Past Praying For (30 page)

The
fog was starting to close in and James drove with even more than his usual caution up the hill to the car park where there was already a good number of cars. The club, he surmised, would be providing a convenient excuse for people to catch up with the latest developments in the Stretton Noble crime wave. The local store, he had noticed when he passed earlier, appeared to be performing the same service for its different clientele.

The
hum of talk, as he entered the main bar, seemed to have a fevered pitch. Normally a local sensation would be greeted with a sort of discreet relish, but this tense atmosphere was something different. After all, it could be your home tonight. No wonder Laura was being – difficult.

Patrick
Bolton was there, eating on a stool up at the bar and chatting to Jonnie Marsden, a pleasant, quiet man with a business in Burdley. James went to join them.

‘
Evening Jonnie, Patrick. Ready for another of those? My shout.’

He
bought the drinks and joined them, and only then noticed Piers McEvoy at the far end of the long bar, slotting back the Scotch as usual in a group of other men. There was a lot of noise down that end, as there always was when Piers was about. He was open-handed with his rounds, running up a tab which he paid off without question at the end of the evening. It assured him, James reflected cynically, of an audience at least of the more dedicated bar-flies, if no one else.

Piers
looked across from his conversation and made a beckoning gesture: James and Patrick both raised a hand in greeting, but made no move to join the other man. He turned back to the group about him with a shrug, and a moment later there was a loud gust of laughter.

The
conversation at James’s end of the bar was considerably quieter. He found himself mentioning, in general terms of course, Laura’s incomprehensible outburst, and found Patrick eager to talk about Suzanne. Evelyn, Jonnie’s wife, had wanted them to take turns at staying awake on fire-watch, and they all agreed that the situation was enough to get anyone going. Jonnie confessed to having gone out and bought three industrial-sized fire-extinguishers which were now looking entirely out of place in his small modern bungalow. The three men laughed comfortably, and Patrick ordered another round of drinks.

It
was, perhaps, half an hour later that James noticed Hayley Cutler come into the bar. She was by herself; she smiled perfunctorily and waved towards them, but did not come over. The bar was even busier now, but when next James looked she was talking to Piers, drawing him slightly apart.

Piers,
unmistakably, was not pleased, but he ordered drinks for them both and went to sit with her at a table in the far corner. James was intrigued now; it would not do to be caught staring, but out of the corner of his eye he was able to see that an acrimonious conversation was taking place. There were no raised voices, but Hayley was pressing some point, leaning forward and gesticulating, while Piers’s position in his chair – leaning well back from her with his arms crossed and a thunderous expression on his face – was as clearly repelling her submission as if James had been able to hear the short, contemptuous sentence which was his reply.

Hayley
drew back, her face turning an ugly muddy red, and for a moment did not move. Then she leaned forward, called him something which, probably fortunately, James could not hear, then got up and strode out, her eyes hard as flint and her jaw set as if it were cast in bronze.

Piers
glared at her departing back, his pale prominent eyes bulging even more in what looked like an effort not to shout at her. He took out his handkerchief and mopped his brow and the back of his neck with a pudgy hand that did not seem quite steady. He reached for the glass in front of him which still contained most of a double, and downed it in one. Then he got up and came over to James and Patrick.

‘
Come on, you two,’ he said with a show of his customary jocular manner. ‘You’ve been tucked away at the fairies’ end of the bar all night – come and join the chaps!’

Jonnie
Marsden, a blameless family man, looked embarrassed and as Piers lingered drifted quietly away.

‘
What about some bridge?’ Piers suggested. ‘I’m just in the mood to make a night of it.’

Not
for me,’ Patrick said, slipping off the bar stool. ‘I’m getting back.’

‘
James, then?’

James
hesitated. He wouldn’t exactly choose to spend a long evening in Piers’s company, but then the prospect of returning home before Laura had gone to bed was unappealing, to say the least.

‘
Well, just a few rubbers, then.’

‘
Excellent fellow! Come and we’ll find another pair of like minds, and I’ll get the drinks in.’

***

It was eleven thirty when Patrick went out into the car park, jingling his keys in his hand as he walked. The temptation had been served up to him on a platter, frilled and garnished by Piers’s obvious indifference to his nervous wife, left alone at home. Patrick should resist it, he knew that. But would he? He had heard mermaids singing, and like Eliot’s Prufrock he was doubtful. But in his heart, his trousers were rolled already, and his fingers sticky with peach juice.

He
started the engine and drove slowly from the car park. The fog was becoming smoggy, and the headlamps reflected back off the surrounding soupy grey. He dipped them; he could see the road in front more clearly now, but the damp dirty blanket closed in about the windows of the car in an echo of that isolation he had experienced this afternoon.

Left
or right at the bottom of the road? Left for home, a nightcap perhaps, and the late film on television, or right...?

He
clicked on the right-hand indicator. After all, he tried to convince himself, he was only paying a neighbourly call to see that Lizzie was all right, because her bastard of a husband didn’t care.

The
house looked quiet and peaceful enough. The children must be in bed, for the only room lights showing were behind the curtains in the drawing room. He parked his car in the road outside, walked up the path and rang the bell.

When
Elizabeth opened the door, she had been crying. She had wiped the tears away, tried to put on a public face, but the heavy swollen lids and the quiver at the corner of her delicate mouth gave her away.

He
had planned it all. He would say, cheerfully, ‘Just called in on the way back from the Club. Piers looked settled in for a long session, so I thought that I’d just check that you were OK.’

But
her pathetic attempt at a welcoming smile was his undoing.

‘
Oh Lizzie, sweet Lizzie,’ he said, and held out his arms.

She
threw herself into them and clung to him as if he were the only solid rock in a sea of troubles that threatened to engulf her.

They
had done no more than talk, mostly, and they were sitting with comparative decorum on the sofa, with Lizzie’s hand lovingly imprisoned in Patrick’s clasp. They heard no warning sound, no footfall on the thick pile of the hall carpet: with a movement that was purest instinct, when the sitting-room door burst open they leaped guiltily, foolishly apart.

There
in the doorway stood Suzanne. She was in her nurse’s uniform, but some of the buttons were undone, and her hair was wild as if she had been running her hands through the thick, strong curls.

‘
Am I to be left with nothing, nothing?’ she cried. ‘I try, God knows I try. Sometimes I think I will kill myself, I try so hard. My son has grown away from me, I’m not strong enough even to do a single night’s work, and now it’s the oldest story in the book, my husband’s car parked outside the house of my best friend. It’s so banal it’s embarrassing. Couldn’t you come up with something just a fraction more interesting, Patrick? Or even something just slightly less devastatingly hurtful? Isn’t it enough that I’ve been stripped naked – am I to be flayed as well?’

Her
sudden intrusion, the sobbing, hysterical onslaught, seemed almost to have paralysed them. After a long moment Patrick struggled to his feet.

‘
Suzanne, I know what this looks like, but –’

‘
Oh, spare me the crap. It’s bad enough, God knows, without the lies and the clichés.’

Elizabeth
found her voice. ‘Patrick only came in to see if I was all right, Suzanne. I was pathetic and stupid and burst into tears, and he was kind. It’s my fault; he’s done nothing.’

‘
No,’ Patrick protested. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Lizzie. It was my choice to come here. And –’

Suzanne
stood watching them, white-faced, her eyes glittering as she followed these exchanges with turns of the head like the spectator at a curious tennis match. But suddenly she yelled, ‘Oh, it’s not Lizzie’s fault, of course. Nothing’s ever
Lizzie’s
fault. Dear, sweet, helpless Lizzie!’

And
then she was upon her, with a banshee scream. She had the advantage of surprise; taken unawares, Lizzie was still sitting at the end of the sofa which slid backwards under the impact of Suzanne’s weight. A little table toppled; a dainty Limoges snuffbox smashed on the parquet floor.

Patrick
grabbed Suzanne from behind, pulling her up and away and imprisoning her flailing arms, but not before she had raked her nails savagely down the side of Elizabeth’s face.

Patrick
gasped as he saw the scratches, now filling with blood. Suzanne, too, stopped struggling, as if the sight of what she had done had knocked the fight out of her.

He
was too shocked to feel anything except bewildered dismay.

‘
Suzanne, are you out of your mind?’

Her
body sagged against him and he took the risk of releasing her from smothering restraint, while still holding himself ready to spring at any threatening movement.

But
she was quiet now. Suzanne looked from him to her handiwork on the other woman’s face, and her eyes fell. She walked away to the door calmly enough.

When
she reached it, she turned.

‘
I’m sorry, Lizzie,’ she said, her voice sounding eerily normal. ‘It shouldn’t have been you, it should have been that bastard there. At least my nails are clean. Wash it with antiseptic and it’ll heal in a day or two.’

She
went out. Patrick, sick and shaken, made to take Lizzie in his arms again.

‘
My darling, your poor face – ’

Elizabeth
was still sitting at the end of the sofa, pushed back as Suzanne had left it. Her eyes were wide, as if contemplating a horror too deep for tears. She was struggling desperately for control.

‘
No, no, please. Don’t touch me, Patrick. Please, just go now.’

‘
But Piers – how will you explain it? Will he be all right?’

She
drew a shuddering sigh, and got out a foolishly small handkerchief to dab ineffectively at the scratches.

‘
Oh, Piers,’ she said, with a travesty of a smile. ‘No, I don’t suppose he will be. He won’t be pleased about the Limoges, apart from anything else. But I’ll cope. I’ll think of something. And it certainly won’t help if you’re here.’

‘
No. No, I don’t suppose it will.’

‘
I’m not worth all this, Patrick. And Suzanne needs you, you know she does.’

He
didn’t want to hear her say that. He would be the judge when it came to the question of her worth to him, but she was right about Suzanne, and Suzanne was his wife.

Patrick
looked with hopeless yearning at the woman he had been permitted to love for such a short time, at the disordered room, and worst of all at her disfigured face. He had done this to her, as surely as if he had used the nails on his own hand which had caressed her so lovingly before.

‘
What will you do?’ Conceding her point, he was still reluctant to leave her.

‘
I’ll go to bed. He won’t be back until after I’m asleep anyway. But go now, Patrick, please go.’

She
had been magnificent, but her voice was rising and even he could see that he was making matters worse rather than better. He took an irresolute step towards her, but her shrinking was obvious.

‘
Don’t worry, I’m going. I’m sorry, Lizzie, more sorry than I can possibly say. Don’t get up: I’ll see myself out.’

With
a heavy heart he left her, sitting on the sofa still, but now with her head bent so that the light of the table lamp fell on it, creating a nimbus out of her fair hair.

12

The streetlamps were pale fuzzy haloes of dead light tonight, and in the main road a car inching along was no more than a grey shape defined by the trapped beams of its futile headlights as they failed to penetrate the gloom.