This Way Out (2 page)

‘But did you ever
think through
what you were doing? Did you realize that you were voluntarily tying up your whole future? That's what used to worry me. Between ourselves, I'm thankful for your sakes that Laurie died young. Oh, I don't expect you to agree with me – not at the moment, anyway. And of course I shan't say a word of this to Christine. But it seems to me that now the poor child's gone, the two of you can start living your own lives for a change.'

The hailstorm had stopped as abruptly as it began. Enid clutched her warm coat collar closely about her throat, and set off at a brisk trot up the yard towards the red brick, double-fronted, square bay-windowed house. Derek had followed thoughtfully, his steps obliterating her neat footprints as he crunched the newly fallen hail that temporarily covered the gravel with white icing.

What his mother-in-law had said was so much in character that he thought no worse of her for it. Predominantly, he felt grateful to her for having kept her opinions to herself while Laurie was alive.

There was something more personal that he felt, though; something so unaccustomed that at first he was hard put to identify the sensation that had begun to lift his spirits. It was years – fifteen, to be exact – since he had known what it was to be buoyed by optimism.

Even though he missed and mourned for Laurie he had felt, ever since she had been buried, a lurking sense of relief that the problems she represented had gone with her. At first he had refused to acknowledge the thought. When it persisted he had declined to dwell on it, out of loyalty to his wife and their dead child. But now that Enid, tough old bird that she was, had not shrunk from putting it into words, he was ready to admit to himself what he had denied to her. Yes, Laurie had been a burden.

He had never discussed this burden with his wife. It wouldn't bear discussion. From the moment they were told of the Down's diagnosis, one-day-at-a-time had been their agreed philosophy. But Derek had looked ahead, as any life assurance man does, and had been alarmed by what he saw.

Caring for a mentally handicapped child was demanding enough. The prospect of caring permanently for a mentally handicapped adult was dauntingly different. For himself, it might not have been too difficult because he had his work to take him away from home. But for Christine, a lively and intelligent woman who had once planned to make a career as an interior decorator when their children had grown up, it would have meant a life-sentence of domestic imprisonment.

The thought that she was now freed from that burden gave Derek immense pleasure. There were sure to be some sad months ahead, for all the family. But it was secretly exhilarating to think that, once Christine's paramount grief had eased, the two of them would at last be able to plan an active, interesting future.

With admiration for his mother-in-law's shrewdness and discretion, and with a genuine affection for her, he had welcomed her into his home.

Enid's brisk and unsentimental presence at the Brickyard soon had the desired effect on her daughter. Christine, who found it easier to be fond of her mother in her absence than in her own kitchen, had rapidly decided that it was time she set about finding a job. Satisfied, Enid had repacked her suitcase and buzzed off in her Fiat to Southwold,
en route
for her long winter holiday.

The following summer, having crashed her car, Enid had allowed herself to be taken to the Brickyard to recuperate. A year later she was still there.

Physically, said the doctor, she was in very good condition for her age. But her age was now showing: she was slower of speech, and on her feet; her hairstyle was deflated, her lipstick was shakily applied. Worse – despite having been persuaded by her daughter and son-in-law to spend the winter in Majorca as usual, though in a hotel rather than the apartment – she had never regained her confidence.

When Enid was active, she had rarely bothered to read the newspapers. Now she bought them in quantity, with a preference for the easy-to-read and the sensational. The newspapers told her that violent crime, particularly against the elderly, was rapidly increasing. Nervous since her accident, Enid began to regard herself as a member of an endangered species.

Despite the fact that she knew Southwold to be one of the quietest and most respectable of seaside towns, and that she was not personally acquainted with anyone who had been burgled, let alone attacked, she convinced herself that it would be the height of folly to return there to live alone. She was afraid that she would be mugged while she was doing her shopping, or – more probably and – that she would be murdered in her bed by a burglar.

Derek said everything he could to reassure her. In actuarial terms, he told her, she was every bit as safe on her own in Southwold as she was with them in Wyveling. As soon as she was back in her own flat, among her friends, she would wonder why she had been worried. Why didn't she try it?

His mother-in-law, now comfortably ensconced at the Brickyard with all her clothes and the most treasured of her possessions, didn't think she could take that risk; at least, not until she felt her usual self. ‘Next week, perhaps –' she would say.

But next week never showed any sign of coming.

Enid was now seventy-six years old. Derek knew that a woman of that age, in average health, has a further life expectancy of eleven years. What depressed him more was that her true life expectancy was probably a good deal longer than that.

Enid knew it, too. She included the local weekly newspaper in her reading, and on several occasions she had commented on the fact that it had become almost commonplace for elderly people – women in particular – to celebrate their centenaries.

‘And here's another one,' she had said cheerfully to her daughter and son-in-law one evening, as she showed them the newspaper photograph of a very lively looking birthday girl. ‘I only hope
I'm
as good as that when I reach a hundred!'

It was during the course of that night that Derek had the first of his bad dreams.

‘You're chasing rabbits again.'

‘Uhh?'

Derek struggled into consciousness. His heart was pounding, his lips were drawn back in a snarl, his throat was so dry that it hurt him to swallow. Sweat stood cold on his forehead. His stomach seemed to be undulating, moving in panicky corrugations as he fought his way out of yet another homicidal dream.

Christine's bedside light was on. Propped on her left elbow, half-turned towards him, her own face in shadow, she was watching him. Instinctively he covered his face with his hands. For a guilty moment he thought that she had been a spectator at his dream; that she had seen – could still see – him as a murderer.

‘Chasing rabbits,' she repeated. And now he realized thankfully that there was nothing but affection in her voice. ‘You've been twitching and panting, just as Sam does in his sleep.'

Sam was their soppy old beagle.

Derek groaned with relief, though he tried to disguise it as a yawn. Untangling himself from the duvet, he staggered to the bathroom – but quietly, so as not to wake his mother-in-law – and sluiced his face. His heart was still thumping abnormally, and there was a foul taste in his mouth. His cheeks, reflected in the mirror, were sickly pale under the stubble, and his bloodshot eyes had an alarming residual stare.

How could Christine
not
know what he'd just been doing in his sleep? He had shouted aloud as he tightened his grip on Enid's throat. Pliable as putty, it had offered no resistance to his squeezing hands. His thumbs could find no windpipe to crush, and he had shouted in panic because the old woman refused to die. Surely Christine must have heard him?

He rinsed his mouth, and padded back to the bedroom. His wife, still propped in the same position, smiled at him.

‘Did you catch it?' she asked.

He kept his eyes averted, and slid back into bed. ‘Catch what?'

‘The rabbit you were chasing. You've been after it three or four times during the past few weeks.'

Sitting up beside her, his head deliberately higher than hers so that she couldn't see his face, Derek tried to laugh the subject away.
His
rabbit was an elusive major client, he told her. But it worried him that she knew he'd had the dream more than once before.

‘I haven't been talking in my sleep, have I? Don't want to start giving away details of a client's finances!'

‘Not talking, no. Whimpering a bit, sometimes – just like Sam …'

Whimpering?
For a moment, Derek felt almost offended. His dream-experience had shocked him with its ferocity. How could such a brutal act – committed only in the imagination, true, but with such intensity that it had left his arm and stomach muscles aching – have been expressed in reality by nothing more than a twitch and a whimper?

But thank God Christine suspected nothing.

He eased down in the bed, stretched his right arm across the pillows, and gathered his wife to him. Christine rested her head on his shoulder, and gave a half-suppressed sigh.

Derek kissed her forehead. ‘Sorry I woke you, darling.' Her skin was dry under his lips, and unduly – slightly feverishly – warm. He stroked her hair: once so thick and glossy, it had lost some of its life since her operation.

‘I was awake anyway.'

He paused in mid-caress, anxiously alert. ‘Are you feeling ill?'

‘Not really. I just couldn't sleep.'

‘I'll make you some tea.' He started to get out of bed, but she drew him back.

‘Don't bother,' she said. ‘Not unless we have to for Mum.'

Derek made no attempt to suppress his sigh. With tender care, he folded his wife in his arms. Bleakly – because of course he wouldn't murder Enid in real life; morality apart, he knew that he could never bring himself to attempt it, except in those savage dreams – he contemplated the unhopeful future.

There had seemed to be so much to hope for, once Enid had got them both going again after Laurie's death.

Christine had still needed time to mourn, of course. The first Christmas after bereavement is difficult for any family, and Derek had dreaded it on his wife's behalf because the season had always given Laurie such particular delight.

But their older children had rallied round magnificently. They had come home from their respective occupations (Tim, massively bearded, from his job as assistant warden of a nature reserve; Richard, in collar and tie, from a polytechnic course in business management; Lyn, as tough and style-conscious as her grandmother, from medical school) to fill the house with so much noise and clutter, and to make so many deliberately outrageous demands on the time and energy of their parents that however many private tears were shed, collective sorrow never got a look-in.

Immediately after their children scattered again, Derek had booked a holiday for Christine and himself. They hadn't been abroad for years. Laurie had suffered from travel sickness, and while she was alive they had been restricted to the holidays that suited her best, in self-catering seaside cottages not too far from home.

The travel brochures had provided hours of family entertainment over Christmas. Their offspring had insisted that they ought to go somewhere
different
: on the Trans-Siberian railway, or a ninety-mile walking tour in the Apennines, or a tent-trek across the Sahara. But Christine had eventually decided that what she really wanted to do was to learn to ski, and so Derek had booked a late-February winter sports holiday in the Austrian Tyrol.

By the time their holiday came, Christine was beginning to look much better. By the time they returned to Wyveling, with Alpine sun-tans and an exhilarating sense of achievement, she was once again as vivacious as she had been in the early years of their marriage. Derek was delighted for her.

Delighted by her, too. He was proud of his wife, and of the fact that – while some couples they knew had been divorced or were contemplating it – he and Christine were still friends and lovers after twenty-three years of marriage. He attributed this, partly, to natural reticence. Having known each other since they were children, they instinctively respected each other's areas of privacy. As adults, they had never discussed their inmost thoughts. Their unspoken agreement was not to probe.

He had never questioned Christine about her feelings over Laurie's death, just as he had never revealed his own – or her mother's – to her. After their skiing holiday they had rarely talked about Laurie. Christine seemed to be reconciled to their child's death, and eager to begin a new phase of her own life.

Having studied fabric design at art school in her youth, and subsequently done all her own home decorating and curtain-making, she had found a job with a friend, the wife of an architect, who had recently opened an interior design consultancy in Breckham Market. Christine loved the job. She did it well, and her friend had offered her the prospect of becoming a partner in the business.

But that was before her mother had had her accident.

Naturally, Christine had taken leave from work so that she could make the long daily trip to the hospital to visit her mother. Derek had thought it would be a good idea to bring Enid to the Brickyard for her convalescence, simply because it would enable Christine to return to work. His wife, although eager to get back to her job, had not been enthusiastic about having her mother to stay; and when Enid showed no inclination to leave, Christine had become tight-lipped.

Derek had never enquired into the relationship between mother and daughter. That was another of the areas he had preferred not to probe. He had always known that they got on better on the telephone than they did in the flesh, and gradually he began to realize why.

Even after all those years of independent living, the two women were unable to see each other as people. When they were together, they reverted to their original roles. Enid – over-compensating, perhaps, for her loss of confidence after her accident – played the authoritative mother; Christine's response was instinctively adolescent. The atmosphere between them was one of hardly suppressed impatience, erupting every so often in bursts of exasperation.