England's Lane (37 page)

Had I but left upon the instant. Had only the lady been just fleetingly aware of the blurred and distant brief confusion of rapid and shadowy movement—then the muted crunch of spat-out gravel as outside a motor car pulled away at speed. But no … but no … I
lingered, gripped within a sort of fascination, though alert as a cat, for just that terrible moment longer. It was I whom she lit upon first—her head, with the neatly gathered-up and chalk-white bun, was cocked to the side in puzzlement, though at the fluttering hesitance of her lips, still there hovered the easy possibility of welcome. Then her eyes dropped down—her breath intaken at the sudden sight of Adam on the ground—though already had I reached her by the time she had shrilly whimpered once and covered her mouth with both her hands, when then she saw her husband. Her eyes were large and stricken, filled with the brimming of tears—I quickly spun around her feeble little body, for I did not care to see them. The merest twist to the softness of her gullet—no more exertion than if I were opening a bottle of ale—and then she was as a light and feathered broken bird, limp within my hands. The keeper to one of her earrings had passingly snagged the palm of my hand as she slid on down to the floor. I sucked at the graze, while inhaling the scent of her lavender water. Very nearly precisely four minutes later (for I timed it) … I found myself standing in a telephone box on a village green by a reedy pond, and by means of deliberately clipped and staccato sentences informing whoever at the local police station after a good long while had responded to the call that some or other constable there might well have an interest in immediately calling upon a nearby compact and honey-colored mid-Georgian rectory, the one with a smartly colonnaded portico.

Now, though, there could be no time whatever for introspection. I was compelled to telephone Fiona and instruct her to prepare Amanda for immediate travel, together with only just so much luggage as was feasibly portable by the two of us. I should of course have preferred not to have endangered myself by returning to the house, but only I was party to the whereabouts of all my money, in addition to a very select cache of small but intrinsically cherishable
things of very considerable value. While awaiting the taxi to Reading station, I remember that my eyes were darting constantly and uncontrollably, though to my fevered and quite indescribable relief, there came sign of no one. And so on that day, my father's rather lovely old house, a great number of my suits together with Fiona's costumes and gowns, and of course the beloved Bentley … all had summarily to be abandoned: only the lives of the three of us might now be considered to be of paramount concern.

And once in London—for to where else would one ever escape but the largest, most easily tolerant and crucially absorbent of cities—we stayed for a brief duration again at the Strand Palace Hotel. This though, clearly, was very far from ideal. I needed very soon a permanent dwelling and, by way of effective cover, some sort of extremely unlikely occupation, not to say a fresh identity. The advertisement for the butcher's shop in England's Lane I glimpsed in passing and quite wholly by chance in the
Evening Standard
while being attended to by the hotel barber. I had just instructed him, as he had lathered my face and now was stropping the razor, not to shave my upper lip: I of a sudden was determined upon a mustache. And then I thought, well now … butchery. I can, presumably, be apprised of the fundaments. And then could I proclaim my assumed identity for all to see on the frontage of the shop—and boldly, too. And this name shall be … what, now …? Oh yes, I know—how had I that afternoon, and totally on the spur of the moment, introduced myself to that dear Miss Myrtle Rivington …? Barton, wasn't it? Barton, yes—it's a good enough name. I fail to see anything wrong with it. And so from that moment on, the three of us—Fiona, Amanda and myself—would now be living as Bartons. And Fiona, well … she conducted herself throughout the whole of this really rather harrowing ordeal as quite the perfect angel. Undisguisedly hated the accommodation above the shop, of course
—and coming from all that we had enjoyed, who, I ask you, could not? Though I had sworn to her that soon, one day, some time not too distant, we should reclaim our rightful position in the hierarchy of things. And such a future, you know, is very considerably overdue. I still have money. A fair deal. But how now can I dare to make a move, when I know that Somerset still is hounding me? Though nor can I remain: if the pig man found me, so soon will someone else. And here then is why I am compelled now and finally to draw all this to a halt. In the plainest of language, I am this very evening dispatching my man Obi to Henley, in order that he may seek out Somerset, and kill him—I care not how. It is the only way. And I imagine that the good people of Henley will never in their lives have set eyes upon one such as Obi: he will be stared at, pointed out—laughed at and feared by all of the children: an instant and abiding topic of conversation, obviously a figure of deep distrust, and therefore never ever to be forgotten. And all this is just so very good, you see: just so very good.

All these thoughts, though, and of so long ago … And still there remains just this one further thing, however … the other and quite key element of our living in Henley, and then finally decamping from it on that frenzied afternoon in so extremely unbecoming a scramble of haste … a factor which still I have yet to mention … because I cannot. For what, after all, could I possibly say? Because, you see … well had it not been for Fiona and Amanda, I of course would have faced him. Somerset. I should not have run from the man. But the instant removal of my wife and child had become quite wholly essential because I knew that he would have been murderous, quite finite in his expression. Though had it not been for them—had they been elsewhere, should they not even have existed—then I would have stayed, and fought him to the death. This not through any misplaced and reckless wave of bravado, but only for the glorious
sake of the ultimate prize. Anna. Anna, yes of course. For the pain I had endured upon leaving her … the spearing, ceaseless and seething hot agonies simply of missing her, day after endless day … these, to me, seemed so very many times that much worse than dying. But rather to my shock, I had made my choice upon instinct: I absconded with my family while unaware that here even was my true intention. During the months that passed, however … I thought of Anna constantly, my memories of love both sparkling and frightful—while I cowered away, shivering from the burn of all that I had caused her, by leaving immediately and amid a shameful silence destined never to be broken. Though subsequently … with the rolling on of further time, the intensity of so obsessive and ultimately self-consuming contemplation … it gradually dimmed … so very slowly, it began to fade away … together with the dulling of a stinging fear, and the stark white threat of apprehension.

And so things rather had remained … right up until the arrival of the pig man. Prior to this quite alarming intrusion, upon only one single occasion had my cloaked and blacker chambers been flooded of a sudden by harsh illumination, and this at the moment when I knew from the wireless that Mr. John Somerset, together with his son Mr. Adam Somerset, both sometime residents of Henley-on-Thames, had that morning jointly been convicted upon forty-seven counts of variously burglary, fraud and aggravated assault, while the son alone was further found guilty of having committed what the broadcaster had elected to sensationally couch as the callous and brutal double murder of an innocent elderly couple. Just once more then did I dwell upon his mother: at that raw and glittering silver dawn which ripened into a marbling of indigo and vermilion, when Adam was hanged.

There was a time, you know—not really too terribly long ago, I suppose … although it does so very much seem to be, now. Such a long time ago. In the days when I was, well … at a time when I felt myself to be considerably more leisured. Than I am now. Easy in my mind. When I could after supper concentrate solely upon getting Paul all nicely tucked up in his bed for the night, while with such pleasant anticipation looking forward to when I would gradually unfold into that so very precious little particle of time that soon would be mine—that I could just have to myself. For by then I was so very well versed—and for how many years past?—in pointedly ignoring—secluding the whole of me safely away from any of Jim's more obnoxious or intrusive activities. Ticking off the minutes as patiently as possible before he'd heave himself out of that staved-in sofa with its feathering of fag ash, which so long ago had become that most wretched seat of his exceedingly awful and sovereign domain … and then would I suffer to hear him muttering one or other of his customary nonsenses concerning his so urgent need now to take the air, his ardent desire to stretch his legs. His arm was all he'd be stretching: ale is all he would take. Yet still was I expected to encourage quite cheerily this sudden and apparent whim,
and in so twitteringly birdlike and thoroughly wifely a way—his bold and spontaneous response to an invigorating impulse propelling him toward an evening constitutional, the very impromptu mention of which you could nightly set your watch by.

And, in those early days, it now rather bitterly amuses me to recall, I actually did go so far as to rather sullenly resent it. Being left. I might even have considered myself to have been coldly abandoned. Why must you do it Jim. I'd ask him—and really quite plaintively. Why must you do it—night after night? You've got a bottle of Bass, haven't you? More than one. Here, in this house, in the cupboard under the stairs. And I've just brought you your cigarettes, haven't I? Room all nice and warm. And it's raining. It's raining, Jim. Can't you hear it against the windowpane? It sounds as if it's coming down really rather heavily. So why do you have to go out? Explain it to me, please. Why do you want to walk just a few doors down in the pouring rain to then be standing up for hours on end in your wet hat and coat in that horrid and stinkingly fuggedup place, drinking Bass and smoking cigarettes …? Both of which you have. Here, in this house. Makes no sense does it, Jim? Makes no sense at all. But all he would do is grunt like an animal, tell me that “women, they don't never understand” … and peremptorily leave. Now, of course, I thank the Lord for it. This nightly imbecility. Sometimes, it's all I can do to refrain from screaming from the rooftops and urging him to get a blooming move on. Oh go
on
Jim, is what I'm aching inside to shout at him. You've had your rhubarb and custard, you've slurped down your fourth cup of tea like a yak at a trough, you've ground out yet another Senior Service butt, and very disgustingly to the side of the saucer—so what on earth is
keeping
you? Hey? Get out of my sight—go to the blessed Washington, why won't you? Go on! Go on! Oh just
go
, you horrible man …!

Yes … but I don't. Ever say any of that. And soon enough, he's anyway gone. And there—when I used to hear the door clang—there was the signal, this was the trigger for that one single and utterly cherished moment in the day when at last I could gently uncoil—relax, yes, into finally being me. I'd hung up my motherly pinny—kicked off and into a corner just another poor and beholden skivvy's bespattered shackles—and now I could just be old Milly again. Just me, with something nice to listen to on the wireless—the Proms, or something—a cup of tea, a digestive and maybe then even a Craven “A,” with my feet up on the pouf. But all such moments, the sweet and lesisurely innocence of them … they seem lost to me now. Now … always there's something infuriatingly nagging at me. Something I long to do. Or something I so terribly regret not ever having done. Something I have to say. Or else something I should so very obviously have said, and forcibly—then, and at the pertinent moment, now long passed. The appalling amount of money that still somehow I am owing to that perfectly loathsome and vulgar little tallyman, for all those ridiculous fripperies that I now know I'll never even so much as glance at again, nor ever dream of wearing. And he's not at all charming, this low and beastly man, now that I no longer am a subscriber to all of his leery enticements. Every Friday I pay him all that I can, and although I make very sure that always there is plenty on the table for both Jim and Paul every mealtime to enjoy, I myself have barely been eating so that I may somehow squeeze out just that little bit more from my pitiful housekeeping—and yet despite all of my deprivation, each and every Friday all he will do is rather horribly snarl at me, and tell me that now I am more heavily in debt than I had been the week before. How can this be? He shows me the columns in that dreadful ledger, and all these closely written figures—jabbed at accusingly by his manicured fingernail that yet somehow manages
always to be grimy—they do appear to tally, though never intellectually can I make even the slightest sense out of them. You assiduously chisel away at any given obstacle, and then gradually its vastness will diminish—no? Well no not, it seems: any such action will serve only to stimulate growth. Oh dear. Oh dear. When and how will it ever end …? Then there is the yearning—the yearning, then, that comes upon me for a certain individual … about whom now I hardly dare think—and cannot, coherently. Pain. My pain. The pain that still is deep within me, which sometimes will teasingly fade to the shadows where barely I still can distinguish its insidious nature, its loitering cruelty, nestled as it is in a soft and fugitive haven … which then, having lulled me, will and without warning twist up so viciously into a shockingly swelling and quite acidic nausea. Once or twice just lately I have been jarringly aware of sudden and tumultuous internal revolt—an involuntary heaving that alarms me into knowing that now I teeter on the convulsive and dreadful edge of retching quite violently … but no, nothing came. On each occasion, I was stranded agape and on my knees in the chill of the bathroom, eyes struck wide, my skin so clammy, the whole of my insides still shuddering with the ugly urge … but no … but no … nothing came. Which left me feeling jilted. Let down and taken in. As if even my own body, now, was lying to me. As a consequence, I do rather think, you know, that some time reasonably soon I might maybe be forced into seriously considering getting somebody to look at me. Oh I don't know, though … don't want to be seen to make a mountain of a molehill—it'll probably go away of its own accord. All these little things, they generally do.