Читать книгу Puppies Are For Life - Linda Phillips - Страница 8

‘Another corned beef sandwich?’

Uncle Bert’s elderly next-door neighbour advanced across the carpet with a mountainous plate in her hands. ‘Plenty more in the fridge, Mr May. Another three plates at least.’ Mrs Wardle looked sadly about her. ‘I didn’t know how many people to make them for, you see.’

Frank May, latterly headmaster of the Harold Vincent Comprehensive School, Middlesex, waved away the plate in a lordly manner. He also declined a chocolate finger and a lemon-flavoured cup-cake.

‘I suppose Bert didn’t keep any beer?’ he asked, getting up on a sudden hope. Tall, solidly built, and with a shiny pink dome of a head, he dominated the dingy front room of his brother’s terraced house. And, looking at him, it was difficult for Susannah to believe that her father lived permanently in the Dordogne. No amount of time in the sun seemed to turn his English ruddiness to a decent tan.

‘Beer?’ Mrs Wardle’s hat quivered as she looked round at her laden trays. She had made quantities of tea in large brown earthenware pots. ‘Well, I can’t say I would know about beer,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I’ll go and have a look in the scullery.’

Susannah felt obliged to help herself to another sandwich since there were so many about to go to waste, but her stomach protested after the first bite. She doubted whether she could manage to force down any more of the margarined monstrosities.

‘Family all right?’ Frank asked. They hadn’t had much chance to talk at the funeral.

‘Oh, we’re all very well, I’m glad to say.’ Susannah put down a thick crust. ‘Katy’s having a whale of a time in a flat with some friends – not far from here, as a matter of fact. I might look in on her later if I have time.

‘And Simon’s still doing well at the estate agent’s in Bristol. He and Natalie are getting on fine, though of course we’d still love them to get married. Justin is adorable – it’s hard to believe he’s ten months old already. As for Paul – well, he was going to come with me today but he found he had a meeting …’

Her voice trailed away and she looked down at her uncomfortably high black shoes. She didn’t like having to tell a white lie about Paul, and now she was going to have to ask after her wretched step-mother.

‘And Jan?’ she forced out. ‘She decided not to come with you?’

‘She’s – er – fine, thank you. Fine. But Bert was nothing to her, really – she only met him once or twice – so there didn’t seem much point in her coming all this way.’

‘You surprise me. It’s not like Jan to miss an opportunity to go round the London stores.’

‘Oh, how lovely to live abroad!’ Mrs Wardle broke in. She had come back into the room empty-handed, having apparently forgotten why she’d left it. ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. All that sea, sun and fresh air.’

‘We’re miles from the sea,’ Frank said abruptly, and he turned to look round the room in a dismissive manner that made Susannah feel even more awkward than she had before.

Mrs Wardle, it was true, was not the kind of woman her father would suffer gladly. She was niceness personified: one of those people who smile constantly and too closely into your face and can’t do enough to please you. No, definitely not his type; but that didn’t excuse his behaviour.

‘Er –’ Susannah thought quickly – ‘it was really very good of you to organise the funeral and everything, Mrs Wardle. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.’

‘Only too happy to do it, my dear. Not that there was much to be done. Bert had arranged everything years ago with the Co-op, you see. So very thoughtful of him, wasn’t it? But that was his way. Just like the vicar said.’

‘Yes …’ Susannah frowned as she recalled the brief eulogy. Words had streamed easily enough from the vicar’s lips, but what they had boiled down to was that Bert had been a nobody who had made no mark on the world – a fact that Susannah found profoundly disturbing in her current frame of mind. She had yet to make a mark of her own.

Frank coughed noisily, anxious to draw things to a close.

‘Well –’ he barked a laugh with no trace of humour in it – ‘can’t hang around here all day eating and drinking, can we? We – er – ahem – ought to get down to business.’

Susannah and Mrs Wardle looked blank.

‘The will, of course, the will,’ he was finally compelled to explain. ‘Now I know the poor old s—I mean poor old Bert’s only just been seen on his way, so to speak, but none of us has the time for life’s little niceties, do we? I’ve got a flight to catch, and Susannah’s got a train, so … well, where have you put it, Mrs Wardle?’

‘Put what?’ The woman flushed to find attention suddenly upon her.

‘The will.’ Frank visibly seethed. ‘My brother Albert’s will. He must have left one with you.’

But no amount of prompting could make Mrs Wardle recall a will. Or a solicitor. Or anything relevant. So Frank allocated them each a room and told them they must search it. Thoroughly.

‘Da-ad! You can’t!’ Susannah hissed, tugging at his sleeve.

‘What? Why not? What else d’you expect me to do?’

She jerked her head in the direction of Mrs Wardle. ‘It can wait, I’m sure,’ she declared loudly, and her father went off in a huff. She didn’t know what on earth he was doing upstairs; all she knew was that she was left to clear up the tea things.

Eventually she went to watch him turning out boxes and tipping drawers on to her uncle’s bed.

Bert had apparently collected silver paper and brown paper bags; bus tickets and bottle tops; string, candles and match books; books on fishing and fell-walking, and birds, and railways and trees.

‘Dad, this is really awful of you …’

Frank caught her expression and had the decency to show a little shame – if a slight deepening of his skin could be attributed to that emotion.

‘I don’t like having to do this, Susie, any more than you like standing there watching me. But this house is going to have to be disposed of, and the sooner I find the will the better. Someone must be named as executor. And it can’t be left through the winter with pipes freezing up and everything. There’ll be bills to sort out too: the gas, the electricity … it can’t all just be left.’

She looked up from a pile of old newspapers that had come to light. They went way back – one of them even mentioned food rationing. ‘But what makes you think Uncle Bert left the house to you?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t say that’s what I thought, did I?’

‘No. But … you do think so, don’t you?’

Frank grunted as he dragged a shoe box from under the bed. ‘Who else do you think he could have left it to? You? Since you were such great penpals?’

Susannah gritted her teeth at the little jibe. Dad would be out of her hair in an hour or so. Just put up with him for a bit longer, she told herself, and you needn’t see him again for – oh, ages.

‘Of course he won’t have left it to me,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t go building your hopes if I were you. It can’t be worth much, can it? Haringey isn’t exactly the up and coming area of London, you know. Anyway –’ she moved to peer over his shoulder as he blew grey dust off the lid of the box – ‘you’ve got loads of money, Dad. I don’t know what you’re getting worked up about.’

‘Why do children always assume that their parents are made of money? And I’m not getting worked up. If anyone’s getting worked up it’s you two hysterical women. Anyone would have thought I was trying to rob Bert’s grave.’

‘He hasn’t got a grave; he was cremated. And it’s not us making a fuss,’ she insisted, ‘it’s you.’

‘What’s got into you all of a sudden?’ Frank growled as the lid flew off. It wasn’t like Susannah to stand up to him like this.

‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Did everyone think she was behaving oddly? ‘Well, it looks like you’ve turned up trumps. That’s a will if ever I saw one.’

Frank didn’t need to be told. He’d already smoothed out the folds. ‘Christ!’ he muttered.

‘What? Tell me.’

He thrust the document towards her.

‘Who the hell’s this Dora Saxby?’ she said when she’d studied the interesting part. She could scarcely keep amusement from her voice: her father hadn’t benefited at all.

‘A woman he used to see.’ Frank’s watery pink eyes looked bleakly into the distant past. He put a finger in his ear, as he often did when upset about something, and absently raked it around. ‘I thought he’d given her up. She was married, you see. Perhaps he didn’t give her up after all. I lost track.’

‘A woman? I never knew.’ Susannah grinned. It was the best news she’d had all day. At least her Uncle Bert had lived a little. An image came to her mind. ‘There was an old dear at the back of the chapel today. I thought she’d got left behind by mistake. But I suppose it could have been her.’ She looked down at the will again and couldn’t resist rubbing salt into her father’s wound. ‘Did you see I’m to have five hundred pounds and the card table? Perhaps I’ll spend the money on air tickets for the family so we can all fly out to see you and Jan in your lovely romantic farmhouse. You must have finished all the renovations by now, surely? When would you like us to come?’

But they both knew she was only bluffing; Susannah would not voluntarily spend any amount of time in Jan’s company. Jan – a teacher at the same school as her father – had never been forgiven for befriending him and eventually taking her mother’s place. Even though her mother had been dead for several years by the time Frank and Jan married and Susannah then eighteen, she hadn’t been able to understand how her father could be so disloyal as to go after another woman. She still couldn’t.

The phone rang and rang in the empty cottage. Simon put down his receiver in disgust. Where had his mother got to? She hadn’t been at work – the guy who’d picked up the phone there had no idea where she was – and she wasn’t at home. But he badly needed her advice. He had no idea what he was going to do.

Reluctant to leave the comparative warmth of the phone booth, even though it smelled disgustingly of urine, he slumped against the Perspex wall. But his eyes fell on the baby buggy outside and he knew he ought to get moving. He would in a minute, he promised himself; right now he felt safe from the world.

Justin would be OK out there for a while. He was protected from the cutting wind by his plastic bubble and was fast asleep with three fingers in his mouth, blissfully unaware of his mother’s defection.

Simon made a fist and thumped the side of the booth. How could Natalie do this to her own child? How could she do it to him? Spurred by anger, he rolled out of the kiosk, grabbed the buggy, and set off down the street, hunched in his anorak and hoping no one would recognise him.

‘You aren’t normal!’ he’d flung at Natalie two days previously as she’d struggled out of their flat with a suitcase in one hand and a typewriter in the other.

‘Not all women are born mothers,’ she’d growled back. ‘I didn’t want him. And it was your fault we had him in the first place. So you can jolly well look after him.’

She humped her things down the stairs.

‘Oh, don’t keep dragging all that up!’ he groaned. ‘It wasn’t my fault the wretched thing burst.’

‘They test them to destruction, you know. Blow them up on machines. You just handled it wrongly.’

‘Well, there’s no point going over it again. It happened and we have to live with it. You should be thinking of Justin, not your stupid career.’

Simon couldn’t understand it. Justin was so cute and smart and lovable; a great kid. Nobody could not like him. How could his own mother be so set against him?

He had glared into the car that came to pick Natalie up. That friend of hers – Lara – had something to do with it, he was sure; she’d been putting all sorts of ideas into Natalie’s head, bit by bit. Feminist ideas. Ideas about independence and dedicating oneself to one’s career.

Of course, Simon acknowledged, jerking the buggy up a high kerb, feminism was nothing new to Natalie – she’d been brought up on it, after all – but she hadn’t pursued it so avidly before. Not until Lara had come on the scene. And everything had gone downhill from then on.

Losing his job had been the last straw.

‘Well, at least you can look after the baby now,’ Natalie had told him when he’d come home and broken the news. That was all the sympathy he’d got. ‘It’ll save me having to keep ferrying him around all the child-minders. And it’ll save the expense.’

‘But – but what are we going to live on? Your salary’s hardly enough.’ Teachers were notoriously poorly paid, and Natalie was at the bottom of the scale.

But she seemed to have worked things out already – as though she had been planning it all for months.

‘I –’ she cast him a wary glance before looking away again – ‘I think I’ll move in with Lara for a while. That should work out a lot cheaper.’

Simon blinked. And blinked again. ‘But what about me and Justin? There won’t be room for us – and I wouldn’t want to live with Lara if you paid me. We can’t go on living here either, with nothing coming in.’ He shook his head as though he had an insect in his ear. ‘Nat, none of this makes sense.’

‘Oh …’ She flapped him aside with one hand. ‘Go and move in with your parents. They’ll be delighted to have you, I’m sure.’

Had there been sarcasm in her tone? Simon reached the door of the flat that he must vacate at the end of the week. What had she been suggesting? That they wouldn’t welcome him with open arms? Well, they would; and they would love to see more of their grandchild.

Not that he could contemplate such a thing, of course. How would that make him look? A grown man, with responsibilities, running home to Mummy?

Not if he could help it.

‘Grief!’ Harvey muttered to himself when he finally got out of bed. His sleep-swollen eyes fell on the debris on Julia’s dressing table and followed a trail of jumble to the bathroom. He hadn’t noticed how untidy Julia was all the years he had been out working. Or if he had noticed it hadn’t bothered him. It was only now, stuck with it for most of the day, day after day, that it was really beginning to get to him.

Heaving himself from the bed he picked up a pair of red panties, two flimsy blouses, and a heap of wet towels. He dropped the clothes in a white wicker Ali Baba and hung the towels on a heated rail. He cleaned out the shower, tidied up the line of toiletries that ran almost the entire length of the bath tub, and then made the bed.

And he didn’t stop there. Fired by – well – he wasn’t sure what had brought on this aberration, he went on to clean the whole house. And when it was all in order and fit to be photographed for Homes and Gardens, he had a late lunch sandwich and a long, hot shower. Then he sat down at the piano in the lounge.

Mozart, he thought, his hands stiff and uncooperative; that’s what I need. Something to make me feel human again.

But he discovered that what he could hear in his head could no longer be reproduced by his fingers. Not surprising, since he hadn’t played for years. It didn’t matter though; there was no one around to listen. So he went on playing, stumbling over the cold keys and repeating his many mistakes, his thoughts drifting about with the music.

Was this real life, he asked himself: cleaning the house and strumming out tunes? Was this what soldiers dreamed of in the trenches when they were miles away at war? Did they really yearn only for their homes, for their loved ones safely about them, and all this crashing, unmitigated ordinariness? And when they were safe and sound at home did they yearn for excitement again, wishing they were back in the thick of it?

Harvey dropped the lid with a jangle and covered his eyes with his hands. Being out in the thick of things didn’t seem to be the answer either: caught up in the world of business, making money, dashing about in pursuit of an absorbing career. No. All that really gave you was an excuse for not addressing the big, burning question; you could simply tell yourself you hadn’t the time to think about it.

But now he had all the time in the world. The question stood before him, and nothing would make it go away. The ultimate riddle – a riddle he couldn’t begin to discuss with his nearest and dearest because she wouldn’t have the remotest idea what he was on about – was beginning to drive him crazy: what the hell was this life all about?

But a loud thundering at the front door prevented him having to come up with an answer just then.

‘Yes?’ he demanded, his eyes sweeping the small band of workmen he found propping up the porch.

‘Mr Webb? We’ve come early,’ their spokesman told him with a grin. ‘Now’s not often that happens, is it? We saw yer car on the drive, so we knew someone must be in, and we thought – well, you ain’t likely to object, are yer, mate?’

‘Object? To what?’ But Harvey had spotted a blue van with writing on the side and it began to trigger his memory.

‘Object to us getting on with it,’ the ring-leader said. ‘Make a start, kind of thing. Get the gear into the house and have another look-see. Know what I mean? Then tomorrow we can get down to things bright ’n early.’

‘Oh.’ Harvey’s face fell. ‘The bathroom. Of course.’

Some time ago Julia had decided they must have the guest bathroom refitted, and he had absently agreed. At the time, when quotations and so forth had been bandied about, he hadn’t taken much notice except for the final cost. He had nodded at colour charts and samples and hadn’t thought he would be much affected by the actual work; he’d certainly never dreamed he’d be part of the surroundings when it happened. Now he realised his privacy was about to be invaded, when all he wanted was to be left alone with his misery and the great mystery of life.

‘I suppose you’d better come in,’ he said, holding the door a little wider, and he watched in dismay as the work-party shambled past him in paint-splattered boots. Within minutes every room in the house seemed to be cluttered with copper piping, a shiny new bathroom suite stuck all over with impossible tape, ladders in three different sizes – what would they need those for? – and a stack of filthy tools. All Harvey’s work of the past four hours had gone to a ball of chalk.

But the boxes of tiles Julia had selected for the walls were too much to stomach.

‘Oh no,’ he said, taking one between his fingers as though it stank, ‘definitely, absolutely, and most decidedly not. This lot can go straight back where they came from.’

And then he had an idea.