The Likes of Us (33 page)

Collins left the house early next morning to drive to a business appointment in Birmingham. Madge stayed in bed until he'd gone. She had slept only fitfully, coming awake after each shallow spell to a shocking awareness of the catastrophe which faced her. Always, at every stage of her life, she had felt herself capable of controlling matters to her satisfaction. What she could not mould or shape to her image of what was fitting and proper for her she had avoided with an unerring instinct. And now, to be led to this pass... The humiliation of it seared her. She coloured up, her cheeks flaming, as she pondered the implications of it. She was supposed to lunch with a friend but she telephoned and cried off, giving a bad headache as her excuse; she did not, for once, feel herself capable of getting through the occasion without betraying something of what she was feeling. And no-one must know. Not a soul must entertain the slightest suspicion that all wasn't well, until she had had time to think what she could do.

Sometime about mid-morning she went into her husband's study. There was a drawing-board on a flat table, a couple of filing cabinets, and a divan bed that Collins had often slept on when working late at night. He had slept there last night and the rumpled sheets were thrown back as he had left them. She looked at the roll-top desk where he kept personal papers. It was locked. She was consumed with curiosity about the girl. Would she, if she broke open the desk, find something she could defend herself with? No, she would not be seen to lose control in that vulgar way.

Collins would not be back until late. There was nothing she could do until she could talk to him again, try some different approach, make promises, get him to see reason. Plead with him, if it came to that. Yes, she would
plead
. Would he realise then, when she begged him, that she too was a human being with needs outside herself? And what would be left of her then, when she had so humbled herself? She clenched her fists and beat them at the air in her exasperation.

She tried to read. Then she sat before the television set during the afternoon's schools' programmes, smoking incessantly. Later, she did a little desultory housework. She had not been out of the house, feeling that her dilemma was written across her face for all the world to see. She had made lunch of an apple and a glass of milk; now she cooked herself an omelette and ate it at the kitchen table.

She didn't believe it; that was her trouble. She just didn't believe it was happening to her.

At seven the doorbell rang. There was a police sergeant on the step.

‘Mrs Collins?'

‘Yes.'

‘Mrs Edgar Collins?'

‘That's right.'

‘I wonder if I could come in for a minute, Mrs Collins. It's about your husband.'

She led the way into the sitting-room, then turned to face him. ‘What it is?' It came to her as she spoke. ‘Has there been an accident?'

‘I'm afraid so, Mrs Collins. Nottinghamshire County Constabulary came through to us just now. A pile-up on the
M
1. Eight cars involved, one of them your husband's.'

‘You've no idea how
–
?'

‘I have a number for you to ring. It's the hospital they took him to.'

‘And you've no idea whether he's badly hurt?'

‘You ring that number, Mrs Collins. I'll hang on a minute while you do.'

She went to the telephone. Collins was gravely ill, a woman's voice told her. Yes, she could go down if she wished but she would be able to look at him for only a minute or two, and he would not know her, because he was unconscious.

She rang off and
'
phoned her father. Adam Greenaway came straight over to pick her up.

They spoke little as they went south down the motor-way, except for one exchange when Adam Greenaway said:

‘I heard it on the six o'clock news. Listened to 'em and thought nothing of it. Eight cars. Rain after a dry spell. Greasy road. Somebody going too fast and can't pull up in time. Then you've got a pile-up. People get hurt in cars every day, yet you somehow never think of it happening to someone close.' He grunted. ‘No, that's not right. You always think of it happening to someone close; never to
yourself. I remember when you and Catherine were still at home, how on edge I'd be when you were out in the car in doubtful weather. But Edgar's such a damned good driver. Fast, but as safe as houses.'

‘You can't always account for the other person,' Madge said.

‘No, that you can't. Too many damned maniacs on the road nowadays. There was a time when driving was a pleasure. Not any more. D'you know, I've been on the motorway and actually had chaps pass me on the inside?'

An hour later they stood in turn at the porthole window of an intensive care room and looked at what they could see of Edgar Collins lying inside the shiny transparent skin of an oxygen tent. He could have been anybody. He had multiple injuries, the sister said, and they couldn't deny the gravity of his condition. Had they driven far?

Madge told her.

‘It's a long way. Of course, you can visit when you like, but there's not much you can do until he recovers consciousness.'

‘I shall come,' Madge said.

‘Of course,' Adam Greenaway said. ‘I shall bring you. Don't worry about that.'

‘I should telephone in the morning and see if there's any change.'

Madge asked about Collins' personal effects. ‘His keys in particular. They'll be needed for his business.'

‘Yes, of course.'

The sister brought Collins' things and Madge signed for them.

‘You're sure you'll be all right on your own?' Adam Greenaway asked when he drew up at her door. ‘Wouldn't you rather come home for a day or two?'

‘I shall be all right,' Madge said. ‘In any case, I gave them this phone number to ring if there's any news.'

She went in, took off her coat, and smoked a cigarette before going upstairs with the keys and into Collins' study. She opened the roll-top desk and went through the papers. Most of them concerned matters she already knew about: Collins had kept no business secrets from her and they had regularly discussed the contracts he was working on. Then she found what she was looking for: a large square envelope containing letters from a woman, addressed to Collins at his office and marked ‘personal'. She expressed regret that when she had fallen in love it had to be with a married man. It was up to him. If he said go away, leave him alone, she would; but not before he said it. Another letter was from a seaside town where she was on holiday. She was missing Collins badly, imagining him there, their having dinner together, then walking on the beach in moonlight... Madge's mouth curled. How the girl had thrown herself at him, blatantly, without reservation. Where was her pride? How had she known he wasn't just using her for a brief period of amusement? And then, once she was sure of him, the screw was turned:
...if there were children involved I wouldn't say these things; but there's only you and her, and she can more than take care of herself. How long are we to go on like this, wasting our chances of happiness together while the years slip steadily by? I want to give you children and I don't want to leave it too late. You say you'll speak to her. Do it. Settle it. Come to me and I'll be everything you'll ever need...' There was a photograph too; it showed the face of a reasonably good-looking dark-haired girl who smiled slightly at the camera. Madge put everything away and had a hot bath. Then she drank some whisky and took a couple of sleeping-pills and went to bed.

There was no change in Collins' condition when she rang the hospital in the morning. He was still unconscious, and seriously ill. She drove down with her father again in the evening. The sister they had seen before brought a doctor to speak to Madge. He took her to one side.

‘I'm sorry to have to tell you, Mrs Collins, but the situation is very grave.'

‘He's not improving at all?'

The man shook his head. ‘There's damage to the brain as well, you see. We might relieve that a little if we operated, but it's major surgery and in his condition he just couldn't stand it.'

‘I see. So…'

‘He's slipping; losing his hold. We're doing everything we can, but…' He shrugged regretfully.

‘How long?'

‘Now that's hard to say. He could surprise us all and
–
'

‘Twenty-four hours?' Madge said. ‘A couple of days?'

She went back to her father. ‘Bad?' She nodded.

‘You can take me home tonight, but first thing in the morning I shall pack a bag and drive back and book in at an hotel. I want to be near.'

‘As bad as that?' Adam Greenaway said.

The telephone was ringing as Madge let herself into the house. She ran to it. A young woman's voice asked:

‘Mrs Collins?'

‘Speaking.'

‘Could you tell me how Mr Collins is, please?'

‘Who is that?' Madge said.

‘I don't think it... I'm a friend of his. They told me at his office which hospital he was in, but when I rang them they were rather evasive.'

‘They don't hold out any hope,' Madge said clearly. ‘They think he's going to die.'

Madge heard a long shuddering sigh on the line. She waited. In a moment the girl said:

‘I wonder if... You see, I don't think they'll let me
–
'

Madge cut her short. ‘I'm afraid that's out of the question.' She replaced the receiver.

 

Edgar Collins died twenty-seven hours later, early in the morning. Madge was in the room when it happened. There was no change that she could discern and she recognised the moment only when the sister, who was checking apparatus on the other side of the bed, suddenly peered intently at Collins then hurried out to get the doctor. He came in, looked at what the sister had seen, then lifted up the side of the transparent tent to lean over the bed. He straightened up and turned to Madge.

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Collins. I'm afraid he's gone.'

Madge got up off the chair in the corner and approached the bed. ‘Can I look at him now?'

Adam Greenaway took over the arranging of the funeral in consultation with the friend whom Collins had named as executor of his estate. Before giving this man access to Collins' papers Madge took out of the desk the letters and the photograph of the girl. She tore them into small pieces and burned them on the sitting-room fire. She informed the managers of both of Collins' offices that they were to close on the day of the funeral. Then she took her address book and wrote and posted a large number of black-edged cards.

On the funeral morning Madge, dressing alone in her room, looked out of the window at the many cars standing in the drive and along the street. The voices of people calling to pay their respects before the coffin left the house had been heard in the hall for an hour or more. Adam Greenaway was receiving them but soon now she would have to go down and face them herself.

She sat down at her dressing table and applied just a touch of almost colourless lipstick to her mouth. She wore no other make-up. Her hairdresser had visited the house yesterday, as had her dressmaker three days before. Now Madge took her hat and placed it on her head. Composedly, she looked at herself in the glass.

It was odd, she thought, how appropriate to one's nature the turns of life could be. Not that she was glad of Edgar's death. She would miss him a great deal. But she had been about to lose him anyway. And she could never have seen herself as a divorced or deserted woman. Everything in her recoiled from the picture. It cast doubt upon her, put her into an area of fallibility, in which she could be judged and possibly found wanting. Divorced? they would have said, their minds speculating. No matter that she would have been the innocent party; people would accept the legal apportioning of blame while nevertheless wondering how much and in what way she herself had been at fault. But bereavement and widowhood... these she could bear, and earn the admiration of her friends for her fortitude in the face of a blow from a malign providence. And her dignity.

She got up, made a last appraisal of herself in the full-length glass, and went out of her room and along the landing to the head of the stairs. She paused then, looking down at the people in the hall. Her presence communicated itself to most of them and they turned to watch her as, steadily, she began to descend. It came to her clearly then, in a thought too private – too harsh even – ever to be revealed. But she could not hide its precise expression from herself, for every face turned up to her was evidence of its truth. She was saved.

 

A Bit of a Commotion

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a bit of a commotion in the bus station this morning. An old woman, crossing between two islands, got herself knocked down by a double-decker swinging in from the street. I was near enough to it but I didn't actually see anything, standing there reading the paper, hunched into the collar of my coat against the cold. Soon enough there are people bending over her and others craning their necks to see. An inspector makes his way across from a bus he's just boarded and he's joined by a second one from the office. They push their way into the middle and in a few seconds the one from the office is out again and going back where he came from, at a trot.

I watch a chap in overalls leave the scene and come over to join the queue I'm in.

‘What's going on?'

‘It's an old woman. Got knocked down.'

‘You'd think they'd have more sense than to wander about out there.'

‘Nay, some of them buses come in at a rare lick.'

‘Is she hurt bad?'

‘They can't tell. She's unconscious. They're debating whether to move her or leave her there till the ambulance comes.'

‘Them buses come round that corner too fast,' a woman says.

‘Well, you know that, so you've to take care.'

‘She's nobbut an old woman.'

‘So if she's short-sighted or hard of hearing, and not so nimble, she ought to take more care.'

‘You'll be old yourself one day,' the woman says to me. ‘Aye, happen so.'

‘She's somebody's mother,' the woman mutters, which strikes me as a bloody silly thing to say. After all, it's the old woman herself who's laid out there, not her son or her daughter.

‘Let's hope it doesn't throw the services back,' I say, and I wish I hadn't then because I catch a couple of looks which show they're thinking I'm a right hard case. But I was just speaking my thoughts aloud. Because it would be just my luck that it's happened this morning, when I've turned over a new leaf. I'll get no mercy from Etherington, old woman or no old woman. He's told me about being late often enough and yesterday's was his final warning.

‘One more time this month, Gravener, and you're out. Five minutes or half an hour won't make any difference. You'll be finished. I mean it. Absolutely and positively. Out.' He walks away, and turns back. ‘And don't think you can get round it by taking the day off. I shall be satisfied with nothing less than a doctor's note.'

So one day means taking a week and convincing a doctor that I'm badly. And no money except a couple of days' sick pay.

Phyllis is no help, the idle cow. No getting up for her half an hour before me and chivvying me about and sending me out with a good hot breakfast. Turning over for another hour's kip is all she's good for; that and queening it down at the pub every night. Still, I was the one who fell for her sharp tits, her long legs, and that ‘come and get me if you're big enough' look. I shan't get another job with as much money as this one; and we need every penny we can get, believe you me, the way she can spend it.

So I'm standing there getting more and more worked up while the crowd's still gathered in the middle of the station and the buses are held up outside until the ambulance arrives. I know I should have come for an earlier bus still, and given myself twenty minutes to spare; but it's too late to think about that now. It's too late for everything except going back home and collecting my money and cards on Friday. We're not on the clock at our place but there's no getting past Etherington standing in that yard at eight sharp and seeing that everybody's in.

There's nobody downstairs when I get back home. Phyllis turns over in bed to look at me when I've stamped up the stairs.

‘Don't you ever get out o' bed till dinnertime?'

‘What you doing back here?'

‘There's been an accident in the bus station. Everything's running late.'

‘Well, couldn't you go, and tell 'em?'

‘You know I told you I'd had my last warning.'

‘What are you doing now, then?'

‘I've come back. I'll fetch me money and cards on Friday.'

‘You an' your turning over new leaves,' she says.

‘A lot of bloody help you've been. A right wife 'ud have been up to send me off right. Anyway, I've told you; it's not my fault.'

‘You're old enough to look after yourself. Only you can't do owt right, can you?'

‘I did the first thing wrong when I wed you, you useless cow.'

‘You know what you can do if you don't like it.'

‘Aye! An' I'll start now.'

I grab the bedclothes and uncover her with one heave; then as she starts to struggle up I lace into her, slapping her about the bed till her yells and curses give way to tears. Then I stop and stand back, looking at her, half satisfied, half sorry at what I've done.

In a while she stops crying, twists on the bed, and gets up.

‘No man does that to me, Harry Gravener.'

‘One just has.'

‘Aye, and it's the bloody last time.'

I leave her and go downstairs where I put the frying-pan on the ring, thinking that now I've the time I might as well at least have a right breakfast. I've got everything nicely sizzling and popping and a pot of tea on the brew when Phyllis comes down, dressed to go out and with a little case in her hand.

‘Where d'you think you're going?'

‘Out. And I shan't be back.'

‘If you can find a better hole than this, get off to it. There isn't another feller who'd put up with your ways for a week.'

‘Thanks. We shall see.'

I turn back to the cooker and hear the door shut behind her, which takes me aback a bit because I didn't expect her to go without a bit more argument. If she went at all. I sit down and get on with my bacon and eggs, thinking she'll be back.

There's no sign of her by eight o'clock. But I've already decided that I'll give her a day or two to cool down and come to her senses before I make any move to look for her.

I go down to the pub for want of something better to do and one of the first people I see is Walt Henshaw from the yard.

‘What's been up with you today, then? Badly?'

‘Oh, I didn't feel so well this morning so I laid in.'

‘You'd better have another couple, then, and get a sick note for Etherington.'

‘Bugger Etherington, and his job an' all.'

‘I thought you were late again when you didn't turn up at eight.'

‘I expect Etherington thought that an' all. I can just see him standing there rubbin' his hands an' waiting to finish me.'

‘No, he wasn't there to watch for latecomers today. He no sooner got there than he was called away again, by a phone call.'

‘Oh?'

‘Aye. It was his mother. Seems she got knocked down in the bus station this morning.'