by Diane Janes
But not to seeing me, Wendy thought, as she exchanged farewells and rang off. She had never quite forgiven Bruce’s mother after overhearing her telling Digby, ‘Of course they don’t realize that Wendy isn’t really common. It’s just that everyone talks like that up there.’
Bruce telephoned her on Tuesday evening. He was in a call box and their conversation was preceded and then punctuated by the sound of him shovelling more coins into the box at the prompting of the pips.
‘Why are you ringing from a payphone? Aren’t you at your mother’s?’ Wendy asked.
‘I’m at a pub. I bumped into some old friends last night and they invited me to come out for a drink.’
‘Well, I’m so glad you’re enjoying yourself.’
‘There’s no need for sarcasm, darling. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be allowed to go out and enjoy myself? It’s only a sociable drink with some people I haven’t seen in quite a few years. Is there something wrong up there? Has something upset you?’
‘Oh, not at all. I suppose I should count myself lucky that you’ve bothered to ring. You didn’t find time last night.’
‘For goodness’ sake! I’ve barely been down here two days, what on earth do you think I had to say? And I have to think of Mum and Dad’s phone bill. Long-distance calls are expensive, you know.’
‘I’m sure you could offer to pay them for the cost of the calls.’
‘You know they’ve refused to accept anything for having me here, which means I can’t start freeloading by spending half the night on their phone.’
‘Well, that’s typical of your mother. She refuses to take any money but will make an issue of the phone bill. Don’t you see what a clever way that is of limiting your calls home?’
‘Don’t be so silly. The way you talk about my mother, anyone would think she was an ogre. Anyway, I didn’t think I was expected to ring you every night.’
‘Naturally, I don’t expect you to think of us when you are so busy enjoying yourself.’
‘Oh really, Wen—’ Bruce’s voice was drowned again by the incessant mechanical demand for further payment. He had either run out of patience or run out of change because this time the pips ended in the distinctive burr of a dead line.
On Wednesday evening he called from his parents’ house, and after a perfunctory exchange he had Wendy call the children to the phone, one at a time, to talk to him. On Thursday they merely confirmed the arrangements for his weekend visit home. By then she was regretting their spat. It couldn’t be easy for him, settling into a new job while moving back in with his parents, where there would be a thousand and one pinpricks and irritations for an adult accustomed to having their own place and ordering their life in the way they wanted it.
She planned his Friday evening homecoming carefully. Supper for two at the kitchen table, with candles lit and a bottle of wine, to be finished in front of a log fire in the sitting room. She would put fresh sheets on the bed. Everything would be made just right for his weary arrival home after the long drive, and on Saturday they would do something nice together, the whole family. A walk perhaps, or a visit to the cinema.
She had already made most of her preparations for supper when he called her late on Friday afternoon to say that the car had developed a fault and the garage could not get the part they needed until the following morning. On Saturday he phoned again, hours after she had thought him already on the road, to say that the garage had been let down over the delivery of the part and, as a result of this further delay, he was only just setting off. An accident blocking two lanes of the motorway created yet another hold-up, so that by the time he arrived, tired and disgruntled, Tara had already gone out for the evening and the salmon which Wendy had prepared for them was on the edge of dried up. Katie and Jamie picked up on the atmosphere and fractiously competed for their parents’ attention throughout the cheerless meal that followed.
When dinner was over, Wendy shooed Bruce from the kitchen and dealt with the various dirty pans herself while the children got ready for bed. When she finally went to join him in the sitting room, she found the fire smoking and her husband fast asleep in one of the armchairs, his head lolling at an uncomfortable angle. Though she flapped a magazine about and chinked a glass, hoping for some sign that he was looking forward to the sort of passionate night an absence was supposed to engender, Bruce slept on, eventually waking with a half-hearted apology, admitting that he was all in and heading upstairs where he wasted no time in shedding his clothes and resuming his slumbers.
Wendy could not help but reflect that she might just as easily have spent the evening alone and taken a good deal less trouble about it. She eventually drifted into an uneasy sleep in which she dreamed of being at a 50/50 dance with Bruce, who unaccountably turned into a different man, who went too fast when they played a foxtrot and refused to let her go when she tried to pull away, instead thrusting his face towards her as he attempted an unwanted kiss, his hands everywhere, groping her until she woke up with a little sob. It was dark and she lay still and quiet for a long time, fearful of a resumption of the dream if she went back to sleep, eventually dropping off again as the first hints of daylight crept around the edges of the curtains.
She was eventually drawn out of bed by the sounds of movement on the landing. Leaving Jamie unsupervised in the kitchen was a recipe for disaster, so Wendy dragged her dressing gown around her and descended to organize her son’s breakfast. Bruce appeared soon afterwards in search of coffee and the papers.
‘I was just wondering what you wanted to do today.’ She greeted him brightly and felt crushed when he gave a pseudo-groan.
‘Do we have to do anything? Don’t forget I need to be on the road again this afternoon.’
‘No, of course we don’t have to do anything. I just thought you might like to do something … well … nice. All of us together, because we’ve been apart all week.’
‘Well, at the moment my idea of something nice would be a cup of coffee and a quiet hour with the Sunday papers.’
‘Yes, of course. Sorry.’ Actually, she thought, I’m not sorry. Why am I apologizing? It isn’t my fault that the car went wrong or there was a sodding traffic jam.
In a repeat performance of the weekend before, Wendy and the two younger children stood outside the house to wave Bruce off. It was less than twenty-four hours since his arrival. He hugged each of the children in turn and then pecked Wendy’s cheek.
‘It was hardly worth it, was it?’ she said lightly.
‘No, it wasn’t.’ Bruce turned away and climbed into the car.
Feeling as if she had been slapped, Wendy laughed, trying to show the children that it was just a little joke between Mummy and Daddy. Bruce reversed the car down the drive and the children trotted after him, readying themselves for a final wave from the front gate. Wendy followed a pace or two behind them. Once out in the road, Bruce put the car into forward gear and waved his hand as he moved off, but she knew that the wave was for the children. Back in the kitchen, she contemplated the wrecked weekend while she burned the muffins intended for the children’s tea and snapped at Katie because her bedroom was untidy again. Had any of it been her fault? Of course not. Was it her fault that he worked so far away? Or that the initial interest in The Ashes seemed to have dried up? A lull in the market, the agent said. None of it was her fault. It was very unfair.
Even so, she felt moved to apologize to Bruce, and was ready to issue some platitudes for the sake of making up this quarrel, which they hadn’t exactly had, so when he had not telephoned by eight thirty on Monday evening, she dialled his parents’ number.
The phone was answered by Bruce’s mother, who greeted her without enthusiasm and said she would call Bruce to the phone. Her mother-in-law did not ask after her or the children. Wendy wondered how much Bruce had said about his unsatisfactory trip north, or how much his mother might have picked up, merely from his manner and general mood.
‘Hello?’
Now that he was
on the phone, all the useful, well-intentioned phrases she had rehearsed seemed to have stowed themselves in some locked box in the back of her mind. In their place came the sort of polite, mechanical conversation which one can only have with people to whom one is entirely indifferent or with whom one is very cross. Bruce offered her no help, enquiring after the children, the weather and what they had all eaten for tea. Neither of them raised the spectre of the weekend and, after three or four minutes, he reminded her with sickening politeness that they ought not to stay on the line too long because of the phone bill.
‘No, of course. Goodbye then, Bruce. Love you.’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Bye-ee.’ As she said it, she heard the click of the call being ended. She must not be upset, she thought. The telephone in his mother’s house was strategically placed so that anyone’s conversation could be heard pretty well all over the house. Naturally Bruce wouldn’t want to have any kind of private discussion or intimate conversation when he knew that his mother was probably hanging on every word.
They spoke every evening that second week. Bruce made it his habit to ring just after six, which not only took advantage of the cheaper call rate, but also enabled him to speak to the children before anyone needed to think about going to bed. On Thursday he explained that he had decided not to attempt the drive home next day, as there were overseas clients expected and he might need to work late.
‘After last week I’ve realized that it just doesn’t work – driving up on Saturday and having to be back on Sunday – so I’m not going to attempt it. I’ll be owed some time, so I can probably get off at lunchtime next Friday and that way we can make a full weekend of it.’
‘Of course,’ Wendy said, burying her disappointment. ‘You’re right. It’s silly to drive all that way, just for a few hours.’
It’s going to be different, she promised herself, next time Bruce comes home.
And it was. The candlelit dinner, the love-making, followed by a day dodging the rain in Middlesbrough, the whole family dashing from shop to shop, laughing too much, like one of those glossy, too-good-to-be-true families in a TV advert, Bruce spoiling the children, spoiling her. It was as if a page had turned, transporting them into a completely new story. The entire weekend was an orgy of friendliness and cooperation, during which Bruce made no reference at all to the sale of The Ashes, and the pile of brochures and pamphlets promoting new-builds in Leicestershire lay gathering dust on the desk in the study where Wendy had tidied them away during the week.
This new spirit of affability and compromise barely survived Bruce’s next call home. The new wave which rocked the paper boat was generated by the approach of the Easter holidays. Bruce’s parents had invited the whole family to come down, representing it as another opportunity to do some house-hunting, but as soon as she got wind of the plan, Tara protested that she wanted to stay at home and revise for her A-levels.
‘I think I should stay too,’ Wendy informed Bruce the next time they spoke. ‘In fact, maybe we should all stay here. You could come home for the Easter weekend.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Tara crying off for revision is one thing, but it hardly creates an excuse for the whole family.’
‘I’m not happy about her being here on her own.’
‘If Tara says she doesn’t mind, then I don’t see your problem. She’s perfectly capable of feeding herself for a few days, and I don’t suppose she’ll burn the house down or organize any wild parties while you’re away,’ said Bruce. ‘She has her faults, but she’s always been conscientious about schoolwork.’
‘It’s all very well her saying she doesn’t mind. If you ask me, she’s suspiciously keen on the idea. And it isn’t wild parties that worry me. I’m sure she’s still seeing that John boy.’
‘I don’t know why you’re being so prudish. If she and that lad want to sleep together they’ll have found a way by now. She’ll be at university in another few months anyway.’
‘Well, I’m not leaving her here on her own.’
‘In that case I’ll have to come and fetch Katie and Jamie and leave you up there. The kids have been looking forward to coming down, and Mum and Dad are looking forward to seeing them. Mum can’t wait for us to move down here and have her grandchildren on the doorstep. We’ll never be short of babysitters, even when Tara’s gone to university.’
‘But the holidays are an opportunity for us all to be together. You know we never feel comfortable sleeping in that room next door to your parents. The walls are paper thin in that house. If you were at home, we could let ourselves go a bit. It isn’t as if we get enough … time together now. That first weekend you came home was a complete washout.’
‘And whose fault is that? Mine, I suppose,’ Bruce said bitterly. ‘Can I help it if I’m tired? I didn’t realize I was expected to perform to order. Fulfilment of stud duties as well as everything else. It puts a strain on a relationship you know, living apart.’
‘It wasn’t my idea to move to Leicester.’
‘It still isn’t your idea to move to Leicester, is it? You’re quite happy staying up there.’
‘Oh, Bruce! That’s not fair!’
‘Well, I don’t see you jumping at the chance to look for a new place. How are we going to continue with the house-hunting at Easter if I’m down here and you’re up there?’
‘This isn’t about that. It’s about not leaving Tara on her own.’
‘Whatever you say.’
‘We still haven’t found a buyer for The Ashes. There haven’t been any viewings at all these last ten days.’
‘Hardly surprising. Interest rates are high and there’s a limited market for places like The Ashes. Maybe you should have thought about things like that before you railroaded us into buying it in the first place.’
‘Your mother won’t mind me not coming.’ Wendy changed tack abruptly. ‘She’s never pretended to like me.’
‘That’s all in your imagination.’
‘No, it isn’t. Your mother has never got over the fact that I’d been married before we met. Nor my accent. Every time the kids call me Mam, she makes a point of referring to me as “Mummy”. Your mother plays spiteful little games like that all the time.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Oh, come on, Bruce. You know the tricks as well as I do. She’s forever talking about people you know and I don’t as a way to exclude me from the conversation. She even goes on about your ex-fiancée, Frances. “Such a nice girl,” your mother always says. For a while, I began to wonder if that was her name, you know, a hyphenated name, Frances Such-A-Nice-Girl.’
‘Why are you dragging Frances into this? What on earth has put her into your head all of a sudden?’ he asked sharply.
‘Oh, I don’t know … I’m so tired of all this bickering.’
‘Well, let’s stop it then. We’ll discuss this when I come up at the weekend.’
The conversation regarding plans for the Easter weekend did not resume until Saturday afternoon, when Wendy was annoyed to discover that Bruce had yet to appraise his parents of the fact that she did not intend to accompany him and the younger children to Leicestershire.
‘I thought you might have changed your mind.’
‘That’s very unfair,’ Wendy said. ‘Because now your mother will be able to say that I cried off at short notice.’
‘I really don’t see—’
Bruce never finished the sentence, his protest cut short by the sound of the doorbell. Wendy went to answer and found Helen’s father, John Newbould, standing smiling on the doorstep. Inwardly deploring his timing, she showed her visitor into the sitting room. A couple of weeks had passed since she’d asked Tara to make enquiries with him as to whether anyone in the local history society happened to have come across anything of interest regarding The Ashes. She knew that it was disingenuous to pose her enquiry in that way, but she guessed that any violent episodes in the past would be grist to their mill, and although involving John Newbould opened
up the possibility that Tara would get to hear about the murder, Wendy figured that her eldest would be more interested than upset, and this way, if Bruce got to hear about it, it would be via a channel that didn’t involve Joan or Peggy Disberry. Bruce still knew nothing about the visit to Peggy Disberry, not least because Wendy knew that he would disapprove of Joan’s deceitful method of gaining Peggy’s confidence, and it therefore naturally followed that he knew nothing of the story of the supposed Victorian murder either.
She assumed that John Newbould hadn’t said anything to his own daughter about the murder, because Tara certainly hadn’t mentioned it a couple of days ago, when she’d told Wendy in passing that Helen’s father intended to call round and talk to her about the house. Wendy had hoped the visit would take place on a weekday evening when Bruce was safely down in Ashby, not just because this avoided him getting wind of the murder story, but also because Bruce did not particularly like John Newbould and would be irritated by Wendy’s having extended an invitation to him.
‘It’s John,’ Wendy announced brightly, as she ushered him into the sitting room. ‘Goodness, how long is it since you two talked rubbish together? John’s helping to organize the big party for the Royal Wedding.’ It was just possible, she thought, that she might divert John onto this topic long enough for Bruce to be fooled into thinking that it was the main purpose of his visit.
Bruce did not even smile at her attempted joke about their one-time membership of the rubbish tip committee. ‘Oh yes?’ he said. ‘Weren’t you on the committee for the Silver Jubilee party as well? Are some people still not speaking after the big fall out over the Under Eights Fancy Dress?’
John Newbould laughed. ‘Well, after 1977 I did say “never again”. I think we all did, but the village likes a bit of a show on these national occasions, and if it’s going to happen, someone’s got to bring it all together.’
‘I’m sure everyone appreciates what you do,’ Wendy said quickly. ‘Have you brought your catering lists?’
‘I have as it happens. I noticed I hadn’t got you down for anything yet and I know you can always be counted on to volunteer.’
