“You know the House of Usher?” Sylvia said, when she recovered herself. “I saw it on TV. It’s better than TV, living here.”
“No licence fee, only the mortgage. No adverts to interrupt you.”
“I’d be glad of interruption at times.”
“Did you throw out my photograph?” Colin said.
“Yes.”
“I suppose you think you did it for my own good.”
“No. I did it for my own.”
“Thanks a million.”
“That was her, wasn’t it? It’s all the same woman.”
“Yes, I’ve often thought that.”
“I’m not stupid,” Sylvia said. “I can put two and two together.”
“I don’t see how.”
“I have my sources of information.”
“You didn’t say anything.”
“What would have been the point?”
“That’s that,” he said. “Ten years of mental agony.”
“It can’t have been. Not ten years solid. There must have been bright spots.”
“She’s an alcoholic. Her husband told me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“C’est la vie,” Colin said. “I saw her coming out of the bank. I thought she was a figment of my imagination, some sort of mirage. So I let it go. There’s a moment for everything and when that moment’s passed you might as well strike camp and stamp out the bonfire—and get back to daily life. You’ve been away too long.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking…I’ve something to tell you.”
“Oh yes?”
“If you really want to run away…do you remember Frank O’Dwyer?”
“Could I forget him?” Alarm and dislike crossed Sylvia’s face: it was an old colleague, whose dipsomaniac company she had never relished. “What about him? I thought you never saw him since he went to County Hall.”
“Only occasionally. I mean, the Educational Advisors don’t come by that often. They might be contaminated by contact with the kids.”
“And?”
“He’s had an accident. He was over at the Forty Martyrs Comprehensive last week, and he’d been drinking whisky in the office—you know what the Brothers are like, very hospitable. Anyway, they couldn’t find him. Thought he’d gone—then Brother Ambrose turned him up in the gym. He’d been on the equipment, you know, swinging from the trapeze and putting his feet through those rings that come down from the ceiling. Broken both legs.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t.” Sylvia covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, it’s awful, laughing at people’s misfortunes.”
“Anyway, that’s the last straw. He’s had warnings. Early retirement. The point is, if you were willing to move, I could have his job.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s unofficial. It’ll have to be advertised, but I think I can swing it. Everybody says so. They’ll want to appoint soon, for September.”
“Do I want to move? Oh Colin, I can’t tell you how I want to move.”
“Two hours ago you wanted to adopt a baby.”
“I want to move.”
“We could look for a house.”
“But September? That’s months away. I can’t see myself in September. I can’t imagine it. Gemma will be seven months old. It’ll be a different world. I can’t imagine lasting out till then. Something awful will happen.”
“Such as?”
“You’ll change your mind about that woman. You’ll be ringing her up. I expect you’re planning right now to ring her up. You’re only telling me all this to throw me off the scent.”
He squeezed her wrist. “That hurts,” she said.
“Get the book. The telephone book.”
“What?”
“Look up some estate agents and ring them up first thing tomorrow morning. Let’s do it, Sylvia, quick. Ask them for details of a nice house—three bed, Claire and Karen can share—modern, big windows, plenty light, nothing with a past; a nice jerry-built house like the one we used to have, with all the flaws built in.”
“The houses are all right, Colin. It’s us the flaws are built into.”
“Not any more. I’m being positive, I’m laying plans.” He paused, momentarily amazed. It’s easy once you start. The momentum carries you forward. “As soon as we find the house, we must move. I’ll have to stay at school till the end of the summer term, but I can commute. I can come on the new link road. It’ll only take me thirty minutes. If that.”
“Do you really think we could? Just get away? Why didn’t you say so before?”
“I was waiting for Frank to break his legs. A deus ex machina,” he said. “Every home should have one.”
“So that’s it then?” She spoke with finality and with hope, and a look of exhaustion crossed her face, from the strain of keeping up such complex and contradictory emotions. Colin looked up at the ceiling of the hall, still stained dark from the kitchen fire.
“Do you think we’ll sell this scrap heap?”
“I don’t see why not. After all, it’s not structurally defective, is it, except for that growth in Alistair’s room? We’ll have to scrape the walls and paint it with something. And in the hall, what you’ve got to do is keep the light off when people come. You wouldn’t notice. You’d just think it was a nice beige shade. You wouldn’t notice till you came to wash the walls down. Then it’d go all streaky.”
“That’s unscrupulous.”
“They get what they see. What they don’t see, that’s their problem.”
“That’s settled then. Get somebody round to give us a valuation.” He took her hand. “And what about Francis? What will he say?”
She looked down at her knees. “I don’t know, what will he say?”
“I thought you had something going.”
“Not really.”
“I thought at one time he was going to leave Hermione.”
“Leave Hermione?” she said scornfully. “She’s a bishop’s daughter. Anyway, do you know, I saw another side of him. When we were down at the night shelter—I didn’t tell you, did I? These two poor old men came in, wanting soup. Well, I didn’t recognise them, they were wearing balaclavas. They were having leek and potato. When Francis saw them he ran up and said, ‘These are the bastards who’ve been causing me all the trouble.’ He said he’d caught them laying a fire in the vestry. He kicked one of them quite hard—you know what big boots he wears. I was ashamed, I said, they were probably feeling the cold, you know what February is. He said, ‘You don’t set fire to cassocks, do you?’ He said it was arson. He phoned the police.”
“What happened to them?”
“They were taken into custody. They’ve been sent to a home.”
“They’ll probably be better off.”
“Oh, no, Colin. They’ll get institutionalised.”
“Still, I can see why you were disillusioned. Does he know you’ve gone off him?”
“Probably.” Sylvia dipped her head. A tear ran down her cheek, slow and singular, and quivered at the corner of her mouth. “He doesn’t care. He’s got other involvements.”
“Oh yes?”
“There’s this deaconess. Julie.”
“The man’s a philanderer! Well, never mind,” Colin said cheerfully. “Never mind, you’ve done some good to the community between you, which I may say is more than Isabel Ryan and I ever did. We were great theorists, but I don’t think we left anybody better off. How’s the canal clean-up going?”
“Oh, it’s going to be lovely.” She sniffed, and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “We’re going to have a nature trail. Anyway, I’ll tell you another thing about Francis. He has this fat crease in his ear.”
“What?”
“It means he’s going to have a coronary. Men with paunches and creases in their ears, they’re At Risk. I read it somewhere.”
“The Beano?”
“No, it’s true.”
“Have I got one?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not
sure if I’m looking in the right place.”
“At least I know now why you keep staring at the side of my head.”
“There’s this new diet I’ve heard of. For the first two days you just eat apples. Any kind, but you mustn’t mix them; if you have Golden Delicious for breakfast you can’t have Cox’s for lunch. Then for two days you eat only cheese—if you have Edam for breakfast you must—”
“No,” Colin said. He shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“No, somehow I don’t think so either. I’ll just get fat.”
“That would be restful.”
“Mrs. Ryan wasn’t fat, was she?”
“Skin and bone.”
“Colin?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think three beds will be enough?”
“I’m counting on Alistair going to Borstal before long. I think it’s a fair bet.”
“What if Suzanne decides to come home? Oh, you know, I can’t forgive myself now for trying to talk her into an abortion. When I saw Gemma I thought—well, she’s a lovely little thing, who would be without her? And if Suzanne wants—”
“She won’t come home. She told you, she’s got her own life now. So has Alistair, he’ll be off soon, somewhere or other. They’re nearly grown up, Sylvia. That part of our life is over. The other two will be off before you know it. It’s they who have the future.”
“And we have none?”
“There are worse things than no future.” He put his arm across her shoulder, held her tight by the upper arm. “Cheer up. The excitement’s over. Nothing will happen to us now.”
Next day, when Lizzie Blank came in to clean, she found Colin’s present sitting on the coffee table. She looked at it for a long time, without touching. Then she knelt before it, as Colin had done, and traced the faculties with her finger. I have got these now, she thought. All of them. I have got everything, except offspring. Carefully she lifted the head and dusted it, although it did not need dusting, and set it down in the dead centre of the table. She was perfectly sure that it was what she had waited for. She had last seen it in Sholto’s shop; its arrival here could not help but tell her something. It was a mysterious transportation; there would be others.
Sylvia came downstairs. She was still in her dressing gown, and she smiled secretly to herself, and hummed as she went into the kitchen. Lizzie followed her.
“Mr. Sidney get his leg over, then?” she enquired.
“Lizzie!” Sylvia glared at her. “You can stop it, you know, or I’ll have to give you notice. I can’t have the children hearing you talk like that.”
“The little lambkins,” Lizzie said sarcastically. “‘Hearing you talk like that.’ We’ve got very snooty, haven’t we?”
Sylvia looked at her daily woman with barely concealed dislike. Since the incident with the photograph she had become increasingly familiar and cutting, and she was definitely skimping on her work, claiming that the breakdown of most of the electrical appliances was making cleaning impossible, that she was tired out and worn to the bone. She looked far from bone, Sylvia thought, her white unhealthy-looking flesh oozing out of her clothes. She had flesh, and to spare.
“I’ll be straight with you, Lizzie,” she said. “I believe in straight talking.”
“Oh yes?”
“I don’t like you, Lizzie. There’s something about you I never have liked, and I resent you poking your nose into my daughter’s business. I kept you on because when we had Colin’s mother here you were a godsend, and I don’t deny that, and I’ll give you a reference, and you can read it.”
“And now you’re discharging me?” the woman said sullenly.
“We don’t need you. We’ll be moving soon.”
“I can travel.”
“Not that far.”
Lizzie looked up. “And this house will be empty?”
“It will be on the market. As soon as I find somewhere, we’ll be off.”
“Well, I’ll save you the trouble of firing me, Mrs. Sidney, madam. I was going to give in my notice anyway. I think you stink.”
“That’s as maybe,” Sylvia said levelly.
“And you needn’t worry I’ll tell on Florence. I wouldn’t soil my lips, I might tell on her if they still had capital punishment. If I thought she’d be hanged by the neck till she was dead.”
“You monster,” Sylvia burst out. “Get out of my house.”
“Your house? Not for long.”
“And give me my daughter’s address before you go. Your address, I mean, it’s the only one I’ve got for her. I’ll send your wages on.”
“I’d sooner have cash.”
“I’m sure you would, but I haven’t got it on me. You’ll have to wait. I’ll pay you for the week.”
“Don’t bankrupt yourself, will you?”
“If you don’t go,” Sylvia said, “I shall hit you. Here, write it down on this.” She thrust at Lizzie the notepad she used for her shopping lists, and the stub of a pencil. “She’s not with you, is she, Suzanne?”
“No, I’ve not seen her.” Lizzie bent over the counter top, grasping the pencil awkwardly.
“If you do see her, tell her to come home. I can’t bear to lose my children.”
“You’re very emotional, aren’t you?” Lizzie looked up, and puckered her face. “Like this, you go.”
“How dare you imitate me?”
“I’ve seen your old photographs. How dare you imitate me?”
“What? You’ve been through my drawers?”
“A lot of water’s gone under the bridges since those days, Mrs. S.”
“It’s the last straw. Hurry up with that and go.”
Laboriously, Lizzie set down Mr. Kowalski’s address; wavering block capitals traced with much effort. She pushed it at Sylvia. “There you are.”
“You can barely write.” Sylvia took it from her and looked at it in astonishment. “Who wrote your application for you? I had a letter.”
“My landlord wrote it. You didn’t ask me if I could write.”
“You’re here under false pretences.”
“If you like,” Lizzie said grimly. She took her coat from the hook by the door and put it on.
“You can go out by the back door,” said Sylvia, pointing. “You always do.”
“Pardon me, Mrs. Sidney. I can go out the front.”
On the way through the hall she paused and looked up the stairs. All the bedroom doors were closed; the stairhead was in darkness. The final straw, she thought. Four and twenty Sidneys, baked in a pie.
Isabel Ryan was blundering about in her kitchen, still in her dressing gown, though it was nearly midday. That’s nothing, she thought. I can still be in it at four in the afternoon, I can still be in it at eight o’clock, and then it is time to get back into it and go to bed. Have I been to bed? she wondered. The house was very cold, though it barely registered with her. She did not think about what her body needed; it had its own life. She could not remember how much time had passed since she had rung up Sylvia Sidney; one night, or two, or many more. In a mist of grief and nausea, she clung to the edge of the kitchen sink, swaying gently.
Perhaps she should have been more persistent. The woman had sounded stiff and dangerous, as if she were going to snake down the wires and do her some damage. What had she thought, that she had rung up to claim Colin back? After all these years? It must have sounded like it. All she had wanted was information. What was the child like?
Is it some natural kind of child, she wondered, that looks like Jim, or like its mother? Or is it a mystery baby; and does it get solved? She ran her hand down over her body. If this was the solution, would she know it soon enough to put it in her exposé? It must come along quickly, because she had almost run out of typing paper; she couldn’t get more unless she was sober, and if she was ever sober there was no saying what she might find out, and the task would be endless. She might even find out if she was pregnant or not. Would Jim stay with her, now she had contracted thi
s mysterious swelling? He hadn’t said.
She could feel resolution spreading inside her; another strange organic growth, beyond her control. I will get together some clothes, she thought, even if it takes me an hour to do it. I will go out and drive my car, even if I crash it. I will go upstairs and find that letter that Miss Suzanne Sidney has written to my husband. Then I will take the address and look at my street map, and taking the letter, I will shred it up finely and flush it down the lavatory. Then I will go round and see her. I will wait outside her house and watch her come and go. I will just look on. I shall just show myself, walk down the street. Then she will see what it is like to be Jim’s wife. She will profit by my example; and I will profit by hers.
Or else I have lost everything, she thought. Jim Ryan, Colin Sidney; and my whisky glass as well.
Less than a mile away from Buckingham Avenue, lying to either side of a narrow and little-used road called Turner’s Lane, there was a tract of open ground. It was surprising that houses had not been built there, but the residents of Lauderdale Road, whose gardens backed onto it, regarded it as an amenity, and had fought with vigour the various schemes for its use which had been put forward over the years. And so it had been unchanged for as long as they remembered; a few desolate acres of tussocky grass, stagnant marshy pools, and little thickets of prickly bushes. The residents never went there; there were houses on three sides of it, and on the fourth side only the old canal. They left it to stray dogs and cats, to the odd exhibitionist, to the passing rabbit and urban fox; and to their children.
It was in one of these prickly thickets that Alistair Sidney and his friends had set up their den. When they had reached school-leaving age, and the winter came on, they had thought they would leave dens behind. But their homes were not congenial to them, and they found that they needed it more than ever. They had a clean dirt floor, swept and compacted; branches curved densely above them, making their shelter almost as wind- and weather-proof as a conventional tent. It was not quite high enough for standing, but you could manage a crouch. The thorns left long pink scratches and puncture marks, which sometimes went septic; but Sherwood had stolen a first-aid kit recently, so that was all right. A dense undergrowth protected them from observation; in spring, as Austin said, they’d be practically invisible. If it had only had video games it would have been perfect.