwards it seemed rather that the moment had chosen her. That all the months of skivvydom and endless, niggling humiliations coalesced into a thrust of aggravation so powerful that her jaws opened of their own accord and the words just tumbled out.
‘I’m late, Honoria, because I’ve done the washing. This took a long time as there is no machine. Before I did the washing I cleaned the bedrooms. In between those tasks, if you recall, I was verifying certain facts on your index cards and taking letters to the post. The miracle to me, Honoria, is not that lunch is late but that I’ve breath to spare to get any lunch at all.’
During this speech Amy did not look at her sister-in-law. And when she had finished she forced herself not to pick up the wooden spoon or relight the gas or make any move along the lines of domestic servitude. The room had gone immensely quiet. Into this vacuum, now that she had said her say, Amy’s apprehension started to seep.
And yet, what could Honoria actually do? Throw me out, decided Amy, that’s what. But would that be so terrible? Surely she could not be any worse off. There were always people wanting help. She had come across a genteel magazine in the library full of advertisements. Any one of them must surely reveal someone kinder than Honoria, with a warmer home and a more generous purse.
What was it Ralph had said when his illness had first been diagnosed and they had clung to each other’s hands in disbelieving terror?
Courage, mon brave
. Surely facing an unknown future must be a trifle in comparison. As these thoughts raced through Amy’s mind the glimpse of freedom they engendered was so exhilarating that she felt almost elated.
Blinking her way back to the present she became aware that Honoria was speaking and picked up the words ‘. . . weren’t so slow . . .’
‘If I am slow,’ Amy said sharply, ‘it is because I am cold. My fingers are frozen stiff half the time.’ She turned back to the sink and tossed the wooden spoon in with a clatter. ‘I can’t stay here any longer.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’d’ve thought that quite plain, Honoria.’ Amy’s stomach churned. She was beginning to feel sick. ‘I want to - I’m going to - leave.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘Why not?’ In spite of the chill Amy’s hair was damp with perspiration. Struggling to brace herself against the tyranny of the past, she slowly looked up.
Honoria appeared stunned. Her stony grey eyes, in which Amy could not recall ever having seen a single flash of emotion, shone with what seemed very much like panic.
‘You must stay here. Where I can . . .’
Honoria running out of verbal steam? Another first. Amy, cautiously testing the temperature of this unfamiliar atmosphere, said, ‘Where you can work me half to death for nothing.’
‘No, no,’ replied Honoria quickly. ‘Where I can . . . keep an eye on you. I promised Ralph I would.’
There was such an improvisational air about the last few words that Amy felt sure they were false. And yet what was more natural than that Ralph would have commended his poverty-stricken wife into the care of his only living relative? Amy tried to believe it, wanted to believe it. But wanting, she discovered, was not enough.
‘I hope you will reconsider,’ said Honoria. Her mouth went into some sort of strange spasm. It was as if it held a square obstacle that was trying to force its way past the tight round O of her thin lips. Eventually it succeeded. ‘Please.’
Amy was conscious of a great dismay. She had actually screwed her courage to the sticking place. Had seen the door that led to freedom standing ajar. Must it now be slammed forever in her face?
‘I’ve been thoughtless.’ Honoria compounded her mysterious felony. ‘So used to the cold I don’t notice. We must light a fire. And I’ll sort out that boiler. Order some coke and really get it going.’
She was moving away as if the matter was settled. Amy couldn’t bear it. She wanted to stop her. To cry out that the boiler didn’t matter nor the lighting of fires. That it was all too late and her mind was made up. Tomorrow she would be packing and by the next day, gone.
But even as she called, ‘Honoria?’ the library door closed and she was once more alone.
Barnaby sat behind his desk, rumbling. Mindful of his starter at Bunter’s he had consumed only a ham salad in the canteen at lunchtime, cutting the pink and white meat, already paper thin, into even smaller portions and carving up the tomatoes - finding himself in the ridiculous position of eating something he didn’t really want while at the same time trying to make it last.
Troy, sitting opposite, had lowered cottage pie, peas, double chips, apricot crumble, two Kit Kats and a huge beaker of Coke which must have given the two young girls on a boat some stick.
‘I don’t know where you put it all. You must have hollow legs.’
Troy regarded the extremely large figure facing him with some sympathy. It was all that cooking that had started it. The sergeant had been quite perturbed when he first discovered the governor’s new hobby, for it had struck him as more than a touch on the bendy side. But then he discovered, via a new sitcom, that all the world’s greatest chefs were men, which not only figured but went a considerable way towards allaying his suspicions. For it stood to reason they couldn’t all be poofters.
Now he watched as Barnaby got up and started prowling around, staring at screens over their operatives’ shoulders, snatching up any phone within an arm’s length the second it rang, chatting to the statements reader, interrogating researchers. Keeping busy not just because that was his nature but because he hoped, by so doing, to banish from his mind the image of the calorifically engorged automat squatting a mere few yards away.
‘Water’s very good,’ said Troy.
‘What?’
‘Maureen drinks a lot of water. When she’s trying to lose weight.’
‘Just mind your own bloody business - all right?’
Barnaby turned and walked back to his patch and Troy, quite unoffended, followed. He perched on the edge of the desk and said, ‘I’ve had a thought.’
‘Well treat it gently. It’s in a strange place.’
‘About this visit of Max Jennings. I was wondering if it wasn’t a coincidence that his name came up at that writers’ meeting. We know now about Laura Hutton’s feelings. What if - even before she knew he wasn’t Mr Spotless - she was getting cheesed off at being rejected. And invited Jennings out of spite.’
‘That presupposes she knew the man. Or at least was aware of the effect his visit might have on Hadleigh.’
‘Stranger things have happened. You’ve said yourself, if we put all the coincidences we come across in a book no one’d ever believe it.’
‘True.’
‘Like for instance the whole lot of them being writers.’
‘Not entirely, Laura Hutton was just faking it to make sure she saw him once a month.’