A Long Road Through The Night

by Rosemary Hodgson

  How could she explain why what – to most people – would appear outmoded morality prevented her from giving way to her feelings?

  Raymond laughed. `If you were a giddy young girl, I wouldn`t want to. You`re perfect the way you are.`

  She reached up to smooth his hair from his brow. `I never met anybody like you before. I think we might have a future, but I don`t want to give you second-best. You`re right – I need to be sure I`m over Tom first.`

  `But you`re not angry with me? I can still come over on Saturday?`

  `You better-had!` she told him, her heart singing.

  `Did you see anything of your friend Mr. Hood over the hols?` Jenny asked.

  Though the kiss was too private to gossip about, Sylvia`s account of the New Year`s Eve festivities at “Cushie-Butterfield`s” captured her friend`s imagination at once. `He must fancy you, or he wouldn`t have arranged a lovely date like that.`

  `It wasn`t really a date – he had free tickets given.`

  Jenny looked and sounded amused. `He could do with getting a new cover-story. That`s the same excuse he made when he asked you to go to that concert with him. I never knew anybody get-given as many free tickets as he reckons he does.`

  `Business people do get handouts like that. It`s probably just publicity for his friend`s club. I don`t see why it`s such a big deal, anyway. Neither of us had anything else planned for New Year, and we just wanted company.`

  `The band played Believe it if You Like!` Jenny jeered, arousing Sylvia`s latent sense of humour.

  `No, they didn`t. They played "Unforgettable." I told you.`

  `And is that what he thinks you are? If he`s asked you to make the arrangement more regular, take it from me, you`ve pulled.`

  Sylvia frowned thoughtfully. `The trouble is, even though I`ve said Yes, I`m not sure I should have.`

  `Why not? You`re a widow, and he`s been divorced since whenever-it-was, so neither of you are harming anybody.`

  `But it`s so soon after Tom.`

  `So what?`

  `It feels disloyal.`

  `Huh!` Jenny sneered. `Do you really give a stuff about that, after what Tom did?`

  `Sometimes I`m certain I don`t give a damn. Then something happens, and I start to wonder.`

  `Why don`t you come back with me to Mrs. Hillier`s?` Jenny suggested. `Perhaps you can find out at first-hand what Tom feels. Surely it`s worth a try.`

  `I don`t think so.`

  `But you wanted to know why he . . . did what he did.` Even after several months, Jenny did not seem able to use the words committed suicide or killed himself.

  `Not any more. Even if I did get a message, I could never be sure it was really true, or just a trick of Mrs. Hillier`s imagination.` Since her talk with Eleanor Harrison, Sylvia felt disinclined to probe further. Tom would surely never have given Daniel such a huge legacy unless they were father and son, and she had no wish to have that hurtful truth confirmed.

  Jenny was right. It was time to move on. Neither Sylvia nor Ray had a partner to be hurt by the increasing closeness of their friendship. It would be best, however, not to let the family know about it yet. If things did not work out, they need never find out what a fool she had been.

  She planned the meal for herself and Ray with care. Chicken would be a safe bet, and preparing it as a casserole would ensure it did not spoil if he came late. As it happened, he arrived exactly on time, bearing a bottle of wine. `I hope this goes with what you`ve made.`

  `It`ll be perfect, thanks.` Despite the less-than-wonderful kitchen-facilities, her cooking was a success. The chicken was tasty and tender, and – to her relief – she managed to get the orange-and-lemon cheesecake out of its mould without breaking the edges.

  Ray sat back at last, happily replete. `That was delicious, Sylvia.` To be complimented on her cooking was a change. Tom had always seemed to take her kitchen-skills for granted. `Shall I help you to wash up?`

  `Let`s have our coffee first.` They sat on the sofa in front of the little gas-fire to enjoy the drink, and Ray stretched out his long legs towards the heat.

  `That`s better. This is marvellous. I feel human again at last.`

  It occurred to her that he was looking tired. `What`s up? Have you had a hard day at the shop?`

  `The area manager`s coming on Monday morning, so we`ve been having a blitz on paperwork, getting the workshop tidied up, and rearranging all the displays in the showroom. I must be getting out of condition, sitting in that office all day long. My feet are killing me.`

  `Take your shoes off.` It seemed the most natural thing in the world to offer the suggestion.

  `Are you sure? How do you know I haven`t got sweaty feet?` he joked, and her eyes danced with laughter.

  `If you have, I`ll jolly-sharp make you put them on again.` As he leaned forward to undo his shoe-laces, Sylvia resumed her duties as hostess. `Would you like more coffee?`

  `Please.` As she carried it towards him, she thought how right it looked, to see him sitting on her sofa in front of the fire, just as if some divine plan had been at work to bring him there. Careful, Sylv, she told herself -- don`t rush into anything -- it`s too soon.

  `Are you warm enough, Ray? This fire doesn`t throw out much heat.`

  `It`s fine. In fact, could I be an absolute slob and take my jacket off as well, please?`

  `If you want.` Without it, he looked more at-home than ever, and her heart sang - This feels good.

  The sound of a decisive rap on the door made her jump. `That`s a ready-money knock. Who on earth can it be at this time?` She handed him his coffee and went to answer it. `Delia! Paul! This is a surprise. Come in.`

  `We were just passing on our way home from the supermarket, and . . . ` Delia`s voice trailed away as they entered, then froze visibly at the sight of the littered table, empty glasses and wine-bottle, and Raymond sitting in his shirt sleeves and stockinged feet. `Mother! What`s going on?`

  FIFTEEN

  The realisation that her daughter was shocked amused Sylvia greatly. `You remember, dear, that time when I was burgled. This is Raymond Hood who helped me then. Ray, this is Delia, my daughter, and Paul, her husband.`

  `Mr. Hood.` Paul`s tone sounded icy, his wife`s almost as much so.

  `It was very kind of him to step in, but . . .`

  Delia`s visible and impolite astonishment unsettled Raymond, who slipped his shoes back on at once. `Perhaps I should be going, seeing you`ve got visitors.`

  Sylvia sprang at once to his defence. `Don`t feel you`ve got to. Delia and Paul don`t mind, do you?`

  `Of course, it`s up to you who you entertain.` But there could be no mistaking the criticism implicit in Delia`s response, and Ray seemed to pick up the vibrations.

  `No, Sylvia. Thanks for a lovely evening, but I`d better go. It`s getting late anyway.`

  At the door she detained him by resting a hand on his arm. `I wish you`d stay a bit longer.`

  `I don`t want to outstay my welcome.` He glanced sideways at the other visitors who had made their attitude so embarrassingly plain.

  `Ring me, then.` Watching him descend the stairs, Sylvia gritted her teeth to hold back a surge of anger - what right have Paul and Delia got, to censor who I see, and who I don`t? -- if they start tonight, I`m ready for them.

  `Well,` Delia said. `That was a surprise, Mother.` Her use of the formal word mother made it plain she was not pleased by the intimate scene they had interrupted.

  `What`s so surprising about it? Am I not allowed to have friends?` Sylvia knew her tone was rude, but was past caring. Thanks to Paul and Delia, the evening had been spoiled.

  `Friends, yes. But why this man? Who is he, anyway?` Paul queried in his usual censorious tone that so much annoyed Sylvia.

  `I told you who he was when I introduced him. He came to my rescue when those lads broke into the flat.`

  `But that was ages ago. Surely he`s not still hanging around?`

  `Yes, he is, and I`m jolly glad he does. I would`ve had a bonny-lonely New Year without him, while
you were living it up on the slopes in Austria.` It was probably unfair to complain about their holiday arrangements, which were no different from any other New Year, but they had started it by criticising Raymond, whom they did not know.

  Paul had not done yet, apparently. `He certainly seemed to be making himself at home. How long has it been going on?`

  `How long has what been going on? Nothing is going on. Ray`s just a good friend, I told you. And what business is it of yours, anyway?`

  `How do you know he`s not a married man?`

  Spitefully determined to shock them, she laughed aloud. `Actually, he is a married man – just like I`m a married woman. But Tom`s dead now, and Ray and his wife are divorced.`

  Delia pulled a face. `Do we know why? Perhaps he makes a habit of chatting up women, and she got sick of it.`

  `And perhaps you shouldn`t be so judgemental about folks you don`t know.` Unable to contain her anger any longer, Sylvia let-fly. `How dare you behave like that to a guest in my house? It`s my business who I entertain, and when. I don`t tell you how to live your lives, so don`t tell me how to live mine.`

  Paul frowned. `Somehow I feel we`re not welcome, Delia. We should maybe make an appointment next time we call.`

  `If you can`t be civil to my friends, perhaps you should.` It was a stupid thing to say, but annoyance overtook Sylvia`s usual politeness. Thanks to their arrival, a pleasant evening had been ruined. When Raymond Hood rang her, she would have to apologise, and hope he accepted it.

  Sylvia did not go out on Sunday in case Raymond rang, but no call came. Had he taken offence, and decided to have nothing more to do with her? Surely not, after his attentive behaviour on New Year`s Eve. But that had been before Delia and Paul had made their dislike of his presence so obvious.

  After a restless night, Sylvia knew she could not put up with waiting for a phone-call that might never come. She went straight from work at the paper-shop to the TV showroom. `Is Mr. Hood in? I`d like a word, if he`s free.`

  His head popped round the office-door, probably at the sound of her voice. `Please come in, Mrs. Brandon.` The formality of the salutation made her want to giggle, but of course the staff were not aware of the special relationship between Raymond and herself. He closed the office door, and motioned her to sit down. `I`m sorry I didn`t get the chance to ring you yesterday. My sister and her husband came over for the day, and stayed till late.` And if he`d rung me while they were there, he would`ve had to explain to them who I am, she thought. Raymond apparently shared her caution about mentioning their nascent relationship to relatives.

  `I`m so sorry about Saturday night, Ray. They both got a piece of my mind after you`d gone.

  How dare they be so rude!`

  `I expect it gave them a shock, seeing me there.` His attitude was more reasonable than Sylvia could have managed, had their circumstances been reversed.

  `Shock or not, it was unforgivable. I hope it won`t spoil us spending another evening together soon.`

  `There`s nothing I`d like better, but Delia at least made it plain she wasn`t too happy about me being there. If we are going to be seeing each other more regularly from now on, I think it might be best if you told them first.`

  `You`re probably right.` She had not meant to make their friendship public yet, but the phone-line between Delia`s house and Patty`s had most likely been red-hot with innuendo already.

  As if to confirm her suspicions, Patty rang her at lunch-time. `Hello, Mum. How are you?`

  `Fine.` Sylvia made her reply intentionally uninformative, aware that the call was most likely a fishing-expedition for information about Saturday evening`s events.

  `Oh.` Patty seemed at a loss to know how to continue the conversation, making Sylvia laugh.

  `You didn`t ring me up just to ask that, did you?` The awkward silence at the other end of the line pricked her conscience, putting an end to the teasing. `I expect Delia spoke to you about Saturday.`

  `Sort-of.` Patty`s carefully-measured response suggested she was trying to put Delia`s comments into tactful words. `She said you had a visitor there.`

  `She said I had a man there,` Sylvia corrected, visualising her elder daughter`s affronted outpourings.

  `Yes.` Another pause before Patty added, `I don`t mean to poke my nose in, but is it serious, Mam?`

  `I`m not sure, pet. We`ve hardly known each other five minutes, and anyway your Dad`s hardly cold. It`s far too soon for anything like that.`

  `Not if it`s what you want.` Patty`s forthright response startled her mother. `Dad didn`t take much account of your feelings, so why should you study-him-up? If you fancy going out with this bloke seriously, you do it. Damn what Paul and Delia think.`

  With no battle to fight, Sylvia could afford to be honest. `I`m not even sure it`s right for me. Ray`s a very different person from your Dad. Could I get used to him, do you think?`

  Patty giggled. `Delia made it sound as if you were getting very used to him indeed.`

  `She would! There was absolutely nothing to it, you know. He`d had a hard day at work and just felt like relaxing, so I said he could take his shoes and jacket off. Then Paul and Delia walked in, put two-and-two-together and made ninety-seven.`

  Patty was laughing now. `I wish I`d been a fly on the wall!`

  `Do you? I wished I wasn`t even there. It was really embarrassing, and I told them what I thought afterwards.`

  `I gathered that. She seems a bit miffed, but she`ll come round.` A more serious note entered Patty`s voice. `Don`t misjudge Dee, Mam. It`s not that she begrudges you being happy. But with it being so sudden, she`s just afraid it might end in tears.`

  Reassured by Patty`s attitude, Sylvia felt able to shoulder her own share of blame for the confrontation. `It was my fault. I should`ve come clean about seeing Ray in the first place, then there wouldn`t have been anything for Delia and Paul to get upset about. In a way, I`m glad it`s all out-in-the-open now. At least I won`t have to pretend any more.` Speaking about her feelings for Ray was easier than she had feared, but it had not come as such a shock to Patty as it had to Delia and Paul. Tonight she must go over to their house and set things to rights.

  `I`m glad you`ve come,` Delia said, `because I wanted to apologise for Saturday night. It was just such a shock – you and some bloke we`d never heard of.`

  `Don`t worry about it, Dee.` Sylvia had not regularly used her daughter`s childhood-pet-name for years, but tonight it seemed right. `There was nothing sinister about keeping you in the dark. I just didn`t bother to mention Ray before, because if we had decided things weren`t working out, there would`ve been nothing to tell.`

  `Will you be seeing him again?` Delia`s tone still sounded anxious, and Sylvia braced herself..

  `Yes. It`s what we both want, so we`ve decided to give it a try.`

  `Is he moving in with you?`

  Though strictly that was none of Paul`s business, Sylvia elected to keep her temper and answer truthfully. `It`s never been mentioned and, quite honestly, I think it`s way-too-soon. We`d need to know each other a lot better, before that.`

  Clearly relieved, they left matters there for the moment. Sylvia, however, could not afford to ignore the scenario pointed-up by her son-in-law -- Ray and I were just casual acquaintances at first but now we`ve decided to see more of each other, and he`s made it plain his interest`s romantic -- sooner or later he`s bound to ask me to put things on a proper footing, and I`ll have to decide whether to or not. She hoped he would wait longer before broaching the subject, because at the moment she hadn`t the slightest idea how she would answer if he did.

  Mention on the news of a dramatic sea-rescue near Bexhill set Sylvia thinking again about Eleanor Harrison and her mysterious son. What had become of the letters Daniel had allegedly written to Tom? -- He kept all sorts of trivia – even that correspondence about the investment he never took up – so it`s not likely he`d have thrown away anything from Daniel. Yet there had been no trace of the missives among the papers sorted through so far. To make sure, she re-checked the
one box to which she had managed to reduce them – nothing there.

  In the process, she discovered the teddy-bear from Tom`s desk, reminding her of her intention to give it to Cathy – not worth packing it in the box again, then. She smiled at the thought of how much her little granddaughter had wanted the bear, and how please she would be to get it. However, like most young children, Cathy was innocently heavy-handed with toys, so it would be as well to replace the rough stitching on its back-seam. No time like the present.

  About to make the first cut, Sylvia paused, struck by an incongruity in the explanation Eleanor Harrison had given for the presence of the toy in Tom`s desk - if Tom bought it brand-new, and Danny never got it, how did the stitching along its back get pulled-out? It seemed unlikely he would have offered damaged-goods as a gift to a newborn baby, but probably his reasons did not matter, after all this time.

  With the stitch-ripper from her sewing-box, Sylvia sliced carefully through the first two or three threads. As she had expected, the bear`s back opened up at once – under Cathy`s enthusiastic handing, the previous unskilful repair would have been lucky to last five minutes. However, butting the edges together to receive new stitching proved difficult, the fabric constantly slipping out of line. For some reason the stuffing would not lie flat. Perhaps removing some of it would help.

  The top layer was easy to tease out on to a sheet of newspaper, but as she removed more, it became clear that much of the stuffing further inside was not straw, but something stiff and bulky – what sort of filling is this for a soft toy?

  Eventually she extracted seven complete sheet of what looked like writing-paper, which was exactly what it turned out to be – several letters addressed to Tom. Curious, she turned the page the right way up on order to read the first one. "Dear Mr. Brandon. I`m not sure if I should have written to you, as you probably won`t know who I am." It was hardly necessary to turn to the end of the letter to find the signature of the writer: "Yours sincerely, Danny Franks."