All these thoughts, though, and of so long ago … And still there remains just this one further thing, however … the other and quite key element of our living in Henley, and then finally decamping from it on that frenzied afternoon in so extremely unbecoming a scramble of haste … a factor which still I have yet to mention … because I cannot. For what, after all, could I possibly say? Because, you see … well had it not been for Fiona and Amanda, I of course would have faced him. Somerset. I should not have run from the man. But the instant removal of my wife and child had become quite wholly essential because I knew that he would have been murderous, quite finite in his expression. Though had it not been for them—had they been elsewhere, should they not even have existed—then I would have stayed, and fought him to the death. This not through any misplaced and reckless wave of bravado, but only for the glorious sake of the ultimate prize. Anna. Anna, yes of course. For the pain I had endured upon leaving her … the spearing, ceaseless and seething hot agonies simply of missing her, day after endless day … these, to me, seemed so very many times that much worse than dying. But rather to my shock, I had made my choice upon instinct: I absconded with my family while unaware that here even was my true intention. During the months that passed, however … I thought of Anna constantly, my memories of love both sparkling and frightful—while I cowered away, shivering from the burn of all that I had caused her, by leaving immediately and amid a shameful silence destined never to be broken. Though subsequently … with the rolling on of further time, the intensity of so obsessive and ultimately self-consuming contemplation … it gradually dimmed … so very slowly, it began to fade away … together with the dulling of a stinging fear, and the stark white threat of apprehension.
And so things rather had remained … right up until the arrival of the pig man. Prior to this quite alarming intrusion, upon only one single occasion had my cloaked and blacker chambers been flooded of a sudden by harsh illumination, and this at the moment when I knew from the wireless that Mr. John Somerset, together with his son Mr. Adam Somerset, both sometime residents of Henley-on-Thames, had that morning jointly been convicted upon forty-seven counts of variously burglary, fraud and aggravated assault, while the son alone was further found guilty of having committed what the broadcaster had elected to sensationally couch as the callous and brutal double murder of an innocent elderly couple. Just once more then did I dwell upon his mother: at that raw and glittering silver dawn which ripened into a marbling of indigo and vermilion, when Adam was hanged.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Are You All Right?
There was a time, you know—not really too terribly long ago, I suppose … although it does so very much seem to be, now. Such a long time ago. In the days when I was, well … at a time when I felt myself to be considerably more leisured. Than I am now. Easy in my mind. When I could after supper concentrate solely upon getting Paul all nicely tucked up in his bed for the night, while with such pleasant anticipation looking forward to when I would gradually unfold into that so very precious little particle of time that soon would be mine—that I could just have to myself. For by then I was so very well versed—and for how many years past?—in pointedly ignoring—secluding the whole of me safely away from any of Jim’s more obnoxious or intrusive activities. Ticking off the minutes as patiently as possible before he’d heave himself out of that staved-in sofa with its feathering of fag ash, which so long ago had become that most wretched seat of his exceedingly awful and sovereign domain … and then would I suffer to hear him muttering one or other of his customary nonsenses concerning his so urgent need now to take the air, his ardent desire to stretch his legs. His arm was all he’d be stretching: ale is all he would take. Yet still was I expected to encourage quite cheerily this sudden and apparent whim, and in so twitteringly birdlike and thoroughly wifely a way—his bold and spontaneous response to an invigorating impulse propelling him toward an evening constitutional, the very impromptu mention of which you could nightly set your watch by.
And, in those early days, it now rather bitterly amuses me to recall, I actually did go so far as to rather sullenly resent it. Being left. I might even have considered myself to have been coldly abandoned. Why must you do it Jim. I’d ask him—and really quite plaintively. Why must you do it—night after night? You’ve got a bottle of Bass, haven’t you? More than one. Here, in this house, in the cupboard under the stairs. And I’ve just brought you your cigarettes, haven’t I? Room all nice and warm. And it’s raining. It’s raining, Jim. Can’t you hear it against the windowpane? It sounds as if it’s coming down really rather heavily. So why do you have to go out? Explain it to me, please. Why do you want to walk just a few doors down in the pouring rain to then be standing up for hours on end in your wet hat and coat in that horrid and stinkingly fuggedup place, drinking Bass and smoking cigarettes …? Both of which you have. Here, in this house. Makes no sense does it, Jim? Makes no sense at all. But all he would do is grunt like an animal, tell me that “women, they don’t never understand” … and peremptorily leave. Now, of course, I thank the Lord for it. This nightly imbecility. Sometimes, it’s all I can do to refrain from screaming from the rooftops and urging him to get a blooming move on. Oh go on Jim, is what I’m aching inside to shout at him. You’ve had your rhubarb and custard, you’ve slurped down your fourth cup of tea like a yak at a trough, you’ve ground out yet another Senior Service butt, and very disgustingly to the side of the saucer—so what on earth is keeping you? Hey? Get out of my sight—go to the blessed Washington, why won’t you? Go on! Go on! Oh just go, you horrible man …!
Yes … but I don’t. Ever say any of that. And soon enough, he’s anyway gone. And there—when I used to hear the door clang—there was the signal, this was the trigger for that one single and utterly cherished moment in the day when at last I could gently uncoil—relax, yes, into finally being me. I’d hung up my motherly pinny—kicked off and into a corner just another poor and beholden skivvy’s bespattered shackles—and now I could just be old Milly again. Just me, with something nice to listen to on the wireless—the Proms, or something—a cup of tea, a digestive and maybe then even a Craven “A,” with my feet up on the pouf. But all such moments, the sweet and lesisurely innocence of them … they seem lost to me now. Now … always there’s something infuriatingly nagging at me. Something I long to do. Or something I so terribly regret not ever having done. Something I have to say. Or else something I should so very obviously have said, and forcibly—then, and at the pertinent moment, now long passed. The appalling amount of money that still somehow I am owing to that perfectly loathsome and vulgar little tallyman, for all those ridiculous fripperies that I now know I’ll never even so much as glance at again, nor ever dream of wearing. And he’s not at all charming, this low and beastly man, now that I no longer am a subscriber to all of his leery enticements. Every Friday I pay him all that I can, and although I make very sure that always there is plenty on the table for both Jim and Paul every mealtime to enjoy, I myself have barely been eating so that I may somehow squeeze out just that little bit more from my pitiful housekeeping—and yet despite all of my deprivation, each and every Friday all he will do is rather horribly snarl at me, and tell me that now I am more heavily in debt than I had been the week before. How can this be? He shows me the columns in that dreadful ledger, and all these closely written figures—jabbed at accusingly by his manicured fingernail that yet somehow manages always to be grimy—they do appear to tally, though never intellectually can I make even the slightest sense out of them. You assiduously chisel away at any given obstacle, and then gradually its vastness will diminish—no? Well no not, it seems: any such action will serve only to stimulate growth. Oh dear. Oh dear. When and how will it ever end …? Then there is the yearning—the yearning, then, that comes upon me for a certain individual … about whom now I hardly dare think—and cannot, coherently. Pain. My pain. The pain that still is deep within me, which sometimes will teasingly fade to the shadows where barely
I still can distinguish its insidious nature, its loitering cruelty, nestled as it is in a soft and fugitive haven … which then, having lulled me, will and without warning twist up so viciously into a shockingly swelling and quite acidic nausea. Once or twice just lately I have been jarringly aware of sudden and tumultuous internal revolt—an involuntary heaving that alarms me into knowing that now I teeter on the convulsive and dreadful edge of retching quite violently … but no, nothing came. On each occasion, I was stranded agape and on my knees in the chill of the bathroom, eyes struck wide, my skin so clammy, the whole of my insides still shuddering with the ugly urge … but no … but no … nothing came. Which left me feeling jilted. Let down and taken in. As if even my own body, now, was lying to me. As a consequence, I do rather think, you know, that some time reasonably soon I might maybe be forced into seriously considering getting somebody to look at me. Oh I don’t know, though … don’t want to be seen to make a mountain of a molehill—it’ll probably go away of its own accord. All these little things, they generally do.
This evening, however—and mercifully—it really isn’t too bad at all, my now near-habitual pain. Perfectly tolerable. A sort of blessing, I suppose, because soon I just have to slip away for a moment. I don’t want to, of course—honestly, I can think of nothing I would favor less. But goodness, you just should have heard him, the tone of his voice on the telephone. It went so very far beyond just simple concern, or even alarm. Stan, I feel sure, has come now to the point of desperation. He was barely sensible. Hardly even speaking comprehensibly, and nor did he seem able to respond to any of my quite insistent interrogation. I just had to, he kept on quite manically repeating to me, come round. Come over: I just had to. And then I would see. Christ Alive, then I would see …! Well at first I had been more than concerned that all he was doing was yet once again, and perfectly unimaginably, intending to behave so very foolishly with me … but then his really quite frantic manner had quickly eradicated all those sorts of notions. I think that if anything awful had befallen little Anthony, then Stan would simply tearfully have told me. Clearly then, some or other element of Jane just had to lie at the root of all this—and had not that recent and very possibly misguided agitation of the abiding situation been solely due to my own insistence? Well: my responsibility also, then. And so—though still with considerable reluctance—I have agreed this evening to go round to see him. And of course it is Paul who is my primary concern, here—because yes I do know of course that he no longer may be said to be an infant, but still it is beyond me to help feeling so very deeply uneasy if ever on such very rare occasions I am compelled to leave him all on his own. But I see no other way. Because of course I could not possibly have gone, could I, until Jim was safely out of the way. Well could I? For Jim, you see … well I do now feel rather reasonably sure that he is, somewhere murky within his own very smudgily illegible and extraordinary nature, nurturing some or other I am sure quite wholly unspecific suspicion with regard to my recent behavior—though for Jim to have registered even so much as a scintilla of just anything at all is more than ample demonstration, I feel, of just how lately I have become quite reckless. And always now there must remain the very distinct likelihood, an almost certainty, that a malicious retelling of Mrs. Goodrich’s mad and unfounded rumors concerning whatever she imagined she might have witnessed between myself and Stan, could well—by way of the flourishing grapevine, fed by ordure and bearing bitter fruit—finally now have reached him. And so therefore, in the light of all of this, I was hardly likely, following our supper, to casually suggest to Jim that he might this evening care to just slightly delay his pilgrimage to the pub, so that he may stay to keep a watchful eye on Paul. You ask me why, Jim …? Because I am going out for a while. Where …? I feel I cannot say. Why …? Well you see, there is someone I have to speak to. Who …? Once more, I am afraid, I must be silent. No. That—not to say his predictably full-throated reaction, this very feasibly to incorporate a barrage of typically colorful and foul-mouthed accusation—would have been considerably more at present than I could easily have borne.
And Paul too … though it fragments my heart even to think it … but Paul, he too—and I now know this to be true—he too has been sensing things. He has not escaped the web’s sticky wickedness, and all of my own quite meticulous weaving. Might you suppose that here is merely the self-chastising projection upon the dear boy’s white and treasured innocence of my own ungovernably blackening conscience? Ah …! I would that it were … though alas, it is not. For I know my Paul, I know him so terribly well … and I have been willfully blinding myself to the very self-evident truth of it that daily has been hanging before my eyes … and yes, although it makes me ceaselessly rock with hurt, I am afraid that now I know that it is true that he found himself no longer able to remain untroubled by a myriad of unknowable little things. I have seen it in the merest fleeting furrow of his sweet little brow. The flecks of doubt that would cluster within his eyes—and then, when I glanced at him, how they so very rapidly were darting away instead of sparklingly fusing with mine—yes, fusing with mine in the blissful bath of mutual love and the enveloping warmth of safety, just as always they used to. And although I was hourly quite terribly tortured by the conviction that now I … that now I … that now I am doing him harm … still I found myself so very far from prepared for all that he had to say when this very morning, just as I was busy clearing away the last of the breakfast things, suddenly he was speaking to me:
“Are you all right, Auntie Milly …?”
It was the inflection, of course—there was nothing to alert me in the words. Or was there here no more than simply an observation? That clearly I am not. All right. But I must be. Mustn’t I? For am I not a capable woman? Am I not the anchor? So I must be. You see. I just must. But the whole of my averted face felt pained and contorted in its strenuous efforts to contain the welling of hot tears of shame: for should he at this moment see me in that way, then all might truly be lost to him.
“Why of course I’m all right, Paul. What a thing to say. Right as rain. Of course I am. Why—are you not all right, then …?”
My voice—I heard it—had been as forcedly lighthearted as that of a cornered and mendicant politician. Paul continued to hover in the area between the kitchen and the landing, as if poised upon an early escape—twisting to and fro the door handle, his eyes alighting upon anything but me.
“Well no … not really, Auntie Milly. I mean—I’m not ill, or anything …”
I bit my lower lip until it really did hurt me most fearfully.
“Well what’s wrong then, Paul? Tell me. You know you can tell your Auntie Milly, don’t you …? Tell me anything, you can. You know that, don’t you Paul …?”
“I do. Well I used to. Not too sure now. Actually. Sometimes you don’t sort of listen like you used to, so there’s not much point. Sometimes I say something to you and you just sort of look funny at me afterward. Like you didn’t hear me, or something. And sometimes … your answers—when I ask you things, well what you say for an answer … it just doesn’t make much sense. Not always, I don’t mean. Just sometimes, that’s all …”
I rubbed my hands quite briskly on the tea towel: it was one of a bale, a bundle of six that I’d got on Saturday from Marion’s. Only three-and-eleven, you know, which I really did consider to be most terribly reasonable. Each a different colored check. This one was orange. I surreptitiously dabbed at my eyes with it.
“Well look, Paul—we’ve got a good five minutes till you’ve got to go off to school. Till you go to pick up Anthony, yes …? So why don’t we go next door and have a jolly good chat about it all. Hm? Yes? Good idea?”
“Oh gosh—it’s nothing really. I don’t really mind. I didn’t want to make something big out of it, or anything. I’m only just saying, really, because you asked me …”
“Well, Paul … it is true that … well, your Auntie Milly has had a little bit on her mind, just lately. One or two things I’ve just had
to think about. But it was very boring grown-up sort of stuff, you know, and now it’s all over and done with. So from now on—I promise you: it’ll be back to the way it was in the old days. Yes? How about that? And from now on you can ask me anything you like, and I’ll close my eyes and stroke my beard and listen very very very closely, and then I’ll give you the proper answer. Silly Auntie Milly. Haven’t I been? Oh yes—and I’ll try very hard not to look at you ‘funny’ any more. All right? Happy now? Everything all right again?”
He nodded, Paul, though quite agonizingly slowly. And then he looked at me sidelong—his eyes still creased into a sort of confusion.
“Yes. Okay. It’s just that … well, Auntie Milly … I just thought that maybe, I don’t know—that maybe you just didn’t love me any more …”
Never mind what I was feeling. Never mind any of that—everything I was going through, just you push, shove, jostle and shoulder all of that to the side, force it to buckle, and get it down on to its knees. Kick and stamp on it—smother it without mercy: leave it no chance to draw breath. I flung open my arms and simply called out to him. I was empty, and whooping with need.
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