A Lovely Day to Die (3 page)

I ought to do it now—
now
—so that these tranquil thoughts will be the last she will ever have; so that a sort of dim peace, at least, and the absence of positive discomfort, may be her last experiences upon this earth …

Slowly, carefully, and making every effort not to rouse the sleeping figure, Millicent reached for the spare pillow, and laid it softly across the dreaming face. Then, leaning forward with all her weight, she pressed down … down …

Not even the most frightful of the recent nightmares, not even the most exaggerated of all her fevered imaginings, had prepared Millicent for anything like
this.
Instantly, and as if galvanised into hideous life by some sort of monstrous shock-treatment out of science fiction, the body leaped and plunged beneath her, with a strength that was beyond belief. The old, withered arms, like sticks, flailed and fought their way out from under the blankets and battered at the empty air. The knees, immobile for years,
jackknifed
beneath the bedclothes, pitching blankets and eiderdown to left and right; the legs, weak as string, kicked out in all directions, pounding against the mattress. The whole moribund body, which had scarcely stirred in years, lashed this way and that beneath the covers, arching, heaving … even with all her strength, all the weight of her body, Millicent could barely hold the creature down.

Promises! Promises! How could either of them, making their humane and civilised pact all those years ago, have guessed that
this
was what they were undertaking? That Life, even at its last gasp, even with all its faculties rotted beyond repair, and all its muscles wasted away to nothing, is like a tiger, mad with purpose, glittering with awful power: with teeth bared, claws outstretched, hurling into the face of the universe its surging, unquenchable determination to go on … and on … and on …

Half-sobbing with the effort to hold the creature down, Millicent cried aloud, “I can’t … I can’t ..!”—or rather, fancied she was crying it aloud; but somehow no sound came. It was in her head that the words were pounding, “I can’t … I can’t …” and the sobbing was deep in her heart and it only felt as if her cheeks were wet with tears …

*

This time when she woke, it was bright morning, and she started up in dismay, knowing at once, from the bright bands of sunlight across the carpet, that it was late, very late. And on a Wednesday, too, just when there was such a lot to do, with the doctor coming, and everything! How dreadfully unfortunate—though of course it was obvious how it had happened. Lying in bed recovering from that first nightmare, she must have dropped off again and gone straight into the second one, almost like a continuation of the first.

Two nightmares in a single night! It was getting past a joke. Something would really have to be done.

*

And that afternoon, when Dr Fergusson paid his routine visit to Mother, Millicent braced herself to tell him about the bad nights she’d been having lately, and how she’d been suffering from nightmares. At once he was full of sympathy, as she’d known he would be. He readily prescribed sleeping tablets for the next few nights, quite strong ones, guaranteed to eliminate dreaming of any kind.

“You’ve been overdoing it, my dear,” he said, as he’d said so often. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to get on to the Social Services and arrange for ..?”

But Millicent was adamant.

“I’ll be okay,” she assured him. “All I need is to catch up on my sleep, and then I’ll be as right as rain.”

He did not press the matter. He knew how proud they could be, these single women of Millicent’s generation; how self-sufficient, and determined never to show any weakness. You couldn’t help admiring it, in a way; and perhaps it was a fortunate thing that such people did still exist, what with nursing help being in such short supply, and most of his other patients, untroubled by pride, clamouring and badgering for every kind of help that was going …

And of course he couldn’t guess—or if he did guess, he was certainly going to keep his own counsel about it—that Millicent’s main reason for not wanting a nurse or a home-help around was that once such a professional was installed, it would at once become enormously more difficult to carry out her plan.

For carry it out she would, despite the nightmares, despite all the doubts and terrors in her heart. A promise was a promise. Mother had trusted her, and she would not, must not, betray that trust.

*

That night, she took one of the new sleeping pills, and it was marvellous. She felt herself sinking, within minutes, into a deep, dreamless sleep such as she hadn’t enjoyed in years. And when morning came, she couldn’t remember when she’d felt so
refreshed,
so strong, so rested; so
right,
somehow, and ready for anything. And at once it came to her, with quiet, overwhelming certainty, and even with a strange sense of exhilaration, that
now
was the time.
Now,
in the first bright freshness of the morning, with the early sunshine glinting through the trees, and herself feeling so well, so vigorous … And there had been no nightmares, either, this was the biggest blessing. For months now it had been the nightmares that had stood between the decision and the execution, relentlessly; yesterday’s painfully screwed-up courage being
reduced
ever and anon to juddering cowardice by yet another of the ghastly dreams …

The sun was brightening every moment, and the soft air was filled with birdsong. A lovely morning to die. And to die in one’s sleep, too, without—in all probability—a single pang.

It must be nearly seven now, but the snores from across the landing were still deep and regular. With any luck, the poor creature would know nothing, her dark, comatose world growing merely a little darker, a little more bewildering, before it blacked out for ever. Her last sensation—if sensation indeed there was to be—would surely be a sensation of peace, like sweet rain, pattering down on her parched soul, and filling to the brim the dried-up hollows and spaces of her ruined mind …

Yes, that’s how it would be. A small quiver, perhaps, as the snores rasped to an unaccustomed halt, and then the labouring lungs would be at rest, the flaccid, long-useless muscles would sink, almost imperceptibly, into a deeper stillness.

That was all. Those fevered nightmares, which had transformed
a helpless, harmless old woman on her deathbed into a monstrous effigy of malignancy and power—these had been nothing but the sick fantasies of Millicent’s own mind—a mind strained almost beyond endurance, and racked by anxiety, guilt and indecision. Nothing to do with the reality at all. The reality was merely sad, and almost ordinary—just one more ancient, helpless body which had outlived its mind—outlived its owner, in a manner of speaking. A body already dead, to all intents and purposes, and laid out ready for the small, final formality of “clinical death”, entitling it, at last, to a funeral and a proper death certificate.

Nothing alarming, then, in what Millicent was about to do. Nothing even very important. Just a small formality.

*

Tiptoeing round the wide bed, as she had done so often in her dreams, Millicent paused for a moment, clutching the fat feather pillow to her breast, and holding her breath, fearful lest the old woman was about to wake. The snoring, though still loud, seemed not quite so regular as it had been a minute earlier … and when she ventured to creep nearer, Millicent observed that the invalid’s crumpled yellow face was no longer wholly at rest. A small grimace twisted her mouth, as though at some twinge of pain pushing up through the dim medley of her dreams; and the eyelids, too, were twitching uneasily, as though the old eyes beneath, restless from too much darkness, were fumbling inexpertly for the light.

*

This was Mother! It was incredible, it was beyond the power of the human imagination to encompass, but this creature really, actually,
was
her!
Mother,
who had once laughed, and chatted, and run a home, and bounced children on her knee, and cooked lunch for everybody. Somewhere, hidden deep, deep behind that withered mask, in a darkness and a silence that no voice could any longer penetrate, she was still there.

It was
Mother
whom Millicent was about to kill—and how could she be sure—absolutely sure—that this was still what Mother wanted? Locked away in there, beyond the range of
communication
—how could one
know
?

And instantly, it seemed to Millicent, the answer came, loudly and clearly across the years, in Mother’s own dear, familiar voice:

“Do what
I
ask you, darling! Don’t allow that old hag to decide how
I
am going to die!”

“She shan’t, Mum! She shan’t!” Millicent whispered, low and urgent. “I shan’t let her!”—and with tears pouring down her cheeks, and her heart overflowing with tenderness and love, she laid the pillow gently over the twitching, wizened face, and pressed down … down … down … Leaning close, as though gathering her mother up in a final, loving embrace …

Perfect love casteth out fear. Why, then, this chill of terror creeping through every limb? Why this sense of awful foreboding, this pounding of the heart, louder, louder, like the very tramp of doom …

*

When she woke this time, it was to the sound of voices; low voices, not much above a whisper:

“A stroke … Yes. Yes, completely, I’m afraid: right down both sides.” And then another voice—strangely familiar, this time, though for some reason Millicent could not put a name to it:

“I’ve been afraid that something like this would happen … High blood pressure … All that heavy nursing … and adamant about refusing any outside help … always so proud. Yes, rather odd, that—they found her on the floor in a great tangle of bedclothes, and the pillows all everywhere … it looked like a battle-field! And the poor old woman shivering and groaning on not much more than the mattress … quite a problem she’ll be, now that there’ll be no one at home to look after her. They’ve brought her here for the time being, but …”

Here?
Where was “here”? And who
were
all these people, anyway? What was going on? Millicent tried to open her eyes, but somehow it was too difficult. What had happened? Where was she? Was she still asleep, perhaps, still dreaming?

“Where am I?” she tried to say—and now she was sure she was still dreaming, for her voice made no sound, as is the way of
dreams; and when she tried to sit up she found that her limbs, too, were paralysed as so often happens in nightmares.

*

As anyone who has ever suffered from nightmares well knows, it is no use struggling to wake up. All you can do is lie there quietly and wait, in the certain knowledge that you are bound to wake up in the end.

*

And thus it was that Millicent, certain that she was bound to wake up in the end, lay there quietly and waited.

And waited … And waited … And waited …

“D
ARLING
, I’
D JUST
love to be able to stay a bit longer. You know I would. I’m just as disappointed as you are. But …”

But.

But, but, but. What would it be
this
time, Stella wondered sourly? Whatever it was, she’d have heard it before, that was certain. After five years of going around with a married man, a girl knows his repertoire by heart.

But
I have to help Wendy with the weekend shopping.
But
the man is coming to do the boiler.
But
I have to fetch Carol from the Brownies.
But
Simon is away from school with a temperature.
But
I have to meet Aunt Esmé at the airport.

This last had been the funniest one of all. Looking back, Stella could hardly help laughing, in a black, bitter sort of way, though at the time it hadn’t seemed funny at all. For it had come so soon—so cruelly, and (as it turned out) so ironically soon after that golden September day when, lying in the long grass by the river beyond Marlow, Gerald had been confiding in her, as married men will, about the depth of his inner loneliness. Even as a child he’d been lonely, it seemed.

“No brothers or sisters. Not even any uncles or aunts,” he’d explained sadly. “I used to long, sometimes, for one of those big, close, quarrelsome families, all weddings and funerals and eating roast chicken and bread sauce at each other’s tables, and
running-down
each other’s in-laws. I yearned for something beyond the tight, nuclear family in which I was raised—just myself and my two parents. I’d have given anything for a disapproving aunt or two, or a black-sheep uncle! Particularly at Christmas I used to feel …”

Stella couldn’t remember, at this distance of time, what the hell it was that Gerald used to feel at Christmas: something about
tangerines, and somebody else’s grandfather out in the snow sawing apple-logs—or something—it was of no importance, which of course was why she’d forgotten it. What
was
important, and she wouldn’t forget it till her dying day, was the discrepancy she’d instantly spotted between those maudlin reminiscences and the cock-and-bull story, only three months later, about having to meet “Aunt Esmé” at the airport.

No brothers or sisters. Poor, lonely little boy with no aunts or uncles, even. And so who the hell
was
this “Aunt Esmé”?

She’d given him every chance. Why couldn’t
Wendy
be the one to meet the woman? she’d asked, watching him intently while she spoke. After all, she was Wendy’s aunt, not his … “Oh, no, darling, no, whatever gave you that idea? She’s
my
aunt, she was awfully good to me as a kid, and so I feel that this is the least I can do. It’s an awful bore, but … You
do
understand, don’t you, darling?”

Of course she’d understood. That’s what mistresses are for.

“
Of
course,
darling!” she’d said, not batting an eyelid; and afterwards, how she’d laughed about it, when she’d finished crying.

She had to be so very careful, that was the thing: call Gerald’s bluff even once, and the whole thing could have been wrecked for ever. He had made it quite, quite clear to her, very early on in the relationship, that suspicion, jealousy and possessiveness were the prerogative of the wife, and of the wife alone. It was in the nature of things (Gerald seemed to feel) that
Wendy
should cross-question him about his business trips, ring up the office to check that he really was working late, go through his pockets for letters and for incriminating theatre-ticket stubs; but for
Stella
to do these things struck him as an outrage, an insult to the natural order of things.

“Look, darling,” he’d said (and the cold savagery of his tone had seemed to Stella quite out of proportion to her very minor misdemeanour: a single tentative little phone call to his secretary asking—just simply asking—what time he was expected back from Wolverhampton)—“Look, darling, when a married man starts an affair, it’s because he wants to get
away
from this sort of thing, not
because he wants more of it. He has enough trouble getting a few hours’ freedom as it is, without having his mistress waiting for him like a cat at a mousehole every time he steps outside his front door!”

A speech both cruel and uncalled-for, and Stella had been dreadfully upset. But being upset never got you anywhere with Gerald, it just made him avoid answering the telephone; and so after a while she’d stopped being upset, and had resolved to watch her step even more carefully in the future. And so this was why, when the Aunt Esmé thing cropped up, she’d let it pass without a flicker of protest. Dumber than the dumbest blonde she’d been, as she sleeked back her wings of black, burnished hair, and listened, her dark eyes wide and trusting, while he floundered deeper and deeper into a labyrinth of lies and evasions from which he would never (unless she, Stella, chose to assist him) be able to extricate himself.

*

For the lies hadn’t ended with meeting “Aunt Esmé” at the airport: they had gone on for weeks. Because that hypothetical lady’s visit had proved to be a long one, and packed with incident. She had to be taken to the theatre on just the night when Gerald usually went out with Stella; she caught ’flu on the exact weekend when Gerald and Stella had planned a trip to the country; and when Stella herself caught ’flu, she had to have it alone because it just so happened that Aunt Esmé had to be taken on a visit to an old school-friend in Bournemouth at just that time.

And Stella had taken it all, smiling. Smiling, smiling endlessly down the telephone, making understanding noises, and never questioning, never protesting. It had been over a year later (surely a
year
is long enough? Surely no one could accuse you of
checking-up
after a
year?
)
before Stella had ventured, warily, and with lowered eyelids, to ask after Aunt Esmé. Had they seen her lately, or had a card from her? she’d asked innocently, one late December day when Gerald, preoccupied, brimming-over with family life, had driven over hastily with Stella’s present. Jewellery again, and expensive. Gerald was good at this sort of thing.

Stella thanked him prettily, even warmly; and then, still
prettily,
she tossed her bombshell into his face.

“Have you heard from Aunt Esmé lately?” she asked, and enjoyed, as she only rarely enjoyed his love-making, the look of blank, uncomplicated bewilderment that overspread his pink, self-satisfied features. Not even any wariness, so completely had he forgotten the whole thing.

“Aunt Esmé? Who’s Aunt Esmé?” he asked curiously, quite unsuspicious.

Stella had intended it to stop there: to brush it off with a light, “Oh, well, I must be mixing it up with some other family”; to leave him unscathed, untouched by guilt, and to savour her triumph in secret. But the temptation to go on, to spring the trap, was irresistible.

“Aunt Esmé, darling! You know—the one you had staying with you for all that time last winter …” and as she spoke Stella watched, with terror and with glee, the dawning of guilt and alarm in his bland, contented features. Fear, calculation and panic darted like fishes back and forth across his plump countenance; and then he recovered himself.

“Of course! How stupid! Dear old
Esmé,
you must mean! Not an aunt at all, but the old family governess from Wendy’s mother’s old home … the children had been taught to call her ‘aunt’ because, well, because, you know …”

And of course Stella
did
know; smiling, and lying, and letting him off the hook. She, too, had had an “aunt” like that in her childhood. An Aunt Polly, she hastily improvised, who had made gingerbread animals … Smiling, inventing, chattering, easing the thing, Stella was nevertheless already making her plans. In a year’s time—or maybe two years—“How’s your mother-in-law’s old governess getting on?” she’d ask, all
innocence,
watching his face while he blundered into the trap:
“
Gover
ness
?
But Wendy’s mother never had …” And while his words stuttered into silence, she would be watching his face, never taking her eyes off it as it disintegrated into terror, bewilderment and guilt.

Guilt, that was the important thing. Guilt so richly deserved and so long outstanding, like an unpaid debt. Such a sense of power it gave her to be able to call him to account like this, just now and again; a sense of power which compensated, in some measure, for the awful weakness of her actual position, the terrible uncertainty about her hold on him. To be able to make him squirm like this, every so often, was a sort of redressing of some desperate balance: a long-merited turning of the tables without which Stella sometimes felt she could not have gone on.

Oh, but it was fun, too! A sort of game of Catch-me-if-you-can, a fun game. Not quite so much fun, though, as it used to be, because of late Gerald had been growing more wary, less easily trapped. He was more evasive now, less buoyantly ready to come out with give-away remarks like “
What
trip to Manchester, darling?” or, “But they’ve never
had
measles …” Now, before he spoke, you could see him checking through the lies he had told recently, his grey-green eyes remote and sly.

And as Gerald grew more wary, so did Stella grow more cunning. The questions by which she trapped him were never direct ones now, but infinitely subtle and devious. It was a dangerous sport, and like all dangerous sports, it demanded skill and judgment, a sure eye and perfect timing. Push Gerald too far, and she would have a terrible, terrifying row on her hands—“Possessive!” “Demanding!” and all the other age-old accusations hurtling round her head. Push him not far enough, however, and the opposite set of mishaps would be set in train. He would start thinking he could get away with anything … leaving her for days on end without so much as a phone-call, and then turning up all smiles, as if nothing had happened, and expecting her to cook him steak and collect his shoes from the repairers. Taking her for granted, just as if she was a wife: and what sensible woman is going to put up with all the disadvantages of being married
as
well
as
all the disadvantages of not being?

It was a cliff-hanger business, getting the thing exactly right. Only a few months ago, Gerald had actually threatened to leave her if she didn’t stop spying on him—though surely “spying” was
unduly harsh a term to apply to Stella’s innocent little show of interest in the details of the business conference he’d pretended he’d been to the previous weekend?

“But, darling, Lord Berners wasn’t
at
the dinner!” she’d pointed out, with a placating little laugh, just to save Gerald the trouble of inventing any more humorous quotes from a non-existent speech, “I read in
The
Times
the next morning that …”—and at this, quite suddenly, he had gone berserk, and had turned on her like an animal at bay. His rage, his dreadful, unwarrantable accusations, were like nothing she had ever heard before, and they threw her into such terror that she scarcely knew what she was doing or saying. In the end, he had flung himself out of the flat, slamming the door on her tears and screams, and vowing never to set foot in the place again.

It had taken a suicide note, no less, to bring him to heel again. It was just about as generous a suicide note as any woman has ever penned to a recalcitrant lover, and Stella still remembered it with a certain measure of satisfaction, despite the misery appertaining to its composition. She’d written,

The posts must have been slow that week, because it was nearly three days before she’d at last heard his feet pounding up the stairs, and had started taking the pills, stuffing them into her mouth in handfuls as he burst into the room.

It had been worth it, though. He’d been sweet to her for days afterwards, visiting her constantly in hospital, and even after she’d gone home, he’d continued to shower her with flowers and presents, calling nearly every day, and displaying in full measure
the remorse, the tenderness, and the self-recrimination that such a situation demands of a man.

Until, of course, he gets bored with it. First bored, and then resentful. “Blackmail” he called it now whenever Stella tried to get him to do anything he didn’t want; and Stella began to realise, gradually, that she was right back at square one: having to be careful … careful. The only way she could hold him now was by avoiding occasions for quarrels, and by being infinitely tolerant and understanding: in short, by letting him get away with every bloody thing.

*

And so this was why, this summer Saturday afternoon, Stella, her teeth set in a smile, was making herself listen without a murmur to what Gerald was saying. She had known, of course, the
kind
of thing it would be; married men always have such
righteous
reasons for letting you down. Sick wives—kids home on holiday—family visits: all perfectly uncheckable, and all showing up what a kind, compassionate, virtuous, dutiful creature the lying, treacherous creature is.

Well, and so what was it
this
time?

Simon’s Sports Day. Gerald was potty about that kid.

“You
do
understand, don’t you, darling?” he was pleading; and of course she understood very well. Understood that he preferred the prospect of watching a nine-year-old running across a field in gym shoes, to the prospect of spending a whole long afternoon with his mistress, cool and mysterious in her darkened flat, the sunlight flickering across the bed through the slatted blinds …

“You see, darling, the thing is, he might
win
! Only nine-and-a-half, and he might actually
win
the under-eleven two hundred and twenty yards! He’s a marvellous little runner, Mr Foulkes tells me, he has a real athlete’s body!”