The Usual Santas

by Peter Lovesey

  “Bond Street?” repeated Fran. She hadn’t got him down as a big spender.

  “This once,” he explained. “It’s special, this Christmas. We’re expecting our first, my wife and I.”

  “Congratulations.”

  He smiled. A self-conscious smile. “My wife Pearlie—that’s my name for her—Pearlie made all her own maternity clothes, but she’s really looking forward to being slim again. She calls herself the frump with a lump. After the baby arrives, I want her to have something glamorous, really special. She deserves it. I’ve been putting money aside for months. Do you want to see what I got? I found it in Elaine Ducharme.”

  “I don’t know it.”

  “It’s a very posh shop. I found the advert in some fashion magazine.” He had already taken the box from the carrier and was unwrapping the pink ribbon.

  “You’d better not. It’s gift-wrapped.”

  “Tell me what you think,” he insisted, as he raised the lid, parted the tissue and lifted out the gift for his wife. It was a nightdress, the sort of nightdress, Fran privately reflected, that men misguidedly buy for the women they adore. Pale blue, in fine silk, styled in the empire line, gathered at the bodice, with masses of lace interwoven with yellow ribbons. Gorgeous to look at and hopelessly impractical to wash and use again. Not even comfortable to sleep in. His wife, she guessed, would wear it once and pack it away with her wedding veil and her love letters.

  “It’s exquisite.”

  “I’m glad I showed it to you.” He started to replace it clumsily in the box.

  “Let me,” said Fran, leaning across to take it from him. The silk was irresistible. “I know she’ll love it.”

  “It’s not so much the gift,” he said as if he sensed her thoughts. “It’s what lies behind it. Pearlie would tell you I’m useless at romantic speeches. Hey, you should have seen me blushing in that shop. Frilly knickers on every side. The girls there had a right game with me, holding these nighties against themselves and asking what I thought.”

  Fran felt privileged. She doubted if Pearlie would ever be told of the gauntlet her young husband had run to acquire the nightdress. She warmed to him. He was fun in a way that Jim couldn’t be. Not that she felt disloyal to Jim, but this guy was devoted to his Pearlie, and that made him easy to relax with. She talked to him some more, telling him about the teaching and some of the sweet things the kids had said at the end of the term.

  “They value you,” he said. “They should.”

  She reddened and said, “It’s about time my husband came back.” Switching the conversation away from herself, she told the story of the mysterious invitation from Miss Shivers.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” he said. “Believe me, you are.”

  Suddenly uneasy for no reason she could name, Fran said, “I’d better look for my husband. He said I’d find him in the bar.”

  “Take care, then.”

  As she progressed along the corridor, rocked by the speeding train, she debated with herself whether to tell Jim about the young man. It would be difficult without risking upsetting him. Still, there was no cause really.

  The next carriage was of the standard Intercity type. Teetering towards her along the center aisle was Jim, bearing two beakers of tea, fortunately capped with lids. He’d queued for ten minutes, he said. And he’d found two empty seats.

  They claimed the places and sipped the tea. Fran decided to tell Jim what had happened. “While you were getting these,” she began—and then stopped, for the carriage was plunged into darkness.

  Often on a long train journey there are unexplained breaks in the power supply. Normally, Fran wouldn’t have been troubled. This time, she had a horrible sense of disaster, a vision of the carriage rearing up, thrusting her sideways. The sides seemed to buckle, shattered glass rained on her and people were shrieking. Choking fumes. Searing pain in her legs. Dimly, she discerned a pair of legs to her right, dressed in dark trousers. Boots with crêpe soles. And blood. A pool of blood.

  “You’ve spilt tea all over your skirt!” Jim said.

  The lights had come on again, and the carriage was just as it had been. People were reading the evening paper as if nothing at all had occurred. But Fran had crushed the beaker in her hand. No wonder her legs had smarted. The thickness of the corduroy skirt had prevented her from being badly scalded. She mopped it with a tissue. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me—I had a nightmare, except that I wasn’t asleep,” she said. “Where are we?”

  “We went through Reading twenty minutes ago. I’d say we’re almost there. Are you going to be okay?”

  Over the public address system came the announcement that the next station stop would be Didmarsh Halt.

  So far as they could tell in the thick mist, they were the only people to leave the train at Didmarsh.

  Miss Shivers was in the booking hall, a gaunt-faced, tense woman of about fifty, with cropped silver hair and red-framed glasses. Her hand was cold, but she shook Fran’s firmly and lingered before letting go.

  She drove them in an old Maxi Estate to a cottage set back from the road not more than five minutes from the station. Christmas-tree lights were visible through the leaded window. The smell of roast turkey wafted from the door when she opened it. Jim handed across the bottle of wine he had thoughtfully brought.

  “We’re wondering how you heard of us.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you are,” she answered, addressing herself more to Fran than Jim. “My name is Edith. I was your mother’s best friend for ten years, but we fell out over a misunderstanding. You see, Fran, I loved your father.”

  Fran stiffened and told Jim, “I don’t think we should stay.”

  “Please,” said the woman, and she sounded close to desperation. “We did nothing wrong. I have something on my conscience, but it isn’t adultery, whatever you were led to believe.”

  They consented to stay and eat the meal. Conversation was strained, but the food was superb. And when at last they sat in front of the fire sipping coffee, Edith Shivers explained why she had invited them. “As I said, I loved your father, Harry. A crush, we called it in those days when it wasn’t mutual. He was kind to me, took me out, kissed me sometimes, but that was all. He really loved your mother. Adored her.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” said Fran grimly.

  “No, your mother was mistaken. Tragically mistaken. I know what she believed, and nothing I could say or do would shake her. I tried writing, phoning, calling personally. She shut me out of her life completely.”

  “That much I can accept,” said Fran. “She never mentioned you to me.”

  “Did she never talk about the train crash—the night your father was killed, just down the line from here?”

  “Just once. After that it was a closed book. He betrayed her dreadfully. She was pregnant, expecting me. It was traumatic. She hardly ever mentioned my father after that. She didn’t even keep a photograph.”

  Miss Shivers put out her hand and pressed it over Fran’s. “My dear, for both their sakes I want you to know the truth. Thirty-seven people died in that crash, twenty-five years ago this very evening. Your mother was shocked to learn that he was on the train because he’d said nothing whatsoever to her about it. He’d told her he was working late. She read about the crash without supposing for a moment that Harry was one of the dead. When she was given the news, just a day or two before you were born, the grief was worse because he’d lied to her. Then she learned that I’d been a passenger on the same train, as indeed I had, and escaped unhurt. Fran, that was chance, pure chance. I happened to work in the City. My name was published in the press, and your mother saw it, and came to a totally wrong conclusion.”

  “That my father and you . . .”

  “Yes—and that wasn’t all. Some days after the accident, Harry’s personal effects
were returned to her, and in the pocket of his jacket they found a receipt from a Bond Street shop, for a nightdress.”

  “Elaine Ducharme,” said Fran in a flat voice.

  “You know?”

  “Yes.”

  “The shop was very famous. They went out of business in 1969. You see—”

  “He’d bought it for her,” said Fran, “as a surprise.”

  Edith Shivers withdrew her hand from Fran’s and put it to her mouth. “Then you know about me?”

  “No.”

  She drew herself up in her chair. “I must tell you. Quite by chance on that night twenty-five years ago, I saw him getting on to the train. I still loved him, and he was alone, so I walked along the corridor and joined him. He was carrying a bag containing the nightdress. In the course of the journey he showed it to me, without realizing that it wounded me to see how much he loved her still. He told me how he’d gone into the shop—”

  “Yes,” said Fran expressionlessly. “And after Reading the train crashed.”

  “He was killed instantly. The side of the carriage crushed him. But I was flung clear, bruised, cut in the forehead, but really unhurt. I could see that Harry was dead. Amazingly, the box with the nightdress wasn’t damaged.” Miss Shivers stared into the fire. “I coveted it. I told myself if I left it, someone would pick it up and steal it. Instead, I did. I stole it. And it’s been on my conscience ever since.”

  Fran had listened in a trancelike way, thinking all the time about her meeting in the train.

  Miss Shivers was saying. “If you hate me for what I did, I understand. You see, your mother assumed that Harry bought the nightdress for me. Whatever I said to the contrary, she wouldn’t have believed me.”

  “Probably not,” said Fran. “What happened to it?”

  Miss Shivers got up and crossed the room to a sideboard, opened a drawer and withdrew a box, the box Fran had handled only an hour or two previously. “I never wore it. It was never meant for me. I want you to have it, Fran. He would have wished that.”

  Fran’s hands trembled as she opened the box and laid aside the tissue. She stroked the silk. She thought of what had happened, how she hadn’t for a moment suspected that she had seen a ghost. She refused to think of him as that. She rejoiced in the miracle that she had met her own father, who had died before she was born. Met him in the prime of his young life, when he was her own age.

  Still holding the box, she got up and kissed Edith Shivers on the forehead. “My parents are at peace now, I’m sure of it. This is a wonderful Christmas present.”