A Lovely Day to Die (11 page)

Lorna didn’t immediately answer. She seemed to be half
mesmerized
by the dark heaving water beneath them, and the white flecks of foam spinning endlessly past her field of vision and away into the night. When at last she raised her head, her small worried profile, silhouetted against the swaying sky, seemed to be wobbling a little, as if she might be about to cry all over again.

“If only I had the courage!” she muttered, though carefully loud enough for Edith to hear. “If only I had the guts. Just one moment of steeling myself—and then to sink, to vanish, to be one with all that black water, whirling, whirling away into nothingness—nothing to worry about ever again …”

In a way, nothing could have suited Edith’s plans better, but since it wasn’t going to happen there was no point in thinking about it. For Lorna was right—she
hadn’t
got the courage. None of
them ever had, though goodness knows how many of them had stood, just like this, by the rail, mouthing this sort of self-pitying drivel.

There is only one sort of role for the bosom friend to play in this situation, and reluctantly Edith played it. First a restraining hand on the silly woman’s shoulder, for all the world as if she really
might
be going to jump, then all the right bracing
exhortations.

Don’t be ridiculous, you just
mustn’t
talk like that! Think of all you have to live for! Think of Rosemary, and … and (God, what
was
the fellow’s name!) … and … your son! Think how awful
they’d
feel! How guilty, how grief-stricken! and those darling popeyed grandchildren (only of course Edith didn’t actually say popeyed, her self-control on these occasions was absolute). You mustn’t
dream
of anything so wicked! And so foolish, too, just think of all the happy years that may be ahead for you! You should be so lucky, you silly cow; only of course Edith didn’t say this, either, it would have wrecked everything.

With the almost indecent haste of most of these
pseudo-suicides,
Lorna allowed herself to be persuaded away from the rail and down the companionway, out of sight of the wild
windblown
sea.

Back in the cabin, they talked far into the night about Life and Death and Loneliness, and Rosemary’s way of cooking cauliflower which took all the nutrition out of it.

And Edith, already in bed in the top bunk, kept murmuring, “Yes,” and “No,” and “I should think not, indeed!” while watching Lorna’s long and elaborate preparations for the night, including where exactly she stored her anti-wrinkle cream. You never knew what might turn out to be important.

*

The next day dawned bright and calm, perfect cruising weather. The sun shone, the vast circle of the sea stretched blue and sparkling in every direction, and in company with the other old ladies, Edith and Lorna joined the Yoga Class up on the Sports Deck. Neither of them could have been said to shine at Yoga, but
on the other hand they weren’t the worst at it either—this would have been an achievement indeed. And it did serve to fill up the time before lunch, always a problem on these shipboard holidays.

And after lunch, while the sun still shone and shone, reflected back like diamonds from the icy Northern sea, the two of them found deckchairs in the lee of the wind, and talked, desultorily, while they knitted, about daily helps and the ingratitude of grown-up children. This occupied them until teatime, and by the time tea was over, the sharp dazzle of the sun had begun to fade. Already, only one day out, you were aware of the shortening hours of daylight; already there was an unfamiliar bite in the air, straight from the Arctic, and indescribably alien.

With rugs round their knees, and pulling their cardigans closer about them, Edith and Lorna sat a little longer, watching the huge ball of the sun go down over the restless water, turning it blood-red as they watched, while to the north and east the blue-grey beginnings of darkness were already gathering.

“Another fine day tomorrow,” prophesied Edith, out of the depth of her experience, and as so often happened, she was absolutely right.

*

The weather on this trip was incredibly good, everyone said so. And at this time of year, too, you wouldn’t credit it. It put everybody in a fine mood. The beauty of the islands, of the fjords, of the Icelandic coast, was duly gasped at; and those who went on the shore trips came back with the usual tales of fantastic bargains, of comic natives and of knowing the Norwegian/Icelandic/Finnish for “How much?”

The shore trips didn’t interest Edith—she’d done it all before; but Lorna seemed infected by the general enthusiasm and went nearly everywhere, coming back laden with purchases, and apparently well-pleased with herself. There was no more talk of suicide, nor of depression either; and so when, on the very last night, after the Celebration Dinner and the Fancy Dress Ball and the farewell drinking parties, when, after all this exhausting revelry, Lorna announced her intention of going up on deck for “a
breath of fresh air,” Edith hardly gave it a thought. Or, rather, she only thought of it insofar as it facilitated her own plans here in the cabin. Not that she had any intention of stealing any of Lorna’s possessions here and now: that must wait till the morning, lest Lorna should take it into her head to check the contents of her jewel box last thing before packing it.

All the same there were one or two things that could usefully be prepared in advance, and here was the opportunity, with Lorna safely out of the cabin. For instance, it would be wise to try out the jewel-box key now while she had the chance, so that when the time came she wouldn’t waste valuable seconds turning it the wrong way, or something.

Hell! The wretched woman had taken her handbag with her! Complete, of course, with the key in that inner pocket! Blast her! What in God’s name did she want a
handbag
for, up on the bleak, black deck, with the wind whistling in off the sea? Tissues to wipe her eyes over Darling Harold? Serve her right if she dropped the bag overboard! Silly, tiresome cow!

Oh, well, she’d just have a look at the lock anyway, get some sort of idea of the kind of lock it was. Briskly she opened Lorna’s underwear drawer and reached under the vests and knickers.

It was gone! The jewel box was gone, vanished! On this last night, of all nights. Wildly, Edith searched Lorna’s other drawers—her locker—her suitcase; but it was nowhere.

At the thought that some other thief might have got in ahead of her, Edith felt rising in her a slow, incredulous rage, a sense of injustice so intense that it almost choked her. After all the work she’d put into it—all the boring tête-à-têtes, the yoga classes, the knitting patterns—after all this, for a total stranger to come along at the last moment and scoop the pool—it was monstrous!

And where
was
Lorna, anyway? Why couldn’t she look after her stuff? She’d been gone for almost an hour—what on earth could she be
doing
up there on the heaving, deserted decks at this God forsaken hour—nearly two in the morning?

*

It was a moonless night, and Edith, making her way from deck to
deck, back and forth along the narrow, rocking gangways, felt herself to be moving almost in a dream. The whole ship seemed completely deserted. The Sports Deck, normally so crowded and jolly, was silent and empty, and still littered with rubbish from the evening’s revels—soft-drink bottles, beer cans, coloured streamers all grey together under these dimmed lights.

Edith shivered, partly from cold, partly from the desolation of the scene before her. The wind whipped against her face, while somewhere out of sight the black sea churned and boiled.

Somewhere, amid all this desolation, Lorna was wandering; and suddenly, with dreadful vividness, Edith was reminded of that first night on deck, and Lorna’s wild threats of suicide. At the time Edith had taken them to be a piece of play-acting, typical of these neurotic, depressed women—but could she be sure? Might it be that tonight, emboldened by the few unaccustomed drinks that the festivities had more or less forced on her—might it be that the wretched woman had found at last the courage of which she had declared herself in need?

But what about the missing jewels, and the handbag? Too much of a coincidence that at the exact moment when Lorna had decided to do herself in, a jewel thief should decide to raid the cabin. Even as she posed the problem to herself, Edith found an answer, flashing across her brain with a kind of intuitive certainty.

Of course! Poor Darling Harold! What more likely than that the silly sentimental fool should decide to take with her to her watery grave all those “lovely presents” he had given her!

That many thousands of pounds should go to the bottom of the sea for the sake of beastly old long-dead Darling Harold was intolerable.

Her failing strength renewed by a sense of total outrage, Edith resumed her search with a driving, terrible sense of urgency.

It was on the lowest deck of all that she finally came upon her quarry, and apparently only just in time, for Lorna was leaning far over the rail, staring out across the black whirling water with just that same half-mesmerized air that she had displayed on that first evening. Her handbag was hooked over one arm, and—yes
—clutched to her breast was a dark object that must surely be the jewel box.

With her eyes, Edith measured the distance; measured, too, the angle at which the woman was leaning over the rail, and the precise position of the precious box. Edith would have taken account, too, of her own arthritic knee, except that suddenly and mysteriously it had completely stopped hurting.

*

You couldn’t call it murder, not really. The woman had just simply overbalanced when Edith pounced on her so suddenly from behind and grabbed the jewel box from her. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; it was just an accident.

Mercifully there had been no witnesses, though Edith had experienced one nasty moment when, barely a minute later, a small boat had appeared out of the darkness, quite dangerously near. For an awful second Edith thought it must be the start of a rescue operation, but when nothing further happened—no commotion, no cries of “Man overboard!”—she realized, thankfully, that she must have been mistaken. Some stray fishing-boat perhaps which had gone off course; they were hugging the shore closely at this stage of the trip.

*

Really, everything had gone off marvellously well. Back in the cabin, Edith tore the box free from the tightly closed plastic sack to which Lorna had apparently seen fit to consign it, ready for its burial at sea; and for a while she sat there, stroking the smooth contours lovingly, gloating over her triumph.

Nothing could go wrong now. No one would notice Lorna Carruthers’ absence until quite late in the morning, when Edith, and all the other passengers, would be safely on shore. Then, and not before, they would come and clear the cabins, and would be mystified to find Lorna’s belongings still there; but by then Edith would be far away, and besides, there would be no reason to connect
her
with her cabin mate’s inexplicable departure without her luggage.

The only remaining hazard was the Customs, and this, really,
was hardly a hazard at all. Even if they
did
insist on prising the box open (the key, of course, had vanished into the sea together with the handbag), they could have no possible reason for suspecting that the jewels were not Edith’s own; and if they somehow worked it that she had to pay duty on some of the contents—well, who cared? The profits would still be enormous.

*

They didn’t ask her to pay duty, but they did ask her to step into the office of the Harbour Police, when they found the packets of heroin tucked carefully beneath the few remaining jewels—the rest having gone to pay the agents during those oh-so-innocent shore trips.

Edith was stunned; but less by the awfulness of her predicament than by a searing sense of grief and loss.

What a friend Lorna Carruthers might have become, if only they’d known what each other was up to! What fun they could have had, leaning together over the rail last night, watching for Lorna’s accomplices to draw alongside in their small boat! And then to hurl the treasure, buoyant and waterproof in its plastic sack, out into the darkness, and to watch some shadowy, lithe figure dive to its rescue with infinite grace and skill!

What a spectacle! What an experience! And at last, a friend to share it with!

What a future they could have shared, too—companions in crime, working the routes together, each plying her own specialty, and giggling together like schoolgirls over their respective triumphs! What soulmates they would have been, exploiting together that secret bonus of being old and unwanted—the ability, at last, to get away with
anything
!

Hardened criminal though she was, Edith felt the tears welling up in her old eyes as she set herself to talk her way out of
this
one.

“N
O
,
NO TELEPHONE
, thank you. It’s too dangerous,” said Miss Emmeline Fosdyke decisively; and the young welfare worker, only recently qualified, and working for the first time in this Sheltered Housing Unit for the Elderly, blinked up from the form she was filling in.

“
No
telephone?
But, Miss Fosdyke, in your—I mean, with your—well your arthritis, and not being able to get about and everything … You’re on our House-Bound list, you know that, don’t you? As a House-Bound Pensioner, you’re entitled—well, I mean, it’s a
necessity,
isn’t it, a telephone? It’s your link with the outside world!”

This last sentence, a verbatim quote from her just-completed Geriatric Course, made Valerie Coombe feel a little more confident. She went on, “You
must
have a telephone, Miss Fosdyke! It’s your
right
!
And if it’s the cost you’re worrying about, then do please set your mind at rest. Our Department—anyone over sixty-five and in need—”

“I’m not in need,” asserted Miss Fosdyke woodenly. “Not of a telephone, anyway.”

There had been nothing in the Geriatric Course to prepare Valerie for this. She glanced round the pin-new Sheltered Housing flatlet for inspiration, but she saw none. Its bland, purpose-built contours were as empty of ideas as was the incomplete form in front of her. “Telephone Allowance. In Cases of Maximum Need …”

It was a case of maximum need, all right. Valerie took another quick look at the papers in her file.

Fosdyke, Emmeline J. Retired dressmaker, unmarried. No relatives. One hundred per cent disability: arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular degeneration, motor-neuron dysfunction.

The case notes made it all so clear. Valerie glanced up from the
precise, streamlined data and was once again confronted with a person—an actual, quirky, incomprehensible person, a creature whose eyes, sunk in helpless folds of withered skin, yet glittered with some impenetrable secret defiance.

Why couldn’t old sick people just
be
old and sick? the poor girl wondered despairingly. Why did they have to be so many other things as well, things for which there was no space allotted on the form, and which just didn’t fit in
anywhere?

“But suppose you were
ill,
Miss Fosdyke?” Valerie hazarded, her eyes fixed on all that list of incapacitating disabilities. “Suppose—?”

“Well,
of
course
I’m ill!” snapped back Miss Fosdyke. “I’ve been ill for years, and I’ll get iller. Old people do. Why do I have to have a telephone as well?”

Valerie’s brain raked desperately through the course notes of only a few months ago. Dangers to Watch Out For in Geriatric Practice. Isolation. Mental Confusion. Hypothermia. Lying dead for days until the milkman happens to notice the half-dozen unclaimed bottles …

An
easy
job, they’d told her back in the office—an easy job for Valerie’s first solo assignment. Simply going from door to door in the Sheltered Housing block, and arranging for a free telephone for those who qualified, either by age or disability or both. She’d pictured to herself the gratitude in the watery old eyes as she broke the good news, imagined the mumbling but effusive expressions of gratitude.

Why couldn’t Miss Fosdyke be like that? Eighty-seven and helpless—why the hell couldn’t she?

“Miss Fosdyke, you
must
have a telephone!” Valerie repeated, a note of
desperation creeping into her voice as she launched into these unknown waters beyond the cosy boundaries of the Geriatric Course. “Surely you can see that you must? I mean, in your situation—suppose you needed a doctor?”

“Nobody of my age needs a doctor,” Miss Fosdyke retorted crisply. “Look at my case notes there, you can see for yourself the things I’ve got. Incurable, all of them. There’s not a doctor in the
world who can cure a single one of them, so why should I have to be bothered with a doctor who can’t?”

Obstinate. Difficult. Blind to their own interests. Naturally, the course had dealt with these attributes of the aging process, but in such bland, non-judgmental terms that when you finally came upon the real thing, it was only just recognizable.

But recognizable, nevertheless. Be friendly, but firm, and don’t become involved in argument. Smilingly, Valerie put Miss Fosdyke down for a free telephone, and left the flat, all optimism and bright words.

“Hope you’ll soon be feeling better, Miss Fosdyke,” she called cheerfully as she made her way out, and then on her long lithe young legs she almost ran down the corridor in order not hear the old thing’s riposte: “Better? Don’t be silly, dear, I’ll be feeling worse. I’ll go on feeling worse until I’m dead. Everyone does at my age. Don’t they teach you
anything
but lies at that training place of yours?”

*

“
What
a morning!” Valerie confided, half laughing and half sighing with relief, to her lunch companions in the staff canteen. “There was this poor old thing, you see, getting on for ninety, who was supposed to be applying for a free telephone, and do you know what she said ..?”

And while the others leaned forward, all agog for a funny story to brighten the day’s work, Valerie set herself to making the anecdote as amusing as she knew how, recalling Miss Fosdyke’s exact words, in all their incongruous absurdity: “No, no telephone, thank you. It’s too dangerous.”

Too
dangerous!
What
could
the old thing mean? Ribald suggestions about breathy male voices late at night ricocheted round the table; anecdotes of personal experiences almost took the conversation away from Miss Fosdyke and her bizarre attitude, and it was only with difficulty that Valerie brought it back.

At
eighty-seven
!—she should be so lucky!—this was the general reaction of the others. Of course, the girls admitted, one did read occasionally of old women being assaulted as well as robbed—look
at that great-grandmother found stripped and murdered behind her own sweet-shop counter only a few months ago. And then a few years back there had been that old girl in an Islington basement defending her honour with a carving knife. Still, you couldn’t say it was common.

“At
eighty-seven
!” they kept repeating, wonderingly, giggling a little at the absurdity of it. Consciously and gloriously exposed to all the dangers of being young and beautiful, they could well afford to smile pityingly, to shrug, and to forget.

*

It was nearly three months after the telephone had been installed that Miss Fosdyke first heard the heavy masculine breathing. It was late on a Sunday night—around midnight, as is usual with this type of anonymous caller—and it so happened that Miss Fosdyke was not in bed yet; she was dozing uneasily in her big chair, too tired after her hard day to face the slow and exhausting business of undressing and preparing for bed.

For it
had
been a hard day, as Sundays so often were for the inhabitants of the Sheltered Housing block. Sunday was the day when relatives of all ages, bearing flowers and potted plants in proportion to their guilt, came billowing in through the swing doors to spend an afternoon of stunned boredom with their dear ones; or alternatively, to escort the said dear ones, on their crutches and in their wheel chairs, to spend a few hours in the tiny, miserable outside world.

Just
how
tiny and miserable it was, Emmeline Fosdyke knew very well, because once every six weeks her old friend Gladys would come with her husband (arthritic himself, these days) to take Emmeline to tea in their tall, dark, bickering home—hoisting her over their awkward front doorstep, sitting her down in front of a plate of stale scones and a cup of stewed tea, and expecting her to be envious. Envious not of their happiness, for they had none, but simply of their marriage. Surely any marriage, however horrible, merits the envy of a spinster of eighty-seven.

Especially when, as in this case, the marriage is based on the long-ago capture by one dear old friend of the other dear old
friend’s fiancé—a soldier boy of the First World War he’d been then, very dashing and handsome in his khaki battle dress, though you’d never have guessed it now. Emmeline remembered as if it was yesterday that blue-and-gold October afternoon, the last afternoon of his leave, when she had lost him.

“He says you’re frigid!” Gladys had whispered gleefully, brushing the golden leaves from her skirt, all lit up with having performed a forbidden act and destroyed a friend’s happiness all in one crowded afternoon. “He says you’re no good!”

Details had followed—surprisingly intimate for that day and age, but unforgettable. They had served, anyway, to ensure that Emmeline remained a spinster. After this, how could she expose herself, ever again, to the scorn of any other man?

Only later, emboldened partly by age and partly by a changing climate of opinion, had Emmeline found herself wondering how responsive Gladys herself had proved to be over the subsequent sixty-five years? Naturally, Emmeline had never asked, nor would Gladys ever have answered. But maybe Gladys’ tight, bitter mouth, and the grey defeated features of the once carefree soldier boy were answer enough.

The visit on this particular Sunday had been more than usually exhausting. To start with there had been seedcake for tea instead of the usual scones, and the seeds had got in behind Emmeline’s dentures, causing her excruciating embarrassment and
discomfort;
and on top of this, Gladys’ budgerigar, who had been saying “Percy wants a grape” at intervals of five or six minutes for the last eleven years, had died the previous Wednesday, and this left a gap in the conversation which was hard to fill.

And so, what with the seedcake, and the car journey, and the boredom, and all the physical effort involved, Emmeline arrived back at the Sheltered Housing Unit in a state of complete exhaustion; she didn’t feel up to anything more than sitting in her armchair waiting for it to be bedtime.

*

She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d learned long ago that when you are old, sleep has to be budgeted just as carefully as money; if
you use up too much of it during the day, there’ll be none left for the night. So she’d intended just to sit there, awake but thinking of nothing in particular, until the hands of her watch pointed to quarter to ten and it would be time to start preparing for bed.

But it is hard to think of nothing in particular after eighty-seven years. Out of all those jumbled decades heaped up behind,
something
will worm itself to the surface; and thus it was that as Emmeline’s head sank farther and farther toward her chest, and her eyelids began to close, a formless, half-forgotten anxiety began nibbling and needling at the fringes of her brain—something from long, long ago, over and done with really, and yet still with the power to goad.

Must hurry, must hurry, must get out of here—this was the burden that nagged at her last wisps of consciousness. Urgency pounded behind her closed eyes—a sense of trains to catch, or doors to bolt, of decisions to make. And now there seemed to be voices approaching—shouts—cars drawing up—luggage only half packed.

Slumped in her deep chair, Emmeline Fosdyke’s sleeping limbs twitched ever so slightly to the ancient crisis; the slow blood pumped into her flaccid muscles a tiny extra supply of oxygen to carry the muscles through the dream chase along streets long since bulldozed; her breath came infinitesimally quicker, her old lungs expanded to some minuscule degree at the need for running, running, running through a long-dead winter dawn…

It was the telephone that woke her. Stunned by the suddenness of it, and by its stupefying clamour erupting into her dreams, Emmeline sat for a few moments in a state of total bewilderment. Who? Where? And then, gradually, it came back to her.

It was all right. It was here. It was now. She, Emmeline Fosdyke, eighty-seven years old, sitting comfortably in her own chair in her own room on a peaceful Sunday evening. She was home. She was safe—safe back from that awful outing to Gladys’ house, and with a full six weeks before she need think about going there again. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all. Nothing, certainly, to get her heart beating in this uncomfortable way, thundering in her eardrums, pulsing behind her eyes.

Except, of course, the telephone, which was still ringing. Ringing, ringing, as if it would never stop. Who could possibly be telephoning her on a Sunday evening as late as—oh dear, what
was
the time? With eyes still blurred by sleep, Emmeline peered at her watch and saw, with a little sense of shock, that it was past midnight.

Midnight! She must have been dozing here for hours! That meant that even with a sleeping pill, she’d never—

And still the telephone kept on ringing; and now, her mind slowly coming into focus, it dawned on Miss Fosdyke that she would have to answer it.

“Hello?” she half whispered, her old voice husky and
tremulous
with sleep. Then from force of habit she said, “This is Emmeline Fosdyke, 497 6402. Who ..?”

There was no answer. Only the slow measured sound of someone breathing—breathing loudly, and with deliberate
intention;
the sounds pounded against her ear like the slow
reverberation
of the sea. In, out. In, out.

For several seconds Miss Fosdyke simply sat there, speechless, the hand that clutched the instrument growing slowly damp with sweat, and her mind reeling with indecision. During her long decades of solitary bed-sitter life, she’d had calls of this nature quite a number of times, and she knew very well there was no infallible method for dealing with them. If you simply hung up without a word, then they were liable to ring again later in the night; if, on the other hand, you
did
speak, then they were as likely as not to launch forth immediately into a long rambling
monologue
of obscene suggestions. It was a nerve-racking situation for an old woman all on her own in an empty flat and late at night.

Miss Fosdyke decided to take the bull by the horns.