A Fatal Attachment (3 page)

“Aren't people awful?” she said to the boys as they passed. “You'd think they'd know better than just to throw things down in a beautiful spot like this.”

The boys stopped.

“We did a project at our old school,” said the younger of the two. “On recycling waste, and that sort of thing.”

“That's important, of course,” said Lydia, straightening up and smiling. “But what we really need is to teach people not to scatter litter in their wake. They don't do it in other countries. . . . Where do you come from?”

“Tipton. We moved a couple of months ago. We had a better school there than North Radley High.”

Lydia was uncertain where Tipton was, and by the time she had thought of something else to say the elder boy had swung his leg over the bar of his bike and was riding off. The younger followed, smiling a farewell.

The next evening was more overcast still, and though Lydia stood in her bedroom for some time watching the hill road, the cyclists never appeared. At seven she gave up her watch and went and prepared her dinner.

Friday, the day of Andy Hoddle's appointment in Halifax, the hot steamy weather returned. Soon after the time when the schools were out Lydia finished work—which was going well, wonderfully well at the moment—and went out into the garden. She meditated wandering down to the village at around the time when the boys usually came up, but there was little in Bly except a pub she had not been in for years and five or six shops which she never nowadays used, so instead she decided to garden once more in the overhang where she could both see and be seen from the road. To her joy the fine weather brought the boys out again. As they approached her wheeling their bikes up the hill, wearing silky running shorts and bright sleeveless tops that Lydia felt rather regrettable, her heart nevertheless jumped in anticipation. She straightened up and waved casually.

“Where are you off to today?” she called.

The boys stopped on the road just below her, and the younger one smiled engagingly.

“The woods beyond the gravel pit. There's a clearing in the middle that makes a good racing track. We're aiming to win the Tour de France round about 1997.”

“Shouldn't you be cycling up the hill, then? To strengthen your calf muscles or something?”

“We're keen but not that keen,” said the elder boy. Lydia laughed.

“That's right. One should have priorities,” she said.

“Do you have a nice garden?” asked the younger one.

“Quite nice. Not like the gardens in the South, but quite pretty. Why don't you come in and have a look?”

The boys nodded and, pulses racing, Lydia walked over the lawn to open the gate for them. They wheeled their bikes through, and Lydia pointed to an old stone seat let into the wall.

“That's where my nephews used to leave their cycles.”

The boys took them over there, and then turned round to get a proper look at the garden. Lydia was pleased it was looking so fresh and green, like these two young lives.

“Gosh, it's lovely!” said the younger toy. “Do you have help with it?”

“Some,” said Lydia. “The sort of help that's not much help, if you know what I mean.”

“Our garden's all overgrown,” said the elder. “Dad goes out there and makes a tot of noise, but he doesn't make much impression. The house was empty for six months before we moved in, Mum says she just hasn't the time or energy.”

“Gardens need a lot of both,” Lydia agreed.

“Are your nephews grown up now?” asked the younger.

“One is,” said Lydia, turning momentarily away. “One was killed in the Falklands War, fighting for his country. The other is . . . in television, actually.”

She was depressed to see their eyes light up with interest.

“Does he appear on screen?” asked the elder.

“Nothing so . . . glamorous. He's deputy head of drama with Midlands Television, and he does a lot of scripts for one of their ‘soaps'—
Waterloo Terrace
.”

She had put very definite inverted commas around the word “soap,” but she realized the act of distancing would be lost on the boys. They, she could see, were enormously impressed by the mention of
Waterloo Terrace.

“My mum can remember when she first saw television, can you imagine?” said the younger. “It was the queen's coronation, She says television was in its infancy then.”

“It still is.”

“Can you remember when you first saw it?”

“Yes, indeed. It was just after the war. We were down in London visiting relatives. They were showing off quite frightfully, because very few people had it then. I remember it was one of the Oscar Wilde plays. They had to have long intervals between the acts, to get the cameras from one studio set to another. I didn't think much of it then, and I don't think much of it now. But we haven't introduced ourselves yet. I'm Lydia Perceval.”

“I'm Ted,” said the elder boy.

“And I'm Colin.”

“Ah. Ted and Colin—what?”

“Bellingham.”

Lydia put her hand to her throat.

“Bellingham! My fate!”

“What do you mean?”

Lydia turned away, with a brief shake of the head.

“Nothing. I'm being silly. I'll tell you one day. You must come and have tea, and we can have a good talk.”

The boys looked puzzled.

“Tea? You mean like a meal?”

“I mean afternoon tea, at four o'clock. With sandwiches and home-made cakes and scones. Don't look so puzzled. Everyone used to have it.”

“We have homemade cakes and scones, now and then,” said Ted. “But we sort of eat them on the wing.”

“That's the trouble with today's world: no one takes the time and trouble to do things properly. Why don't we say tomorrow? I never do any writing at weekends.”

“That would be great,” said Colin. “Cakes and scones and jam?”

“Definitely cakes and scones and jam.”

“Writing?” said Ted. “What did you mean, writing?”

“It's what I do for a living. I write people's lives.”

“Gosh, fancy finding a writer stuck on top of a hill near Bly!” said Colin. He gave her his engaging grin, and then the two raised their hands in greeting and went to retrieve their bikes. As they rode off towards the gravel pit and the woods they raised their hands once more in farewell.

As she turned and went out of the sunlight into the cottage Lydia felt suffused by feelings of happiness such as she had not known in years, had almost forgotten, whose return she fervently welcomed.

“W
E'RE
going out to tea today, Mum.”

“To what?”

“To tea. With Mrs Perceval.”

All sorts of questions drifted into Dora Bellingham's mind: why Mrs Perceval should ask her sons to tea; why they had accepted; whether they would want anything later on. But she let them drift out again, and sank back into her chair.

“All right,” she said.

The boys had discussed what they should wear for this unprecedented occasion in their lives, and they had eventually decided on grey flannel trousers, white shirts and school ties. When their father, hacking away randomly in their wilderness of a garden, saw them cycling off he came back into the house and stood in the French windows.

“Where were the boys off to?”

“They've gone out to tea.”

“To
what
?”

“To tea with that woman they've been talking about. Lives at the top of the hill. Some kind of writer.”

“What are they going out to tea with her for?”

“She asked them, I suppose.”

“
Why
did she ask them? What is a writer doing, asking our sons out to tea? Didn't they say?”

“No. I didn't bother to ask.”

He looked at her again, anger stronger than concern.

“You can't be bothered to do anything these days, can you, Dora? Come out for a meal with me. Come to the firm's parties. Have anyone for dinner, have anyone visit.”

She could hardly raise the energy to protest.

“That's not fair, Nick. We had a visit from my mother just before we moved.”

“Your mother coming isn't a visit, it's an Act of God.”

Nick Bellingham stumped off angrily, back into the garden. He was not, in fact, particularly worried about his sons, but he was very aware that he was getting no support at a time when he was most in need of it. He was in a new job in a part of the country where he was made to feel a foreigner. He was manager of the Halifax branch of Forrester's, a TV and video chain store. It was the sort of business that had been badly hit by the current recession, and Bellingham was ever-conscious of the drastic dip in takings since he had taken over. He was also half-conscious that he had been appointed above his capacities, and this made him bluster. He knew that he needed back-up from his wife. Dammit, that was one of the things she was there for, wasn't it?

In the house Dora Bellingham sank back into her chair again. It was true, what Nick had said: everything these days seemed too big an effort. Nothing seemed
worth
doing any longer. Was it a reaction, after the move? Certainly that had taken it out of her. But she thought it had begun before that. She had been conscious that, though she loved her sons—of
course
she did—to do anything for them beyond feeding them and keeping them reasonably well turned-out was beyond her. She couldn't interest herself in their interests, let alone try to guide those interests. But that was all right, wasn't it? They were at an age when children naturally develop in their own way, grow away from their parents' influence. It was natural. It wasn't anything to worry about.

• • •

“I'd better take that ream of typing paper up to Lydia,” said Thea Hoddle to her husband.

They were lying in deck chairs in the garden of their house in Bly. It was a substantial house, built in a style which Lydia referred to disparagingly as Headingley Tudor. It had been bought, of course, when Andy had a good job and a secure future. More recently they had taken in lodgers and the occasional bed and breakfast guest in order to make ends meet. Thea would be glad if those days were now over. At her time of life she no longer enjoyed sharing her home with others.

“Don't bother,” said Andy, turning the page of his
Independent.
“I'll take it up to her this evening. I can then give Lydia the glad tidings that I am now in the ranks of the respectable and gainfully employed.”

“Yes—I suppose you'll enjoy doing that,” said Thea, looking at her husband affectionately. “Don't be mean to her.”

“Mean to her? Why should you think I might be mean to her? We have always remained on excellent, cool terms. In any case I hardly have any sort of whip hand over her: I shall still be only a late starter in an ill-paid profession, and she will always be a successful and nationally known bitch.”

“Do you think bitch is the right word to describe Lydia?”

“Witch, vampire, succuba, virago, harpy, vulture, blood-sucker, emotional leech—call her what you will,” said Andy, waving his hand in a lordly way. “I haven't her skill with words.”

“You manage,” said his wife.

• • •

Lydia got great pleasure out of her preparations for tea. She had asked her cleaning lady, Mrs Kegan, to bring up a cake from the village baker's—she had given up making cakes years ago, and she didn't trust her hand now. But she made scones, and put them out with strawberry jam and cream, and she cut substantial sandwiches suitable for boys' appetites and filled them with cold beef, with tomato and cheese, with salmon and shrimp paste. These were the sandwiches that Gavin and Maurice had always called for, on the numerous occasions when she had fed them as boys.

It will not be the same, she kept telling herself. I must not expect it to be the same.

But the boys certainly did enjoy the same food. They arrived, nicely dressed but behaving rather awkwardly. It was the food that soon caused them to shed any gaucheness, and they tucked in with a will, Colin eating scone after scone and getting whipped cream all over his upper lip, Ted relishing the sandwiches. They probably would have preferred Coca-Cola to drink, but Lydia felt that on that there would be no concession: at tea one drank tea.

“Are you settling down at the new school—whatever its name is?” Lydia asked.

“North Radley High. It's all right,” said Ted. “It's not a
good
school, but it's all right.”

“Some of them laugh at our accents,” said Colin. “But that's stupid. We don't have accents. They have accents.”

“It helps that we're both good at cricket.”

“Though there's some are jealous about that too. They say we'd never be eligible to play for Yorkshire.”

“We say: ‘Who'd want to?' ”

Both boys laughed.

“I suppose it's helped that it's been such a lovely summer so far,” said Lydia.

“Yes, it has,” said Colin. “We're going away to the seaside when school breaks up. Southport or somewhere like that. Dad says if Mum can't make the effort we three men will go.”

It was as if a door had opened a tiny chink, giving light on the situation in the Bellingham household. Lydia's eyelids flickered, but she was too clever to pursue the subject at once.

“I'm afraid I usually avoid the English seaside resorts,” she said. “The English look their worst in warm weather: all those tattoos and hairy legs and beer bellies.”

“And the men are even worse,” said Ted.

The two boys rocked with laughter. Lydia smiled, then giggled indulgently. Nothing wrong with schoolboy humour. She would educate them out of it as time went by, into something more refined, ironic. She had with Gavin and Maurice—though, heaven knew, Maurice could have no use for refined humour in
Waterloo Terrace.
Please God let these boys not disappoint her as Maurice had done.