The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

by Margaret Forster

  In the afternoon, she took Amy out. They passed the Pens’ house but there was no indication either that they had gone or were still there. All the way to the park and back Alice was distracted by the thought that one or other of the Pens might have collapsed. Another of Stanley’s attacks, she decided, would be preferable to it being a case of Rose simply having cold feet. Perhaps the calm of the last few weeks had all been a subterfuge, perhaps her contentment had only been a pretence and underneath fear had all the time been preparing to pull her in and down. Alice thought about the consequences if this were so and felt sick. Her face assumed a drawn, grey look that made acquaintances think she must be ill or moping after her miscarriage and, without realizing it, she was shunned by several.

  Tony came home to find her wandering about the house unable to settle to anything. He was hardly through the door before she was saying, ‘I’m sure something dreadful has happened.’

  ‘Rubbish. Their light was on when I came in.’

  ‘Was it? Which light?’

  ‘The lamp they have in the front room on top of their telly.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure – go and look for yourself.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to.’

  ‘Then stop worrying. They’ll come and tell you eventually and if they don’t I can’t see it matters. It’s none of your business.’

  But neither Mr nor Mrs Pendlebury did come. Alice found herself standing in her own hall clutching their key several times a day. From being an ordinary dull brass Yale key with a bit of string tied round it the object became as menacing as a weapon. If she wasn’t going to use it she must return it and there was no way of returning it without facing Mrs P. She couldn’t just put it through the letter-box as the cool Charlotte advised – it would be sacrilege. She became convinced the Pens were waiting and watching for her, and her head was full of scenes in which they accused her of fraud. The scenes turned into nightmares and she woke twice in a state of sweating terror that roused Tony to a stiff and unsympathetic anger.

  ‘I’m returning the key myself tomorrow,’ he said, after the second occurrence.

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘I can. You’re working yourself into a panic over nothing. We’ve been through all this before.’

  ‘But you –’

  ‘I don’t want to discuss it. Good night.’

  She waited, terrified, for him to come back. He was very quick. When he came in again, looking for his car coat to go to work, he was brisk and cheerful.

  ‘Mission accomplished,’ he said. She looked at him appealingly. ‘All right, a blow-by-blow account. I walked up the front path, rang the bell and waited. After a couple of minutes Stanley opened the door and I said hello Mr Pendlebury how are you everything all right I hope and he said yes thanks and I said we thought we’d better return your key as you didn’t seem to have gone off and he said yes thanks we had a cancellation my daughter-in-law’s ill. Oh, said, I, what a pity, yes he said but that’s life I expect we’ll go in the spring instead and I said might be a better time to go even if it is a disappointment now and he said that’s what I say and I said well I must get off to work be seeing you and that was that.’

  ‘How did he look?’

  ‘Like he always looks – no collar, sleeves rolled up, old suit waistcoat –’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Like Stanley – dozy. He never changes his expression anyway, not that I’ve ever seen. He was in a hurry, for him – dying to get back either to the lav or English lessons for Pakistanis on telly.’

  ‘Did he say how Mrs P. was taking it?’

  ‘He said exactly what I’ve just told you he said – no more, no less.’

  ‘It must have been literally at the last minute – can you imagine –’

  ‘No. You can keep your imagination to yourself and divide by two.’

  ‘Imagination?’ Alice said, and stood still in the hall while he left for work. He kissed her but she hardly felt the kiss. Imagination didn’t come into it. She knew for a fact that Rose Pendlebury would be going through the tortures of the damned – and let Tony condemn that for a high-flown phrase if he liked. Mrs P. might well be damned. The disappointment, quickly followed by retribution as it surely would be, could only weaken the last strands that had kept her believing in the human race at all, strands of hope, strands of anticipation, binding her to other people. They were so very thin and fragile anyway, so easily severed, leaving her bitter and betrayed, feeling she had tried but that it was hardly worth while. And Alice found she cared more than she would have admitted before this happened – Mrs P. must not cast herself off. It mattered that she should feel wanted and cherished. She could not, as Stanley would say, be left to stew in her own juice.

  Wednesday came and went and no Mrs P. Alice had hardly expected there would be. She was ready to go next door before it was past eleven, before it was decently certain that Mrs P. would not be coming. She didn’t expect, either, that Mrs P. would open the door and was ready for Stanley.

  ‘Hello. Is Mrs Pendlebury all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ Stanley said, ‘but come in, she’d like to see you.’

  Alice was sure she heard a scuffle and even a cry of some kind from the back room at the end of the passage down which she followed Stanley.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she’s all right. A bit disappointed, of course, but she’ll get over it. It was a bit of a shock.’

  ‘I should just think it was. It must have been literally at the last minute.’

  ‘Yes, yes it was. We didn’t hear the phone – Frank phoned you know – and we didn’t hear the telegram boy. Of course, that upset my wife, not hearing them, that upset her as much as anything. Now where is she?’

  They were in the back room and it was empty. Stanley looked amazed. He shuffled into the kitchen and called, ‘Rose?’ but even Alice from where she was could see there was nobody in the tiny room.

  ‘She was here a minute ago,’ he said, ‘where can she have got to? She must be in the garden.’

  ‘Never mind,’ Alice said, ‘I only came to say how sorry I was about Australia. I’ll pop in another time.’

  ‘No, you stay there,’ Stanley said. ‘I know she’d like to see you. I’ll just look in the garden.’

  He found her in the garage, sitting in the old car, crouching down on the back seat.

  ‘Whatever are you doing?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere, calling your name and everything. I’ve got a visitor for you.’

  ‘Then get rid of her.’

  ‘It’s young Alice, come to see how you are.’

  ‘Get rid of her. Go on – get rid of her. It’s your doing, you can get out of it.’

  ‘But she’s come to –’

  ‘I know why she’s come and I don’t want to see her, I don’t want to see nobody.’

  ‘Don’t be silly –’

  ‘Don’t you call me silly, I’m not silly, I’ve got all my wits about me, you needn’t worry about that.’

  ‘It isn’t polite just to send her away. What’s she done to deserve that?’

  ‘She knows.’

  ‘I don’t know what bee you’ve got in your bonnet now but –’

  ‘You get rid of her.’

  ‘But what am I to tell her?’

  ‘Tell her what you like for all I care.’

  Stanley stood and scratched his head, but refused to move. He couldn’t see his wife’s face very clearly in the half-light of the garage, but her voice was one he knew well enough, one half-way between hysteria and rage that told him more than any arrangement of her features. She wasn’t to be trifled with, not in that mood. Best leave her alone, to get over whatever it was by herself. He went out into the garden and slowly retraced his steps down the path. He could see Alice standing obediently by the window. She was a nice girl, he wouldn’t want to see her feelings hurt. He would have to invent a story though he wasn’t good at that kind of thing. Wh
at should he say? What the devil could he say? He cleared his throat in preparation for a good deal of mumbling, but Alice saved him the bother and he blessed her for it.

  ‘She’s busy unpacking all the garden tools, I suppose,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Well, I won’t interrupt. I must get back anyway – I’ve left Amy asleep.’

  ‘It was very nice of you to call. I expect my wife will come round shortly.’

  ‘You tell her to come in any time.’

  They both smiled.

  ‘You’re quite sure she’s – all right?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Well,’ Stanley hesitated, ‘she’s a bit low, in the circumstances.’

  ‘Couldn’t you go away to cheer her up? I mean, without being interfering, perhaps a little break by the sea would take her mind off things.’

  ‘You might be right there.’

  ‘I mean, with winter coming on – Mrs Pendlebury doesn’t like winter, does she, and if she’s depressed anyway –’

  ‘Oh, she’ll snap out of it before winter don’t you worry.’

  ‘But I do worry. I don’t like to see her unhappy. We all think the world of her.’

  Alice stopped, embarrassed by her own gushing words that were the only ones she felt might make an impression on Stanley. He said it was very nice of her but she could tell nothing had penetrated his thick layer of complacency. He showed her out, smiling and making remarks about the weather while in the garden she knew his wife was hiding.

  But Stanley was slightly alarmed and by no means as impassive as Alice had thought. He watched from the back window to see Rose come out of the garage. She took her time about it, and when she did she had a ridiculous old straw hat pulled down over her face. She meandered between the bushes, pulling at things, sometimes literally going in circles. If only she’d had a good cry when it had happened. He’d known at the time that was what she’d needed, but instead she’d laughed and said things like, ‘I knew it,’ and been loud and raucous in everything she did afterwards. She’d tipped the whole of their cases out into a heap on the floor – just ripped them open and up-ended the whole lot and shouted, ‘Waste of time that was!’ He’d been furious, absolutely furious, not prepared to make any kind of allowances for that kind of behaviour. The mess was appalling. She made no attempt to clear it up, just kept walking round it like somebody skirting a bonfire and she had indeed actually suggested burning everything. He sweated at the memory of it. There had been something wild about her all that long awful day, something unrestrained and vicious.

  It had all settled down, of course. The next day she was quiet and moody. She said she didn’t want to talk about it and he had respected her wishes. Naturally, she wouldn’t talk to Frank when he rang again, and he’d had to deal with that himself. Frank was worried to death. Veronica, it seemed, had broken her leg in two places and fractured an arm and heaven knows what. She’d fallen from a ladder painting the outside windows for them coming. Frank kept saying she was just like mother, wouldn’t wait till I got home, had to have it done. Stanley reassured him. It didn’t matter the trip being postponed, they quite understood, and of course Frank had done the right thing no doubt about that, no point at all in them coming if Veronica was out of action.

  Stanley was exhausted after that telephone marathon. He felt aggrieved that Rose didn’t appreciate what he’d saved her. ‘That was Frank,’ he said, needlessly. ‘It seems Veronica fell –’

  ‘I don’t want to hear. Don’t mention her name.’

  ‘Well that’s very nice I must say. Your only daughter-in-law has a serious fall and you don’t want to hear about the accident or –’

  ‘It wasn’t any accident.’

  ‘How wasn’t it? Did she break her leg and arm deliberately then? Eh?’

  ‘I don’t know what she did.’

  ‘I’ve just told you – she fell off –’

  ‘You don’t know either.’

  ‘Frank just told me, she fell off a ladder painting the outside windows for us coming.’

  ‘So she says.’

  ‘Frank said. Are you calling Frank a liar?’

  ‘I never said nothing about Frank – it’s her, I don’t want to know.’

  ‘I think you should see sense.’

  ‘I can see what I want to see thank you very much and that’s quite enough.’

  There had been no moving her. He didn’t dare wonder what terrible thoughts she was harbouring. It was better to look the other way till her own common sense put her right. Nobody could help her, it would all take time. He felt sorry for himself having to put up with it and almost wished he could have another ‘do’ and get himself carted off to hospital for a few weeks. What did he have to look forward to here? Rose moaning, taking it out on him. Strikes any minute, seeing nobody, only the Club for escape and her resenting him going so much that it was almost more trouble than it was worth. What a life.

  She came in at last.

  ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself,’ he said.

  She didn’t reply, just pulled the dirty old straw hat farther down on her head. ‘I’m going down to the Club this afternoon,’ he said, ‘get my name down for the functions as I told them to take it off. Do you want the news on?’

  ‘It isn’t time for the news, nothing like time. Why don’t you think before you speak?’

  ‘I speak anyway, more than you’ve been doing – been like living with a dummy this last week.’

  ‘If you’ve any objections you know what to do.’

  ‘Do I? What then?’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘Don’t talk silly. This is my house.’

  ‘It’s come to that, has it? My this my that. Oh well, it’s better to know where I stand. I’ll get out myself. When do you want me to go?’

  Stanley was so irritated he was at a complete loss. He groaned and slapped the window sill with his hand and then laughed and said she was the limit.

  ‘What a carry on,’ he said finally. ‘I think we both want our heads felt. What a to-do.’

  Rose refused to laugh with him. She looked at him with hatred and cursed him for his attitude of acceptance. She’d wanted him to flare up and carry it a stage further, she’d wanted to be out on the street with her apron and straw hat and then she’d just wander like a tramp. How dare he mock her anger and misery by being reasonable, by ridiculing it. To show him how she felt she picked up the vase from the table and threw it to the floor and then left him staring in that stupid way at the pile of wet crystal and the puddle on the carpet and the yellow chrysanthemums splayed out everywhere. He could think about that down at his precious club.

  Chapter Eighteen

  BETWEEN OCTOBER AND Christmas, Alice saw Mrs P. only twice – once she met her head on in the street and had five minutes’ desultory chat before a heavy shower of rain sent them both scurrying on, and once over the garden wall when they were both burning leaves towards the end of November. That was the most disturbing of the two encounters. Amy saw Pen first, standing as she was on the garden table looking over the wall. Mrs P. greeted her shout happily enough, and came to the wall with her rake still in her hands, but when Alice came too she at once became busy again and replied to pleasantries in monosyllables. Amy, of course, began asking if she could go over but Mrs P. didn’t offer and Alice had to say Mrs P. was busy, wait till another day. They both went on working in the garden for another half-hour, Alice feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

  As New Year approached, and with it Amy’s third birthday, Alice felt an effort must be made. She and Amy made a splendid invitation asking the Pens to come to the birthday party. It was a giant card, covered in tinfoil and tissue paper, leaking glue everywhere, proudly special and homemade. They took it next door together and when no one answered the bell left it propped up against the milk bottles where it couldn’t be missed. No reply came, but on the morning of Amy’s birthday Stanley came in looking more dishevelled than Alice had ever seen him and s
aid could Amy come in to see Mrs Pendlebury for her present. Amy was out of the door shrieking with excitement before Alice could ask if she could come too. Stanley trailed after her saying he would bring her back. They were gone a bare five minutes and then Amy was hammering at the door wanting to show off the big box of sticklebricks she’d been given.

  ‘I hope you said thank you, Amy,’ Alice said. Stanley had disappeared.

  ‘Yes I did. I said thank you for having me.’

  ‘Did Mrs Pen give you the bricks?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Alice wanted to ask so many things and gazed at her small daughter helplessly. She couldn’t subject a three-year-old to an inquisition, however badly she wanted the information.

  ‘Was Pen all right?’ she asked, feebly.

  ‘She was in her bed.’

  ‘Really? Upstairs? Did you go upstairs?’

  ‘Mm. Up twenty stairs.’ Amy counted them as conclusive proof. ‘Pen was in her bed in a blue nightie like your blue nightie with the strings on.’

  ‘Ribbons.’

  ‘Ribbons on.’

  ‘What did Pen say?’

  ‘Happy Birthday aren’t you a big girl are you having a party what did you get for your birthday isn’t that nice.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Thank you for having me I got a bike.’

  ‘Did you ask if she was coming to your party?’

  ‘No. But I saw my card I made.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Pen had it.’

  ‘In bed?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  A little ashamed of her eagerness, Alice let it drop. At the party that afternoon lots of people asked about the Pendleburys, remembering the year before. Some had seen her in the street and said how ill she looked, others had seen her at the window and had waved but she had not waved back. Alice tried to explain to the genuinely interested – among whom Charlotte was not one – what had happened, but she only had to embark on this explanation to find it impossible to continue. Nothing, after all, had happened. The Pendleburys hadn’t gone to Australia, that was all, wasn’t it? She couldn’t expect anyone, on that basis, to feel as she did. One or two expressed sympathy with the old couple, Penny Stewart even going so far as to say the anticlimax must have been awful for them, but Alice was left afterwards feeling the Pendleburys, even to those who knew them, were unimportant, not to say invisible.