At the sound of the taxi drawing up, Brenda Brockley’s heart pounded. Ignoring her parents’ disapproving glances she rushed to see what was happening and immediately afterwards rushed straight upstairs, thus avoiding any discussion or lecture on her odd behaviour.
She locked her door and went over to her pretty little writing desk which was placed in the large bay window. The chair on which she sat was pretty too. It had a tall, narrow back: two upright slats and a crossbar made of varnished papier-mâché inlaid with mother-of-pearl. An amber silk cushion patterned with silver fleur-de-lis was tied to the seat with narrow velvet ribbons. Facing her, on the sill, was a vase of deep red carnations.
These two pieces of furniture were deliberately different from anything else in the room. It was not that Brenda thought the other things boring or tasteless—though they were—but that she recognised their absolute unsuitability to play even the most humble part in a scene in which her grand illusion would be allowed to hold full sway.
She took a tiny gold key from a box covered with shells, unlocked the desk and rolled back the lid. From the interior she removed a large, shagreen-covered book labelled with the word Diary and filled with unlined pages of creamy yellow paper. Just inside the front cover was Sellotaped a photograph of Alan Hollingsworth which she had obtained in the spring of the previous year.
One Sunday afternoon when Reg and Iris were out buying a large supply of Paraquat from their nearest garden centre, Brenda, fortified by a schooner of sweet sherry, had approached the Hollingsworths over the larch lap divide. Explaining that she had just one shot left and Shona seemed to have quite lost interest, Brenda asked if she could take their picture. Somewhat surprised, they agreed.
Brenda adjusted the viewfinder with great care and got exactly the snap she wanted. A clear head and shoulders of Alan and no sign of Simone.
Brenda would have liked to have framed the photo. It deserved a beautiful silver one like those she had seen in antique shops; all flowing acanthus leaves and arabesques of lilies. But she was afraid that one day she would forget to lock it away in her desk. And that such a time might coincide with one or the other of her parents popping their heads in while she was having a meal or in the bath, to sneak a quick look round.
She wrote in her diary only at the weekends when there were enough hours to do it justice. Sometimes, and this was more exciting by far, she actually spoke to Alan. The smaller window in her room overlooked the forecourt of Nightingales and, when he was due to arrive home, she would open it with trembling fingers, lean out and call, “Good evening.”
Brenda had pondered to an agonising degree as to how frequent these greetings should be and had finally decided on a ratio of one to ten. More frequently and she feared he would guess that her appearance was not accidental. Less and the fear was that she would be unable to bear the waiting.
The occasions of her calling out were carefully marked by an asterisk in her shagreen book with a special pen, the sort used at Christmas for labelling parcels. Filled with powerfully smelling runny liquid, it dried shining silver like a snail’s track.
Once a month she and Alan actually conversed. These stomach-churning encounters were marked with a golden pen of the same type with the asterisk surmounted by a red felt-tipped drawing of a heart.
The conversations could only be brought about by a certain amount of artificial loitering which involved hanging around the front garden sniffing the roses and pretending to weed or playing outside in the lane with her dog. As Alan closed the garage door, Brenda, nauseous, her skin prickling with nerves, would toss a casual “Hullo” in his direction.
He replied of course but the ensuing conversations were necessarily brief. How many responses were there after all to a suggestion that today had been uncertain/awful/wonderful/changeable? Or that the news didn’t seem to get any better. She would follow through with, “And how are things at Nightingales?”
Alan would then assure her that things were fine. Although he only rarely asked how matters at The Larches were faring, Brenda was never unprepared.
Recognising that her replies must not only be short and lighthearted but, hopefully, amusing, she would practise them right up to the last minute, a throwaway almost negligent style being her aim.
There was no one to whom she could sing her love. At work, where her shyness was mistaken for slyness, she had no friends. And the thought of telling her parents was utterly appalling. Even thinking of it chilled her bones. They had always seemed to Brenda antiseptically unaware that such a thing as romance existed. She had never heard a sound smacking even remotely of eroticism from their bedroom. The only rhythmical vibration occurred when the alarm clock went off. Sometimes, regarding the straining hospital corners on the chaste, single beds, Brenda wondered if she was a changeling found under a gooseberry bush.
Like everyone else in the village, but to an intensely more passionate degree, Brenda’s thoughts were engaged in the matter and manner of Simone’s disappearance. Plainly she had been forcibly abducted. Or lured away, perhaps by a false message purporting to come from her husband. Obviously no woman lucky enough to be married to Alan Hollingsworth would leave home voluntarily.
It might be thought that Alan’s newly unyoked state would fill Brenda with wild hope and delight but such was not the case. It was the stable impenetrability of the Hollingsworths’ lives that held Brenda’s dreams together. Now that background had been torn apart the whole tapestry seemed about to unravel. She dreaded what the future might hold. Overwhelmingly paramount was the fear that, if Simone did not return, Alan might decide that Nightingales held so many unhappy memories he could no longer bear to go on living there.
For the first time she found herself regretting her parents’ reclusive existence, her mother’s finicky revulsion against any sort of close relationship. If only she had been the sort to run around with a dish of something sustaining. And what then would be more natural than that her daughter should call to collect the empties.
Brenda had even, shaking in her shoes at the thought of such audacity, imagined going round alone. Alan hadn’t been out for two days now and must surely be in dire need of assistance. In her imagination she placed a wicker basket on his table and lifted a snowy cloth to reveal French bread and rosy apples, a honey pot shaped like a beehive, crisp frilly lettuce and a wedge of cheese wrapped in waxed paper. Finally, a long-necked dark green bottle of wine.
Alan would be sitting, sad and solitary, staring at the wall. She would need to speak two or three times before he became aware of her presence. It might even prove necessary to touch his arm.
Brenda sighed and returned to a worrying present. She unscrewed the cap from her fountain pen, mottled tortoise-shell with a gold nib. It had been bought especially and at great cost for inscribing her private thoughts and was never used for anything else.
She pondered her first line carefully, for the text was sacrosanct. Nothing was ever altered or crossed out. She would have regarded such mutilations as ill-omened.
A movement in next door’s garden caught her eye. Alan! First sighting since he had been so cruelly abandoned. He had his back to the house and was carrying a spade. As Brenda gazed hungrily down, he pushed it into a large, wet patch of earth near the patio.
Brenda had sat, just so, looking down and longing, on hundreds of occasions. She believed herself to have exceptional sensitivity as far as Alan was concerned and was sure that, should he happen to look up, she could lower her eyes and turn away in time. Certainly she always had till now.
But then something happened which gave the lie to such confidence. He thrust the spade down hard by a clump of day lilies, withdrew it then turned away, apparently in some disgust. As he did so he raised his head and stared straight at Brenda’s window. Caught out, all she could do was stare straight back.