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by Robert Barnard

“I think she has seen it, and is beginning to pave the way for a divorce.”

  “You don’t think she has met someone else?”

  “It is possible. Or perhaps there is someone ‘back home,’ as she sometimes calls it, someone whom she would have preferred to be married to but was too weak to fight for when I was proposed. Who knows? And I don’t greatly care. I hope she does find somebody.”

  Eve knew now she had to tread carefully.

  “But you care about getting a divorce?”

  “Of course. You know that.”

  “But I need to know whether I should care about your divorce.”

  He put his hand across the table and took hers. His great brown eyes were liquid, and he spoke softly, with quiet emotion.

  “Of course I would like you to care. I think you know that, though we know so little of each other. It’s what I want more than anything. But Sanjula hasn’t brought her feelings into the open, and that may mean she hasn’t made up her mind definitely yet. We have made one little step forward. Don’t ask me to take more steps than I can. I have to be ready.”

  “Of course not. You’re quite right. I expect it’s my age. Old woman in a hurry.”

  “Don’t mention anything so irrelevant.”

  “But of course it’s relevant. I’m vintage 1970.”

  “And I’m vintage 1979. Does it sound so very much when it’s put like that?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “I think I should go now. Would you think it inappropriate if I gave you a chaste kiss?”

  “I should like it very much, Omkar.”

  He bent down, reminding Eve of an actor in a period drama, and they enjoyed a brief, stately kiss. Then he stood up and left the restaurant.

  Eve finished her coffee thoughtfully. She had enjoyed the kiss, and it remained with her as a promise of what one day might come, when perhaps she and Rani were a rather formal and loving couple, behaving impeccably in the public eye. Then she went up to her room, washed her face, and lay down on the bed. She looked around her. She loved hotel rooms, because you could be anywhere. But not in Leeds. She should not have taken a hotel room in Leeds. She had nearly frightened him. She was going to have to proceed more slowly, more carefully, more caringly. She accepted, almost gratefully, that she must leave the initiative to him.

  She got her few things together and checked out of the Radisson. The girl at reception asked her if her room had not been satisfactory, and Eve said it was fine, but she’d had a message on her mobile that she was needed at home. On the last train to Halifax, almost alone on it, and in the car on the journey to Crossley, she thought about her situation, and thought that, though she knew she had made mistakes, and would make more, on the whole she felt very happy with her evening.

  CHAPTER 9

  Old Head

  Two mornings later, after a day to catch up on developments, to adjust her thoughts to the present position of things, Eve settled down to action. She was going to have to do something about Mrs. Southwell, the former headmistress—whenever a very old person was an object of attention, a degree of urgency entered the picture.

  However as Eve was putting her bedroom to rights after a breakfast of toast, jam and tea in bed, she looked out of the window and saw that Mrs. Calthorp next door was already at work in her garden. She was conscious of having talked to her about the May they both knew—the middle-aged and the elderly May—but not about the young May. When had Mrs. Calthorp moved next door? She seemed to Eve always to have been there. When she went out of the back door and over to the hedge between the houses, Eve got the impression that Mrs. Calthorp was glad for an excuse to straighten her back and have a view of something other than ground elder.

  “Hello—taking a day off today? You have been awfully busy.”

  “Yes, and I will be busy later today I hope.”

  “So much to do, I suppose. You’re lucky you can get time off from work.”

  “Yes, I am. Though I’m thinking of not going back to Wolverhampton at all. Of stopping here, in fact.”

  “Oh really! That would be nice. Strangers always take a while to get to know.”

  “I wouldn’t necessarily remain in this house. I’d like it, but it is very large for one person. Maybe I could let the upper floor. I’d still have acres of room downstairs.”

  “You used to have a . . . boyfriend, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. That’s over . . . Mrs. Calthorp, when did you move into your house?”

  “Nineteen seventy-three. I was carrying my second son—Jason. You remember? You used to play with him, nurse him a bit. You were about four years older.”

  “Oh, I remember Jason very well. So by the time you moved in, my father had moved out.”

  “Well, yes. He’d gone to Australia for the sun. Weak chest, your mother said.”

  “That’s right. Did you talk to my mother much about him?”

  “Well, no. I didn’t get any sense that she wanted to talk about him. She shut down, changed the subject. People were still sometimes embarrassed in those days if their marriage broke down. And I thought she might be jealous of me, with a husband doing well in the world and a growing family.”

  “Yes . . . But I don’t think it was that . . . When did she tell you he was dead?”

  “Oh dear me, that’s a difficult one. I think it was about two years later. Just mentioned it one day, saying I’d probably hear people talking about it. It was all rather odd . . .”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, when I asked if he’d be buried out there and if she’d go to the funeral, she said yes he would and no she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to take you on a long, difficult plane flight and she was unwilling to leave you behind. She saw I thought that a bit odd, as I say, and she said: ‘You know we haven’t been close these last few years.’”

  “I don’t suppose that was a surprise to you.”

  “Well, no it wasn’t. I thought there might have been something in the way of a trial separation. But this was the first time it had come out into the open.”

  “Do you remember anything else about that time?”

  Mrs. Calthorp thought.

  “A little, thin, black band sewn onto the jacket of one of her suits . . . Going in to work every day as usual. I used to see her when I was washing up the breakfast things. Everything was pretty much as usual. Didn’t she tell you much about him?”

  “Not much more than she told you. I’m finding that my work here is trying to find out anything about him—personality, work, views.”

  “But why would you want to do that?”

  “Because I’m getting a feeling that he may be still alive.”

  As she turned to go back to the house, she saw Mrs. Calthorp’s jaw dropping. If she had suspected something about a separation, she had obviously not been suspicious about John McNabb’s supposed death.

  When Eve, in her search for Mrs. Southwell, got on to the Internet (the computer was not much used, she guessed, but waiting to be used when necessary in her mother’s study), she found several nursing homes and residential care homes but only a few that seemed to offer to their residents supervised independence in small flats such as the chief superintendent had mentioned. The one that appeared to fit most closely Superintendent Collins’s half memories was Autumn Prospect. Most people love autumn views, but here Autumn seemed to be a euphemism for winter.

  “Yes, Mrs. Southwell is one of our residents,” came a comfortable male voice. “Would you like to speak to her?”

  “Yes, I would, please.”

  “Could I have your name? We have to be a bit careful.”

  “Of course you do. It’s Eve McNabb. She might remember it. I’m May McNabb’s daughter, tell her.”

  She waited, then was rewarded with a “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Southwell, I don’t know if you remember—”

  “Of course I remember. I’m not senile, you know. Autumn Prospect does not take dementia sufferers. You’re May’s daughter. And
you were named after me.”

  “Really? You’re Eve too?”

  “Evelyn. I suppose May preferred the shorter version to distinguish us, though to my ears it sounds a bit too biblical and penitent female.” The voice was rich, but with a hint of stridency or aggression that now began to soften. “I was sad to hear of May’s death. I did send a wreath.”

  “Of course you did. I had to think a bit to remember the name,” lied Eve. “I believe you’ve recently had your—which was it?—your eightieth birthday?”

  “Eighty-fifth. I’d lie if I could, but the newspapers all got it right.”

  “Congratulations, anyway—”

  “Birthdays become just water under the bridge. So what can I do for you, Miss McNabb?”

  She said it with kindly condescension, as to a young child.

  “I wondered if you would let me come and talk to you about my mother.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “That seems an odd request. You must have known her much better than I did.”

  “I suppose that’s true, though I wish we had had more time together in recent years. The fact is, though, I know the May McNabb who was the mature headmistress. You knew the young one.”

  “True. But don’t you think they were essentially the same person?”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps experiences changed her. But in any case I don’t want to discuss her character. I want to discuss what happened to her in the years before and just after I was born—years when I couldn’t know what was going on.”

  There was a much longer silence.

  “I suppose that could be possible,” said the rich voice, now robbed of its stridency. “When did you want to come?”

  “I wondered if tonight might be possible.”

  “I don’t have a very full diary these days,” she said, with a bitter little cackle of laughter. “You obviously do, or you’re in a great hurry.”

  “I shall be away all next week, so I would like to see you before I go—if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Getting in before I pop off! Oh don’t worry: everybody does it. You can come—oh, let’s say tea time. I can’t cook dinner for two—it’s becoming chore enough to feed myself. It’s number twenty-six. Shall we say four o’clock?”

  “Four o’clock it is.”

  “Please be prompt. I don’t like latecomers.”

  She sounded as if she was rebuking a child in year three for slipping late into assembly.

  “I shall look forward to it.”

  “So shall I!”

  There was some kind of implication behind Mrs. Southwell’s last words. Presumably an old person in sheltered accommodation welcomed any relief from a diet of daytime television and regular hot drinks. But that wasn’t the implication. The tone of voice almost suggested that, though she would enjoy the interview, she would do so in an unpleasant way. The caginess of the early exchanges had altered to something close to relish. Presumably, Eve thought, Mrs. Southwell had decided how she was going to handle the encounter. Eve somehow did not think that the relish in the other’s voice meant that she, Eve, was going to enjoy the meeting.

  May McNabb had a collection of town maps in one corner of an upstairs bookcase. Eve knew she had had meetings everywhere, particularly in other primary schools, and had needed to know how to get there. It was easy enough that afternoon to find Autumn Prospect, on a hill overlooking Keighley, with a splendid view of Keighley Moors beyond the nineteenth-century dwellings in the immediate vicinity—many of which had become nursing homes.

  Autumn Prospect was certainly not a nursing home. It was a custom-built series of small flats, all on the ground floor, constructed in one large square with flats on three sides and a wall on the side adjacent to the road. It was entered through a single gateway with a porter’s lodge, where a capable-looking man was pottering. He hailed her, and asked her to sign a book for visitors. Then he came out into the getting-chilly afternoon air and strolled with her toward number 26. As she walked Eve heard jazz on Radio Three and also the television children’s programs. She approved of what she saw and heard. If she had to get old and of diminished capability, this was the sort of place she would not mind ending up in. Or taking her autumn views from. The sense of privacy within a small community was increased by the flats being divided into sections of five or six, with their own door to the outside world. The caretaker let her into the section, then took himself off.

  She knocked on the door of 26, and there were sounds of movement from inside. It opened, and she encountered her mother’s first and only boss in Crossley.

  Evelyn Southwell was heavily made-up. As always happened, the orange-brown matte color made her look even older than she was, and the rose pink lipstick didn’t help, or the gingery hair. She had a prepared smile on her face that Eve did not trust or like, but she let herself be led into a small, comfortably furnished living room, though each piece seemed designed for a larger space. Evelyn Southwell was walking with a metal stick, and she gestured with it toward a chair. Already on the table were thin-cut bread and butter, with dark fruitcake and currant buns. The teapot was under a cozy. Mrs. Southwell had assumed her strictures on latecomers would be heeded. When she had heaved herself down into the room’s other chair, almost groaning with relief, she welcomed Eve in a fruity voice designed for a larger room, or perhaps an assembly hall.

  “So nice of you to come. It’s a great treat to see you again. It’s not all of one’s old pupils who remember.”

  Mrs. Southwell was taking the visit as a tribute to herself. And she had forgotten that Eve had never attended Blackfield Road. May had thought it bad for a child to attend a school run by her parent. In any case, Evelyn Southwell had moved on (or been moved on?) well before she, Eve, had started school.

  “It’s a pleasure for me too. A lot of people have talked to me about you in the last few days. You must have made a big impression in Crossley.”

  “Ah yes,” sighed Evelyn with a flutter of eyelashes. “I always believed a good teacher had to be something of a performer—don’t you agree?”

  “Oh, I do,” said Eve. But what percentage performer? she wondered. “So many people have passed on to me memories of my mother’s early years in Crossley, and what an impression she made.”

  “Ah yes, your mother,” said Mrs. Southwell vaguely. Eve sensed that she was being played with.

  “And of course my father too.” The old eyes, under the mascara, blinked, apparently in an effort of remembrance. Eve felt sure her namesake remembered her father perfectly well. But the woman pantomimed a sudden remembrance.

  “Oh yes, of course: the artist.”

  It sounded better than cartoonist.

  “Yes,” said Eve, determined to continue with the subject. “I haven’t found any of his artwork in the house. He went abroad for his health when I was very young.”

  “Yes, I remember now. People went abroad for their health then. Nowadays they just go for sun and fish and chips, or so people tell me.”

  “Many do. But from what I hear, Australia doesn’t go in much for fish-and-chips tourism. I believe my father must have died there at some point.”

  “Yes, I remember people talking about it. I’d moved to Bradford by then—a big promotion to a fine, well-endowed school—”

  “But you did hear that he had died?”

  “Oh yes. Your mother by then was headmistress of Crossley. And people knew I came from the Crossley school. So of course they passed things on when they heard them.”

  Suddenly a sharp, sardonic look came into those old eyes, and Eve felt she was being directed by a cunning director of plays—forced to react in a certain way.

  “But you doubted my father was dead, didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t—let’s say—think the news was conclusive. I wondered whether your mother wanted people, especially you, to think he was dead. That would rule out your trying to find him when you grew up. I don’t mean to be cynical, but that would have saved he
r an awful lot of trouble.”

  “Was my father ‘trouble’?”

  She shook her head, looking annoyed.

  “I didn’t say that. On the surface he certainly wasn’t, and I only saw the surface. But death is conveniently final, and just being in Australia is not.”

  “What exactly are you saying?” Eve was getting annoyed now.

  “Have some more bread and butter, Eve. Or some cake.” She paused while Eve reluctantly took a small bun. “What exactly am I saying, you ask. Let me get at what I’m saying by going at it crabwise. When your mother arrived at Blackfield Road School, she was the answer to a headmistress’s prayer. So wonderfully competent all round. I could hand any little task to her, and know that it would be done, and well done. When she became deputy head, I could do more of what I really enjoyed—teaching. And she still so young! In her late twenties, but she looked even younger. If she’d been in a secondary school, she could have been mistaken for one of the pupils, but in a primary school it was fine. She both fit in and yet was a leader. She was like a big sister to the children.”

  She paused, and Eve thought it time to step in.

  “We were talking,” she said, “about why my mother might have put it around that my father was dead, when perhaps it wasn’t true. It seems quite unlike the woman I knew.”

  “Crises produce special responses,” Mrs. Southwell said grandiloquently. “Now the reason things started to go wrong for your mother—and they might have gone a great deal more wrong than they did if it hadn’t been for me—was of course sex.”

  Eve raised her eyebrows, somewhat hypocritically.

  “Sex? I don’t associate sex with my mother.”

  “Children seldom do, unless it’s too blatant to be ignored. How do they think they came into the world? I grant you that your mother, by all accounts, lived a blameless life for all the years you knew her. But it’s those early years in Crossley you’re asking me about, and while she was winning a great reputation in educational circles, and from parents and people generally, she was also attracting a degree of attention from the wrong sort.”

  “The fast set of Crossley? Difficult to imagine that there was one.”