Читать книгу A Clubbable Woman - Reginald Hill - Страница 6

‘He’s all right. You’ll live for ever, won’t you, Connie?’ said Marcus Felstead.

His head was being pumped up and down by an unknown hand. As he surfaced, his gaze took in an extensive area of mud stretching away to the incredibly distant posts. Then his forehead was brought down almost to his knees. Up again. Fred Slater he saw was resting his sixteen stones, something he did at every opportunity. Down. His knees. The mud. One stocking was down. His tie-up hung loose round his ankle. It was always difficult preserving a balance between support and strangulation of the veins. But it was worth it. Once the mud hardened among the long black hairs, it was the devil’s own job to get it off. Up again. He resisted the next downward stroke.

‘Why do you do that, anyway?’ asked Marcus interestedly.

‘I don’t know,’ said a Welsh voice. ‘It’s what they always do, isn’t it? It seems to bloody well work.’

‘You all right then, Connie?’

Connon slowly got up with assistance from the Welshman whom he now recognized as Arthur Evans, his captain.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

‘It was that big bald bastard in their second row,’ said Arthur. ‘Never you mind. I’ll fix him.’

There was a deprecating little cough from the referee who was lurking behind Connon.

‘I think we must restart.’

Connon shook his head. There was a dull ache above his left ear. Marcus was rather blurred.

‘I think I’d better have a few minutes off, Arthur.’

‘You do that, boyo. Here, Marcus, you give him a hand while I sort this lot out. Not that it matters much when you only get twelve of the sods turning up in the first place.’

Marcus slipped Connon’s arm over his shoulder.

‘Come along, my boy. We’ll deposit you in the bath before the rest of this filthy lot get in.’

They slowly made their way to the wooden hut which served as a pavilion.

‘Get yourself in that bath and mind you don’t drown,’ said Marcus. ‘I’ll get back and avenge you. It must be nearly time anyway.’

Left to himself, Connon began to unlace his boots. The ache suddenly began to turn like a cogwheel meshing with his flesh. He bowed his head between his knees again and it faded away. He stood up, fumbled in his jacket pocket and took out a packet of cigarettes. The smoke seemed to help and he took off his other boot. But he couldn’t face the bath, he decided. He wasn’t very dirty and he hadn’t moved fast enough to work up a sweat. He washed the mud off his hands and bathed his face. Then, after towelling himself down, he got dressed.

The others trooped in as he was fastening his tie.

‘You all right, Connie?’ asked Marcus again.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Good-oh!’ said Marcus. ‘Let’s get into that water before Fred gets in.’

He began to tear his rugby kit off. Within seconds the bath was full of naked men and the water was sloshing over the side. There was a general outcry as Fred Slater settled in. Connon looked at the scene with slight distaste.

‘Goodbye, Marcus,’ he said, but his voice was drowned in a burst of singing. He made his way to the door and out into the fresh air.

He picked his way slowly over the muddy grass towards the distant club-house. The hut the fourth team used had originally been all the accommodation the club possessed, but the present of an adjoining field and a large loan from the Rugby Union had enabled them at the same time to develop another two pitches and build the pavilion. But even here the showers could not really cope with more than two teams, so the Fourth soldiered on in the old hut.

Connon thought ruefully that he had rather missed out on the development. The season the club-house was opened had been the season he retired. All those years in the first team had been centered on the old hut. Now when he was stupid enough to let himself be talked into playing, it was back to the old hut again.

He pushed open the glass-panelled door and stepped into the social room. Tea and sandwiches were being served.

‘Hello, Connie,’ called Hurst, the club captain. ‘Been over at the Fourths? How did they get on?’

Connon realized he did not know. He could not even recollect the score when he had left the field.

‘I don’t know how it ended,’ he said. ‘I got a knock and came off early.’

Hurst looked at him in surprise.

‘You haven’t been playing, have you? Good lord. You’d better have a seat.’

Connon helped himself to a cup of tea.

‘I’m only thirty-nine,’ he said. ‘You’re nearly thirty yourself, Peter.’

Hurst smiled. He knew, and he knew that Connon knew, this was his last season as captain.

‘They won’t get me out there, Connie. When I finish, I finish.’

‘Sandwich, Connie?’ asked one of the girl helpers. Connon recognized her as the girl-friend of the second team full-back. He shook his head, remembering when Mary had used to come down on Saturday afternoon. The catering like everything else had been more primitive then. Once they became wives they stopped coming. Then they tried to stop you coming. Then they even stopped that.

‘I won’t do it again in a hurry,’ he said to Hurst. ‘How did you get on?’

But Hurst had turned away to talk to some members of the visiting team.

The ache was turning again in Connon’s head and he put his cup down and went across the room to the door which led into the bar. This was empty except for the club treasurer behind the bar sorting out some bottles.

‘Hello, Connie,’ he said. ‘You’re early. You know we don’t serve till tea’s done and the girls have got cleared up.’

‘That’s all right, Sid. I just feel like a quiet sit down. It’s rather noisy in there.’

He sank into a chair and massaged the side of his head. The treasurer carried on with his work a few moments, then said, ‘Are you feeling all right, Connie?’

‘Fine.’

He lit another cigarette.

‘Make an exception and pass me a scotch, will you, Sid?’

‘Well, all right. Medicinal purposes only. Don’t let those drunkards smell it.’

He poured a scotch and handed it over.

‘Two shillings and sixpence.’

‘Isn’t my credit good?’

‘Your credit’s bloody marvellous. It’s my accounts which are bloody awful. Two and six.’

Connon dug into his pocket and produced the money. He sat down again and sipped his whisky. It didn’t help.

The door opened and Marcus stuck his head in.

‘There you are, then. I saw your car outside so I knew you must be hiding somewhere. How are you feeling?’

‘Not so bad.’

‘Good-oh. I see you’ve got a drink. Hey, Sid!’

‘No.’

‘Right, I’ll have to share yours, Connie.’

He sat down beside Connon. Connon pushed the drink towards him.

‘Have it.’

‘Here. Watch it or I’ll take offence.’

Connon smiled.

Marcus Felstead was short, bald, and fat. His face was not really the face of a fat man, Connie thought, but of a tired saint. He could not recall the name of the tired saint he had in mind but he remembered very clearly the picture in his illustrated Bible which was the source of the idea. The saint, his sanctity advertised by a dome of light which sat round his head like a space helmet, had been leaning on a staff and looking despondently into the distance which seemed to offer nothing but desert. Perhaps the thing about Marcus’s face was that the fleshiness of it formed a framework round rather than belonged to the thin nose and lips and narrow intelligent eyes which peered at him now curiously.

‘Are you sure you’re OK, Connie? You’re not usually knocking the booze back so early.’

‘Well, I did feel a bit groggy. But it’s gone now. How did we get on by the way?’

‘What do you think? Two men short with one of their reserves playing at full-back. Can you imagine? A reserve for a fourth team. Jesus, he made me feel young. They scored another couple after you’d gone. Thirty-two – three it was at the end.’

Connon was surprised. He could not recall any scoring at all, certainly not the kind of regular scores needed to build up a total like that.

‘Who scored for us?’

Marcus looked at him strangely.

‘What are you after? Flattery? You did, you silly bugger. A moment of glory, like the old times.’

Connon drank his whisky absently. He had distinct memories of the game, but they bore no relation to Marcus’s account.

The door burst open and a group of youngsters came in, their faces glowing with exercise and hard towelling.

‘Come along, barman, this isn’t good enough, this bar should be open now!’ one cried.

‘It’ll be open at the proper time,’ said the treasurer, ‘and then I’m not sure you’re old enough to be served.’

‘Me? The best fly-half the Club’s ever had. I’d be playing for England now if I hadn’t got an Irish mother, and for Ireland if I hadn’t got an English father.’

‘And for Wales, if you didn’t fancy Arthur Evans’s old woman.’

Marcus frowned disapprovingly and spoke sharply into their laughter, affecting a Welsh lilt.

‘Somebody talking about me, is there?’

There was an edge of silence for a moment, but only a moment.

‘It’s only Marcus!’

‘It might not have been,’ said Marcus sharply.

Unconcerned, a couple of boys strolled over and sat down at the table. They were only eighteen or nineteen. Still at the stage where they were fit rather than kept fit, thought Connon.

‘Did you play today, Marcus?’

‘Yes.’

‘Great! How did you get on?’

‘Lost.’

‘Pity. We won and the Firsts won.’

‘Not playing for the Firsts yet, a young and fit man like you?’

The youth smiled at this attack on his own condescension. ‘Not yet. But I’m ready. I’m just waiting for the selection committee to spot me.’ He grinned, a little (but not very) shyly, at Connon. ‘Didn’t you like my line-out work today, Connie?’

The boy had never called him Connie before. In fact, he couldn’t recollect the boy’s ever having called him anything. This was the way with these youngsters – noncommittal or familiar, there was no earlier formal stage. Not that I mind, he admonished himself. This is a rugby club, not an office party.

‘I didn’t see it, I’m afraid,’ he replied.

Hurst stuck his head through the hatch which led into the social room.

‘Right, Sid,’ he said. ‘All clear.’

‘Your order, gentlemen. Marcus, you’re on tonight as well, aren’t you?’

‘Christ, so I am. I could have been legitimately behind the bar all this time. Are you staying, Connie?’

Connon shook his head.

‘I’m late already. Mary’s expecting me for tea.’

‘She doesn’t know you were playing, then?’

‘How could she? I didn’t know myself till Arthur grabbed me when I got here and wept Welsh tears all over me.’

‘Best of luck, then. See you tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Come on, Marcus!’ came a cry from the bar. The room was now full and the social room hatch was also crowded with faces. Marcus barged his way through the crowd and was soon serving drinks from the other side of the counter.

Connon held the last of his whisky in his mouth. He felt reluctant to move though he knew he was already late. In fact he tried to catch Arthur Evans’s eye but the little Welshman either missed him or ignored him. Connon smiled at himself, recognizing his own desire to be pressed to stay. A group of young men with their girls crowded round his table and he stood up.

‘Thank you, Mr Connon,’ said one of the girls as she slipped into his chair. Connon nodded vaguely at her, suspecting he recognized one of his daughter’s school-friends under the mysterious net of hair which swayed over her face. She brushed it back and smiled up at him. He was right. Seventeen years old, glowing with unself-conscious beauty. She had a piece of tomato skin stuck in the crack between her two front teeth.

‘You’re a friend of Jenny’s, aren’t you?’ he asked.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘How’s she enjoying college?’

‘Fine,’ he answered, ‘I think she’s very happy there. She’ll soon be home for the holidays. Perhaps we’ll see you at the house. It’s Sheila, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. It depends where I fit into Jenny’s new scale of friends, I suppose. I’d quite like to see her.’

Connon reluctantly digested another piece of the revolting honesty of the young and turned to go. He heard a burst of laughter as he moved to the door. Arthur noticed him this time.

‘Hey, Connie, how are you there, boyo? How’s the head?’

‘It’s all right now.’

‘Good. I settled that fellow’s nonsense anyhow. Time for a drink?’

‘No thanks, Arthur. Gwen coming down tonight?’

‘Why yes, she is. Always does, doesn’t she? Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. I haven’t seen her for a while, that’s all.’

‘That’s because you’re always bloody well rushing off home, isn’t it? Why doesn’t Mary come down nowadays?’

Connon shrugged. For a second he contemplated offering Arthur a long analysis of the complex of reasons governing his wife’s absence.

‘Too busy, I expect,’ he said. ‘I’d better be off. Cheers, Arthur.’

‘Cheer-oh.’

The car park was quite full now and his car was almost boxed in. He had once proposed at a committee meeting that the club-house facilities be restricted to those who at least watched the game but this voluntary restriction of revenue had not won much support. Finally he got clear without trouble and drove away into the early darkness of a winter evening.

He glanced at his watch and realized just how late he was. He increased his speed slightly. Ahead a traffic light glowed green. It turned to amber when he was about twenty yards away. He pressed hard down on the accelerator and crossed as the amber flicked over to red.

There was no danger. There was only one car waiting to cross and it was coming from the right.

But it was a police-car.

Connon swore to himself as the car pulled ahead of him and flashed ‘Stop’. He drew carefully in to the side and switched off his engine. Its throbbing continued in his head somehow and he rubbed his temple, in an effort to dispel the pain. Out of the car ahead climbed two uniformed figures who made their way towards him slowly, weightily. He lowered his window and sucked in the fresh air.

‘Good evening, sir. May I see your licence?’

Silently he drew it out and handed it over with his insurance cover-note and test certificate.

‘Thank you, sir.’

The gears in his head were now grinding viciously together and he could not stop himself from rubbing his brow again.

‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘No. Well, no. I had one whisky but that’s all.’

‘I see. Would you mind taking a breathalyser test, sir?’

Connon shrugged. The policeman accepted the negative result impassively and returned his documents.

‘Thank you, sir. You will hear from us if any further action is proposed concerning your failure to halt at the traffic lights. Good evening.’

‘Good evening,’ said Connon. The whole business had taken something over fifteen minutes, making him still later. But he drove the remaining five miles home with exaggerated care, partly because of the police, partly because of his headache. As he turned into his own street, his mind cleared and the pain vanished in a matter of seconds.

He drove carefully down the avenue of glowing lampposts. It was a mixed kind of street, its origins contained in its name, Boundary Drive. The solid detached houses on the left had been built for comfort in the ’thirties when they had faced over open countryside stretching away to the Dales. Now they faced a post-war council estate whose name, Woodfield Estate, was the sole reminder of what once had been. This itself merged into a new development so that the boundary was a good four miles removed from the Drive. Mary and her cronies among the neighbours often bemoaned the proximity of the estate, complaining of noise, litter, overcrowded schools, and the comparative lowness of their own house values.

This last was certainly true, but Connon suspected that most of his neighbours were like himself in that only the price-depressing nearness of the estate had enabled him to buy such a house. Even then, it had really been beyond his means. But Mary had wanted a handsome detached house with a decent garden and Boundary Drive had offered an acceptable compromise between the demands of social prestige and economy.

His gates were closed. He halted on the opposite side of the road and went across to open them. While he was at it, he walked up the drive and opened the garage doors. It was quite dark now. The only light in the house was the cold pallor from the television set which glinted through the steamed-up lounge windows.

When he went back to his car a man was standing by it with the driver’s door open. Connon recognized him as the occupier of the house directly opposite his own, a man named Dave Fernie whom he also knew as a chronic grumbler at work.

‘Evening, Mr Connon. You left your engine running. I was just switching it off.’

‘Thank you,’ said Connon. He never knew how to address this man. He worked in the factory of the firm for which Connon was assistant personnel manager. But he was also a neighbour. And in addition, possibly with malice aforethought, Mary had made of Mrs Fernie the only friend she had from the council houses.

‘I was just opening my gates,’ he added, climbing into the car.

‘That’s all right,’ said Fernie graciously. ‘I’ve just been down the match. Were you there?’

‘Yes,’ said Connon. ‘I mean, no. I was at the rugger match.’

‘Oh, that. I meant the football. We won, 3–1. How did your lot come on?’

‘Oh, we did all right.’

‘Good. Rugby, eh? Here, you used to do a bit of that, didn’t you? My wife saw the pictures.’

‘Yes, I did once.’

He turned the key in the ignition and felt the turn in his skull so that the pain in his head shook with the roar of the engine, then settled down as quickly.

‘You OK?’ asked Fernie.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Well, good night then.’

‘Good night.’

He swung the car over the road and into the drive, slamming his foot hard on the brake as the branches of an overgrown laburnum slapped against his wing. He was used to this noise, but tonight it took him completely by surprise. He had stalled the engine and this time it took two or three turns of the starter to get it going again.

At last he rolled gently into the garage. He shut the main doors from the inside and went through the side door which led into the kitchen.

In the sink, dirty, were a cup and saucer, plate and cutlery. From the lounge came music and voices. He listened carefully and satisfied himself that the television was the source of everything. Then he took off his coat and hung it in the cloakroom. He looked at himself in the mirror above the hand basin for a moment and automatically adjusted his tie and ran his comb through the thinning hair. Then, recognizing a desire to delay, he grinned at his reflection and shrugged his shoulders, grimaced self-consciously at the theatricality of the gesture and moved back into the entrance hall.

The lounge door was ajar. The only light within was the flickering brightness of the television picture. A man was singing, while in the background a lot of short-skirted dancers sprang about in carefully choreographed abandon. His wife was sprawled out in the high-backed wing chair he thought of as his own. All he could see of her were her legs and an arm trailed casually down to the floor where an ashtray stood with a half-smoked cigarette burning on its edge. The metal dish was piled full of butt ends, he noticed. The burning cigarette had started another couple of stumps smoking, and Connon wrinkled his nose at the smell.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ still hesitating at the door.

The music and dancing seemed to be approaching a climax. The trailing hand moved slightly; a gesture of acknowledgment; a request for silence, a dismissal.

Connon let his attention be held for a moment by a close-up of a contorted face, male, mixing to a close-up of a shuddering bosom, female. The cigarette smell seemed to catch his throat.

‘I’ll just get a cup of tea, then,’ he said and turned, closing the door behind him.

Back in the kitchen he found a slice of cooked ham, evidently his share of the meal whose débris he had noticed in the sink. He slapped it on a plate and lit the gas under the kettle. Even as he did so, he felt his head begin to turn again and this time his stomach turned with it. He pressed his handkerchief to his mouth and moved shakily upstairs. Distantly the thought passed through his mind that he was well conditioned. Being sick in the downstairs toilet might disturb Mary. Now he was on the landing and his knees buckled and he gagged almost drily. Wiping his mouth, he pulled himself up, one hand on the handle of his bedroom door.

The next time he fell, he fell on to the bed and the wheels in his head went spinning on into darkness.

‘Do we have to have that tripe on?’ asked Dave Fernie.

‘Please yourself,’ said his wife. ‘You usually like it. All those girls. You must be getting old.’

‘Too old for that.’

Alice Fernie glanced across at her husband with a smile, half ironical, half something else.

‘Old enough for what, then?’

‘Aren’t you going to switch it off?’

‘I didn’t switch it on.’

‘No. I did. So you could see your precious football results after you rushed back from your precious match. And when you didn’t come, I even marked them down for you. Don’t you want to see?’

Fernie reached across and took the paper from the arm of his wife’s chair.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

The singer was off again, alone this time; a ballad; his voice vibrant with sincerity.

‘For God’s sake, switch that bloody thing off, will you!’

Angrily she rose and pulled the plug out of its socket.

‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you these days. I’m getting pretty near the end of my tether with you. Other women wouldn’t put up with what I do.’

Fernie ignored her and peered down at the newspaper, but she sensed he wasn’t really seeing it. She stood in the middle of the room and glowered down at him. He was in his early thirties, the same age as herself, but there was a puffiness about his face and a sagging at the belly which made him look older. Normally the contrast to her own advantage pleased her. Now she screwed up her face in distaste. Then, quickly as it came, her anger drained from her and she sat down again.

‘Are you ready for your tea yet?’

‘No, love. I told you I wasn’t hungry.’

‘Is there anything bothering you, Dave? Are you feeling all right?’

She steeled herself for the irritability her concern for his health always seemed to cause, but unnecessarily.

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘You were late tonight.’

‘Yes, I’m sorry. I got held up. It was a good gate. I met his lordship on my way up the road.’

He jerked his head towards the window which faced the street. Alice affected not to understand.

‘Who’s that you mean?’

‘You know who. Connon. Bloody twat.’

‘Why? What’s he ever done to you?’

‘Nothing,’ he grunted. ‘I just don’t take to him, that’s all. Too bloody standoffish for me.’

‘That’s what he was. A stand-off.’

‘A what?’

‘Stand-off. His position at rugby. Mary told me.’

Fernie laughed. ‘Stand-off, eh? That’s bloody good. Wait till I tell them on the bench. That fits him.’

‘Anyway I think you’re wrong. When I met him he was very nice. Charming. A bit quiet perhaps but he’s just a bit shy, I think.’

‘If he’s shy he shouldn’t be a bloody personnel manager, should he? Anyway he’s more than that. He’s a snob.’

Alice laughed with a slight edge of malice. ‘I’d have thought you could say that about Mary Connon. But not him.’

Fernie shook his head dismissively. ‘Her. That’s different. She’d like to be better, but knows she isn’t. He believes he is. Bloody rugby club.’

‘Oh, Dave, don’t be daft. It’s not like that these days. Anybody plays rugby. Maisie Curtis’s boy next door, Stanley, he’s in the Club.’

‘So what? Things don’t change all that quick. What a game. Organized thuggery, then they all sing dirty songs like little lads. Yet they all tut-tut like mad if one of our lads runs on the field and someone shouts “shit” from the terraces.’

‘There’s no need to get excited, Dave.’

‘No? No, I suppose not. Here, I think I’m ready for my tea now.’

Alice rose and went into the kitchen.

‘I’ll tell you something about your precious stand-offish Mr Connon, though.’ His voice came drifting after her.

‘What’s that, then?’

‘He’d had a couple tonight. He was swaying around a bit. And I thought he was going to drive across his lawn and in through the front door.’

Alice came back to the sitting-room door.

‘That doesn’t sound like him.’

‘Doesn’t it? Don’t tell me that you’ve only heard good of him from Madam Mary?’

‘She doesn’t talk much about him at all.’

‘I don’t know why you bother with her. You’ve only got your age in common.’

Alice took an indignant step forward.

‘What do you mean? I can give her ten years, and more.’

Fernie caught her hand and pulled her down beside him on the settee.

‘As much as that? Mind you, she’s well preserved. And game too, I should think.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Alice, struggling to get up.

‘She must have caught him young then, very young. He’s only thirty-nine, you know.’

‘How do you know?’

He didn’t answer but went on, ‘And they’ve got that girl of theirs …’

‘Jenny.’

‘Yes, Jenny, at college. He must have been caught young. Very young. She’s a pretty little thing, now.’

‘Don’t you want any tea, Dave?’

Fernie’s brawny arm held his wife in a clamp-like grip round the waist. He looked thoughtfully into her face, then pressed gently with his free hand where it rested on her leg just above the knee.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I think I’ve changed my mind again.’

Jenny Connon hadn’t quite made up her mind what to do about the hand on her knee. Adaptability was an important quality in a teacher, her education tutor had told the class that morning. How to cope with the unexpected.

Though, as she herself had arranged that her roommate should go out and she herself had turned the key in the door to prevent interruption, the situation was not all that unexpected.

‘Do you really want to be a teacher?’ she asked brightly.

Antony (he insisted on the full name) pushed the hair back from his brow with a gesture almost girlish (but he used the hand not on her knee) and smiled.

‘If you mean, have I got a sense of vocation, no. If you mean, are my natural inclinations to be something else being repressed, the answer is equally no. Being at college is less distasteful than most of the alternatives, and it pleased my parents. Anyway, think of the holidays. I have a sense of vacation very strongly developed.’

Antony Wilkes was without doubt the smoothest man in the South Warwickshire College of Education at the moment. As he was in his third year and Jenny was in her first, the opportunities for the relationship to develop were limited. As it was, Jenny had decided to feel flattered that she was the second girl he had chosen from the year’s new supply. Her college ‘mother’ in the second year had assured her (rather sadly) that Antony was most discriminating in his selection. Her room-mate had been even more positive. She had been the first of the year. This gave Jenny the advantage of being well briefed in the Wilkesian technique, but being forewarned she was discovering did not prevent her from being disarmed. Antony was one of the few people she had met who really did talk in long well-organized speeches like people in plays. Most of her acquaintance, she realized, hardly ever strung together more than a couple of dozen words at a time except when telling an anecdote, and in fact the few who did talk at length were down in the catalogue as bores and therefore to be avoided.

But Antony talked eloquently, interestingly, without strain; with none of those changes of direction, grammatical substitutions, syntactical complexities, whose existence her linguistic lecturer assured her was the real framework of the spoken language.

His speech, Jenny decided, was the smooth, reassuring surface of his amatory technique. Even the slight sense of staginess it conveyed worked for him, creating a faintly non-real, therefore non-dangerous, context. But beneath the surface …

The obvious survival tactic was to stay afloat. She seized at a bit of driftwood in his last speech.

‘Is it important to please your parents?’

‘But of course. It’s important to please everyone who deserves it, even a little beyond desert if possible. Financially it’s not important. My father has a strict scale of values. He gave me the precise amount necessary to bring my grant up to the level he has worked out to be sufficient for my well-being. Less would be neglect; more would be luxury. So I never get more or less for any reason. And to use money as punishment or reward is quite out of the question.’

‘He sounds like a Puritan banker.’

‘Not at all. If you wish to combine his religion with his profession, you’d have to call him an Aston Villa butcher. Mind you, my mother slips me the odd note now and then. But, as I say, this has nothing to do with the question. The only real answer is that, despite the fact that in many ways they find me utterly incomprehensible, they have always felt inclined by nature to please me; similarly I them.’

‘You mean you love them?’ asked Jenny, half-consciously trying to embarrass him.

‘Yes, of course. Had I not made that clear? I’m sorry. And you, do you love your parents?’

‘Yes, I think so. My father, I like him a lot and we mean a lot to each other. It’s a matter of talking and understanding, but my mother’s different. Irritating in so many things. I want to scream at her sometimes.’

‘But you never do?’

Jenny grinned. She had tried to stop grinning. She thought it made her face fall apart in the middle, and she still had to count her teeth to assure herself she had not got twice as many as other people. But she kept on forgetting.

Antony Wilkes was glad she forgot.

‘Oh, sometimes. I give a quick forty-second-psycho-analysis. Rather nasty stuff it can be. She’s a bit of a snob; uses me to get at Dad, whom she resents in some odd way. She’s a few years older than he is, though I only use that as a last resort. I don’t know why, I suppose I just know that for her age is the ultimate insult, stuck a long way after vanity and dishonesty! But sometimes I feel I’m a lot more like her than Dad, than I’m like Dad I mean, though I like him more.’

Ruefully she compared her own performance as a speech-maker with Antony’s. Still, it wasn’t all that bad. And her hesitancies arose from uncertainties of emotion. Perhaps it would have flowed more smoothly if she hadn’t been so aware of the tensions, the fight for survival at home.

Antony’s hand patted her knee sympathetically. She realized that her attempt to stop on the surface had somehow gone wrong. She had entered into a conversational intimacy with him without even noticing it. She would have to keep very much on the alert now. His other hand was pressing her shoulders round. She turned to him and he kissed her. She’d have to do something about his other hand. But not yet. Mini-skirts and tights, she thought dreamily. Action and reaction. The invitation to attack might be more compelling than ever before, but the defences were stronger. She grinned again, which produced a very invigorating kind of kiss.

She could postpone her decision for a while yet.

‘Christ, Marcus, where the hell have you been? You just said half an hour. It’s been more like an hour and a half.’

Marcus Felstead manoeuvred his bulk under the flap into the bar.

‘Sorry, Ted, old son. Got held up a bit. Look, have a pint on me and push off now. I’ll spell you when you’ve got a Saturday.’

‘OK. And I’ll have that pint. I’ve been so bloody busy that not a drop’s passed my lips since you left.’

‘It’ll do you good. Give you an edge when they start fighting for the spare.’

‘Some hope. There won’t be much of that around now. See you, Marcus, Sid.’

Sid Hope, the club treasurer, looked askance at Marcus.

‘Nice of you to come back and give us a hand.’

‘Come off it, Sid. I did get Ted to stand in.’

‘Ted! Have you seen him at the till? He’s got some peculiar decimal system of his own. Where have you been to anyway? On the prowl?’

‘Nowhere important. Just out.’

A peal of uninhibited female laughter cut through the noise and fume of the bar. Marcus turned. Sitting in the furthermost corner surrounded by half a dozen men was the woman he expected to see after hearing that laugh. Dressed in a low-cut cocktail dress whose demure whiteness set off the gleaming black of her hair and the shining silver of her tights, she was looking up and smiling at the young man who bent over her, obviously telling a story.

The treasurer followed Marcus’s gaze and shook his head.

‘Trouble,’ he said laconically.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what Arthur is. He’s been hopping around like a cat on hot bricks all evening waiting for his precious wife to turn up. Finally off he goes about half an hour ago to fetch her. Decides she must have forgotten. Forgotten! Well, he’s hardly out of the place before she comes sailing in like the figurehead on the good ship Venus. And of course within two minutes of coming into the most crowded room in the county with a queue six deep at the bar, she’s sitting in the corner surrounded by drinks. Just wait till Arthur gets back.’

Sid drew a couple of pints for a complaining customer, then looked over at Gwen Evans again.

‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘what a pair of bristols, Jesus! There hasn’t been anything like that in here since Nancy Jennings went off with that traveller. And Mary James – Connon, I mean – was the only thing I’ve ever known who could have beaten it.’

‘Connie’s wife?’

‘Yes. She doesn’t get in here much now, does she? Nor does Connie for that matter. But I can remember the days. Jesus! Connie was married when you came to live here, wasn’t he, Marcus?’

‘Yes. Just.’

‘It must have been a full-time business with that one. No wonder he lost his edge after that. God, he once looked a cert for a cap. First we’d have ever had. Never been a sniff since. All for love.’

Marcus poured himself a scotch.

‘He did crack his ankle.’

‘Of course he did. I’m not really suggesting, mind you, that kid of theirs came out pretty smartly. Like Connie’s pass, they said. And the responsibility can’t have helped. But they seemed to make out all right. Didn’t see all that much of Mary after that. But it was before. Like her over there. And Nancy Jennings. Trouble.’

Marcus, his eyes still fixed on the noisy corner, ran his glass along his lower lip.

‘Are you putting forward as a general proposition, Sid, that women with big breasts cause trouble?’

‘Not absolutely. Though there’s a bit of truth in it, isn’t there?’

‘Mary Connon never caused any trouble down here that I saw.’

‘Like I said, after they married, she didn’t get in here so much. Tailed off. That’s an apt phrase if you like. She was six years older than him, you know.’

‘Still is, isn’t she?’

‘You know what I mean. She’d had her fling down here. Not here exactly. That was in the days before this bloody roadhouse came into being. Remember? We had the tea-hut. None of your polished floors. You could get splinters through your shoes if you weren’t careful. Then over to the Bird-in-Hand. No, Mary did the right thing – for her, anyway. Married someone half a dozen years younger. And stopped coming so much. Nancy Jennings, she buggered off. It’s when they marry someone ten years older than themselves and keep their wares in the shop window that the trouble starts. Here, my lad, if you’re going to have another whisky, pay for the last one first.’

‘Sorry, Sid. There it goes; and for this one too. Witnessed?’

But Sid wasn’t paying attention.

‘Here we go,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Here we go.’

Marcus had never seen anyone whose face was really black with rage, but Arthur Evans was pretty close to it as he pushed through the door. A path opened up before him. It led to the corner where his wife sat. She looked up, flashed him a quick smile, then returned her attention to the youngster who had been talking to her. But he had seen Arthur too and seemed disinclined to talk further.

With a tremendous effort, obvious to all who watched, which was about three-quarters of those in the room, Arthur turned to the bar. Marcus could almost feel the man’s will forcing his broad shoulders to turn. Then his trunk followed. And finally his legs.

Quickly Marcus thrust a glass up against the whisky optic. And again.

‘Arthur, old son, I’m in the chair. Wrap yourself round this and tell us about your childhood in the green valleys of old Wales.’

Evans took the drink in one.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Over his shoulder, Marcus saw Gwen casually disengaging herself from the group in the corner. Exchanging a word here and there as she came, she passed easily across the room till she arrived at her husband’s shoulder.

‘Hello, dear. Going to buy me a drink? I’ve got no money and I can’t sponge off your friends all night.’

‘Where’ve you been, Gwen?’

She smiled ironically.

God, you’re a beauty, thought Marcus. Sid, in an excess of desire to share his admiration of the sight before them, kicked him painfully on the ankle.

‘Oh, I got tired of waiting, so I came on by myself.’

‘But you were supposed to be coming with Dick and Joy.’

‘Was I? Oh, I forgot.’

‘They called for you.’

‘Then I must have left.’

‘To come here? You took your time, didn’t you, girl?’

‘Do you want to quarrel, Arthur?’

She raised her voice just sufficiently to cut into the attention of those immediately adjacent to them.

Marcus looked at Arthur. Surprisingly, he seemed to be considering the question on its merits.

Finally, calmly, ‘No,’ he said.

‘Then let’s have that drink. Marcus, love, see if you can add a bit of gin to that slice of dried-up lemon which seems to be all that’s left of a once proud fruit.’

‘A pleasure, ma’am,’ said Marcus. ‘A real pleasure.’ He meant it.

Two hours or so later, just after eleven, he put the lights out in the bar. Outside he could hear the din of departure. Car doors. Impatient horns. Voices. Song.

As he passed the Gents, the door opened and a large figure fell out.

‘Marcus,’ it said.

‘Ted. Christ, you certainly caught up, didn’t you? Come on, old son. We’d better get you home.’

Arm in arm they walked out into the car park.

Jenny Connon opened the door to let her roommate in.

‘Hello,’ said the newcomer brightly. ‘Not too early, am I? It’s after eleven.’

‘What you really mean is, not too late, you hope. How are you, Helen?’ said Antony. ‘Well, must be off. See you both. Bye.’

Jenny watched him go down the corridor.

‘Had a nice time?’ asked Helen.

‘Oh yes,’ said Jenny noncommittally as she closed the door. She hoped she had done the right thing.

‘The time is ten minutes past eleven,’ said the announcer with evident relief. ‘You are watching …’

Alice Fernie switched him off in mid-sentence and yawned.

‘Well, I’m off to bed. Coming?’

Behind her, her husband stood in the small bay of the window looking out into the front garden.

‘No, dear. You go on. I’ll be up in a minute.’

‘What are you looking at?’

‘Nothing. I thought I saw that bloody black and white cat from next door digging up my lawn. Off you go.’

‘All right, then. Good night.’

‘Good night.’

And over the road, Sam Connon stood pale-faced and trembling in the darkened hall of his house, the telephone in his hand.

Behind him in the lounge, stretched out in the high-backed chair he would never want to call his own again, was his wife.

She was quite, quite dead.