Jesus cares.
The whisper goes round that a startlingly new development can be expected at any moment. The fax machines are jumpy. The mobile telephones bleep. Miss Benson is besieged in her flat as she waits for the appropriate moment and she chooses to make her announcement from the window like the Pope addressing the crowds in St Peter’s Square.
Miss Benson’s window is a balcony which is not a balcony, in other words you can open two French windows but you cannot step out, there is nothing there but a window box surrounded by safety bars. It is possible to hang your washing to dry over the edge of the little mock-balcony but residents are requested not to do so for aesthetic reasons. She is a timid but dignified figure as she stands there with a note in her hands, then turns to accept the megaphone passed over by a gentleman of the press.
Below her, all heads are turned up towards her. The crowd is hushed and waiting.
She clears her throat in readiness to proceed. She hopes Mrs Peacock can hear her. They discussed how this should be done last night. ‘This is a letter which was given to me by Irene Peacock before she was forced to board up her home. I have no idea what it says, and still don’t know,’ she lies. ‘It was she who wrote it. I was required to open it and read it seven days after it was given to me and I have kept my word. Now I intend to share it with you—with all Irene’s good friends’
A roar of approval goes up from the crowd. Miss Benson trembles; she is understandably terribly nervous. She has never spoken in public before, only in elocution at school when she stood on the stage and chanted, after thirty others before her, and using exactly the same inflections, The Lake Isle of Innisfree.
‘This letter,’ she starts, ‘is addressed to the Queen, and I sent off a copy to Her Majesty this morning. Tomorrow she should receive it.’
The crowd crows with delight. They are part of this, and this is undoubtedly revolution. History is being made tonight.
‘Your Highness!’
Below her comes a pleased flutter of anticipation.
‘Thank you so much for your kind reply to my letter. As you will probably have heard, I have been forced to resort to extreme measures in order to protect my freedom and my property. By now, hopefully, everything will have been solved and this letter might never need to be posted. I regret having to bother you again with my little problems and hope I may not need to do so. However, in the event that I am still stuck in my flat, negotiations having come to nought, I now beg you to intervene on my behalf and on the behalf of all elderly people at present in this same plight.’
Miss Benson pauses for a breath and for effect. That initial palpitating fear has left her. ‘Can you hear me all right at the back?’ she calls.
A roar of, ‘Yes!’ comes drifting back. And a few shouts of, ‘Get on with it.’
‘I would not normally presume to make any request of my Sovereign, but my present shattered circumstances mean that I am having to behave in all sorts of abnormal ways and I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me. I am not merely requesting now, I am begging at this tragic hour. I know you have an elderly mother of your own, I know how fond you are of that very frail and lovely lady. I know too how caring you are about your family and relations, so that is why I am begging you please to intervene in this dilemma which affects so many of your most vulnerable subjects, and come to speak to me personally. Come and knock on my door so the whole world can see how much you care, and I will open it and accept my fate whatever it might be.’
Some yob sets off a firework. It spirals into the night sky leaving a trail of stars behind it and starting a frenzied wave of stamping and clapping which grows so thunderous and threatening that those few security men who are armed put their hands on their hidden guns and stand to immediate attention.
‘Damn,’ says the Police Superintendent, hiding in the back of a reinforced security van. ‘That’s put the cat among the pigeons.’
‘You don’t think the Queen will come?’
‘Of course she won’t. You can’t blackmail your Royals like that. You can’t start off on that slippery slope, God knows where it might lead.’
Miss Benson has to visit the lavatory. She fights her way through her little sitting room, locks the door behind her and kneels on the floor with a beating heart. She pushes back the carpet and raises the floorboard.
‘Mrs Peacock?’
A short pause while Irene Peacock positions herself to answer. ‘You were wonderful, Miss Benson! Absolutely wonderful!’
‘Oh, thank goodness you think so. I was so afraid I might muff it.’
‘Now we can only wait and see. I have played my last card.’
‘And if there is no response from the Queen?’
‘Well, let’s face it, I can’t stay down here for ever. There’s nothing else for it; if there is no response I shall have to creep out and suffer the humiliation of a complete U-turn. At least we have brought this wicked practice to public attention. At least people have been able to talk about it and get angry and be listened to by those few folks in London who are only interested in wars and foreign lands and the Common Market and such like. We’ve kept those issues out of the news for a few days anyway, those and all the devious sex practices nobody wants to know about. MPs and their silly wives.’
‘You have bravely defied them all,’ says Miss Benson from her bathroom floor. ‘You ought to be very proud of yourself.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without your help, Miss Benson. You have been my inspiration and my right hand. Heaven only knows how you are coping with all those newspaper people in that small flat. It will want complete redecoration when they have gone. And what about the carpets with all that wear?’
‘Now is not the time to worry about such insignificant matters,’ Miss Benson reassures her neighbour. ‘I will contact you at seven-thirty in the morning and we will decide on our next course of action. Have you got everything you need? Cigarettes? Gin? How about lime juice?’
‘I’m fine, thank you, Miss Benson. In some ways I shall regret having to come out at all. It’s so cosy living like this and never having to see anyone. I could go on quite happily like this for weeks. My only real regret, of course, is that Frankie has been so upset.’
‘That was unavoidable. She’ll get over it, you wait and see. And perhaps it will make her think a bit harder about her attitude towards you.’
It’s so nice being waited on hand and foot and yet comfortable in your own home without having to get up and face the everyday turmoil of life. Irene can only compare this strange lifestyle to being ill in bed when she was little and let off school and having her favourite meals brought up on a tray to tempt her. Those were the only times she was allowed to read uninterrupted, listen to the radio, go to sleep when she wanted, presented with little treats like comics and jigsaws and ice cream for her sore throat. The only times she was ever totally approved of. After all, you can’t misbehave when you’re ill. Whatever your behaviour, you can’t help it.
You get to be a monster by the time you are better, calling down with impatient demands, sulking and desperate to get out of the house. Quarrelling. Hot and scratchy.
William. How she misses him still. But now she gets to thinking that William was treated as if he was ill all his married life. Did she treat him like that because he was a man, and whatever his behaviour might be she secretly believed he couldn’t help it? She knows how angry her relationship with William always made poor Frankie. ‘He’s nothing but a bad-tempered old misery and you are the one who made him like this. There’s no one to blame but yourself if he doesn’t lift a finger to help you. Hell, Mum, he’s even jealous of the kids! And they don’t like coming to the bungalow because Dad is so spoilt and unpleasant.’
Well? Was William spoilt and unpleasant? For the first time in her life she has the space, the peace and quiet to consider the whole matter. William was a self-centred man, everything and everyone revolved around him, much as the world is revolving round her today.
It makes a change for Irene to attract this sort of attention, any sort of attention.
And she is thoroughly enjoying it. She has never seen life from William’s angle before.
It is an excellent angle. She looks round her safe and cosy flat with the planks nailed across the windows, all this: her cupboard full of good things, enough gin and fags to last her, the television on in the corner, Miss Benson upstairs, the great provider… This comfortable life she is living today, this protected, peculiar existence, is what William enjoyed all the time. There was Irene keeping the rest of the world at bay, answering the telephone, dealing with the letters and cards, entertaining the grandchildren, going to bed when he went to bed, watching the programmes he chose to watch and eating the food which was always his favourite. Except when he was out at work William conveniently barricaded himself off from the world while she fed him all his necessities down through a chute and felt just as satisfied as Miss Benson does, poor Miss Benson, racked by a guilt which is her undoing.
But Irene had never minded.
She enjoyed taking care of William.
Oh, William.
Well, now it is my turn, and I’m only sorry you’re not here to see it.
Irene Peacock once again readies herself for bed. It’s all such a struggle these days. She eases herself up off the chair and pauses, resting on her stick for a moment, wondering if it is possible that she might need the sort of permanent care that a Retirement Home could give her. She would find it difficult, now, to cope at home without a great deal of help with the shopping, the cooking, the laundry. Sometimes, and she admits this only to herself, she can scarcely walk for the pain in her legs. For a long time now she has avoided looking in her mirror because the person she sees there is not the person she wants to be. Inside herself she is still sixteen with the whole of her life ahead of her; she has all the passion, all the silliness, still there under the grey hair and wrinkled skin, the scraggy chest and varicose veins. When she eventually pulls herself into the bedroom, moving slowly, putting one foot in front of another and using the table and chairs for support, she feels like a toddler learning to walk. It is as if she has made no progress at all in the long years in between.
What is the point?
What is the point of all this fuss?
Perhaps she should have just let them sell the flat after all.
So many people have been hurt in the process—Frankie, the children, Miss Blennerhasset, and now the poor dear Queen herself has been put in an embarrassing quandary because of it. And will Mrs Peacock feel any better at the end of the day? At best she will be allowed to remain in her flat, but for how long? Six months? One year? Perhaps two if she’s lucky?
We shall see.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Joyvern, 11, The Blagdons, Milton, Devon
‘THAT’S THE FLAT,’ SHOUTS Vernon above the hubbub and clamour.
‘The one with the spotlight right on it.’
‘Gosh, Dad, how awful,’ and Suzie shields her eyes from the glare. ‘How awful’ seems to be Suzie’s stock phrase ever since she came home for Joy’s funeral.
Joy would have been proud of her children, Vernon thought vaguely on the day, as he stood there, numbed, in the crematorium chapel, when everyone’s eyes were tranced in thought, manners subdued and voices low. There had been a post mortem, of course. The undertakers were so sympathetic, the very oil of sympathy, the distilled essence of courtesy, understanding and consideration, given the terrible circumstances. Vernon’s muddled thoughts rambled over the last few days. Everything assured him that he was perfectly safe. He wondered if there was a God, or a Devil to whom he had sold his soul, and if this meant he would be unable to enter Heaven. No, surely not, he reasoned with himself. The idea was preposterous and only a prop for those who find the need to worship, a similar role to that of the Royals, who were under threat at that moment. And Vernon, nursing his guilty secret, knows what it’s like to be under threat.
He went through tortures choosing a suitable coffin, knowing how much prestige and style meant to Joy, and how important it was that she went off in style, even into the fiery furnace. Vernon shuddered. For not only has he murdered his wife but he has shifted the blame to an innocent man and so is doubly damned, if, in fact, God is in his Heaven and all’s right with the world.
Which it’s not.
He was given Joy back in a jar and wondered what to do with the ashes. Ideally, Joy would have enjoyed being scattered in the city centre arcade, or in Monsoon or Next, but of course Vernon couldn’t do that. After leaving her on the mantelpiece for a day or two he went and sprinkled her down the end of the garden where she’d enjoyed so many happy gossips.
And at the house afterwards he chose the most expensive finger buffet on the caterers’ list just as Joy would have wanted, hang the expense. He can only trust that the Middletons are still going ahead with the purchase. He made a point of assuring them that he’d rather the deal went through, in spite of the tragic situation, but they hadn’t seemed able to take it in. Too harrowing, he supposed. He was surprised at how many people came to the funeral. Since Joy’s tragic and terrible death Norman Mycroft at the bank has changed his tune entirely. Well, nobody could continue attacking a man who has suffered as Vernon has suffered, and Vernon has an idea that someone had a strict word with him from above. At any rate the terrible fellow has been moved from overdrafts to mortgages—not a promotion, he was pleased to note—and replaced by the young woman with a bob and sensitive eyes who used to deal with travellers’ cheques. Mrs Eccles insists on wearing ill-fitting suits like female weather forecasters, a silly mistake which makes Vernon warm towards her, and her name was on the bottom of the note of sympathy sent to him by the bank.
And now here they are, drawn, as so many people are, to the siege of the century, the very flat which Joy and Vernon intended to make their last home.
‘You told us she’d moved here early because you were afraid we would overreact if we knew she’d gone missing,’ Suzie shouts back, hanging on to her father’s jacket for fear of being lost in the crowd, just as she used to in her childhood. ‘Poor, poor Dad, how awful for you! Having to cope with all that as well as the shop going down the pan. It’s incredible that Mum wouldn’t tell us the truth. We both honestly believed all was well and that you were only moving because it would be more convenient. And to think it was just a facade!’
‘What about all those lies she told Adele next door,’ Tom calls from the crush. ‘I spoke to her at the funeral, she was very sympathetic, but nobody really believed Mum and you were moving into that cottage. Everyone knew exactly what was happening. All she was doing was making a fool of herself. Poor Mum, she must have been very sick at the end.’
‘Perhaps, who knows. Could be it was a happy release after all,’ says Suzie thoughtlessly.
Tom is appalled. ‘How can you possibly think that, Suzie, after the horrible way that she died?’
‘Thank God they’ve got him, that’s all I can think about now,’ says Vernon, leading the way to a hole in the crowd beside the police security van.
They have come here this evening because none of them could bear the thought of another sad evening at home playing rummy. Apart from the horror of the latest events, the three of them have little in common. Tom and Suzie are their mother’s children, and dressed accordingly—Suzie in a neat navy outfit with large white high heels and Tom in a linen jacket, smart striped shirt and tie. Suzie’s cooking is the sort of clean, sterile affair her mother’s had been, nothing sloppy, everything undercooked as is the vogue these days, raw vegetables and even the lamb she did last night was served pink with some sort of herb sprinkled on it. During the day, of course, they picked at the funeral fare which seemed to taste of sawdust and ashes or perhaps that was just Vernon’s guilty taste buds joining all the other rebellious parts of his body.
For Vernon is not a well man. The doctor has increased his blood-pressure pills and he is on tranquillisers and sleeping p
ills at night to cope with the shock. In fact, the shock, which was so apparent to all who saw him, was one of the most convincing aspects of his innocence, not that the police believed for one minute the ravings of Jody Middleton who is still being held at the station. They applied for several extensions to hold him in custody until their enquiries were completed and the lad appears before the Exeter magistrates tomorrow. No, the shock which genuinely came upon Vernon, was caused, he knows, by the sudden and complete change of character which crept over him the minute he started accusing somebody else for his crime and actually believing that to be true.
Never before in his whole life, until now, has Vernon done anything shoddy or mean. He has always owned up to his misdeeds, he has been kind and gentle, thoughtful and caring to those about him, never forgetting to shut field gates behind him, never dreaming of emptying his car ashtray in lay-bys as some downright ignorant people do, and happily hurrying to the police if ever he found a purse or a ten-pound note or a stray dog. The same as most other people of his generation really, but now he has committed two ghastly crimes and he’s not even certain which is the worst, Joy’s death or his wicked denouncement of that poor boy Jody Middleton.
If, at first, Vernon suffered from fear of exposure, it diminished with every day. Not in a living face anywhere could he see a trace of doubt or questioning. He cannot believe that having committed such a brutal murder, life can go on so quietly and unremarkably. That one memory anaesthetised, all is amazingly peaceful even though they are only one week away from that bloody afternoon which he has shut away in a locked cupboard of memory. Poor Jody hadn’t a leg to stand on. Just as Vernon suspected he would, the youth left an assortment of clues behind him at Hacienda—fingerprints lay everywhere, and even shoeprints leading to the well made by his trainers, while no clue to Vernon’s visit existed. Vernon, schooled for so long by Joy and his house-proud mother before her, is always careful to clean up behind him. The police haven’t even tested the car in which Joy took her final ride—to the shops, he said, and they had no reason to disbelieve him.
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