Then, one day, while Minty was having a bath and washing her hair, Auntie’s voice came very clearly and said something new. “That Jock’s evil, Minty love, he’s really evil. He’s dead but he can’t ever come where I am because he’s an imp of Satan. If I was back on earth, I’d destroy him, but I can’t touch him from this holy place. I’m telling you it’s your mission to destroy him. You’ve been called to destroy him, and then he can go back to hell where he belongs.”
Minty never answered Auntie because somehow she knew that though she could speak, she couldn’t hear. She’d been deaf for a couple of years before she died. The voice persisted for most of the evening. From her front room Minty watched Sonovia and Laf go off to the cinema. The evenings were light now, the sun still shining. But it had always been rather dark inside this house, perhaps because Auntie and now Minty only drew the curtains back halfway across the windows. For inner London and in parts a rough area, it was also very quiet. Mr. Kroot on one side lived in dim silence, while the Wilsons weren’t keen on television or loud laughter. Into the absence of any sound Auntie’s voice came back, telling her to destroy Jock and rid the world of his evil spirit.
Next day the top she put on was tighter and shorter, and the knife showed through, sticking out like some sort of frame. She tried other ways of carrying it and finally found that wearing it under her trousers against her right thigh, strapped in place by a belt, answered best.
A lecture awaited Zillah in the morning. Jims was dressed as she hadn’t seen him for the past ten days. Perhaps she’d never seen him so svelte and elegant. He wore a charcoal suit, impeccably cut, for which he’d paid £2,000 in Savile Row, a frostily white shirt, and a slate-colored silk tie with a vertical saffron stripe. Zillah belonged to that school of taste that holds that a man is never so attractive as when dressed in a dark formal suit, and gloom descended on her. She hadn’t slept well and her hair needed washing.
“I’ve something to say to you. Sit down and listen, please. Recriminations are quite useless, I realize that. What’s done is done. It’s the future I’m concerned about.” All of Eton and Balliol were in his tone. “I don’t wish you to speak to any journalists at all, Zillah. Do you understand what I’m saying? Not any at all. There must be no exceptions. Frankly, I had no idea when you began on your press campaign that you would be as rash and uncontrolled as you have been. I expected a modicum of discretion, but I’ve said there are to be no recriminations, so let that be an end to them. The key phrase for you to remember is, no contact with the media. Right?”
Zillah nodded. She was remembering the charming boy of her adolescence who had been such a sweet and funny companion, and the gracious man who visited her in her loneliness at Long Fredington and who always seemed close to her in a happy and intimate conspiracy-Zillah and Jims versus the world. Where had he gone? Her heart sank like a stone when she thought: This is my husband.
“I would like to hear you say it, Zillah.”
“I won’t talk to the media, Jims. Please don’t be so angry with me.”
“I shall tell Malina Daz to hold you to that. Now you’re off to fetch the children today, I think you said. It would be a good idea if you were to stay a few days with your parents.”
“In Bournemouth?”
“Why not in Bournemouth? It’s a very pleasant watering place and the children like it. It will give you an opportunity to check on your father’s health. How do you suppose it would look if it got about-if it got into a newspaper-that (a) you failed to return from the Maldives when your father had had a coronary, and (b) you failed to rush post-haste to his bedside once you did return?”
“But I didn’t know he’d had a coronary till last night!”
“No, because you didn’t once take the trouble to phone your mother while you were away, although your children were with her.”
It was unanswerable. Even Zillah could see that. “How long do you want me to stay there?”
“Until Friday.”
It was a lifetime.
The traffic was heavy, and it was nearly six by the time Zillah reached her parents’ house. Her father lay on the sofa, boxes and bottles of medicaments on the little table beside him. He looked perfectly well, his eyes bright and a rosy flush on his face.
“Poor Grandad fell down on the floor,” said Eugenie importantly. “He was all alone. Nanna had to bring me and Jordan down to save his life and I said, ‘If poor Grandad dies, we must get someone to bury him in the ground,’ but he didn’t die.”
“As you see,” said Charles Watling, grinning.
“We went to the hospital and Nanna said to Grandad, ‘Your daughter’s gone to the ends of the earth and I don’t know her phone number.’ ”
Nora Watling had packed up the children’s things and prepared sandwiches for them to eat in the car on the way home. When Zillah said they would be staying till Friday, she sat down heavily in an armchair and said flatly that they couldn’t. Even one more day of Jordan’s crying and Eugenie’s officiousness would be too much, not to mention the presence of Zillah herself.
“No one ever wants us,” Eugenie said calmly. “We’re just a burden. And now our poor mummy is too.”
Weakening, Nora put an arm round her. “No, you’re not, my darling. Not you and your brother.”
“If we can’t stay here,” said Zillah, “where are we supposed to go?” Had she known the passage, she might have said that the foxes have their holes and the birds of the air their nests, but she had not where to lay her head. “To a hotel?”
“Your husband had enough of you, has he? That’s a good start, I must say. I suppose you’ll have to stay, if that’s what you want. But you’ll have to help me. Do the shopping, for one thing, and take the children out in the afternoons. Never mind about Eugenie’s schooling. That’s the last thing on your mind. But you mark my words, there’s no doubt one never gets rid of one’s children. No matter how often you think they’ve gone for good this time, they always come back. Look at me with you.”
“You see, you’ll never get rid of us, Mummy,” Eugenie said happily.
Zillah had to sleep in the same room as the children. Jordan went to sleep crying and woke up in the night crying. This began to worry her and she wondered vaguely if she should take him to a child psychiatrist. In the daytime the three of them spent the mornings food shopping and fetching prescriptions, and in the afternoons, because the weather was fine, they went to the beach. It was as bad as being back in Long Fredington. On Thursday morning Charles Watling became ill again, breathless and with a pain down his left side. The GP came and he was rushed into hospital.
“It’s no good, you’ll have to go, Sarah. I can’t stand the worry and the noise, not with your father like this. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was hearing Jordan crying all the time that set this second attack off. You can stop tonight in a hotel. Goodness knows, it’s not as if you were short of money.”
At five that afternoon Zillah checked them into a hotel on the outskirts of Reading. Eugenie and Jordan were tired and after they’d eaten pizza and chips, went immediately to bed and to sleep. For once, Jordan didn’t cry but nevertheless Zillah slept badly. Yawning and rubbing her eyes, she remembered to phone her mother in the morning, was told her father was “comfortable” and would probably be having a bypass at the end of the following week. At just after eight she started the drive home in heavier traffic than she’d ever experienced, and it was past eleven when she drove into the Abbey Gardens Mansions car park.