by J M Gregson
‘It’s an excellent hotel.’
‘It’s not just that. I thought it was a long way to drive for a few days, but now I’m glad that we did it. It must be psychological, but I feel that I’m in a completely different world down here.’
Geoffrey knew exactly what she meant, but he chose to interpret it more narrowly. ‘St Ives couldn’t be much different from an old cotton town.’ He couldn’t resist adding loyally, ‘Though I still say the country of the Ribble Valley takes a lot of beating.’
She grinned at him, appreciating his foibles, but without the irritation which might have accompanied her sympathy if they had been married for forty years. ‘I didn’t just mean that. I was thinking it’s good to leave behind all the complications of the families and friends who might wonder what we’re about.’
Geoffrey didn’t want to say that he had himself spent the early weeks of their relationship wondering just what it was going to be about. They left the dining room and went to have coffee and mints in the adjacent lounge. He looked appreciatively at the pictures on the walls and settled back into his armchair with his cup.
‘This was a railway hotel originally,’ he said, ‘The old Great Western Railway was the grandest of all the lines, in its heyday. Isambard Kingdom Brunel didn’t do anything by halves. And the Tregenna Castle had to match his ideas.’
‘You’re not going back into the age of steam again, are you?’ said Pam with a grin. She had already found that the vanished age of steam locomotives was one of his enthusiasms. It marked a new and welcome stage in a relationship when you could tease each other.
‘With you around, I wouldn’t dare. But I’m brave enough to steal your mint, if you’re going to leave it again.’
They wouldn’t need to go through the tiresome stuff about diet again, thought Pam. She liked a man who didn’t repeat himself - though it had been nice to hear him say with such ringing sincerity that she didn’t need to watch her figure last night, and even to have his assurance that he would do that for her. Conventional humour was quite reassuring when you liked the man who offered it.
She said suddenly, ‘You seem to know all about this place. Did you come here with Jill?’
He smiled, and she thought how much better and more relaxed he looked now that he had caught the spring sun. ‘No. I’ve never been here before. I knew quite a bit about Brunel and the Great Western, and I picked most of the rest of it up from the hotel brochure.’
She was relieved not to be competing with a ghost. ‘You’ve no need to be frightened of talking to me about Jill, you know. We can’t change the lives we’ve lived, and she was an important part of yours. It’s different for me, having divorced a man I’ve no wish ever to see again.’
He was pleased with her for that. Nevertheless, he had more sensitivity than to dwell on his memories of his dead wife. He might talk about her to Pam at some time in the future, if things continued to go as well as this. In the meantime, he had more serious worries: his family knew nothing about this new relationship, and he was now sure that he was going to have to tell them all about it.
On the next morning, Geoffrey looked rather longingly at the golf course which was attached to the hotel, but didn’t venture on to it: Pam didn’t play, and on this first outing together, he wouldn’t leave her. He wasn’t silly enough to think that such self-denial would survive for very long, but from what he’d heard from Pam so far, he was sure that she’d eventually encourage him to pursue his passion for that infuriating game. Instead, they swam together in the hotel pool, walked again on the cliffs and visited the dramatic outcrop of St Michael’s Mount. On the next day, they spent happy hours at the National Trust garden at Trengwainton, where Pam proved unexpectedly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the plants. ‘Some of the hardy Japanese camellias will even grow in Brunton, nowadays,’ she informed him. It sounded like an assurance for the future.
It was on the last evening of their four days in Cornwall that Geoffrey Aspin told Pam Williams that he wished to marry her.
* * *
Back in Lancashire on the same evening, an entirely different union was under discussion in one of the recesses of the almost deserted Brunton CID section.
‘It’s time you were making an honest man of me,’ declared Percy Peach to Lucy Blake. ‘I have serious qualms of conscience about the way you take me into your bed and make use of my body. I defer to your urgent physical demands, because I realize that you have certain needs, but my conscience tells me that we should have the benefit of wedlock. Because of my unselfishness, you do not appear to realize that all the time I am exploring the recesses of your bottom I am wracked with ethical doubts.’
‘You’ve been talking to my mum.’
Percy’s eyes grew round with wonder, a phenomenon denied entirely to the criminal fraternity of the Brunton area and intensely irritating to his prospective bride.
‘You mean that your mother thinks we should get married? Well, there you are then. Haven’t I always said that Agnes Blake had a very sensible perspective on the world in general and the lives of her loved ones in particular? She talks such sense because she has the benefit of much experience: she can stand back from these things and take a detached overview.’
‘Like Tommy Bloody Tucker?’
‘Wash your mouth out, my girl! Not at all like Tommy Bloody Tucker. I don’t understand how a young woman I’ve always thought had a certain sensitivity could link her own mother with that affront to humanity. I’m shocked.’ He walked over to the filing cabinet in the comer of his office and shook his head sadly at its smooth grey surface, demonstrating the depth of that shock.
‘I’m not your girl! I get enough of that from my mother, without you joining in. And I’m busy getting on with my career. I don’t need the complication of marriage at present.’ Percy Peach walked with difficulty back to the chair behind his desk, apparently just making it before he slumped into its welcome support. ‘I’m deeply shocked. Really I am. Deeply shocked. I didn’t think that even a thoroughly modem young woman like you would ride so cruelly over both the conscientious scruples of a partner wracked with moral doubts and the views of an ageing mother. May I remind you that Agnes Blake’s dying wish would be to see her only daughter married to the man of her dreams?’
Lucy Blake considered this unlikely scenario for a few seconds. Sometimes the scale of Percy’s effrontery and baroque imaginings took aback even her, who should have been most prepared by experience for his wiles. ‘Firstly, I do not recognize this picture of a man torn apart by conscience. My recollection is of a man who seems to have as many hands as an octopus and who uses them to explore the most intimate recesses of my overworked body, without any inhibitions at all and with the maximum of lusty enjoyment, and—’
‘Just because my natural altruism makes me hide my pangs of doubt, you shouldn’t just assume—’
‘And secondly, my mother is in perfect health and still working two days a week in her local supermarket. She is nowhere near making dying wishes yet, and even if she were—’
‘I’m glad you’re able to reassure me of that. All I can say is that when we met on Easter Sunday, your mum seemed very anxious to progress our nuptials.’
Lucy had thought she had kept them apart when Percy had come over for tea on Easter Sunday. She had spent several hours preventing collusion between the two of them on this. Perhaps even the brief toilet break which nature had forced upon her had been enough for them. Or perhaps he was merely chancing his arm, and her mother and he hadn’t talked at all about this. Percy was good at chancing his arm, and he was always saying that you should play to your strengths.
She said stubbornly, ‘It should be my wishes that count in this, not my mother’s.’
‘Ageist, that is. I’m surprising to hear the sentiment voiced by one whom I have striven to make the most sensitive DS in the—’
‘As sensitive as you, you mean?’
Percy stretched his neck in an attempt to secure maximum
dignity, an effort curiously reminiscent of a toucan on cocaine. ‘I do not demand or expect the impossible. I merely presume that the members of my team will be conscious of the moral issues involved in any decision.’
‘You demand and expect that the members of your team will carry out your bidding without question, as a matter of fact. I’m merely trying to point out that you can’t carry this attitude into your private life.’
Percy shook his head despondently. ‘You’re saying that an elderly lady who has been most kind to me should have her dearest wishes thwarted. I have to be honest and declare that your attitude saddens me.’ He cast his eyes to the carpet and hung his head; he did sadness rather well, he thought immodestly.
Lucy looked at her watch and said in desperation, ‘I need to get to the shops.’ She tried not to be conscious of Percy’s black eyebrows arching impossibly high towards the baldness above them.
Percy’s smile said that he saw through such transparency. ‘I think we should fix a date. I’m tired of living over t’brush, our Lucy.’
Perhaps it was his use of that old dialect phrase which her mother had used which finally caught Lucy off guard. She said uncertainly, ‘What did you have in mind?’
‘I thought August.’
‘August of next year. I suppose that might be possible, but we’d need to—’
‘This August.’
‘This August? Three months hence! That is totally impossible.’ She sought desperately for a reason why, and hit happily upon one immediately. ‘Everywhere will be booked up, long ago, for this August. My mum will want somewhere decent, you know.’
‘And I shall want somewhere decent, to please my mother-in-law, whose daughter is so cruel about her mother’s wishes.’
‘And there are dresses to organize.’
Percy flung himself absurdly on to one of his sturdy knees. ‘I shall take you without a dress. Without a stitch, if necessary.’ He brightened with a sudden inspired thought. ‘We could have a rehearsal tonight, if you like.’
‘Not just a dress for me, you wazzock! There’ll be bridesmaids’ dresses to think of, and a best man, and—’
Still on one knee, he flung his arms wildly around her hips. ‘I may be a wazzock, Lucy Blake, but I’m your wazzock. You may take my proud body and do with it what you will.’ He buried his face in her fascinating stomach and began to explore the contours of her backside with the expertise of a very determined wazzock.
Despite her decision to be firm with him, she dissolved into giggles, which increased his excitement and doubled his activity levels. He moaned softly into the roundness of her belly and said with searing sincerity, ‘With my body, I thee worship, Lucy Blake. Twice nightly, with encores.’
She shook him off and backed away. ‘Arise at once sir, from that semi-recumbent posture! There, you’ve brought out the Lady Bracknell in me. That should be a warning to you, Percy Peach.’
‘I’m heedless of all warnings and all dangers, where you’re concerned, lass. September, then?’
‘What? Oh, no, certainly not. It would have to be next spring at the earliest.’
Percy smoothed his trousers and nodded slowly. ‘So that’s fixed, then. You drive a hard bargain, lass, but so be it. Spring it is, then. Will you tell your mum, or shall I?’
Lucy Blake wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she knew she’d been outflanked again, by the mother who wasn’t here and the man who emphatically was.
Four
You’ve kept this a secret.’
Geoffrey Aspin heard his daughter’s voice hiss on the sibilants. He tried to firm up his resolution. ‘Not a secret, Carol. We just thought we should be discreet, in the early stages.’
‘And now that the early stages have gone, you don’t care who knows?’
‘I don’t, as a matter of fact. I don’t mind if the whole world knows about Pam and me. Of course, I don’t expect the whole world will be very interested, but—’
‘You can’t just make a joke of this, Dad.’
‘I wasn’t trying to make a joke of it, Carol. I was trying to make you see it from my point of—’
‘So your eldest daughter only gets to know of this at the same time as all the world. I see.’ Carol’s lips set in a thin line and she looked past him, out of the window of the house, to where the bedding plants she had put out three weeks earlier were showing an early brightness which now seemed to her quite inappropriate. She flicked a strand of her dark hair impatiently off the left side of her forehead, in that gesture which her father had found so fetching in her when she was a girl and an adolescent. ‘I should have thought you could at least have told your family about this before it became public knowledge.’
She was still a striking woman, tall and with the brittle elegance of a model. But a meanness had grown about her face in these last few years. He wanted to tell her how much better she looked when she smiled and how infrequently he saw her smile nowadays. He wanted to ask her to give him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps even to give the world at large the benefit of the doubt occasionally.
‘Pam and I wanted to be discreet about it. Surely you can understand that? Our relationship might never have gone anywhere, and if it hadn’t, no one need have known about it.’
‘I told you. A secret. Hole-in-the-comer stuff that you didn’t want your eldest daughter to be aware of. So how did this “relationship” start? How did you meet this woman?’
‘Her name’s Pamela, Carol. She likes to be known as Pam.’ Geoffrey heard the anger pressing against his clipped monosyllables.
‘And how did you meet her?’
He was tempted to lie. But he didn’t want to lie, not to his daughter. More to the point, he could not think at this moment of any lie which would be convincing. ‘I advertised. You put a tiny bit about yourself in the paper and—’
‘Advertised?’ She managed to force a wealth of outrage and contempt into the seemingly innocent word, and he again wondered irrelevantly how the pretty, lively young woman he remembered in her graduation robes could have grown into this thirty-six-year-old harridan. ‘You mean that you touted yourself about in the media like a—’
‘It’s quite discreet, Carol. It’s called DATING POINT. There’s a similar page called ENCOUNTERS in The Times' He had an obscure, hopeless wish that the mention of that august organ would dignify and justify his conduct to her.
‘I see. And how exactly did you trumpet your attractions in the national press?’
‘I can’t remember. And it doesn’t matter.’
For an instant, he thought she was going to begin a tirade about how much it did matter, how little he cared for the feelings of herself and the rest of her family. But she controlled herself and merely said through tight lips, ‘And did you have many replies to this curriculum vitae of your achievements and your personality which you paraded through these columns?’
‘A few. Actually, I didn’t say much about myself, so that—’
‘You played the field, did you, before settling on the delights of this - who was it - Pamela?’
Geoffrey wondered why families should make their own rules of conduct. How could he be so dominant and in control at his factory and yet so much at the mercy of his eldest daughter in this exchange which was going all wrong?
‘As a matter of fact, I didn’t play the field, as you choose to call it. Pam was the first and the only person whom I met.’
‘Ah! Love at first sight, was it?’
He wanted to fly into a rage, to ask her what she knew about love, to tell her that she should be glad that it was coming to him at his time of life. He was obscurely aware that this would make him only more ridiculous in her eyes. ‘I’m not going to talk about love, Carol. I just hoped that you might be glad to see—’
‘Dad, have you any idea how this looks from the outside? Have you any idea how it looks to the world at large to see a man making a fool of himself?’
‘I know what it feels like from the inside! I know how lonely
I was in the two years before I met Pam. You and Louise have your own families and your own lives to live, and I understand that. But the winter nights in particular are very bleak when you’re in a big house on your own. Pam’s helped me to get rid of that feeling of desolation. I know how she makes me feel. I know what it is to have a little joy back in my life!’ He heard himself breathing heavily, struggling to keep control of his words as he delivered them. Yet he was glad that at last he’d managed to say these things. ‘It looks ridiculous, that’s how it looks! I can tell you that.’
‘At this moment, I don’t much care how it looks to the world at large. I was just hoping that my eldest daughter would understand a little better how I feel about it. I see now that that was a vain hope.’
‘And I’m just trying to get you to put things into some sort of perspective. Dad!’ She shook her head, drummed her fingers on the arm of the easy chair in which she sat so stiffly upright. ‘I don’t know what Jemal is going to think about this.’
Geoffrey wanted to say that he didn’t give a damn what his son-in-law thought about it, that it was none of the man’s business. Instead, he controlled himself and said, ‘If he’s the man of the world he claims to be, perhaps he’ll rejoice in the fact that a man of my age is getting a little more happiness out of life than he did at this time last year. A lot more happiness, if you want the truth.’
‘Oh, we want the truth. Dad. Let’s have the truth, however unpalatable it may be. It would have been nice to have it a little earlier, instead of being the last to hear about these goings on.’
‘Surely you can see that we wanted to keep things fairly low-key until we knew this was heading somewhere. We had no idea how far it would go when it started. If it had just fizzled out, it would have been better for everyone that we hadn’t made a song and dance about it.’
She wanted to scream at him that he should stop using this ‘we’, that the less she knew about this new woman the better, that it was an insult to the mother she had loved that he should even be thinking about other women, let alone consorting with one of them. But even in her fury, Carol was beginning to realize that she must somehow come to terms with this new situation. She paused for a moment, made herself speak more calmly as she said, ‘How far has this gone, Dad?’
