Her Living Image (34 page)

“Where are you – have you found a room?”

“I’m moving in with Mike.”

Her heart sank. “But he’s only got one bedroom.”

“I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

“But –”

“But what? What don’t you like now?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” She drained her glass. “Can we go for a walk?”

“Now?”

“Yes. We could walk to another pub, then back for the car. It’s lovely outside now, look at that sky.” She pointed through the window opposite their table. The lower panes
were frosted, but through the upper ones they could see a clear, dark blue sky, which was lemony yellow – almost green, at the lower edge, from the sunset.

“All right.”

They walked in silence for a while, and Alan took her hand.

“Why is this such a bloody mess?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you want us to live together?”

She had prepared herself for this question. “It’s far too early to say. You’ve got to be on your own, and be certain about what you’re leaving – and why . . .
before we can begin to think about it.”

“But it’s already gone so far. . . . You turn it on to me. I’ve got to be certain. What do you think?”

She shook her head. “I can’t – I can’t say. You’re not – when you’re free it’ll be different. I don’t know. I can’t imagine us living
together.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know . . . because of your family, I suppose.”

“They don’t own me.” He grabbed at a switch of overhanging weeping willow, but it did not break easily and he was forced to stop and twist the sinewy stem round and round
impatiently before he could tear it off. When he had broken it he beat it along the fence. “I really don’t think it will make much difference to the kids.” His voice sounded as if
he was trying to be reasonable.

“Why not?”

“Because – they’re much more attached to Carolyn. They tolerate me. They do things with me on her instructions. You can practically feel a collective sigh of relief when I go
out.”

“Why? Why should it be like that?”

“I don’t know. Because of the way Lyn looks after them, I suppose. She does – she – her whole life revolves around them. She knows what they want before they know
themselves. I mean, there’s no competition; if I ever do anything for them, I simply don’t do it as well as she does.”

“She has more time with them than you do.”

“Of course, I’m out at work all day.”

“Well then it’s hardly surprising.”

“No.”

She saw that he was dissatisfied with this conclusion, though, and waited for him to carry on. The silence lengthened until she realized that he had thought better of it. He was lashing at the
wall rhythmically with the stick. The noise irritated her. The sky ahead of them was perfect. The last yellow-green tints from the sunset were fading, leaving a pale eggshell-blue wash which
darkened gradually and imperceptibly, rising to the deep blue vault of space overhead. Three pale stars were already visible.

“You feel sorry for yourself,” she said.

He didn’t reply.

“You could have made more time to spend with them. Your father used to look after you and your sister, you said. He had a job.”

“Yes. But there was room for him to look after us. There was a gap. Lucy was practising, or at concerts. Lyn doesn’t leave any gaps at all.”

“You’re blaming her, then.”

“I don’t know – it just happened. You think it’s my fault?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t seem fair that you should blame her for looking after them too well.”

“Well I’m not fair, am I? I’m a rotten selfish adulterous bloody bastard.”

“Stop it,” she said quietly. He had never criticized his wife before, to her.

When they came to the pub he did not sit with her, but brought her drink then returned to the bar. She watched him drain his pint and buy another. After a few minutes she joined him.
“I’d like to go, now.”

“Go on then.” He did not turn round.

“What are you going to do?”

“Stay here.”

“You won’t be able to drive.”

“That’s my business.”

She went out. It was quite dark now, but still warm, and the sky was sprinkled with white stars. It would take her about an hour to walk home, she judged. She could get a bus into town and
another out. . . . She decided to walk.

It took her longer than she had expected. It was after midnight when she turned into her street. Alan’s car was parked outside the house. She had been telling herself he was despicable;
childish, self-pitying. But these certainties evaporated into thin air before the fact of him jumping out of the car and running towards her.

“Where on earth have you been? I’ve been driving up and down looking for you – I’ve been waiting at bus stops for hours.”

“I just walked back.”

“All the way?”

She nodded.

“Good grief, you could have been murdered and raped – why didn’t you get a taxi?”

She laughed. “I’m all right.”

“I know you are. It makes me sick. Open this door.”

“Are you coming in?”

“Yes. But not in the street. It’s too cold.”

Getting up and dressed in the morning somehow resulted in them making love again, which slowed the whole business down considerably. Caro was persuaded easily into accompanying
Alan to work in the car. She would be late again, if she went on the bike. But to her astonishment he started to drive away from town, in the opposite direction.

“What are you doing? Where are you going?”

“I need a clean shirt.”

It took her a while to realize that they were going not to Mike’s but to Alan’s house – the house where his wife and children lived.

“How dare you – what do you think you’re doing? God, if I was her I’d throw them all away. You told me you’d moved into Mike’s – you liar –”

“Your argument would be more coherent if you knew whether you were angry for yourself or Lyn. And I have moved in to Mike’s. It just so happens that all three shirts I have there
with me are dirty.”

“Well, I’m not washing them for you!”

“Fine. I didn’t expect it. Kindly allow me to go home and fetch a clean one.”

Caro sat in outraged silence, as they drove past the flow of commuter traffic pouring into town, past the big houses with their tall hedges and deep green gardens. The sun was shining.

“Nice, isn’t it?” he said. “Nice part of town.”

He turned off the main road, into an avenue lined with lime trees. The houses were all set well back from the road. “Solid investments, houses like these,” he said. “Go up by a
few thousand every year. Pleasant too – nice class of neighbours. And look at the gardens; roses, wisteria, blossom in the spring –” They drove past a neat modern primary school.
“Close to all facilities, schools, transport –”

“What are you talking about?” she shouted furiously. “What are you trying to do?”

“Nothing,” he said pleasantly. “Just showing you what a nice neighbourhood I used to live in.”

“Used to? Nobody asked you to leave.”

He slowed down and drew to a halt outside a big house with mock-Tudor beams on the front. There was a beautiful Japanese maple, she noticed, in the middle of the front lawn. “Pretty,
isn’t it? I should think it’s worth about fifty thousand pounds by now.”

Caro realized it was his. “You shit – you –”

“Careful. Someone will see you.”

Almost hysterical with rage, Caro folded her arms and bent her head low over them, so that her face could not be seen from the outside. Alan jumped out and strode up the path to the house,
whistling. He didn’t knock on the door. He’s still got his key, she thought. Of course he has. The footsteps came back down the path almost immediately. When he opened the car door he
swung in a white shirt on a hanger, before he got in himself.

“How d’you have the nerve – how d’you have the bare-faced cheek – ?”

“Oh it’s easy, when you’re as wicked as I am.” He began to whistle again, a hateful piercing noise. They turned a corner, into a newer, less established street.

“This used to be green belt,” he said informatively. “They changed the planning regulations in sixty-eight. Sold it in lots to private builders. Of course, we older residents
look down on it all. Rather tasteless, most of it. That’s Bellamy’s on the left.”

The houses here looked raw and naked, lacking the full hedges and trees of the Victorian streets. Bellamy’s house was as ugly as Alan had said. Despite her rage, Caro stared at it. The
garden was being landscaped. There was a mound of black earth and rubble at one end, and piles of –

“Stop. Alan. Stop.”

He glanced at her and stopped the car. Caro jumped out and ran back down the road. He watched her in his mirror. She was staring into Bellamy’s garden. Then she came slowly back to the
car.

“Well?” he said, as she got in.

“He’s – he’s got our bricks.”

“Our bricks?”

“Yes. Blind garden bricks. Bricks from the park.”

Alan glanced in his mirror and drove off from the kerb. “How d’you know?”

“Because they – they’re the ones that were painted. Spray-canned. Red. They’ve got that red paint all over one side.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“And he’s got topsoil – and a heap of paving stones. . . . He must have stolen the lot.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me.”

“What d’you mean?”

“You’re such an innocent,” Alan said contemptuously. “It happens all the time. Of course people are nicking stuff.”

“But he said – in the paper, that interview about vandals – and they’re taking Kevin to court over one bag of topsoil. . . .”

Alan shrugged. “That’s the way it goes.”

“Well I – I – I’ll go to the police.”

“That would be silly.”

“Why?”

“Because you’d lose your job. Look, Caro – how many people are already turning a blind eye? That stuff’s been on site once, hasn’t it? So the contractors must have
brought it out again for him. They’re all in on it. The police’ll laugh at you.”

“But it’s not fair.”

“That’s life.”

She subsided into silence. After a while he said, smiling, “You’re a ridiculous idealist.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not. I think you’re silly. But I’m forced to admire your sense of fair play.”

“I don’t want you to admire me. I don’t want you to think I’m silly.”

When they got to the car park he said, “Can we stop it now?”

“Stop what?”

“All this bickering. Kiss me.”

“What on earth makes you think I want to kiss and be friends?”

He shrugged. “All right. Let’s have another forty-eight hours of hostilities, then. Shall I see you tomorrow night, when you’ve cooled down?”

She was so angry she couldn’t speak, and nearly fell out of the car in her haste to get away from him.

Caro was overwhelmed, in the course of the morning, by the sense of the impossibility of changing anything. Realistically, what could she do about Bellamy? It wasn’t even
– she tried to add up the value of what he must have taken. It couldn’t amount to more than fifty pounds’ worth, altogether. People wouldn’t believe her because it was too
ridiculous, for someone like him to have stolen such a paltry amount.

She refused to let herself think about Alan at all; she could not face examining his motives for their morning drive. She passed a deeply frustrating morning telephoning woodyard after woodyard
in an attempt to secure a new supply of seasoned sweet chestnut (the construction of the adventure playground was supposed to start in ten days’ time), and a depressing afternoon writing yet
another internal report on the extent of the damage at the park. Work there had stopped completely, at the moment. There was not even the authorization to start building a new stores hut until the
Council had met on Thursday.

Over the next two days Caro found herself becoming almost manic, doing fifteen jobs at once at work, tearing round the house frantically at home. When Clare came in from her rehearsal the
following evening, she found Sylvie and some of her friends in the TV room listening to deafeningly loud music, and Caro in the kitchen dismantling the oven.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“It’s filthy. Some of these bits haven’t been cleaned for years.”

“But there’s a time – and a place, Caro. Why has it got to be done now, at –” she consulted her watch “– seven-fifteen on a Thursday evening? How can
I cook tea?”

“Have something cold. There’s some cheese in the fridge.”

Clare got her to sit down, by making a pot of tea and a plate of cheese sandwiches. “What’s up?”

“Nothing. Everything.”

“Are you still – what’s happening with Alan?”

“It’s a mess. I don’t know. I keep thinking it’s finished . . . then – He left a note on my desk to meet at the George at nine tonight.”

“Are you going?”

Caro shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m just not in control any more, at all. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Someone turned up the music in the next room, and everything in the kitchen began to vibrate to the bass beat, as if a huge heart had suddenly begun to thump under the floorboards.

“That’s nice,” said Clare sourly, and they both suddenly laughed. “Shall I go in and throw my weight about?”

“No.” Caro touched Clare’s arm. “Leave it. It’s like being in the jungle.”

“Like being in the womb, more like. They play noises like that to babies, now, in trendy nurseries – just imagine what decibel level they’ll graduate to, when they’re
Sylvie’s age.”

“Clare?” Caro had not intended to tell her. But she suddenly craved the shrewd certainty of Clare’s response. She knew what it would be; but she wanted to hear it, like a
craving for something strong and salty – anchovy, or Danish blue. “You know Bellamy? the councillor they interviewed in the paper the other day? I – I went past his house
yesterday morning, and there were some bricks. . . .” She told Clare what she had seen.

“What are you going to do?”

“Well what – what can I do?”

“Expose him! God, you could reduce him to shreds. All that stuff about respecting other people’s property, and standing up to be counted – Caro it’s brilliant!”
Clare leapt up and hugged her.