Читать книгу The Torso in the Town - Simon Brett - Страница 13

Jude got back late on the Friday night. It had been an emotionally draining trip and she slept in on the Saturday morning. When she got up, the garage door of High Tor was hooked open, and there was no sign of the immaculate Renault. Carole was probably off doing a big Sainsbury’s shop.

Jude knew she should really do the same. She was out of virtually everything. Not even enough in the freezer to make herself lunch. For Carole, that would have been a definite argument to go shopping. For Jude, it was an argument to go and have lunch at the Crown and Anchor.

The bar looked welcoming and relaxed, but even scruffier than before. The same could be said for its owner. Ted Crisp’s hair and beard were shaggier, and it was a few days since their last encounter with shampoo. His uniform T-shirt and tracksuit trousers also looked as though they had been on for a while. Perhaps, Jude thought, like Carole, he was reacting to the end of their relationship by becoming more intensely himself. She had become more uptight than ever, he more sloppy. As if to say: This is what I’m really like. You’d hate me if you saw me now. It could never have worked.

Jude hadn’t had any breakfast and was hungry, so arrived at the pub soon after twelve. There were a couple of weekending families squabbling over crisps and Coke at the open-air tables, but she was the only customer inside the bar. Ted Crisp looked up lugubriously, took her in slowly, and said, ‘Hello, stranger.’

‘Yes, sorry I haven’t been in much recently. I’ve had to—’

‘No need to apologize. Still a large white wine, is it?’

‘Please. And are you taking food orders yet?’

‘Sure. Recommend the Fisherman’s Pie today. Got a bit of everything in it, that has, and all fresh from the quay. Cheesy potato on top, and it’s served with chips the size of logs. Get outside of that and you won’t hurt.’

‘Your silver-tongued sales talk has persuaded me. I’ll go for it. God, I’m starving.’

Ted called the order through to an unseen presence in the kitchen, then turned back to her. ‘What you been up to, then?’

When asked direct questions, Jude always answered. Carole was the only one whose gentility made her think she’d gone too far into their friendship to start asking.

‘I’ve been with a friend who’s just lost her husband. Very cut-up, needless to say. I’ve been hand-holding to get her through the funeral.’

‘Ah. I see. There you are.’ Ted pushed across her glass of wine. There was a silence. The ghost of Carole seemed to hover between them, and could only be exorcized by the mention of her name.

Ted took a clumsy run at it. ‘Thought I might have lost your custom too.’

‘Hm?’

‘You know, when I put your friend’s back up. Thought I might get the old sisterly solidarity reaction.’

Jude shook her head and sighed in exasperation. ‘No, I wouldn’t behave like that. And you haven’t exactly put Carole’s back up. She just feels embarrassed, that’s all. Oh come on, Ted, it’s not as if you treated her badly.’

‘Didn’t I?’

‘No. It just didn’t work out between you, that’s all. You were looking for different things.’

‘You can say that again.’ Ted Crisp wearily ran a hand through the foliage of his beard. ‘Carole . . .’ There, he’d managed to say it. ‘Carole kept wanting to define everything. Where were we going? What was the nature of our relationship?’ He let out a defeated sigh. ‘Why is it that men think in terms of enjoying things right now and are never in any hurry to see what happens next, whereas women are always thinking in terms of bloody relationships?’

‘That’s been one of the great gender issues since time began,’ said Jude.