by J M Gregson
Had she not been tied to the responsibilities which attached to a small child, she might even have become a personal secretary to one of the partners when a vacancy had occurred in the previous month. But with the laws of discrimination as tricky as they were, it was not even safe for employers to discuss such possibilities with a worker. So the partners limited themselves to cautious hints that her work was satisfactory and that her temporary position might now be regarded as permanent.
Modest Sue was quite pleased to hear that. She and Toby were going to be all right.
And perhaps more than that. In the jerky, enigmatic phone calls, Martin Hume had taken to making to her, he had hinted at his concern for their welfare. “Verna won’t be around for ever,” he had said gnomically. Sue wondered if that meant that he had persuaded Verna to give him the divorce she had always so scornfully refused. But something she could not define held her back from asking for the details of what he meant. He seemed, after all, to be enjoying the air of mystery which accompanied his announcements.
Martin began to see her in the evenings when he knew Verna would be away. One memorable Wednesday, when Toby was on holiday from school, she look a precious day from her annual allocation of leave to be with Martin. They drove deep into the country and went on the river together in a rowing boat, with Sue sitting like an Edwardian lady on the wide seat at the rear with summer skirt spread wide. She smiled shyly at Martin as he leant far back and pulled smoothly on the oars. He rowed with a skill and rhythm she would never have expected in him.
Toby, leaning out with his mother’s hand firmly grasping the belt of his small red shorts to feel the water racing through his widespread fingers, urged their oarsman excitedly on to greater efforts. Martin responded, lengthening his stroke still further, exulting in the release he felt in the physical effort. The boat moved faster and faster, its timbers creaking with his efforts, while the boy’s shouts grew shriller and louder, until all three of them collapsed laughing into the center of the old boat, watching the speeding banks gradually slowing to a lazy crawl beside them.
They had a cream tea at a place beside the river, quiet on this midweek afternoon. The sun shone obligingly and it was too early for wasps to be a nuisance. The two adults chatted contentedly, ever more at ease with each other, and Toby’s happiness surrounded him like a tangible thing. A cloud of content seemed to rest like an aureole around the boy’s tanned and laughing face.
Sue took a picture of her son sitting on Martin’s knee, with a blob of cream of which he was blissfully unaware decorating his freckled nose and his cotton sun hat sitting rakishly on the back of his small round head.
When they had returned the boat to its mooring, Martin walked hand in hand with Sue, while Toby skipped ahead of them on the path by the river, talking a little of his work, asking about hers, discussing the boy’s school and his progress there, surprising her with how much he knew about these things. To any casual observer, they would have seemed a natural family. They felt so themslves on that golden afternoon.
Martin knew that he had fallen in love with the vivacious yellow-haired woman at his side. It felt like something he had been aware of for years, but which was only now being allowed to manifest itself. He was surprised by his own confidence, content not to rush things as he would have have wanted to do when he was younger, enjoying the slowly developing relationship. There was no need to hurry things along.
He wanted nothing sordid to taint what existed between him and Sue. It was good that he liked Toby so much. In time, there might be brothers and sisters for him. Single children could get spoilt, even with so sensible and loving a mother. But he did not talk about such things yet. That would have raised the question of Verna. And he particularly did not want to talk about that, even with Sue; especially with Sue.
For her part, Sue Thompson was happily surprised. She had fended a few men off, and others had disappeared rapidly when they found she had a child to support. None of the departures had been regretted. The emotional bruises of her life with her husband and their eventual divorce were still with her, and she had thought herself content with her work and her life with Toby.
Now Martin, whom she had scarcely thought of for years, save as a fellow-sufferer at the hands of Verna, had suddenly emerged as a man who was not only kind but intelligent and attractive. The very unexpectedness of it was part of the charm and yes, she acknowledged it with wonder, the excitement. When the exhausted Toby had fallen happily asleep in his small bed upstairs, she and Martin kissed lingeringly in the untidy kitchen of her small council house. And, as this man who seemed so much in control held her against him, she was as surprised as she had been by everything else in this business to feel her affection developing into passion.
He did not go any further, and she almost regretted that. Perhaps he had been made cautious, as she had, by the batterings of an unhappy marriage. He held her at arm’s length, and smiled that knowing, affectionate smile she had seen in him several times now. “We’ll be all right, you’ll see, my love,” he said.
She thought of that ‘my love’, gentle and unforced, when Martin had gone and she sat bemused but happy in her shabby armchair. She wrapped herself contentedly in this new love, rejoicing in its contradictions. It was as comfortable and unthreatening as a well-loved garment. Yet – and this was what really surprised her – it was still exciting.
As if to remind her that life still held its threats, the phone shrilled in the narrow hall.
She knew the voice immediately. “He’s been with you, hasn’t he?” Verna’s harshness cut through her dreams like a razor.
“If you mean Martin, yes, he has. We’ve been on the river with Toby and—”
“I’m not interested in where you’ve been, Sister Susan.” Verna spat out the name like an obscenity. “I wanted to know where the wanker had been, that’s all. Playing happy families with soppy Susan and her sprog, that’s where.”
The mention of Toby turned Sue’s spine to ice. “Listen, if you think there’s—”
“Don’t bother. Do you think I care where the stupid bastard dips his wick?”
Sue realized her sister had been drinking. Her words were slurred, though her rage and malice came through clearly enough. Sue’s mind raced. She tried again to stem the tide of invective. “Look, Verna—”
“No. I won’t look, little sister. Just you listen to me. I couldn’t care less about the fucking wimp, but I’m not having him shagging my own sister! So take your tight little arse somewhere else.”
Verna banged the phone down, and Sue was left staring helplessly at the earpiece. She sat for a long time on the dining chair beside the phone, her euphoria permanently shattered. She must have been there for quarter of an hour or more; she felt that if she even stood up she would be physically sick. Eventually, she made herself move, dragging herself heavily up the stairs to Toby’s room.
She studied the innocence of the sleeping face, willing it to change her mood away from the black despair that had descended upon her with Verna’s phone call. Toby slept with his thumb adjacent to his mouth, but not touching it. His fine hair, the color of deep gold in the curtained room, fell on each side of the miniature, perfectly formed ear. The boy smiled gently, sleeping so quietly that the small breast scarcely rose and fell beneath the sheet.
The sight calmed Sue, but it could not dissipate the feeling of inadequacy Verna had, as usual, brought to her. She should have stood up for Martin; should have hurled back defiance at the virago, who was spitting her hate from the other end of the line. Even a refusal to listen would have left her with a little dignity. Instead of which, she had been left shuddering with horror and distress, unable to stem the tide of malice. A tide that would no doubt be engulfing Martin by now.
She lay for hours in the darkness of her bedroom, her helplessness turning first to resentment and then to a hatred of her sister which was more powerful than anything she had felt in her life.
She wasn’t going to give up M
artin. Verna couldn’t be allowed to go on ruining lives like this. Something would have to be done about her.
Five
In private moments, when she sought to excuse her conduct to herself, Verna Hume had often told herself that her marriage had foundered on the lack of constructive conflict. All good relationships had their spats. People shouted at each other, then made up, and got on with life. The making-up gave the relationship depth and understanding, leaving it stronger than it had been before. That was what the magazines said, and that was what she had chosen to believe.
But her sentimental resolution to be kinder to Martin, made in the contented aftermath of sex with Hugh, had not survived long. When he now stood up to her and fought his corner, she found it altogether less pleasurable than she had anticipated in the years of his docility.
Verna’s automatic response to his opposition was to turn up the violence of her invective. “Good screw, was she, my sweet little sister?”
“I wouldn’t know, would I? We didn’t hop into bed, you see, though I expect you would find that difficult to understand. But since you ask, I’ve no doubt she would be a considerably better partner in bed than you, Verna. That wouldn’t be difficult.” Martin sat in the single armchair beside the dining table, pretending not to see her over the top of his Times, yet noting her every movement.
Verna cradled her beaker of black coffee in her slim hands, seeking feverishly for images which would infuriate him. “Stroked her nice yellow hair, did you? In places more exciting than her head? Or is it not that bottled blonde in other areas?”
Martin almost sprang up to shut her filthy mouth. But he quickly gained control of himself. And with that control, he felt power surging through him, as if he had tested himself in a new situation and come through safely. “She’s an attractive woman. And gentle. You’d never think she was your sister.”
This coolness, this refusal to be hurt, this capacity to put her down so effortlessly, were all new to Verna, and she was disconcerted. “Well, I told her what I thought of her last night on the phone. And what I thought of you, too.” Verna laughed harshly, almost out of control.
“I expect you did. And I’m sure Sue knew just what to make of your opinion.” He walked over to the waste bin, opened the lid to put in the empty cereal packet and paused just long enough over the contents to let her know that he had registered the empty gin bottle on the top of the kitchen refuse, then sat down again.
“Well, sister Sue can have you, and welcome. I’d finished with you a long time ago.”
“And I with you, Verna.”
He spoke so quietly that she was for a brief moment stilled, even apprehensive. He made it sound very final, as if he had reached some decision. Verna felt for some reason threatened by him. She willed him to move, to reveal that she was disturbing him, but he sat with his eyes on his newspaper, a caricature of the suburban husband who is not available for breakfast conversation. His eyes were gray steel; he would not look at her directly, yet she knew that he was aware of her every movement.
Verna roused herself; usually contempt came easy and unforced to her lips, but today, she felt like an actress who had mistimed her opening lines and was struggling desperately for some sort of rhythm. “Anyway, I couldn’t care less where you put your greasy paws. I thought saucy Sue might have had a little more taste, but that’s her funeral. I might even give you that divorce you’ve whined about for long.”
She waited for him to speak, for evidence of the eagerness she knew he must feel at the prospect. He looked at her briefly for an instant, then went back to his paper, a tiny smile lifting the corners of his mouth a fraction.
She plowed on, floundering as she moved out of her depth in this unfamiliar water. “It’ll cost you, though. By God, it’s going to cost you. You and that little church mouse sister of mine won’t be living in luxury when I’ve finished with you, by God you won’t!”
She stood still through a long pause, waiting for him to say money was of no consequence, as he had in the past when he had pleaded with her for a divorce.
Martin looked directly into her dark eyes for the first time, the gray steel of his irises seeming to cut laser-like through all her tawdry ambitions. He said, “We shall see about that, Verna. In due course.”
*
Long after Martin had left the house on that Thursday morning, Verna was still disturbed by his attitude, and it was partly to reassure herself, to shut out the memory of her husband’s face brimming with confidence, that she rang Hugh. She had rung him at work only once before, so he would surely know this was not a frivolous whim. They were closer than that now in any case, she told herself as she dialed the number.
The secretary’s cool voice said, “Mr Pearson’s been in conference since he came in this morning. I’ll just check whether he’s free now, if you’d care to hold.”
She could just hear the woman’s voice as she spoke into the intercom. “It’s a Mrs Verna Hume asking to speak to you personally, Mr Pearson. Do you want me to put her through?” Verna wondered if she had given that title as well as her name; she did not think so. She was already taking a dislike to that cool, detached voice. When she and Hugh were married, the woman had better watch out…
“Verna? What can I do for you?” Hugh’s voice was suddenly loud in her ear. He came through well on the phone, she always thought, his voice not very distorted by the instrument. She could see him at his desk, his cuffs immaculate, his gold pen poised over the big leather-edged blotting pad.
“I’ve told Martin he’s getting his divorce.”
“Really? How did he take it?”
There had been a tiny hesitation before he spoke, as if he had been searching for the correct reaction. And could her sensitive ear detect a trace of impatience in his tone?
“He was all right. He’ll do what I say. Don’t you worry about him.” She tried to force the confidence back into her voice.
“I wasn’t. I’ve no intention of getting involved with poor old Martin.”
“No. No, that’s right.” She was searching now for a reason why she had rung him. She could never admit that she needed reassurance. She said a little desperately, “It’s just that I’d like to get things under way, you see. Now that I’ve told him he can have his divorce. We need to give ourselves a timetable, so that we keep everything in control, make it happen the way we want it.”
“You’re ringing to try to fix a date for us to set up house together?” This time he did not trouble to keep the surprise out of his voice.
“No. Of course not. I just thought you’d like to know that I’d told him. We aren’t due to meet until Saturday, you see, and—”
“Yes, I see. I’m glad you’ve told him, of course I am. But this isn’t really a time when I can talk, you know. I’ve got appointments lined up for the rest of the morning. Saturday will surely be soon enough to talk. And there’s no need to rush things, is there? We must make sure we do what’s right for us, as you say. I’ll see you on Saturday night, as we arranged. There’ll be plenty of time to talk then, darling.”
She was glad of that last word, even though it seemed to be stuck on as an afterthought, like a bribe offered to a wilful child. She hung up then picked up the notepad beside the phone and flung it furiously against the wall on the other side of the hall. She wished now that she had never thought of ringing him.
In his office, Hugh Pearson sat for a moment looking at the phone he had just put down. He walked across to the double-glazed window, watching the traffic passing oblivious below him for a full minute. Then he opened the door of his office and said, “Debbie, if Mrs Hume rings again, better tell her that I’m out of the office.”
*
That afternoon, Verna journeyed to the Fylde coast. She sat with her back to the engine, looking glumly at the bright green May countryside as it raced away behind her. Things had not gone well so far that day. She must make sure that she got what she wanted out of the rest of it.
She could
smell the sea when she came out of the station at Lytham St Annes, though she had gone half a mile in the taxi before she got her first glimpse of it. There was a stiff breeze, making the white horses dance on the bright blue corrugations of the estuary. “The weather should hold for you over the weekend,” said the driver, assuming that like most of his other fares she was here to relax.
The raw new bungalows in the road near the top of the low cliff were too similar, each precisely laid out in its identical plot, cheerful but rather boxy. There was too much winter wind here for the ornamental trees which would have given individuality to flourish. But with its brilliant blue sky and clear sea air, it was nevertheless a pleasant spot. It was easy to see why her father had chosen to hide himself away in a place like this.
He came down the garden to meet her when he saw her paying off the taxi, gray-haired, stooping a little, smiling a nervous greeting to the daughter whose mother had so long been dead.
“Alice has got the kettle on,” he said. “You’ll be ready for your tea.”
Neither of them volunteered anything more intimate than that. She noticed how he led her into the bungalow without once meeting her eye.
Her father had been married to the cheerful, buxom woman who waited inside the house for ten years now, but Alice Osborne was still a little in awe of her sophisticated stepdaughter. They did not kiss – Alice came forward and shook hands. They met as people in a similar relationship might have greeted each other fifty years earlier.
Alice had made a ham salad, and there were freshly baked scones and cakes on the table. “You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble,” said Verna. She delivered the conventional line without embarrassment, knowing that she was acting a part here.
Neither of them laughed at her words. She meant what she said, anyway. There was no need for this woman, who was a stranger, to have taken such trouble. Verna would stay in this house no longer than was necessary to deliver her message.
They chatted conventionally over tea. Verna said the bungalow was looking nice and Alice blushed a little with pleasure.
