SO HARD IT is to remember a season gone, a way of life now over. To recall, while the wet white fog coils against the black branches of the winter trees just beyond the window, that only two months ago it had been a golden September day, an Indian summer, and Ivor out there in the sunshine, gathering up dead leaves for the bonfire he would never light. The first bonfire of the season, and he excited as a child about it—a child launching into its fifty-ninth autumn. Excited, too, about tomorrow’s lecture, which he had spent half the vacation preparing: the Hanfield Memorial Lecture, to be delivered two hundred miles away, to an audience of over a thousand learned colleagues from all over the world. It was a singular honour, this Hanfield Memorial Lecture, the culmination of a brilliant career. It was a prize, and Ivor had won it, as he had won so many prizes. Imogen, watching from the kitchen window, had seen the easy swing of his arms as he gathered up the leaves, the triumphant toss of his tawny hair in the sunshine, and had thought, “Thank God he’s in a good mood”—and had gone upstairs to pack his things. Ivor could be terrible sometimes, when an important lecture was ahead of him; though no one would ever have guessed it. Even Imogen herself, watching him on the platform, relaxed, witty, utterly professional, holding his audience in the hollow of his hand—even she, herself, could sometimes hardly believe that this was the same man who had been tearing his family’s nerves to shreds only an hour or two before.
*
There wasn’t much to pack. Just the few things he’d need for a single night at the hotel where he was to stay when the lecture was over. Why he had decided not to stay there, but to set off, a little after midnight, on the two-hundred mile drive along the wet roads, no one would ever know. Well, probably not, anyway. What was the point of knowing? What could anyone have done if they had known …?
*
If … if … if. If he had gone up by train, with Professor Ziegfeld. If Imogen had reminded him to take his proper driving glasses instead of relying on his bifocals. If she had insisted on accompanying him despite his nervous insistence that he needed to be alone. If the long spell of glorious weather hadn’t broken that very evening in floods of autumnal rain. If … if … if … By now, eight weeks later, Imogen’s brain was quite numbed by thinking of all the ways in which it mightn’t have happened.
Not at the beginning, though. At the beginning, her brain had seemed unusually alert, and curiously detached. She hadn’t even felt surprised to get a long-distance call from the hospital in the middle of the night: it was as if she had been expecting it all along.
“Yes,” she’d said. “Yes, I see. Yes, thank you very much. Thank you for telling me,” and she’d set down the phone and gone into the kitchen to look at the time.
Three forty-five a.m.: and presently, just as it was getting light, it all happened all over again. The police, this time.
“Thank you. Yes. Thank you,” she said once more and then, “No, I’m not alone, my son’s here,” she’d lied; and heard the relief in the bothered, unknown voice before it pinged into silence.
Ha ha! Foiled! She felt cunning, a bit of a devil, for having brought off the small deception. Now they’d leave her alone, stop pestering her. Stop trying to foist Ivor’s death on her like a wrongly-addressed parcel.
He couldn’t be dead yet, she wasn’t ready for it, he’d have to wait. He’d said he wouldn’t be back till the Sunday evening, and now here he was, dead, first thing in the morning. It was too soon, too early, how could she be ready at such an hour? Besides, she was busy, there was too much to do.
Like the jumble.
“Yes, it’s just about ready,” she said vaguely, bundling the last oddments into a cardboard box while Mrs Fielding from the Red Cross stood, smiling and tired, in the damp sunshine outside.
“Yes, quite well, thank you,” Imogen heard herself saying, like a parrot, as she edged Mrs Fielding and the cardboard box, and all the bits and pieces, off the premises. “Yes, fine, thanks … Yes, we really must, mustn’t we? … Yes, one of these days … Yes, that would be very nice … Yes. Thank you. Yes …”
Gone at last. Again Imogen felt this flicker of sly triumph. Because, of course, all the while no one knew what had happened, then it hadn’t happened. Not quite. Not yet. It was like a game, this dodging about, putting them off the scent, not letting herself get trapped into telling them.
How long could she keep it up?
All day, apparently, while the tap dripped into the sink, and the tin clock ticked noisily, racing perilously onwards, heedless of its destination: until towards dusk, it faltered, and fell silent, because it hadn’t been wound.
“Very well, thank you,” she heard her parrot voice saying, quite brightly, to the two or three people who rang up about this or that during the course of the long afternoon, and then during the quietly encroaching night. Yes thank you. Yes, of course. And yes, the lecture had gone off very well, thank you, wasn’t that nice?
So it had, probably, very likely, for all she knew: but this time, as she laid the phone down, she felt, for the very first time, a tiny flicker of unease. Something, somewhere, was not quite as it should be.
The feeling passed, though, in less than a second: and she was sitting listening to the tap again, quite peacefully. It was like an old friend by now, restful and undemanding. She could have stayed in its company for ever.
It was a sort of laziness, really, putting-off Ivor’s death like this. Like putting-off the writing of a difficult letter. Tomorrow would be time enough.
*
But when tomorrow came, it came with a thundering on the door: with a sobbing, and a clamour, and tumult of questions and answers as they all surged in: and carelessly, through the swinging front door, they let Reality slip in past them. Out of the windy autumn morning, early still, with the clatter of milk-bottles, the thing came at her, like a gigantic wave, and sent her reeling.
“Dead!” she gasped, staring at them. “Ivor dead?” and such was her blankness, her total, unfeigned shock, that no one—until a little later, it was forced upon them—would ever have dreamed that she had heard the news already: had known it all perfectly well for more than twenty-four hours.
“PROFESSOR’S WIDOW PRETENDS HUSBAND STILL LIVING!” proclaimed one of the dailies a couple of mornings later; and really, you could hardly blame them, such a mix-up it all was of conflicting reports.
“I wasn’t pretending, I was only lying!” Imogen sobbed when she saw it: and “There, there” said her bewildered relatives, patting and stroking, and assuring her that they quite understood.
They didn’t, of course: and neither did Imogen: but quite soon the need for understanding was overlaid by the need to organise cars for the funeral, and to sort out the squabbles about the flowers. Someone who’d sent a huge wreath of lilies had had their name affixed to a meagre bunch of wilting chrysanthemums; and for a while, naturally, this had taken precedence over grief and loss.
*
But how to summarise all this for Robin? There he lay, lounging against the pillows, expectant, only thirty years old, and still thinking that there are explanations for things. He was waiting for his stepmother to tell him the true story in words—and not too many of them, at that. He was curious about the mystery, certainly, but on guard lest it should prove boring.
“I don’t know, Robin. That first day—I told you—I can’t remember much about it. The doctor said I was in a state of shock—”
As she spoke, she realised, for the first time, that the doctor had been quite simply right. She had been in a state of shock. Until now, it had seemed like a guilty excuse.
Excuse for what? Heartlessness? Cowardice? Or simply for depriving Ivor of his first, exciting day of being mourned? He’d have resented that, certainly, and there was no way, now, of restoring it to him. First love, first job, first day of being dead—they only come once, and if you’ve missed them, you’ve missed them.
“Does it matter?” she asked after a moment, finding Robin’s eyes still fixed on her, thoughtfully.
He shrugged.
“Only to me,” he answered drily. “You’re in the clear, as you pointed out, because of all those phone calls, proving that you were innocently at home all night. But you see, Step, in the course of the night’s phone-in you seem to have mentioned to someone that your son was there with you.
“I wasn’t: and that’s made them curious, you see, to know where I was. And I don’t see why I should tell them.”