Family and Friends Page 14

  ‘Why ever should I say Mr Yorke? It was Mr Pierson who saved me.’ She jerked her head at the newspaper. ‘It’s all in there. How he grabbed hold of me.’ It was beginning to look after all as if she was going to be able to get in a few words about that thrilling moment. ‘Flung his arm round me neck. From behind. Like this.’ She threw herself about in violent attitudes.

  ‘Do stop jumping up and down,’ Zena said crossly. ‘And talking of Mr Pierson, does he call on Mrs Fleming? Have you ever seen him in her house? Or in her shop?’

  ‘That I couldn’t say, mum.’ Emily reverted suddenly to pure Victorian kitchen-maid, pursing her lips primly.

  ‘And why couldn’t you say?’

  ‘Not in a position to, that’s why.’

  Zena remained angrily baffled for a moment. ‘Got a couple of bruises on me body,’ Emily said almost with gaiety. ‘When he took me home I got me things off—’

  ‘When who took you home? How did you get home?’

  ‘In a car. Not fit to walk. One on me leg and one on me arm, turning black and blue, I’ll show you—’

  ‘Whose car? Who took you in a car?’

  ‘A gentleman.’

  ‘What gentleman?’

  ‘A gentleman who was passing.’

  ‘One of the police?’

  Emily put up a hand and fingered her ear. Getting a bit tricky now. ‘Well no, not exactly police, he wasn’t.’

  Zena gave a sarcastic little laugh. ‘Only partly police, was he? In what way did he resemble the police? Did he for instance have big feet?’

  ‘Big feet?’ Emily could make nothing of this. ‘Not as I’ve ever noticed. I never pay no attention.’ She let out a long breath. ‘And now if you don’t mind. I’d like to get on with me carpets.’

  ‘Was it or was it not,’ Zena said very loudly and clearly, ‘Mr Yorke who drove you home?’

  Emily glanced at her with an air of great surprise. ‘Why, whatever makes you say that, mum? He never went and told you that, surely?’ There’s two pounds stuffed under me mattress back at the cottage says he didn’t, she added in her mind, almost smiling at the memory.

  ‘Yes, he did!’ Zena cried triumphantly, believing she had at last bowled a winning ball.

  ‘Oh, Mrs Yorke, mum!’ Emily fielded it neatly, levelling at her a look of reproachful accusation. There was a brief pause. ‘Me mother always told me to speak the truth,’ she added pointedly. ‘Speak the truth, Emily, she used to say, and God will look after you.’

  ‘Then speak the truth now!’ Zena shouted. ‘Who drove you home?’

  Emily raised her eyes to the ceiling, ‘A gentleman who was there with his car.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘I never thought to ask.’ She flung a level look at Zena. ‘And that’s the one hundred per cent truth.’ She drew a finger across her stringy throat. ‘And hope to die. And now, I’ll get on with them carpets.’ She switched on the machine and began to wield the tube with determination.

  CHAPTER 9

  The day of Walter Pierson’s funeral was brilliantly clear and cold. As David Cottrell drove through the streets he glanced out at the pavements, hoping he might catch sight again of the woman he now habitually thought of as the blonde goddess. But there was no sign of her. Was it conceivable she might be at the service, might be acquainted with the Piersons? He blinked away the thought, a little ashamed of such speculations at a time like this.

  Several hundred yards ahead of Cottrell’s car Arnold and Sarah were driving to the church. Arnold turned his head and looked out at the tail-end of the lunchtime crowds. An ordinary day for them, returning from the shops, going back to work, setting off for the cinema. He saw suddenly a man walking along, facing the car, pausing to look in a shop window, a tall, middle-aged man inclined to heaviness. The face–he couldn’t place it but it teased at his mind as if he ought to have been able to recognize it. It was the walk though, the swing of the shoulders, the movement of the arms, that really pricked at recollection. Already the car had moved past, the man was lost to view. Someone from the factory perhaps? A buyer–a salesman? A local shopkeeper, unfamiliar out in the streets?

  But they were drawing near the church. Other cars appeared from side roads, turning towards the gates. He had many details to attend to now, the face and figure dropped away from his mind.

  Emily Bond walked into the church with an air of assurance as of one who had every right to be there. She took her place in a pew at the back, watching with lively curiosity everyone who came in, noting their clothes, the depth of grief expressed on each countenance. All her life she had been an ardent devotee of christenings, weddings and funerals, the primitive landmarks of existence. And the greatest of these was funerals.

  She had laid out a good part of Owen Yorke’s two pounds on a wreath. Not that she had known the dead man, not even to nod to in the street. But he had been the father of her rescuer and it was a feeling of intense loyalty to Arnold that had made her part with the money, brought her to the church and would despatch her to the graveside to stand in the bitter weather with the rest of the mourners. The least she could do by way of gratitude was to see Mr Pierson’s father respectfully on his way.

  ‘What on earth made you bring that old woman back to the house?’ The last of the funeral guests had departed; Sarah was worn out at the end of the afternoon, inclined to asperity. She knew Mrs Bond of course from her own business visits to The Sycamores; she had never cared much for the creature, slovenly, unmannerly, argumentative. What Arnold could have been thinking of–naturally Mrs Bond had leapt at the chance of a free spread, she’d jumped into the back of the car with surprising agility.

  But what had above all irritated Sarah was the way the old crone took it upon herself to help to do the honours, handing food around, gathering up empty plates, refilling cups and glasses. And insisting afterwards on staying behind to help with the washing-up, talking non-stop although Sarah had indicated more than once that she had a headache.

  There had been nothing for it in the end but to suggest to Arnold that he drive her home; otherwise Sarah feared she might actually bed herself down for the night on some pretext or other.

  ‘I thought she looked as if she needed a good hot drink,’ Arnold said mildly, rather surprised at Sarah’s sharpness; he’d thought Mrs Bond had been very helpful, waiting on the guests, clearing away, waving aside his offer of payment.

  ‘Always glad to oblige you,’ she’d said, looking up at him with meaning. ‘Call on me any time. I’ll come from the ends of the earth,’ she’d added, briefly startling him.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down now and have a rest?’ he said. Sarah did look tired. The whole thing must have been a tremendous strain for her; there had been the responsibility for nursing his father even without the sorrow and upheaval of the funeral.

  ‘Oh, I’m all right, really.’ She gave him a half-apologetic look. ‘But I will sit down and close my eyes for half an hour.’ She lowered herself into a chair, sitting upright as usual.

  ‘I’ve one or two things to see to,’ Arnold said vaguely. He felt restless but didn’t feel he could follow his usual practice of going out and roaming the streets; he couldn’t very well leave Sarah alone at this moment.

  The notion thrust at his mind as he walked up the stairs and into his father’s bedroom. He stood looking down at the bare mattress, glanced round at the table and shelves already stripped of Walter’s belongings. For all the evidence that remained, his father might never have passed an hour between these four walls. When we are gone, how truly and finally we are gone, he thought with sorrow. His gaze searched about, striving to conjure up some sense of the man who had loomed so large in his life but the room offered him nothing but emptiness.

  He turned his mind back to Sarah. I am free, he thought again; he felt all at once that it was true. Inhibition had slipped away from him, lying now under a weight of icy earth. Free to pay court to Linda Fleming. Was it conceivable that she would ever agre
e to marry him? If he could ever get as far as asking her. He strove to imagine himself opening an evening door, seeing her come towards him along a passage. It seemed just faintly possible.

  But what of Sarah? Could she be left alone? Would there be any justice in that after she had devoted the greater part of her life to looking after himself and his father? He closed his eyes against the notion of her sharing an establishment with himself and Linda. Totally out of the question.

  He walked to the window and looked out at the darkening evening. Arrangements could no doubt be made about Sarah, arrangements might have to be made . . .

  Downstairs Sarah sat unrelaxed in her chair, her eyes closed against fatigue. Her lips moved in the merest suggestion of speech; she was addressing her thoughts to the image of her mother, a habit she had increasingly fallen into with the passing of the isolating years. Over a quarter of a century since she had stood in this very room and handed round the plates of cakes and sandwiches after her mother’s funeral and yet it seemed to her still that her mother was the only person to whom she could fully and frankly open her mind.

  I looked after him, she said to that beloved shadow, I looked after them both, I kept my word. She had been a woman of thirty-two when she stood beside her mother’s grave–in the same plot where Walter had now joined her. On that day she had said goodbye to her last frail hopes of marriage, children, a place of her own. Never a beautiful girl, scarcely even a pretty one, she had grown up in a time when there were women to spare, when men could pick and choose.

  But if her mother had never married a second time, if there had never been any deathbed promise, things might have been very different. Sarah had been a mere eighteen when she had moved with her mother to Walter’s house and the footsteps of an eighteen-year-old girl might have gone down paths that were closed at thirty-two.

  Her own father had worked for Ralph Underwood; there had been a great deal of argument after his death about pension rights. Such matters hadn’t been so precisely formulated then, there had been some technical flaw. Old Ralph had never been a man to part with a penny more than the law compelled him to disburse; humanity and moral justice were considerations outside the realms of hard cash. And so in the end her mother had got nothing except the return of her husband’s contributions, which had just about served to pay the expenses of the funeral and the bills that had piled up since he drew his last breath.

  Sarah clasped her hands on her lap, pressing the fingers tightly together. If there had been a pension, if old Ralph hadn’t been such a skinflint, her mother would never have remarried–or at least would never have married Walter–and Sarah would have been as free as air. Her lips moved in a faint smile. At least I’m to get a pension, she thought, time has brought about some improvements.

  Not that it would be exactly princely. Her salary–on which the pension would be based–had never been exceptionally generous; there had been talk a few years ago of an annual bonus as a percentage of sales but it had come to nothing. The question had been raised by Owen Yorke in a moment of expansiveness, but there had been a credit squeeze, the shop’s figures had begun to dwindle after the appearance of more fashionable boutiques. And Zena had put her foot down. Not that credit restrictions seemed to affect the Yorkes’ standard of living very much, Sarah thought, they did well enough.

  She passed a hand across her eyes. If Arnold had married, his wife would have been expected to take over the responsibility for Walter and Sarah might yet have spread her wings. And he might have married, she thought, if it hadn’t been for the curious and complicated ties that kept him bound to Zena. It seemed highly unlikely that he would marry now, too set in his ways, too locked inside himself.

  But her promise to her mother had surely not been meant to extend as far as looking after a man of Arnold’s age, a man who had deliberately chosen not to marry and who could if it came to the point, pay a housekeeper. If she and Arnold continued to inhabit the same house it would be from mutual convenience, habit, a lack of attractive alternatives, and not from obligation.

  So she opened her eyes at last on the thought: I am free, I have done my duty. But no exhilarating sense of liberation followed, only a deep weariness, staleness, the feeling of a vast section of life being over and done with and little to show for it but greying hair and a habit–all that was left of youthful courage and hope–of greeting each day with a kind of optimistic pessimism.

  She tilted back her head and glanced up at the ceiling, hearing Arnold walking restlessly about upstairs. She wondered for a moment if he was experiencing any sense of release. She remembered all at once something that had been driven from her mind by the pressures of the last few days. There had been a phone call for Arnold–when was it? Yes, Monday evening, she had answered the call herself. A woman’s voice, light, attractive; she had given her name . . . it came back to her now . . . Linda Fleming. Fleming . . . surely that was the name of the young woman who had taken over that little draper’s shop. Could it be? Why should she be ringing Arnold? He had said nothing about it to her afterwards. It occurred to her suddenly that there might be a great many things she didn’t know about Arnold . . .

  He came downstairs and into the sitting room. ‘How’s the headache? Any better?’

  ‘About the same, thank you, it isn’t a very bad one.’ She wouldn’t even consider taking an aspirin. ‘Mrs Yorke never troubled to come to the funeral,’ she said suddenly. Zena hadn’t bothered to attend the funeral of Sarah’s mother either.

  ‘They sent a very handsome wreath,’ Arnold pointed out.

  Sarah made a contemptuous sound. ‘Lift a telephone and pay the bill, that’s all a wreath involves. And even that was probably done by Mr Yorke. I know he couldn’t come to the funeral, he’s away on business, I’m certain he would have come if he’d been in Milbourne.’ She got to her feet, feeling the need for movement. ‘I’m going to make some coffee–would you like a cup?’ She gave a grim little laugh. ‘If I can find where anything is after Emily Bond’s kind assistance.’

  CHAPTER 10

  Linda Fleming yawned delicately and glanced at the clock. Half past two. She felt bored and restless, all the busy activity of the week dwindled into this somnolent stretch of time before Sunday tea.

  Not a word from Owen Yorke in over a week; he had very probably forgotten all about his impulsive offer of a ticket for the ball. She sighed. She couldn’t in any case now think of coaxing Arnold to go with her; there would be no question of his going anywhere very festive for some considerable time.

  And then the phone rang sharply. She sprang to her feet with a smile of lively anticipation.

  ‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’ Arnold’s voice, hesitant but tinged with resolution. ‘I wondered if I might perhaps call to see you.’

  ‘I should be very pleased,’ Linda said. ‘I’ll give you some tea.’ As soon as she had replaced the receiver she bustled about the room, restoring order. As she straightened the magazines on a side table she saw the week-old copy of the evening newspaper folded open at the report of Emily’s accident. She sat down and read it through again with pleasure before going off to change her dress and do her face.

  Quite a useful week’s work on the whole; Owen had drummed up some good business, and it had been a relief to be away from home. But I don’t think I’ll bother hanging on here for tea, Owen thought, glancing round the hotel lounge with its scatter of winter residents, sleepy after Sunday lunch; I think I’ll push off now. It would only take an hour or two to get back to Milbourne, not much traffic at this time of year.

  But the prospect of an endless evening at The Sycamores with Zena likely to be in a highly combative mood, seemed little more alluring than tea and inane chat among the potted palms.

  I’ll call and see Linda, he decided. A pleasant drive out into the country, maybe a civilized dinner somewhere . . . perhaps it might be as well to phone first. He pushed back his chair and got to his feet, rousing a couple of elderly ladies into accusing wakeful
ness; he strode cheerfully over to the reception desk and brought his hand briskly down on the bell.

  Things so far had gone rather well. Arnold still sat a little stiffly in the easy chair but he was beginning to experience an unusual and very agreeable feeling of relaxation. The room was a good deal brighter and gayer than the sitting room at home. A bowl of daffodils bursting into bloom stood on a low table, a vase of tulips, delicate mauves and pinks, graced the top of an elegant little bureau.

  And Linda looked so pretty in a white dress that emphasized the dark softness of her hair, the porcelain quality of her fine skin. She hadn’t unnerved him by any brittle gaiety of manner that would demand an equal liveliness in response. Everything about her, her voice, her movements, her look, seemed gentle and fluid.

  He had the comforting notion that she would be an easy person to live with, not given to importunate demands, understanding, soothing, softly-spoken. Impossible to imagine her in a rage or even sourly irritable.

  They had chatted in a companionable way; the question of an evening out had been lightly touched on but nothing definitely settled yet.

  ‘I’ll go and put the kettle on,’ Linda said, getting to her feet. ‘I won’t be long.’ She waved a hand at the side table. ‘The Sunday papers are there if you’d like to look at them.’

  When the door had closed behind her Arnold went over and looked at the pile of newspapers, seeing with a slight thrust of surprise that the topmost one was a copy of last Monday’s evening paper with his own long-ago face staring solemnly up at him.

  He carried it back to his chair and began to read the paragraphs with keen interest. When Sarah had given him the paper a few days ago he had merely made a show of running his eyes over the column. Now he was pleased to find he was able to study it without revulsion, almost with detachment, striving to see it as it would have appeared to Linda.

  When he had sufficiently taken it in he looked up with a faint smile beginning to touch his mouth. Perhaps after all the present might be allowed to close over the past, life could be permitted to move forward again, unclouded by ancient shadows.