Dear Doctor Lily (40 page)

Every weekend, Paul worked outside with Tony, repairing fences, making a new gate, shoring up the barn, starting to do some rough work on the neglected land. Tony's father bulldozed out dead trees to be sawn into logs. He brought up his cultivator, and Paul started a vegetable garden and a few flower-beds near the house. Next year, they would tackle the tufted grass at the front and sides and start a proper lawn.

Paul came home from work early on Fridays, and they left the Cape late on Sunday nights. It was the best time of his life so far. In between weekends, he existed.

One weekend, Paul and Harry got a load of wood and partitioned off two loose boxes inside the barn. Harry lent Paul an old chestnut horse for the summer, and found a dependable bay pony for the girls, which was like a miniature horse, narrow and smooth going.

‘Room for plenty more boxes,' Harry said. ‘Tack room, feed shed, hay store. You could turn this place into a boarding stable and make enough money to keep your own horses. Run a tack shop, why not? Dump those robbers at Turnbull's, and use all your experience for yourself.'

‘And live here all the time and be a doddery old saddlemaker.' Paul had already dreamed this dream.

‘Lovable,' Harry added, ‘with crooked eyeglasses and a stained white moustache.'

‘And have horses and horses. Buy that bit of scrub land across the road from the Andrades, plough and seed it, put up more fences. Winterize the house. Knock the kitchen and living-room together to make one big room.'

In his office desk, Paul kept a drawer of plans and notes and catalogues that had nothing to do with Turnbull's.

Every night when they were here in the summer, he and Lily would walkout into the field before they went to bed. The horse and pony would come to them out of the darkness, slowly, because it wasn't feed time. Arthur ranged, nose down, on some serious night hunting. The grey cat that had moved in when oats in the barn brought rats and mice jumped to the top rail of the fence and did a tightrope walk. Paul leaned against the good old chestnut horse. He lifted its heavy head so that he could put his cheek against the soft pale velvet place just above the nostrils. He blew gently down his nose, mingling his breath with the horse's moist, grassy essence, which smelled of apples if Lily had brought some out, otherwise, curiously, of chicken soup.

When the horse and pony tired of it, they would wander off down the dip in the field and be lost in shadows, leading the secret life of domestic animals who sleep outdoors.

Then Paul and Lily would put damp horsy hands round each other, and wander back in silent content. Lucky, they told each other often. They were so lucky.

What Isobel had tried to say to Paul was totally absurd. How could a child of that age make up something like that? He put it out of his head, but the idea seeped back through treacherous cracks. When Harry was there, Paul occasionally caught himself watching him with Lily, but they were just as they had always been, loving and open, teasing, laughing.

Paul was forty-five. Lily was thirty-five. Harry was nearer her age. Paul shoved the unworthy thought down again and stamped on it. He was going to stay young, young with Lily; never be the jealous older husband – formula for disintegration.

Never be jealous of her job either. Or of superwoman Martha, whom she tried so hard to please. Or of the clients whom she talked about incessantly at home. There were times when Paul privately thought that Lily went a bit overboard. He remembered how she had been, years ago, over the man in the greenhouse whose little boy had died. Paul's father had warned her then: ‘You can't take on everyone else's troubles,' and she had almost shouted at him across the table, ‘But you've got to be involved!' with her face ablaze.

‘I hear you're doing noble work,' Terry said to Lily when he came, after months, to see what they were doing with the house. ‘Not bad for a young and irresponsible foreigner.'

‘How is your mother?' Paul asked.

‘I don't know. All right, I guess.'

Terry had left home last year, and stayed with different friends, moving around. When students left summer jobs to go back to college, Terry left the airport snack-bar and took three or four restaurant jobs and then one in the bar of a suburban motel. His girls were assorted, from black satin and high heels and squeals, to earth colours and long dusty skirts, and misfit people whom he described as ‘older women'. He had dropped out of the art school.

The Judge was also going to drop out. With his doctor's encouragement, he had decided that he was not able to return to work. He seemed relieved.

‘Only problem – how am I going to put up with Mrs Meggs all day? She's not bad in the kitchen, but she robs me blind at the market, and she's beginning to want to watch my television
instead of hers. She's filtering down from her part of the house. She says we're two lonely people. I'm afraid she has designs on me.'

‘No problem,' Terry said. ‘We're three lonely people, counting me. Fire the Meggs and let me move in with Grandpa.'

‘Lynette as well?' Paul asked.

‘Who's she?'

Terry's girls came and went quite fast.

James had continued to see Evvie off and on, depending on whether a job from Faces took him up to London, and on the occasional television work Evvie got for him.

Kyle had moved out of her flat after a row, but she would never let James in there. So it was the odd hotel room, but not often. No strain. No sweat. It was there if they wanted it. They didn't usually want more than a chat and a meal together.

His best commercial had been for jogging shoes, in a sweater with vertical stripes to emphasize the old pot-belly. He made about £500 in repeats, and even Nora was pleased with him. He did a few days of crowd work: ‘With Sir Larry – we're all in togas.'

‘With your legs?' Nora got a laugh from the bar customers. ‘That explains the fall of the Roman Empire.'

She had begun to see the value of what she still called ‘Your fun and games in the wicked city'. (Could she know about Evvie? Not a chance.) They were going to take the plunge and go to America again to visit Lily and Paul. Nora had plodded round travel agents in her usual methodical way, and found the cheapest fare to Boston.

Blanche was willing to look after the Duke's Head. She was taking a bit more interest in the pub these days, which was good in a way, but upsetting in another, because she kept telling her parents what they ought to do. Once she brought in a friend who worked in an architect's office to discuss how alterations could be made to enlarge the kitchen and make room for a small restaurant.

‘Very nice,' Nora and James said. They didn't argue. They just knew they weren't going to do it.

‘You've got a little gold mine here.' Blanche's friend had bloodshot nostrils and huge round glasses like portholes.

They had made Blanche promise not to take an axe to any of the walls while they were in America.

‘Why should I care?' was her answer. ‘It's your pub. If you don't want to keep up with the changing type of trade, that's your privilege.'

‘Watch her while we're gone,' James told Duggie Manderson. ‘I don't trust her.'

‘Telephone!' Nora, who was doing housework in the cottage, opened the back door of the pub and called to James, on lunchtime duty in the bar. He picked up the telephone, which was between the public and private bars.

It was Henrietta. ‘Look,' he said quickly, with his back to the customers. ‘I can't take the call here. Too much noise. Let me ring you back in a few minutes.'

‘Don't muck about,' Henrietta said. ‘I've got to call back with an answer for the magazine right away. The man's got a plane to catch.'

‘Magazine, what magazine… what?' There were some farm workers in the public bar. They were making a racket.

‘They asked for you.' Henrietta raised her deep voice. ‘Remember the still you did for
True Tales?'

Jam smiled, remembering himself. ‘I was the alcoholic politician?'

‘Something like that. This is another of their magazines. You may not have seen it… er, you may have.
Do It Yourself.'

‘So bring my overalls?'

‘No, your executive suit, plus bowler, brolly, briefcase and that.'

‘You mean, “Even a bank manager can build his own home”?'

‘Not exactly. Look, you haven't got to do this if you don't want. It's soft porn.'

‘Crikey!' James cupped his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘I don't have to –'

‘The girls do that. You have to be shocked.'

‘I would be.' Jam was far more proper than he admitted to. ‘But why is it called Do It Your – oh. Got it.'

‘Seventy-five an hour. Yes or no?'

Good money. Go on, Jam. ‘Of course I'll do it.'

‘I knew you would.'

‘Ho ho.'

‘And ho ho to
you.'
One of the farm workers leered at him as he hung up the phone. ‘Jam, you've gone all red. Was that your girlfriend?'

‘That'll be the day,' Jam managed to say. He poured himself a shot of White Horse to steady his nerves. Better. What the hell. He was a pro. A trouper.

The next evening, he went down to the post office call-box to tell Evvie.

Kyle answered. ‘You can't,' he said quite rudely. ‘She's working late. What the hell do you want?'

James hung up. He could have said, ‘What the hell are you doing there?' The man had moved out a few weeks ago.

There were three girls in the studio with him. The photographer was a jaded-looking man in a poncey yellow cardigan. His assistant was a bored fellow with dirty white jeans and shaved hair. They continued to look jaded and bored even when the girls came out of the dressing-room in tiny black bras, black stockings and black suspenders. No knickers.

The girls looked bored too, except when they rolled their eyes and grinned, or made ‘oo' mouths for a take. James was the only one who was not bored.

He had to wear glasses, which was the only thing that saved his eyes from falling out of his head. The assistant arranged the girls in various rude poses. ‘Wider, wider,' the photographer droned. ‘Come on, you're here to show more than that.'

James was coming through the door marked ‘Bank Manager', to be surprised by what, at a hideous stretch of the imagination, were supposed to be his bank clerks, cutting it up with spray cans of shaving foam. All he had to do was look startled, shocked, amazed, outraged.

The girls were called Doreen and Annabel and Holly. Annabel
had a very posh ‘Mummy darling' accent. Holly was married to a company director. Doreen was a bit of a tart. James could not believe that he was mixed up in this. For the final still, the girls piled on to a sort of office cart like Nora's tea trolley, and he had to push them, bottoms up, through the doorway, looking back at the camera with the smirk he had been disguising when he was being astonished and outraged.

Afterwards, he took his briefcase and umbrella round to Evvie's office on the chance that she might be free. She was finishing up, so they went and had a drink, and James told her how he had earned his living that day.

Evvie didn't show whether she was amused, or shocked, or what. She was not excited, that was certain. James was.

‘I think I'm getting delayed reaction,' he said. ‘Have you got time to – you know – take a little trip to the Essex?'

‘Could I spray foam on you?' Evvie giggled with a straight face.

In the hotel room, he asked her, ‘What was Kyle doing at your place?'

‘When?' Evvie called from the bathroom.

‘I rang you a couple of days ago.'

‘He came back to collect some film.'

‘Hurry up.'

In that room, with the curtains drawn on the streets where people were going home from work, Jam felt something that was like love for Evvie. She had come to him in his hour of need. She was a totally different shape from Annabel and Doreen and Holly. She would starve to death rather than do something like that, and she'd never need to, because she was a sharp and successful business woman, and the fact that he was with her in the Hotel Essex was even more astonishing, when you thought about it, than being in that foam-spattered studio this afternoon.

He trailed home to the same old scene. Supper in the oven. Nora in the bar. Good old Nora. If she could even
guess
what he'd been up to, wouldn't she simply die? You rotter, Jamspoon.

Feeling mild pangs of guilt, he went through to the pub and told Nora to go and put her feet up. The bars were not busy. He was able to do most of the clearing up before closing time. When
he went back to the cottage for a cup of tea, he gave Nora a hug. He felt mellow towards her. That was how guilt took him. Nora went to take the kettle off the stove. For an insane moment, he imagined her with those suspenders round her broad bottom, and depraved Doreen squirting foam on you-know-where.

Nora drank tea placidly, her eyes looking over the rim of the mug like a child.

‘Slow tonight,' he said companionably.

‘It was quite busy earlier.'

‘That right? Who was in?' He didn't care, but the Duke was her life. She liked to talk about it.

She named a few boring names.

‘Haven't seen old Duggie for a while. What's happened to him? He taken his trade to the Lion?'

Nora put down her mug. ‘Since you brought it up.' She took a deep breath and told him. It didn't take long.

When she had finished, he stood up. ‘Well,' he said, surprised to hear that his voice still worked, ‘better go down and do those bloody barrels.'

‘I'll help you.'

‘Don't bother.' How dare she?

She got up. ‘Jamie.'

Her pet name for him. He wanted to spit.

‘Leave me alone.'

In the cellar, trundling a barrel across the floor, forcing the aching muscular effort to get it on the rack, he thought, ‘Let me have a heart attack. Now, God. Let her come down in those pyjamas with the little prissy collar and find me here.'