Years passed like this, the nameable fears giving way to the unnameable, the familiar dread of evening muffled under a pall of fog, of blackness, of earth; all the days lived as if underground, and Muriel, she thought, if I could have mourned myself, if I could have drawn breath, I might have pitied you. She pulled her cardigan around her and turned her cheek from the wind. Time to go back upstairs.
To Colin’s alarm and astonishment, Frank slowly stood erect. Colin stepped back. It was beyond his power to deliver a further blow, to knock down a sentient, upstanding Head of Department. But then, as if swaying in some whimsical breeze, Frank leaned sideways, then tottered, then keeled over and crashed to the floor like a dead man.
Giving his victim a cursory glance, Colin secured the file and headed back for the dining-room. Sylvia was coming in from the kitchen with two mugs of black coffee on a tray.
“There you are, Colin,” she said in a matter-of-fact voice.
Colin’s chest heaved, sweat ran from every pore.
“These were all the cups I could find that were reasonably clean and fit to use.” She put the mugs on the table and held up the tray. It had once been the lid of a biscuit tin, with a bit of bilious green lino, sugar-encrusted and stained, forming a top to it. “I wouldn’t give this houseroom. It’s an education, what people have in their backs. That kitchen makes me heave, all that Italian muck plastered all over the place. I’d have thought he could have afforded decent food. And cleanliness costs nothing. I don’t know who’s going to have these coffees. Do you want one?”
“We’re going,” Colin said.
“I’ve got my coat.” Tears sprang into Sylvia’s eyes, glinting like bayonet points. “Colin, do you know what he’d done with it? He said he didn’t know where to put it. He’d dumped it in his rubbish bin. My good coat. It stinks of tomato sauce and fish.”
“Oh, Sylvia. Oh, love, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to be like this.”
“I can’t wear it. It’ll have to be cleaned.”
“Do you want my jacket?”
“No, it’ll do me good to get out in the cold. What’s that under your arm?”
“Nothing, just some papers. Come on, let’s go.”
Sylvia pulled out a tissue and polished the tip of her nose. “I’d like to give Frank a piece of my mind.”
“He was drunk. I’m sorry.”
“Where is he?”
“I put him to bed.”
Behind him, from the study, he heard movement and a muffled groan; Frank coming to, or as to as he would come, before morning. He took Sylvia’s arm. “Come on.” From upstairs came a yelp of triumph, and Yarker’s voice:
“Well done, that man!”
He bundled Sylvia out of the front door and into the damp air. A pulse hammered in his forehead, his hands had begun to shake again, but free of the smoke-laden fug of the house, he took huge raw gasps as they scurried to the car. All I need now is a flat battery, he thought; expecting the worst, as experience was training him to do. But the engine roared, dreadfully loud, shattering the silence of four A.M. on a dead winter’s day.
“In twenty minutes we’ll be in bed,” he said.
“You know the way, don’t you?”
“Oh yes, I know it now.”
“I wish we had got lost. I wish we’d called it off and never gone. It was the worst night out I’ve ever had.”
“Yes, I know. Try and forget it.”
“We’ll never go there again.”
“I’ll be surprised if we’re ever asked, love.”
“That’s something, then. I wonder how Florence went on with them? Perhaps she’ll come over and mind them next week, and we could go to the pictures.”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”
“I’ll have to take my coat to the cleaner’s first thing. Colin, it was awful, that man Yarker started interfering with her. With Charmian. I was embarrassed. I came out.”
“Yes, you did the right thing. Don’t get involved, that’s the best.”
They were the only car on the road, an icy ribbon unwrapping beneath them, the fields bare and still, the houses shuttered, the moon riding high and white.
“I haven’t been out at this time for years,” Sylvia said, adding, “thank God, and I don’t intend to be again.” She sounded cheerful enough, now that the whole ordeal was over. She stretched, arching her body in the seat, and yawned loudly. “Is that somebody behind us?”
Colin saw the flashing lights in his rear-view mirror. Sylvia saw them too, looking back over her shoulder. Colin pulled into the side of the road. For a moment neither of them spoke. Then, very quietly, very calmly, Sylvia said, “It’s like a nightmare.”
Colin wound down his window. The young constable whose face loomed up to fill their vision had a paste-coloured face in which freckles bloomed like the raisins in a steamed pudding. Shorn copper bristles extruded from under his cap, and for a chilling moment Colin thought Yarker had pursued him, metamorphosed, rendered youthful the better to hound him down the years.
“Are you aware, sir,” the boy said, “that your rear lights are defective?”
Slowly, Colin swung open the door and uncoiled himself from his seat. He set his feet as firmly on the ground as he could manage, but it seemed to give under his tread, as if swamp had bubbled through the tarmac. With one hand on the roof of the car he worked his way around to the boot. Something ghastly hung from the policeman’s hand, some membrane, shiny and swinging. Colin blinked.
“Would you please, sir,” said the constable, “breathe into this bag?”
CHAPTER 7
Colin woke up next morning to the sound of Sylvia talking on the telephone. The house seemed strangely quiet. Of course, he thought, the children are still at Florence’s. He fumbled on the bedside table for his watch, and when he raised his head a glancing pain swooped through it and settled behind his eyes. Just past noon. He allowed himself to flop back against the pillows. There was a foul taste in his mouth, and he felt slightly sick. I must get up, he told himself, and face things. Get the car; and the file, Isabel’s file, is still in the back of it. It came to him in a flash: Axon, Muriel Axon, their neighbours at home. How stupid that he shouldn’t have remembered, after all the years that the Axons had lived round the corner; next door, in fact, but because of their front gate being in Buckingham Avenue you didn’t think of them being next door. Not that he’d ever known the Axons, but you didn’t think of them as the kind of people who were a problem for Social Services. You didn’t think of Social Workers operating at all in the Lauderdale Road area, people were generally pretty self-sufficient, they kept their problems to themselves. He had a vague idea that there was something wrong with Muriel, not altogether there, but it wasn’t something you talked about. He supposed Mrs. Axon was getting on a bit, maybe she did need some kind of help. Hadn’t Florence been going on about them a few months back, saying she never saw them out and about? Not that you listened to half that Florence said. Wearily, Colin pushed the covers back and swung his legs out of bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress, rubbing his eyes. With the threat of motion, the pounding inside his skull had increased. Never mind the Axons, he thought, I’ve done my bit for them. I’ve got to sort myself out.
He went into the bathroom and cleaned his teeth. His face in the mirror was that of an elderly rake, parched and neurasthenic; as if with Frank’s Valpolicella he had drained the dregs of experience. He went downstairs. The living-room was unnaturally tidy; he realised that Sylvia had been cleaning. A sort of exorcism for her, he supposed, driving out the bad memories of Frank’s kitchen. Already the foul taste had come back into his mouth, mingled with toothpaste.