The House Across the Street

by Lesley Pearse

  Katy preened in front of the mirror, swishing the skirt, loving the way the dress felt, even if it did cost over two weeks’ wages. ‘I must admit I’ve met a few mechanics, farm labourers, and even a dustman,’ she said with a grin. ‘Certainly no one that sets my heart racing. But then I might not find that in London either, and my mum and dad wouldn’t like it if I left.’

  ‘You must live your life for yourself, not your parents,’ Gloria said firmly. ‘You look like a model in that dress, enough to break any man’s heart. Besides, your dad will only want the best for you, he’ll know that Bexhill is a bit staid for young people.’

  That evening, after the conversation with Mrs Reynolds, Katy did daydream about going to London. She imagined herself and her friend Jilly in a smart flat whooping it up all night at weekends. The pair of them discussed it and thought they could go up for a reconnoitre in January, as both had a few days’ holiday left. But then their minds turned to Christmas shopping and what they would wear to the Christmas and New Year’s Eve dances, and they hadn’t spoken of going to London since.

  Now, as Katy trudged home through the driving snow, she felt so desperately sad that she hadn’t found time to pop in to see Gloria Reynolds before Christmas and thank her for her suggestions. As it was, she was never going to see the woman again, and she expected the shop would close down. It was going to feel like a bright light had gone out in the town. Perhaps she really ought to move to London now, it would be a way of honouring that lovely woman.

  A blue-and-white panda police car was parked outside her house.

  ‘There’s my daughter now,’ Katy heard her mother say as she hung up her coat and took her wellington boots off just inside the back door. ‘But she won’t have seen or heard anything, she sleeps like a log.’

  Katy went into the sitting room to find her mother there with two policemen. She’d made them a tray of tea and even put biscuits on a plate. The fire was blazing away and the deep red carpet and gold brocade three-piece suite made the room look very sumptuous and welcoming.

  ‘This is Katy,’ her mother said. ‘I told the police you wouldn’t have seen or heard anything.’

  ‘No, that’s right, I knew nothing about it until Mum shouted for us to get up,’ Katy said, looking at the older policeman. She had met him briefly once before, when he’d come into her office to make some inquiries about a break-in further down the high street. He was around forty, tall, broad-shouldered and bald, but with nice twinkly brown eyes and a warm smile. She knew his name was Sergeant Ransome. ‘It’s a terrible business; I do hope you catch the person who started it.’

  ‘We are still gathering information. Just now we are trying to build up a picture of Mrs Reynolds. Did you know her, Katy?’

  ‘Yes, I often bought clothes from her shop, and I liked her,’ Katy said. ‘I think everyone did. She was very warm and friendly.’

  ‘Did she ever tell you anything about her personal life?’

  Katy shook her head. ‘Not exactly personal, only that she had two daughters – and a son, too, in Manchester. She usually went to the daughter with children after work on a Saturday evening. I believe that daughter lives in Hastings. The other one, Elsie, is a legal secretary in London. But I don’t know the first daughter’s name.’

  ‘When you were out of an evening in Bexhill, did you ever run into Mrs Reynolds? In a bar, at a dance or anywhere else?’

  ‘No. Never.’

  ‘Your office is only two doors away from her dress shop. So did you ever hear any gossip about her? About her men friends, who she went out with?’

  Katy glanced at her mother. She had a feeling she might have suggested to the police that their neighbour was a maneater.

  ‘The only gossip I’ve heard I believe to be entirely unfounded. I’d say it came from pathetic, spiteful women who were jealous because she was such an attractive, charismatic and successful woman,’ Katy said firmly, looking away from her mother.

  There was an awkward silence, the only sound the fire crackling. Katy glanced again at her mother and saw she was tight-lipped and frowning. She knew then she’d be in trouble later.

  Sergeant Ransome suggested they talk in private and led her out into the hall, shutting the door behind him, leaving the other policeman with her mother.

  ‘I sensed you were nervous of saying anything further in front of your mother,’ he said. ‘But go ahead now, tell me anything you think is important. And, unfounded or not, did you ever hear of Gloria Reynolds having an affair with a married man?’

  ‘No, I never did,’ Katy said firmly. ‘I’m a bit shocked that people would say such things when she has just died.’

  ‘Yes, but if it is true, that man could be her killer,’ Ransome said evenly. ‘Few people are murdered by total strangers; it’s almost always at the hand of someone close to them.’

  ‘Has anyone told you about the visitors she had?’ Katy asked. ‘I shouldn’t imagine it was any of them, as they were always women and they usually came in an old black Humber with a middle-aged woman driving.’

  Ransome looked surprised. ‘No, no one else has mentioned this. Are you saying they were visitors as in guests, coming for a drink?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. And anyway, mostly they came during the day when Mrs Reynolds was at her shop. The older woman had a key.’

  Ransome frowned. ‘How often did this happen?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, because I only saw it occasionally, on a Saturday, and only then if I happened to be looking out of the front window. But I’ve seen the Humber at the house several times when I got back from work.’

  ‘What were your thoughts on why the women came?’

  ‘I wondered if Mrs Reynolds could be counselling them about their marriages, maybe, or if they were women just out of prison. She was very kind and caring, you see. I mean other neighbours mentioned it too, and some implied quite nasty things. But I don’t believe Gloria Reynolds had a bad bone in her body.’

  ‘Would you recognize any of these women who called, if you saw them again?’

  ‘The older lady, the car driver, I would. But I don’t think I’d know the women who came with her.’

  ‘The car number?’

  Katy shook her head. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well, that has all been very helpful. If you think of anything else, please call me,’ he said, handing her a card with the police station phone number on it and his name.

  ‘I will,’ she agreed. ‘I hope you catch whoever did it. I can’t bear the thought of that lovely lady dying in such a horrible way.’

  The family’s supper that evening was eaten in a strained atmosphere. Rob grimaced at Katy, which she took to mean this was how it had been all day.

  Silence continued; Katy felt her mother was about to burst into one of her tirades, almost certainly directed at her.

  ‘I think I’ll go back to Nottingham tomorrow,’ Rob said suddenly. ‘I’ve got a project to finish and I need some information I’m more likely to find in the library there.’

  ‘Good for you, son,’ Albert said. ‘Easier to get stuck into the new term if you have a few days’ grace to get settled back into hall.’

  ‘What would you know about it?’ Hilda said waspishly. ‘You’ve never been anywhere near a university hall.’

  ‘How many men of my age got to university, with war looming?’ Albert replied. ‘I was the same age as Rob is, back then. Just because I didn’t go to university, it doesn’t mean I can’t imagine what it’s like.’

  ‘Joining up for war would’ve been a lot harder than going to university,’ Rob said, as always trying to be the peacemaker. ‘My generation is getting it a lot easier.’

  Katy looked at her mother, wondering how she could twist that to make her husband look like a failure. He had been in the Royal Engineers during the war. When he was demobbed, his uncle took him on at his engineering company in Hastings, and got him to complete a full apprenticeship at the workshop and at night school. He was the managing d
irector of Speed Engineering now, and under his direction the company had gone from strength to strength. This was why they had the big house in Collington Avenue, why Katy and Rob had gone to private schools, and why Hilda had never wanted for anything. Yet all she ever did was snipe at her husband.

  Albert looked from Katy to Rob. ‘I, for one, am very glad neither of you had to endure the war. All I want from my children now is to see you happy. And if that takes you away from Bexhill and your mother and me, that’s okay with me.’

  The disapproving snort from her mother goaded Katy.

  ‘So glad you agree, Mummy,’ she said with saccharine sweetness. ‘Just today I was thinking of finding work and a flat in London. I’ve got a few days’ holiday owing to me so I might take it next week and go up there to check things out.’

  ‘More fool you, that’s all I can say,’ Hilda said, standing up to gather up the empty plates and clattering them together. ‘You’ve got a good job and a nice home here. People live in squalor in London.’

  She swept out of the dining room with the dirty plates. Albert, Rob and Katy exchanged glances as they waited for the sound of banging crockery which would follow.

  ‘Are you serious, Katy?’ Rob whispered.

  ‘I wasn’t until she started,’ Katy said. ‘I’m sorry, Daddy, but it’s becoming unbearable. Anything is preferable to coming home to this every night.’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ Albert said quietly. ‘I would like to get up and go, too. There is nothing for me here any more, but I promised “for better or worse” and I have to keep that promise.’

  ‘You don’t have to, Daddy, she’s doesn’t deserve your loyalty.’ Katy raised her voice over the sound of banging pots and plates. ‘You get a flat in Hastings and I’ll come and live with you.’

  She saw the flicker of hope rise and then fade on his face. ‘I can’t do it, Katy. It’s so tempting but it wouldn’t work.’

  ‘You think she’ll go to Speed’s and make trouble?’

  ‘I know she will.’

  ‘You say you want us to be happy, but how can we be when we know what she puts you through?’ Rob said. ‘You should make the break.’

  All at once they realized the banging had stopped and their mother must have heard what Rob said. He groaned, wiping his hand across his face.

  Katy felt a wave of nausea wash over her. All of them knew Hilda didn’t take criticism lightly. One way or another, she would make them pay for what had been said.

  The next morning, Rob and Katy left the house with their father at eight thirty, with the plan he would drop Rob at the station and Katy at her office. Although none of them voiced it, they felt a huge sense of relief at getting out of the house together. Snowploughs had cleared the busier roads, and although the piled-up dirty snow at the kerbs was ugly, it was a lot less dangerous.

  Usually Hilda baked a cake for Rob to take back to Nottingham, wrapped sandwiches for the journey and fussed over him. But not this time. She’d been like an iceberg on the previous evening, dumping some of Rob’s unironed shirts on his lap with instructions to pack them, before flopping into an armchair and remaining in total silence for the rest of the evening. She hadn’t even said goodbye to any of them this morning.

  In the past when she had been really nasty, Katy had begged her father to seek help for her. He always quoted the proverb: ‘You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.’ He insisted he had tried and failed many times.

  ‘I’m dreading going home this evening,’ Katy said after they’d dropped Rob off at the station and were driving to her office. ‘She’ll be worse than ever with Rob no longer there. You know she usually keeps a lid on it when he’s home. Why can’t we get a flat, Daddy? Surely it must be even worse for you than it is for me?’

  He didn’t reply until he pulled up in front of her office. ‘She had a difficult childhood,’ he said, his face lined with anxiety. ‘Maybe if I’d been more understanding when you kids were little, or clamped down on her when she first started these tantrums, the problem might have been solved.’

  ‘You always blame yourself, Daddy.’ Katy reached out and stroked his face tenderly. ‘You are a good man, a wonderful father, and you’ve been the most tolerant husband, too. You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You are only forty-five, still young enough to meet a lady who will value you. Divorce is nothing now, there isn’t even any stigma to it like there used to be.’

  ‘Let’s see how she is tonight,’ he sighed. ‘I must admit I am at the end of my tether. Maybe I should talk to a solicitor and get some advice. But not at your firm, Katy – we don’t want them knowing our business – maybe a firm in Hastings.’

  Katy’s spirits lifted a little, as this was a major breakthrough; he’d never even admitted before that he’d considered divorce.

  ‘I’ll see you about six,’ she said. ‘And drive carefully.’

  Katy was given a divorce statement to type up later that same day. It was from a Mrs Byrne, a client divorcing her husband for unreasonable behaviour, and by coincidence her complaints against her husband were very similar to those her father had to live with.

  ‘There’s no joy in him, he complains about everything. He doesn’t want to go anywhere; he’s so nasty about my friends and the neighbours when they are really nice to him. I’m so glad I’ve got a part-time job as it takes me out of the house, but every night I wish I didn’t have to go home and see him.’

  Katy’s eyes prickled with tears as she read the statement. She wondered if the divorce judge would think this was nothing to complain about, yet she knew her father was at the end of his tether just as Mrs Byrne said she was, too.

  Later, when she took the typed statement to Mr Marshfield, she couldn’t help herself; she had to ask him the all-important question.

  ‘I found Mrs Byrne’s statement very moving,’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t snap at her. ‘I can imagine how miserable it must be to stay with such a difficult man. But tell me, sir, do you think she will get her divorce on grounds of unreasonable behaviour?’

  Mr Marshfield put his elbows on his desk and his hands together, almost as if he was praying. He did this all the time when he was thinking, and everyone in the office found it funny.

  ‘No, I think the judge will dismiss it,’ he said after a few moments. ‘After all, Mr Byrne hasn’t beaten her, or been unfaithful.’

  ‘So he would think a wife should put up with her husband’s callous behaviour? And what if it was the other way round, and Mrs Byrne was the nasty one? Would her husband be granted a divorce?’

  ‘Interesting question, Katy,’ he said, giving her one of his very rare smiles. ‘I suspect the husband might be treated more sympathetically by the judge, but what would his friends and relatives think of him? A henpecked husband is always a figure of fun.’

  Katy wanted to ask him what he’d do if his wife was a joyless cold shrew, but that was too impudent, so she thanked him and left his office.

  Katy didn’t go home after work but called on her friend Jilly instead, to sound her out about going to London.

  Jilly worked as a nurse at the local vet’s. Her ambition was to get a job nursing sick animals at a zoo. While she knew her training and experience didn’t actually run to caring for elephants, monkeys or any other wild animal, she was always reading up on different species.

  ‘Come on in,’ Mrs Carter, Jilly’s mother, said, welcomingly when she opened the door to Katy. ‘She isn’t home yet, but she soon will be. Will you stay to tea? I’ve made a big stew.’

  Within minutes Katy was sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of tea in her hand, and thinking, as always, that Jilly’s mother was the polar opposite to her own. Mrs Carter had no sharp edges, she was billowing plumpness with a pretty face, curly fair hair and an almost permanent smile. The Carters’ home was a council house, and different in every way from her own home. The untidy small living room never smelled of lavender polish, the curtains drooped from the rail because some of
the hooks were missing, and a very hairy dog called Ruin monopolized the sofa. But more than once Katy had wished this was her home. If it wasn’t for Jilly having her heart set on working at London Zoo, Katy would say she was mad to leave her family.

  Jilly and her young sister, Patsy, came in together and threw their coats on to the banister while still continuing an argument about a jumper Jilly believed Patsy had borrowed without asking and torn a hole in the sleeve.

  ‘Enough!’ Mrs Carter yelled from the kitchen. ‘Do you want Katy to think we have no manners?’

  ‘Katy’s here?’ Jilly called back and came running in to hug her friend. ‘What a lovely surprise. I didn’t expect to see you till the weekend. Tell us about that fire. Isn’t it awful that Mrs Reynolds died in it? And they said on the news this afternoon the other person was her daughter, the one who worked in London.’

  Jilly was often described as ‘striking’, which she hated because she was sure they meant ‘plain’. She wasn’t exactly pretty, because her face was very angular, her nose a bit too big, and her eyes very prominent; plus she was five foot seven tall, taller than most girls. But she seemed unaware that she’d been lucky to inherit her mother’s shoulder-length blonde, wavy hair and her startling azure-blue eyes. The description ‘striking’ was given more because people never forgot her. She was a force of nature, firing out questions, wanting to get things done. She did everything at speed, but when anyone had a problem and wanted someone to talk it over with, she was also the best listener.

  ‘I suspect Katy came here to avoid talking about the fire,’ Mrs Carter said. ‘I bet that’s all you’ve heard since it happened?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jilly said, looking chastened. ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  Katy suddenly felt better about everything. Jilly always had that effect on her. They had met at thirteen when they joined the Girl Guides on the same day. One glance at each other bonded them, and a year later they were asked to leave because they were so disruptive. They couldn’t help themselves, so many of the other Guides were goody two-shoes who sucked up to the Guiders and worked diligently and quietly to get more badges, while Katy and Jilly much preferred doing handstands, cartwheels and playing leapfrog outside, and encouraging other potential rebels to join them. Their final indiscretion was to light a campfire much too close to a cherry tree in the church hall grounds, and it caught fire.