So the night passed. Eva sat in the kitchen and made cups of tea and worried and was angry and then blamed herself and wondered who to telephone and then decided it was best not to call anyone because they'd only be cross at being woken in the middle of the night and anyway there might be a perfectly natural explanation like the car had broken down or he'd gone to the Braintrees for a drink and had had to stay there because of the police and the breathalyser which would have been the sensible thing to do and so perhaps she ought to go back to bed and get some sleep...And always beside this bustle of conflicting thoughts and feelings there was the sense of guilt and the knowledge that she had been stupid to have listened to Mavis or to have gone anywhere near Dr Kores. Anyway, what did Mavis know about sex? She'd never really said what went on between her and Patrick in bedit wasn't one of those things Eva would have dreamt of asking and even if she had Mavis wouldn't have told herand all she'd ever heard was that Patrick was having affairs with other women. There might be good reasons for that too. Perhaps Mavis was frigid or wanted to be too dominant or masculine or wasn't very clean or something. Whatever the reason it was quite wrong of her to give Patrick those horrid steroid things or hormones and turn him into a sleepy fat personwell, you could hardly call him a man any longer could you?who sat in front of the telly every night and couldn't get on with his work properly. Besides, Henry wasn't a bad husband. It was just that he was absent-minded and was always thinking about something or other that had no connection at all with what he was supposed to be doing. Like the time he'd been peeling the potatoes for Sunday lunch and he'd suddenly said the Vicar made Polonius sound like a bloody genius and there's no reason to say that because they hadn't been to church for two Sundays running and she'd wanted to know who Polonius was and he wasn't anyone at all, just some character in a play.
No, you couldn't expect Henry to be practical and she didn't. And of course they'd had their tiffs and disagreements, particularly about the quads. Why couldn't he see they were special? Well, he did, but not in the right way, and calling them 'clones' wasn't helpful. Eva could think of other things he'd said that weren't nice either. And then there was that dreadful business the other night with the cake icer. Goodness only knew what effect that had had on the girls' ideas about men. And that really was the trouble with Henry, he didn't know what romantic meant. Eva got up from the kitchen table and was presently calming her nerves by cleaning out the pantry. She was interrupted at six-thirty by Emmeline in her pyjamas.
'What are you doing?' she asked so unnecessarily that Eva rose to the bait.
'It's perfectly obvious,' she snapped. 'There's no need to ask stupid questions.'
'It wasn't obvious to Einstein,' said Emmeline, using the well-tried technique of luring Eva into a topic about which she knew nothing but which she had to approve.
'What wasn't?'
'That the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.'
'Well it is, isn't it?' said Eva, moving a tin of Epicure marmalade from the shelf with pilchards and tuna fish on it to the jam section where it looked out of place.
'Of course it isn't. Everyone knows that. It's a curve. Where's Daddy?'
'I don't see how...What do you mean "Where's Daddy?"' said Eva, completely thrown by this leap from the inconceivable to the immediate.
'I was asking where he is,' said Emmeline. 'He's not in, is he?'
'No, he isn't,' said Eva, torn now between an inclination to give vent to her irritation and the need to keep calm. 'He's out.'
'Where's he gone?' asked Emmeline.
'He hasn't gone anywhere,' said Eva and moved the marmalade back to the pilchard shelf. Tins didn't look right among the jam-jars. 'He spent the night at the Braintrees.'
'I suppose he got drunk again,' said Emmeline. 'Do you think he's an alcoholic?'
Eva clutched a coffee jar dangerously. 'Don't you dare talk about your father like that!' she snapped. 'Of course he has a drink when he comes home at night. Nearly everyone does. It's quite normal and I won't have you saying things about your father.'
'You say things about him,' said Emmeline, 'I heard you call him'
'Never mind what I say,' said Eva. 'That's quite different.'
'It isn't different,' Emmeline persisted, 'not when you say he's an alcoholic and anyway I was only asking a question and you're always telling us to'
'Go up to your room at once,' said Eva. 'You're not speaking to me in that fashion. I won't have it.'
Emmeline retreated and Eva slumped down at the kitchen table again. It was really too trying of Henry not to have instilled some sense of respect in the quads. It was always left to her to be the disciplinarian. He should have more authority. She went back into the larder and saw to it that the packets and jars and tins did exactly what she wanted. By the time she had finished she felt a little better. Finally she chased the quads into dressing quickly.
'We'll have to catch the bus this morning,' she announced when they came in to breakfast. 'Daddy has the car and'
'He hasn't,' said Penelope, 'Mrs Willoughby has.'
Eva, who had been pouring tea, spilt it. 'What did you say?'
Penelope looked smug. 'Mrs Willoughby has the car.'
'Mrs Willoughby? Yes, I know I've spilt some tea, Samantha. What do you mean, Penny? She can't have.'
'She has,' said Penelope looking smugger still. 'The milkman told me.'
'The milkman? He must have been mistaken,' said Eva.
'He isn't. He's scared stiff of the Hound of Oakhurst Avenue and he only delivers at the gate and that's where our car is. I went and saw it.'
'And was your father there?'
'No, it was empty.'
Eva put the teapot down unsteadily and tried to think what this meant. If Henry wasn't in the car...
'Perhaps Daddy's been eaten by the Hound,' suggested Josephine.
'The Hound doesn't eat people. It just tears their throats out and leaves their bodies on the waste ground at the bottom of the garden,' said Emmeline.
'It doesn't. It only barks. It's quite nice if you give it lamb chops and things,' said Samantha, unintentionally dragging Eva's attention away from the frightful possibility that Henry might in his drunken state have mistaken the house and ended up mauled to death by a Great Dane. And then again with Dr Kores' potion still coursing through his veins...
Penelope put the idea into words. 'He's more likely to have been eaten by Mrs Willoughby,' she said. 'Mr Gamer says she's sex-mad. I heard him tell Mrs Gamer that when she said she wanted it.'
'Wanted what?' demanded Eva, too stunned by this latest revelation to be concerned about the chops missing from the deep-freeze. She could deal with that matter later.
'The usual thing,' said Penelope with a look of distaste. 'She's always going on about it and Mr Gamer said she was getting just like Mrs Willoughby after Mr Willoughby died on the job and he wasn't going the same way.'
'That's not true,' said Eva in spite of herself.
'It is too,' said Penelope. 'Sammy heard him, didn't you?'
Samantha nodded.
'He was in the garage playing with himself like Paul in 3B does and we could hear ever so easily,' she said. 'And he's got lots of Playboys in there and books and she came in and said'
'I don't want to hear,' said Eva, finally dragging her attention away from this fascinating topic. 'It's time to get your things on. I'll go and fetch the car...' She stopped. It was clearly one thing to say she was going to fetch the car from a neighbour's front garden, but just as clearly there were snags. If Henry was in Mrs Willoughby's house she'd never be able to live the scandal down. All the same something had to be done and it was a scandal enough already for the neighbours to see the Escort there. With the same determination with which Eva always dealt with embarrassing situations she put on her coat and marched out of the front door. Presently she was sitting in the Escort trying to start it. As usual when she was in a hurry the starter motor churned over and nothing happened. To be exact, something did but not what she had hoped. The front door opened and the Great Dane loped out followed by Mrs Willoughby in a dressing-gown. It was, in Eva's opinion, just the sort of dressing-gown a sex-mad widow would wear. Eva wound down the window to explain that she was just collecting the car and promptly wound it up again. Whatever Samantha's finer feelings might persuade her about the dog, Eva mistrusted it.