Last Act of All (8 page)

‘
Not at all.’ She assumed a light tone. ‘It’s always gratifying for a hostess to see that her guests are enjoying themselves.’

He
smiled in polite disbelief, turning to Maxwell Tilson. ‘I’m just on my way now, sir. Have you brought your car, or shall we walk down together?’

Helena
could see that the old man was not entirely pleased; his reply had a sarcastic edge. ‘Why, thank you, Edward. I feel sure that even my aged bones can make it down the hill unaided, but I have to admit that you did that very neatly.’

Ignoring
the implication, Edward went on, ‘In fact, I have an even better idea. The Morleys have to pass our respective doors; I’ll see if I can hitch a lift for the two of us.’

Under
such a quietly determined onslaught, the party inevitably began to break up, and Tilson got himself to his feet.

‘
He does get what he wants, that young man. I think you will have to be careful, my dear.’

But
this time Helena was ready, ‘He’s been so helpful to us both. And whatever he says, it can’t be easy to see your family home fall into other hands.’

‘
He must have felt very sure that your husband was the right custodian. Thank you for a most — enlivening — evening.’

His
eyes twinkled on the adjective, and Helena could not help laughing, as he kissed her hand with old-fashioned gallantry.

Then
they were, mercifully, leaving. The vicarage children had perpetrated nothing worse than black sticky marks on the new paintwork, and Marcia, flown with wine, was in full spate.

‘
What a marvellous, generous man your husband is! So good, so kind – we couldn’t believe it, could we, Peter, when he said – oh, I mustn’t let cats out of bags, must I? But I think, I really think, he has saved me from having a nervous breakdown—’

Wearily,
Helena wondered what empty promise he had been making now. Once she would have assumed it was a naive way of buying temporary popularity; tonight, she really wondered if he had given it for the pleasure of breaking it later. But meantime, to Marcia at least, Neville was all that was wonderful.

His
popularity, however, was not universal. Amid a volley of giggling, tipsy protests from Sandra, Neville was kissing her fingers individually by way of saying good-night. At his shoulder, Jack’s face was darkened by a cloud of suspicion; it was clear that Neville noticed, and was amused. The involvement of a jealous husband might add spice to a conquest that threatened to be all too easy.

With
considerable relief, Helena escorted them all out. But when, ahead of her husband, she came back into the room, a figure still loomed by the window – Chris Dyer.

Her
recoil must have been obvious, for he gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘The welcome guest! Did Neville forget to tell you I was staying?’

‘
No, of course not. You just gave me a start as I came in.’

‘
That’s a weight off my mind. I would simply hate to think you didn’t want me.’

He
was moving towards her as Neville came in. His eyes travelled from one to the other with speculative, malicious amusement.

‘
Don’t let me interrupt anything,’ he drawled, but Helena ignored him.

‘
If you’ll both excuse me, I’ve got a bit of a headache, so I’m just going up to bed.’

It
was Chris who expressed polite concern. Neville’s face, she thought as she closed the door, displayed the thwarted annoyance of a spoiled child when the grown-ups have ruined his fun by taking away the sparrow before he could really settle to pulling off its wings.

Her
steps dragged as she climbed the stairs. She was papering over the cracks. It was what she had done all her life; now the paper was peeling and the cracks gaping wider and wider, yet she still lacked the resolution to pull the whole rotten edifice down. She made a timid prayer that something would happen to sort it out, and despised herself.

The
only thing worse, they say, than unanswered prayer, is being given what you thought you wanted.

Chapter Four

The mirror in the old hallstand lent Martha Bateman’s face a drowned, greenish tinge as she peered at it, but she had long ago ceased to notice that. It had been here in the hallway of this house when it belonged to Joe’s parents, and Joe’s father’s parents before that.

In
any case, it was a long time since looking in the glass had given her pleasure — not that she hadn’t once been well enough. But now her interest was strictly practical, to ensure that the grey wool hat was set decently straight, covering the rigidity of the iron-grey perm.

This
morning, she barely saw her image, though her fingers automatically twitched the collar of her Sunday coat into place. There was trouble on its way; she read the signs as surely as she would have deduced the otter’s presence from the arrowhead of spreading ripples on Markham’s Fen. It might be no more than the follies of strangers, as unthreatening as the posturings on the television screen. But some instinct was telling her it was not so, and there was wariness already in her hooded eyes.

With
handbag and gloves in her hand, she opened the door of the front room. Joe Bateman was sitting in vest and trousers, with his tabloid Sunday newspaper in his calloused joiner’s hands, in the nearest approach to squalor he could achieve in any house that Martha Bateman cleaned.

Her
mouth, grim-set already, tightened further. He could be managed only so far — stubborn as Eardley’s pigs, the Batemans were, in the village phrase.

‘
You see you remember to put on them potatoes, like I said.’

He
took in her church-going outfit, and a slow, knowing smile crossed his face. ‘Well, vicar’ll think it’s Christmas, with all the old hens coming in to cackle.’

‘
You’re one to talk, Joe Bateman. When did you ever set foot over the threshold, except for your own wedding?’

His
manner might be ponderous, but the reply was pointed enough. ‘And the christening. Don’t forget the christening. You set a lot of store by that, seems to me.’

Her
eyes travelled involuntarily to the photograph on the mantelpiece in its brass frame: a boy, smiling, but with features which somehow testified to the fact that he was not quite as other boys are. Her mouth softened as she looked at it, but only for a moment.

‘
And for the funeral,’ she said harshly. ‘Well, three visits won’t get you to heaven, not to my way of thinking.’

‘
I’ll have good company where I’m going, then.’ Unruffled, he chuckled coarsely as he waved the newspaper at her. ‘Takes something out of the ordinary to get you there, anyways. Oh, there’ll be a great old turn-out today, shouldn’t wonder.’

Martha,
ignoring him, went out into the street. She did not look round at the sound of hastening feet behind her.

‘
Martha, oh Martha!’

She
neither turned her head nor adjusted her pace as the woman panted up behind her.

‘
Well, Martha, what do you reckon to it?’

Her
lip curled a fraction. ‘Reckon to what, Annie?’

‘
You mean you’ve not seen it? All over our paper, it were...’

‘Oh, that.’

At
the church a huddle of women, like Joe’s barnyard fowls in their sober Sunday colours, were clucking at the lych gate, ignoring the vicar who waited to greet them at the church door, his hands rubbing unconsciously together.

The
hush that fell when she arrived was a tribute to Martha, and she savoured it. She was very watchful these days; as housekeeper at Radnesfield House she had commanded an automatic respect which now she must exact by force of personality. Relishing the moment when she would toss them this juicy worm of scandal, she hesitated a second too long. She bridled at the sound of another woman’s voice.

‘
It did seem to me we’d all be in our pews this morning. What do we think on it, then? Is he misbehaving, or are they a sweetly loving couple?’

‘
Oh, there you go, Jane Thomas.’ Martha’s tone was sharp with spite, resenting this theft of her small pleasure. ‘You should know better than to pay any mind to what you read in them old newspapers, you should.’

‘
No smoke without fire, that’s what I say.’ One of the lowest in the pecking order had dared to speak, emboldened by the choice nature of the titbit of information she had to contribute.

‘
Them Daleys had a right set-to going home from the pub at lunchtime, and Jack Daley with some tidy names to call that Sandra. And there was my youngest, out playing in Wagstaff’s field with Mary’s Billy. And when she comes in, “Main,” she says to me, “what’s a common tart?”’

Teeth
were sucked in pleasurable shock, and scandalized breath indrawn. The subdued clucking rose again.

‘
Well, London ways.’

‘
Everso pretty, that actress is. Younger than Mrs, by what I saw on the telly last week.’

Sharon
Thomas was hovering at the outside of the group. She was pretty, in the drawn, exhausted way of women who have married and had too many children too early, and drudged all their young lives. She lived in the shadow of Jane, her forceful mother-in-law, and certainly in awe of Martha Bateman and her vitriolic tongue. But now, exalted by her status at Radnesfield House, she could taste the delights of superior information.

‘
All I know is, that Mrs Fielding, she’s a real lady. Ever so kind and thoughtful. But him — pinched my bottom, he did, when I were bending over cleaning the brass.’

‘
He never!’ Incredulous eyes swivelled on to her.

‘
You’ve never said nothing about this before!’ Martha led the accusation.

‘
Nobody’s never asked me.’ She tossed her head. ‘Like I said, she’s nice. And we’d best be getting into church, or vicar will wring those hands of his right off.’

Martha
’s face was blacker than ever as she brought up the rear with Jane Thomas.

‘
Changes, that’s what this’ll mean. You mark my words.’

‘
Talking’s cheap,’ Jane said comfortably. ‘Takes a lot of believing, you said yourself.’

Martha
was not appeased. ‘We’ve had enough changes in Radnesfield. We don’t want no more.’

In
agreement for once, Jane nodded as they reached the vicar, who, with all the innocence of the reader of quality Sundays, was saying happily, ‘How very nice to see you all, ladies! Such an encouraging congregation,’ as he ushered them in.

*

Neville was brusquely uncommunicative as he and Chris Dyer set off for London early on Monday morning. Dyer was unsurprised. Fielding was a moody sod, and anyway, who made bright conversation at six a.m.? He pulled his French leather cap down over his eyes, leaned back and went to sleep.

Neville
glanced at him in annoyance. Just because he had been a little crabby, it didn’t mean he wanted to drive all the way up to London with only his thoughts for company.

He
was obscurely disappointed in Radnesfield, which had promised, somehow, a lot more than it had got round to delivering. Helena, despite the dislocation, was still the same Helena. She had managed to convert his wonderful anarchic house into a sort of monument to good taste in dreadfully trying circumstances; when he had reckoned to reduce her to bread and cheese at the kitchen table or a chicken and chips carry-out from Limber, she had responded with entertainment as elaborate as anything she produced in London for expected guests.

He
had tried to get her off balance; she had treated him like an experienced mother ignoring her child who is kicking and screaming on the floor. Now they didn’t talk, they didn’t fight, they didn’t make love.

If
Helena wanted to play the ‘don’t care’ game, then he was happy to raise the stakes. Don’t care, as they had been accustomed to say in the Home, was made to care, and god! he was going to enjoy watching her break. He’d like to see her attempt the sort of toffee-nosed lack of interest she’d shown about Sandra Daley.

She
was right there, of course; Sandra didn’t matter. Sandra was a zero, like a dozen other zeroes, and her eagerness had about as much appeal as an over-ripe plum that squelches into the hand that plucks it. He would have dropped her long ago if it weren’t for the husband, who provided fresh entertainment each time Neville saw him with some new evidence of tortured suspicion.

Daley,
mad with jealousy. Cool, self-possessed Helena, helpless and pleading. That would provide two delicious illustrations of his power, and a tiny taste of the fictitious satisfactions Harry Bradman so regularly enjoyed.

*

Helena heard the front door slam as Neville and Chris left, and tried to get back to sleep, but as tormenting thoughts cartwheeled behind her closed lids, she accepted the inevitable, and got up. Bundling on her jade dressing-gown against the morning chill, she pattered through the silent house to the refuge of the kitchen.

The
red Aga glowed warm and welcoming, and she pressed herself against it like a cat as she made her coffee.

Sipping
it gingerly, she went to perch on the cushioned seat in the window that took up almost the whole end wall of the kitchen.

The
sun was dragging itself lazily above the horizon, and a wraith-like mist was rising from the pond in the hollow beneath the house. The tops of the beech trees in the coppice that straggled down towards the village, showing a lively green just now, were barely swaying in a light dawn breeze, and somewhere a blackbird was calling. Over it all, the great span of sky was clear, brilliant silver. It was going to be a lovely day.

Helena
gazed hungrily at the beauty before her. Somehow beauty seemed to be a very scarce commodity these days.

She
had wakened with a headache, the sort that tension clamps like an iron circlet about the forehead. It came on, sometimes, before a thunderstorm, and this weekend the house seemed filled with the same sort of brooding, electric anticipation.

She
had scolded herself for being melodramatic, but this was not imagination. The balance of her relationship with Neville, so precariously maintained over the years, was shifting. It was as unmistakable as the wind veering round, though she was still unable to identify the quarter from which it came.

She
had once fasted for three days, in a fashionable attempt to rid her body of toxins. At the end, she felt weak and disorientated, but strangely perceptive. Solitude, it seemed, was having the same purgative effect on her. She was becoming painfully sensitive to atmosphere, as if every mood vibration acted on her like ice on a tooth with an exposed nerve.

On
past experience, there should have been weeks of tranquillity and sunshine, while Neville, having got his own way, sweet-talked himself back into favour. This time, he seemed to have kicked the craving for approval.

Yet
again, Harry’s shadow fell. She had heard them talking on the terrace, Neville and Chris.

‘
It’s got to convince,’ Dyer had said. ‘I’m going to be asking more from you, Neville — more sense of danger, more anarchy. The punters have got to see you uncontrollable, in free fall. They have to believe you’re capable of absolutely anything.’

And
Neville, in the slow, deeper voice he used for Harry, had drawled, ‘Oh I am, believe me, I am.’

Helena,
clearing cups from the study, had shuddered as if a goose walked over her grave, and couldn’t shake off the thought.

It
was uncharacteristic, too, that Neville should be indifferent to Chris’s blatant attentions to her — Neville, always one of the great modern proponents of Victorian double standards.

He
knew of Helena’s fastidiousness, so was this another Bradman development, a psychological game to attack what she was and break down her personality, or was he trying, at last, to provoke a crisis in their marriage? Until now, she had been essential to his comfort, his safeguard against the Sandra Daleys who persisted after he had tired of them.

Or
was there, perhaps, someone else, someone with whom he might genuinely have fallen in love? Given the rest of his behaviour, it seemed unlikely, but she had her headache to convince her that somewhere, storm clouds were indeed massing.

The
click of the letter-box, telling her the newspaper had been delivered, roused her from her depressing reverie. Beside the paper on the mat lay a large brown envelope, addressed to herself in anonymous black capitals.

When
she slit open the envelope and drew out newspaper clippings, she checked, with a churning of the stomach.

They
came from the bottom end of the Sunday newspaper market, and, in essence, all carried the same story. There were photographs of Neville, escorting a young and very glossy blonde, which showed them tête-à-tête in a restaurant, entering a theatre, or leaving a nightclub with her on his arm. Several shots revealed them gazing into one another’s eyes.