by J M Gregson
He scrambled to his feet, his head bouncing away one of the big tinselled spheres she had hung up for Christmas decorations as she tried to distract herself. ‘Just so long as you don’t stop me getting a golf club into Bert Hook’s big hands,’ he grinned.
‘Don’t tell anyone else,’ she said as he was at the door. ‘I don’t want your colleagues to know what a panicky old bat you’ve got at home. Sorry I interrupted your day.’
‘No great matter,’ he said. ‘It’s a quiet time anyway, coming up to Christmas.’
When he looked back a fortnight later, that seemed the most ironic statement of all.
*
Gerald Sangster went to see the love of his life on that Thursday before Christmas. The hopeless love. He told himself he realized that now, as everyone else had realized it years ago. But his heart would not allow him to let go of Moira Yates, however clearly his brain spelt out the situation to him.
Dermot Yates tactfully left the pair on their own. He said that he would be glad to get out of the house for a break, to do some belated Christmas shopping. Probably there was some truth in this. The doctor assured him that Moira could be left on her own in the house, but he had not chosen to leave her without company on many occasions as her own reluctance to set foot beyond two or three rooms in the house had become more marked with the passing weeks.
Moira and Gerald Sangster chatted in desultory fashion through the afternoon. They knew each other well enough not to be embarrassed by the long pauses in their talk. But it was the talk of old friends, rather than the intimate exchanges that Gerald always envisaged and never seemed able to engineer. They were easiest when they talked of the old days, when they had been part of a crowd of young people, when they had been the most gifted of a group who played serious tennis, when he had towed the horsebox around the south of England to the scenes of her various equine triumphs.
Nostalgia is a powerful pleasure among old friends, uniting them in happy remembrance of times past, reminding them of common interests, mutual friends, and the joyous successes of years gone by. Carefree times, they always seem, in the retrospective glow of that selective memory which is one of the human defences against darker thoughts.
Sangster brought the conversation back as gently as he could to the present. He tried to explore the depth of Moira’s present depression, for he had researched agoraphobia since she had become its victim, and his reading suggested that depression of some kind lay always behind its fears. Whilst he hinted gently that the only solution lay within herself, she retreated gently behind the fences she had built around her as she had receded into her illness.
When Gerald was eventually irritated into a more definite suggestion, she turned her eyes for the first time to meet his. He expected anger, and for a moment irritation did flare in those large, near-black pupils which had given him so many sleepless nights over the years. Then she relaxed, grinning at him, teasing in a way he remembered from happier days. ‘You mean I should snap out of it!’ she said.
‘No, I wasn’t thinking of anything so—’
‘You’re right, though. It’s what the doctors say, too. They don’t put it as directly as that, of course. They say that, “the solutions to psychological disorders of this kind will most usually be found within the patient herself.” I prefer your version, Gerald, “Snap out of it!”’
It gave him a ridiculous pleasure to hear her use his name. She had not done it much during the months of her illness. Not knowing what to say, he found himself bumbling on about his lack of medical knowledge, going nowhere.
This time it was the invalid who had to rescue him. She came across and sat beside him on the sofa in the darkening December room and took both his hands in hers. It was the first time in months that she had volunteered any physical contact with him, and for an instant his blood pulsed in his temples with an absurd hope that it was he who was to be her salvation, he who was to lead her as a lover from the barless prison within which she had caged herself.
It was the opposite. She looked him again full in the face and said, ‘I will come out of this, Gerald. I can feel that, now. But the rest of my life won’t be spent with you, you know. I’m sorry.’
She didn’t say any more. Neither of them needed more. He held on to her hands for a full minute, in what he felt now would be the last intimate contact he would ever have with the woman he loved. He did not want explanations. Yet he was driven into words, as much to break the spell of this exquisitely painful silence as in search of explanation. ‘It’s him, isn’t it? Keane!’ He spat the name harshly, as if it were an obscenity.
She snatched her hands away at that, as he felt he had known she would. Her eyes stared out at the twilight, her profile turned to marble. He felt her seeping away from him as she said, ‘It may be. I don’t know. I think I’m almost rid of him, now. But I can’t live with you, Gerry. I’m sorry.’
The words hit him like a bludgeoning with a sand-filled sock. He stood up unsteadily, surprised that he had enough control of his limbs to move in a normal fashion. ‘I’m sorry, too, Moira. Perhaps ... Well, perhaps when ...’
He could not go on. He wanted to say that perhaps when she was better things might be different, but he could not face the certainty of the renewed denial that would bring. He said clumsily, ‘I think I’d better be off now,’ unable to frame a decent excuse for an abrupt departure. He knew that Dermot would be away for an hour at least yet, but he needed to be out of this claustrophobic house, away from the woman he loved before she could retreat even further from him. She did not come to the door with him, and he did not look back for the face he knew would not be there.
That night, fury welled within Gerald Sangster, surging over and drowning the pain of his rejection by Moira. It was not her face which was framed by his anger, but the confident, urbane countenance of the man who had rejected her, who had cast her into this illness which Gerald now felt was the source of all his pain and frustration.
Raymond Keane had suffered nothing for what he had done to his lovely Moira. He had installed that new blonde woman already in her place. And his political career was going from strength to strength. Well, he couldn’t be allowed to get away with it. He wasn’t the only enterprising and determined man in Moira’s life. Gerry had built his own prosperous business, and he had the resources and determination to bring Keane down, if he put his mind to it.
It was the only service he could render now to Moira. The only one she would allow him to make. He would not fail her. He had no idea yet what he would do.
But he would make sure her revenge upon Keane was swift and effective.
*
Gerald Sangster would have been surprised at what was happening to the blonde woman he had last seen on Keane’s arm.
Even as Sangster began to formulate his action against Keane, Zoe Renwick was reviewing her relationship with the MP. She had had a trying day as ward sister. There was sickness among the staff as flu began to make its winter rounds. There had been a little spat between two normally quiet nurses about the duty rotas for Christmas and New Year. For the first time in her experience, the notion that parents of small children were given priority in Christmas leave had been challenged, and she had been called upon to adjudicate.
In the afternoon, there had been a death—an expected one, but one which tore at the emotions none the less for that. Death in the smaller, more intimate world of a private hospital shattered those close to it more than that inevitable event did in the large and busy wards of the National Health Service. The grieving relatives, even with their breathy, well-meant thanks to those who had nursed the departed through these last days, made an unavoidable impact on the other patients in this quiet, contained world.
By the time she got back to her flat in the evening, Zoe was quite exhausted. Her mind came back again, as it did in every spare moment, to that curious gathering on Sunday, when Moira Yates, flanked by her brother and her faithful champion of many years, had confronted her former lover and his new mis
tress. Try as she might, Zoe could only think of the meeting in terms of a confrontation.
And what of her own part in it? Why had she chosen to be present at this embarrassing encounter? Had it been mere curiosity to see the woman she knew Raymond had lately loved so deeply, however much he might make light of it now? Had she been anxious to oversee and confirm Raymond’s exchange from his former lover to her? It was understandable she would need reassurance, after all: Raymond Keane was expecting her to become his wife.
And she had expected, even been anxious, to become that wife. Before Sunday. She did not like what she had seen in herself that day, but she liked still less what she thought she had seen in Raymond. There had been a streak of cruelty in her wish to be so inappropriately present at this farewell to Moira Yates; she saw that clearly now. There had been a part of her which wanted to see herself triumphant and the former mistress put down. It was despicable in her. And it had not worked out that way.
That strange, febrile woman who had taken such unexpected charge of the proceedings had been the winner of the strange battle she had conducted in her brother’s antiseptic modern house. Zoe had found herself suddenly jealous of her, of her easy intimacy with Raymond Keane, of her ability to discomfort him so easily. Zoe had been treated as if she did not exist, until Moira chose to acknowledge her presence. And for Raymond, when he had been in the orbit of that strangely powerful dark-haired witch, Zoe had indeed been unimportant, almost unnoticed.
She had known by Sunday night that she could never marry Raymond. She had been appalled by the casual, exuberant cruelty of his treatment of his business partner, Chris Hampson, on that Sunday morning. The fact that he had been showing off to her, asserting his power and inviting her to admire him, had made it much worse, for she had felt herself drawn into his behaviour. It showed what he thought of her, how little he knew of her, that he expected her to applaud him in this.
And then that encounter with Moira Yates in the afternoon. He had planned to be as cruel to that strange woman as he had been to Hampson, she was sure. And he would have expected Zoe to applaud him in that cruelty also. She was glad now that that flashing dark-haired woman had so discomforted Raymond, that she had been there to see it. It had been painful, but the scales had dropped from her eyes.
Everything Raymond had said since he had left Moira Yates had only confirmed her revulsion for him: his preoccupation with recovering his own composure; his repeated statements that Moira would never have made a parliamentary wife; above all, his total failure to take account of the way the meeting had affected Zoe and her relationship with him.
When the phone shrilled suddenly in the quiet room, she started so violently that she spilled most of her drink on her lap. It was evidence of how much on edge she was, she thought as she picked up the phone.
It was Raymond. He had been drinking; for the first time ever, she resented that, acutely and irrationally.
He was not drunk, but his voice slid a little carelessly over the syllables as he said, ‘I’ve almost wound things up in the metropolis. One or two people to see tomorrow. Then I should be able to get away to the cottage. See you tomorrow night?’
‘Not tomorrow. I—I’m working.’
The lie fell clumsily from her trembling lips, but he was too drunk, or too complacent, to recognize it. ‘Saturday, then. Christmas Eve. Mistletoe and no nighties! I’ll look forward to it, my love.’
The endearment was too casual, too presumptuous. She wondered how many other women it had been offered to in the past. Such things had never worried her when she loved him. ‘All right. I don’t know what time.’
‘Be in touch, then. Goo’ night, old thing.’
He put the phone down before she had to frame a reply. Zoe knew that she was one more small task achieved, one more item to be ticked off on his list of tasks for the day. This was the well-organized political man, making his way, putting his wife in place as part of his visible parliamentary baggage.
Staring down at her phone, Zoe Renwick realized how close she had come to ruining her life.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Zoe was right about the man who was still officially her fiancé. Raymond Keane was ticking off the jobs he still had to complete at the end of a busy parliamentary session.
He did not go as far as putting Zoe on his list, of course; he did not need to be reminded to ring her. But the rest of his tasks and assignments formed a neat handwritten list in the back of his diary, and on Friday morning he checked it and did indeed tick off the ones which had already received his attention.
He had already delivered his professionally packaged gifts of perfume and chocolates to his secretary and his parliamentary research assistant. The latter was an earnest, bespectacled girl who was still young enough to be besotted with his charisma; she worked like a slave for the man she was willing on to ministerial office.
He took his bottle of whisky down to the caretaker of the Westminster block which contained his London flat, remembering like the good politician he was to ask about the progress of the man’s student son, thereby securing for himself a disproportionate burst of affection and a reputation as a thinking and caring man.
He dictated four routine letters into his dictaphone machine and left the tape for his secretary. By midday, he was on the M4, the big Jaguar purring quietly at the 78 m.p.h. the Chief Constable had assured him was the safe limit as far as motorway police were concerned. He concentrated his mind on the meeting ahead, which was more than just another routine matter. There were fences to be repaired.
He parked the Jaguar next to Chris Hampson’s Granada and walked into Gloucester Electronics to find that Christmas was still being kept at bay. There were a few coloured paper-chains in the main office, a row of cards strung along the wall, but everyone was still busily employed in company work. A notice on the top of the filing cabinets sternly reminded staff that, ‘We have guaranteed all our customers that all orders received by December 20th will be dealt with before Christmas’, and the small factory hummed with the sounds of cheerful industry.
He found Chris Hampson characteristically busy in shirt sleeves. His partner had always led by example, long before ‘hands-on management’ had become a fashionable term. In answer to Raymond’s routine enquiry, he said curtly, ‘Business has picked up, as it always does in the last weeks before Christmas.’
‘So you were being unnecessarily pessimistic when we spoke last week at the cottage.’
‘No. What I said then had nothing to do with this. As a matter of fact, the order book for the new year is thinner than it’s ever been. I shall have to lay some of the lads out there off by the end of January.’
Hampson, his grey hair tousled with effort, looked older with even the thought of that. He had never come to terms with the harsher aspects of industrial life. Raymond said, genuinely wishing to be helpful, ‘Would you like me to come down and give them the bad news? Assuming it should be necessary, of course.’
‘Tell people you’ve never seen that their services are no longer required, you mean? No, thanks. I expect you’d quite enjoy it, but I’ll do it.’
Raymond kept control of himself, determined not to be offended. ‘Sometimes it’s better to keep these things as impersonal as possible. Wouldn’t it be better if they blamed me than you?’ Raymond could already see himself incorporating his bravery into political speeches about the hard facts of industrial life. When election time came round, it would remind his listeners that he was a working capitalist, still in touch with the pulse of British economic problems.
Chris Hampson’s lined, experienced face was red with his sense of injustice. ‘Be better if you got out into the world and used your contacts to get us some orders. Leave the routine stuff to me.’
‘Look, Chris, I haven’t the time. And politically I have to be careful of what I do. I can’t be seen to be using my position to the advantage of the firm.’
It was no more than a routine excuse: there was no question of government
orders being placed with a small firm like theirs. But it was the wrong thing to say to a man looking for help. ‘You didn’t say that when you went off to parliament,’ said Hampson furiously. ‘The whole basis of your downing tools here was that you’d make use of what you called your higher profile to bring in orders. And what’s happened? As times have got harder for us, you’ve not wanted to know. The rougher things get, the less we see of you!’
It was a long speech for a man who lived by actions rather than words, who had to force himself into the harshness of disagreement. Chris Hampson stood toe to toe with his partner, panting like a boxer at the end of a vigorous exchange. Their eyes were not more than a yard apart.
For Raymond Keane, this was the worst possible scenario. He had called in at the works to make peace, hoping that his emollient skill with words would heal the breach between him and Chris, or at least paper over the cracks until things improved in the business. Not for the first time this week, he was finding that the generalities which got him by with a wider audience were not being accepted in a more personal situation.
He gave his partner a smile that was supposed to convey the understanding he brought from a wider perspective. ‘If times are hard, we’ll just have to cut back, Chris. It’s a fact of industrial life. You know that as well as I do.’
‘Good. I’m glad you feel like that. I’m glad you accept the situation. Because neither you nor I will be taking anything out of the business this year.’
Hampson got his first spurt of satisfaction in this confrontation, as he saw alarm spread over Keane’s handsome, well-fleshed features. ‘Now wait a minute, Chris. That wasn’t what I was implying at all. I need the money from the firm, I’ve planned my life around it for the next—’
‘Well, you can just unplan it then. I’m not getting rid of good men from the shop floor whilst an absentee landlord takes a fat income out of the place. You’ll be getting nothing this year, Ray. Just be glad you’ve got that parliamentary salary, including the rise you so thoughtfully voted for yourselves, to keep you going.’
