The Habit of Widowhood

by Robert Barnard

  Grace Poole has convinced Edward she is a reformed character. She assures him that drink never touches her lips. He believes her because he would rather not involve anyone else from the lower orders in the sad, disordered affairs of his family.

  Where her drink comes from I no more than suspect. Some member of her family brings it, I believe, and conveys it to her during the Methodistical church service which she attends every Sunday. She makes good use of it at night.

  Next month my dear Fairfax goes to stay with his “aunts” Diana and Mary. They have been very pressing that since I am so occupied (!) they must see him. Edward has agreed.

  Next month it must be then.

  I have my rush light. I have my wits about me, which Bertha never had. One night when Grace is in her usual drunken stupor I shall sally forth and . . .

  I shall have no regrets for Grace, for her, or for myself. Least of all shall I have regrets for Edward Fairfax Rochester. I have discovered the difference between a man and a woman. Women forge ahead, progress, put the past behind them, and go onwards. Men are circular creatures, going not onwards but around, their lives becoming a dreary repetition of their old mistakes.

  Put vulgarly, they never learn.

  THE GENTLEMAN IN THE LAKE

  There had been violent storms in the night, but the body did not come to the surface until they had died down and a watery summer sun was sending ripples of lemon and silver across the still-disturbed surface of Derwent Water. It was first seen by a little girl, clutching a plastic beaker of orange juice, who had strayed down from the small car park, over the pebbles, to the edge of the lake.

  “What’s that, Mummy?”

  “What’s what, dear?”

  Her mother was wandering around, drinking in the calm, the silence, the magisterial beauty, more potent for the absence of other tourists. She was a businesswoman, and holidays in the Lakes made her question uncomfortably what she was doing with her life. She strolled down to where the water lapped on to the stones.

  “There, Mummy. That.”

  She looked toward the lake. A sort of bundle bobbed on the surface a hundred yards or so away. She screwed up her eyes. A sort of tweedy bundle. Greeny brown, like an old-fashioned gentleman’s suit. As she watched she realized that she could make out, stretching out from the bundle, two lines. . . . Legs. She put her hand firmly on her daughter’s shoulder.

  “Oh, it’s just an old bundle of clothes, darling. Look, there’s Patch wanting to play. He has to stretch his legs too, you know.”

  Patch barked obligingly, and the little girl trotted off to throw his ball for him. Without hurrying the woman made her way back to the car, picked up the car phone and dialed 999.

  • • •

  It was late on in the previous summer that Marcia Catchpole had sat beside Sir James Harrington at a dinner party in St. John’s Wood. “Something immensely distinguished in law,” her hostess, Serena Fisk, had told her vaguely. “Not a judge, but a rather famous defending counsel, or prosecuting counsel, or something of that sort.”

  He had been rather quiet as they all sat down: urbane, courteous in a dated sort of way, but quiet. It was as if he was far away, reviewing the finer points of a case long ago.

  “So nice to have soup,” said Marcia, famous for “drawing people out,” especially men. “Soup seems almost to have gone out these days.”

  “Really?” said Sir James, as if they were discussing the habits of Eskimos or Trobriand Islanders. “Yes, I suppose you don’t often . . . get it.”

  “No, it’s all melons and ham, and pâté, and antipasto.”

  “Is it? Is it?”

  His concentration wavering, he returned to his soup, which he was consuming a good deal more expertly than Marcia, who, truth to tell, was more used to melons and suchlike.

  “You don’t eat out a great deal?”

  “No. Not now. Once, when I was practicing. . . . But not now. And not since my wife died.”

  “Of course you’re right: people don’t like singles, do they?”

  “Singles?”

  “People on their own. For dinner parties. They have to find another one—like me tonight.”

  “Yes. . . . Yes,” he said, as if only half understanding what she said.

  “And it’s no fun eating in a restaurant on your own, is it?”

  “No. . . . None at all. . . . I have a woman come in,” he added, as if trying to make a contribution of his own.

  “To cook and clean for you?”

  “Yes. . . . Perfectly capable woman. . . . It’s not the same, though.”

  “No. Nothing is, is it, when you find yourself on your own?”

  “No, it’s not. . . .” He thought, as if thought was difficult. “You can’t do so many things you used to do.”

  “Ah, you find that too, do you? What do you miss most?”

  There was a moment’s silence, as if he had forgotten what they were talking about. Then he said: “Travel. I’d like to go to the Lakes again.”

  “Oh, the Lakes! One of my favorite places. Don’t you drive?”

  “No. I’ve never had any need before.”

  “Do you have children?”

  He had to think about that, really working at it, but coming up triumphant.

  “Oh yes. Two sons. One in medicine, one in politics. Busy chaps with families of their own. Can’t expect them to take me places. . . . Don’t see much of them. . . .” His moment of animation seemed to fade, and he picked away at his entrée.

  “What is this fish, Molly?”

  When the next day she phoned to thank her hostess, Marcia commented that Sir James was “such a sweetie.”

  “You and he seemed to get on like a house on fire, anyway.”

  “Oh, we did.”

  “Other people said he was awfully vague.”

  “Oh, it’s the legal mind. Wrapped in grand generalities. His wife been dead long?”

  “About two years. I believe he misses her frightfully. Molly used to arrange all the practicalities for him.”

  “I can believe that. I was supposed to ring him about a book I have that he wanted, but he forgot to give me his number.”

  “Oh, it’s 271876. A rather grand place in Chelsea.”

  But Marcia had already guessed the number after going through the telephone directory. She had also guessed at the name of Sir James’s late wife.

  • • •

  “We can’t do much till we have the pathologist’s report,” said Superintendent Southern, fingering the still-damp material of a tweed suit. “Except perhaps about this.”

  Sergeant Potter looked down at it.

  “I don’t know a lot about such things,” he said, “but I’d have said that suit was dear.”

  “So would I. A gentleman’s suit, made to measure and beautifully sewn. I’ve had one of the secretaries in who knows about these things. A gentleman’s suit for country wear. Made for a man who doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘casual.’ With a name tag sewn in by the tailor and crudely removed . . . with a razor blade probably.”

  “You don’t get razor blades much these days.”

  “Perhaps he’s also someone who doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘throwaway.’ A picture seems to be emerging.”

  “And the removal of the name tag almost inevitably means—”

  “Murder. Yes, I’d say so.”

  • • •

  Marcia decided against ringing Sir James up. She felt sure he would not remember who she was. Instead she would call on him in Chelsea with the book, which had indeed come up in conversation—because she had made sure it did. Marcia was very good at fostering acquaintanceships with men, and had had two moderately lucrative divorces to prove it.

  She timed her visit for late afternoon, when she calculated that the lady who cooked and “did” for him would have gone home. When he opened the door he blinked, and his hand strayed toward his lips.

  “I’m afraid I—”

  “Ma
rcia Catchpole. We met at Serena Fisk’s. I brought the book on Wordsworth we were talking about.”

  She proffered Stephen Gill on Wordsworth, in paperback. She had thought as she bought it that Sir James was probably not used to paperbacks, but she decided that, as an investment, Sir James was not yet worth the price of a hardback.

  “Oh, I don’t . . . er . . . Won’t you come in?”

  “Lovely!”

  She was taken into a rather grim sitting room, lined with legal books and Victorian first editions. Sir James began to make uncertain remarks about how he thought he could manage tea.

  “Why don’t you let me make it? You’ll not be used to fending for yourself, let alone for visitors. It was different in your generation, wasn’t it? Is that the kitchen?”

  And she immediately showed an uncanny instinct for finding things and doing the necessary. Sir James watched her bemused for a minute or two, as if wondering how she came to be so familiar with his kitchen, then shuffled back to the sitting room. When she came in with a tray, with tea things on it and a plate of biscuits, he looked as if he had forgotten who she was and how she came to be there.

  “There, that’s nice, isn’t it? Do you like it strong? Not too strong, right? I think you’ll enjoy the Wordsworth book. Wordsworth really is the Lakes, don’t you agree?”

  She had formed the notion, when talking to him at Serena Fisk’s dinner party, that his reading was remaining with him longer than his grip on real life. This was confirmed by the conversation on this visit. As long as the talk stayed with Wordsworth and his Lakeland circle it approached a normal chat: he would forget the names of poems, but he would sometimes quote several lines of the better-known ones verbatim. Marcia had been educated at a moderately good state school, and she managed to keep her end up.

  Marcia got up to go just at the right time, when Sir James had got used to her being there and before he began wanting her to go. At the door she said: “I’m expecting to have to go to the Lakes in a couple of weeks. On business. I’d be happy if you’d come along.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly—”

  “No obligations either way: we pay for ourselves, separate rooms of course, quite independent of each other. My business is in Cockermouth, and I thought of staying by Buttermere or Crummock Water.”

  A glint came into his eyes.

  “It would be wonderful to see them again. But I really couldn’t—”

  “Of course you could. It would be my pleasure. It’s always better in congenial company, isn’t it? I’ll be in touch about the arrangements.”

  Marcia was in no doubt she would have to make all the arrangements, down to doing his packing and contacting his cleaning woman. But she was confident she would bring it off.

  • • •

  “Killed by a blow to the head,” said Superintendent Southern, when he had skimmed through the pathologist’s report. “Some kind of accident, for example a boating accident, can’t entirely be ruled out, but there was some time between his being killed and his going into the water.”

  “In which case, what happened to the boat? And why didn’t whoever was with him simply go back to base and report it, rather than heaving him out?”

  “Exactly. . . . From what remains the pathologist suggests a smooth liver—a townie not a countryman, even of the upper-crust kind.”

  “I think you suspected that from the suit, didn’t you, sir?”

  “I did. Where do you go for a first-rate suit for country holidays if you’re a townie?”

  “Same as for business suits? Savile Row, sir?”

  “If you’re a well-heeled Londoner that’s exactly where you go. We’ll start there.”

  • • •

  Marcia went round to Sir James’s two days before she had decided to set off North. Sir James remembered little or nothing about the proposed trip, still less whether he had agreed to go. Marcia got them a cup of tea, put maps on his lap, then began his packing for him. Before she went she cooked him a light supper (wondering how he had ever managed to cook for himself) and got out of him the name of his daily. Later on she rang her and told her she was taking Sir James to the Lakes, and he’d be away for at most a week. The woman sounded skeptical but uncertain whether it was her place to say anything. Marcia, in any case, didn’t give her the opportunity. The woman’s voice did not suggest she had any affection, or any great concern, for Sir James.

  She also rang Serena Fisk to tell her. She had an ulterior motive for doing so. In the course of the conversation she casually asked: “How did he get to your dinner party?”

  “Oh, I drove him. Homecooks were doing the food, so there was no problem. Those sons of his wouldn’t lift a finger to help him. Then Bill drove him home later. Said he couldn’t get a coherent word out of him.”

  “I expect he was tired. If you talk to him about literature you can see there’s still a mind there.”

  “Literature was never my strong point, Marcia.”

  “Anyway, I’m taking him to the Lakes for a week on Friday.”

  “Really? Well, you are getting on well with him. Rather you than me.”

  “Oh, all he needs is a bit of stimulus,” said Marcia brightly. She felt confident now that she had little to fear from old friends or sons.

  This first visit to the Lakes went off extremely well from Marcia’s point of view. When she collected him the idea that he was going somewhere seemed actually to have got through to him. She finished the packing with his toilet bag and other last-minute things, got him and his cases into the car and in no time they were on the MI. During a pub lunch he called her “Molly” again, and when they at last reached the Lakes she saw that glint in his eye, heard little grunts of pleasure.

  She had booked them into Crummock Lodge, an unpretentious but spacious hotel which seemed to her just the sort of place Sir James would have been used to on his holidays in the Lakes. They had separate rooms, as she had promised. “He’s an old friend who’s been very ill,” she told the manager. They ate well, went on drives and gentle walks. If anyone stopped and talked Sir James managed a sort of distant benignity which carried them through. As before, he was best if he talked about literature. Once, after Marcia had had a conversation with a farmer over a dry stone wall he said:

  “Wordsworth always believed in the wisdom of simple country people.”

  It sounded like something a schoolmaster had once drummed into him. Marcia would have liked to say: “But when his brother married a servant he said it was an outrage.” But she herself had risen by marriage, or marriages, and the point seemed to strike too close to home.

  On the afternoon when she had her private business in Cockermouth she walked Sir James hard in the morning and left him tucked up in bed after lunch. Then she visited a friend who had retired to a small cottage on the outskirts of the town. He had been a private detective, and had been useful to her in her first divorce. The dicey method he had used to get dirt on her husband had convinced her that in his case private detection was very close to crime itself, and she had maintained the connection. She told him the outline of what she had in mind, and told him she might need him in the future.

  When after a week they returned to London, Marcia was completely satisfied. She now had a secure place in Sir James’s life. He no longer looked bewildered when she came round, even looked pleased, and frequently called her “Molly.” She went to the Chelsea house often in the evenings, cooked his meal for him and together they watched television like an old couple.

  It would soon be time to make arrangements at a Registry Office.

  • • •

  In the process of walking from establishment to establishment in Savile Row, Southern came to feel he had had as much as he could stand of stiffness, professional discretion and awed hush. They were only high-class tailors, he thought to himself, not the Church of bloody England. Still, when they heard that one of their clients could have ended up as an anonymous corpse in Derwent Water they were willing to cooperate
. The three establishments which offered that particular tweed handed him silently a list of those customers who had had suits made from it in the last ten years.

  “Would you know if any of these are dead?” he asked one shop manager.

  “Of course, sir. We make a note in our records when their obituary appears in The Times.”

  The man took the paper back and put a little crucifix sign against two of the four names. The two remaining were a well-known television newsreader and Sir James Harrington.

  “Is Sir James still alive?”

  “Oh, certainly. There’s been no obituary for him. But he’s very old: we have had no order from him for some time.”

  It was Sir James that Southern decided to start with. Scotland Yard knew all about him, and provided a picture, a review of the major trials in which he had featured and his address. When Southern failed to get an answer from phone calls to the house, he went round to try the personal touch. There was a FOR SALE notice on it that looked to have been there for some time.

  • • •

  The arrangements for the Registry Office wedding went without a hitch. A month after their trip Marcia went to book it in a suburb where neither Sir James nor she was known. Then she began foreshadowing it to Sir James, to accustom him to the idea.

  “Best make it legal,” she said, in her slightly vulgar way.

  “Legal?” he inquired, from a great distance.

  “You and me. But we’ll just go on as we are.”

  She thought about witnesses, foresaw various dangers from most of the possible ones in London and decided to pay for her detective friend to come down. He was the one person who knew of her intentions, and he could study Sir James’s manner.

  “Got a lady friend you could bring with you?” she asked when she rang him.

  “Course I have. Though nobody as desirable as you, Marcia love.”

  “Keep your desires to yourself, Ben Brackett. This is business.”

  Sir James went through the ceremony with that generalized dignity which had characterized him in all his dealings with Marcia. He behaved to Ben Brackett and his lady friend as if they were somewhat dodgy witnesses who happened to be on his side in this particular trial. He spoke his words clearly, and almost seemed to mean them. Marcia told herself that in marrying her he was doing what he actually wanted to do. She didn’t risk any celebration after the ceremony. She paid off Ben Brackett, drove Sir James home to change and pack again, then set off for the Lake District.