by Mary Wesley
‘Surprise?’ Clodagh May, who had kept her voice low, shouted, ‘Surprise, you say! The next surprise is she divorces him. What do you say to that?’
Maurice said, ‘On what grounds?’ hoping for the indictment of smelly feet and parts, or better still adultery, and if adultery who with and in whose bed? He held his breath, guessing.
Clodagh May drew her legs up, to sit contained in her chair. Distancing herself, she said, ‘What does it matter?’ She stared past her visitor. ‘Now I have nothing,’ she murmured, ‘nothing.’
Maurice glanced uneasily at the toys sitting in their malevolent row. ‘You have their grave,’ he said.
She said, ‘Would you have expected me to have Giles and Christy freeze-dried?’ And presently she said, ‘Have you far to go?’
Dismissed, Maurice Benson headed for the main road but, level with the pub and reading an enticing notice, Open all day, he stopped and went in. The landlord with whom he had chatted earlier was gone, the customers too. A bored woman polished glasses to the rhythm of piped muzak. Maurice leaned against the bar. She said, ‘Whatalyahav?’
‘I’d better have something soft, I’m driving.’
‘A non-alcoholic beer?’
‘That will do, thanks.’
She said, ‘You have been drinking shorts with May and Brownlow,’ and poured his drink.
Maurice said, ‘Somebody been watching me?’
She said, ‘This is a small village. You a friend, then?’
Maurice said, ‘You could say that.’
‘Didn’t see you at the funeral.’
Maurice said, ‘Couldn’t make it,’ and sipped his non-alcoholic beer. Then he said, ‘Tell me about the widow.’
The woman said, ‘You work for the Sun?’
‘I’m not Press. I was a friend of Giles Piper; tell me about Julia.’
The woman leaned dimpled arms on the bar. ‘Julia, she’d gone before I came here, and from what I hear she should never have come back.’
Maurice said, ‘Ah,’ and hopefully, ‘Why?’
‘You should ask her yourself if you were a friend of Giles. Got her address?’
Maurice said, ‘Yes,’ and then, at a venture, ‘You didn’t like Giles, then?’
She said, ‘I didn’t say, did I? Some found him devious, can’t say I did. Straight to the point, your friend. No messing about, up the girls’ knickers. Shouldn’t slander the dead, should I? It was a dreadful accident, dreadful.’
Maurice said, ‘I heard. Mrs May is taking it hard. Might I offer you a drink?’
She said, ‘Thanks, I’ll have a shandy.’
Maurice said, ‘What was she like as a mother?’
‘The girl or her mother?’
‘The mother, she didn’t strike me as the maternal type. You a mother?’
‘Not yet.’ The woman eyed Maurice, daring him to suppose she had left procreation too late, and following this train of thought, she said, ‘Clodagh May was a teenage bride, to hear her talk, Julia born when she was eighteen.’
Grinning, Maurice said, ‘What else is she like?’
‘You’ve met her. Not much money but class, she imagines, and Giles just the same—his grandfather was a Sir, but you’d know that. No money, but to hear them talk little Christy was going to Eton and us wondering who would pay. They were a funny couple!’ The woman smiled. ‘Thing was, Julia didn’t fit.’
‘Oh?’ Maurice willed her to go on.
‘She’s divorced your friend, hasn’t she? I never saw her when the child was here, it would be with its daddy and Clodagh May. But she came to the funeral. I saw her.’ The woman looked past Maurice towards the road he had followed to the cemetery. ‘They say in the village that she never stayed with her mother after she and Giles married, even before the divorce; if little Christy visited she’d stay at a farm which does bed and breakfast.’
‘Funny.’
‘Not really. Before she married, she had not been home for years. It was Giles and Clodagh who’d come to the pub, they were regulars, but one night Clodagh fell over a chair here in the bar.’ The woman laughed. ‘She broke a leg. I shouldn’t laugh, but it seemed funny at the time.’
Maurice Benson said, ‘Other people’s accidents are.’
The woman said, ‘Well,’ forgiving herself. ‘It was then they sent for the girl to look after her mum and help Giles, who was designing the garden. They could have got help from the village, but Clodagh May’s not one to spend on help if she can get it free.’
Maurice said, ‘So that was when Giles met her?’
‘That’s right. She looked after her mother, ran the house and worked with Giles. Did most of the work, according to some. I like flowers but I’m an Interflora lady, I don’t get my fingers dirty. But she did.’ The woman’s gaze flicked past Maurice. ‘The poor girl,’ she said. ‘Another beer?’
Maurice said, ‘No thanks. Mrs May talked as though she and Giles—’
‘No, no,’ said the woman. ‘She watched and I dare say Giles watched, too. People say it was mostly Julia did the garden. They say she can make a dead stick grow, pops a seedling in the ground and says, “Grow, you bugger,” and it does, knows all sorts about gardens, birds, wildlife, that sort of thing. Green, don’t they call it?’
‘So as they toiled in the garden, they fell in love?’ suggested Maurice. ‘An idyll in Eden.’
The woman snorted. ‘A bonk in the potting shed, more like! No!’ she exclaimed in sudden irritation. ‘I feel really sorry for poor Clodagh May, she was passionate about that fellow.’ As Maurice opened his mouth to speak, she added, ‘I don’t know why I’m gossiping with you. If you’ve got the girl’s address, why don’t you ring her up, ask her all these questions yourself?’
Pushing himself away from the bar Maurice said, ‘I may just do that.’ (One could stir things up on the phone perhaps?) And as he opened the door to the road he asked, ‘Which fellow was she passionate about?’ But the woman had turned her back and switched the muzak up loud.
NINE
JULIA PIPER HAD WALKED with no aim other than to get away which, since what she hoped to escape was herself, was an exercise in futility. It had been a fine night but now it started to rain. After hours on unforgiving pavements her feet ached and the rain trickled off her hair down her neck. There had been nowhere to rest or shelter; the seats on the Embankment were occupied by sleepers and the doorways of shops crowded with people huddling in cardboard boxes. Walking steadily, avoiding contact, she kept mostly to side-streets. Early in the night she had been narrowly missed by a speeding car. The driver had swerved, hooted, shouted, ‘Stupid bitch! Cow!’ before driving on.
Crossing Trafalgar Square she sat briefly on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields, but moved on at the approach of a policeman to wander across Shaftesbury Avenue into Soho. Now very tired and walking at a snail’s pace, she knocked against a man carrying a heavy backpack hurrying along unshaven and angry. He too exclaimed, ‘Stupid bitch! Cow!’ and she found herself longing for green fields and ruminating cattle, their sweet breath scenting the air as, sitting humped and contented, they chewed the cud. Then ahead she saw steps, an open door, and people going into a church; she followed them in out of the rain.
Moving up the church, she sat on a rush-bottomed chair in a darkish side chapel. The other people kept to the body of the church; she was alone. She stretched her legs and eased her feet. An old man shuffled up, took a candle from a box, stuck it in a holder, fumbled for a match and lit the candle; he mumbled, crossed himself and wandered away. Watching the flame, Julia closed her eyes.
When she woke there was a Mass going on; where she had had the chapel to herself, there were people, six or eight women, several men in City suits, and hurrying in late a middle-aged couple with a little girl. The man sat in front of Julia and gestured to his wife to sit across the aisle with the child. The couple did not look like the child’s parents, more like an uncle and aunt; the man kept glancing fussily at his wife while the child, a g
irl of about ten, fiddled with her plaited hair, looked bored and sniffed. As the sniffs grew louder, the man passed a handkerchief across to the child. Mutinously she wiped her nose and handed the handkerchief back. Julia averted her eyes. Since she could not leave without causing a disturbance, she tried to pay attention to what the priest was doing. She had never been to a Mass and thought she had better copy the man in front, rise and kneel, sit and stand when he did.
She felt terrible after her sleep and could only catch an occasional word, for the priest muttered and his intonation was foreign. Somebody ran a thin-sounding bell and people knelt; the priest held something up and the bell tinkled again. Clearly it was a sacred moment; there was a hush. But the man in front of her was watching the child. He leaned across the aisle and, whispering indignantly to his wife, said, ‘She is picking her nose.’
Covering her face with her hands, Julia snorted with laughter and stuck her fingers in her ears until the Mass was over and people were leaving. Watching the couple go out with the child she saw the man speaking angrily to the woman, and wondered whether what he had said was, ‘Stupid bitch! Cow!’
The old man’s candle was guttering. She got up, took a fresh one from the box, lit it from the dying taper, breathed in its homely smell then sat down again. Some time later she remembered that she had once, years ago, before she married Giles and the advent of Christy, worked for the fussy couple and been sacked because she never, when she dusted, replaced their collection of ornaments in the correct order. This useless memory reminded her that she should resume work immediately if she wanted to pay the pile of unopened bills scattered among the letters lying on the floor of her flat, and recollecting the unhappy period when she had worked for the middle-aged couple. She remembered, too, that the woman had jealously counted the biscuits she ate with the grudgingly provided mid-morning Nescafe. This in turn made her realize that she was hungry, had eaten little since Mrs Patel’s curry.
There was a sandwich bar crowded with jostling office workers in the street. She queued and bought a sandwich and then, since the rain was still drenching down, she returned to the anonymous darkness of the church.
While she had been away several people had come into the side chapel; they knelt or sat as though in anticipation. She chose a chair as far from them as possible and, with her back turned, surreptitiously ate the sandwich; then, appreciating the stillness, sat back and eased the shoes off her aching feet.
Quite close to her was what looked like a sentry-box with a heavy curtain across and she noticed vaguely that people went behind the curtain, reappeared, knelt for a bit, then lit a candle, crossed themselves and went away. She sat mesmerically watching the candles, which flickered when a companion was added to their number. (Christy had loved candles, loved blowing them out and watching her wet her fingers before snuffing the wick.) Soon there would not be room for any more candles, but there was no need to worry, the people had left, she had napped. She yawned and stretched her legs, stiff with fatigue.
When like a Jack-in-a-box the priest appeared from behind the curtain, she was badly startled, realizing that all this time she had been sitting by a Confessional, and that the priest might suspect her of eavesdropping. Overcome with confusion she averted her eyes, but the priest walked past her, leaving her alone.
Her heart was beating with shock; it was time to go. She leaned down to put on her shoes, but her feet had swollen. The shoes would not fit. She almost wept with frustration.
‘Perhaps I could help?’ The priest was back and standing near her.
‘I did not realize it was a Confessional; I can’t get my shoes on. I wasn’t listening. I’m so sorry. My feet have swollen and will not go into my shoes—’
‘No hurry,’ he said, ‘no hurry at all.’ He sat beside her.
‘And I ate a sandwich in here. I’m sorry about that.’
‘So you ate a sandwich.’
‘And I laughed when that awful man went for the child for picking her nose when the bell—’
‘At the Elevation of the Host, m-m-m.’
‘Oh, curse these shoes. I must go! So you noticed him.’
‘Sit quiet a while.’
‘I have sat quiet. I’ve been here hours. I’ve slept.’
‘No harm in that.’
‘There is. I have to work, pay my bills, pull myself together.’
‘It looks to me,’ said the priest, ‘as though you’d “been together” too long.’
‘I’m not together any more,’ said Julia. ‘I am solo. Giles took Christy in the car when he was banned from driving; they were both killed. I thought it was safe,’ she said, her voice rising. ‘Thought it was only fair for the child to see his father. Don’t you see? I am responsible. If I had been sensible and bloody-minded, Christy would be alive now.’
The priest was silent.
‘I am not “together”,’ Julia went on, ‘any more than my feet are together with my shoes.’ Still the priest did not speak. ‘And don’t imagine,’ said Julia, who, having started to talk, could not stop, ‘that I am sorry about Giles being dead. I am absolutely delighted. He was selfish and violent and cruel and a rotten father. I was divorcing him anyway; he terrified me when he was drunk and I did not like him sober. He smelled and I found it hard to stand up to him, though I did once hit back in desperation and broke his nose; I am proud of that. But usually I cringed and held Christy between us as a shield. I knew, you see, that he was not quite enough of a shit to hit the child. Oh God!’ she exclaimed. ‘I don’t know why I am telling you all this; it is no business of yours. I have no faith, my belief in God is ropey and I am not even a Catholic. This is a Catholic church, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I only came in to escape the rain. Oh, blast my swollen feet!’ Again she tried to force her feet into recalcitrant shoes. ‘They simply won’t go.’ She shook with frustration.
‘We could leave aside your absence of faith,’ said the priest, ‘move out of here to the presbytery where my housekeeper could give you a cup of tea and a foot bath. That would be a start—the feet and shoes getting together,’ he said.
Julia said, ‘That sounds like heaven.’ Then she said, ‘I am sorry. I am drivelling. I’d better shut up,’ and blew her nose.
‘We could also,’ said the priest, ‘find you a bed for the night.’
Julia said, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you, but no. I have a perfectly good bed; I must get back, if I can get my shoes on. I am not as destitute as some. You are very kind,’ she said. ‘Forgive me. I have made use of your church and wasted your time.’ She was on her feet now, holding her shoes; she looked at him for the first time. He was middle-aged and grey and tired; he watched her quizzically. She felt it would be a horror to deceive him. Painfully she said, ‘There’s another thing I should tell you, but I can’t. It’s not a murder or anything like that, and it might seem a small thing to you, but to me it’s the ultimate betrayal.’
He said, ‘Let me deal with your feet and your shoes,’ and led her towards the door.
Julia thought, I am being a bore, there’s a limit to what he can stand. He probably gets all the flotsam of the Government’s Victorian values in here; he doesn’t need me. I must not impose. She thrust her handkerchief back in her pocket and walked beside him, carrying her shoes. Passing the altar the priest genuflected and she, looking up and seeing the Virgin framed in delicious mother-of-pearl, exclaimed ‘How lovely, how surprising. Most Catholic churches in England are hideous.’
He said, ‘This is the Bavarian church.’ He did not explain, but asked, ‘Do you live in London?’ distancing her somehow by his question. When she said, ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I will give you your bus fare.’
And she, distanced, exclaimed, ‘Thank you, but I have some money. I had enough to buy a sandwich.’
And he said, ‘So you did.’
They were by this time at the door of the presbytery; he unlocked the door, ushered her in and called to his housekeeper. The opportunity
to tell him more was over; she bottled it up.
But later, as the bus which would carry her back to the World’s End came rushing to a stop, she hesitated in the crush of people climbing on board.
The priest had not flinched at a broken nose; could she not have purged herself of that other infinitely worse burden? Then, as she hesitated and people pushed from behind, the conductor reached down, caught her arm and pulled her into the bus.
TEN
‘I THOUGHT I WOULD just look in to see how you are getting on.’ Rebecca strode past as Sylvester opened the door. ‘I see you’ve given your door knocker a polish. Jolly good, it’s such a pretty one. I like dolphins; getting quite rare, the dolphin knockers. The Americans bag them all.’ She pressed on into the sitting-room. ‘I was just passing,’ she said, ‘on my way.’
‘Where to?’ Sylvester teased, not expecting an answer. ‘Where were you on your way to?’
‘Oh!’ Rebecca exclaimed, coming to a halt. ‘Oh!’ Her large eyes probed the room like searchlights. ‘A writing table! That’s new! It’s a beauty, Sylvester.’ She stroked the mahogany, slid a drawer open. ‘These are quite hard to come by, Sylvester, and it has its original handles, marvellous. And it’s in jolly good nick. Lashing out a bit, aren’t you?’
‘It was my father’s, it’s been in store. Celia didn’t like it.’
Rebecca laughed. ‘I don’t suppose for one moment she realized what it’s worth, or perhaps she thought it was a copy? Or has Andrew Battersby got lots of valuable writing tables?’
‘Perhaps he has. Like a drink?’
‘Oh, yes please, just a little one. And the chair; that’s new, too.’
‘Also my father’s.’
‘It’s Chippendale, lovely.’ She ran her hand across the back and down the arm.
‘Yes.’
‘Just look at its legs,’ Rebecca crooned. ‘My goodness, Sylvester, I wish I had legs like that. Mine are like grand pianos.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Sylvester, who had often thought so. ‘I’ll get your drink.’ He left his visitor eyeing the room.
