‘Well, it’s a bit early …’ Carole began, but she was overruled by Jude saying:
‘What a good idea. I’ll get some glasses.’
Left alone together, Mike Winstone favoured Carole with a bonhomous beam. ‘You interested in cricket, are you?’
Her recollections of the game came from the very few occasions when she’d watched her son Stephen play while he was at school. Those games only lasted a couple of hours, but they’d still seemed interminable. What watching a full five-day Test Match must be like was too appalling for Carole to contemplate. Thank goodness Stephen had never shown any real aptitude for the game – or indeed for any others – and devoted himself increasingly to his studies.
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ she replied.
‘You’re missing a lot, you know, Carole. Very fine game, subtle mix of the very simple and the really quite complex. Lot of women getting interested in it now too, you know, and I must say some of them don’t half play a good game.’
Jude returned with the glasses before Carole was required to amplify her views on cricket. Which was probably just as well.
Mike Winstone expertly removed the foil, wire and cork from the champagne, then filled the three glasses. Passing two to what he referred to as ‘the ladies’, he raised his own. ‘As I say, thanks very much for helping out “her indoors” in her moment of need.’
‘Our pleasure,’ said Carole.
‘So she told you all about it?’ asked Jude, a little puzzled because Hester Winstone had so firmly assured her that she wouldn’t let her husband know about the suicide attempt. He was, she’d said, ‘no good with that sort of stuff’.
‘Oh yes,’ Mike replied confidently. ‘No secrets between Hest and me. Got to tell the truth when you’re incarcerated in a marriage – worse luck.’ He guffawed again.
‘So did she tell you as soon as you got back?’
‘Well, we were having a chinwag about everything we’d both been up to while I’d been in the Antipodes and then I notice this dressing on Hest’s wrist and I said, “What’ve you been up to, darling – trying to top yourself?”’ This was deemed to merit another huge guffaw.
‘And she told you?’ asked an incredulous Jude.
‘Yes. And I said, “Good heavens, Hest – what a muppet you are!” Because, you know, she’s always been scatty, but cutting her wrist when she was opening a tin of dog food … well, doesn’t that just take the biscuit – or should I say “dog biscuit”?’ Another rather fine joke, so far as Mike Winstone was concerned.
Jude nodded agreement, at the same time desperately trying to think how to find out the details of the story Hester had told her husband.
Fortunately Mike provided the information himself. ‘Anyway, when she told me about cutting herself, of course, I realized it tied in with what happened last Sunday – not yesterday, Sunday before.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Jude tentatively.
‘You see, I’d rung Hest on the landline that evening. Good time from the Antipodes – I’m just getting up about the time she’s thinking of bed, but I didn’t get any reply. Which I thought at the time was a bit odd … until Hest explained that she was here with you.’
‘Hm.’ Jude still wanted a bit more than that … which Mike again supplied.
‘She told me all about what happened in the car park …’
‘Really?’
‘Yes … how she’d nipped out early on the Sunday evening to do a bit of shopping …’
‘Right.’
‘At Sainsbury’s.’
‘Of course,’ said Jude, waiting to see where Hester’s fabrication would take them next.
‘And how she came over all funny in the car park and fainted or something, and you wondered what had happened.’
You never said a truer word, thought Jude.
‘Anyway, I’m so glad you were there. Well, you too, Carole.’ He raised his glass again to both of them. ‘Very kind of you to take her in, Jude.’
‘No problem.’ She still hadn’t got the complete picture, but Hester Winstone’s version of events was becoming clearer.
‘Better you than some officious member of the Sainsbury’s staff who’d probably have called an ambulance and started God knows what kind of palaver. Poor old thing. Hest must’ve lost a lot more blood than she thought.’
‘Oh?’
‘From the cut. For her to have keeled over like that.’
‘Ah yes.’
‘I’ve never known her to faint in the … what? Twenty-five years odd we’ve been married. Still, it’s probably partly her age.’
‘Are you talking about the menopause?’ asked Carole who, in her view, hadn’t said anything for far too long.
‘Well, erm …’ Mike Winstone coloured. He was clearly not at ease in discussing what he would no doubt have referred to as ‘ladies’ things’. ‘Well, Hest is getting rather scattier than usual.’ He raised his glass to them for an unnecessary third time. ‘Anyway, this is just to say: thanks enormously.’
‘As I say, no problem. Anyone would have done the same.’ Jude reckoned she now had the complete text of what Hester Winstone had told her husband. ‘You see someone keel over on a cold evening in Sainsbury’s car park, you go and help them. It’s human nature.’
‘Well, I’m glad it was you who did it, anyway. You clearly made quite an impression on Hest.’
‘How is she, by the way?’
‘Hest? She’s right as rain. Scatty as ever, like I said, but fine. Our boys have got an exeat from school this weekend, so she’s looking forward to seeing them. Oh, there’s never anything wrong with Hest for long. She doesn’t let things get to her.’
Jude caught Carole’s eye and could see that the same thought was going through both their minds. Namely, that Mike Winstone didn’t know his wife at all. So long as he was secure in his cocoon of cricket and general bonhomie, he could keep himself immune from other people’s problems.
‘She mentioned,’ said Carole casually, ‘that she’s involved in some amateur dramatic group …’
‘Oh yes, the “Saddoes”.’ He used the same pronunciation that Ritchie Good had. And clearly, from the darkening of his expression, he wasn’t a great enthusiast of the society. ‘Mm, Hest said she’d got time on her hands now the boys are both at Charterhouse and I said, fine, give you a chance to play more tennis, have a serious go at whittling down the old golf handicap. But what does she go and do? Join this bunch of local poseurs in the amdram.’
‘You don’t sound very keen on the idea.’
‘Well, to be quite honest, Carole, I’m not. I mean, I remember at school there was a bunch of boys who spent all their time putting on plays and, quite honestly, they weren’t the most interesting specimens. I certainly made many more friends among the sporting types than I did with that lot. I mean, you go on enough minibus trips to cricket matches and football matches with chaps and you really get to know them well. I made some damned good chums through sport, certainly never made any from amongst the drama lot.’
‘But presumably they made friends with other people doing drama?’ suggested Jude.
‘Oh yes, of course they did.’ He flipped a limp wrist and said in the voice all schoolboys use to suggest homosexuality, ‘Very good friends.’
Jude made no reaction to this, but said, ‘I gather Hester’s going to be prompting for the new production of The Devil’s Disciple.’
‘Something like that, yes. I don’t remember the name of the play. But no, good for her,’ he said without total conviction. ‘If that’s what Hest wants to do, then I’d be the last one to stand in her way. They say it’s important in a marriage for the partners to have different interests. And there’s nothing that could be more different from cricket than amateur dramatics!’ This was judged to be another guffaw-worthy line.