Eleanor took the mini, though the pub was so close, preferring to brave the elements on four wheels. The car park was filling up now that it was lunch time, but she found a space; she hadn’t been able to find one on Christmas Eve, or she might never have seen him.
Her foot slipped on the icy ground as she got out, and she walked carefully towards the back entrance. On Christmas Eve, she had had to park in Castle Road; she had used the main entrance. And so had Graham Elstow, coming in as she was going out, the mere sight of him tearing at emotions already exposed by George’s visit.
She pushed open the door, and found herself glancing along the corridor to the bar, checking who was there. But Graham Elstow was one person she was never going to bump into again. The phone was being used; Eleanor waited, her face hot with the memory of that day, her heart beating too fast. But the man hung up, and said ‘All yours, darling’, as though she wasn’t in an advanced state of panic. She thanked him, and dialled the number, clutching the coin hard, so that her hand didn’t shake too much.
‘Byford 2212.’
‘Is Mr Wheeler there, please?’ Eleanor was surprised at how ordinary her voice sounded.
‘I think so,’ said the voice. Marian’s? Joanna’s? Eleanor didn’t know Marian well enough to tell, and she didn’t know Joanna at all. ‘Who’s calling, please?’
Oh God, she hadn’t thought of that. But come on, Eleanor. Pull yourself together. You’ve called him before – you have business with him. And what’s changed, what’s really changed?
‘Eleanor Langton.’
There was the tiniest of pauses. ‘Just a moment, please.’
She could hear footsteps in the hallway, then muffled voices. ‘Hello – Eleanor?’ He sounded ordinary too. Not like the tortured man he was.
‘George.’ She glanced along the corridor. No one around. And the people in the bar too far away to hear. ‘I’ve had the police,’ she said. There was a silence. Then, ‘Yes?’
‘Yes!’ she said impatiently, ‘I told them you were with me,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said again, ‘I thought you probably would.’
He sounded so unconcerned. So matter-of-fact. What if she’d told them that she hadn’t seen him? Wasn’t that what he’d asked her to do, in his oblique way? Was he relieved or angry that she’d told them?
‘But George—’ She turned her back on the people in the bar. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Thanks for ringing.’
Eleanor realised. ‘Oh, hell, there’s someone with you.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’ve got to talk to you.’
Another silence. ‘Yes – perhaps tomorrow?’ The casual tone was beginning to sound a little desperate.
‘Tomorrow?’ Eleanor echoed. ‘Can’t you come before that?’ ‘No,’ he said, and she could hear paper rustling. ‘No, sorry.’ ‘All right,’ she said weakly.
‘Fine. Tomorrow, then. First thing.’
Eleanor hung up, and let out a sigh.
‘Stood you up, has he, love?’
She whirled round, her face burning, to see the man who had been using the phone before her.
He looked a little alarmed. ‘Nothing personal,’ he said. ‘Just a joke.’ He picked up the receiver. ‘At least you got through,’ he said. ‘That’s more than I did.’
Eleanor stared at him. What had he heard? Had she said anything? She’d called him George. Oh, George was a common name – she could have been ringing anyone called George. And why would he care, anyway?
She turned and almost ran from the pub.
‘Joanna,’ said her father, as he slowly replaced the receiver. ‘Did you want something?’
She had stayed in his study after she had told him about the call. If she hadn’t, she would have listened in on the hall phone, and conspicuous eavesdropping seemed preferable, morally. ‘What did she want?’ she asked baldly.
‘Just play-group business,’ he said.
‘Play-group business?’ Joanna said angrily. ‘Come off it! All that diary consulting – was that for my benefit? You’re not doing anything just now!’
He slammed his diary shut. ‘I will not be cross-examined about my private phone-calls!’ he shouted.
That was just the problem, thought Joanna. He probably would be. She sat down. ‘That’s where you were on Christmas Eve,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it? You were with her. You told me you’d stayed at the pub.’
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘It’s called bearing false witness, in the trade,’ he said.
‘And what you were doing with her?’ Joanna asked sharply. ‘What’s that called?’
His eyes widened. ‘It’s called minding my own business,’ he said. ‘Just like you were minding yours. You weren’t exactly forthcoming about where you’d been.’
But she hadn’t lied to him. And she hadn’t been . . . She closed her eyes. ‘Is that why Mummy was angry with you?’ she asked.
‘She wasn’t angry with me,’ he said, and he sounded almost wistful.
‘Was that another lie?’
‘No!’ He stood up. ‘It was a possible explanation for her burning the dress, that’s all.’
‘Does she know about you and her?’
‘Now, look!’ He banged his fists down on the desk. ‘Whoever this concerns, Joanna, it does not concern you.’
‘Doesn’t it?’ Joanna asked bitterly. ‘Then why did I find myself lying to the police?’
His body sagged a little, and he sat down heavily. ‘I’m sorry about that,’ he said.
‘Why?’ she asked again. ‘So that you didn’t have to admit that you were with her?’
‘I just didn’t want Eleanor’s name brought into it,’ he said, swivelling the chair round, and looking out of the window.
‘I’ll bet you didn’t.’
‘Have you told them where you were?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, but that wasn’t entirely true.
‘But you still won’t tell me? Or your mother?’
‘No.’ No, no, no . She didn’t want them to know about the baby. Not now. Not ever, but she had very little option about that. Not until they had to, at any rate.
‘Then we’ll just have to respect one another’s privacy, and hope that the police do the same,’ he said.
He was still staring out of the window when Joanna left.
They had spent the afternoon fruitlessly going through the mounds of paperwork that had developed on the Elstow business. Next door, people collated and cross-referenced, and tried to produce some kind of coherent sequence of events from the observations of those not involved, and therefore not likely to be lying. But they were likely to be exaggerating, or imagining things, or simply mistaken. Marian’s movements were checkable, and had been checked. She had called on half a dozen people, staying just a couple of minutes at each place, and would have arrived home at about ten, just as they all said she had. Wheeler had been seen walking up Castle Road; Joanna hadn’t been seen at all. Someone knew that it was the gypsies. If there had been any gypsies, Judy thought, she would have gladly gone and interviewed every one of them. Joanna’s information about the overalls had gone down the pipeline, so now people knew that that might be what they were looking for; at least that was something.
Outside, the afternoon had grown dark, and evening had descended. Another day almost over, and they were no further forward.
‘The overalls are our best lead so far,’ she said, looking up at Lloyd.
‘To what?’ Lloyd got up and stretched, then sat on her desk. ‘To some intruder who went in, saw them, and popped them on just in case he came across someone he wanted very messily to murder?’
Judy shook her head. Lloyd was edgy, ready to dismiss anything she said. He’d been like that since they’d seen Eleanor Langton. ‘Are you still convinced it was one of the family?’ she asked.
Lloyd looked away in disgust. ‘Of course it was,’ he said. ‘I’m still convinced it was Joanna Elstow, if you want to know.’
‘But the doctor confirmed her story,’ said Judy.
Joanna had arrived, a little upset, according to Dr Lomax, some time after half past eight. About quarter to nine, she thought. She had stayed for thirty, forty minutes. Something like that.
‘The friend of the family,’ corrected Lloyd, ‘confirmed her story.’
‘Oh, Lloyd! Do you think the whole village is party to a conspiracy?’
‘I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ he said sourly. ‘A domestic. A domestic – you’re supposed to get there and find someone in tears saying that she was cutting some bread when the knife slipped. And that’s that.’
Judy smiled. ‘I don’t believe she killed her husband,’ she said. ‘For one thing, she wasn’t there – and for another, I don’t believe she wanted to.’ She paused. ‘I think we should take a closer look at Elstow. He was sober when he arrived at the vicarage in the first place,’ she said. ‘What made him get drunk?’
Lloyd sighed. ‘Becoming involved with that bloody family, that’s what,’ he said. ‘It would drive anyone to the bottle.’ He ran a tired hand down his face.
‘But he didn’t drink,’ Judy said. ‘Not as a rule. And why would he choose to just then? He was trying to get Joanna back, not put her off.’
‘And yet he succeeded, according to her,’ said Lloyd, tapping Judy’s notebook. ‘Does that seem likely to you? He arrives drunk, gets drunker, beats her up, and it all ends happily ever after? Or would have done, if the invisible man hadn’t popped in and murdered him?’
Put like that, it seemed highly unlikely, but it had seemed true enough when Joanna had told her about it. If Lloyd had been in a more receptive mood, Judy might have tried to explain that.
‘I think our first theory was right,’ Lloyd said. ‘I think Marian Wheeler was right. Joanna went for him with the poker.’
‘But the time of death is wrong,’ Judy pointed out reasonably. ‘I’m going to get Freddie to have another look at that,’ he muttered.
The overalls. White nylon overalls, which George Wheeler had left in the hall, and which had now disappeared. They were important, thought Judy. If they found the overalls, they might get some answers.
Left in the hall. A thought occurred to her. ‘Wheeler,’ she said. ‘He’d know—’
‘Wheeler doesn’t know if he’s coming or going!’ snapped Lloyd. ‘If you ask me, he doesn’t know what day of the week it is, never mind anything else.’
‘If your theory’s right about Joanna, he’d have to know more than he’s telling us,’ said Judy, stubbornly.
‘Not necessarily. He says he heard the bedroom door close as he went in. That could have been Joanna. Shutting herself in the bedroom with her husband, after she had killed him. Wheeler and his wife go upstairs to change, Joanna creeps down, and into the sitting room, where the original fight took place, and where they found her.’
Judy looked up at him.
‘Don’t look like that! It fits all the forensic evidence. It explains why she didn’t come straight out and tell her parents what had happened. And it means that George Wheeler’s telling the truth, and doesn’t know what the hell’s going on.’
‘Except,’ said Judy patiently, ‘that Freddie says Elstow didn’t die until two hours after that, when Joanna was sitting in the pub.’ Lloyd grinned suddenly. ‘That’s its only drawback,’ he said.
‘So you’re going to ask Freddie if by any chance he’s made a two-hour error on the time of death?’
‘You never know,’ Lloyd said. ‘I’m going to ask him to assume that nothing that we have been told is accurate.’
‘But we know it’s accurate! We know what time they arrived home, we know what time Elstow ate—’
‘We only know because people have told us,’ said Lloyd.
‘The barmaid,’ said Judy. ‘The people at the afternoon service – why would they lie, Lloyd?’
‘People can make mistakes. This is a domestic murder, Judy, whatever way you look at it. The intruder theory is laughable.’ ‘Maybe,’ said Judy. ‘But he did meet someone at the pub.’ ‘According to Joanna,’ said Lloyd.
‘Isn’t there anyone else who might have had it in for him?’ she asked hopefully. She had believed Joanna; she wasn’t going to admit defeat yet.
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘You know there isn’t. He didn’t gamble, he didn’t owe money except in the usual way. We can’t find anything on other women – his own wife admits he didn’t even drink to excess. The one offensive thing he did was to beat his wife.’ He smiled. ‘The house looks as if a bomb’s hit it, but that seems to have been Elstow himself rather than the Battered Wives’ Liberation Army.’
‘Do you think it’s funny?’ Judy asked sharply.
Lloyd sighed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You know I don’t. But if you don’t laugh at this job . . .’ He shrugged.
You cry, thought Judy.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But what have we got here? We’ve got a caveman. Dressed up like an accountant, but a cave-man, all the same. Frustrated and inarticulate – you said that yourself. A man who beats his wife, Judy – you find him with his head bashed in, who do you look for?’
Judy nodded sadly, and Lloyd looked at her, his face serious. ‘You’ve got too involved,’ he said. ‘You like her. You want to believe her. You don’t blame her, do you?’
‘No,’ Judy admitted. ‘Not after what he did to her.’
‘See?’ said Lloyd. ‘What are you defending, Judy? Her innocence? Or her actions?’
She’d walked right into the trap. But there was no triumph in his voice.
‘Joanna was home before anyone else,’ Lloyd went on. ‘Saying she had been locked out.’
‘She had been,’ Judy said. ‘Marian had locked the doors.’ ‘Why?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Because she’d found Elstow’s body,’ said Judy.
‘Why lock the doors?’ Lloyd repeated.
Judy had just accepted it, until now. Marian had locked up the house in order that no one would find Elstow’s body. But why shouldn’t it have been found? What difference did it make?
‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly.
‘She didn’t,’ Lloyd said. ‘She didn’t lock the doors at all. There was no reason to, whether or not there was a body in the bedroom. But there wasn’t, because Elstow was in the bedroom, alive. And whoever murdered him locked the doors.’ He sat back. ‘And then claimed that she had been locked out all along,’ he added.
‘The time of death is still wrong,’ said Judy. ‘Elstow had been dead half an hour before Joanna got back from Dr Lomax.’ Lloyd made an impatient noise. ‘No one was synchronising their watches, Judy! It’s all arounds and abouts. Joanna says she got back at around nine-thirty – Freddie says Elstow died at about nine o’clock. Easy enough to lose half an hour that way.’
‘Before nine o’clock,’ Judy reminded him, then realised that she had been steered completely off course. ‘And anyway,’ she said. ‘There’s the overalls.’
‘What about them?’
‘You’ve seen the house,’ she said. ‘Whatever else Mrs Wheeler may be, she’s a very conscientious housewife.’ Lloyd had entertained her to a number of things which, in his opinion, Mrs Wheeler was. ‘And it seems that he left these overalls in the hall,’ Judy said. ‘Mrs W. was doing a washing, wasn’t she? I don’t think she’d leave a pair of dirty overalls in the hall for long – especially not when it was all decked out for Christmas. I think,’ she said simply, ‘that she would have washed them.’
Lloyd got off her desk and walked around, which meant that he was actually thinking about what she had said. ‘And if she did wash them,’ he said slowly, ‘then the intruder would have had to know that he was going to need overalls. And that he could find a nice pair all washed and tumble-dried in the machine.’
Judy nodded. ‘And when we took the washing away, Marian Wheeler knew the overalls should have been there,’ she said. ‘But they weren’t.’
Lloyd stared at her. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Of course. That’s when she bundled Joanna off to bed.’ He sat on her desk again. ‘Did you notice what she was like when she came back?’ he asked.
Judy had. Marian Wheeler had been distracted, unsettled. Her mind seemed to be somewhere else altogether. ‘She kept looking at George,’ Judy said. ‘And he’s the one who threatened Elstow in the first place. He’s the one who lied about where he was.’ At last, Lloyd was really listening. ‘Marian Wheeler wasn’t protecting Joanna at all,’ said Judy. ‘She was protecting George. Because if Elstow had died at five, we would hardly have been asking her where she was two hours later, would we? She knew that. Perhaps it was never Joanna she suspected in the first place.’
Lloyd tore a piece off her blotter, and rolled it into a ball as he thought. ‘But when did he do it?’ he asked, flicking the pellet at the wastepaper bin, and missing.
‘Would Mrs Langton give him an alibi, do you think?’ Judy asked.
Another pellet pinged against the metal bin, and landed on the floor. ‘She seemed to think she was spoiling one,’ said Lloyd.
‘Not his,’ argued Judy. ‘Joanna’s. She was very keen to put suspicion on Joanna – and take it right off George.’
Lloyd flicked another pellet, which landed satisfactorily in the bin. ‘Arrest the whole lot of them,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘That’s the answer.’
‘Including Eleanor?’ Judy asked wickedly. ‘You mustn’t get too involved, Inspector Lloyd.’
‘With her?’ said Lloyd, with genuine horror. ‘Don’t worry.’ They laughed, and the moment could have been seized, but Judy let it go. Two rejections were enough for anyone.
‘Elstow met someone at the pub,’ mused Lloyd, trying one more attempt at the waste-bin. He missed. ‘There are too many little puzzles,’ he said, picking the coats off the pegs, and – throwing Judy’s to her. ‘Let’s call it a day.’
And they called it a day, going to their separate cars. Judy drove towards home, considering giving her car star markings to indicate its freezing capacity, as her feet and hands began to lose their feeling. Other people looked forward to going home, she thought.
But she was going home to the Hills, and earnest discussions about whether gas or electric central heating was better, about whether their furniture had really been a sensible buy, about how the future really mattered, because it was what you gave your children. ‘When they come along,’ Mrs Hill had said, with a twinkle, as though she and Michael were newly-weds. And Judy didn’t believe that Mrs Hill had missed a word of the Christmas morning discussion between her and Michael.
The Hills might have been sitting with her in the car, pointing out how hard Michael had worked to get their beautiful house, which would be even more beautiful once it had all the necessary things done to it. Pointing out that Judy didn’t really need to work now, because Michael was doing so well. Pointing out that time was going on – it was hard to believe that it was ten years . . .
She was almost home. Just next left, and then a right, and her twenty-minute journey would be over; she would be safe in the bosom of Michael’s family. She pulled the car into the kerb, and sat for some minutes, the engine running. Then she started the car, passed the left turn, stopped, and reversed into it. She stopped again, for a long time, until her breath began to mist the cold windscreen; she wiped it with a tissue, and started the car, indicating right. Back along the road she had just travelled. Twenty minutes later, she passed the police station. Left at the big roundabout at the bottom of the hill. Left, to the old village.
She parked her car beside Lloyd’s, remembering the last time. The jolt to her ego of his rejection had been considerable, and she walked almost on tiptoe.
He might have heard the car, and simply not answer the door, she thought, as she pushed open the glass door to the flats.
He might be out. You couldn’t tell with the thick curtains and that silly lamp. He’d strain his eyes if he read by it.
He would just tell her to go away again, she decided miserably, as she climbed the stair.
When she got to his door, she was out of breath; she had been holding it all the way up. All the way there. She gave herself a moment before ringing the bell, then heard the inside door open, saw the light going on. She could see him through the fluted glass. The door opened, and she was inside, in his arms. He was apologising. Why was he apologising?
‘You’re frozen,’ he said, letting her go, ushering her into the warmth of the sitting room. He helped her with her coat, and put a finger to her lips as she tried to speak. ‘Later,’ he said. ‘We can discuss things later. Let’s get you thawed out first.’
She sat down, while he went to the kitchen, coming back some minutes later with a steaming jug of coffee and the brandy.
‘Just coffee,’ she said.
‘Fine.’
The coffee warmed her, but the silence unnerved her. It must have unnerved Lloyd too, because he began making conversation in the way that he’d told her he did with Barbara. Carefully avoiding any mention of work; even more carefully avoiding any mention of their situation. She took as much of – it as she could stand, then waited for a lull.
‘I thought you would be—’ she began.
‘I’m just glad you’re here,’ he said, interrupting her. He smiled. ‘Do you want to eat?’
She shook her head.
‘More coffee? Or would you like a brandy now?’
‘No,’ she said.
He switched off the lamp. ‘Kisses by coloured lights?’ he said, with a little laugh, and this time he met with success.
They went into the bedroom, arms round one another. The room was chilly; Judy shivered a little as she pulled off her sweater. Lloyd’s lips caressed hers as he began to unbutton her blouse.
‘It’ll be a lot quicker if I do it myself,’ she said.
Lloyd smacked her hand away. ‘And a lot less fun,’ he said. ‘You have no soul. Andante, Sergeant Hill. Andante.’
But Lloyd didn’t realise just how many layers of clothes she wore in weather like this. He soon found out, laughing with delight as he discovered what he insisted on calling a vest.
‘It is not a vest,’ said Judy. ‘It’s a T-shirt.’
‘It’s a vest. And you thought you could whip it off while I wasn’t looking.’
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘You get yourself undressed.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said, grabbing her. ‘I don’t want to miss anything. What have you got on under the trousers?’ He took a peek. ‘Long johns,’ he said.
‘They’re tights,’ she squeaked indignantly. ‘It’s all right for you – your car’s got a heater that works. They keep me warm.’
‘They don’t,’ he pointed out.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘They’ve got feet. They’re tights.’
But Lloyd had discovered skin, and was tickling her. They collapsed in a heap on the bed, and the more they laughed, the more andante it became, and the more they enjoyed it.
Judy had thought about this moment on the way to the flat. She had thought it would be awkward and intense if it happened at all; at best, she had imagined it would be a kind of self-conscious re-establishment of the status quo. But instead, it was like this, and she lost herself completely in the laughter and the love.
Which was why, when her senses returned, she got up, taking Lloyd’s dressing-gown from the door as she went into the sitting room, pulling the belt tight around her. She stood for a moment in the near darkness; she wanted a cigarette, a B-movie cigarette, and she felt in her handbag for the packet, not wanting even Lloyd’s seduction lighting. Her hand trembled as she struck the match.
She heard Lloyd arrive in the room; she didn’t turn round.
‘And I thought it was the faithful come to Bethlehem,’ he said, after a moment.
She didn’t need him talking in riddles. She inhaled deeply, and expelled the smoke. ‘What?’ she said, still not looking.
‘Joyful and triumphant.’
She smiled, despite herself. ‘It was.’
‘Then what’s wrong?’
The smoke was drawn through the coloured lights, curling round the tree. ‘I’m frightened,’ she said.
‘Of me?’
She didn’t dignify that with an answer.
‘Of us,’ he amended, and this time she didn’t have to answer.
He came up to her. ‘Because you forgot to keep back a little piece of yourself?’ he asked.
She put her cigarette in the ashtray, and turned to look at him. Acting came to Lloyd as naturally as breathing. His voice, his expression, his mood. But he dropped the act with her. He pretended that what was underneath was just another act, but it wasn’t; it never had been.
‘But it makes you so vulnerable,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
She hugged him close to her. ‘I love you,’ she said.
He reached past her, and switched on the lamp, which seemed suddenly brilliant.
‘What did you do that for?’ she asked.
‘Say it again. When I can see your lips move.’
She hadn’t meant to say it in the first place. She had spent fifteen years not saying it.
‘Where did you get that?’ Judy touched the sleeve of the new dressing-gown that Lloyd was wearing.
‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘It’s nice,’ she said, and glanced down at the one she had wrapped round herself like some sort of fig-leaf; it had afforded her about the same protection.
‘The kids gave me it for Christmas.’
‘They’ve got better taste than you,’ she said.
‘Say it again.’
‘They’ve got better—’ She smiled. ‘I love you.’
‘You’ve never said that before.’
‘I’ve said it now.’ She smiled again. ‘Twice. So that should keep you going for another fifteen years.’
‘But what does loving me mean?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she said. ‘It means I’m here, when I should be at home with Michael. And his parents. God knows what I’ll tell them. I’m a rotten liar.’
‘So tell them the truth.’
Mrs Hill probably wouldn’t believe her if she did, thought Judy. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Forget it. Do you want something to eat?’ ‘Poor Lloyd,’ she said smiling. ‘You’re hungry.’
‘Starving,’ he said. ‘What would you like?’
‘Nothing,’ she said quickly. ‘I’ve got to go, Lloyd.’
He let his arms drop away from her, and walked off into the kitchen, slamming the door.
It was bitterly cold, and the wind had come back, moaning through the trees. But George stood in the garden in his shirt sleeves, looking across at the castle, its battlements visible in the clear, starlit night. He was trembling, already. Because it was cold. Too cold to stand out here. The frozen snow glistened as the temperature dipped even further.
The coldest Christmas period since eighteen seventy-something, the radio said. Hypothermia was a killer, they said. Make sure old people wear lots of layers of clothing. Tell them to heat one room only if they’re worried about bills. Make sure they have hot meals.
He had ten years to go before he collected his pension, before he was consigned to that section of humanity assumed to be incapable of making sure for itself that it wore warmer clothes in winter – who couldn’t even listen to advice on the radio. Ten years to go before other people had to listen to the radio for him, and tell him what it had said. Ten years. He wasn’t old. And yet he felt old. Too old to start again.
He could go across the fields, to the castle. To Eleanor. She wanted him there. She needed him. But he wouldn’t go. He would stay at home with Marian.
‘George?’ Marian’s voice. ‘George, are you all right?’
‘Just getting some fresh air,’ he said.
He could hear her footsteps crunching on the snow, as she walked over. She came up to him, putting her arm round him. ‘A bit too fresh,’ she said. ‘Come back in. You’ll catch cold out here.’
‘I always understood that you could only catch colds from other people,’ he said.
‘And you’re testing the theory?’ Her arm tightened round him. ‘We’ve just got to carry on,’ she said, in a quiet voice.
He looked at her, and smiled. ‘You’re better at that than I am,’ he said.
She kissed him, her face warm against his. ‘Don’t make yourself ill,’ she whispered. ‘It’s happened. We’ll survive it. We’ve survived other things.’
Lost babies, lost parents, lost dogs. And it was always Marian who kept herself and everyone else together. He kissed her, suddenly and fiercely. But she couldn’t help him through this.
‘Dinner’s ready,’ she said.
He gave a short laugh. ‘Not much point in my eating it,’ he said, patting his stomach.
‘Is it just as bad?’
George looked at the castle. ‘It won’t get any better until this business is over and done with,’ he said, and he followed her into the house.
For a few moments, out there in the cold, it had gone. Out in the sharp, breathless cold, there had been no desperation in the pit of his stomach, making him ill.
But now it was back.
Lloyd turned down the gas under his rice, and surveyed the multicoloured piles of matchstick vegetables, ready for stir-frying. Slicing them up had been good therapy. Removing a table mat and fork from the drawer, he went into the sitting room. She wasn’t there.
He picked up the ashtray, in which Judy’s cigarette had burned away, leaving ash and melted blobs of nylon ribbon. They were lucky she hadn’t set the place on fire. As he put it down, it reminded him of something, and he frowned, looking at it again.
He set his solitary place, and went into the bedroom, where Judy sat, dressed and ready to leave. But she hadn’t.
‘I thought you were in a hurry,’ he said.
She looked up at him. ‘I didn’t want to leave while you weren’t speaking to me,’ she said.
Lloyd sat beside her, and took her hand in his. ‘I want to explain how I feel,’ he said.
She looked away. ‘This must be later,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ Her hand still rested in his; his thumb moved back and forth across it as he tried to phrase his statement. ‘Judy,’ he said at last. ‘Going to bed with you is lovely. It’s great. Tonight, it was better than ever.’ He paused. ‘Look at me,’ he said.
She turned, her face a little apprehensive.
‘But it’s not why I want you here,’ he said. ‘It’s not what this is about. And your being here just long enough for us to hop in and out of bed seems . . . sordid, somehow.’
‘Sordid!’ She turned away again.
‘Yes, damn it! Sordid. It’s not all I want out of this,’ he said. ‘But I’m – well, I’m afraid that maybe it is all you want.’
She looked back, her face angry. ‘That would be funny,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t so—’ She pressed her lips together, and took a moment before speaking again. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been married to Michael for ten years. Ten years, Lloyd.’
Lloyd was listening. But she was saying nothing new. ‘So he’s got the prior claim, is that it?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, her voice exasperated. ‘He has, I suppose, but that’s not it. Because I don’t think it would break his heart.’ Lloyd was lost again.
‘Until this year, he spent half his time abroad,’ she said. ‘He did what he pleased when he was away, and I could have done the same, I suppose. But I didn’t.’
‘Until I came along?’
‘Not even then,’ she said. ‘Because this isn’t the same, is it?’ Every time Lloyd thought he’d got hold of something, she seemed to change tack. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘What are you saying? That you were faithful to Michael until I came along and seduced you, or what?’
She closed her eyes. ‘No,’ she said, opening them again. ‘You,’ she said. ‘If I was faithful to anyone, then it was to you. Because I’ve never wanted anyone else.’ The tears weren’t far away when she spoke again. ‘So, no – I’m not just after your body,’ she said, her voice bitter.
She had been hurt by that; Lloyd put his arms round her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Truly, I am. Take no notice of me.’ He held her close. ‘But I don’t understand why you won’t just leave him,’ he said.
‘Because I’m a coward,’ she answered, her voice muffled. ‘You said I was frightened to leave him, and you’re right. I’m scared to change my whole way of life just like that.’
‘But you wouldn’t be on your own!’
‘I know,’ she said, standing up. ‘And I do have to go,’ she said. ‘It’s this or nothing? Is that what you’re saying?’
She nodded. ‘Unless it’s too sordid for you.’
He looked up at her. ‘My tongue gets carried away sometimes,’ he said. ‘It’s Welsh. You have to make allowances.’
She didn’t reply. After a moment, he heard the outside door close.
He’d done it again. It was some time before he could make himself move, go into the kitchen, and carry on. And he ate his stir- fry, but his appetite had gone, and he didn’t enjoy it. He tried to watch television; some of the proper programmes were back, but they were all, to his jaundiced eye, unwatchable. After the news, which he would have been better advised not to have watched, he went to bed, at an unreasonably early hour for him. He was tired, but he took his book, as he always did.
He opened his eyes when it landed on the floor. Blinking, he picked it up again, and carried on reading, as though to fool it into believing that he’d never been asleep. The words were easy enough, but he didn’t know what they meant. Then the print moved and swam before his eyes, and the book slid away again. This time he caught it, admitted defeat, and closed it. But the action involved had made him properly awake, now, and he might as well carry on reading.
He opened the book, almost against his will, at the inscriptions. A hastily written ‘Best wishes from’ followed by the indecipherable signature of the author. Underneath, in her neat, clear, writing, ‘and from me.’
But he didn’t want to think about Judy, or the arrangement that he no longer wished to live with, or without. He closed the book again, and switched off the light.
He was drifting off to sleep again, when an image came into his mind. George Wheeler. George Wheeler, emptying ash from a dustbin on to the vicarage driveway. Grey ash, black speckled.
Just like the melted nylon ribbon in his ashtray.
Marian Wheeler watched her husband as he got ready for bed. At first, he wasn’t aware of it; she watched him become aware, try to ignore it. She watched him become awkward, as if she were a stranger.
He buttoned his pyjama top. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Why are you staring at me?’
Marian took a deep breath. ‘What’s making you sick, George?’ she asked.
‘I told you,’ he said lightly. ‘This business. You know what I’m like – I used to be sick for a week before exams. I was sick in the vestry before I gave my first sermon.’
‘Is it because you’re being unfaithful to me?’ she asked, when he’d finished.
George closed his eyes briefly, and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing happened on Christmas Eve, Marian. I went there to get my tie. That was all.’ He sighed. ‘But I realised that I could stay there or come back here and spend the evening with my son-in-law. So I stayed.’
Marian didn’t speak.
‘Nothing happened then, and nothing’s happened since. I’m not being unfaithful to you.’
‘Because you haven’t actually slept with her?’
George looked away.
‘Why don’t you, George?’ she said. ‘Perhaps it would settle your stomach.’
‘Marian—’
‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘If you want to break commandments, go ahead and break them. Don’t agonise over it.’
George didn’t say anything at all. He turned the bedclothes back slowly, and got into bed.
Marian put out the light, and lay back. She had known about Eleanor Langton’s effect on George long before he had noticed it himself; she had prepared herself for the reckoning, unlike him.
Poor George, making a fool of himself over a girl not much older than Joanna; becoming, Marian was sure, the subject of behind-the-hand murmurings amongst the other play-group mothers. Making himself sick with worry and guilt, and for what? A fantasy. Well, Marian would back herself against a fantasy any day.
And yet, she was grateful to Eleanor Langton, in a way; at least she had been with George on Christmas Eve, and that proved that he couldn’t have killed Graham.
If only she could be that sure of Joanna’s whereabouts. But nothing she could say would make Joanna tell her where she’d gone that night. Marian toyed with the idea of a similar assignation to George’s; she even considered the possibility of Joanna’s being pregnant by another man. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t told them about the baby.
Perhaps it was this man that Graham met in the pub; why he got drunk, why he became violent. It would explain why Joanna had just stayed in the sitting room after she and George had come home, because she wouldn’t want to answer questions until she was ready. It would explain why she hadn’t taken them into her confidence about where she had been that night. For it would be natural, wouldn’t it, to go to him, to tell him what Graham had done.
It explained everything, but Marian knew that it was nonsense. Joanna had been too hung up on her odious husband to have been looking elsewhere.