“Are they, dear?” said Milly brightly. “And there was I thinking slacks were the latest. I thought they had taken over from jeans. Silly me. They certainly look like slacks. Why aren’t they slacks, in fact, Doreen? And two pounds of granulated, Edie.”
“Slacks,” sighed Doreen, rapping the counter with an impatient red fingernail, “don’t have these little straps, see? The little straps that go under your feet.”
Mrs. Goodrich was also sighing. “Whatever next? Little straps that go under your feet! You’d never catch me in trousers.”
“They’re not trousers …!” Doreen nearly was squawking.
“We know, Doreen,” said Milly placatingly. “They’re ski pants. And very nice they are too. And where do you ski, dear? Primrose Hill?”
“Christ …”
“Now now,” snapped Mrs. Goodrich. “Language. I won’t have language.”
“Can I just buy my Quaker Oats?” Doreen pleaded with Edie. “It’s all I came in here for.”
“Here you are, Doreen love. On your Mum’s slate, eh?”
Doreen nodded, grabbed the packet, and looking only at the floor, quickly made it to the door.
“Young people …!” spat Mrs. Goodrich, with scorn.
“Mustard powder, please Edie,” said Milly, consulting her list. “Small tin. You make them sound like a plague of vermin, Mrs. Goodrich.”
“Not far short. The more I look around me, the gladder I am not to be encumbered. I made a conscious decision. I said to my Colin right at the outset—Colin, I said: I have not the slightest intention of spending the best years of my life up to my elbows in nappies and ordure and kowtowing to a bawling brat. Oh no. Not me. I made a conscious decision.”
“You don’t know what you’re missing, Mrs. Goodrich. Packet of lard and the large drum of Cerebos, and I think that’s all of it, Edie.”
“On the contrary. What I am missing, Mrs. Stammer, is the likes of that Doreen strumpet who no doubt by now is already off gallivanting with yet another man. They may be terribly sweet when they’re toddlers, oh yes maybe—but that’s what they grow up into. There’s what you are left to deal with. I pity that one’s mother.”
“She’s not so bad …” Edie said quietly—looking now nervously from Milly to Mrs. Goodrich.
Milly wasn’t really listening to anybody now because she had just caught sight of the cardboard box on the counter, crudely wrapped in a scrap of last year’s rubbed and creased Christmas paper, alive with robins and snowballs, a slot gouged into its lid. The sight of it depressed her terribly because this year it was Milly’s turn to be in charge of the festive party, and apart from the gathering together of all the food and drink donations, there was always a collection box stationed somewhere prominent for the inevitable extras—decorations, crackers, little token presents for the kiddies, on top of all the rest of the palaver. This year, though, it had been decided—and which idiot was it, Milly would dearly love to know, who came to so foolish a decision?—that there should be a separate box in every single shop the length of the Lane. She herself with reluctance had dressed up an old Price’s candle carton and placed it on the counter at Stammer’s, just by the string dispenser. Two weeks ago she did that, and still it was empty. This was the trouble—and why could they not have foreseen it? Everyone will ignore each of the boxes, claiming they have already given to another one. The net result will be zero: she felt it in her bones.
“Not so bad …!” hooted Mrs. Goodrich. “What—Doreen? She’s one of the very worst, she is. No respect for her betters. Man-mad, of course.” And she puffed up the scarf at her throat, so as to make it clear that she meant what she said.
“How much do I owe you, Edie? I’m sure that can’t be true, Mrs. Goodrich.”
“Oh you’re sure, are you? Well, Mrs. Stammer, I am here to tell you that you are very wrong. Only just broken up with that teddy boy—what was his name? What was his name, Edie? You know the one. Works in the garage in Winchester Road. Anyway—name doesn’t matter. And he was up to no good, you just had to look at him. Hair like a pop star, tight trousers. Those things on his face—what are they? Sideboards. Well that lasted no time—but now our Doreen has very much bigger fish to fry, from what I see and hear. Oh yes. Her current tastes seem to be running to rather the more mature sort of gentleman. The sort with a bit of money behind him.”
“Oh Mrs. Goodrich …!” Milly couldn’t help but giggle. “Honestly—where do you get it all from? Do you make it up, I wonder? What do you think, Edie? Do you think she makes it all up?”
Edie now seemed almost to be cowering away from something to come.
“That’ll be nine and tenpence ha’penny please, Mrs. Stammer.”
Milly passed across to her a ten-shilling note and stowed away everything into her basket. Suddenly keen to be back at home now, cozy in the warmth of her kitchen and making herself a good strong cup of tea, she had already become careless of Mrs. Goodrich beside her—happily unaware of the narrowing of her eyes, a new and purposeful tightness at the mouth. And then, with relish, a slip of wet tongue was darting in and out of it.
“Well you can think I’m making it up if you want to,” Mrs. Goodrich was huffing, her voice growing steadily more threatening. “That is your privilege, I’m sure. But if the gentleman Doreen was seen with coming out of an X-certificate and doubtless very bawdy screening at the Swiss Cottage Odeon just this last Friday evening and then getting into a taxi with him, if you please—if that gentleman wasn’t the greatly esteemed husband and father Mr. Barton, our family butcher … well then it was someone who very much looked like him, I can assure you of that. Might it conceivably be his twin brother, Mrs. Stammer, do you imagine …?”
A fleeting and malign twisting of triumph was swiped across the press of Mrs. Goodrich’s lips, her small eyes bright with satisfaction at the result of her goring (its surgical precision, its undoubted effect). Edie looked away as Milly, suddenly flushed, turned upon Mrs. Goodrich a shocked and affronted face—and then she felt the heat in her cheeks quickly fade into pale. She had to go, quickly and immediately, and so she strode toward the door with unbending purpose, not at all aware of Edie calling out after her about a penny-ha’penny change. And then she just stopped. Her hand was frozen, reaching for the handle on the door, and then she just stopped abruptly. Milly was only sort of aware of Edie asking her now if she was quite all right, but still grimly she focused on the reverse of the sign hanging against the glass, not smiling at it this time, but reading it with care, over and over. “Sorry! We are closed—even for the sale of Lyons’ Cakes.” It was not the collection of her change, though, that was making her pause, but a pain—more than a throb—deep down and within her. Milly was hardly a one to give in to such things: an active person—hadn’t she said this a thousand times?—an active person has to expect the odd little ache, the occasional twinge. It’ll go away by morning—hadn’t she said this a thousand times?—and always her comforting homily had proved to be true. But this one, this particular pain she had had before. Just yesterday, as a matter of fact. And now it was back. This gnawing then stab that is grabbing her, this sickly convulsion, well … it hadn’t gone away by morning.
CHAPTER FIVE
A Day Unlike Others
It’s true, you know: there really could be nothing better, nothing nicer … here is how Fiona Barton would idly be talking, how she would languidly confide in you … nothing at all she could think of, nothing whatever that swam into her mind—with just possibly the exception of a quarter or even a half pound, goodness, of violet creams from Miller’s up the road—that was quite so very heavenly, so indulgent, as a deep hot bath at the end of yet another very ordinary day. Or so, anyway, is the way she remembered it. That was how she recalled it had been in the past. But in this rather beastly bathroom she now was forced to cope with, may the Lord have mercy upon her, we have an altogether different circumstance. The bath itself, well … cramped, very—and there is a curious, tawny and curling st
ain loosely meandering down from a big old tap which forever is seeping, and nearly to the plughole, so little chrome still flecking the brass beneath. Sometimes the water is brownish, which yes I suppose might go some way to explaining it. The stain, I mean—not at all why the water should be brownish. There stands alongside it a large and squat black meter—no no, it’s true, I am not joking, believe me. Would that I were. And therefore—rather in the manner of one having to make a series of telephone calls from an outside box—a great number of pennies has to be consciously assembled before a bath of any substance may even be contemplated. I crouch down—oh yes I do, just one more thing to which I am these days reduced—I crouch right down and insert the first of the pennies into the ugly gash there, and then I dutifully revolve a sort of key thing until the coin is heard to clang down into the box. I then must wind back this key thing, this twisty little handle sort of affair, and repeat once more the procedure. Five times if a puddle is all you require—a foot bath, no more, and charged with Radox—though easily a shilling if the water is to cover you. And when I think back to the house, the old house—that wonderful old house where we all were so terribly happy, the sunlight forever lighting up our faces … yes well. Best not to dwell, I think. Far better not. Just get on with it, really. What else is there? Except to dwell. And dwell I do …
So, the bathroom notwithstanding, I still do go through the business of pretending to enjoy what used to be—and, if Jonathan is to be believed (of course an unfeasible premise, at even the best of times) one day will be again … a luxurious soak at the end of every evening. I close my eyes. The green of the walls is hardly conducive. One finds oneself irresistibly tracing the descent of this or that little rivulet of condensation. I try so hard not to be aware of the clanking in the pipes, the plumbing’s moan as it shudderingly recovers from the breathtaking exertion of having disgorged its bounty with seemingly pain and a deep reluctance—its only purpose, after all, but still there would appear to be harbored an abiding resentment within the rusty guts of it to ever be a party to the entire affair. But when Jonathan enters the room, as is generally usual—unless, of course, he is off again into the dark on yet one more of his unspoken and wholly probably unspeakable night excursions—well then when Jonathan comes in so very silently, I will snap open my eyes and look at him in fascination. For still he maintains this grip upon me—I can see him only in awe. Why, I can only suppose, I still am here with him. Why else would I be? Stranded in this measly little flatlet above a meat shop. Why else would I be? If not from love, and an ever deeper passion—one which neither of us could even come close to understanding, while needing very badly all of its warmth (and are dazzled by its edge, so stark). Except that he feels it to be his due, my patent adoration—that much always I have seen in him. Despite his behavior, his extraordinary attitudes, nothing less than reverence could ever be acceptable to him … oh yes, I have always seen that in him. And much to my own surprise, sometimes anger, and always resignation … I am able to supply it, unequivocally. There is not even effort involved—a sort of wonderment exudes from my pores, and I know he must smell it.
He will nod to me, Jonathan, as he stands before the mirror to loosen his tie. His glance encompasses my breasts, which I never would seek to conceal, though alas the water is never so deep that they may float, buoyantly. He afterward will take out the iron and press that tie where the tightness of the knot has been, then hang it on a rotating rack, and with care. His trousers he will place between two flat boards beneath the mattress. It is a knack and a habit, he told me so very many years ago. One more knack and habit, picked up along the way. And then he shaves. Unusual, one may think, to shave last thing in the evening—but he is so very meticulous, you see. His appearance is so terribly important to him. And to me, of course. Oh yes. And to me. For Jonathan, though, it need not at all be the end of the day, you see. Sometimes, yes—sometimes he will get into his bed, having put on his hairnet and the gauzy cover for his mustache, and sleep immediately. Other evenings, late, he will change his underthings, shirt, tie and suit, and off he will go. I used to inquire. At the beginning I did. And then I think I became wiser. Why invite a lie, an evasion, some very undignified subterfuge? Because he would always respond to my inquiry with elegance and a disarming plausibility—an apparently so very open agenda … though who knew? On occasion it might even have been the truth. And then he would smile the smile that soothed all things: even as I basked in it, he was gone.
Sometimes, at night, he is, I know, attending to business. I am aware of comings and goings, and always under the generous cowl of darkness. Business is a fine thing: I enjoy the fruits of this terrible trade to which he has so very deftly taken. I like to buy beautiful things. Apart from Amanda, my sweet Amanda, this is all that is left to me—though often my trinkets act as no more than a savage reminder of before. But mostly, of course, it’s women. Always there have been women. Though I am not at all convinced that he has a “type,” you know. I have known him with all sorts, many ages and colorings, backgrounds and even nationalities, but I believe even he might draw the line at a negress—though of course one can never really know. A fine face and figure would appear to be mandatory, together with a modicum of intelligence. Not necessarily education … though I think he wouldn’t tolerate even a hint of crudeness, a lack of manners or femininity … but other than that I think that no fleeting potential may be safely discounted. And I mind, do I …? Well I don’t, no. Not. I really ought to, I do quite see that—I should be burned by the white heat of outrage, I should feel betrayed, insulted, less of a woman, failing in my wifely duties—all these tedious and rather humdrum things which you read about in the magazines—but of course I don’t. I have tried—I really did try in the early days to muster a smidgen of moral anger, even a touch of hatred. But it never really was coming—not to me; and he … I doubt whether even in passing he observed my muted attempt. But you see … he is a man, after all. A very fine and nearly greedy man, and I honestly do believe that in his place I would do the same. Were I a man too. Not through need, but simply because it was possible. Because there was fun and diversion to be had—something new and exciting. I cannot see for the life of me how pursuing such ideas could be wrong in any way. How much worse not even to sense them, to be quite unbound from lust and curiosity. Or to feel these things keenly, and then stamp them to death—but never quite to death, no, so that a mewling whimper of hopeless protestation always is dimly to be heard, a feeble just-alive gesture from a mangled and bleeding almost corpse. It is sex, after all—only sex. Do you see? A mere release. What is that, when compared to his love for me? The one thing I know to be true. There was just one occasion … only one—still we were in the house at Henley—when his abiding passion for another did cause me such very serious pain. For he had, you see, fallen very helplessly in love with one whom he believed to be a goddess, and as a consequence, and for good long time, my future and even that of Amanda did lie in considerable peril. I said not one word, extraordinary circumstances intervened, and now all that is passed. And so … as he walks into the bathroom, just as my water is cooling, do I feel love for this utterly tremendous man before me? I do. It pulsates. And it collides in the air with his love for me, the soft explosion and the balm from that, they engulf me.
“I trust you are well, my dear. All seems secure.”
Which is what he always says, when first he approaches me—stoops down then to kiss the top of my head. It makes me feel so safe, protected, while even as I sense his caress, I am alarmingly aware—inside and around me—of my retention of such tremulous screaming at this so spectacular a folly: to succumb if even for a moment to so rosy an illusion. A nebulous threat is never distant, of course I know that, and yet mercifully Jonathan is able to raise up a barricade so as to screen at least the looming prospect, to contain its swell, to muffle the very worst of its maniacal hammering.
“Just rested, thank you Jonathan. And your day …?”
Jonathan g
azed in seeming astonishment at his own reflection in the mottled mirror hung above the basin. As if genuinely amazed that it should be he who was in there, tired, wide-eyed and calmly staring back out at him.
“Ah … my day. Yes indeed, my day. Well it was quite a day, that may be said for certain. A day unlike others, I should regard it. But then, in their ways … each one is. No?”
“I suppose. In its detail. And after? Tonight, are you …?”
“Indeed I am, I fear. Some things just must be attended to. Tiresome, but there it is.”
Yes: there it is. There it very much is, damn and blast it. There is mess to be cleared. And mess I dislike intensely. Because today, well … all had not gone according to plan. Well in truth, of course, there had been no plan—how could I have formulated a plan, when nothing remotely of the sort was even anticipated? All was to be straightforward, just as it has been for how many months? But there was something about the man, this time. Not just an air, but something he was clutching within him, with glee—people of this class, they are incapable of concealment. This bloody man whom I had assumed all along to be no more than a Middlesex smallholder and of little brain, eager to conduct a bit of brisk business by moonlight, while creaming the goodness away from the Revenue. The acceptance of the pig, it never took too long. And very soon I had a young lady to attend to, did I not? So I was hardly eager then for a pig to detain me, and nor its loathsome breeder, whatever the bloody man’s name is. Here was not a friendship, God in heaven—why ever should I have known his name? Soon my benevolent doctor would arrive to administer sedation to this gross and gently squealing creature which—in a butcher’s yard—scented something malign: its eyes were far from easy. And then two five-pound notes were in the man’s hand—his signal, surely, to touch that greasy cap cocked so very comically upon a bony skull and be gone the way he came. But no: he then began to utter.
England's Lane Page 7
