The Seduction of Mrs Pendlebury

by Margaret Forster

  ‘Are you going back now?’ she asked him. One thing about Stanley, there was no suggestion of violence about him.

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly.

  ‘I’ll walk with you,’ she said. They both walked back down the street, Stanley pretending to be absorbed in the back page of his newspaper.

  ‘Mr Pendlebury,’ Alice said very quietly, ‘If you don’t promise to at least consult your doctor then I will.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ There was no mistaking the fact that slow though he was that had gone in straight away.

  ‘I’m going to telephone Dr Thompson and explain and ask his advice.’

  ‘Don’t you dare.’

  ‘I do dare. Mrs Pendlebury’s health is more important than offending you.’

  ‘Now look here, young lady,’ said Stanley, brandishing his newspaper, ‘I’ve said you mean well and no doubt you do, but there are some things I won’t stand for and that’s one of them. I don’t want to be rude but you mind your own business, that’s all. That’s all – just leave my wife to me. I’ll look after her. If a doctor’s necessary, he’ll be called. Now then.’

  ‘But he’s necessary now.’

  ‘Not in my opinion and I should know. I’ve lived with my wife fifty years and I should know.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘No harm done.’

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, Alice trailing her empty bag against the railings. When they got to her gate she said again, ‘I’m sorry. Mrs Pendlebury was going to come and see Amy. Could you ask her if today would be convenient, about four?’

  ‘I don’t think she can manage today.’

  ‘Tomorrow then?’

  ‘I think it would be better if we left it a while.’

  So they did. Alice went inside more miserable than she’d gone out, and Stanley continued on his way. Nobody would guess how upset he was. It was lucky the army had taught him how to handle himself in a tough spot or he might have given himself away. The game was up. He ought to have realized that young couple would tumble to what was going on, he ought to have realized and forestalled them. He could have popped in and prepared the way with some story then they would have thought nothing of it. Now, they were suspicious. That talk of calling a doctor in had scared him stiff. A doctor only had to arrive when Rose was having one of her little turns and Bob’s your uncle. Of course, if he came when she wasn’t having a turn the laugh would be on them. She’d pass A1 then, no mistake. It was lucky the girl was soft when it came to the bit – he could see he’d impressed her. She wouldn’t call any doctor. But nevertheless, now that the risk was so great, he must be prepared. Rose must be kept under observation night and day.

  She was quiet enough the rest of March, and then the power cuts stopped and that helped and in April they had a week of lovely spring weather and he got her out as much as possible. She didn’t want to go out but he insisted, practically dressed her himself and pushed her out. They didn’t go far, just to the park and a couple of times to the Heath. He kept her away from crowds and noise. They sat and looked at the trees and flowers and she liked that. She was very white and seemed fatter than before which was funny because she hardly ate at all, just sat at meal times playing about with her food in the very way she had always hated other people doing. When he asked her if she felt all right, she said she had headaches and he advised aspirin and she took them quite obediently, two each morning, two after lunch, two at bedtime.

  When the question of Australia came up at Easter he wasn’t too worried when she wouldn’t entertain the idea of going. Frank wrote and phoned and it was all very embarrassing. She wouldn’t speak to him, just said she wasn’t feeling up to it yet. Frank said perhaps in the autumn and, when Stanley asked her, she said perhaps, with no conviction at all. It would all have been a lot of bother anyhow, he had always said that, a lot of upheaval and fuss, when the thing to do was keep her quiet. There was no doubt in his mind that that was the best treatment. He realized with pleasure at the beginning of May that Rose hadn’t had a turn for six weeks. He thought back to check that – perfectly correct. No turns, no tempers. She’d done one or two funny things but nothing too drastic, nothing that couldn’t be justified if he tried hard enough. Burning all Frank’s old letters, for example, was strange. She’d always treasured them, then one day she filled three carrier bags with them and took them into the garden and had a bonfire. When asked why, she said they were gathering a lot of dust. Well, that was reasonable enough. What good were old letters when you came to think about it? Then she called a rag and bone man into the house one morning – hauled him in off the street – and got him to take away several objects that were perfectly good. It was only afterwards that it dawned on him they were all the presents Alice had ever given her. When he tackled her on this she said she’d gone off useless ornaments. Odd, but not outrageous. She’d always had whims, it was just they were getting stronger.

  In June, the Club had its annual outing, a day out by coach to Margate. Stanley had always gone, always enjoyed it and looked forward to it. There was nothing he wanted more than to go this year. He’d put his name down way back in January – no harm in that – and kept it there even when he knew he couldn’t go. When it came to June 1st, and they all had to confirm, he dithered and dothered and finally left his name there.

  Still no harm, still not committing himself. But he wouldn’t go, not unless Rose would go with him. He genuinely thought she might, since she’d gone on small trips with him without objecting, but at the very mention of a Club outing she turned stubborn. No, she would not go, no use asking. He could go on his own, she was perfectly all right. With her saying that, he thought about it. She was all right. He’d left her for an hour the last few Tuesdays and she’d been quite all right. Gradually, he convinced himself a day out would be in order, but worry still niggled away – and then he had an inspiration. If he tipped Elsie a wink she’d drop in that day, all casual-like, he was sure she would. Rose need know nothing about it, she could just turn up and that would be him covered. No explanations beyond the most perfunctory would be necessary. All he need say was that, as they hadn’t seen each other for ages, how about coming over to see Rose when he was away for the day. He could say she was a bit low and would like a surprise. Elsie was quick on the uptake, she would get the message.

  June 8th was the day, a Wednesday. All the omens were good. It was a bright, clear day, not too hot, the sort Rose liked. She was up before him and when he woke and heard her singing an almighty sense of relief went right through him down to his toes. She was as cheerful as anything and the minute he saw her in the kitchen turning her cupboards out he knew he need have no worries. Cupboards took all day – she’d still be engrossed when Elsie came about two o’clock. She even snapped at him and told him to get his clumsy hands out of that drawer when he was looking for his plastic mac and that was the best sign there could be. She’d been very, very quiet for far too long, very amenable and placid, pleasant enough at first but ultimately disturbing. But now he could see all was truly well and he left for his outing in excellent spirits. He gave her a peck on the cheek and told her to be good and he might bring her a Duncan’s Walnut Whirl back, and she laughed and pushed him away and off he went. He was going to have a marvellous day. It would be unforgettable.

  Rose listened. He’d gone. She went up the stairs and looked out of the window. He had gone. She waited. He didn’t come back. He’d gone, she was quite alone. She laughed and had to stuff a handkerchief in her mouth to stop herself. Silly old man.

  Nimbly she went back downstairs, two steps at a time, thudding all the way, not even holding on to the banister. She was excited, she knew that. Her hands were hot and a vein throbbed in her head. She remembered jumping downstairs at home and getting the belt for waking her dad. No belt now. She could do what she liked, nobody could stop her.

  In the kitchen, she slammed the cupboard doors shut. That had taken him in. She’d no intention of doing the
cupboards. No, today she had some scores to settle, while Stanley was away.

  Alice intended to spend the whole day in the garden. Amy was at nursery school and then having lunch and spending the afternoon with a friend. She had nothing at all to do except sunbathe.

  It was only eleven o’clock but the sun was already hot. She had one of those wickerwork sun-chairs, loaded with soft cushions, positioned under the apple tree so that her head was in the shade but her body in the sun. The sun on her face gave her a headache and her face came out in funny blotches. They said, at the antenatal clinic, that this was quite normal in pregnancy but they bothered her and she didn’t like to feel they were in any way her own fault. She was otherwise very happy to be pregnant again. Everything had gone as it should and she found herself unworried about the last four months, somehow just knowing it would be all right this time. They’d said not to upset herself, to take things very easily in every way and she intended to. Now that contact with the Pendleburys seemed to have been severed there was nothing to upset her anyway.

  She supposed she must have dozed off, for when she next looked up the sun was in quite a different position and she found she’d been lying fully in its glare. The skin on her stomach was stinging and there was a tight feeling across her eyes. Cross with herself, she moved the chair into the shade and went to get a drink. When she came out again, she sat upright and read a magazine. Perhaps, if it was going to be too hot for her to stay in the garden all day, she would go inside and sleep properly. Idly, she looked round the garden, admiring the semi-wilderness. There was a heat haze everywhere, wrapping the greenery in softness. She half closed her eyes and the leaves split into millions of fragments, each one spiked with sunshine.

  In this dreamy, half-conscious state the small sounds in the garden next door did not at first make any impression on Alice. They were small, soft, regular noises – little clicks, very faint, and tappings and whirrings. She heard them but they did not disturb her, not till a louder, more regular thump began. Then she opened her eyes and listened. It was a metallic bang, as though a spade or some similar object was being knocked against a dustbin lid. She sat up even straighter and carefully put on a towelling robe she had beside her, tying the belt in an unnecessarily secure knot. She stayed quite still, thinking. It wasn’t really a noise like the other noises all those weeks ago – there was nothing frantic about the tempo. Really, it was quite melodic, as though someone was amusing themselves like a child might. Then the area where the noise was coming from seemed to change – from being higher up the garden, near the house, it became lower down, near the garages, and then it changed again to the centre. Peeping out from underneath the tree. Alice saw Mrs Pendlebury looking over the wall. She was holding a rake in one hand and a trowel in the other and banging them together, end to end, like peculiar cymbals. And she was smiling. Relieved, Alice got up and went down the garden thinking she would invite her over and tell her about the baby.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Pendlebury, isn’t it a lovely day? Isn’t it hot?’ Alice called as she made her way through the overgrown raspberry canes.

  ‘Yes, yes it is,’ Mrs P. said.

  ‘How nice to see you looking so well,’ Alice said, still not really looking at her neighbour, still with her head down, untangling herself from the bushes in order to reach the wall.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs P. said.

  ‘Have you been gardening in this heat?’ said Alice, reaching the wall at last, and putting one hand on the warm bricks. Almost before she felt the roughness below her hand there was another roughness on top – Mrs P. had dropped the rake and clamped her hand on top of Alice’s, securing it by the wrist. Startled, Alice looked into her face and instinctively drew back, but with her hand so tightly held could not move more than a few inches from the wall. She was aware of her heart thudding and of the need to keep very, very calm.

  ‘What a lovely day,’ she said again, weakly, her voice cracking with fear.

  ‘Yes, yes it is,’ Mrs P. was still smiling, but she had put the other hand, the one holding the trowel, in front of her eyes, apparently shielding them. They both stood there without speaking, hands locked together, and then Alice said, ‘I was wondering if you’d like to come round and have some tea?’ As though she’d been struck, Mrs P. backed away, loosening Alice’s hand. ‘No!’ she shouted, ‘no I would not, not after what’s been going on, no I would not.’ Alice felt her freed hand. There were nail marks on the wrist but she nursed it with gratitude. She’d been afraid she’d faint if Mrs P. held on to her for just one more second. Now she felt more in command she dared to look over the wall and not shy away from what she saw. Mrs P. was standing with her legs apart, brandishing the trowel, as though astride a horse. She was so white-faced that there appeared no dividing line between her skin and her hair – both were horribly moulded together as though a sheet of plastic had been stretched over them, distorting the texture of both hair and skin, making both into a kind of colourless rubber. Her eyes stood out all the more clearly, each circle of blue rimmed by red, each wide open, propped open, quite unblinking. She seemed to be gritting her teeth or grinding them, her mouth moved but it was closed, the lips compressed and then thrust out and then compressed again. The knuckles holding the trowel were rocks in the flabbiness of her hand and held all the visible tension in her body. As she began to speak she kept taking steps backwards, all the time holding the trowel first up and then down, pushing it through the air like a piston.

  ‘I’m not silly, you know,’ she shouted, ‘I’m not silly in the head, I know what’s been going on and I won’t have it, I won’t put up with it a minute longer. What I want to know is what are you going to do with that husband of yours? Eh? What are you going to do about him?’

  ‘Tony?’

  ‘Yes, Tony, precious Tony and his friends. What’s he got to frighten two old folk for, what’ve we ever done to him? Why has he got to break our windows and scratch our table, eh? Why?’

  ‘But, Mrs Pendlebury, Tony’s only been in your house once and you were there –’

  ‘I’m not silly, you can’t fool me with that, you’ve had our key, haven’t you, you’re the only ones ever had it.’

  ‘But you gave it to me and I gave it straight back.’

  ‘Not straight back, you had it a week and there are places you can get a copy made in a few hours.’

  ‘But, Mrs Pendlebury, you’ve never left your house, you’ve always been there, how could anyone have done anything without you knowing it?’

  ‘I don’t know how, that’s what I want the police for, that’s their job, it’s up to them to find out how and why and for what. I don’t know why he hates us, why he has to do all this, and you, don’t look at me like that as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, you’re in it as well, after all I’ve done for you, the love I’ve given your child, the things I’ve showered on her, and all for what, for what, to have you turn on us for nothing, for not letting that nurse have our flat, don’t you try to pretend that wasn’t what did it, that was the beginning, that was the start, just because I wouldn’t let her have our flat and why should I, why should I do anything else for you, eh, after all I’ve done, treating you like my daughter, like poor Ellen, and feeling so sorry for you when your baby died, all wasted, wasted.’

  She had backed right down the garden, still stabbing the air with the trowel, shouting all the time. Alice hadn’t moved or spoken since the tirade began. She concentrated on keeping very still and on trying to get into her expression nothing but a steadiness she did not feel She waited until Mrs P. had gone inside, until the door had slammed shut, before she moved, and then she went back into her own house, dreadfully tired, and sat down. A calmness had come over her, succeeding the turmoil that had invaded her when Mrs P. took her hand. There was no point in going to see Stanley. Her way was quite clear. She must ring Dr Thompson at once.

  Chapter Twenty

  ELSIE WAS VERY angry when she arrived at half past two to find nobody was in.
She stood on the doorstep and rang and hammered and looked through the silly letter-box and even the keyhole and then she tried the side door and shouted, but all to no avail. She just knew that Rose was in, not because Stanley had told her she would be but because the house somehow breathed Rose was hiding. Determined not to be beaten, Elsie used all her cunning to gain entry. She found a call-box and rang Rose’s number, but nobody answered: she couldn’t be tricked. Remembering the garage and the little lane at the back she went right round the block and found the entrance to it and located Rose’s garden and tried to find a way in, but the barbed wire on top of the fence frightened her. She banged on the garage door and tried to force it open, almost succeeding, but finally had to give up. Furious, she returned to the front of the house and kept her finger on the bell for fully five minutes.

  Thinking how typical of her sister-in-law this was, Elsie then went off and found a café and had a cup of tea, just on the off-chance Rose might have popped out for a while. She. went through the same performance an hour later and then she had to make a decision – to hang about till Stanley came back from his trip and really show Rose up when she got inside, or go home. She would dearly have loved to have camped on the doorstep, just to see Rose’s eventual discomfiture, but common sense prevailed. She might wait a long time. Stanley had said six but you never knew with these trips. Better to go home and vent her spleen later, on Stanley. Reluctantly, Elsie went off down Rawlinson Road, turning the corner out of it just as Dr Thompson’s car turned into it, thereby missing a scene she would have paid a thousand pounds to see.

  Dr Thompson had no better luck. His heart was not exactly in his job as it was then presented to him, but he honestly spared as much time as he could to ring the bell and bang at the door. When there was no reply there wasn’t really much he could do. The circumstances as reported to him by the young woman next door didn’t exactly warrant breaking in, or even reporting it to the police. From the way it had been described to him – and the girl had been impressively flat and factual – he was by no means certain that Mrs Pendlebury was certifiable. The girl hadn’t wanted to lodge a complaint with the police, she’d made that clear. All she wanted to do was help. Standing on the doorstep Dr Thompson decided that, for the moment, he would leave it, and return to his afternoon-off’s swimming. He would call again after evening surgery, and if he got no reply then he’d think what to do. Thoughts of Mrs P.’s possible suicide did occur to him, but he thought it unlikely. He knew Stanley Pendlebury well enough and somehow felt that he was a reliable fellow, the sort of chap who would certainly call if his wife had reached that stage. He’d come back at half past seven and try again, that was much the best thing. His informant might think he had failed in his duty but that was too bad.