The ring came at the front door before lunch.
Ella, who was practising controlled breathing as she came up the hall, saw Josef’s tousled head looking out at his doorway and called out, ‘It’s all right Josef. I’ll get it.’
Panic, eagerness. That wouldn’t do.
She opened the door and thought she was looking at David.
‘Mrs Ferguson? Detective Constable Vernon. I think you are expecting me.’
‘Yes, that’s right. Come in, please.’
The impression had been momentary, a matter of figure and stance as he stood, his face obscured, with his back to the light. It was still disconcerting. It emphasised the decline in her social standing and might offer a dangerous temptation to relax and lower her guard.
It was a matter of movement, too, she saw as he walked with her down the corridor and into her room.
‘I didn’t realise you had your own entrance. I’m afraid I disturbed the fellow next door.’
‘It’s about time for Josef to get up. I suppose it might have made him wonder if you’d been in uniform.’
‘Rattling my handcuffs.’
This would not do. She must not be put at her ease – though that was clearly the young man’s intention. He radiated reassurance like a friendly dentist.
‘I won’t keep you long, Mrs Ferguson. You will know we are investigating a break in’ – he took a notebook from his pocket and turned its pages like an ordinary policeman – ‘at Number One Woodrow Avenue Acacia Heights. Your previous home, I believe.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘We are checking dates, trying to fix the time of the break in. Your daughter says the house was in order when she went in to move some furniture out on the second of the month. You paid a visit to the house during the relevant period, I believe. Can you tell me the date of that visit?’
‘It was after Sophie had been in, because the furniture was gone. It was the Tuesday – yes, it must have been the fifth, then. I went to fetch my sewing machine.’
‘What time of day was that?’
‘In the afternoon. Early afternoon. Perhaps half past 2.’
‘And everything was in order then?’
‘Yes.’
When I went in.
‘I see.’
He closed his notebook and said confidentially, ‘By the way, what’s a gobsucker?’
She started, blushed and stared at him, incapable of speech.
There was nothing in his face but friendship. The conspiratorial grin he wore was almost a wink. You and I are having a fine joke on the world, it said.
‘I couldn’t say.’
Clinging to a straw of truth, she added, ‘I’ve never heard the word.’
‘No, I suppose not.’
He stood up and said earnestly, ‘I’m sorry to say, Mrs Ferguson, that we haven’t much hope of apprehending the culprits. There was too great a lapse of time between the break in and the report to the police. If we could fix the time of the offence we could interview a few likely suspects, but as it is …’
Go free.
‘Well, I’m sure you did what you could.’
‘Oh, yes. We try.’
But we don’t always try our hardest.
‘Well, thanks for your help. Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.’
You’d better get out before I kiss you, thought Ella as she opened the hall door for him and said goodbye.
‘Nice young fellow, that,’ said Josef in the kitchen. ‘Family?’
When Josef wanted to know something, he asked.
‘No, just a friend.’
Was there no such word as gobsucker, then? She was sure she had seen it written up somewhere – that or something very like it. Well, lucky that ink had been washable.
Now she could see to it that Becky got her rug. When she had eaten her lunch of fruit and cheese she rang the University and left a message for Dr Vorschak, asking him to call her as soon as it was convenient.
She didn’t know what to expect of Max. He had made the effort to bring Becky to see her, but he hadn’t repeated the visit and he hadn’t honoured the lunch invitation either. She thought it was a matter of good intentions defeated by adverse circumstances. She couldn’t expect him to destroy his marital peace on her account.
The phone call at least came promptly.
Max was jovial.
‘Why, Mother, this is splendid. How are you? How are things going with you?’
‘Very well, thanks. The reason I rang, Max. I’ve been hooking a nursery rug for Becky and now that I’ve finished it I’d like you to take it to her. Would you mind calling round for it? Seeing that you’re so close, I thought …’
Max paused too long.
So that she will always have something from me, so that she will know I love her. Don’t deny me that.
‘Of course. She will be very happy about that. This afternoon? I am here till 5. I could come then.’
‘That would be fine. Do you need directions?’
‘No, I have the directory.’
‘Please come to the side door with the little porch. You can drive right in.’
She put down the phone and thought about that pause for reflection. It seemed sinister, though Max had been friendly.
How had she ever got to be the villain in this drama?
It was the money, no doubt, the long, bitter struggle over money.
Sometimes she could understand Martha’s dislike of the getters and strivers. That struggle had made a sad change in David, which could explain Martha’s depression. As for Max, he was probably friendly with that one … no use speculating.
She wasn’t going to unroll the rug and sit crying over Becky all afternoon, either. It was her farewell to Becky; that had to be endured in silence.
Shopping was the only resource. She decided to award herself the crimson bowl she had been hankering for since she had seen it in the window of Kitchens Plus. That would encourage her to spend the rest of the afternoon polishing the utilitarian wardrobe-dressingtable combination where she intended to place it.
That program proved satisfactory. There was nothing like a job of polishing for working off mental anguish. She was standing back to admire the result of her work when Max knocked at the outer door.
‘Wherever you are, Mother, you make a home. Those curtains must be of your making, I think.’
‘They are sheets, really. You couldn’t get such designs in anything else. You think it works? It’s not overpowering?’
This was a serious question needing an honest answer. She had been working to transform the room into a setting where she could invite the young people to dinner without shame. Success was essential; if the effect was amateurish, she would be touching the string of pathos and making them miserable. If she was successful, of course, they would fear she was settling in, rejecting the nice little unit they talked of so fondly. There was too much sensitivity about, altogether, but knowing her children, she thought greed would prevail and they would forget their worries for a homecooked dinner.
Max, endearingly, was giving serious consideration to the curtains.
‘Perhaps, if your colours were not so subtle. No, it looks very effective. The height of the ceiling is the good point of the room. You accentuate that with the vertical drape. Very good, I think.’
‘I got the grandfather chair at the local antique shop. I couldn’t do it, of course, if the landlord weren’t such a nice man. He’s been very helpful. Well, Becky’s rug.’
His reaction to the rug, when she unrolled it, was satisfactory.
‘Enchanting. Enchanting. You said a nursery rug. I was expecting Little Bo-Peep.’
‘I hoped it would do for more years than that.’
‘I am sure that it will. What a beautiful piece of work. I hope very much, you know, that she has inherited your talent.’
Ella was thinking in astonishment, ‘Talent?’ – a word she connected with Rob and with William – when Max astonished her further.
‘But of course I cannot deliver it for you. You must bring it to her yourself.’
‘Do you mean now, this evening?’
‘Why not this evening?’
‘Caroline won’t be expecting me.’
‘There is such a thing as the telephone, is there not? You must have a telephone here.’
‘In the hall.’
‘Then I shall use it.’
She heard Max say, ‘Just a friend. With a nice surprise.’
He should give her warning.
Was that tactlessness – always a possibility with Max, though not usually to this extent – or was it deliberate unkindness?
Unkindness from Max to Caroline was something new.
Travelling beside him with her passport rolled on the back seat of the car, she reflected that Max was not making things easy for her, either. Whatever his intentions, the best she could do was make it clear to Caroline that she had no part in them.
‘Max took me quite by surprise,’ she would say. ‘I wanted him to deliver …’ No, leave it at that. ‘Max took me quite by surprise.’
It was the worst scenario.
Caroline in her best hostess gown came smiling into the hall to greet the visitor, and halted, looking shocked.
He could have spared her that, thought Ella, but Max, who had always registered and suffered every atom of Caroline’s pain, did not intend to spare her. With his arm round Ella in a most unusual gesture, he said jovially, ‘Here’s Mother come to see us, with a lovely surprise for Becky.’
‘I’ve made her a rug.’
‘She’s in the living room.’
She led the way.
Becky in pyjamas and dressing-gown was building a tower of blocks, which collapsed as she stood up shouting, ‘Grandma!’
‘Come and see what Grandma had brought you.’
Glad to be rid of her awkward burden, Ella spread the rug, to which Becky paid no attention, since she was rolling on the floor, giggling in an excess of delight.
‘Oh, I don’t see you. I don’t see you for a very long time.’
‘Come and give me a cuddle then.’
Sitting in an armchair and taking the little girl on her knee, she hoped that this might reach Caroline later, though she couldn’t be expected to smile over it in a moment of defeat.
‘It’s very pretty,’ said Caroline, looking at the rug.
‘Pretty is not the word,’ said Max. ‘It has the charm of the primitive combined with the skill of execution. It is unique.’
Now you’re being clever at her, Max. That’s enough.
He added, ‘She will come to love it later.’
Ella hugged Becky’s warm, heavy little body while Becky, still giggling with delight, nuzzled against her shoulder.
‘I’d rather she loved me now.’
‘We want Grandma to come and see us much more often, don’t we, Becky?’
‘Yes, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.’
Caroline said, ‘It’s time she was in bed.’
Becky was gracious.
‘Grandma may put me to bed tonight.’
‘If that’s all right with Mummy.’
‘She’s been on the pot. She just has to have her teeth cleaned, that’s all.’
‘And a story,’ said Becky.
‘I can manage all that. Say goodnight to Mummy and Daddy, darling.’
She took Becky’s hand and led her away, eager to leave the couple alone and let Caroline have her say. Max’s behaviour had been devious and inconsiderate. Perhaps Caroline wanted to tell him so.
When she came downstairs after tucking Becky in and kissing her goodnight, she found Caroline dishing up roast chicken while Max opened a bottle of wine, both in silence, showing no sign either of war or of friendship.
No Man’s Land.
At the dinner table, in spite of the constraint in the atmosphere, she felt remarkably at home.
But this was home, the very sitting for the domestic dinner table – guilty secret (hers, this time and she’d never regret it), buried hatred (still Caroline, alas), while Max was playing her own part as the embodiment of the three wise monkeys, hearing no evil, seeing no evil, speaking no evil.
Virtuous Upbringing. That was its name. Pam had brought back a postcard of that panel, from a temple in Japan, with the carving of the three wise monkeys. ‘Virtuous Upbringing’ it was called.
‘Don’t be rude to Caroline, Sophie.’ ‘David, pass Sophie the bread. You shouldn’t need to be asked. You should be watching.’ ‘Yes, Dad.’ ‘And Sophie, you shouldn’t be stretching after it, you know. You should ask.’ ‘Yes, Mum.’
While inwardly the separate worlds were turning …
Just as well one didn’t know.
They had minded their manners and cleaned their plates. The rest she couldn’t answer for.
And how much was Max carrying in silence?
Hamfisted Harry. If Rob knew that name, so must Max, unless he had shut his eyes and his ears. If he hadn’t managed to do that, he had certainly shut his mouth. There was more to Max than met the eye.
‘Have you made any plans for the future, Mother? I suppose you won’t want to live in a room for ever. Though you have made it really very charming. You must see it, Caroline.’
‘It’s an interesting experience. I’m quite comfortable, really. No, it won’t be for ever. David and Martha are househunting, you know, and I’d like to buy something near them.’
She wished she hadn’t said that. Caroline’s mouth had tightened to a line of pain.
‘Of course. They are such a support to you, you must want to be near them. I wish we could have done more.’
Caroline looked up.
‘Do you think you could clear your things out of the house soon? It’s very awkward, you know, when Dad is trying to let it.’
‘But that is one thing we can do for Mother. We can pack her things and store them for her here.’
His impervious cheerfulness was beginning to fret Ella, too.
‘Would you mind calling me Ella, Max? I would prefer it.’
That didn’t ruffle him, either.
‘Of course. I am honoured. It is more modern, is it not?’
She must stop this discreet sniping at Max in Caroline’s defence.
There it was – she could never be immune to Caroline’s suffering. Whatever blight had fallen on her, whatever pain it was that could get relief only in giving pain to others, Ella suffered them, too. One felt just as much for the emotional cripple as for any other handicapped child.
Between the chicken and the mousse she gave up at last. It was out of season, the complex of guilt and sympathy, love and frustration she felt for Caroline. Time to be done with it.
‘This is a good chocolate mousse. It isn’t my recipe, is it?’
‘No. It’s out of Margaret Fulton. Max likes the orange flavour.’
‘Oh.’
It was one of those dinners where one is truly grateful for the wine.
Max drove her home.
During the journey they spoke little. As he stopped the car at her door, he said, ‘You must come again very soon, Ella.’
‘I have to be invited, Max.’
‘But of course you will be invited. I shall telephone you next week. What is the best time?’
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.