The Likes of Us (55 page)

When I'd filled the kettle and plugged it in, then poured the rest of the whisky from the miniature and added another cube of ice, my gaze fell on the television set. I switched on and sat down opposite it. From where I sat I could see my reflection in the glass over the dressing-table unit. I wondered again at the face that had led a man to lead me astray and asked myself what Douglas would have made of it now. Well, I'd experienced that. I'd known it, was the better for it, and no harm done. For now I'd something to measure it against.

There was a magazine programme on television. They were talking about a new picture biography of the Princess of Wales and showing film of her wedding day. It was when my food had arrived and I was thanking the waiter and looking for my handbag while wondering if I'd remembered aright that service was included, that a thought slipped into my mind.

I let the food stand and the kettle come to the boil as I rolled the tumblers of Raymond's case and clicked the locks open.

Then I was crying and choking as I tried to swallow what was left of the whisky. That he should have chosen that combination. That that should be the sequence he lined up every day when he opened the case. The date of our wedding.

‘Oh God, but that's touching!'

I'd spoken out loud. Because he'd reached me. Not knowing, he'd reached me as surely as if he'd placed a gentle fingertip on my cheek.

 

His partner wanted to drive up straight away. I put him off. ‘Don't trouble, Eldon. There's nothing you could do. Tomorrow or the day after they may let me take him home. The specialist seemed quite optimistic.' I said nothing about the scrambling of Raymond's mind. Eldon is a fussy and pedantic man and a careless word about that could lead him to wonder if Raymond would be capable of pulling his weight again.

The Ascoughs' phone was answered by a girl with a thick foreign accent.

‘Is nobody here,' she said. ‘All out.'

I spoke slowly and clearly. ‘Will you give them a message, please. This is Mrs Raymond Hawkridge. They were expecting us. My husband was taken ill on the journey and now we must cancel our visit. I'll ring them later, when I have more news. Will you make sure they get that message?'

‘Will do,' the girl said, and hung up.

My soup had gone cold but I didn't mind. Soup of the day, which I'd not troubled to identify, had turned out to be tomato, which always gives me indigestion. Munching my sandwich, I boiled the kettle again and made tea. Before very long it would be time to take the car and visit Raymond once more.

I must ask him, try to get him to tell me, if there was anything I should do. Before that, was there anything in his briefcase I might need? I hadn't closed it. Its lid stood open, held by brass hinges. A handsome case, which I'd given him myself, with a mock-suede lining and leather loops holding pens. Two folders lay neatly in the base; other papers were tucked into two pockets in the lid.

I told myself that it was not my way to pry; but until I looked I could have no idea what might be important and what not. Ludicrously, as it seemed then, the old saw came to mind that those who eavesdrop seldom hear good of themselves. And then a moment later colour was flooding my throat and face. They burned as though I'd been caught shamelessly delving.

I was holding an envelope drawn from deep in one of the pockets – an envelope already slit open, though addressed to myself. I found that I could still hear his carefully modulated voice (an old-fashioned actor's voice, I used to tease) as I read what was inside (and which you, Monica, since I've come so far, may as well hear too):

‘My dear Nora, I knew you would know it was finished when I didn't come to our usual place, and I knew that after all we'd said you would make no attempt to contact me. I thought it best that way, but now I feel I must say a final word.

‘I am oddly bitter that you were ready to throw away what we found together. You speak of duty and moral choices as if they were absolutes handed down from on high, when you don't believe that any more than I do. I can't for the life in me see what you owe someone who has left such a void in your life, you have had to snatch at happiness elsewhere. Yours isn't a nature that craves the excitement of an adventure, yet you haven't the courage to grasp what is being offered to you. I hope you won't spend the rest of your life regretting it.

‘For myself, I shall be a long time forgetting. As a start, I'm going abroad. I had the offer of this job before. Had things gone differently I should have taken you with me. Now I shall go alone. Who was it said there was nothing like a sea-change for putting an unhappy relationship in perspective? We shall see.

‘The “decent” thing now would be for me to thank you for the great joy you gave me. I would, but it's been too dearly bought. I always said your Raymond didn't deserve you. Now I think perhaps he does. Goodbye. D.'

I got up then and went to the window and took several deep breaths, until my heart stopped racing.

Of course, I wondered how he'd come to intercept it and why he chose then to keep it from me. Not that there was anything in it that I hadn't already known and come to terms with. But why, when he'd decided not to face me with it, did he not destroy it? Why keep it and carry it with him? To remind himself of the perfidy of women? That what you trusted most was least to be trusted? Or did he find in that ever-present knowledge that I'd been tempted yet turned back to him his greatest solace?

Dear Monica, I'm putting all this down because I have to try to get it clear in my mind, and that's best done as if I were talking to someone: someone who knew. But I doubt if I shall post this letter. Not this one, but another, a simpler one, appreciating your anxiety and putting your fears at rest. It's really too late in the day for me to let myself wonder whether there was a moment when temptation led you to try to turn things to your advantage.

But how bitter for you, as well as us, if there was. Because for myself, you see now, I have to come to terms with the realisation that Raymond has been living all these years not with the woman I let him know, but with one he knew as well as she knew herself. And I'm going to have quite enough to think about learning to live with that.

Rue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He lived alone in the house after his wife died. They had not got on for years and he was vaguely surprised when he found that she had made no will, so that everything came to him: what was left of her father's money, his collection of snuff-boxes, all she had owned. He had often wondered what it would be like to leave her; but the loneliness in the house after she died was appalling. The silence was the worst; that and opening the door to a room and knowing she would not be there. Her absence was like the ache in an amputated limb.

He was the managing director of a printing firm, was paid a director's fee on top of a substantial salary and was given a new car every two years. Fifty-three years old now, he would retire at sixty with a pension and a block of shares in the company.

Always reserved, he had many acquaintances but no close friends. The people who visited the house had come to see his wife. They stopped coming when she died and he thought they must have been relieved when he did not take up the invitations to dinner parties and the like which they sent him in the early days of his widowerhood.

A woman had come in two half-days in the week to help with the cleaning. He gave her his wife's key so that she could let herself in, but after a short time she left a note to say she would not be coming any more. He went to see her, wondering if he had offended her in some way and ready to offer her more money. She did not express herself clearly, but he gathered that she did not like the empty house either, preferring company while she worked.

At night he lay awake in his bed straining his ears for every small sound as the house cooled.

He thought about moving. He could sell the house at a handsome profit, buy a flat and invest the rest of the money. But he dreaded finding himself at the mercy of neighbours, who might have children, might quarrel, might play pop music into the night. He had always prized the quiet of the house, but not this silence. It was as though what the house lacked now was the sound of his wife's breathing.

There had been one child, a boy, who died in a swimming accident in his early teens. His wife had blamed him for that, said he could have saved the lad. In time he came to believe it himself. He found that he could no longer touch her. From being a tired routine, their intimate life died altogether. He gave himself occasional relief and tried not to let the subject preoccupy him.

Now he thought about the new relationships his freedom made possible and began to take stock of himself. He had felt middle-aged for years, but though he was a little overweight (he had always inclined to tubbiness), he still had his teeth, most of his hair, and managed without glasses except for reading. He took note of the age of politicians and others who came into the news, looked at them on television and compared his appearance with theirs.

He took up jogging. He bought a tracksuit and the right kind of shoes and at first drove out of the neighbourhood and began with short runs which would not put too much sudden strain on his heart. As the nights drew in, he also started trotting round the local streets, last thing. This served the double purpose of giving him exercise and tiring him for bed.

One night, after dark, he was stopped and questioned by two policemen, in a car. They asked him his name and address and what he did for a living. There was a man going about murdering women on the streets. He had been doing it for five years. Jordan realised when they had let him go what a good disguise the role of a jogger could be. It was natural for a jogger to be seen running; he could carry his weapons on a belt under his tracksuit and remove any blood from the suit by putting it straight into the washer.

Still the nights troubled him. It was then that he felt his loneliness most. He tried comparing his loneliness with that of a man who was impelled to murder strange women. It did not help him much.

 

He tried taking a nip of Scotch before going to bed and gradually increased his consumption until one night, when he had drunk a third of a bottle, he realised he was talking to himself. His mind, calm and concentrated at work, slipped late at night into a turmoil. When he had had a lot to drink he felt that there was something that made sense of everything lying just beyond the grasp of his thoughts. That was what whisky did to him, and drinking alone.

He had never frequented public houses but one evening, having noted the warmly lighted windows of the local at the end of the street, he forewent his run and walked along there instead. About to order Scotch, he changed his mind and asked for a pint of bitter. It was cool and palatable, making a good mouthful. He stayed an hour, standing at one end of the bar counter, and drank three pints. He felt the tension gradually drain out of him. His thoughts drifted. He vaguely recognised several people he had seen in the neighbourhood. A couple of them nodded to him, but none of them struck up a conversation. The barmaid, whom he had never seen before, wished him goodnight as he left. Her hair was the colour of partly burned corn-stubble. Her top teeth protruded slightly and her tongue occasionally flicked saliva from the corners of her lips, which remained apart in repose. Her sudden smile as she reached for his glass and dipped it into the washing-up machine behind the bar remained with him as he strolled home and let himself into the empty house.

He thought about her as, too sleepy to read more than half a page, he switched off his bedside light; and again when his radio-alarm woke him out of a deep, unbroken sleep. His bladder was full and as he padded briskly along the landing to the bathroom he wondered how old she was and tried to remember whether she had worn a wedding ring.

He had a ticket for the opera that evening. It was his greatest interest outside his work. There had been a time when he thought his wife enjoyed it too. But when he played gramophone records from his considerable collection or tuned in to a radio broadcast, she found excuses to do other things, and he began to realise that she had little ear for music and that only the stage spectacle made it tolerable for her. Latterly, she had sneered at what she called opera's ‘unreality' and people standing about ‘bawling their heads off'. He had found solace in shutting himself in another room and escaping through music into the world each score conjured up. Yet since her death he could not concentrate for more than a few minutes. Without her unsympathetic presence in the house, his thoughts wandered and even those favourite passages which could start to sing in his mind at any moment of the day slid by only half noticed.

Tonight he saw a performance of Verdi's
Don Carlos
in a new production not yet run in, with small troubles that lengthened the intervals and kept the audience late. He had thought of calling at his local for a last drink, but by the time he had driven up out of the city the pub was closed.

Lights still burned inside where the staff would be washing glasses and clearing up. He wondered if the woman lived on the premises and, if not, how she got home and how far she had to go. His wife would have called her common, a millgirl, and pointed with distaste to the unnatural colour and spoiled texture of her hair. Yet he could not forget the direct genuineness of that smile, and ‘genuine' as the one word he found himself applying to her.

When he went into the pub the next evening, there was a woman serving whom he took to be the publican's wife. He did not like to ask how often the other woman was on duty and when she would be here again. They might have several casual staff for all he knew, and he had no name with which to identify the woman with the corn-stubble hair and that appealing open smile. Nor was she there on either of the two crowded weekend nights. He was being silly, behaving like an adolescent. She was no different from any number of the women employed at the works. He must have sunk low in personal resource if he could be so affected by a single friendly smile from a complete stranger. If the pub had been any farther away, he would not have returned. But it was so convenient. He had taken to the beer and he liked the atmosphere. But not at weekends. Then there were too many people, too much noise and tobacco smoke. He was constantly jostled at the bar as he stood aside to let people get served.

He had other things to think about. He must work out a way of living instead of drifting from day to
day. The house was becoming neglected. Every Saturday morning he dusted and vacuumed, but knew that it needed more than that. He had pinned a typewritten postcard advertising his need of a cleaner to the works' noticeboard, hoping that one of the women would know someone who wanted the work, but there was no response. Now he redrafted it as a small ad for the evening paper: ‘Widower (businessman) requires cleaner, two sessions a week (no heavy work). Old Church Road area. References. Telephone outside business hours.'

She rang on a payphone when the ad had appeared three times. ‘Are you the man that's wanting a cleaner?'

‘Yes, I am.'

‘Can I ask you what two sessions a week means?'

‘Two mornings or two afternoons, whichever is more convenient.'

‘No evenings?'

‘Well, no.'

‘That's all right, then. I've got an evening job.'

‘You could probably combine the two nicely,'

‘Yes...' There was a silence, as if she were thinking, or trying to assess him from his voice.

‘Are you interested?'

‘It is a genuine advertisement, isn't it?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘There's some funny folk about these days. You've got to be careful.'

‘My wife died six months ago,' Jordan said. ‘Things have been getting out of hand.'

‘Hmm. I suppose I'd better come over.'

‘When can you come?'

‘Would tonight be all right? I'm not working tonight.'

‘That's all right. Where are you speaking from?'

She told him a district of the city that was about twenty minutes away by bus and he gave her the number of the house.

‘Shall I give you directions?'

‘Is it anywhere near the Beehive?'

‘It's just round the corner. Five minutes away.'

‘I'll find it, then.'

‘I'll expect you.'

‘By the way, what's your name?'

‘Jordan.'

‘I'll be seeing you, then.'

He supposed it would mean nothing to this woman, but he had very occasionally to remind people in whom his name touched a distant chord of memory that he shared it with the hero of a Hemingway novel. ‘Except that you don't look like Gary Cooper,' a local academic – a lecturer in American literature at the university – had once remarked. ‘And I've certainly never had the pleasure of sharing a sleeping bag with Ingrid Bergman.' Jordan had added.

That had been at a gathering in the neighbourhood he'd been taken to by his wife. He supposed they still went on, those Sunday morning or early evening sherry parties, but he was never asked to them now. You could live very privately in these tree-lined roads of stone houses in what had once been a village with a couple of miles of open land between it and the city. That had suited him: he was a private man. But that had been before the loneliness which assailed him after his wife died. Perhaps, he thought, now, if he could get some help in the house he would give a party himself, renew some acquaintanceships, meet some new people. He did not want to think about living much longer as he was doing now.

He had already eaten a light supper and now he washed his hands and face and brushed his hair, and, after switching on the porch light, settled down in the sitting-room with a glass of Scotch and
Cosi fan tutte
on the record player. Though he knew the plot and what the characters were singing about, he found that following the translated libretto helped his concentration.

She came when he had just put on the second record. He left it playing and went to the door. She was half turned away, shaking her umbrella, and the scarf covering her head hid her hair; so that it was not until she had stepped inside and they faced each other in the hall that he saw who she was. His surprise then was such that his voice lifted involuntarily in a second greeting.

‘Oh, hullo!'

‘Do you know me?'

‘You once served me in the Beehive.'

‘Did I? You weren't a regular, though, were you?'

‘Oh, no. There was just the once while you were there.'

‘I'm not there any more now.'

‘Ah! That explains it.'

‘What?'

‘Why I hadn't seen you again.'

‘Were you looking?'

Her directness was unexpected. ‘I noticed.' He held out his hands. ‘I didn't know it had started to rain. Let me hang up your coat.' He took it from her while she unfastened her headsquare, shook her hair free and smoothed the hem of her pastel-pink jumper.

‘Come through.'

In the sitting-room he had to indicate twice that she should sit down, while he took the record off the player. She sat on the edge of the deep armchair, ankles crossed as she looked round the room. She had pretty legs, Jordan noticed, and she was probably vain
about them because her tights were flatteringly fine and of a better quality than the rest of her clothes.

‘They're big, aren't they?' she said.

‘Beg pardon.'

‘These houses. They're bigger than they look from the outside.'

‘You'd soon find your way around. I'll show you, later.' He sat down near her. ‘Have you done this kind of work before?'

‘Not for other people, no.'

‘Well, nobody asks for a diploma in cleaning.'

‘No.'

‘Just for thoroughness. My wife was very thorough.'

‘Did she do it all herself?'

‘Oh, no. She had a regular woman.'