He parked the car and ran back along the alley, too concerned to walk. Good job I got down here today, he thought. If they’ve put the house up for sale there has to be a reason, and in this climate, with him in voluntary arrangement, it’s probably a bad one.
When he reached her window, he was shocked to see that the curtains were gone and that the room inside was completely empty. Moved? In this short time? She can’t have. Why didn’t she phone and tell me?
There was a young woman ambling up the road with a baby in a pushchair and a little girl dawdling behind her. He approached them cautiously so as not to alarm her, but, being a resident of Shore Street, she knew who he was.
‘You’re the chap who took them to the theatre, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘That’s me.’
‘I’ve just seen her up the school,’ she told him. ‘I’m Sally. I used to baby-sit for her. She never said you were coming down.’
‘She doesn’t know. It’s a surprise, like.’
‘An’ you’re the one surprised.’
He grimaced.
‘I’m not supposed to hand this on to anyone,’ she said as she wrote Alison’s new address on a slip of paper. ‘I think she had a bit of bother with some of his creditors. They were repossessed, you see. Anyway she doesn’t want people to know where she is. But seeing as it’s you … Do you know how to get there?’
‘I got a map.’
‘You’ll need it,’ she warned. ‘It’s all little cul-de-sacs up there. Go straight along the Selsey Road until you get to the roundabout and then take the second turning out. It’s called Bersted Road. That’ll lead you to the estate.’
It led him to Alison. She was trudging along the Selsey Road, pushing her double buggy, wearing jeans and that familiar patched anorak, and a shawl of some sort wrapped round her head, a dark plodding figure in the gathering gloom of late afternoon.
He cruised to a halt beside her. ‘Like a lift?’ he said.
She turned as she walked, her spine taut with apprehension, her face half hidden by the folds of the shawl. Then she recognised him. ‘Morgan!’ she said. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Taxi service,’ he told her. ‘Hop in and I’ll take you home.’
She was embarrassed. ‘I’m not living at Shore Street any more. I’ve…’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Your friend Sally told me. Hop in.’
‘No, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I can manage.’
There were two cars behind him waiting to pass on the narrow road.
‘We’re holdin’ up the traffic,’ he said. ‘Hop in.’
She dithered, biting her lip and looking down at the buggy. ‘I can manage. You go on.’
The car drivers began to hoot their impatience.
‘I’m not movin’ till you get in,’ he said. ‘They can hoot all they like.’
She was panicked into a decision. She didn’t want him to see the state she was in, but she couldn’t cause a traffic jam. She lifted the kids out of the buggy, folded it and bundled them all into the car. But she didn’t look at him, or smile, or thank him.
‘You’ll have to navigate,’ he said, being deliberately cheerful.
She sat at the back with the children and kept her head down all the time, giving directions but hiding her face. Morgan’s concern for her grew by the minute but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even comment on the distance they were travelling. What a long way they have to walk to school, he thought. She really ought to run a car if she’s got to live out here. Could she drive? He didn’t know and it wasn’t the right time to ask. Not when she was behaving so oddly.
He wasn’t impressed by the house, with its broken window and its garish décor, but he didn’t say that either. While she ran on ahead to open the door, he carried the buggy into the porch and skinned the kids out of their anoraks. Then he stood in the porch and waited to be invited in. She was so obviously upset that he didn’t want to do the wrong thing.
She was a long time fussing about inside the house, switching on lights and setting a match to a gas fire. But at last she came back to the door.
Now that she had taken off the shawl, he could see her black eye and the bruises all down the side of her face. He was so horrified that he said the first thing that came into his head, without stopping to think.
‘Alison, cariad what’s happened to you?’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, ducking her head. ‘I had a bit of an accident, that’s all. It’s worse than it looks. I’m all right.’
‘What happened?’
She looked past him into the dusk of the front garden, not wanting to tell him, wishing he’d go away. But Jon was standing beside her and before she could stop him, he blurted everything out.
‘Daddy hit her,’ he said. ‘He came in and he shouted and screamed and then he hit her and she fell down on the floor and we all screamed and then he threw the phone out of the window.’
‘It’s nothing,’ Alison said, her face stubborn. ‘He was upset, that’s all. Someone sent a private eye out to Spain to find him. It upset him.’
Morgan could feel his heart sinking, as inescapable facts jostled into his mind. This is all my fault. I persuaded him back. Duw!Duw! I did this. And in that second he knew he had to look after her and protect her, no matter what.
‘That’s a terrible bruise,’ he said, cupping her chin very gently in his hand and tilting her face to the light. ‘You seen a doctor, have you?’
His concern irritated her. ‘There’s no need for that,’ she said, shaking his hand away. ‘I’m all right. I provoked him, that’s all. I should have been more careful.’
‘What rubbish!’ he said. ‘He’s got no right to treat you like this, even if you did provoke him, which I don’t believe.’
‘It’s my responsibility,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I should have been more careful.’
‘That’s what battered wives say.’
‘I’m not a battered wife,’ she said, her face suffused with anger and revulsion at the very idea. ‘He lost his temper, that’s all. It was a one-off. I shall get over it.’
‘He could have injured you.’
‘Well he didn’t. Anyway it’s no business of yours. Why don’t you leave me alone?’
‘Because I can’t stand to see the state you’re in.’ And he thought: Because I love you and it tears me to shreds to see how much he’s hurt you and to know it’s my fault. And was surprised at what he was thinking.
‘Then don’t look.’ Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be talked about. I want to pretend it hasn’t happened.
The anger between them distressed him so much that he couldn’t think what to say next, and while he hesitated, impetus and opportunity were lost.
She was sharp with unshed tears. ‘I can do without this,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ And she shut the door on him.
Left in the porch, Morgan watched her drawing the curtains against him and realised that he was shaking with fury. That bloody creature! he thought. That bloody, idle, hideous creature. To come home and knock her about like that. She must have been in a bad enough state being repossessed, without being punched in the face. He’s a bloody monster. He ought to be laid out cold. But over and above all that, he was feeling ridiculously happy. I’m in love, he thought. I love her. And he began to grin.
Meantime there was the problem about what to do next. She’d switched on the television. He could hear a children’s programme playing loudly inside the house, and Emma squealing. There’s no point hanging about here, he thought. If I knock, she’ll ignore me. Those curtains are like a barricade. She’s had enough. I ought to have seen that before I started arguing.
Still, at least after years working for Mr Alexander Jones, he knew one possible tactic. That gentleman’s motto was explicit. ‘Give ’em space and try again.’ I’ll come back next week, he decided. I mustn’t rush her. I’ll give her time to recover and then I’ll come back.
Rigg, who had no
such scruples, came back on Friday morning. He arrived on the doorstep at Barnaby Green just as Alison and the children were setting out for school. He had an arm full of red roses and a mouth full of abject apologies and he actually offered to drive them all to the school gates.
The children clung to her legs in fear and had to be coaxed into the car but Alison was surprised to find that she didn’t feel any emotion towards him at all. She wasn’t afraid of him, or annoyed by his return, or angry with him, or even sorry for him. She simply felt cold, as if he was a total stranger to her.
‘I’s been a pig to my Kitten,’ he said as he drove back again. ‘I didn’t mean to hit her. Is I forgiven? My poor iddle-diddle Kitten.’
She cut through the baby-talk. ‘Well it’s done now,’ she said. ‘It’s no good talking about it.’
He took that as forgiveness and turned to other things. ‘I saw Norrie in Chichester yesterday,’ he said. ‘She says you’ve got all my stock.’
‘It’s hidden under the bed,’ she said. ‘It’s quite safe.’
‘That’s good,’ Rigg turned into Barnaby Green. ‘I’ll take it off your hands. You don’t want to tempt the burglars.’
He went straight upstairs as soon as she opened the door and was down again almost at once with the first of the boxes.
‘I don’t suppose you had a stock list, did you?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I made a list. Do you want a copy?’
‘If you’ve got one.’
She found the list while he was stacking the boxes in the boot of his car.
‘Great!’ he said, folding it and putting it in his pocket. He seemed in a hurry to be off. ‘Well that’s the lot. See ya!’
Alison took Emma’s hand and walked down the path after him. There was something surreal about this visit and, although she didn’t want to prolong it, she needed to make sense of it. She leaned down to the open car window.
‘Now what?’ he said and there was no mistaking his impatience.
‘Aren’t you going to give me an address or something?’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘Don’t you think I ought to know where you are?’
Rigg shrugged. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll be around.’
She insisted. ‘If people write to you, I need to know where to send the letters.’ She’d had several unpleasant letters from his creditors at the video shop, and it was only right that he should deal with them.
‘Let them wait,’ he said. ‘I don’t particularly want them to know where I am. Anyway I don’t have an address. I’m sort of on the move. See ya!’ And he crashed the car into gear and roared off.
His departure left Alison with a nasty taste in her mouth. He wasn’t sorry for what he’d done to her. He’d only really come back to collect his stock. Still she thought, the flowers are lovely. I’m damned if I’m going to waste them. So she put them in a vase and arranged them prettily. Then she settled Emma with some toys and sat down at the table to examine her face in her pocket mirror.
It was the family tea that night and Mum would be expecting them. But she knew she couldn’t go. Not with one side of her face so swollen and discoloured. If only bruises didn’t take such a long time to come out. Another week and she might get away with it, but not today. The injuries were too raw, and too recent, and too obvious.
Elsie was most upset when Alison rang to tell her she wouldn’t be coming.
‘That’s two weeks in a row,’ she said to Jenny and Katy, as the three of them were setting the table. ‘It’s not like her.’
‘She has moved house,’ Jenny said, arranging biscuits.
‘Yes, I know that,’ Elsie said, ‘but all the more reason to come, to my way of looking at it. You’d have thought she’d have liked a meal in comfort. It isn’t as if she’s got to walk here. Mark said he’d drive them over.’
‘She’ll come next week,’ Jenny said, comforted.
‘I know it’s silly,’ Elsie went on. ‘But I’ve got a sort of feeling. It worries me. It’s not like her, is it Katy? And I made this jam sponge specially.’
‘Tell you what,’ Katy offered. ‘You cut off a big slice and I’ll cycle over and give it to her and then you’ll know she’s got it and we’ll all know she’s all right.’
‘You’re a good girl, Katy,’ her grandmother said. ‘Isn’t she a good girl, Jenny?’
‘No good asking me,’ Jenny said, basking in her daughter’s well-earned praise. ‘I’m biased.’
So the cake was cut and wrapped and packed in a tupperware container, and Katy cycled to Barnaby Green to deliver it. Consequently, she was the first person in the family to see Alison’s bruises.
She was awed and impressed but splendidly unemotional. ‘Did he hit you?’ she asked. There was no disapproval in her voice, and more curiosity than shock.
Alison found it was possible to talk to her.
‘We had a tiff,’ she said. ‘People do when they’re married. It’s nothing really. It looks worse than it is. There’s no need to tell your Mum and Dad. Or Gran. It would only upset them.’
‘Was that why you didn’t come to tea?’
‘Got it in one. I didn’t think they’d like the look of me. You won’t tell them, will you? He’ll never do it again.’
Katy was proud to be the receiver of such confidences. It was a step into the adult world. ‘Course not,’ she promised. ‘I won’t tell anyone.’
But she told her friend Meriel, at break on Monday, naturally. They told one another everything and considered themselves experts on wife-bashing.
‘She says he’ll never do it again,’ she confided, ‘I don’t believe that, do you? Once they start wife-bashing, they don’t stop.’
‘Sandra’s dad hit her mum for years and years,’ Meriel said. ‘He broke her leg, d’you remember? She was hobbling about for yonks.’
‘Men are gross,’ Katy said,
‘Your dad’s all right.’
‘Oh he’s different,’ Katy said. ‘He makes jokes.’
Mark was also very concerned about his sister, when the news got back to him via Meriel’s mother and Jenny.
‘What are we going to do about it, Jen?’ he asked, when Katy and William had gone chattering off with their friends and they had the house to themselves.
‘Leave her alone to get over it,’ Jenny advised wisely. ‘And don’t tell your mother. She’d have a blue fit if she knew our Ali was a battered wife.’
‘That bloody Rigg,’ Mark scowled. ‘I’d like to break his stinking neck, vicious little git. First he leaves her without any money and she has to close down all his bloody shops and then he comes back and beats her up. Why didn’t she phone us, Jen? I’d have gone over and seen him off for her. Perhaps I ought to go over now. What d’you think?’
‘I wouldn’t, if I were you,’ Jenny said. ‘If she’d wanted our help she’d have rung. You go charging in and you’ll make matters worse. She’ll ask when she’s ready. You’ll see. Let her do it in her own time.’
So Alison was left to cope on her own over the weekend and surprised herself by how well she managed.
The summer bookings were coming in so there was a lot of work at the holiday camp, and although she was feeling terribly tired, she was glad to be occupied. Some of the campers gave her curious glances, but the girls who worked with her had the good sense not to comment on the state of her face, but simply kept her cheerful with jokes and cups of coffee. Jon and Emma may have been wetting their beds every night but at least Jon seemed all right at school and Emma behaved herself in the nursery, and they were pathetically good at home, offering to help her make their beds with the newly dried sheets and following her like lambs wherever she went.
On Tuesday morning, she came home from her shopping to find that the glass she’d ordered had been delivered, with a wedge of putty attached. She gave Emma every toy she could find to keep her amused and a stern lecture that she wasn’t to come anywhere near the glass while Mummy was working, then she
set about mending the window.
It was horribly difficult because the old glass was a pig to remove and the new glass was heavy and unwieldy and almost impossible to hold in place. But after a two-hour struggle, the window was back. There were cuts and scratches on three of her fingers, two of them still bleeding despite elastoplast, the putty was pitted with finger marks, the glass was smudged and smeared – but she’d done it and she’d done it herself.
I might be a deserted wife, she thought, as she surveyed her handiwork, but I’m not defeated. I can cope. It was a comforting thought to take with her on her long trek to the holiday camp and her afternoon’s work.
Morgan was also feeling pleased with himself that afternoon because he’d just used his detective skills to particularly good advantage. At odd moments during the morning, he’d phoned the holiday camp to find out when Alison would be finishing work, provided an alibi for his early departure from the office and persuaded Roger to hold the fort. Now he was on his way to the coast. Everything had been timed to the last minute. He’d even made allowances for heavy traffic. Whatever happened when he arrived, even if she refused to talk to him, he was as prepared as he could possibly be.
Because it was such a beautiful spring day, it was actually quite a pleasure to wait outside the holiday camp. He listened as the campers drove in and out under the garish welcome sign, car radios blared pop music, and unseen children splashed and yelled in the open-air paddling pool. The long flag-poles clinked tinnily in the March wind, the sky was a riot of tumbling cloud and he could smell the sea through his open window. Just let her talk to me, he thought. That’s all I want.
And there she was, pushing Emma in the buggy, walking towards him from the administration building. As she got closer, he saw that her black eye had deepened, her bruises had extended and changed colour and that she’d cut two of her fingers – how had she done that?—but she was smiling at Emma and looked a lot more cheerful.
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