Black Diamond (30 page)

‘I bet they’d have given her a rough time in the locker rooms.’

‘She wouldn’t have had to be in a regiment. And they wouldn’t have been in barracks, anyway. They were all out in the woods.’

‘Until she got to some kind of a town where she could get information about her husband. As soon as she came into contact with other people, she’d be eating with them and washing with them.’

‘They always leave that out of the history books.’

‘Because it’s assumed. That’s like not making a movie that’s got people taking a leak all the time. You know they do, but there’s no reason to put it in unless that’s your favorite part of the story.’

‘Why do you call her Wilhelmina?’

‘I can’t even remember. Had enough?’

‘Yes. Thank you for showing me how to get here.’

‘My pleasure. I’ll walk you home.’

They walked back slowly. She asked him about his work. He wanted to know if she’d seen a play he’d read about; and, if not,
would she like to go to it with him? She said that she would. She wrote down the address and phone number of her place in town. She asked what day of the week he had in mind. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said.

*

Aunt Marion didn’t arrive till nightfall. She was loaded down with packages and was full of apologies for her lateness. ‘It was such a beautiful day,’ she said.

‘How was Elsie?’

‘Much better – almost transformed. We had a lovely day. We talked all about old times. You know, it makes such a difference, when you reach my age, to know people who remember you the way you were as a child. And they remember your parents and grandparents, too. I used to think that remark of Will Rogers’ was so stupid, but sometimes nowadays I wonder if it mightn’t be true, as long as you had enough time to get to know the person. Time does seem to give you the truth in ways that are hard to explain. I think about it a lot.’

‘What’s all the shopping?’

‘Bargains, dear. I’ve spent a fortune. Elsie decided that we’d go out as soon as I got there. I didn’t think she looked well at all. I thought we ought to stay at home. But she wouldn’t take no for an answer. A very stubborn woman when she wants to be. She took me out to one of those enormous shopping malls. But it wasn’t like any one I’ve ever seen. The quality of the
merchandise
– I was bowled over. And they had a sale on. We ripped through that place like nobody’s business. Wait till I show you.’

‘Aunt Marion, I had a strange thing happen while you were away.’

‘Not the pipes?’

‘No, it –’

‘Or something electrical?’

‘Nothing like that. The house is fine. And so is the
window-pane
they delivered. And everything else. No. It was a little boy, who rang the doorbell and seemed to be lost. I asked him in and he started telling me all kinds of wild stories. And then he asked me if there was anything to eat, so I took him into the kitchen.
And I’m afraid he’s eaten up just about everything in the refrigerator.’

‘Good. That’s what it was for.’

‘I thought I was never going to get rid of him, but then his father came looking for him and the boy finally agreed to go back. They live around here; I wonder if you know them? His name’s Roy Martinson. The Roy stands for Conroy.’

‘Oh,’ Aunt Marion said. ‘It rings a bell. Faintly. You’ll have to let me think. I’ve been back in my schooldays all weekend.’ She bustled around, found some bread and a few cookies that Eric hadn’t discovered, and made tea. Over their meal she showed Sandra the haul from her shopping binge: shoes, gloves, a tweed skirt, yards of summer materials. ‘I never used to like shopping,’ she said. ‘It was always a duty – a necessity. And I had to be careful with the pennies. I used to walk miles to find something that cost a little less. That was a long time ago. The world has changed for the better in that way. Money has changed. These credit cards … Of course, we were brought up to think that that sort of thing was immoral: to be in debt. And I’d never dream of letting it mount up – I send my check off straight away. But it’s nice to go on a spree with an old friend.’

‘To buy things you don’t really need, but you want them like crazy because they’re pretty.’

‘Yes. And even to spend a while looking at things that you’d never bother with. We went to a camera store. That was very interesting. I thought that – for what they were – the prices were quite reasonable. I’ve still got Hudson’s old camera, but he used to make it sound so complicated that I was sort of tempted by these new ones. They do everything for you. Ordinary people never used to be able to work mechanical gadgets without a lot of training. Nowadays you just buy a box and push the buttons and out comes something – like magic. We went into a typewriter shop too, because Elsie wanted to sit down and I thought I’d like to find out about word processors. It’s so embarrassing to say that you only came in because you couldn’t walk another step. They were very kind. They found Elsie a chair straight away and a nice young man explained the machines to me. And then he let
me type a letter and we printed it out. Naturally I wouldn’t have taken up his time if they’d been busy in there, but everyone else seemed to be down at the china reject shop. They had a clearance sale on.’

‘But you didn’t buy any?’

‘We didn’t want to carry anything heavy. And besides, what would I do with one more earthenware pot or a willow-pattern coffee cup? Most of my things just stay in the cupboard until the bridge-club meetings. No. We thought about going into the garden center, but by that time we were getting hungry, so we stopped for lunch. My, the different restaurants they have: there’s a whole place just for desserts. It’s called “Sweet Stuff”. They serve everything you can name. Then there’s a restaurant for breakfast, and a teashop and all kinds of international food: Chinese, Indian, Malayan, Swiss, Italian, Hungarian. Well, we couldn’t make up our minds. We went into the nearest one.’

‘Aunt Marion, I think you’ve hit on a new system for fun shopping: only go into a store if you have to sit down.’

‘It worked very well, I must admit. They gave us a really nice luncheon.’

‘What did you have?’

‘A salad full of radish sprouts. And for dessert, a peanutbutter waffle with something called Dreme Whip. Delicious. It almost convinced me that I ought to buy myself a waffle iron. But I wouldn’t use it enough. Do you have one?’

‘No. For the same reason. We had one at home. It just sat there, except for about once a year. We used to get it out around Christmastime. I think nobody ever wanted to have to clean it afterwards.’

‘And Elsie had a most intriguing soup: carrot soup with cardamum, ginger and a bit of cream. I meant to write that down.’

Sandra stood up. She crossed the kitchen and picked a pencil out of the flat straw basket on the windowsill behind the sink. She tore a piece of paper off the notepad next to the basket.

‘Thank you, dear,’ her aunt said. ‘I owe one or two people a good recipe. That spinach and cottage cheese casserole was the
last surefire thing I had to trade with. I hope it wasn’t too dull for you here.’

‘No. There was that little boy.’

‘Oh, yes. Of course.’

‘And I went for a couple of walks and watched a nature movie on TV. And then I did a lot of thinking about that boyfriend. You know.’

‘And?’

‘I decided that I’ve got to break it off. I don’t know why I let it go on so long. He’s always going away on those hunting weekends or taking a trip to see some team play a game. The only time we’re together is when we’re eating or going to the movies.’

‘Men do have their particular interests, you know. They like to get together every once in a while, to drink and tell stories. It’s like my bridge meetings. I’d miss them dreadfully.’

‘That isn’t all of it. I’m not having any fun. And he doesn’t even know I’m there.’ He just wanted someone to sleep with. She didn’t think her aunt would care to hear that; it would make plain what Sandra’s relationship with men was, and the idea would offend her. Aunt Marion undoubtedly knew all those things in any case, but she appreciated a certain amount of tact: they weren’t actually to be mentioned.

‘If you don’t enjoy his company,’ Aunt Marion said, ‘then I’d do what they recommend on the stockmarket. I’d cut my losses.’

‘That’s what I’m going to do.’

‘Well, then. I’m glad to hear that your weekend hasn’t been a waste.’

‘On the contrary. I really think I needed a little time away from things.’

She went upstairs and checked that she’d packed everything. She put on her jacket and brought her bag down. At the door she kissed her aunt goodbye, stepped out and turned around again, to smile and wave.

The old woman stood holding the door. Her face was
thoughtful
. She told Sandra to have a good trip back to town, and to drive carefully. Then she said, ‘Oh. I know what it was: Conroy Martinson. I remember now. He’s the one who killed his wife.’

*

Somehow, although Aunt Marion seldom got things wrong, she must have mixed up one story with another. Sandra was so sure of it that she hadn’t contradicted her, nor did she remember, until she was well into the weekend’s homecoming rush of cars, that there was evidence to back up her conviction: both father and son had spoken of the ex-wife in the present tense. She was certainly still alive. Sandra put the matter from her mind and concentrated on the increasing traffic.

When she got home, she was later than she’d thought she would be. She dropped her bag inside the door. She looked around. Not even a new coat of paint would cheer the place up. She’d lived there too long and she’d never liked it.

Her eye fell on one of Bert’s knapsacks. His hockey stick and fishing rod were in the closet, the iceskates and baseball bat in the cupboard under the window. It was just luck that everyone in the building had been issued a new set of keys after the Huxtables had had the burglary; and that she hadn’t yet made copies for Bert. She gathered all his clothes and equipment into a pile near the door. Then she climbed into bed and finished reading her novel.

In the morning, she bundled Bert’s possessions into the car. She drove to work early so that she could dump everything with his secretary before he came in.

The moment she walked away from his office, she felt elated. She crossed to the other side of the building, took the elevator down and went to her desk. She picked up the phone and made an appointment to get her hair done during her lunch hour. On the dot of one she left her desk, beating her friend, Maureen, to the doorway into the hall.

At the hairdresser’s they gave her a sandwich and a cup of coffee. While she was trying to balance the cup and get it up to her mouth without hitting the hood of the dryer, she noticed that another woman was having the same sort of trouble, but worse: she hadn’t figured out that she should leave the saucer and spoon behind.

On her way back to the office she ran into Bert. ‘Sandra. Hi,’ he said.

‘Hi,’ she answered. She kept walking.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back to work.’

‘I thought we’d go out to lunch.’

‘I’ve just had lunch.’

‘I mean: I did think. Where were you?’

‘Hairdresser. Bert, I’m going to be late.’

‘I thought maybe we could have a talk.’

‘About what?’

‘I’ll drop by tonight, okay?’

‘No, not tonight.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I can’t. Come on, Bert. What do you want to tell me?’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking: Maybe we should cool it for a while.’

‘That’s not enough.’

‘What?’

‘We’ve got to admit that it’s no good, and say goodbye.’

‘I didn’t mean anything drastic like that.’

‘Well, I do. That’s why I left all your stuff with your secretary. Didn’t she tell you?’

‘Oh. She did mention something. I thought it must have been those spiked running shoes I asked you to get fixed.’

‘I’ll phone you at the weekend,’ she said.

‘Hell, Sandra, you know I can’t this weekend.’

‘Okay. Next weekend.’

‘What’s wrong with tomorrow night?’

‘I can’t. I could see you some day for lunch, I guess.’

He pulled out an appointment book. She started to walk ahead. She got as far as the steps in front of the glass doors. ‘How about Thursday?’ he called after her. She nodded, waved and went inside. She had no intention of keeping the date. She still felt irritated, which was silly. There was no point in being angry because she’d let things between them go on too long. Now she begrudged him the time she’d spent in his company, yet that
wasn’t his fault. It was hers. Everything would be different when she went to the theater with Roy.

That afternoon she was out of the office in record time and on her way home to get ready for the evening.

*

He arrived on the dot of six. And he was driving the kind of car that looked like the ones you could see in races. It was red. He said, ‘I hope you don’t mind riding low to the ground.’

‘As long as we don’t drive under a truck,’ she said. She buckled up her seatbelt. She felt as if she were in a fighter plane, next to the controls.

On their way in to town they passed small groups of children dressed up as witches, ghosts and goblins. A few of the gangs included a grown woman: a mother who was too worried about her children to allow them out trick-or-treating even if they were surrounded by friends. When Sandra had been at school, they hadn’t allowed that kind of thing. If anyone tried to bring a mother along, or even an older brother or sister, the original crowd would go into a huddle, plan out what moves to make and then, at a signal, run out on the sissy and the protector.

He drove to an underground parking lot that belonged to a hotel up the road from the theater. The attendant knew him; he also knew the car: an expression of intense compassion poured over his face as he got behind the wheel to park it.

They went into the building at a side entrance. There didn’t seem to be any guests, and only a few of the staff were working. Over at the reception desk a white-haired man was reading a ledger. Roy walked her across the lobbies and into a waiting room. ‘I love this place,’ he said. ‘It used to be a grand old hotel back in the nineties. Everybody used to come here. Then – I don’t know what happened. Maybe they didn’t modernize the
bathrooms
, or something. I’ve never stayed here, so I don’t know what it’s like upstairs. People used to come here in the thirties for a while. That was the last time it was fashionable. It’s a shame. When I was at college across the river, it was just as empty as it is tonight. I used to bring my friends over for cocktails. But
everybody was trying to be casual then: eating hamburgers and wearing sneakers. It never caught on with anyone else.’