A Lovely Day to Die (6 page)

W
HEN
I
INVITED
Lucy to come over for a drink and to tell me all about it, I must say it hadn’t occurred to me that it would take up the whole of my evening: not to mention all that happened during the night. I am a busy woman, and if I had had the slightest inkling of what I was letting myself in for, I would have got out of it somehow. “Not just now,” I would have said, as soothingly as I could. “I’d love to help in any way I can, Lucy, of course … but not just now … Come and tell me all about it some other time …” Or words to that effect.

But of course, at this stage, I didn’t know exactly what “it” was going to turn out to be. It sounded, you see, such an ordinary—not to say hackneyed—situation: just one more marriage on the rocks; one more disillusioned, embittered wife washed up on the shoals of middle-age, while her (equally middle-aged) husband waltzes off, paunch and all, with a little blonde typist half his age.

It’s happening all the time. The only surprising thing, in this particular case, was that it should be happening to Lucy. For Lucy had always hitherto seemed to be one of Life’s winners. She was the one who landed an exciting job on a glossy magazine before she was twenty: who spent the next few years swanning around the world covering fashion shows in places like Biarritz and Helsinki; and who finally met on holiday a handsome and dashing Romeo who turned out not only to have honourable intentions but also a substantial and steadily-rising income derived from his
unassailable
position in Daddy’s successful wine-importing business.

She’d always been like this, even at school. That spring when we were all madly pretending to have ’flu so as to escape the dreaded geography test, Lucy was the one who actually had a temperature and quite a high one, too. That sort of thing. No great brilliance, you understand, and no special talents either at lessons or at
games: nor was she specially hard-working. Just lucky. The Luck of the Devil, we used to call it, green with envy, whenever she managed to get herself into, or out of, something, exactly as she desired. I’d always assumed, I suppose, that she would go
on
being lucky: that Luck was something you are either born with or not, and that it will last a lifetime.

And so this was why I was surprised, as well as slightly dismayed (for it is always a bit disconcerting when an old friend suddenly acts out of character) when Lucy’s voice, muzzy with tears, came to me over the phone just after I’d got in from work, begging me to let her come over right away. “Something
awful
has happened, Jennifer!” she gulped “Hugo has left me! I
must
come and talk to you!”

I forget exactly what I said: made sympathetic noises, I suppose, and voiced suitable concern, culminating (well, how could an old friend do less?) in an invitation to come round immediately.

Mind you, it wasn’t madly convenient. I had a lot to do that evening. I, too, now have an exciting job on a glossy magazine—but in my case it has come after twenty years of hard and determined effort, starting as a switchboard girl; it didn’t just fall into my lap as it did into Lucy’s. I have a very responsible position these days, with important deadlines to meet, and it commonly happens that I have to bring work home with me to finish in the evening.

However, one has one’s priorities; and surely an old and established friendship comes pretty high among them? So, albeit with a sigh, I tidied away my papers, got out the drinks, and turned up the gas fire as high as it would go. A bit of real glowing warmth, I always think, means a lot when you are miserable, and I wanted to make the place look as welcoming as I could at such short notice. I’m not a very assiduous housewife, and living alone as I do I’m inclined to let things go a bit when the pressure of work builds up, and so I have to admit that the flat wasn’t looking its best that day; it was untidy, and not particularly well dusted. Still, with the centre light off in the living-room, and the fire purring away at the top of its bent, and the glasses and bottles sparkling on the low
table, I flattered myself that it didn’t look too bad. Good enough, anyway, for an evening of tears and grievances and marital recriminations.

*

I don’t know if it was the gin, or whether Lucy has always talked in clichés and I’d never noticed it before—but I have to admit that I was almost shocked by the sheer banality of her discourse that evening.

“The best years of my life ..!” she sobbed; and “Casting me aside like an old glove!”

I hoped (I told her) that she wasn’t talking like this to Hugo, for these were hardly the sort of phrases to lure back to her side an errant husband currently basking in the sort of undiluted flattery that a brand-new mistress can so effortlessly provide.

Lucy repudiated the idea with scorn.

“Talk like that to Hugo? As if I would! What do you take me for! Naturally, I pretend I don’t care! I’ve told him I don’t care a
damn
what he does or doesn’t do! I’ve told him he can go to bed with every woman in London, and it doesn’t matter to me a scrap! I just
don’t
care
..!”

This was a bit more like the Lucy I’d always known. It was good to see her eyes sparking with the old battlelight instead of awash with uncharacteristic tears. But all the same, I wasn’t sure that this was good tactics, either. To make a man believe that you don’t care
at
all
..?

We discussed in depth the pros and cons of this “don’t care” stance; and this naturally led us on to the consideration of the various other ploys open to the betrayed wife.

What about tit-for-tat? Find a lover yourself, and see how he likes
that
?

Lucy shook her head violently.

“Oh, Jennifer, I
couldn’t!
How could I? Don’t you realise I’m over forty, and I’ve never … I mean … Oh, I just
couldn’t
! Besides, I still love Hugo. I
love
him! In spite of everything … in spite of how he’s treated me … I do still love him! I really do!”

This, of course, complicated matters. It meant that there was a whole range of well-established ways in which she couldn’t get her own back, like getting after him with her solicitor, or going to his boss (in this case, his father) behind his back. You can’t do this sort of thing to a man you still love, no matter what sort of a rat he has proved himself to be.

We were left, then, with the more subtle, more civilized techniques: I tried to draw her attention to some of them.

What about getting in touch with
Her,
for example? Going to see her, talking to her, woman-to-woman, about the damage she is doing, ruining three lives, etc. etc ..?

See
her? Lucy was outraged. Never would she so demean herself as even to find out the creature’s address, never mind setting foot in the place! “Some filthy bed-sitter off the Fulham Road, I wouldn’t be surprised!” she spat. “Filthy sheets … mounds of unwashed crockery … a stink of rancid fat and decaying vegetables ..!” and when I interrupted her, mildly, to suggest that the well-heeled and somewhat fastidious Hugo would never tolerate such a set-up for one moment, she simply burst into tears all over again.

“That’s what’s so awful, Jennifer! She’s
changed
him!
I just don’t feel I know him any more—what he might do and what he mightn’t. It’s as if she’s cast an evil spell over him … turned him into a different person! That’s the most dreadful thing about the whole business—what it’s
doing
to him, as a person! Dragging him down … ruining him! She’s just
using
him, Jennifer, I know she is! She doesn’t care a damn about him really; she’s just an evil, scheming little gold-digger, and when she’s sucked him dry and ruined his marriage, she’ll … Oh, Jennifer, if I could only make him
see
what she is really like … what she is really after ..!”

She paused; and I assumed (wrongly, as it turned out) that this was my cue, as an old friend, to offer my intervention.

“Look, Lucy,” I began, “Would you like
me
to have a word with Hugo? I might be able to …”

She shook her head, hopelessly. “It’s sweet of you, Jennifer, but it would be no good. Absolutely none. He’s besotted—I told you. He’d only be furious with
you
for ‘interfering’—that’s what he’d
call it. Besides, I don’t know where he
is.
I mean, I know he’s with
her,
of course, but I don’t know where. I told you, I don’t know her address, I have no intention of ever knowing it …”

And so on and so on. By midnight, I found myself exhausted and—more to the point—with absolutely nothing more to say. We had said
everything
—both of us—which can possibly be said in this distressing though all too commonplace situation, and all I wanted to do was go to bed. It now transpired that Lucy hadn’t come in her car—as I had naturally assumed was the case; after all, they are a two-car—indeed a three-car—family. Normally, she drives
everywhere
, wouldn’t dream of using public transport.

Still, there it was. The trains and buses would all be finished now. She would have to stay the night.

Not too ungraciously, I hope, I made up a bed for her in the spare room. I switched on the electric blanket, brought her a hot milky drink with a few biscuits, and laid out a couple of light novels in case she couldn’t sleep. Then, thankfully, I retired to my own room—though not forgetting, first, to say “And let me know if you want anything”, as a good hostess is in honour bound to do.

A
good
hostess, yes; but you’d have to be a saintly hostess indeed to contemplate with equanimity the possibility that your guest might
actually
want something at this sort of hour; and want it, too, just twenty minutes after you’ve settled down in your own bed and are just sinking into your first and deepest sleep.

It was a scuffling sound that roused me—a rustling of paper—a clinking. Still half asleep, I switched on my bedside light, and there, across the room from me, stood Lucy, wrapped in the flowered housecoat I’d lent her, and rummaging about in the top drawer of my chest of drawers.

“Oh, Jennifer, I’m so sorry,” she apologised, “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted some sort of sleeping pill—I know you have some. I’m so sorry … I thought I’d be able to find them without disturbing you …”

How she could have thought any such thing, I couldn’t imagine, because there was no way she could know where I kept them. Actually, they were in the bathroom. Grimly, I crawled out of bed
and led her thither. I could feel my hostess-manners slipping badly, but I did my best to control my irritation while I sought out the bottle and shook out one of the long blue pills into her outstretched hand.

“Oh—Jennifer—
please
!
Couldn’t I have another? One won’t be enough, it really won’t. You’ve no idea, these last few nights, how I’ve …”

“They’re pretty strong,” I said repressively. “You shouldn’t really have more than one … Oh,
all
right!”
I finished, as the thought of standing there, arguing, swept over me in a tidal wave of exhaustion—“Take it … There you are!” and I tipped out a second one.

It was only after I’d got into bed, and had been lying there for several minutes trying to relax, that it occurred to me that I might be unwittingly conniving at some silly suicide gesture. Maybe the whole performance—messing noisily about in that drawer, pretending she didn’t want to wake me—had simply been a clumsy trick for getting me to reveal where the bottle was kept? Maybe I should go and check that she was all right?

Maybe hell! I’d had enough: I was exhausted. Already I could feel sleep beginning to overtake me, wave after delicious wave …

And then—wouldn’t you know it?—barely half an hour later the telephone rang. Dragging myself from deep sleep, I lifted the receiver and—again, wouldn’t you know it?—it wasn’t for me.

That’s the sort of night it was, that night when Lucy came to stay.

*

It wasn’t until the next day that I heard the news—on the radio, at the office. All the girls heard it, though of course for them there was nothing all that special about it—this wine-importer chap, Hugo something-or-other—found dead in bed with a fractured skull.

Busy though we were, I had to tell them I didn’t feel well and must go home immediately. I could see they were taken aback—I don’t normally let the job down like that, but what else could I do? I’d left Lucy very sound asleep when I went out in the morning, and I was desperately anxious that she shouldn’t be alone when
the police came. There were a lot of lies I was going to have to tell, and I wanted to get them in quickly before they started trying to break down Lucy’s alibi. Yes, I was going to say, she was here in my house last night. Yes, she was sleeping heavily all the time: I had myself given her two full-strength barbiturate tablets soon after midnight, and naturally they’d knocked her out completely for hours. Yes, I’d looked into her room a couple of times during the night, just to check she was all right …

What I
didn’t
tell them—and never will—was that on my first visit, to call her to the phone, I’d found the room empty, and the two blue pills lying untouched on the bedside locker; nor did I tell them that as I’d stood there, bewildered, I’d heard a car start, from a hundred yards or so down the road, the sound carrying clearly in the silence of the small hours. Above all, I didn’t tell them about the telephone call from Hugo. I never even told Lucy about it, for I realised that this call from him, between two and three in the morning, was the one thing she’d never reckoned on. The poor man was distracted, ringing round everywhere for his missing wife: and when I went to fetch her for him, and then had to come back and tell him she’d disappeared, he was more distracted than ever. Tactlessly, I suppose, and risking a crushing snub, I decided to use the occasion to put in a salutary word about this blonde typist affair, and try to make him see how miserable it was making Lucy: but far from snubbing me, or seeming angry, he was totally and genuinely bewildered.
What
blonde typist? What was I talking about? He and Lucy were absolutely devoted to one another, surely I knew
that?
He’d never looked at another woman, and never would …