Tread Softly

by Wendy Perriam

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered!

  Bello is a digital only imprint of Pan Macmillan, established to breathe life into previously published classic books.

  At Bello we believe in the timeless power of the imagination, of good story, narrative and entertainment and we want to use digital technology to ensure that many more readers can enjoy these books into the future.

  We publish in ebook and Print on Demand formats to bring these wonderful books to new audiences.

  About Bello:

  www.panmacmillan.com/imprints/bello

  About the author:

  www.panmacmillan.com/author/wendyperriam

  Contents

  Wendy Perriam

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Part Four

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Wendy Perriam

  Tread Softly

  Wendy Perriam

  Wendy Perriam has been writing since the age of five, completing her first ‘novel’ at eleven. Expelled from boarding school for heresy and told she was in Satan’s power, she escaped to Oxford, where she read History and also trod the boards. After a variety of offbeat jobs, ranging from artist’s model to carnation-disbudder, she now divides her time between teaching and writing. Having begun by writing poetry, she went on to publish 16 novels and 7 short-story collections, acclaimed for their power to disturb, divert and shock. She has also written extensively for newspapers and magazines, and was a regular contributor to radio programmes such as Stop the Week and Fourth Column.

  Perriam feels that her many conflicting life experiences – strict convent-school discipline and swinging-sixties wildness, marriage and divorce, infertility and motherhood, 9-to-5 conformity and periodic Bedlam – have helped shape her as a writer. ‘Writing allows for shadow-selves. I’m both the staid conformist matron and the slag; the well-organised author toiling at her desk and the madwoman shrieking in a straitjacket.’

  Dedication

  For my Mother.

  In loving memory

  Epigraph

  This was the world when you stepped into it. The thick

  charge of blame and assault and love and murder and

  unbelievable acts of kindness and the bitterest sunken

  levels of disappointment that you could imagine and then,

  quick as a flash, from nowhere, jokes!

  Susie Boyt, The Last Hope of Girls

  Part One

  Chapter One

  BUNIONS were inherently absurd. The very word made people smirk – perhaps because it rhymed with onions. But the reality was far from funny. Distortion, swelling, constant pain. Agony in bed at night.

  Lorna surveyed her feet: granny-shoes, at thirty-nine; ugly low-heeled lace-ups, bulging at the toe-joints. The Creator, if He existed, had done a lousy job. This waiting-room was proof enough, full of the walking wounded – plaster casts from thigh to ankle, arms in slings, bandaged knees – and a bald, squint-eyed baby wailing fretfully. Even the posters crowding the walls reinforced the theme of mortality: ‘Meningitis can kill.’ ‘Tobacco seriously damages health.’ ‘TB – still a major threat.’

  She turned back to her magazine. ‘Tempt him with our haddock savoury.’ Unlikely. She and Ralph ate separate meals at different times in different rooms. Anyway, he hated fish. Haddock – another comic word. Gudgeon, flounder, turbot, winkle: all a shade ridiculous. There were fish in the tank opposite, dazzling, iridescent creatures, the only healthy occupants of the room. She closed her eyes, letting her swollen feet melt into graceful fins and propel her through warm, turquoise-coloured water. Pursued by a shoal of lusty males, she zigzagged sinuously between fronds of weed, flirtatious bubbles streaming in her wake.

  ‘Mrs Pearson?’

  Startled, she surfaced, abandoning her bevy of sleek suitors with their kissing mouths and gossamer tails.

  ‘How d’you do? I’m Mr Hughes.’

  Pin-stripes, silver hair, a pale, solemn face with joltingly dark eyes. Her father, resurrected, stepping out of his photo frame into three-dimensional reality. In a daze, she shook his hand, gripping the cool, reassuring fingers for rather longer than was suitable.

  ‘This way, please.’

  Stay alive, she murmured, as she followed him into his room. Don’t leave me again. Don’t slip back to your sepia flatness.

  ‘Six weeks? I can’t spare you that long, Lorna. We’re up to our eyes as it is.’

  ‘I’ll be able to work, Ralph. I just can’t walk, that’s all. Well, I can hop around on crutches a bit, but he said not to overdo it. I’m meant to keep the foot up as much as possible. But I can still type and answer the phone.’

  Ralph poured himself a glass of something. Whisky, from the smell of it. He had his back to her, as usual. ‘I’ve heard it’s a very painful operation. How on earth will you manage?’

  ‘With pain-killers. They have fantastic ones these days. Anyway, I’ve got to have it done. He said it’ll only get worse if I leave it. It was extraordinary, you know. He looked just like my father.’

  ‘Your father?’

  ‘Well, the photograph. I was so struck by the resemblance I forgot half the things I was meant to ask.’

  Ralph said nothing. Was he listening, she wondered, or still worrying about her being off work? The latter, she decided. Over the years she had learned to read his back: anxious, tense, annoyed, withdrawn. Today it was all four. Since he’d given up smoking a week ago his stress level had soared.

  ‘He says he’ll have to operate on all the toes, not just the bunion itself. Break and reset five bones, cut a couple of tendons …’ She kept her tone light-hearted. As a child she had been taught stoicism. When she broke her ankle falling off a pony, she was told she was lucky to have legs at all, just as she was lucky to have food on her plate when millions of children were starving. She had imagined the world as full of amputees with empty bellies. ‘At least he’s not doing both feet at once,’ she added, valiantly ignoring six weeks’ immobility, six months of still painful walking and a year before the swelling went down. ‘He says he’ll leave the right one till next year. Otherwise I’d be completely out of action.’

  ‘Couldn’t the left one wait till Christmas, when things are slacker?’

  ‘I’m not sure if surgeons work over Christmas.’

  ‘Well, the week before, then.’

  She pictured herself hobbling out of hospital on Christmas Eve, cooking the turkey from a wheelchair. Except there might not be a turkey. Last year, having a deadline to contend with, they’d had time for only a quick cheese-and-chutney sandwich in front of the computer.

  ‘It really would help, darling. The next three months are going to be absolute bedlam.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, ‘I’ll ask Mr Hughes.�
� The prospect was appealing. On the way home she had relived the sensation of him handling her bare feet, resting them on his pin-striped knee, palpating each toe in turn. He had endowed distorted growths with a peculiar sort of dignity, worthy of his art.

  ‘You know, I hadn’t realized till today what complex things feet are. That’, she said, pointing to her left foot, ‘contains twenty-eight bones, thirty-five joints and a hundred-odd ligaments. Which is why the operation’s so difficult. There’s a lot more to go wrong than in, say, a hip replacement. People imagine you just hack off the lump and hey presto! But –’

  ‘I’m sorry, Lorna, I must get off. I’m late already.’

  ‘Get off? Where? We’re going out this evening.’

  ‘We can’t be. I’ve arranged to meet John Allan.’

  ‘Ralph’ – she tried not to let her irritation show – ‘we’re having dinner with the Kirkwoods. It’s been in the diary for weeks.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t see it.’

  Didn’t want to see it. Ralph liked his meals on a tray, alone. ‘Look, I’ll phone John Allan and tell him you’re not well.’ As he turned to face her, she noticed the tiny muscle in his cheek was twitching again. She felt sorry for that overworked muscle.

  ‘No. The last thing we need is clients thinking I’m going downhill. What time are we meant to be there?’

  ‘Half past seven.’

  ‘That’s OK then. Cobham’s only fifteen minutes’ drive, so I can see John Allan first.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Ralph. We’ve less than an hour. You’ll just have to put him off. Say something unexpected’s cropped up.’

  After Ralph had left the room she remained sitting on the sofa, gazing at the oppressive grey-green walls. For ages she had wanted to redecorate, but somehow they never managed to get round to it. Besides, she doubted if redecoration would change the basic character of the house – a character not unlike Ralph’s: dour and rather isolated. He was the one who had chosen it, long before her time, and, despite now being in their joint names, it still seemed his, not theirs.

  ‘You’re lucky to have a roof over your head,’ she heard Aunt Agnes cluck, ‘when hundreds of people are sleeping rough.’

  Lorna saw them huddled drunkenly in doorways on their cardboard pallets or sprawled supine on the pavements. She ought to visit Agnes, soon – before the operation certainly. It was a long way to go on crutches.

  Picking her way through the rows of inert bodies, she went upstairs to change.

  ‘John Allan didn’t mind,’ said Ralph, putting his head round the door. ‘As a matter of fact, he’s not very well.’

  ‘Good. I mean rotten for him but good for you. Are you going to drive, by the way, or shall I?’

  Ralph ignored the question, correctly interpreting it as: Do you intend to drink? He yanked off his tie and picked irritably at the label. ‘When d’you think we’ll be able to leave?’

  ‘Ralph, for heaven’s sake! We’re not even there yet.’

  ‘It’s just that I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘Tomorrow’s Saturday.’

  ‘I know. But I’m going to Devon. I’ve only just arranged it.’

  Lorna forced her feet with difficulty into the nearest she possessed to normal shoes. Another weekend alone. Which meant the Terrors were bound to strike. Most normal people found terror inexplicable unless it had a cause – a bomb scare, for example, or rapists at one’s bedroom door. Anything less was neurosis. But Ralph understood, thank God. He could hardly be much help, though, two hundred miles away.

  ‘You’re fortunate to have a husband.’ Aunt Agnes again, lifelong spinster.

  Yes, Aunt, she replied feelingly. I am.

  ‘Come in, come in! How lovely to see you!’

  Lorna felt herself pressed against a generous, fleshy bosom and overpowered by floral scent. The sensation was not unpleasant – like being softly smothered by a honeysuckle pillow – and was a distraction from the pain in her feet, exacerbated tonight by shoes that made her bunions scream. Was it beyond the wit of shoemakers to construct special lump-accommodating shoes, on the lines of hamsters’ pouches?

  Olive Kirkwood released her at last. ‘It’s wonderful to meet you, Lorna, after all our little chats on the phone. And of course we’ve heard so much about you from Ralph.’

  So much? Ralph rationed words and regarded compliments as unnecessary, if not hypocritical. But perhaps he was different when she wasn’t there. How odd, she thought, that she’d never know how he behaved in her absence. With the Kirkwoods he might praise her to the skies: ‘I adore my wife. I’d be completely lost without her. She means the world to me.’

  ‘You must meet Hugh, my other half. He’s seeing to things in the garden.’

  Hugh. Hughes. Lorna’s mind flipped back to the surgeon. Sitting on his knee. Not just her feet, the whole of her. He was stroking her hair, caressing her cheek. He smelt of coal tar and security.

  Olive was now embracing Ralph, unaware that he regarded physical contact as an invasion and a threat (and anyway would rather be at home). ‘Great to see you again, Ralph! Do come through, both of you.’

  As Olive led them into the sitting-room, Lorna covered for Ralph’s taciturnity with a tidal wave of compliments: what a lovely house it was, so light, so bright, so spacious … Weren’t the pictures charming, and what an original colour scheme. She was, in fact, dizzied by the patterns – stripes on the curtains, squiggles on the carpet – and by the profusion of flowers: flamboyant lilies, shaggy-haired chrysanthemums, snooty scarlet roses preening in cut glass. Olive herself was a living bouquet in flounced peony-printed silk, and there were more flora on the chair-covers: an extravagant (if seasonally inaccurate) display of delphiniums entwined with pussy-willow. She had imagined the house quite differently from Ralph’s terse descriptions.

  ‘Yes, we love it,’ Olive smiled. ‘Especially the garden. We decided to have drinks alfresco this evening, to show off your handiwork. Hugh’s made a nice fruit punch.’

  Ralph’s smile failed to reach his eyes. He actively avoided any drink with an alcohol content of less than 40 per cent.

  ‘Or would you prefer something else?’ She indicated a daunting array of bottles on the sideboard. ‘We’ve got all the usual – gin, whisky, sherry, Martini – and a few exotics brought back from trips abroad. This is medronho,’ she said, cradling a weird-shaped bottle in smoky-brown glass, ‘which we picked up in the Algarve. Or there’s ouzo from Cyprus, or –’

  ‘Whisky, thanks.’ Ralph was still standing by the door, as if poised for a speedy getaway.

  ‘And I’ll try the medronho, please.’ Lorna wished she had something of interest to say about the Algarve, but her fears put paid to foreign holidays. She eyed the family photographs, which, even on the expanse of the dazzlingly white grand piano, seemed to be jostling for space. She and Ralph were not just singularly ill-travelled but short of living relatives: no parents on either side, and no children – only pregnancies.

  ‘There we are!’ beamed Olive, handing them their drinks. ‘Now let’s go outside and find the others.’ She led the way through the French windows on to a patio that rivalled Kew Gardens in its abundance of plants, the only difference being that the Kirkwoods’ were largely artificial.

  A paunchy fellow in a loud tweed suit spotted them and came bounding over. ‘Hello! Hello! I’m Hugh,’ he said to Lorna, pumping her hand with painful vigour and then giving Ralph a friendly thump on the shoulder, all the while somehow managing not to spill his drink (a lurid mulberry-red concoction stuffed with an awesome amount of tropical fruit salad – the punch, presumably).

  ‘Cheers!’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Here’s to us.’

  ‘Cheers!’ Lorna echoed, wondering what he meant by ‘us’. Surely they had nothing in common beyond an interest in fake grass.

  ‘How’s business?’ Hugh asked, as if reading her mind.

  ‘Fine,’ Ralph lied. ‘We’ve landed a big contract for Broom Hall’s hock
ey pitches. It’s a boys’ public school in Devon. I’m off there tomorrow, to measure up. With all this rain we’ve been having recently, artificial grass is really coming into its own.’

  ‘Yes, we’re thrilled with ours,’ Hugh said. ‘It saves us a hell of a lot of work. No mowing or weeding or maintenance.’

  ‘And no hay fever,’ Olive put in. ‘Last summer I was sneezing night and day.’

  Ralph should put them on the payroll, Lorna thought – let them proselytize to all and sundry with their unprompted customer endorsement. Far cheaper than an advertising agency.

  ‘Our guests are admiring it at this very moment. And they’re all frightfully keen to meet you.’

  Hugh steered them across the Astroturfed lawn to the Astroturfed tennis-court, where some six or seven people were peering down at the velvet-smooth green surface. Well, green in part. The garden was illuminated by a variety of coloured lights, which cast psychedelic swathes of pink, purple, gold and turquoise across the extensive vista.

  As Olive made the introductions, Lorna grasped at names and hands. Was Alice the one in the red, or was that Caroline? And had Olive said Joan or Jean?

  ‘So you’re Mr and Mrs Astroturf!’ Joan/Jean laughed.

  ‘You could say that,’ Ralph put in quickly, scenting further business. ‘We’re actually called Astro-Sport, and we use every sort of material and do every type of job – private gardens, of course, but also putting-greens, cricket-grounds, tennis-courts, you name it.’

  ‘It’s a brilliant notion,’ the woman in red enthused. ‘You could never tell it isn’t real.’

  ‘And it’s much healthier for children.’ Ever loyal, Lorna backed Ralph up, stressing the messiness, inconvenience and health hazards of real grass. And ditto of real plants and shrubs. Although the Kirkwoods had real water, she noticed, cascading in a miniature Niagara from the gaping mouth of a corpulent bronze frog into a landscaped pond surrounded by frog siblings. Further statuary (of a human kind) was dotted among ersatz rhododendron bushes in full purple bloom – a rare sight in mid-September.