Simply Heaven (48 page)

I catch Rufus looking at me with something akin to admiration. I don’t think he expected this of me. Like he said, you can know someone your whole life …

‘Don’t mention it,’ says Mary, and she’s gloating like a fly-fed toad. ‘It’s forgotten.’

Edmund suddenly folds up his paper. Launches into the longest speech I’ve ever heard from him. ‘Actually, Melody, I think we all owe you an apology as well. I don’t think there’s a person in this room who has cause to feel proud of themselves about how Christmas went, and as no-one else seems capable of bringing themselves to do the decent thing, then I suppose it’s up to me. I really am extremely sorry. I don’t think we did a good job of making your family feel welcome here, and it’ll be a black mark on this house for a long time. Will you accept an apology from me?’

I find myself gulping. My emotions are still uncomfortably close to the surface. It takes me a second to find my voice.

‘Thank you, Edmund. I really appreciate that.’

‘Good,’ says Edmund. ‘It was meant. I’m not having any bad atmospheres in the house. Enough to put a chap off his crossword.’

He picks up the paper, reopens it at the court and social page and returns to reading.

The car’s gone. I’ve been twenty minutes in the chemist and ten in the butcher’s, and the car, in the intervening time, has vanished. In the space where it should be sits, insolent and blunt, a rusty old Fiesta in babyshit brown, its houndstooth check seats covered in a thick layer of long white dog hairs.

My stomach does a lurch. Lately it lurches without a great deal of justification.

My beautiful car. Three weeks old, and gone.

The sounds of Stow square fade into the background, replaced by the pump and slosh of blood in my ears.

It can’t be gone, it can’t. It was only here a minute ago
…

I feel feverish again. I feel conspicuous, vulnerable, standing outside the back door of Scotts, by the dinky mullioned window, tourists, even in this bottom part of the off-season, swarming past me on the pavement, stopping at the estate agent’s on the corner and exclaiming over the prices. I step back and lean against a green-painted junction box, scan, hopelessly, the ranks of cars parked in the square, the empty double-yellows of Digbeth Street, as though this will make my own reappear.

Maybe you didn’t leave it here. Maybe you’ve forgotten. You park somewhere around here pretty much every day. Maybe it’s your memory again
…

I don’t seem to be feeling any better. I know they say you ought to get up and get on with things, but I don’t suppose the guys who say that have ever really plumbed the full depths. These days, simply moving sucks the strength out of me, leaves me weak and shaking. My legs are so heavy I feel like I’m wading through treacle.

Am I losing it? Am I? Is what they’re all saying true, after all?

And I forget things. I’ve lost my wedding rings. As far as I remember, I took them off to wash my hands in the Great Hall loo, but when I went back for them half an hour later, they were gone, and retracing my steps through the house has done no good. And there was hell to pay because I forgot to feed the dogs one evening, but I have no recollection of anyone asking me to do it, though Mary says she reminded me twice. It’s like there’s a big blank space. I put books down and never find them again. I lose my house keys. The only way I seem to be able to remember anything is by writing it on the back of my hand.

I can’t bring myself to tell him. What sort of wife just takes off the symbols of her marriage and forgets where she put them? I just hope they turn up before he – before anyone – notices. And the worst of it, I can see him wondering, sometimes. Clever Mary, with her poison pills coated in sugar. Cunning as a dunny rat. He doesn’t want to see it, but now she’s dropped the issue into the mix, you would have to have the sensibilities of a stone not to wonder, sometimes.

Sometimes, I wonder myself.

I can’t see the doctor. What do you say, on your first visit to a new bloke who’s doubtless heard about you through the grapevine like everyone else has? Hi, doc, I’m having a few emotional problems. Oh, yes? And what would you say has set these off? Marital difficulties? Family misunderstandings? Career crisis? Bereavement? Well, a bit of everything, really. My dad and brother fed my lover to the sharks of the Barrier Reef.

It would either be cops or loony bin, and neither prospect fills me with joy.

Steadied a little, I try looking again, but it’s gone. Vanished. The square is full of Range Rovers and Volvos and Kas and Peugeots and Vauxhalls and Daihatsus. But there’s no Merc. No green-black stylish chick Merc with AMG multispokes and a cherry-red interior anywhere.

‘Oh God,’ I say, ‘this isn’t happening.’

A woman who’s just come out of the Co-op and paused by me to light a Superking looks up. ‘Are you all right, love?’ she asks, because, depending on the class of people you come across, this part of the world is still one where people notice stuff.

‘My car’s gone,’ I say.

She says the sort of useful thing people always say in these circumstances. ‘Are you sure?’

I nod, gulp.
Oh God, he’s going to be so angry with me
.

And then I remember I’m thinking about Rufus, not my father. I should call him. He’ll know what to do.

And then I remember, say ‘oh God’ again.

‘What?’ she asks, half curiously, half kindly.

‘My phone was in there,’ I tell her, and burst into the sort of noisy tears that makes people nudge each other and swap looks.

She’s amazing. It’s incredible, the kindness people can offer, suddenly, to total strangers. She leads me – Joan’s her name, though I’ll never meet her again – over to the Talbot hotel and buys me something called a whisky mac, which she says will put hairs on my chest. I drink it anyway. It’s good: hot and gingery and fortifying in a sticky sort of way. And then she lends me her phone to call Rufus and sits with me while I wait for him to come.

I’m still alternately cursing and bawling. This is too much. It’s too bloody much.

Joan fishes in her bag and hands me a crumpled tissue. ‘It’s all right,’ she says. ‘I won’t want it back.’

The joke makes me cry some more, and Joan just sits there and pats my hand while I sob and snivel and dribble and wipe my eyes.

‘I can’t bear it,’ I say. ‘I can’t
bear
it.’

‘I know,’ says Joan. ‘There, there.’

It all comes spilling out. ‘It’s the last bloody straw. I’m a million miles from home and my family hate me, and there are holes in the roof and water in the cellar and his family all think I’m totally hatstand, and his granny tried to pay me to go away, and now I’ve even lost the car and I can’t
bear
it.’

‘Ooh, I know,’ she says, turning not a hair, as though I’ve just been telling her about a run-in at the supermarket. ‘Still. It could be worse. At least you’ve got your health.’

They love that phrase. Ooh, your house is on fire. At least you’ve got your health. Old man banged up for defrauding the neighbours? At least you’ve got your health. Lost both legs in a car crash? Never mind. At least you’ve got your health.

‘But I don’t,’ I protest. ‘That’s the thing! I wouldn’t be in this state if I wasn’t feeling so awful!’

‘Oh, dear,’ says Joan. ‘Cold, is it? Or something wrong with your waterworks?’

It’s funny how comfortable people seem to be with discussing their most intimate ailments with strangers when they’d blench at mentioning them to their husbands. ‘I had cystitis for three weeks once,’ says Joan. ‘Awful. Felt like my kidneys were going to burst through my spine.’

‘No,’ I say, ‘it’s everything! I’ve some sort of low-running fever, and I feel sick all the time, and my concentration’s blown, and I’ve got no energy. And the worst thing is, most of the time I can’t even think straight. It’s like my brain’s gone to mush.’

Joan considers this for a bit. ‘Never mind, love,’ she says. ‘It does pass. I was the same with Shelley. All that ‘feeling special’ stuff is nonsense, if you ask me. It was horrible while it lasted, but it does pass. You’ll start feeling better.’

I backtrack. ‘Eh?’

‘It’s just hormones,’ says Joan wisely.

‘Well, that would be comforting,’ I say, ‘if I was up the duff, but I’m not.’

Joan colours slightly. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, darling. It was just the way you were talking. It did sound just like it.’

‘Well, I’m not.’

‘Relieved to hear it,’ she says. ‘I was starting to feel guilty about that whisky mac.’

I blow my nose. ‘Sorry. I guess I
do
sound a bit hormonal, now you mention it.’

‘Women’s troubles, do you think?’

‘I bloody hope not. That’d be all I need.’

‘Probably just the shock,’ she says. ‘You don’t get your car stolen in Stow-on-the-Wold every day, now, do you? Better drink that up. It’ll help.’

I drain my glass. It makes me glow inside. So I go to the bar and get us a refill. At least I haven’t lost my wallet.

‘So you’re living locally, then?’ she asks as I return to the table. This, I realise, is less of a show of interest in my life than a discreet enquiry as to how long Rufus will be. I noticed her checking her watch as I waited to be served.

I sit down. ‘Oh God, yes. I’m so sorry. Yes. My hubby’ll be here any minute. I’m so selfish, keeping you here. Please. You’ve been such a heroine, but there’s no need to stay.’

‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no,’ she says in that British fashion that means ‘thank fuck for that’.

‘You must have things to do. Please. I’ll be fine.’

I don’t know why, but something makes me want her to stay. A need for backup, for someone to look like they believe me. Something. But I know it’s not fair. I can’t just eat into her time like this.

‘Couldn’t possibly,’ she says, which means ‘please ask me one more time and then I’ll feel able to accept’. The indirect way these people communicate can be a pain in the neck. I don’t know how they ever do business. I can’t imagine anyone British ever nailing down a deal.

‘Seriously,’ I say, ‘you’ve been far too kind already. I’m feeling much better.’ It’s true, as well. The ginger in the drink has settled my stomach for the first time in weeks. ‘Go on, do,’ I say, willing her to stay. ‘I’ll be OK.’

‘Well, if you’re sure …’

‘Absolutely. Seriously. I can’t tell you how grateful I am.’

I’ve got this pommy-speak off pat now.

‘Well …’ she pretends to think while she fumbles under the table for her bags, ‘… I’d stay, of course, only Geoff’ll be wondering where his dinner is if I don’t get it on in the next half-hour.’

Dinner? Lunch? That’s right. That’s one of those words they use to tell each other apart with.

‘Get going, then.’

She’s on her feet and sidling towards the door. Changes her mind and pops back to down her drink in one. ‘All right. I hope you don’t have to wait too long. You take care of yourself.’

‘Thank you, Joan. You too.’

The door clatters behind her. I light a cigarette and look around me. It’s only half-eleven, but the pub is already doing brisk trade, mostly, I notice, with knots of Septics whose nationality you could tell without them ever opening their mouths just by seeing the way their backsides hang over the sides of their seats. If the United States ever fell into the sea, I swear they could carry on regardless simply by farming each other’s butt-cracks.

‘Say, miss!’ they cry. ‘Doncha got no non-dairy
Creamer
?’ ‘Say, miss! I asked for
half
-fat jello!’

I don’t even notice Rufus until he’s standing over the table, big bunch of keys dangling from his finger.

‘God, darling, are you OK?’

I get to my feet, take a hug. ‘No, I’m not. I’m bloody not.’

‘What happened?’ He’s eyeing the table over my shoulder, the four empty glasses and the butts in the ashtray.

‘I don’t know. I just came out of the butcher’s and it was gone.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yuh-
huh
.’

‘Have you been drinking?’ His voice is mildly accusatory.

‘Yes. Yes, I have. Since it happened, yes. A nice lady bought me a drink to deal with the shock.’ Why do I feel like I have to be on the defensive?

I’m glad there’s no-one listening to this conversation. We sound a bit too like the long-suffering husband rescuing the dipso missus.

‘I had two drinks, Rufus,’ I say defensively.

‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter. Come on. We’d better go and report it, then I’ll take you home. I’ve got the surveyor and some geologist coming at one to look at the moat.’

I follow him out of the pub. Crisp winter air hits me, makes me momentarily light-headed. I take his arm for support, cover it up as a show of affection. ‘I’m sorry to drag you away. I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘It’s fine, darling. I’m only sorry it’s happened. Where did you park it, anyw—’

He stops, suddenly. Both talking and walking. Puts his hands on his hips and gazes in the direction of Barclays Bank. ‘I thought you said it was gone.’

‘It is,’ I say. ‘I told you. I came out of the butcher’s and—’

And then I stop, too. Because my car sits, shiny and new and undamaged, ten metres down from where I thought I’d left it.

He insists we leave the car where it’s parked while he drives me home. Of course he does. I can’t deny that I’ve been drinking, so it’s inevitable that he thinks all four glasses on the table were mine. After all, if I could imagine I’d lost something as large as a car, I could just as easily have imagined myself up a Joan for company. Christ. If I’d really drunk that much this early in the day, I’d be legless. Edmund would be just starting to cheer up, but I’d be legless.

There’s a telling silence between us as we traverse the green and silver countryside. Even now, in the dead of winter, this land is beautiful: great trees stretching skeletal fingers to the sky, vistas I never saw before opened up broad now the leaves have gone.

I tuck my heels up on the seat, hug my knees, say:

‘Darling, I wasn’t hallucinating. It was gone.’