Dragging on his dressing gown, he opened the door of the small room at the south of the house which was to be the nursery. The cot was in pale lemon and white, matching the curtains. The changing table with its lower shelf for baby paraphernalia, its hanging bag for clean nappies, stood against the wall. The wallpaper was a riot of rabbits and leaping lambs. It was impossible to believe that any child of his would one day be sleeping here.
And it wasn't only the house which rejected him. With Susie absent it was sometimes difficult even to believe in the reality of his marriage. He had met her on a cultural cruise to Greece on which he had booked as an alternative to the usual solitary walking holiday. She had been one of the few younger women on the ship, travelling with her mother, the widow of a dentist. He realized now that it was Susie who had made the running, who had determined on the marriage, who had chosen him long before he had thought of choosing her. But the realization when it came was flattering rather than disturbing and, after all, he hadn't been unwilling. He had reached that time of life when he would occasionally indulge in an idealized picture of a wife waiting at home, domestic comfort, someone to return to at the end of the day, a child who would be his stake in the future, someone to work for.
And she had married him despite the opposition from her mother who at first had seemed to collude in the enterprise, perhaps reminding herself that Susie was twenty-eight and time was not on her side, but who, once the engagement had been secured, had made it plain that her only child could have done better, and had embarked on a policy of ostentatiously making the best of it while undertaking a vigorous campaign of his social re-education. But even she hadn't been able to find fault with the house. It had cost him all his savings and the mortgage was the largest his income could support but it stood as a solid symbol of the two things which mattered most to him, his marriage and his job.
Susie had been trained as a secretary but had seemed glad to give it up. If she had wanted to carry on working he would have supported her as he would in any interest she cared to take up. But he preferred her to be happily satisfied with the house and the garden, to find her waiting for him when he returned at the end of the day. It was not the kind of marriage that was currently fashionable, nor the kind that most couples could afford; but it was his kind of marriage and he was grateful that it was hers.
He hadn't been in love with her at the time of the marriage, he knew that now. He would, indeed, have said that he hardly knew the meaning of the word since it had certainly nothing to do with the half-shameful affairs, the humiliations of his earlier experiences with women. And yet not only poets and writers, the whole world used the word, seeming to know by instinct if not by direct experience exactly what it meant. Sometimes he felt uniquely disadvantaged, excluded from a universal birthright as a man might be who had been born without a sense of taste or smell. And when, three months after the honeymoon, he had fallen in love with Susie it had seemed like the revelation of something known but never experienced, as blinded eyes might suddenly open to the reality of light and colour and form. It was one night when, for the first time, she had found joy in his lovemaking and, half crying, half laughing, had clung to him whispering incoherent endearments. Tightening his arms about her he had known in what seemed a moment of amazed recognition that this was love. That moment of affirmation had been both a fulfilment and a promise, not the end of searching but the beginning of discovery. It left no room for doubts; his love, once acknowledged, seemed to him indestructible. Their marriage might have its moments of shared unhappiness and anxiety but it could never be less than it was at this moment. Was it really possible, he thought now, that it could be seriously threatened if not destroyed by its first serious test, her decision to give in to her mother's calculated mixture of bullying and entreaty and leave him when their first child was about to be born? When the baby was first placed in her arms he wanted to be there. Now he might not even be told when she went into labour. The picture which persistently haunted his imagination, before he fell asleep and at waking, of his mother-in-law standing triumphantly in the labour ward with his child in her arms deepened his dislike of her almost to paranoia.
To the right of the dressing table was one of their wedding photographs in a silver-plated frame, taken after a marriage ceremony which could have been specifically designed to emphasize the social differences between the two families. Susie was leaning a little towards him, her peaked, vulnerable face looking younger than her twenty-eight years, the fair head with its chaplet of flowers barely reaching his shoulder. The flowers had been artificial, rosebuds and lilies of the valley but, in memory as on the day, there rose from them a transitory sweetness. Her face, gravely smiling, revealed nothing, not even what the whole white mystique surely symbolized; this is what I worked for, what I want, what I've achieved. He was looking straight at the camera stolidly enduring what had after all been the last of the seemingly endless photographs taken outside the church. The family group had at last been released. Here were Susie and himself, legally yoked, an accepted pair. The photographic session had, it seemed in retrospect, been the most important part of the ceremony, the service merely a preliminary to this complicated arranging and rearranging of incongruously garbed strangers according to some hierarchy not wholly understood by him but of which the hectoring photographer was obviously master. He heard again his mother-in-law's voice: 'Yes, a bit of a rough diamond, I'm afraid, but he's really very able. Chief constable material, I'm told.'
Well, he wasn't chief constable material and she had known it, but at least she hadn't been able to criticize the house which he had provided for her only child.
It was an early hour to telephone and he knew that his mother-in-law, who was a late riser, would make the most of the first grievance of the day. But if he didn't speak to Susie now it might well be late at night before he had another opportunity. For a moment he stood looking down at the bedside telephone, unwilling to stretch out his hand. If things had been different, if it hadn't been for this new murder, he could have got in the Rover, driven north to York and brought her home. Face to face with him she might have found the strength to resist her mother. Now she would have to travel alone, or with Mrs Cartwright if her mother insisted on accompanying her. Well, he would put up with her if she insisted on coming and it might be better for Susie than facing the long train journey alone. But he wanted her home; he wanted her here in this house.