Naturally people, being human, made the odd joke, the occasional conjecture. They said that Paul had gone on their honeymoon with them; they suggested he was the emasculated male figure of fiction and of real life—the Turgenev to their Viardots, hopelessly in love with Imogen. Some said he was in love with David—weren’t they at public school together, after all? Some, under their breath, suggested they all shared a bed together, in a variation of the pattern favoured by Sir Charles Dilke (the comparison sprang to mind because David and Imogen were active in Liberal circles).
No one hit on the truth: that at the end of the day spent running David’s home, entertaining David’s friends, establishing David’s role in the community and significantly helping him to run his business, the bed Imogen went to was Paul’s.
It was an ideal working arrangement. David needed a wife in the social sense—a helpmeet who was also an ornament. His sexual drives were low, intermittent, and essentially solitary. Paul needed a bed-partner, but he had no use for a wife who would be around him at all hours. He knew Imogen at once most intimately and least intimately. Imogen loved money, good clothes and good food, the sense of living luxuriously, though hers was also a generous nature—a spreader of good fortune rather than a hoarder of it. She also liked spice and a mild sense of danger. The joke people made about their honeymoon was not too far from the truth. Paul had flown to Pisa by a different flight, and they had all met up outside Customs. While David had taken his hired car to Florence, Paul and Imogen had driven in theirs to Portofino. They had all enjoyed themselves very much.
In fact, they enjoyed their life together very much too. A typical day might have Imogen entertaining important foreign buyers to lunch. She was a delightful hostess—impeccable in her standards, yet relaxed and amusing. She was a beautiful woman, and if a hair on her head was never out of place, nor did her coiffure seem to have been bulldozed into conformity. David, with his lithe, broad-shouldered figure, his even but not ostentatious tan, seemed almost un-English to his guests (who were much more used to British businessmen of the pot-bellied and guzzling variety). The Chatterways were like their furniture: the quality of the product was undeniable.
Often they entertained David’s employees. These were big do’s, and outside caterers were called in. But always there were special dishes that Imogen had cooked or prepared, and the flower arrangements were hers alone. And the welcome she gave—she and David gave—made everyone from board director to workshop sweeper feel at home, wanted, part of one big team.
And when the workers from Chatterway and Company had gone home, Imogen would go to Paul’s bed—cool, delightful, responsive.
It was a surprise to Imogen when she became pregnant. She was, after all, thirty-nine—she had been over thirty when she had married David. They had never intended having children, and she or Paul had always taken precautions.
Well, almost always.
‘I can see it’s not something you’ve been working or hoping for,’ said Dr McLintock.
Working for—what an odd phrase, thought Imogen.
‘Well, not exactly.’
‘If you should decide you don’t want it, there’s your age—’
‘Yes. Can I have a few days to think it over?’
‘Oh, of course. Though the sooner you make the decision the better, naturally. At your age . . .’
Really, thought Imogen, driving home, he did rather go on about my age. Because there’s no reason at all why I shouldn’t have it, now it’s in there, waiting. It’s not as though Paul were black or anything, so that the game would be up. No reason why there should be any talk at all. Everyone would be delighted for us. The question is whether I want all the pain, the bother, the responsibility. That’s all.
Though in fact it wasn’t quite all.
She decided not to tell ‘her boys’ (was it significant she thought of them like that?) until she had made her decision. Paul and David were both conscious that something was ‘up’, because of Imogen’s quietness, her secretive smile. They thought she was preparing some surprise, or joke—one of those little things she occasionally did that added piquancy to their lives together.
She announced it to them a couple of evenings later at dinner, over escargots.
‘You’re not going to believe this, you two—’ (again, was it significant that her phrasing made it sound like a speech from a school story?)—‘but I’m pregnant.’
There was a brief silence, then David laughed.
‘You’re not. But you’re always boasting how careful—’
‘A momentary lapse,’ said Imogen.
‘Beastly of me to laugh,’ said David, relaxing. ‘I believe abortions are nasty, messy things.’
Imogen began clearing away the plates.
‘I’m not having an abortion.’
She caught the look of horror on both their faces before she went to the kitchen.
‘You’re not serious,’ Paul said, when she came back with the casserole.
‘Yes, I am. I’ve decided to have it.’
Her coolness irritated them enormously, as did her assumption that it was her decision alone.
‘But you’ve never wanted a child,’ protested David. ‘It was part of the agreement.’
‘No, I’ve never felt in the least maternal before, I agree. Now, on balance, I want to keep it.’
‘Well, I’ve never felt in the least dynastic,’ said David forcefully. ‘When I’m bored with the business, I want to sell it at a gigantic profit and retire. Children never do what their parents want them to do these days anyway. You go through the nappy stage, and the first bike stage, then pimples and young love, and when you’re just about to hand over the family firm to them, they tell you they want to go and administer famine relief in Africa. No thank you.’
‘Have you thought of all the bother?’ asked Paul. ‘All the wailing and screaming, the need to feed it, the disturbed nights, the nappy-changing? Have you realized what that’s going to do to your life?’
‘You mean what it’s going to do to your life,’ said Imogen. ‘Can anyone eat any more of this casserole?’
That was typical of Imogen’s behaviour over the next few days. As soon as David or Paul attempted to discuss the subject with her, remind her of their agreement, point out the changes a baby would bring to their lifestyle, she coolly changed the subject. She seemed to imply—and both men thought it rather outrageous of her—that it was a question for herself alone to decide, and that she had decided it.
‘The whole arrangement was working like a dream,’ said David to Paul, over a lunch-time pint at a country pub near the factory headquarters. ‘And now she’s brought the thing down round our ears with a vengeance! Diarrhœa and nappy-rash—’
‘Burps and colic—’
‘Shopping at Mothercare and agitating for more nursery-schools—’
‘And the little bugger screaming its heart out most of the day, chucking its pap on the carpet and banging its spoon on the high chair. My God!’
‘It used to be such a peaceful house,’ said David. ‘Orderly, in the classical sense.’
‘I need peace and order,’ said Paul. ‘For my work.’
But there didn’t seem a lot they could do about it. Imogen simply didn’t discuss the matter with them, beyond a few pieces of news about the progress of the pregnancy. ‘Dr McLintock was quite pleased with me today,’ or, ‘I can’t wait to feel the little monster kick—’ that was about the extent of it. As time passed the question of an abortion simply faded away. The men felt bruised, discarded, as if they had been used, and then cast aside.
‘If we divorced,’ said David, ‘it’d be me she’d sue for maintenance of the child. She knows which side her bread is buttered on.’
Meanwhile, though she cut down a little on her work around the house—made simpler meals, bought convenience foods—she still entertained with zest, and enjoyed her work in the community. What Paul and David suspected she enjoyed most about these activities were p
eople’s delighted comments on her pregnancy, and the possibility of comparing notes about its progress with women who had already had children.
‘I’m terrified of losing it,’ she confided to one of these women.
‘Oh, darling, not in this day and age.’
But both of them knew the possibility still existed in this day and age.
Imogen paid frequent visits (she and David were private patients, of course) to Dr McLintock, and during them she confided not only all her symptoms, but all her fears. Sometimes she caught a shadow crossing his face that suggested that his fears echoed her fears. He said nothing, but Imogen was an intelligent woman, and McLintock knew he couldn’t get away with pooh-poohing the natural fears of a woman who was having a first baby at thirty-nine.
‘I don’t like pumping drugs into people,’ he said, ‘particularly pregnant women. But Mylexadrin I was going to prescribe anyway—I always do with an over-thirty who is having a first child. It has an excellent record in making sure the pregnancy runs its full course.’
Imogen was helping at a Liberal Bring and Buy Sale the next day. A General Election was in the offing, and as always Liberals were hopeful of a great triumph for middle-of-the-roadery. Their home village, near Leamington Spa, was an old-fashioned part of the country, full of retired professional people, and David made the joke that they called the Bingo in Latin numerals. But Liberals were oddly abundant, and Imogen enjoyed herself. She had a stall where she could sit down all afternoon, and plenty of volunteers to relieve her. On the way in with David and Paul she gave her husband Dr McLintock’s prescription.
‘Be a dear and pick this up for me.’
‘Of course. What is it?’
‘Oh—pregnancy pills,’ said Imogen, shrugging.
Paul’s eyes met David’s briefly in the driving mirror.
‘Something for the little woman’s interesting condition,’ said David facetiously as he handed over the prescription at the chemist’s.
‘Oh yes, Mylexadrin,’ said the dispenser. ‘We stock it. Very useful little drug for the older woman—though I shouldn’t call your good lady that, should I?’
‘What does it do?’ asked David casually, his eyes exploring the range of cough lozenges on the counter in front of him.
‘Works against premature birth or miscarriage. Always a danger in these circumstances. Don’t want any accidents at this stage, do we?’
‘We certainly don’t,’ said David.
Paul followed him out of the shop. In the car they examined the tablets.
‘They look just like the indigestion tablets Dr McLintock prescribed for me last year,’ said David. ‘Very mild, quite harmless.’
Without further discussion they headed for home. When David handed over the bottle to Imogen at the end of the Sale, he said:
‘It’s got one of those damned anti-child tops. You never can work them. There. That’s it.’
But Imogen would probably never have noticed that the bottle had been opened. She was quite unsuspicious, living in her own little world.
The crisis came in the seventh month. By then the men had almost despaired of its ever coming, though they had not resigned themselves to the baby. David was weighing up the pros and cons of suing for adultery on the grounds of Imogen’s affair with Paul. Paul had decided he thoroughly disliked sleeping with a pregnant woman, and was considering moving out—wonderful light for a painter at Meadowbanks or no. Then, on a filthy night in October, over the sound of pelting rain, David heard a scream.
It was a Jane Eyre touch quite unsuited to the cool Finnish expansiveness of Meadowbanks. He turned on the bedside light and leapt out of bed. He heard scrambled footsteps down the stairs from the split-level flat that Paul inhabited, then the connecting door opening.
‘David! David!’
It’s come, thought David. Together they ran up to Paul’s bedroom. Imogen was on the bed, hunched over, alternately screaming and moaning, the screams so terrible it seemed they must cut through the teeming rain and be heard in the village.
‘Get a doctor! . . . Christ! Oh, my God! . . . No, call 999. Get an ambulance . . . AHHH!’
‘That’s it,’ said David. ‘We’ll call an ambulance right away. It’s a hospital matter. We’ll just get you downstairs first.’
‘No! Call the frigging ambulance!’
‘Don’t be silly, Imogen,’ said David reasonably. ‘You can’t be found in Paul’s bed. Come along.’
‘I don’t care whose bloody bed I’m found in,’ screamed Imogen, hardly recognizable as the cool, witty hostess of Meadowbanks. Her face was red with pain and effort, her hair torn, her whole body wrenched out of shape. ‘Call that ambulance!’
‘Come along,’ they both said. ‘Only a few steps. It’s not far. We’ll soon have the ambulance men out when we’ve got you into David’s bed. They’ll know what to do. They’re used to this kind of thing.’
Dumbly, bent with pain, Imogen stood up, recognizing that she had no choice. Immediately she lunged forward. Her body felt as if a burning iron had been thrust into it. David’s strength saved her. He took one arm, very gently, and Paul the other, and slowly, slowly, they got her through the studio, down the stairs—each one a screaming, torturing effort for Imogen—and then across the wide, pine-lined landing to David’s bedroom. When they had settled her for the first time in David’s bed, David said: ‘Now I’ll ring 999.’
Was it Imogen’s tortured imagination, measuring minutes by hideous, lunging pain, or was it a long, long time before David returned and said they were on their way?
The ambulance men were very efficient, but there was little they could do to ease Imogen’s agony. The rain didn’t help, enforcing redoubled care on the driver. The crisis came in the ambulance, and David and Paul were very glad they had decided to follow in David’s Volvo. By the time the stretcher was carried into the Maternity Wing, it held only a dead child, cradled beside a dead mother.
• • •
David and Paul genuinely grieved. ‘I can’t express our sense of loss and grief,’ David wrote to a friend, and neither David nor the friend found it odd that he should write in the plural. Paul and he sat together in the evenings, watching television or listening to music, and they ate together the meals left to be warmed up in the oven by the woman who came in from the village. Often they said: ‘If only she hadn’t got that scatterbrained idea . . .’
David entertained buyers and contacts at various restaurants in Leamington, and as often as not Paul came along too. When David had his employees over to Meadowbanks for the annual get-together the usual caterers were employed, but this time they did everything. The employees shook their heads in private, and said it was wonderful of David to make the effort, but somehow it wasn’t quite the same.
The occasion was memorable to David and Paul, however. Both of them, quite independently, noticed a new girl who had recently joined the marketing division. She was fair, pretty, and stood around on that hot summer’s day as if the sun had no power over her. She looked, David said, as if she belonged.
Her name was Evelyn, and she was surprised when she was invited to dinner. David told her to tell nobody, so she hugged to herself the notion that promotion was in the offing. It was in fact at the end of the meal, during which David had noted again how perfectly Evelyn had behaved, that over fresh strawberries the matter was broached.
‘We’d like to make a proposition to you,’ David said, ‘entirely in confidence. It’s a little unusual, and if you don’t accept, you must just forget about it entirely. You see, we’ve noticed, both of us, how well you seem to fit in here . . .’
Evelyn listened, at first astounded, then fascinated, then seeing the beautiful logic and suitability of the arrangement. It was a wonderful house—a dream house for someone who loved open space and clean lines. And David—well, everyone at work had been in love with David, and Evelyn was no exception: that lean, athletic, fined-down look, which went with his beautiful courtesy and consideration.
Odd that he shouldn’t be more . . . interested. But Paul, if he was not good-looking, was still a roly-poly bundle of a man, awfully pleasant and comfortable. Paul would do to have David’s baby by.
Because she didn’t take seriously all that stuff about not wanting children. Of course when it came down to it David would want an heir for the business. Men always did. He’d just been thrown off-balance by that awful business with his wife. A clever girl could always devise ways of finding herself pregnant, couldn’t she? For Evelyn did want a child more than anything in the world.
LITTLE TERROR
It was Albert Wimpole’s first holiday on his own for—oh, he didn’t know how long: since he was in his late ’teens it must have been. Because after Mum died, Dad always liked to tag along with him, and though Dad was quite lively, and certainly no trouble at all, still, it was not quite the same, because Albert was a considerate person, conscientious, and naturally he adapted a lot to Dad’s ways. Now Dad had decided, regretfully, that he couldn’t quite manage it this year, his arthritis being what it was. So Albert was going to enjoy Portugal on his own. A small thrill of anticipation coursed through his slightly old-maidish veins. Who knew what adventures he might meet with? What encounters he might have? On the first day, though, he decided not to go down to the Carcavelos beach, because the breeze was rather high. At the hotel pool it was nice and sheltered.
‘Hello.’
The voice came from behind his ear. Albert’s heart sank, but he was a courteous man, and he turned round on his sun-bed in order to respond. He saw, without joy, a pink, ginger-haired boy, with evilly curious eyes.
‘Hello,’ said Albert, and began to turn back.
‘How old are you?’
‘How old? Let me see now . . . I’m forty-two.’
The carroty boy thought.
‘That’s not three score years and ten, is it?’
Death of a Salesperson Page 3
