The Thursday Friend

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Under those circumstances, I think it would have been in order, girl.’

  Janie’s voice was low now as she said, ‘If he’s not married, jump at him; but if he is, and has a little wife around the corner, forget him, because you don’t want to break up a family with a divorce.’

  ‘Oh, I never would; and anyway I know that Humphrey wouldn’t divorce me under any circumstances.’

  ‘Has he said so?’

  She looked at Eddie. ‘Not openly,’ she said; ‘but he’s very much against divorce, as are his aunt and uncle. I was in a conversation there once – well, I was a listener – when they were talking about it. Mrs Philippa Drayton gave her opinion that it was a pity that some marriages couldn’t be dissolved. At the time she wasn’t looking at me, but I knew what she was thinking. The gist of that conversation was that, next to murder, divorce was the greatest sin anyone could commit. God had joined two people together and only God could release them. So, apart from everything else, if ever Humphrey tried to divorce me he’d be cut off without a penny, and Humphrey’s no fool. So you can see’ – she looked from one to the other – ‘there would be no talk of divorce in our little household, even if I were to sin grievously.’

  ‘But what do you think? Is it wrong to think along the lines of “what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve over”? I know you both think he’s prissy, but I wouldn’t want to hurt him. He’s always been very kind and understanding towards me – or so he told me last night.’

  ‘He said that?’ came from both Eddie and Janie almost simultaneously; and she looked from one to the other as, in his defence, she answered, ‘Yes, but it was in reply to something I’d said, and for the first time that I can remember in our married life I had actually turned on him and told him what I thought.’

  Now leaning towards Hannah, Janie said, ‘About the other thing, the main business, was that it?’

  ‘In a way, yes.’

  ‘And what was his answer to that?’

  Hannah lowered her head as she said, ‘He didn’t consider it the main thing in marriage.’

  ‘Oh, hell’s bells!’ Eddie had swung his feet up on to the couch again and lay back. ‘That really makes me sick. Look. Get to know how this other bloke stands – if he’s married or not; then, if he’s married and living with his wife, finish it; but if he’s married and separated, and make sure it is a separation, then go ahead and live your life on the side.’

  ‘Yes, once a week on a Thursday night.’

  Hannah’s voice had a dull sound and the futility in it caused Janie to cry at her, ‘There’re the weekends, aren’t there? And he takes long ones, so you say. And you come here most Sundays, so, knowing the way things are, we could stand in for you if anything should transpire and he had to phone you here. Anyway, I can’t see that there’s much further you can go until you find out the lines his life runs on, so get yourself to that restaurant tomorrow and take it from there.’

  And at this Eddie, aiming to grin, said, ‘And we’ll be sitting here on tenterhooks, waiting to know the rest of the serial. So you either come pell-mell here on Sunday, or phone us. Understand?’

  It was an hour later when Hannah rose to leave; and again Janie walked her to the door, and there, putting her arms around her, she said, ‘If he’s at all free, go ahead, girl, the whole hog. It’ll act as a lifesaver for you; you’ll blossom again. But, then, I can see by your face you’ve already started.’

  ‘Oh, Janie. I’m all het up inside. I . . . I can’t bear the thought that after tomorrow I may not see him again; and all this to have happened since yesterday morning.’

  ‘Oh, sis! That’s the way it happens, whether he be barrow boy or baron. Don’t I know!’

  Chapter Four

  She was fifteen minutes late. As she approached the restaurant she could see him standing on the pavement looking this way and that. When she reached his side she said, ‘Hello! I’m sorry I’m late. There was some kind of hold-up on the tube.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, that’s all right. You’re here now.’

  ‘I don’t know what was going on; it was chaos.’

  He had taken her arm now and was leading her through the restaurant to a far corner where a table was set for two. A card on it read ‘Reserved’. The table also had the advantage of being more than half screened from the rest of the diners by a panel to the side of a flight of shallow steps leading into the basement.

  As they seated themselves, he said, ‘I phoned Micky this morning. He’s not here today, he’s out on business’ – he made a slight moue with his lips – ‘but he reserved this table for us. Wasn’t that good of him?’

  When she didn’t answer but simply sat staring at him across the small space he said quietly, ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have come,’ she said; ‘I shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Why? You’re having lunch with a friend, what harm is there in that?’

  ‘My husband wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘Do you like the fact he spends every weekend with his people?’

  ‘I didn’t like it at first, but now—’ she almost said, I’m glad he does, but instead finished, ‘it gives me time to myself.’

  ‘My next question should be, why do you feel you need time to yourself? But I’ll leave it till after we’ve eaten. That’ll be one of the many questions I want to ask you. Anyway—’ His voice changing, he picked up the plainly typed menu from the table and glancing down at it said, ‘There’s a variety, but it all depends on your taste. They’re noted for their bangers and mash and their mutton stew and dumplings here. These head the list, especially on a Saturday. Then there’s bacon-and-egg pie and stuffed tomatoes, or perhaps lamb chops with savoury rice, mushrooms and peppers.’

  She was smiling at him now as she asked, ‘What do you recommend?’

  ‘I like the stew: it’s very, very tasty, but it’s filling; you want a long rest after it. You know the kind? The bangers and mash are very nice; and they’re not just bangers and mash: nice little strips of bacon, button mushrooms, onion rings and bits like that.’

  ‘I’ll have bangers and mash plus, please.’

  ‘Good choice. I’ll have the same.’ He beckoned the waiter, and when the man came to the table he said, ‘Two bangers, Dick, please.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Two bangers it is.’

  ‘Do you often eat here?’ Hannah now asked David.

  ‘No; not all that often. I have a very good cook of my own . . . Peter. He’s my jack of all trades, my . . . friend.’

  She knew he had been about to say ‘my man’, and this puzzled her. Manservants were a thing of the past. He had said he was going to ask her a lot of questions . . . well, she, too, would have a lot to ask . . .

  The very tasty bangers and mash was followed by ice cream and coffee. Throughout, they chatted in a relaxed way, as if they had known each other for years. Things were going so well that Hannah dreaded asking him the questions that she knew might seal the end of their friendship. When, three-quarters of an hour later, they left the restaurant David had a quiet altercation with the waiter, who apparently had had his instructions with regards to the bill. ‘If we are going to go there very often I’ll have to take Micky to account,’ he said. ‘He embarrasses me. Now,’ and he drew in a long breath, ‘where would you like to go? To a matinée, for a walk or on a trip up the river?’

  ‘Oh, a trip up the river. That would be wonderful. I’ve often seen people on the boats, but I’ve never done it.’

  So they had a trip up the river. They boarded the boat near Tower Bridge, and on the journey he pointed out places of interest she hadn’t known existed.

  After they had returned, they walked to a park and, espying a vacant seat, they quickly took possession of it; as they sat down he laughed a
nd said, ‘Would you like to make a bet that within fifteen minutes a down-and-out will come and sit at that end? He’ll get his paper out as if he were going to make himself comfortable for a snooze; he’ll look at me, and then depending on whether or not I’m wise, I’ll press something into his hand and gratefully watch him move on to some other bench and some other likely victim.’

  She turned a slanted glance towards him as she asked, ‘How d’you know all this? Have you experienced it often?’

  He leant towards her, saying softly, ‘No, madam; I haven’t experienced it often, I haven’t experienced it at all, but I’ve seen it happening. I often walk in parks, it’s my only form of exercise. I breathe in deeply, then puff out all the bookworms I’ve swallowed during the day.’

  She smiled now, and he, still staring at her, said, ‘Your face alters so much when you smile; your eyes are so bright. You look happy when you smile. Are you happy? I . . . I mean, when you’re not smiling?’

  She turned from him and gazed across an open patch of sunburnt grass to where some children were chasing each other amid high screeches, and she said, ‘I never know what people mean when they say they’re happy.’

  ‘Well’ – he pointed now – ‘you’re watching happiness personified: those children are jumping for joy; they’re feeling the exhilaration of the chase and being chased; their minds are not looking backwards or forwards. At the moment they are expressing that phrase from Childe Harold: “Let joy be unconfined”.’

  Then she said, ‘You can’t judge happiness by children; as yet they haven’t lived.’

  They were half turned towards each other and staring questioningly into each other’s eyes, when she startled him by asking, ‘Are you married?’

  She watched his shoulders hunch slightly before he answered: ‘Yes; yes, I am married. I’ve been married for fourteen years, and separated for ten of them. Does that ease your mind?’

  She nodded once, then said, ‘Yes. Yes, it does.’

  ‘If I had said that I had a wife and a family, well, what then?’

  ‘I would have stood up and walked away.’

  ‘You would? Without listening to any explanation I might be able to give you concerning them?’

  ‘Yes, just that.’

  ‘Then why, if you feel as strongly as that about married men with responsibilities, why did you come?’

  ‘I don’t know. Yes, I do. I thought . . . well, you were alone on Thursday night and you’re alone today, so perhaps you weren’t married. Then I thought, well, maybe you had free Thursdays and weekends, like I do . . . But I am married . . . Oh dear.’

  She turned from him and slipped her hands once more between her knees. Then when her body made a slight rocking movement his arm went around her shoulder and, softly, he said, ‘Oh, my dear, don’t distress yourself, please. I’m not in any way tied to my wife. We’re legally separated and I’ve barely seen her during the past ten years; nor do I have any desire to. It’s you who has the stumbling block. As you say, you have a husband, and you’re feeling very guilty about Thursday and today, aren’t you?’

  Her throat was full: she couldn’t answer and when her head drooped further, he said, ‘If you want my opinion, a man who could leave a woman like you on her own, weekend after weekend, doesn’t deserve to have her at all, and to my mind if he had been any kind of a man he would have brought you himself to that concert and said to blazes with bridge for one night. Is it the same every Thursday?’

  Before looking at him again she said, ‘I . . . I’m sorry. I’ve spoilt what was going to be a . . . well, I will say it’ – now her head went up – ‘a beautiful day. I’ve been looking forward to it.’

  ‘Well, it can still be a beautiful day.’ He had now taken her hand and was patting it. ‘And tomorrow, too, can be a beautiful day.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, but I do.’

  ‘I . . . I generally go to my sister’s for Sunday lunch. Oh, and by the way’ – her smile was wide now – ‘a strange thing happened. My brother-in-law, who is also a Cockney, like your Micky, used to have a stall in the market, and he knew Micky. We used to buy our fruit from Eddie. That’s how Janie got to know him; and you know what?’ She was still smiling. ‘One day she bounced into the dining room – I was only sixteen at the time, but it seems just like yesterday – she bounced in and said, “Listen! I’m going to marry Eddie Harper. Well, I’m going to live with him at first, in his flat above the fruit shop – he’s no longer a barrow boy, he’s got a fruit shop.” And to my father she turned and said, “If you try to bring me back . . . I’m twenty, but if you try to bring me back, I’ll come, but I’ll be pregnant. Just you think on that.” And then my mother felt flat on her face in a real Victorian faint.’

  He was laughing now, as she was too, and she went on, ‘Janie’d been brought up in a convent school. We both had. She left when she was seventeen, but you wouldn’t recognise the convent in her were you to meet her now. But . . . but she’s a lovely girl; and he’s fine too, great fun. But what I want to tell you is this . . . I visited them yesterday and told them what had happened.’

  He stopped her here, saying in surprise, ‘You told about us and our little night out?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did. Well’ – the smile went slowly from her face – ‘she’s the only one I can talk to. I’ve no-one else to turn to, and lately I’ve . . . well, I’ve been troubled, very lonely.’ She looked down and repeated, ‘Yes, lonely. And . . . and yesterday Eddie was there. He’d just had a tooth out and I wouldn’t have said anything in front of him, but Janie, in her own forthright way, said, “Oh, I told him about Humph.” That’s what they call my husband; his name is Humphrey. It annoys him; so we don’t meet often, you know, as a family, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, yes; go on. So you told them?’

  ‘Yes, and I said it had been great fun. And I described your friend Micky, and when I mentioned the name McClean, Eddie bounced from the couch. Apparently he and your friend had been brought up together, and he gave me a vivid description of what that meant in the poorest quarter of London. When Eddie and his father had the business in the big market they used to supply Micky,’ and she bounced her head towards him now as she emphasised the name, ‘with vegetables,’ and, adding a fair imitation of Eddie’s voice, ‘“all first-class stuff, mind, no bruised fruit”.’

  David laughed again as he said, ‘What a coincidence! And your brother-in-law sounds another Micky to the tee.’

  ‘Oh, yes; just the same, and I’d love to hear them together.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to take them down there for a meal one night.’

  Again the smile slipped from her face. ‘I don’t think Humphrey . . . ’

  ‘Look here!’ He took hold of both her hands and, shaking them gently up and down, said, ‘I’ve never met your Humphrey and I have no inclination to do so but I’m going to ask you this: Are you afraid of him?’

  ‘Afraid of Humphrey?’ She jerked her head and made an attempt to withdraw her hands from his before she said again, ‘Afraid of Humphrey? No, no! No, no! Only I . . . well, to be honest, I’m afraid of hurting him, if I can put it like that. He’s so kind and thoughtful and I’d never want to hurt him. He’s the kind of person you . . . you shouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘No matter how he’s hurting you?’

  She did take her hands from his now, and when she went to clasp them once more between her knees he stopped her, saying, ‘Don’t do that. It tells me you’re worried. Look. You seem to be able to trust your sister and your brother-in-law, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Yes. I could tell them anything and it wouldn’t go any further.’

  ‘And you went there yesterday and asked them what you should do, didn’t you?’

  Unsmiling now, she looked into his face and said, ‘You’re very astute, aren’t
you?’

  ‘No, not really in this case. But in the short time I’ve known you, which, when I come to think of it, seems a very, very long time, I have come somehow to gauge your feelings by the tone of your voice when speaking of people.’

  ‘Huh!’ She gave a slight shrug of her shoulders. ‘You’re like Janie: she says I’m like a mirror.’ She did not add, ‘My husband says that my thoughts are so patent as to be almost childlike.’ He had said this to her on many different occasions, and she had promised herself, of late, especially when he was criticising her writing, that she would surprise him one day with her response. But at the same time she had warned herself not to, for her apparent simplicity acted as a kind of shield behind which she could hide.

  David said, and his tone now sounded businesslike, ‘I’ll come out into the open. I would like to be friends with you, but only to the extent that you wish to be friends with me. You have this fear of hurting your husband, which I think is very commendable of you; yet you’re far from satisfied with your way of life. I didn’t need any mirror to be made aware of that. On Thursday, at Micky’s, you were like a child let out from a hated boarding school.’

  ‘Oh.’ She turned from him, saying tersely, ‘Please don’t keep referring to me as a child. I hear enough of that. I’m twenty-nine years old and I’m no child.’

  ‘I’m sorry. That’ll be the last time I’ll use that phrase to you. But I wouldn’t have said you were twenty-nine: twenty-two, -three, -four . . . ’ This made her turn to look at him again, while saying, ‘You’re being extremely kind.’

  ‘I am not being extremely kind.’ His voice was so loud that they both turned and looked from one side to the other. Then he was laughing as he said, ‘Don’t worry. If they heard, they’d think we were a married couple having a row, Hannah . . . and I’m going to call you Hannah. So, would you like to be friends with me, and I mean on whatever terms you care to lay down? Once a week, on bridge night, or more, if possible?’