Chain Reaction

by Gillian White

  ‘Well, when would be convenient with you, dear?’

  Frankie crosses her arms and her legs. ‘Not this week, this week is out because of the German student staying with Poppy. We feel we ought to take her out somewhere new and interesting every day, you know. Next week would be better, but not Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays because that’s when I do the Play Reading Society.’ Frankie frowns when she suddenly realises just how absurd her invitation sounds. ‘The week after that, say two weeks’ time on a Tuesday would be easier. Do you think you could make it then?’ She will force the children to stay in despite their groans and protestations. After all, this is their own grandmother.

  ‘I should think so, my diary is not especially full these days,’ said Mother, puffing out a mouthful of smoke, but apparently without irony. She doesn’t seem at all upset by Frankie’s unintentional slight. She considers Frankie thoughtless anyhow. When Michael left home Frankie knew that Mother thought she was lucky to have kept him so long. ‘You youngsters think that you can just go your own ways, but it’s give and take that make a marriage, Frankie.’

  ‘Give and take? What, you mean one gives, like you did, and one takes, like Dad. That’s one way of living your life, I suppose.’

  Mother’s frail hand gripped the hound’s head handle. ‘The difference is, Frankie, that I enjoyed looking after your father. Doing things for him didn’t feel like a chore to me. The more I could do for him the more pleased I was. And I had no idea how much you, as a child, resented that.’

  ‘Well, it’s not like that these days, Mum.’

  ‘Then it’s no wonder there’s so many drift apart through lack of trying.’

  ‘What did Dad ever do for you? Even when you were ill the neighbours came in to change your sheets and make your dinner. He never put himself out one iota. He never washed up, I doubt if he even knew how to butter a slice of bread, let alone boil an egg.’

  ‘He had no need to because I was there to do it for him.’

  ‘Yes, but Mum, what sort of a life is that, merely being a servant for somebody else? I had to work, remember. It was different for me.’

  ‘But I kept William till the end,’ said Mother severely.

  ‘You make it sound as if he was a trophy awarded annually for good behaviour!’

  ‘We will always disagree over this, Frankie, so there’s absolutely no point in talking about it any further.’

  But you could see Mother was gratified when Michael walked out. She didn’t say so, of course, but her face closed up in that satisfied way as if she had finally proved her point.

  And is Frankie satisfied, in some disgraceful way, to see her mother here like this? Is this Frankie’s revenge? Surely not. No, that’s an absurd suggestion, right out of the question.

  So they decide upon tea on Tuesday the week after next. ‘I am going to Miss Benson’s again tomorrow,’ says Mother with pleasure, changing the subject. ‘It’s become quite a regular little outing.’

  ‘Miss Benson is very good to bother like this,’ says Frankie, unthinkingly because it is just so hard to see Mother as a pleasant and chatty companion.

  ‘I think it might be because she likes me,’ says Mother smoothly, that old closed look filming her eyes once again. The effect of the drugs? Probably.

  ‘Well, yes, of course, she must do.’

  ‘It is possible, Frankie, you know. I am not a waste product. William liked me too, when he was alive. He loved me till the day he died, if you remember.’

  She sounds quite triumphant, not herself at all! What is Mother up to? Frankie leaves Greylands this evening slightly perturbed and properly chastened.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Joyvern, 11, The Blagdons, Milton, Devon

  IT TOOK A WHILE for the thundery crashes to cease vibrating inside Vernon’s head. What staggered him most was the speed of his violence, when he was normally a man of such a gentle and serious demeanour. He looked down at his feet, at what he had done. There, on Joy’s ultra-clean kitchen floor, the scarlet had splashed on the new yellow tiles, keeping colour with the window begonias and a streak of the bloody gore had stuck to the shining photograph, the smiling childhood of Tom and Suzie.

  He stood with the fingers of one hand in the fist of the other, both trembling. Sometimes they jerked spasmodically as if they wanted to carry on wielding the weapon and bringing it down and down again. He is one of those men who kill their wives. You read about them. You wonder about them. You imagine they’ve been beating their spouses up every night for years. Not cherishing them, protecting them, as it says you must in the marriage service; with my body, I thee worship… with my body I thee bludgeon to death with a steam iron. God help me.

  It was the pressure, of course, and the unendurable stress Vernon had been under for the last two years, struggling to keep Marsh Electronics afloat and to make sure that Joy was looked after according to the standards she craved. The last straw, that last flash of horror, was the phone call from Norman Mycroft and the discovery of Joy’s enormous deceits—rail upon rail of them in her wardrobe, pile upon pile in her chest of drawers—and all so useless, so unnecessary, so pathetic, those needs that had driven her to the shops on that fatal Tuesday to spend spend spend as if there was no tomorrow.

  What sort of tomorrow will there be now? Vernon gazed down at his wife’s battered head with dropped jaw and beaten eyes. How she would hate to be seen like this, with that expensive haircut all over the place—literally, as half of it had seemed to travel of its own accord and lodge like a sleeping cat under the kitchen table. She was wearing an expensive top and smart summer sandals. They couldn’t be ordinary sandals, the sort some people pick up from beach shops—oh no, Joy’s were expensive thonged white leather, Italian, from her last London excursion. One of them has come off and is waiting there by the bit bin.

  And Vernon is a peaceable man.

  Vernon sat down heavily at the kitchen table, removed his glasses and wept, and trembled, and longed for time to go back just ten minutes. Let her make her entrance again, let him be reasonable this time, reasonable as he had been for twenty-three years over Joy’s little idiosyncrasies, knowing them to add up to the sum of the woman he loved, still loves, will always love. With shaking hands he lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. Had she gone yet? Or was her spirit hovering somewhere in this room even now, beside the vases on top of the dresser? And what would she say to him now if her mouth was still a mouth and not just a gash of brutalised flesh in a face white, staring and horrified? Vernon, how could you do such a thing. What will people say? Clean it up, clean it up straight away and use the Dettol in the left-hand cupboard because there’s nothing worse than decomposition for germs, and flies will soon be laying their nasty eggs. And don’t just put the cloth back after you, throw it away when you’ve finished.

  He sat in his chair as if chained there by terror. His heart went dead, it had to. His arms would never enfold her again.

  If there was capital punishment he would be hanged for first-degree murder.

  His heart started palpitating like a beast’s in a trap. He would wait in the condemned cell with a few carefully picked jailers watching the hands of the clock go round, wondering when the hangman would peer through the slot to get a look at his neck and measure him up for the drop. Everyone in the whole wide world, the great, the washed and the consecrated righteous, would be indifferent to his death. His Queen and his country would not want him to be alive any more; not even his children would be able to forgive this unspeakable crime.

  His head stunned, his thoughts a racing disorderly mob, his feet alone commanding his movements, he edged towards the cupboard under the sink for the roll of black rubbish bags. He won’t use the dishcloth, that would be wasting money. He would use the decorating rags he had carefully cut up and stored for future use. He’d never imagined in his wildest dreams that these innocent rags would do anything more than wipe the dust off skirting boards, or dab up a little smeared gloss paint. Oh God God God, his b
ody blundered on, wiping around his fallen wife, rubbing at the spatters and the streaks and the bits that looked like grey mince. Some of the jelly was stuck to his shoe. It took ten cloths to finish the job properly so that Joy would have approved of the cleanliness in her kitchen. While he was at it he also wiped the crumbs away from underneath the toaster.

  The evening was warm, even hot. The air was heavy with garden scents, and the crushed smell of cut grass; children were playing somewhere outside. Soft, early television sounds could just be heard on the evening air. Extraordinarily, Vernon longed to go straight into the lounge, change into his slippers and turn on his own TV, have a glass of sherry perhaps and glance at the evening paper. How lucky were those who were doing just that this evening, moaning because they were bored with nothing better to do. He longed to assure them how lucky they were. He desperately wanted life to go on as usual. In spite of the murder, his appointment with Norman Mycroft tomorrow still loomed large in his mind, almost too large to cope with. He had annihilated his wife but not managed to avoid the confrontation that he knew must come. Menace was everywhere. Almost, he would prefer to give himself up to the police so that he would be in custody when Norman Mycroft sat back in his office tomorrow and pressed the bell for Vernon to enter. Anyone would think the two events, his wife’s murder and a meeting at the bank, were equal in terms of total horror. The idea of suicide drew him close, for very lovely seemed the white emptiness, the forgetful sleep that lay beyond death, where Joy had already gone. But Vernon reached for the brandy bottle and poured out half a glass while trying to decide what to do next.

  He twirled his glass and stared morosely through it. He must think of the children, Suzie and Tom. They must be his first priority.

  He must get his finances straight.

  He must continue with the sale of the house.

  He must do something with the body on the kitchen floor.

  The cavernous chambers of his brain slowly flooded with the golden liquid, soothing first, calming his grim meditations down and eventually, as he poured a second, and then a third, lit his senses brilliantly until he felt briefly equal to anything. By now Vernon’s conscience was oddly fuddled and confused; only furtiveness and a desire for self-preservation were left.

  Could Vernon pretend that some violent villain had broken in and battered his wife to death sometime during the afternoon while he was at work? He thought about that for a while. There were bound to be witnesses who had seen him locking up his shop to come home, and others who had noticed the car passing by and him parking it in the drive. These days it is easy for the police to find the most minuscule clues. No matter what he did with his clothes or his hands or his hair they would find traces of his crime somewhere about his person. Anyway, why would a thief break into Joyvern and be prepared to commit such a heinous crime? Their bits and pieces might have been very dear to Joy’s possessive heart, but they were hardly worth a fortune. No, Vernon cannot pass the murder off and blame it on somebody else. That just wouldn’t work.

  What if he put her in the car and drove to some remote cliff top—he knows the very place—and sent the car crashing down onto the rocks below? He could tell with hysterical horror how he jumped clear at the very last moment. If he filled the petrol tank first, the blue Ford would probably burst into flames and there’d be little of Joy left for the forensic people to examine, would there? But to set up such a stunt would take some doing. He’d just have to hope that nobody was around to notice his nefarious antics. But even at night there are lovers, especially in places where there’s a dramatic view of the sea, and wouldn’t there be clues left on the grass… footprints, tyre-tracks—and what would the Marshes be doing so close to the edge of the cliff anyway? Vernon took another swig out of his third glass; the liquid ran hot and comforting through his nervous body. As it permeated his being he felt more and more hopeful, enlarged, sanguine, even grandiose. As the glow of assurance brightened, the old timorous caution faded so that he wondered how he had ever been at its mercy and the idea came to him in the distance, coming closer as he concentrated harder like one of those Magic Eye pictures you have to stare at to make sense of. And there it was, suddenly, standing out as clear as day as if some jumbled kaleidoscope had been given the correct turn.

  Joy had wanted the ruined cottage, Hacienda, to be her final home. He sat and considered the place, what he remembered of it, and then went to fetch the brochure from the cupboard. He studied it as well as he could through his boozy eyes. There was nothing much about the well in the garden, no measurements to describe its depth, whether it was dry, or broken, or functioning, or contaminated over the years. But Vernon knew it was most unlikely that anyone would bother to use it as a well, not in these days of intensive hygiene, washing machines and dish-washers that require gallons at a time. People are very particular about the water they drink these days.

  Should he declare Joy missing?

  At what point should he declare it?

  Wouldn’t it be reasonable for Joy to move first in order to prepare the temporary flat she’d told everyone about, while Vernon stayed behind in the house until the contracts were signed, until it was finally time to move out?

  In certain circumstances some people do that, don’t they?

  Nothing in his life had prepared him for anything like this. A humane and sensitive man, Vernon was not a fan of medical dramas, or war films. Even the violence in some of the soaps upset him and his own family life was free of loud disagreements, old-fashioned if you like, certainly mundane and so he could never bear to confront Joy at her worst extremes, with her penchant for social drama and shopping, preferring to bend with the wind and wait till her moods were over. The Invisible Man, he supposed.

  Vernon was consumed with a desire to sleep, but the first thing he had to do was run the car into the garage. He must stick to his usual habits.

  Then, while Joy was still free of rigor mortis, he must get her through the door that led directly from the kitchen into the garage, and bundle her into the passenger seat. Hurry, hurry, before anyone called or the phone went and caught him speechless.

  Joy was lying relaxed, legs apart, arms above her mangled head as a small child sleeps. The wetness that spread over Vernon’s face in his efforts to move her was not just sweat; there were tears there too, for he was a harmless man. He tried a gentle approach so as not to wound her further. He must block her away from his senses, this woman who was not Joy any more. After the black rubbish bag he must wrap her in a blanket. He fetched the rug from the car and rolled her over onto the bright red tartan. He dragged his gory burden through to the garage, opened the passenger door and struggled to lift her inside. She was a small woman, but heavy and hard to manoeuvre. He could not believe this was real life. These are things which happen to other people, never to oneself. With tautened hearing he listened for the slightest sound. If someone stumbled upon him now about his sinister business he would give himself up straight away and confess to everything. Such an action would almost be a relief. He felt boxed in, in the garage—entombed, already cut off from ordinary life, the birdsong, the sigh of the wind, the falling of sunset down the sky and the visits of the stars. He slipped the bin bag and the blanket down so the top of her body was exposed. Then he arranged her but she, slack and untidy in death, flopped against the seat belt, but ended up as though she was naturally searching for something in the glove compartment.

  That would have to do for now.

  Vernon bathed and put his clothes in the washing machine.

  He heated up some beans and took a pork pie out of the fridge. He had it with bread and butter and pepper and great dunks of piccalilli. After his meal he washed up the plate and the pan and then, with the passing of time, the terrible passing of time and four cups of black coffee, he readied himself to lie to his children.

  It was essential that he did not stutter or fumble; as it was he was forced to pause in order to clear his throat. ‘Mum’s gone to the flat already. There�
��s so much to be done and you know what she’s like.’

  ‘Why on earth didn’t she ring me herself and say goodbye?’ asked Suzie.

  ‘Because it all happened in rather a rush. The old lady who lived there is already in a Home and the daughter said she was worried about the flat standing there empty. She’d let us move in early, she said, and it seemed the most sensible course to take.’

  Suzie sounded doubtful. ‘But will Mum be all right on her own, without you?’

  ‘It was her idea,’ said Vernon, fighting to justify his words. ‘I think she feels pretty restless, moving out of Joyvern after so long. The strain of waiting was beginning to tell. It’s probably better that she’s gone early.’

  ‘I still don’t know why you decided to make that move. It seems crazy,’ said Suzie. ‘I mean, lots of people live in houses that are too big, but they don’t have to move somewhere smaller for no other reason. Mum loves that house…’

  Damn Joy’s lies. Vernon bit at a nail and noticed a fleck of blood underneath the skin. Oh dear God. His or Joy’s? ‘I know, but to tell you the truth I think Mum was beginning to find the work too much.’

  Suzie’s voice took on an anxious edge. ‘She is all right, isn’t she, Dad? I mean, first she gives up driving the car because it’s getting too stressful, and now she’s decided to move out of the house she loves. And then you say you’re retiring before you have to. I really don’t understand what’s going on.’

  ‘It’s silly to work when you don’t need to,’ said Vernon, going along with another of Joy’s silly lies. He gave his voice a studied carelessness, a very far cry from his true feelings. ‘But more important than that I feel I want to be around to look after your mother.’

  ‘You’ve always looked after her. She depends on you totally. Why the sudden intense concern?’

  Vernon paused for effect. He took another gulp of brandy. Wonderful how easily his part slipped over him. ‘Joy has been having some problems lately.’