Family and Friends Read online

  He looked at Zena with a moment’s deep compassion for the garish muddle of her life. She had started out with so many advantages. If she had had a little more common sense, a little more insight, a little less egotism. But she hadn’t dictated her temperament or arranged her upbringing. And his own hamstrung existence hardly gave him the right to criticize anyone else’s.

  ‘You can get a taxi,’ Zena said impatiently. ‘There are always taxis coming and going round there. Go on, get a move on.’

  ‘All right then.’ Arnold levered himself out of his chair. ‘But I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about. You do rather imagine things.’ To her surprise he stooped and patted her hand.

  The action didn’t please her; it didn’t square with her feeling of manipulating people, exerting power over events. For a long time now her relationship with her husband had lacked the bite, the edge that provided her with the needling stimulus she absolutely had to have if the days were not to wash over her in savage grey monotony. Owen had somehow sidled out of her reach into a position from which he seemed able to survey her with acquired calm. She had come to rely instead on her exchanges with Arnold, on the curious blend of old intimacy and present hostility that gave a sharp lift to her spirits.

  But if Arnold in turn were to wriggle free–she frowned and pulled her hand away.

  ‘I have no need to imagine things.’ She threw significance and force into her look. ‘I have enough hard facts to be going on with.’ And saw with a return of pleasure and reassurance that his face hardened again.

  ‘Be sure to leave the front door on the latch.’ She picked up a book and opened it, no longer bothering to look at him, levelling the command with a casual authority that tightened his nerves. ‘I’m expecting my brother shortly.’ Her shoulders moved luxuriously against the pillows; her mouth opened in a wide and pleasurable yawn.

  Arnold went rapidly from the room and down the stairs, trying to release by swift movement the angry tensions that twisted inside him again. He let himself out of the house, plunged down the steps and into the drive.

  It might not be very much longer now that he would have to dance–or maintain a ridiculous show of dancing–to Zena’s tune. His father was seventy-two; old age had gathered its forces in the last year or two, had struck more than one shrewd blow; he seemed no longer able to rally with the remains of his youthful vigour.

  Arnold halted for a moment, appalled at the direction of his thoughts, jerking them away with a violent shake of his head. He loved his father, he certainly couldn’t wish him dead simply to snap the bond that kept him dangling at Zena’s call. He resumed his quick step beneath the arching trees, forcing his mind away from the memory of his father lying with flushed cheeks, confused by fevered dreams, in the old double bed at home.

  His thoughts circled briefly round the foolish errand on which Zena believed she had despatched him. Was it after all possible that she was right, that Yorke had allowed his eyes to stray? Not so very unlikely perhaps. Yorke was in the prime of life. His carefully-laid plans were all bearing fruit; he might feel now the need for something warmer, gentler, in the busy pattern of successful days.

  His mind threw up a sharp image of Linda Fleming walking gracefully along the corridors of the factory, and Owen Yorke attentive and smiling beside her, putting a hand under her elbow to pilot her through a doorway. I wonder, he thought, frowning at the notion . . . Linda Fleming . . . I suppose it is conceivable. He was startled at the fierce thrust of jealousy that struck at him; he halted again, closing his eyes for an instant, willing away disturbing emotions.

  He opened his eyes and glanced about him, sighing at the rest of the chill evening in front of him. He had reached the main road. Where to now? Back to the neat semidetached and Sarah’s busy silence? Or wander without objective through the Milbourne streets, killing a couple of the pointless hours that advanced towards him one by one until the last hour of all and total oblivion.

  A car came round the bend of the road, cruising smoothly and without haste. He glanced at the number-plate, at the sleek outline, placing it immediately, one of the local police cars. The driver turned his head, raised a hand in greeting. David Cottrell, patrolling the New Year streets, idly watchful. Arnold nodded briefly in reply.

  ‘Who’s that?’ In the passenger seat young Detective-Constable Quigley half-swivelled round to look back at the solitary figure wreathed in mist.

  ‘Pierson. Accountant. Underwood’s.’ Cottrell supplied the staccato information, accustomed to filling gaps in local knowledge for newcomers to the force. Only a month or two in Milbourne, young Quigley, but shaping well, anxious to learn.

  ‘Not the most pleasant evening for a stroll,’ the constable said.

  ‘Wouldn’t be just a stroll. That lane he was coming out of leads to The Sycamores, nothing beyond, except fields. His boss lives in The Sycamores. Owen Yorke.’ Up to the house on business of some sort; Cottrell automatically filed away the information. Pierson was hardly likely to have been engaged in a purely social activity. ‘Not exactly the life and soul of the party, Arnold Pierson,’ he said aloud, remembering all at once a different Arnold in the days when they were lads together. ‘He was sweet on Zena Yorke once. Zena Underwood she was then.’

  Quigley tilted his head back. ‘Perhaps he is still.’ Married barely six months himself, he inhabited a world in which everyone was–or ought to be–in love.

  ‘Not he,’ Cottrell said with finality. ‘He was just a kid then.’ He stared back at the past. ‘We were in the army together. Taken prisoner by the Japs.’ He pondered briefly on the way it had affected some men, changed them permanently, while other men, himself among them, had been able to put it behind them. ‘He’s always been a bit odd since then, a loner, takes him all his time to speak to me if I stop in the street.’ He sighed; whatever he and young Pierson had expected on that long-ago morning when they’d burst through the door of the recruiting-office, they’d surely never imagined it would end like this, the cool nods of total strangers thirty years later.

  ‘I’ve never really been able to make out why it took him like that.’ Of all men he would have expected Pierson to have been able to come to terms with life in a Japanese camp, to have cast it off later without crippling bitterness. ‘He just withdrew, right into his shell, pretty well from the moment we were taken prisoner, and he’s stayed like that, locked up inside himself, ever since.’

  Quigley made no reply. Not even born until the war was well and truly over, he had grown out of his childhood passion for hearing old campaigns refought, merely bored now by tales of what old So-and-So had been through in those stirring times. He allowed his mind to slip into another gear where it was pleasantly occupied by thoughts of Sharon, his Sharon, actually his very own wife Sharon, at this moment without doubt cooking supper for him with her beautiful delicate hands.

  Cottrell slid a glance at him, recognizing that glazed and dreaming expression as of one who hears far off the music of the spheres. Give him time, Cottrell thought, well-used to these symptoms in newly-wedded constables; the dreaming days don’t last for long. Two or three years of irregular hours, night duty, haphazard social life and the dust would begin to drift over the gilding, Quigley would start to frown like other men, young Mrs Quigley’s voice would take on a higher, more acid note. Seen it so many times, had Cottrell–which was why, being in spite of everything a romantic man who liked his giltwork bright and gleaming, he had never married himself.

  ‘Wake up!’ he said good-humouredly. ‘You’ve still got an hour or two to do.’

  ‘Oh–I’m sorry.’ Quigley sat up straight, squared his shoulders. He glanced out at the misty street. Almost in the centre of town now, more cars about, people setting off for the evening’s gaieties, lights shining out from hotels and cafés, a sudden flash of music. ‘All right for some,’ he said. ‘Nothing better to do than enjoy themselves.’

  ‘No thanks, I’m just off.’ Owen Yorke raised a friendly hand, gestur
ing his politely firm refusal of another drink. He set down his empty tumbler and stood up, nodding farewell here and there. The lounge at the Independents’ was pretty full this evening, many of the members in dinner-jackets, going on to some ritual feasting.

  He looked about with satisfaction. A good club to belong to, the finest in Milbourne, possibly in the whole county. And in no time at all he’d be standing in the ballroom, wearing his presidential sash, taking Zena by the hand, leading the first waltz at the inaugural ball.

  He felt normal again, thank goodness, normal in the way he always used to feel until just lately, in the way he was pretty certain the great majority of the other members felt. Prosperous business and professional men, solid family men, ready long ago to settle for what might be reasonably expected from life, a sure and steady income, a sensible wife. Not men to chase a will-o’-the-wisp profit in tricky mining shares or be dazzled by a pair of smiling hazel eyes.

  As he made his way between the tables he allowed himself to ponder for a moment on the home lives of these relaxed and jovial citizens. If any one of them had ever felt the pangs of passionate love, it was certainly not apparent now in the way they talked about their wives, in the whole of their attitudes, spoken or unspoken, about marriage. No one in his senses looked for pulsing happiness after the first year or two; a man who mentioned his wife often, with affection, was considered uxorious, soft, to be despised, even pitied.

  His own marriage was not, after all, so exceptional. Quite run-of-the-mill, really. In the entrance hall he paused to read a notice on the green-baize board. A stray thought suddenly reared up in his mind. He looked back into the lounge at the urbanely smiling faces, wondering if any of his fellow clubmen, so like him in externals, were like him also in experiencing sometimes that painful, disturbing sense of having been cheated. Had any of them ever laid hold of a shining blade and longed, however briefly, to sink it into soft white flesh?

  He gave a fragmentary laugh. Hardly likely, old boy, he said firmly to himself, taking the insane notion by the scruff of its neck and flinging it from him.

  He exchanged a few friendly remarks with the hall-porter, slipping the fellow a handsome tip in expansive recognition of the season of goodwill. Down the steps, out into the car-park. A settled, highly-respectable citizen. He inserted a key into the car door. But . . . while he was actually out . . . and since he had definitely decided to close the shop . . . and as there was after all the matter of the surplus stock to be disposed of . . . he might perhaps just call in on Mrs Fleming.

  Only five or ten minutes, certainly no more than a quarter of an hour. Purely and exclusively a matter of business.

  He gave a little decisive nod of his head, opened the car door and settled himself with a brisk movement into the driving seat. He reversed the car and swung it smoothly out on to the forecourt, quite unaware that he was humming the waltz tune from The Merry Widow.

  CHAPTER 5

  The bathroom was deliciously warm and steamy, the radio spun soft threads of music into the fragrant air. Oh . . . oh . . . I could lie here for hours, Linda thought, squeezing her sponge in the pale blue water.

  For a moment she contemplated turning the hot tap on again, closing her eyes against the account books waiting for her in the desk downstairs. A loud rat-tat beat suddenly on the door panels.

  ‘You still in there, Mrs Fleming?’ Emily Bond’s sharply accusing tones. ‘I need some more scouring powder.’

  Linda gave a long resigned sigh and pulled out the plug, seeing peace and leisure swirl away. She stood up and reached out for a towel.

  ‘There’s another canister in the cupboard under the sink. I’ll be down in a moment,’ she called placatingly.

  ‘I can’t stop above another twenty minutes or so,’ Emily screeched with resolution.

  Linda dabbed herself dry with speed. ‘Yes, I know,’ she called. ‘I’m very grateful.’ Oh, the weary necessity to keep the old duck in a good mood, on top of having to lash out high wages and handsome sweeteners. ‘If you could just finish downstairs before you go, it would be such a help.’ A mumbled grunt at the other side of the door as Emily took herself off again.

  Linda wrapped a huge towel round herself and ran along the passage to her bedroom. She took a fluffy housecoat from behind the door, slipped her feet into feathery mules and attended rapidly to her face and hair. As she went downstairs towards the little room which she used as an office, she could hear Emily banging about in the kitchen. She wouldn’t bother to make herself any supper just yet, for that would mean having to ply Emily with coffee and sandwiches, with a great waste of time all round.

  She had just settled herself at the desk and begun to sort through the invoices when she heard a ring at the front entrance. Not the door leading into the shop but the one admitting visitors to the house. She threw down her pencil. Who on earth could it be calling on her? She went through the hall and opened the door.

  ‘Why–Mr Yorke!’ He was standing at the top of the short flight of steps, half turned towards the street, giving the impression that his call was made on the spur of the moment, that it was scarcely likely to be long.

  ‘I happened to be passing.’ His tone was friendly but impersonal. ‘I thought I’d look in and see how you’ve been making out.’ Crikey, he thought, a little taken aback by the sight of her in that pretty pink thing, her hair loosely taken up, her eyes still bright, her skin still faintly flushed from the bath–I’d certainly better not stay for more than five or ten minutes. ‘But I expect you’re busy.’ He kept his voice light and easy.

  ‘No, not at all. Do come in. As a matter of fact I was just starting to go through my books. There are one or two little matters I’d rather like to ask you about.’ She opened the door more widely. At the mention of business he smiled and stepped inside. She closed the door and led the way along the passage.

  ‘I use this room as an office. It’s a bit cramped but at least it stops me scattering papers all over the sitting room.’ She would keep him in here out of earshot of Emily. No point in advertising to that old gossip the identity of her caller–or, she thought suddenly, in letting Owen Yorke know that his wife’s charwoman was at that moment splashing about in the kitchen a few yards away.

  She pulled up another chair. ‘There’s a question about discount that I don’t altogether understand. Perhaps you know the firm?’ She sorted the papers with a businesslike air. Time enough to relax with a glass of port in front of the sitting room fire after Emily had been quietly despatched from the premises.

  Owen ran his eyes over the invoices. ‘Yes, I know this firm, very sound, been in the trade since the year dot. If you take the gross figure, here—’

  Very bright, he thought with professional approval; she cottoned on at once to the somewhat involved explanation. And pretty too, really very pretty, sitting there in that pink negligée, smiling her gratitude. A pleasant, easy glow spread through him, he leaned forward and laid a hand lightly, casually over hers.

  ‘I’ve decided to close down my High Street premises.’ He liked the way she didn’t break out into irritating Ohs and Whys but sat there with her head tilted, still with a smile on her lips, waiting for him to go on. ‘There’ll be a certain amount of stock left over at the end of the sale.’ And he liked the way she didn’t coyly withdraw her hand but let it lie peacefully beneath his own; not a woman who would argue every toss and turn with a man. ‘If you were interested, I could let you have it very reasonably.’ He gave her hand a fractional squeeze. The smile remained on her lips, her hand stayed where it was. ‘At a purely nominal figure. You’d want to see the stuff of course, that could easily be arranged. I could take you over there one evening after the sale. Do you think you might be interested?’

  She turned her head and looked him full in the eyes; her smile deepened. ‘Oh yes. I might be very interested indeed.’

  Ruth Underwood took the supper-plates from the trolley and began to stack them in the dish-washing machine. From upstairs c
ame the bang of Jane’s bedroom door, the sound of her feet running along the corridor, down into the hall. The sitting room door thrust open, slammed shut again a moment later.

  Ruth set the coffee-cups into a rack, ranged the saucers in position. Jane flung open the kitchen door.

  ‘Father’s gone! He might have waited for me, he knew I was going out!’

  Ruth picked up a handful of used cutlery and inserted them into a container. ‘Were you hoping for a lift? I don’t think he could have understood, otherwise I’m sure he’d have waited. He’s been gone ten minutes or more.’ She stooped to take the tumblers from the lower shelf of the trolley. ‘I imagined one of your friends would be calling for you. Can you get a bus?’

  Jane frowned. ‘Yes, I suppose so. But it’s a rotten night to be waiting round for buses. You ought to have a car,’ she said suddenly. ‘I can’t think why you don’t. It would be very useful.’ Her voice took on a friendly, animated note. ‘And I could learn to drive, I could use it too.’ She took a couple of steps into the room. ‘Why don’t you get one? Then we wouldn’t always be so dependent on Father’s car. If you had one now you could have run me to the party.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I’m thinking about getting one quite soon.’ Ruth crossed over to the table to pick up a couple of serving-dishes. What a pleasant manner Jane could switch on when she wanted to wheedle something out of her. And how cheerfully she was prepared to play her father and stepmother off against each other. She blinked away the thought. Only natural after all, in Jane’s situation, any youngster would do the same. She smiled, ‘I’ll let you know when I make up my mind, you might come with me to choose it.’

  ‘Oh, I’d love that. Do make it soon, won’t you?’ Jane glanced at the clock. ‘I must go or I’ll miss that bus.’ She waved a careless hand and turned to the door.

  What she needs is a nice steady boyfriend, Ruth thought with a wry smile as the echoes of departure died away. Someone to take her attention off her father and me.