by Susan Sallis
If Rosemary and Arnold had needed more reassurance about the wisdom of Maria marrying the Reverend Marcus Challenger, they had it that night. Marcus was in a foul mood; he sat in the back of Arnold’s car as far from Maria as he could get and studiously avoided all reference to their parking problems but gave a concise and vitriolic review of Sink and Swim.
‘It was salacious. What they are calling soft porn, I believe. Heaven knows what hard porn is like.’
‘I think it’s when they enact the sexual act on the stage,’ Maria said helpfully.
‘That is called simulated sex, Maria. It would be impossible to do more than represent the act in full view of the public.’
‘Oh, but it does happen. Before she was taken so ill, Mrs Heatherington was telling me about it. They have to sort of gird themselves up to it before they come on stage.’
Marcus was silent, considering this. Maria said, ‘I just loved Greta’s dressing gowns, didn’t you, darling? That silky one that was so damaged – it reminded me of the one you bought for me. Just before we became engaged. Not that it was damaged.’ She giggled. ‘Not until later anyway.’
‘Maria!’ he cautioned.
But Maria had had three glasses of wine and was unstoppable. ‘You were reading one of my romantic novels. You called it a bodice-ripper and said that the term was ridiculous because no self-respecting garment could be demolished so easily. And you experimented on the dressing gown.’ She was convulsed with giggles.
He was silent and Arnold called back from the passenger seat, ‘Good for you, old man! Didn’t know you had it in you!’
There was still no reply. Rosemary, who was driving, angled the rear-view mirror so that he could see the back seats. Maria and Marcus were locked in an embrace. As Arnold said later, ‘It could have been salacious. I’m not sure.’
‘Why on earth didn’t you switch on the interior light?’ Rosemary asked innocently.
‘I might have discovered what hard porn really is. He is a man of the cloth after all.’
Rosemary woke him with tea and toast the next morning at six o’clock. He groaned and held his head. ‘I’m supposed to be resting,’ he complained piteously.
‘You can rest and eat breakfast and then rest again.’ She was glowing. ‘May has arrived. And guess what – Greta’s pains were nothing to do with indigestion. They were labour pains. She had them for Connie. Have you ever heard anything like it?’
‘No. But how is Connie? And what about May?’
‘Connie is fine. She had three contractions and May positively burst forth.’ Rosemary took some toast and rammed it into her mouth. ‘Thee taketh after my father.’ She chewed fiercely and swallowed. ‘She takes after my father. My mother called him a professional complainer. Hope she gets over it.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and drew on stockings. Then stood up, took off her dressing gown and fastened a bra.
‘You’re doing it purposely,’ Arnold said.
‘Doing what?’
‘Dressing. You always dress in the bathroom.’
‘Because I have to get your breakfast and I know that if I dress in front of you, you will grab at me.’
‘What makes you think you are safe from me today?’
‘First because you know I am practically halfway to Number Five. Secondly because you have a hangover.’ She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Listen, I’ll take my own car. Marcus is sure to need a lift this morning. Are you up to coping on your own?’
‘He can have my car.’
‘You are a wonderful man. I love you. There’s salad in the fridge. Cold chicken. I’ll be back to cook for tonight.’
She was gone. He listened to her opening the garage, getting out her car, closing the garage, reversing carefully around his parked car and then driving down the lane and away. He must be weaker than he thought because for two pins he could cry. It was because he was so happy. Who would have thought that at his age he would have this wonderful new life? He scrubbed his eyes with a corner of the sheet and poured more tea. And the phone rang.
He almost fell down the stairs into the hall. It couldn’t be Rosie, she would only just have got on to the main road. But what if it was William to tell them that something was wrong with the baby . . . or with Connie? The trouble with loving so many people was that it increased your chances of heartbreak. He snatched up the receiver.
‘Hello – I’m here – who is it – what has happened?’
‘It’s Maria. I just saw Rosemary driving away. Is anything wrong?’
The serpents in the Garden of Eden. He forced jocularity into his voice. ‘Nothing at all. Connie has just had her baby. A girl. May.’
‘Oh how lovely. Marcus – darling – Connie has had the babe. Isn’t that wonderful?’
He came on the line. ‘Congratulations to you all. Are they all right?’ He barely waited for an answer. ‘I was rather hoping Rosemary would be in a position to take me in to the police station this morning but I can get a train of course.’
‘Better than that, old man, borrow my car. It’s insured for any driver and you can leave it outside my place. Rosie and I will be back and forth for a while and can pick it up.’
Marcus was sincerely grateful. ‘I know that what you said last night made sense, Arnold. But I am still rather nervous about the whole thing. The bishop will not be pleased.’
‘Sell it to him. Clergy can make mistakes. Makes you one of the people, that sort of thing.’
‘Arnold . . . your support is very welcome. I feel a little emotional this morning, I do apologize . . . Darling, pass me a tissue . . . Arnold, Maria has breakfast waiting. I hope to see you in an hour or two.’
Arnold grinned. Marcus Challenger was having a good cry; he’d put money on it.
The phone rang again and his heart was in his mouth – again. He picked up the receiver gingerly and immediately a voice said, ‘I am ringing on behalf of Mr Maurice Heatherington. Have I got the right number?’
Arnold felt as if he might explode with sheer joy. Connie’s baby at six thirty in the morning, Marcus’s tears at seven thirty, and now Maurice Heatherington. He had met Maurice just once but he greeted him like an old friend.
‘You certainly have, Maurice! Welcome back to the land of the living! This is Arnold Jessup here. When we met I was old Mrs Gainsborough’s solicitor. Now my partner acts for your wife. And we certainly have something very advantageous to tell you.’
There was a long pause. Arnold said urgently, ‘Maurice, don’t hang up. I am serious. We’ve been looking for you since Christmas.’
‘I’m afraid Mr Heatherington has passed away, sir. That is what I have to tell you.’
‘Come on, Maurice. You can please yourself, of course. Disappear again if you want to. But you must be interested to have phoned. And you probably know where my office is. So why don’t you call? Otherwise the lot goes to Archie Fielding. And you certainly will remember him.’
No one replaced a telephone receiver and no one spoke.
Arnold said in the heartiest voice he could muster, ‘Tell you what, you shrinking violet you, come up to Brum tomorrow. My office number is four seven four seven. Ring me and I’ll collect you from the station. We could have lunch.’
With enormous will power he replaced the receiver. He hovered, waiting for it to ring again. It did not.
Rosemary did not want him to go. She arrived home in time for tea and was looking forward to an easy tomorrow. ‘She’s like a – a – suffragette!’ she said, referring to baby May. ‘Greta says she was fighting even when she was born!’
‘Listen, you can drop me wherever Marcus has left my car then go on to Number Five and do your grandmotherly stuff again.’
‘You’re not supposed to drive, Arnold! Just because this chap calls himself Maurice Heatherington doesn’t mean a thing. And anyway, poor old Greta is going to have a hard enough time with a full week of performances, the last thing she wants is—’
‘Slippers by the fire. I must tell him that. D
arling, you’re tired. Sit down and put your feet up – another cup of tea, then you can watch the news while I dish up.’
‘Oh Arnold. I forgot to get something special. I’m so sorry.’
‘I took the braising steak out of the freezer and after lunch I cooked it with some garlic and peppers and things and it’s been marinating in the sauce ever since.’
‘I love you,’ she said with conviction. ‘You are an absolute catch and I am glad you played the field for so long otherwise you wouldn’t have been available when I came on the scene.’
‘I would always have been available for you, sweet Rosie.’ He leaned over the back of her chair and kissed her upside down. ‘I’ve had a good day, love. This phone call has got me going again. And I think that actually it was you who decreed I should not drive. You’re trying to incarcerate me in the house so that I am available at your every whim!’
He was gone before she could hurl a cushion at him. She leaned back, smiling. It was so good to come home. Everything was marvellous at Number Five and May was going to be such a joy. She was dark-haired with mud-coloured eyes, and so like Connie in one way and exactly like a female version of William in another. It emphasized the fact that darling Frankie was blond, blue-eyed, placid and nothing like either of them. It was good to be home and able to put that at the back of her mind.
Marcus rang later. Arnold’s car was outside the office in Selly Oak and he thought he had ‘smoothed everything over’.
Arnold said, ‘Till the next time.’
‘What do you mean? How do you mean?’ Marcus sounded panicky.
‘You’ve always dealt in other people’s problems, old man. Rather like me. Now you’ve let someone in. Next to you. Part of you. You can’t be objective any more and fate knows that. Things will happen.’ Arnold made his voice sonorous and doom-laden.
‘Maria is very placid,’ Marcus said with a hint of uncertainty. ‘And I don’t believe in fate – not in that way.’ He paused, cleared his throat and went on, ‘But thanks so much for the use of your car. Lovely drive. Rosemary can bring you in when she comes to see her new grandchild.’
‘Oh yes.’ Arnold waited for Marcus to ask about baby May. He did not. They rang off.
They left early the next morning and ate breakfast in Arnold’s sitting room, which doubled as a waiting room during office hours. Mrs Flowers had kept milk in the fridge for William and herself and made them coffee after they had eaten some stale cereal. She had visited Arnold three times since her return from Australia but as he was living in sin she pretended those visits had never happened and launched anew into her holiday itinerary, her face turned to him. She did not exactly ignore Rosemary but simply assumed that she was not interested.
‘It was autumn over there, of course. The colours were wonderful. They say Adelaide is rather like an English city only before the war.’
Arnold grinned at Rosemary. ‘Perhaps we could go one day, Rosie.’ He turned to his secretary. ‘Any early phone calls, Mrs Flowers?’
‘Mr Mather rang, sir. Said he would be late as they hadn’t had much sleep.’
‘Right. I’m waiting for a call which might not come. Mrs Vickers is going on to be with her daughter.’ Rosemary started to say that she was driving him but he overrode her. ‘That will free William to come into the office. And I will take all the calls initially.’ He stood up.
‘Thank you for looking after us, Mrs Flowers. I’ll see you off, Rosie, then I can sit upstairs. Go through some paperwork.’
Rosemary did not want an outright row in front of Mrs Flowers but she did her best. ‘Isn’t that why Mrs Flowers has kept in touch, Arnold? You have been “going through paperwork” since you came out of hospital!’
‘Don’t forget your keys, darling. I’ve got my spare. I’ll give you a ring at Connie’s, shall I? Say cheerio to Mrs Flowers.’
She looked up at him as they went into the hall. As if the prompt had been for her, Mrs Flowers trilled, ‘Goodbye, Mrs Vickers – so good to see you,’ and went on up the stairs. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Flowers,’ Rosemary trilled back and then, with quiet venom, ‘I could kill you at times, Arnie. You haven’t driven that damned car for almost five months. It’s not safe.’
‘I’ll doubtless be driving it the short distance to Number Five, my love. Stop worrying. Nothing awful is going to happen.’
He waved her off, grinning like a Cheshire cat. And then turned and went up the stairs to his office. It was good to be back.
Maurice rang at nine thirty. There were no preliminaries this time.
‘I’m at Euston. There’s a train in ten minutes. Gets into New Street in two hours. I’ll be in the refreshment room. Carry The Times.’
He had been so cautious last night. Arnold wondered what had happened to change him. Were the police after him? He felt like a schoolboy detective.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll wear dark glasses.’
‘Oh.’ Heatherington sounded almost affronted. ‘I’ll be wearing them too.’
‘Looks like we’re both on the same track.’
Arnie replaced his receiver. Mrs Flowers would have heard every word of that but he didn’t care. He dialled Greta’s number.
‘How are you bearing up after all that heavy labour stuff?’ he opened.
‘Arnie! Darling . . . how lovely to hear your voice. How are you? I’m fine – I think it kind of freed me in some way. I don’t feel such a barren old hag.’
He guffawed sardonically. ‘How about audiences for the show?’
‘Not bad. Nothing like that first night but word hasn’t got round yet. I think we’ll be all right, Arnie. The West End won’t be interested but we might get a tour of sorts. It’s funnier than we thought.’
‘I plan to be in Birmingham this afternoon – getting my hand back in. Any chance of a cup of tea at the flat?’
‘Arnie, that would be wonderful. I don’t have to be at the theatre till five thirty.’
‘OK. No cream cakes. Doctor’s orders.’
‘Rosemary’s orders you mean. But she’s right.’
Arnie put the phone down and went through the outer office and upstairs to his private quarters. Rosie had practically stripped his wardrobe, which probably meant he was a permanent fixture out on the Lickey Hills. He smiled contentedly. He found his old glasses and changed into his office suit. The wardrobe mirror made him look like an American private detective. His smile widened. Things could not get much better than this, surely?
It was wonderful to be behind the wheel of his car again. Wonderful to wind carefully through the traffic and into the car park at New Street station. Wonderful to go underground, locate the refreshment rooms, get his dark glasses from his top pocket and push open the doors. A man was sitting at the bar reading The Times. Arnold had forgotten about The Times. The man looked round, saw no one in dark glasses and went back to his paper. Arnold studied him carefully, trying to assess whether he could make Greta happy. It was an impossible task. He wore a trilby pushed back and showing a lot of crisp white hair. His sports jacket had leather patches on the elbows – Arnold hated that but accepted that most women thought it showed masculinity. He wore a very heavy-looking gold-coloured watch and shoes with horrible pointed toes. He could be a cad. But Greta must have known he was a cad when she married him. Was he the sort of cad who would forget to put her slippers by the fire? Was he the sort of cad who might punch her in the face if things weren’t going well? How could he know by looking?
He went to the newspaper stand and selected a copy of The Times, paid for it, put on his dark glasses and went to the bar.
‘Maurice Heatherington, I presume?’
The man looked round, took off his glasses and grinned disarmingly. ‘My God – you are who I thought you were, if you get me. You haven’t changed much in the last twenty years.’
Surprisingly, Arnold discovered he was accepting this at its face value; mainly because memory suddenly fitted what he saw before him with the nervous forty-year-old stand
ing next to the woman called Greta Gainsborough. The wide face was wrinkled now, of course, but it was still genial; Maurice’s big frog-like grins had proclaimed him to be everybody’s friend.
‘Neither have you,’ he said tersely. ‘Which makes me want to punch you here and now. And very hard.’
The face seemed to collapse in on itself. Maurice removed his dark spectacles and revealed baggy, faded blue eyes; tired eyes. Exhausted eyes. He said, ‘Listen. I shouldn’t have let it get that far. But I’d never felt like she made me feel. Alive. As if something exciting was round every corner. When I realized it was you on the telephone I knew she was dead. It was awful. But then . . . you know, the glasses and catching the train up here . . . I thought perhaps the excitement was still around. Somewhere.’
‘And you hoped she’d left you something, did you?’
‘Hardly. Not after what I did. I needed her so badly, Mr Jessup. And in those days you could not sleep with a girl unless you were married.’
Arnold looked at him incredulously. ‘Those were the very days when you could do that! And she was not a girl. She was almost forty years old. Unmarried because she was waiting for Mr Right. And you were Mr Right!’
The head hung low. ‘I married Jessie when we were both eighteen. I thought I’d left her when I came to London. But . . . the next morning, after Greta and I were married . . . I wondered how she would get her breakfast, how she would dress herself . . . She had polio as a kid and it left her very weak.’ The head came up and the blue eyes focused on Arnold. ‘I couldn’t do it, Mr Jessup. Greta was strong and beautiful and there would be others. There wouldn’t be for Jessie. I told myself she could sell the shop and go on living in the flat . . . but I still couldn’t do it.’
Arnold stared into those eyes and saw something that Greta had seen. They were kind. He said as curtly as he could, ‘So . . . you have kept the shop and your first wife. Fine. You could have written to Greta. She would have understood.’
‘Yes.’ Maurice sighed deeply. ‘I was going to. It was so difficult. We had something wonderful, precious, we both knew that. I was afraid. I’m not a brave man, Mr Jessup. I was afraid.’
