You Don't Have to be Good

by Unknown

  Katharine chewed joylessly. She attempted to laser Richard into silence but he was in overdrive; his tact sump was empty, he was trying to compensate for her own numbness and also – Katharine dropped him a pitying look – also, he was flirting.

  ‘Well paid?’ Suzanne lifted her glass to her lips and sipped. She swallowed meaningfully in Richard’s direction.

  ‘I think she gets by,’ he said, distracted for a moment by the wine bottle that Paul was waving at him. ‘But not, you know . . .’

  Katharine watched Suzanne tearing ciabatta then dabbing it in the sauce on her plate. She knew this type, knew what she was up to, on and on with the personal questions, not stopping until she had her subject pinned and spread, all intimacies surrendered. She was nourished by the disasters of others. When other people fell apart, Suzanne felt complete. Katharine looked to Jane for help, but Jane was flailing down the other end of the table, trying to fend off Oscar’s interrogation about local schools and house prices. Katharine pushed back her chair and got to her feet.

  Suzanne looked up at her and said, ‘Jane tells me you’re an absolutely brilliant paediatrician and a wonderful mother.’

  Katharine sat down again. Richard confirmed that this was true.

  ‘And does your sister have children?’

  Katharine shook her head.

  Richard cantered to the rescue, sweeping up the wine bottle by the neck on his way. ‘But our children adore her. And she’s devoted to your mother, isn’t she? Keeps in touch and what have you.’

  ‘A maiden aunt. Invaluable,’ said Paul. ‘I used to have one. They have so much more time and energy.’

  ‘Not married, then?’ asked Suzanne.

  Richard nodded. ‘Oh, yes. To Frank. A writer.’

  Oscar pricked up his ears and leaned towards the conversation. ‘A writer? Really? Anything I’d have heard of?’

  ‘Some radio plays, I think. Holby City every now and again.’

  ‘Ah.’ Oscar studied his plate.

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid Frank isn’t what you’d call prolific. He’s something of a freeloader really, old Frank. Well, we think so, don’t we, darling?’ said Richard.

  Katharine couldn’t speak. Something was catching in her throat. Cardamom? Chilli? She took a gulp of water and forced it down. Something sharp was burning. Torn lamb lay on the white plate in a smear of dark gravy. Her eyes watered. This can’t be happening, she thought. I can’t be about to spew out a mouthful of chewed meat or die of asphyxiation in front of all these people. She coughed, spluttered and knocked over her glass of wine. Her eyes searched out Richard’s. He looked appalled.

  Jane came towards her with napkins. ‘Sorry. Did you get one of the chillies?’

  The spasm passed. Katharine opened her eyes and drank some water.

  ‘Sorry.’ Her voice sounded small and weak.

  Suzanne was shaking her head in faux befuddlement. ‘Obviously I know nothing about your sister, but from what I hear . . . sometimes people reach their fifties . . . they take stock of their lives and if it’s been a bit . . . dull . . .’

  The wine worked abruptly on Richard. His face flushed, his mouth widened and he began taking up more space. ‘Well,’ he said, too loudly, threatening to roar with laughter. ‘It would bore the pants off me, working in that office then coming home to bloody Frank every day. He’s a grumpy old sod.’

  Katharine stood up and said, ‘We need to get back.’

  Jane was by her side saying, ‘I’ll get your coat.’

  Katharine got herself to the kitchen sink and ran the tap over her hands. They smelt of work despite the fact she hadn’t been at work since the day before. No matter how often she washed them she could still smell the chemistry of illness and drugs. To her left, by the knife block, stood the gin bottle. She spun the cap off and poured a measure into a dirty wine glass, knocking it back while the others were apologising, reassuring each other and getting to their feet. She shuddered. It tasted rank and bitter, like stems left too long in a vase.

  Cold

  AT NINE o’clock the next morning, when CID and Forensics arrived, Frank was still asleep. He had tidied the front room, ignored the Scotch bottle and worked late the night before, hunched over a final printout of Lupa. He sat quietly with his back to the open door, a shy hope perched patiently on his shoulder. He had left the door open so he might hear her come in and she would see him labouring there all alone. By two in the morning his throat was sore and he was shivering. By three, he cursed women in general for their lack of concern, drank a large glass of brandy, swallowed the remains of an old bottle of Night Nurse and fell asleep on the couch.

  He was woken by long, insistent rings and aggressive hammering on the door. When he finally blinked out into the Saturday morning light, he found two very tall police officers on his doorstep. One of them was holding a piece of paper and speaking the lines about a search warrant. The other one barged into the house and straight through to the kitchen. Out in the street, two more officers were climbing out of a white van.

  He was told that a full and exhaustive search of the property was to be carried out as part of their ongoing investigation into the disappearance of his wife. It was suggested that he might find it more convenient to vacate the premises for the duration of the search. He was also informed that they would be removing his vehicle and computer for forensic examination. Blue and white tape was wound between the gateposts and a tow-truck pulled up outside. A small crowd gathered in the street. Nesrine watched from her upstairs window.

  Frank had pulled on his coat to cover himself before opening the door. The weight of the parcel still in the coat pocket rested lightly against his thigh. It would be best to let it stay there, he thought. He indicated his naked legs beneath the coat and said he wasn’t dressed yet, and the officer said, ‘That’s easily remedied,’ and escorted him upstairs.

  From the children’s room, where he was dressing, Frank could hear something heavy being dragged through the hall. Out in the back garden, two men were climbing into white body suits. He heard a dog bark and van doors slamming. It’s a bloody liberty treating a man this way, he thought. Anyone would think he was a suspect. The whole thing was an outrage.

  The phone rang.

  ‘Can you hear me? Frank? Frank, can you hear me?’

  It was his father, Lance. Something was going on and he didn’t understand. The police had just rung him, for goodness’ sake. They had asked all kinds of questions, unpleasant questions, questions he wasn’t too sure how to answer. At first he wondered whether it wasn’t the police at all but the press; perhaps one of Frank’s plays was going to be on the television. But no, it was the police and they wanted to know whether Frank had an interest in clubs and videos of an adult nature, whether Frank had, to his knowledge, ever visited a prostitute, been involved in swinging at all, got into trouble as a boy, and how relations were with his wife.

  Frank looked down at his yellowing toenails that were becoming impossible to cut and tried to get a word in edgeways. He said, ‘Calm down, Dad,’ and ‘I’ll be round to your place in half an hour and take you down the pub for lunch,’ but Lance wanted to know what on earth was going on; it was a shock and he didn’t know what to think. He said he sometimes wished he had never moved down to Cambridge. It wasn’t as if he saw Frank very much and he might as well have stopped in Burnley for all the difference it made. Lance often said this. It was one of the few things that he and Frank agreed about.

  The walk to the pub with Lance took longer than Frank expected. His fingertips caressed the packet while he walked at a snail’s pace beside his father. It was a while since he had seen his father because Bea usually popped in on him most weeks; his sheltered housing accommodation was on her way back from work. But something seemed to have happened to the old man in the few weeks since Frank had seen him last. He shuffled stiffly at an angle that threatened to tip him forwards on to his face. Every few moments he stopped dead and turned to look back the way they had co
me. Then he would start with the infuriating questions again: The police? In your house? What, now? Searching? Searching for what? By the time they were in sight of the pub, Frank began to think that time had ceased and gone into reverse. It reminded him of walking with Adrian and Laura when they were toddlers, not a stage he had a natural affinity for and one that he’d avoided as much as he could. All those whats and whys, all that stopping and looking; it completely clogged up his narrative drive.

  ‘So did you have a tiff or what?’ Lance asked when they were seated in the pub. They were going to have a coffee and then maybe an early lunch, although Lance said the last time he’d been here he’d had a crab and egg sandwich, then been up half the night with a funny tummy.

  At Lance’s request they had chosen a table near the toilets, and once the coffees were brought over, and then a couple of Scotches and two pints of bitter, he let Frank get a word in. Frank explained that the police were searching for evidence. Evidence of what? Frank shrugged. Evidence of Bea, he supposed. Well do they think she’s been kidnapped? asked Lance. Frank said this might be a possibility. There came a point in conversations with Lance when it was easier to answer in the affirmative because negatives merely provoked supplementary questions and requests for clarification. Lance shook his head and said he was confused. Had something untoward happened to Bea? She hadn’t said anything when she brought his shopping round last week. Frank was aware of the barman listening and wished his father would lower his voice. He tried to steer the conversation towards more familiar ground by saying he hoped the police didn’t damage the front garden or the patio.

  ‘Ah, patios,’ said Lance. ‘They’re like wallpaper. Hide a multitude of sins.’ Lance had always enjoyed a bit of DIY. ‘Did a patio for a chap up Skipton way once. Foxes kept digging up the family pets. He had two dogs, a cat, quite a few rabbits, a gerbil and a fish out there. Well, you can imagine. Put a patio down and problem solved. And somewhere nice to sit in the summer. It was that patio, come to think of it, where I broke my foot . . .’

  I am drinking Teachers whisky and Kenco coffee with my father in an empty pub on a Saturday morning, thought Frank. He looked at their feet facing each other on the carpet and worried that Lupa had inner conflict and outer conflict but did it have personal conflict? He was not so sure any more. Perhaps he should leave it for a while and make a start on Close and Personal. He watched his father’s mouth working away on the words and the whisky and sighed. People took up so much time.

  ‘I said to myself, if I don’t get out of this blinking hospital right away they’ll have to carry me out in a box. So I goes up to the nurse and I says, “I need me clothes back, I’ve got work to do, where are they?” Well you know what they’re like. Half of them can’t speak English. I said to her, “You know my son would find this highly amusing.” Then I said, “He’s an acclaimed writer and one-time photographer on the Oriana.” Well that made her listen up. “What’s his name?” she said . . .’

  Two plates of ham and eggs arrived at their table and Lance stopped talking.

  What if this is the future? thought Frank, looking around for the sauce bottles. What if this is the final act? A stained carpet, the smell of stale beer and listening to his dad in a chilly pub? Had this moment been waiting in the wings all through these last few years that he and Bea had spent together? Had it poked him in the ribs those mornings he’d turned over and pretended to go back to sleep? Those mornings lately when Bea had stretched a clammy hand towards him in bed? He inched away from Lance, who had pierced the yolk and was wiping a chip through the dreadful gelatinous flood that bled towards the pineapple ring. He shuddered. There was a draught coming through the windowpane behind his chair and his neck was going into spasm. A cold shoulder, that was what he had been to Bea lately, he knew. He squirted brown sauce on to his plate and nodded. Lance paused in his eating and gestured at the bottle with his knife. Frank squirted Lance’s plate too and wondered briefly whether the old man had been feeding himself properly. He was wolfing the food down like he hadn’t eaten in a week. Frank swallowed a mouthful of chips and had a dismaying thought. What if the police came across the photos of Wanda that he kept among his vinyl collection? Lance had his head on one side and was pointing with his fork. He was saying that sometimes, in a marriage, sometimes patience and forgiveness was what was needed and it might be necessary to swallow your pride and—Frank shied away from the father-and-son chat he saw plodding towards him and caught the barman’s attention. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. And to the barman he called, ‘Same again.’ His father’s eyes were shining and watery and something was tugging at the corners of Frank’s mouth, so he pushed his plate away angrily and said that Bea hadn’t been herself since before the summer. She had changed, and not just on the outside. Lance looked at him, and Frank added that it had been a difficult few months, that Bea had wanted a holiday somewhere hot but he couldn’t possibly go because he had too much work on and she had spent all her spare cash on the bloody garden. There was the patio, endless new shrubs and climbers, herbs for this and that and the other. Her latest plan was a pond, yes, a pond if you don’t mind, as if there wasn’t enough water around the place already.

  They were silent for a while. Frank frowned. It was becoming difficult to think clearly. Had he shut the door on her. Had he wanted her to beg? To beg him to stop? Do you surrender? Do you surrender?

  ‘Pardon?’ His father looked at him, glass half raised to his mouth.

  ‘Do you want another drink?’ said Frank, pushing away his half-finished food.

  Lance wiped his mouth and shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t mind some of those chips, though.’ He pulled Frank’s plate towards him. ‘Whatever you’ve done, son, go and make it up with her. A man’s no good on his own. A man needs a woman around the place. Do you know, not a day goes by when I don’t miss your mother.’ Lance was getting teary. Frank glared at the barman. ‘A man’s no good on his own and that’s a fact. I always thought I would find someone else because I know that’s what your mother would have wanted, but when it came down to it I just didn’t have the heart . . .’

  Frank closed his eyes and stopped listening. A wave of nausea crept over him, which could have been the eggs and could have been the thought of Bea with her old flame, Patrick. Patrick the Prick, as Frank liked to call him. He had never been entirely sure that it was over between them; after all, they worked in the same building. He had met Patrick once at one of Bea’s work do’s. It was the first and the last such event that he attended. She had introduced them. Patrick was tall and gangly, with an effeminate taste in shirts. He had stooped elaborately to shake Frank’s hand, pumped his arm up and down and asked how the writing was going. Needless to say, by the time Frank composed a reply to this, someone else had swooped over to request the Chief Executive’s attention.

  ‘What’s the betting she’ll turn up at the weekend, Frank, cheerful as you like, telling you she’s been to see a friend down Hastings way or some such?’

  Frank remembered Katharine had told him she was going to look in Hastings. Katharine had taken over, of course. Barging in as soon as she got the phone call. He was surprised she’d found the time, and she didn’t have the kids with her, which was a rarity in itself. Got on the phone to Bea’s mother. Got the poor woman all worked up and then told her not to worry. Typical. That’s a bedside manner for you. Must be scary coming round from an operation and finding Katharine by your bed with a clipboard, equine face all angles and bone, blood counts and bleeds and secondary spreads, no nonsense, telling you like it is through twisted teeth . . .

  Lance rose, getting unsteadily to his feet. He needed the toilet. Frank got up and helped to shuffle him in. Then he waited and shuffled him out again.

  Lance said, ‘Shall we take a wander then? See whether they’re done yet?’

  ‘I’ll go, Dad. You stay here.’

  But Lance would not sit down. He gripped Frank’s arm. ‘What do I want sitting in here all on me tod?’

>   There was no way they could walk back. Frank looked over to the barman.

  ‘Can you call us a cab? It’s my dad. He’s not been himself lately.’

  Tender

  FRANK FELT it before he saw it. The front door had a melancholy look and the hairs rose on the back of his neck. Inside, the hallway smelt of polythene and dust. Lance hovered on the doormat saying, ‘Have they gone, then?’ while Frank looked tentatively in at the downstairs rooms. Every object, all Bea’s plates and jugs and bowls and figurines, had been taken from its place and put back awry; shelves gaped empty or half stacked with their contents the wrong way round; cupboard doors hung open and the computer was gone. CD cases were open and strewn across the floor; furniture was moved from the walls; rugs and carpets had been dragged askew and the floorboards bore the marks of a crowbar and hammer.

  Feeling old and ashamed, Frank climbed the stairs. In the bedroom, in the children’s room, even in the bathroom, the same wreckage. He sank on to their double bed and tried to draw breath. Something in here was odd though, surely. He looked about him, at the carelessly repacked plastic bags, the disturbed drawers and wardrobe, at the dust balls exposed where the bed was dragged away from the wall. Then he saw them. Her egg cups lined up, precisely spaced as always, apparently untouched and watching him in silent reproach. He heard Lance calling from the kitchen.

  Outside, they stood in the sand and cement where the patio had been and stared at the ruin of her garden. The lawn looked like a vandalised graveyard with its split turf, dug pits and dislodged paving stones. Clumps of ivy had been ripped up and piled up. A thrush hopped in the fresh soil, stabbing at grubs and worms. Someone had tried to replant her magnolia sapling but it leaned half in and half out of the soil, delicate twigs already drooping. Her shrubs were uprooted and the border plants, which she had begun to carefully prune and mulch to protect them from frost, lay with their roots and tubers exposed. Tender? Was that what she called them, the ones that needed covering for the winter? Those dark red ones with tips like asparagus that she wrapped in black plastic and bound with twine? He heard Lance say he needed a sit-down, he saw the drenched corpse of the squirrel still in its cage and he wondered what Adrian had been told. Abruptly he turned and marched into the kitchen.