The Girl Next Door (15 page)

Posh-voice answered. “Oh, yes, Mr. Winwood. You wanted to know if you should visit your father. I’d say yes, of course. He’s perfectly well—well, he’s very old, of course, so little ailments are to be expected, but he’s really remarkable for his age.”

“When should I come?”

“I think we told you when you last spoke to us that we have had a most unfortunate mishap at Urban Grange. One of our inquilines had an accident and we thought we were going to lose her. But thanks to the truly wonderful medical attention our medical staff give, it looks as if all will be well.”

“When shall I come?”

“Shall we say next week? Any day that suits you. Shall we say in the afternoon, perhaps the late afternoon for tea?”

16

T
HE PILLS THE
doctor prescribed gave her a night’s sleep. You couldn’t call it a “good” night’s sleep, but it was eight hours of unconsciousness. Rosemary’s trouble, among others, was that since her wedding night she had hardly ever slept alone. There had been the three nights when Alan stayed at his mother’s when his father died, and the times when the children were born, but that was all. Now she thought she would never sleep again without pills. Although the pills worked, she would wake up, at first to reach for Alan, then, and soon, realise that he wasn’t there, that he had left her and she was alone.

Her children and her grandchildren were good to her. All of them took her side unreservedly. All of them thought she had been cruelly treated, and even Owen and the husbands said Alan must have succumbed to senility. This was the onset of Alzheimer’s. She was getting tired of that word. This woman, this Daphne whatever she was called, must have seduced him when he was bewildered, unable to understand his sudden loss of memory and his confusion. Owen went to call on him and Daphne, all set to compel his father to pack his bags and leave with him, but instead found himself accepting a glass of wine and only with reluctance refusing to stay for supper. He told Rosemary the pair of them had been recalcitrant, a word
he had to define to his puzzled mother, which rather took the force out of it. Fenella was more to be reckoned with and treated Alan and Daphne to a long diatribe on her grandmother’s sufferings and told them what they knew already, that Freya was pregnant. Alan’s absence would take away all the joy Rosemary would feel in the birth of this new great-grandchild.

Alan settled things for the time being by dismissing her: “Oh, go away, Fenella. You’ve said your piece and it’s not your business anyway.”

“Isn’t it?” Daphne asked when Fenella had gone.

“No, I don’t think it is. It’s my children’s certainly, but not my grandchildren’s. That’s too far removed.”

Fenella walked up the road to Freya’s flat. “I’ve seen Granddad. It’s a funny thing to say at his age, but he’s
grown.
I mean in strength. It’s not long since he never stood up for himself. He really couldn’t stand having Callum and Sybilla around, you know. I could tell, I’m not a psychologist for nothing, but he never said, he just put up with it. He wouldn’t now. He’s grown strong. Must be her doing. I shan’t tell Grandma, of course. She’s in a bad enough way as it is.”

“Did you tell him about the baby?”

“Well, I did, Frey, but I can’t say it made much impression. Sorry but he hardly seemed to notice.”

“That’s the Alzheimer’s,” said Freya.

It would be a good idea, Judith said to Rosemary, to come and stay with her for a week or two. For longer, if she wanted to. She shouldn’t be alone. Rosemary refused. She had to be in the Traps Hill flat, she said, in case Alan came back.

She had done no dressmaking since he went. She cooked nothing unless it was a scrambled egg or to heat up some ready meal in the microwave. The long walks she had taken with Alan were a thing of the past; she missed her weekly visits to the hairdresser and gave up the bridge club. In the old days, as she saw her long marriage, she wouldn’t have thought twice about writing a condolence letter
to Maureen Batchelor, but no letter had been written and no visit to Carisbrooke had been paid. She stayed at home, deeply miserable. Alan occasionally phoned, mostly to ask if she was all right. Was there anything she needed? Was she all right for money? He seemed to understand that as she had never paid a bill since her marriage or filled in a form or questionnaire from the council, she might need help. She said Owen or Judith saw to all that, and then, invariably, she began to cry.

“You can’t go on like this,” said Judith. “You’ll be ill.”

“If I’m ill, I might die and that would all be for the best.”

“I would never have advised this,” said Judith, who could be pompous, “but I think it might be a good idea if you were to go there and see him. Talk to him. I’ll come with you if you like. I know exactly where it is. We could have lunch with Freya and walk down to Hamilton Terrace.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rosemary snapped, jolted out of her despair and unusually sarcastic. “Make a party of it, why don’t you, and invite the neighbours. This is my life, Judith. This is my life, and your father has wrecked it.”

“Shall we go then?”

“Yes, all right, why not? Things can’t be worse than they are.”

Unlike her daughter and her brother, Judith announced her projected visit in advance. She wrote her father a letter, which arrived on a Saturday morning along with flyers, communications from the City of Westminster, mail-order catalogues, and pleas for charitable donations. When the post came, Alan and Daphne were sitting up in bed eating the breakfast Alan had just prepared and brought upstairs. They had passed the muesli stage and were beginning on the egg-and-bacon course when the bell rang. Alan went down again in his dressing gown. It was the postman, hoping to deliver a package from a friend for Daphne’s birthday. Recognising his daughter’s handwriting on an envelope, Alan wanted to ignore it but knew he would have to open it sometime. He took it and the
package upstairs, where his egg was getting cold. Daphne took the package from him and began opening it.

“Look, a very pretty scarf. Isn’t that kind? Alan, what’s wrong? You’re wearing a bad-news look.”

“Rosemary wants to come here next Tuesday or Wednesday. Up to us. Judith will bring her.”

O
N HER WAY HOME
from visiting Freya, an even more frequent happening since her daughter’s pregnancy was known, Judith drove down the road and round the corner into Hamilton Terrace. If anyone came out of the house or just looked out of the window, they wouldn’t recognise her car. Her father might know the make and the colour, but silver was the most popular shade for a Prius and thousands of them were about. Nice house, she thought, must be worth a fortune. Had it occurred to her mother that her father might have left her because Daphne was a wealthy woman? That he might prefer to live here than in a suburban flat? Judith dismissed the thought, though it would certainly be pleasant sharing such a palace, with its covered way leading up to the front porch, its front garden with its pair of lawns and tubs that overflowed with trailing Thalia fuchsias.

Driving across London was not pleasant. Roadworks clogged the streets, and bad-tempered motorists swore and screamed. Her nerves were shattered by the time she was back in Chiswick. If they kept to the plan she had made, they would go on the tube. Rosemary said Judith would have to organise it as she hadn’t the faintest idea how to get to St. John’s Wood. She had only once been there and that was “ages ago” when the children were small and they went to the zoo. Alan had been told on the phone to expect them at about three.

Not the kind of woman who bakes cakes or even serves tea as a meal and not as a cup of the stuff, Daphne walked up to the High
Street, where she bought a box of meringues and another of petits fours. It seemed ridiculous, as she told herself, but not as ridiculous as dressing up in a special dress and special shoes would be. She put the cakes on two plates and some milk in a jug.

“I can do that,” said Alan.

“Okay.” She was not usually so laconic.

Upstairs, at two thirty, she looked at herself in the mirror, in one of her everyday garments of black skirt, light beige jumper, and string of black beads. She took off the beads and put on a leather jacket she had bought years ago but never worn. With its embossed and panelled front, its studs, it was too young for her. It was, she decided, vulgar,
common
was the word no longer used but somehow appropriate. Shock waves would be aroused in Alan’s wife and daughter. As for him, he wouldn’t even notice. He had laid the table with what she always called “the worst china.” No fuss must be made. If Judith and Rosemary liked to think he and Daphne ate tea like this every day, let them.

“If Rosemary tries to persuade you to go back to her, will you be persuaded?”

“I will not,” he said like someone taking a serious vow.

“I won’t speak about it. I mean not about us, unless she asks me, and then I’ll have to. I can talk about cakes and clothes and this house but not about us.”

He took her in his arms, and to his surprise she clung to him in a way she had never quite done before, while the stiff and shiny leather jacket made an unwelcome barrier between them. “Do you realise that you and I are together because of those hands? We met again because of those hands in a biscuit box?”

“I do now. I never thought I’d be glad of something like that.”

The doorbell rang. It was two minutes to three.

T
HEY KNEW EACH OTHER
, of course. You could say they had known each other all their lives. Daphne said, “Rosemary.” That was all, just the given name.

Rosemary said, “Good afternoon.”

Judith introduced herself. Neither she nor her mother spoke to Alan, but they sat down side by side on the sofa when Daphne asked them to. That was all anyone said for perhaps two minutes, a very long time. Judith, the intermediary, broke the silence and said, “I think my mother would like you, Dad, and Mrs. Furness to tell us what you intend to do.” Judith tried to smile but it turned into a grimace. “If anything.” Rosemary was fidgeting with her handbag, lifting it from one side of her and transferring it to the other, shoving it between her left arm and the arm of the sofa. She held tightly to it by its strap and the zip which held it closed. “Or what you intend to do, Mother.”

Another silence, during which Judith wondered why her mother had brought with her what was probably the largest handbag she possessed, and then Rosemary said, “I don’t intend to do anything. I’m alone, my husband has been taken from me, and I want him back.” She said to Alan, not for the first time, “You’ve broken my heart. It can be mended if you do what you ought to do and come back to me. Leave that woman and come back.”

“I don’t much care to have this conversation in front of my daughter,” said Alan.

“Too bad. I’m not leaving.” Judith looked at Daphne for the first time. “Can I have a cup of tea? Can we
all
have tea?”

Without replying, Daphne stood up and poured tea into Judith’s cup and Alan’s and her own, Rosemary having covered hers with her hand, like someone preventing the refilling of a wineglass. The milk jug was passed silently between Alan and his daughter. Daphne passed them the meringues.

“Haven’t you anything to say to me?”

Alan looked at his wife. “I’m not coming back, Rosemary. I’ve
told you many times. I’ve no fault to find with you—sorry, that’s a horrible way to put it. I expect you have faults to find with me. We no longer get on. I want to live with someone I get on with.”

“And that applies to her?”

“You know it does.”

Rosemary moved the bag onto her lap. “And all those years you spent with me mean nothing?”

“They mean a lot. They meant a lot. We have shared our home, we have two children. It’s over now. It’s over for a lot of couples as we’ve seen among our friends. They break up, earlier than it is for us, but eventually we are doing it too. I will make it as easy for you as I can, I will help you to get used to it, even one day to think it’s for the best.”

“If that’s all you’ve got to say, I’ll ask her.” Rosemary swung round and fixed her eyes on Daphne. “One good thing, everyone that knows us, all his friends, side with me. More than that, they’ve come to hate him. Their sympathy is all for me, they’ve shown me what friends are. But just the same, they want him to come back and then they’ll return to him. We’ll be as we used to be. Do you understand?” Daphne said nothing, she gave a small nod. “I don’t know what he sees in you. You were never specially good-looking and you haven’t improved. Who has? You’ve apparently got a lot of money.” Rosemary waved a hand round the room. “But he’s not badly off himself. When he retired, he got a big golden handshake and he’s got a huge pension. You’re no chicken, you’re older than him and me. I suppose he wanted a change. Was that it? So will you give him up, send him back to me? Will you let him come home with me? Come back with me now, back to his
home
?
Will you?”

Rosemary had seemed perfectly calm, but as she spoke the last two words, she snatched up a cup from the table and hurled it across the room. It struck a painting on the wall and shattered. Another followed it.

“Stop that, Rosemary,” said Alan.

“I’ll break the place up until she answers me. Will you give my husband back to me, Daphne whatever your name is? You’ve changed it often enough.”

“No,” said Daphne in a voice of ice. “I don’t want him to go, but he must do as he chooses, go or stay.” If she had left it there, all might have been more or less well, but she didn’t. “I love him. I love him and want to keep him here with me.”

Rosemary stood up. She unzipped her handbag, and at once Judith knew why Rosemary had brought such a big one. From its depths she took a long knife, the carving kind that has a thin blade and a point on its end. She held it like a dagger, blade pointing down. People think they know about such events, they see them happening day after day on film and television, on computer screens and mobile phones. Reality is different. No one moved, but Daphne, who took a step backwards, and then Alan. He tried to seize Rosemary by the shoulders but she spun round, slashing at him and cutting the palm of his hand. Blood splashed, more than could be expected from a cut palm. Rosemary spun round and stabbed at Daphne, stabbing vainly at the air, at her hair, and grazing her neck. Rosemary pulled the knife back and plunged it at Daphne’s chest just where her heart must be. The vulgar jacket, armoured with studs, deflected the blade before it could penetrate. Alan seized Daphne, pulling her back, forcing her behind him. The knife, still in Rosemary’s hand, slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor.

A
LAN WAS HURT
the most. Judith called 999 for an ambulance. She picked up the knife and wiped the trace of her father’s blood off the blade. With great presence of mind she fetched a fruit-and-nut loaf from Daphne’s kitchen, with butter and a pot of jam. When the paramedics came, they encountered a happy family gathering, and if their smiles were strained and Rosemary was shivering, no one seemed to notice. Judith explained that her father had been cutting
bread. No one remarked on the unsuitability of the knife for this, and Alan’s request not to be taken to hospital but have his wound dressed on the spot was reluctantly agreed to. Alan agreed to go to the hospital and have the wound checked the following day, but he had no intention of doing so.