Chain Reaction (21 page)

Vernon groaned; he rattled the paper. She has so much more pride than he. ‘if it’s important to you, Joy, I will certainly try.’ But her present suffering is pitiable. He can’t help but see it as an exasperating betrayal.

Why is she so afraid of somebody finding out?

‘Because they’ll all enjoy seeing our downfall.’

Bemused, Vernon argued, ‘Why would they? We wouldn’t enjoy seeing theirs!’ The moment he’d spoken he’d known he was wrong. She
would
enjoy it; she would derive some sense of achievement to see somebody else come to grief. Somehow she would feel that she had succeeded in keeping everything clean and sweet while they themselves had failed. That’s why she is always so interested in gossip, in rumour, in fanning the flames of scandal. In finding comfort from the disasters of others.

‘Well, I just hope you know what you’re doing.’

‘It’s all so depressing. Vernon, we must keep them all from figuring it out. It’s no good, I can’t begin to be as brave as you.’

Brave? Vernon’s not brave, just a sticker. But last night he couldn’t be bothered to argue with her. If she wanted him to support her lie then he would, he supposed—if he remembered. For the sake of peace and quiet if nothing else. But she’ll be hoist by her own petard in the end. The truth will come out and then she will look a greater fool than she’s ever looked before.

It is after lunch when Norman Mycroft phones from the bank. Vernon has just finished his cheese and tomato sandwiches. Since the start of this financial nightmare he has never heard the phone ring without a shot of trepidation, ever prepared to deal with an angry voice, a supplier demanding payment. The awful thing is that Norman Mycroft’s voice is never angry, it is always menacingly balanced.

‘Mr Marsh?’

‘Ah yes, Mr Mycroft. Good afternoon.’ But inside he winces. This phone call alone will take him over his extended overdraft limit.

‘I am slightly concerned about a number of withdrawals made on the Tuesday of this week, passed on to me by my colleague, Miss Grear, withdrawals pertaining to your credit card. As you no doubt remember, last time we met we agreed that those facilities were no longer available to you.’

What’s this? He can hardly believe it. Vernon gives his immediate reaction. ‘There must be some mistake.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ says Mr Mycroft, slyly affable as he prepares to unload his bombshell, ‘and so I made enquiries this end and double-checked, and I am afraid there is no mistake. Therefore I would be grateful, Mr Marsh, if you could make an appointment at my office as soon as possible, as this matter is now one of some urgency. Might I suggest tomorrow morning at ten?’

Is there no pity, no imagination anywhere?

Certainly not at the bank.

A moment of still horror. It is true when they say your heart sinks, but it is not Vernon’s alone that now sinks into his bowels, but his throat, his lungs, his gizzard, the very hair on top of his head until he is nothing but a melted mass of glutinous terror standing there in his sad little shop.

It takes all his courage to make the necessary enquiry. ‘Might I ask how much these recent withdrawals amount to?’

There is a pause while Mr Mycroft pretends not to know, draws out the agony as he peruses his heartless computer screen and lies back in his swivel chair, no doubt rubbing his managerial hands. ‘The withdrawals to which I refer amount to one thousand six hundred and eighty-nine pounds.’

Vernon’s face goes grey. ‘But that cannot be right.’

The voice on the phone grates with a mild irritation. He has more to do in his busy day than waste time with wastrels and doubters. ‘I assure you it is, Mr Marsh. We have the counterfoils to prove it.’

‘To whom were these payments made?’

‘I can’t go into the details right now—I have a customer waiting, I’m afraid. But I thought I should let you know so that we can meet and discuss this soonest.’

Vernon lets the last heavy breath hiss out of his body. There is nothing to add but, ‘Thank you, Mr Mycroft.’

‘Right, I will see you tomorrow. Good afternoon, Mr Marsh.’

The phone goes down of its own accord, Vernon is too shocked to take any such positive action. If it’s not a mistake then it has to be Joy. Joy, who is as well aware of the circumstances as he, who is in this trouble up to her neck just as he is, who is even more concerned about a reasonable future than he is. But she wouldn’t! It is quite unimaginable that Joy, his wife of twenty-three years, would go out deliberately and spend money on God knows what when she knows full well what the consequences will be. God, he didn’t bother to tell her that their Access card could no longer be used. He didn’t want to worry her further and he never dreamed she would go out and attempt to use it, not at this precarious stage.

Vernon remembers… She was out on Tuesday when he got home. He had taken the opportunity to sort out some more bills, write a few more letters while she was absent because he knows how much the very sight of such awkward correspondence upsets her. She commented on it in so many words, when she got in, he remembers. She had said she was cheesed off with it all, and he had told her that he was, too.

Had he asked her where she had been?

No, he imagined she’d been over the road chewing the cud with Adele or that other so-called friend of hers, Bob’s wife Angela. Having a companionable sherry or two with the neighbours, the very people she’d come back and vilify for hours on end. If Vernon ever asked why she bothered with people she so disliked, people who were so obviously inferior, she would answer, ‘Who else is there around here to talk to? Since I gave up my job to work at home I am hardly the centre of a social whirl. I can’t afford to choose any more, Vernon. I have to take what’s on offer.’

Vernon sits down, feeling sick. He is hardly thinking, mostly staring. His head shakes from side to side as he holds back the tears. His eyes are wide with despair. He is dumb, empty and exhausted, for the most wasting emotion of all is fear. Joy! But why? Perhaps he should have shown more enthusiasm when she took such an interest in
Hacienda,
that ruined cottage. Perhaps they should have talked about it more. Vernon should have taken the proper time to explain just how much money it would require to make the place habitable, let alone bring up to the sort of standard demanded by Joy… gingham curtains fluttering at the windows, patchwork quilts on the pine beds, polished wooden floors covered with tasteful rugs, laundry room, en-suite bathroom, blue jugs filled with flowers and cushions scattered on the window seats… Hopeless to try and explain to her that the people who dwelt in such rustic cottages never lived like that, that her concept was as much of a dream as the very idea that the Marshes might be able to afford
Hacienda
at all.

Is Joy’s shopping a way of exacting revenge?

No, that doesn’t make sense either. This way she is punishing herself!

It is she who finds the prospect of homelessness intolerable, dreaming about mobile homes and the like. It is she who is already appalled by the thought of moving into that small flat.

Vernon is going to have to close the shop and go home although he knows that a shop closed early is the simplest way to announce to the world that here is a business about to pack up. Any customers will just have to lump it although he has to admit that a customer on a Thursday afternoon would be an unlikely phenomenon anyway.

Home, when he gets there, is empty. Joy, who frequently moans that she has nothing to do, has obviously found something, or somewhere to go, probably elaborating on the plans they have for the renovation of a cottage that does not exist beyond the confusion of her own sick mind.

Wearily Vernon mounts the stairs, unemotionally, deliberately, like a policeman on the prowl. How can he play the strong protector?

He moves across the bedroom towards Joy’s wardrobe, turns the key and slides it back. There, still with the tags, with the labels, are some of the purchases Joy must have made on Tuesday. They are pressed in tightly, amongst the racks of other clothes, rank after rank of them. ‘Never anything decent to wear, well, never anything suitable,’ she always says.

Vernon catches his breath, swallows, and runs his finger inside his collar. Then he moves on to her chest of drawers, slowly, like an aged man. Going through his wife’s things feels so wrong and distasteful; he is no better than a pervert rifling through women’s washing on garden lines. But he has to do this. He can’t turn back now; there is no other answer. Everything is neatly folded and smells of some sort of soap she stores in the drawers to keep her beloved garments fresh. He tries to do it delicately and with a measure of respect but his eyes do not want to look. Nothing can ever be the same again, and there, as he expected, hidden away under the slightly older jumpers, blouses, underwear and nightwear, are the carrier bags full of Tuesday’s treachery, of tissue paper, of new wools and silks and cottons and lace and his own white unhappy fingers feeling.

He can’t bear to face her jewellery box; there’s a premonition of too much pain. He feels like a man who’s expecting a shot in the back.

And he’d wanted to fight the world for her sake.

When Joy returns half an hour later, Vernon is downstairs in the kitchen smoking a cigarette.

‘What on earth?’ she starts. ‘Where did you get those from? You haven’t touched one of those for five years!’

‘Where were you on Tuesday, Joy?’

‘I am disappointed in you, Vernon. Honestly, what with your obsession with bacon and fried bread and chips with everything, what do you think the doctor would say if he knew you’d taken up smoking again? Nobody smokes these days. Everyone knows that it is disgusting.’

‘Where were you on Tuesday?’

‘I thought we’d have stew tonight. They were giving away braised beef at Dawsons so I popped some in the oven to braise at lunch-time.’

‘Where were you on Tuesday, Joy?’

Her frightened eyes fix on him.

Vernon pours it all out in a broken and passionate stream, all the arguments, stresses and mortifications he has been putting up with for months, all the hopes this new move gave him, working up to a desperate rage.

She listens, scared, silent and staring. The old defiance sparkles for a second in her eyes, ‘Can you blame me?’ she pounces back contemptuously, attempting to claim the drama of the moment. ‘After all I’ve been through…’

Her words are like stones that blind him. Damn her! Damn her with all her ridiculous blush and stutter, with her hundred punishing sentences already rehearsed and ready! Her eyes are hard, blaming and unloving. The shiver which he hardly noticed a few minutes ago now shakes and worries his body and his limbs. With the hurt passion of a child tortured for too long he hurls himself towards her. ‘Am I never to get free of all this?’ And he raises the only weapon at hand, the steam iron on the draining board.

‘I’m left on my own nine hours a day, sometimes ten, while you’re away at that nasty little shop and now you decide to come back early and have the nerve to go rooting—’

His eyes glare. His voice rises.
‘What have you done? In God’s name, Joy, what have you done?’
His eyes look like a madman’s eyes and she is forced to recoil from them, and from his uplifted arm. His temples beat, his limbs shake, his heart plays tricks and he no longer sees, hears or feels anything around him. And then, as he hammers the iron down again and again, he feels his brain give way.

J
ODY IS HOME AGAIN,
thank God. But it’s a mixed blessing and he can’t stay long. The Middleton family once again feel like hostages in their own house.

He arrived under cover of darkness last night, two days after Len’s nerve-racking visit to the park to give his son the money he’d asked for. When, on that evening, he broke the news of Jody’s escape to a white-faced Babs and showed her the tabloid reaction, she acted as though she had just been given the news of a holy birth, prepared to travel 1,000 miles with only a star to guide her.

‘Where is he, Len? I must see him at once!’

‘Babs, I honestly don’t know where he is. He’s with two friends as far as I gathered and I presume he is hiding out somewhere with them. Let’s face it, dear, they’ll catch them. Jody’s case is the most notorious to come up round here for decades. He’s the lead player and the public are baying for justice, so they’re bound to pull out all the stops to put him back inside again.’

Babs scoffed scornfully, ‘Inside—where he belongs, I suppose. Well, just let them try!’

Len hesitated, braced himself. ‘I did wonder, for his own good, if we ought to turn him in.’

She snarled at him then like a she-wolf protecting an injured cub. ‘Don’t you ever say that again! You know how unjustly he has been treated and all because that cretinous girl won’t tell the truth—attention-seeking, no doubt, making up all sorts of mischievous stories.’

‘Babs, there’s been no suggestion of that.’

‘No, but I’m fairly certain that’s what is going on. They wouldn’t tell us, would they? We’d be the last people to get to hear about that.’

Len tried to take his wife’s hand but she shook him off impatiently. ‘For his own sake, pet, it would be better if he had never absconded…’

‘He’s out of that hell-hole, Lenny, and neither you or I are about to put him back in there again. Over my dead body!’

Telling the girls was a stressful exercise. But they had to be told before they saw the evening papers.

Cindy rushed upstairs in tears and Dawn just sat on the sofa sighing, rolling her eyes in disbelief, ‘Wait till everyone hears about this! Oh no, oh no, so it’s all blowing up again. No sleep for us, tears from Mum all the time, screaming headlines, abuse in the street… Why the hell did he have to do this to us?’ She rocked herself backwards and forwards hugging a cushion as if she was racked by stomach cramps. ‘Hasn’t he already done enough
? I hate hint! I hate him!
And you… you could have turned him in, Dad. You just don’t see, do you? Both of you are as bad.
You just refuse to see…
’