by Various
‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘Your husband had to go away on business.’
‘Oh no.’
‘So on Tuesday afternoon I was faced with the alternatives of putting them up or turning them out on to the streets. I must say, I do regard it as something of an imposition. It’s not as if they’re even special friends of Nigel.’
‘I had no idea. I’m so grateful. I do hope they behaved themselves.’
‘To an extent. Of course, people have different standards. About a lot of things.’
‘Oh dear. Did my husband warn you about James’s bed-wetting?’
‘No, he didn’t.’
It was quarter past eight. The boys were finally in bed, though not asleep. Still arguing fiercely. They were upset and confused, and, as usual, expressed their confusion by fighting.
Avril fell on to her bed without taking any of her clothes off. Just sleep, sleep.
The phone rang. She answered it blearily.
‘It’s Philip Wilkinson. Is Kevin there?’
‘No, he’s away on business. I don’t know when he’ll be back.’
‘He’s not away on business. I saw him in the office this morning. Then he went off after lunch.’
‘Then I’ve no idea where he is. All I know is that he’s been away on business for the last three days.’
‘He hasn’t.’
‘What?’
‘He’s been in the office for the last few days. On and off. A bit distracted, but he’s been there.’
‘Oh. Well, I’m sorry, we’ve got our wires crossed somehow. As I say, I have no idea where he is. I’m absolutely shagged out and I’m going to sleep.’
She put the phone down and lay back on the bed. But, in spite of her exhaustion, sleep didn’t come. Her mind had started working.
Kevin came back about half-past eleven. She heard the front door, then his footsteps up the stairs. But he didn’t come straight into the bedroom as usual. She heard him going into the bathroom, where he seemed to be going through some fairly extensive washing and teeth-cleaning.
Eventually he came into the bedroom. ‘Oh, I thought you’d be asleep.’
‘As you see, I’m not.’
‘No. How’s your Mum?’
‘Better.’
‘Good.’ He reached for his pyjamas. ‘Oh, I’m tired out.’
‘Kevin, what do you mean by leaving the boys with Mrs Bentley?’
‘I had to do something. I was called away on business.’
‘You weren’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That smoothie Philip Wilkinson rang to speak to you. In the course of conversation, he revealed that you have not been away on business for the past three days.’
‘Ah.’ Kevin put his pyjamas down again. Slowly he started to put his clothes back on. As he did so, he spoke. Flatly, without emotion. ‘Right, in that case I’d better tell you. You’d have to know soon, anyway. The fact is, I have fallen in love with someone else.’
‘What, you mean another woman?’
‘Yes. I have spent most of the past week with her.’
‘Most of the past week? The shooting weekend ...’
‘There was no shooting weekend.’
‘But how could you? What about me?’
‘I don’t think there’s much left between us now, Avril.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Her name’s Davina Entick. She works at Andersen Small.’
Avril started laughing. ‘Oh God, Kevin, you’re predictable. Clawing your grubby way up the social ladder. First you got the voice, then you got the job and the house. Then you looked around and you thought, what haven’t I got? The right woman. I need a matching woman to make a set with my shotgun and my wine-rack and all my other phoney status-symbols. So you start sniffing round some little feather-headed debutante.
‘Well, let me tell you, Kevin Smith, it won’t work. Okay, maybe you managed to get into bed with her. A man can usually manage that if he’s sufficiently determined, and you’ve never lacked determination, Kevin Smith. But that’s all you’ll get out of her. You can’t screw your way into the upper classes. You’ve always been as common as dirt, Kevin Smith. And about as wholesome.’
He knotted his silk tie. ‘I didn’t expect you to understand. I’m sure you’ve forgotten what love feels like.’
‘If I have, it’s only because I’ve been living with you for the past fourteen years.’
‘I’m going now.’
‘Oh, back to the little lovenest in Mayfair?’
‘Fulham, actually.’
‘Oh, Fulham – what a let-down. Couldn’t you find a nice upper-class dolly-bird with the right address? Never mind, maybe you can trade them in at Harrods. Fix yourself up with a nice shop-soiled Duke’s daughter, how about that?’
Kevin still spoke quietly. ‘I’m leaving, Avril. I won’t come back, except to pick up my things.’
‘Oh yes, pick up your things.’ She rose from the bed and went across to the chest of drawers. ‘Why not take your things with you now? I’m sure Davina won’t want to soil her pretty little hands with washing sweaty shirts and horrid stained Y-fronts, will she?’ As she spoke, she opened the drawers and started throwing clothes at Kevin. ‘Here, have your things. Have your clean shirts, and your socks, and your Y-fronts, and your vests, and your handkerchiefs and your bloody Aran sweaters and ...’
Quite suddenly, she collapsed on the floor crying.
Kevin, who had stood still while all his clothes were flung at him, looked down at her contemptuously. ‘And you wonder why I’m leaving you.’
She heard the car start. But when she looked out of the window, it was out of sight. All she could see, through the distorting film of her eyes, parked exactly outside the house, was the silver-grey Volkswagen Golf.
‘Mummy, why have you drawn the curtains?’
‘It’s nearly night-time, James.’
‘But it’s not dark. It’s summer.’
‘Look, if I want to draw the curtains in my own house, I will bloody well draw them.’
‘But you must have a reason.’
Oh yes, Avril had a reason. But not one she could tell. You can’t tell your six-year-old son that you’ve drawn the front curtains because you can’t bear another second looking at the car parked outside your house. You can’t tell anyone that sort of thing. It doesn’t make sense.
So, as usual, answer by going on to the attack. ‘Anyway, it’s time you were in bed. Go on, upstairs.’
‘Am I going to have a bath?’
‘No, you can have one tomorrow night.’
‘You said that last night.’
‘Look, I have not got the energy to give you a bath tonight. NOW GO UPSTAIRS!’
‘Can’t I wait till Christopher comes home?’
‘No. You go to bed.’ Avril didn’t want to think where her ten-year-old son was. Mrs Bentley, who had very grudgingly picked up James from school, had brought back some message about Christopher’s being off with some friends and making his own way home on the bus. Avril knew she should be worried about him, but her mind was so full of other anxieties that that problem would have to join the queue and be dealt with when its time came.
A new thought came into her head. A new thought, calming like a sedative injection. Yes, of course, that was the answer. She’d just have to go out and check. Then it would be easy. Just get James into bed and she could go. He’d be all right for a few minutes.
‘Go on, James, upstairs, or I’ll get really cross.’
Her younger son looked stubborn and petulant, just like his father when he didn’t get his own way. With an appalling shock, Avril realised that she could never be free of Kevin. She could remove his belongings, fumigate the house of his influence, even move somewhere else, but the boys would always be with her. Two little facsimiles of their father, two little memento moris.
‘I need some clean pyjamas,’ objected James. ‘I haven’t got any clean
pyjamas in my drawer, because you haven’t done any washing.’
Now she had no control over her anger. ‘And you know why you need clean pyjamas every night, don’t you? Because you wet your bloody bed like a six-month-old baby!’
She knew she shouldn’t have said it. She knew all the child psychology books said shouting at them only made the problem worse. And, when she saw James’s face disintegrate into tears, she knew how much she had hurt him. She was his defender. His father had told him off about it, but she was always the one who intervened, made light of it, said it’d soon be all right. And now she had turned against him.
At least it got him out of the room. He did go upstairs. Maybe, when all this was over, she’d have time to rebuild her relationship with her children. Now she was just too tired. It was the Thursday. Kevin had gone the previous Friday. Nearly a week ago. And still she had hardly slept at all. She lay back on the sofa. Strangely, she felt relaxed. Maybe now sleep would come.
But no, of course. Her good thought. Yes, her good peace-bringing thought. Yes, she must do that.
She stood up. The whole room seemed to sway insubstantially around her.
She went into the hall, then out of the front door. She averted her eyes from the thing parked in front of the house and set off briskly up the road.
A five-minute walk brought her to her objective. It was where she had remembered it would be, in the middle of the council estate.
It was an old Citroën DS. The tyres were flat and the back window smashed. Aerosols had passed comment on its bodywork.
But what she was looking for was affixed to the windscreen. It was a notice from the Council, saying that the car was dangerous rubbish and would have to be moved. She noted down the details of the department responsible.
Back outside the house, she forced herself to look at the car. It hadn’t moved. It was in exactly the same position. Resin from a tree above it had dropped on to the bodywork and dust had stuck to this, dulling the silver-grey sheen.
But it was still a new car. This year’s model. Some residual logic in her mind told her that no Council was going to come and tow this away as dangerous rubbish.
For a moment she wanted to cry. But then everything became clear.
She wondered why she hadn’t seen it earlier. Yes, of course. The car had arrived on the supposed shooting weekend. The smart new car had arrived just at the time Kevin had gone off with his smart new girlfriend. At last she understood why she felt threatened by it.
She was so absorbed that she didn’t hear the police car draw up behind her. It was only when the officer who got out of it spoke to her directly that she came back to life.
‘Mrs Hooson-Smith?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve brought your son Christopher back. I’m afraid he was caught shop-lifting from the supermarket.’
Avril sat by the window in Kevin’s study, looking down at the silver-grey Volkswagen Golf. Now she knew who it belonged to she could face it.
It was Saturday. People walked up and down the road loaded with shopping or planks and paint pots for the weekend’s Do-It-Yourself. She had sent the boys out. She didn’t know where they had gone. Probably the park. The policeman had said she must keep an eye on them, particularly Christopher until his appearance in the Juvenile Court on the Tuesday. But she couldn’t yet. Not till all this was over.
It was sunny and very hot. But she didn’t open the window. Her dressing-gown was hot, but she couldn’t be bothered to take it off, still less to get dressed. A sickly smell of urine wafted from James’s room, but she was too distracted to go and change his wet sheets. Even to close the study door and shut out the smell.
She had to watch the car.
The phone rang.
It was a dislocating intrusion. Like someone forgetting their lines in the middle of a good play, a reminder of another reality.
She lifted the receiver gingerly. ‘Hello.’
‘It’s Kevin.’
He sounded businesslike. This was the way she had heard him speak into the phone on the rare occasions when she’d gone up to Andersen Small to meet him and had to wait in his office.
‘Oh.’ She hadn’t expected ever to hear from him again. He was a part of her life that she no longer thought about. It was strange to be reminded that he was still alive. He had no place in the weightless, transitional world she now inhabited.
‘How are things, Avril?’
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t cope with the philosophical ramifications of the question.
‘Listen, I’ve been thinking. I want to get things cut and dried.’
Unaccountably she giggled. ‘You always did, Kevin.’
‘What I mean is, I want a divorce. I want to marry Davina.’
‘And does she want to marry you?’
‘I haven’t asked her yet, not in so many words. I wanted to get our end sorted out first, to feel free ...’
‘Free,’ she echoed colourlessly.
He ignored the interruption. ‘Then I’ll speak to Davina. It’ll be all right. We have an understanding.’
‘I’m sure you have.’ Suddenly anger animated Avril’s lethargy. ‘It’ll be easy enough for her to have an understanding of you. All she has to understand is selfishness and petty-mindedness and social-climbing. And I’m sure, from your point of view, she takes no understanding at all. You can’t understand something when there’s nothing there to understand.’
‘There’s no need to be abusive. Particularly about someone you haven’t met. Davina is in fact a highly intelligent girl.’
Avril didn’t think this assertion worthy of comment.
‘Anyway, all I’m saying is that I will be starting proceedings for divorce, and it’s going to be easier all round if you don’t create any problems over it. I’ll see that you and the boys are well looked after financially. By the way, how are the boys?’
‘Fine,’ she replied. Why bother to tell him otherwise?
‘Anyway, I’ll be round at some point to pick up my things. I hope we’ll be able to meet without too much awkwardness. We’re both grown-up people and I hope we’ll be able to deal with this whole business in a civilised, adult manner.’
Avril put the phone down.
A civilised, adult manner. She laughed.
Pick up my things. She laughed further.
If, of course, you have any things to pick up.
She took a bottle out of the wine-rack and threw it against the opposite wall. It shattered satisfyingly.
She did the same with another bottle. And another and another, until the whole rack was empty.
It was enjoyable. She looked round for further destruction.
She opened the cupboard by the window.
And there it was. Of course. The brand-new shotgun.
Kevin had a book about shotguns on his desk. Good old Kevin. Never go into anything without buying lots of books to show you how to do it. Do your homework, you don’t want to look a fool.
The book made it easy to load the gun and showed how to release the safety-catch. Avril slipped a cartridge into each barrel from Kevin’s unopened box.
Then she opened the window a little and continued watching the silver-grey Volkswagen Golf parked outside.
It was early Sunday morning. Eight o’clock maybe. She had seen it get light a couple of hours earlier. All night she had watched the car outside. It would be terrible not to be there when they arrived.
She didn’t know where the boys were. She vaguely recollected their coming back at lunchtime on the Saturday. But they had found there was no lunch prepared and had gone out again. She thought they had said something about spending the night in the park, but she couldn’t be sure. It had been difficult to take in what they said. Her dizziness and the mobility of everything that surrounded her seemed to have grown. It was as if her head had levitated and floated above her body in some transparent viscous pool.
But she knew she would be all right. Her body would hold up as lon
g as was necessary.
The phone rang. This time its intrusion didn’t seem so incongruous. It now took on the ambivalence of everything else she saw and heard. It might be real, it might not. It didn’t matter much one way or the other.
She answered it. As she did so, she thought to herself, ‘If it’s real, then I’m answering it. If it’s not, then I’m not.’ That was very funny, and she giggled into the receiver.
‘Hello, is that Avril?’
‘Yes. Almost definitely.’ She giggled again.
‘It’s Mrs Eady.’
‘Ah, Mrs Eady.’
‘It’s about your Mum, Avril. I’m afraid she’s had another stroke. Doctor’s with her now.’
‘Ah.’
‘And I’m afraid this one’s more serious. Doctor says he doesn’t think she’ll last long.’
‘Ah.’
‘Look, Avril, can you come up? I mean, she’s still alive now, but I don’t know how long it’ll be. They’re going to take her into hospital and ... Avril, are you still there?
‘Oh yes,’ said Avril wisely.
‘Can you come up?’
‘Come up?’
‘To Rochdale.’
‘Oh no, I’m very busy.’
‘But it’s your Mum. I mean, she can still recognise me and—’
‘No, I’m sorry. I can’t do anything till they come.’ She put the phone down.
It was nearly eleven o’clock when the girl arrived. She came up the road carrying two suitcases.
It was the suitcases that alerted Avril. Kevin had got a nerve. To send the girl to pick up his things. A bloody nerve.
The girl walked up the road slowly, giving Avril plenty of time to look at her. No, she wasn’t that pretty. Not even as young as she’d expected. Looked about her age. Very brown, though, very tanned.
Avril knew she would stop by the car and, sure enough, she did. The two cases were put down, and the girl fumbled in her handbag for car-keys. I see, she’d load up with Kevin’s things and then drive off in the car.
Avril could see everything very clearly now. The world around her had stabililised, in fact she could see it in sharper detail than usual. She sighted along the barrels of the shotgun.
The girl had found her key and was bending to open the car door. Avril felt the trigger with her finger. Just one trigger. Kevin wouldn’t approve of waste. Just one cartridge would do it.
