Breaking the Chain (22 page)

‘Oh,
Duncan,’
she said, all in a rush, ‘I’m
so
glad to speak to you. Wherever have you been? I was so worried.’ Then without waiting for his answer, she told him the whole story of Poppy and the boys and how bad she had felt, and still felt about it. ‘And I was so afraid you’d be phoning Rick’s house,’ she said,
‘and I’m here with Fay, you see. Well, I just couldn’t stand Rick’s house on my own, and she’s been so kind to me. Anyway, I’ll tell you the whole story when I see you. I’m coming straight home today. Can you meet the train at Bristol Parkway? Duncan?’ He couldn’t speak. ‘Duncan, are you still there? Are you all right? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s Father,’ Duncan said with an effort. ‘He’s had an a-a-a-accident.’

‘Oh no!’ Phoebe said. ‘What’s happened? Is he all right?’

‘No,’ Duncan said. A great tidal wave of emotion swept in and engulfed him, all unprepared. ‘He’s dead,’ he managed to say, and burst into noisy tears.

Phoebe enjoyed train journeys as a rule. They were a good excuse to buy a paperback, a newspaper and a packet of prawn sandwiches, and to divide one’s time between reading, watching the countryside, eating and doing the easy crossword. If you were lucky you didn’t get crowds of screaming children or zombies with over-loud Walkmans. Very occasionally you even came across someone who was fun to talk to.

Today she did none of those things. Instead she stared blankly out of the window as the long line of the Berkshire Downs went past on the skyline, and worried about Duncan. She had never known him to break down before. She had even begun to wonder if he
had
any feelings. When they had heard officially two weeks before, that Conrad and Fay were to split up, he had been completely unmoved. He hadn’t even wanted to discuss it. But now he was desperately unhappy and not only was she not there to look after him, but she had gone on and on about her own problems, when he … Phoebe bit her lip. She willed the train to double its speed. She needed to be there
now!

Phoebe wondered how Hope was taking her husband’s sudden death. Would she be devastated? Would she show she was human after all? Phoebe herself felt no particular grief at Peter’s departure. He had never been nice to her. She had thought him a selfish show-off. She was glad of this now; she would be able to care for Duncan so much better if her own emotions were not involved as well. She wondered how the other sons would
react to the news. Would Hereward be as upset as Duncan? Would Rick abandon his film? Would Brendan fly home from his boat? Would Fay now feel she had to go and comfort Conrad?

Fay. Phoebe began to think about her too. She was the only good thing around at the moment, it seemed. She was so supportive, so easy, so intuitive. Thank God for Fay, Phoebe thought, she’s the best. She’s the sort of person you can be totally relaxed with. You don’t need to put on an act; she takes you as you are.

Phoebe had spent a second night in another double bed with Fay. The friend’s flat had only had one bed, so there hadn’t been any choice. Phoebe hadn’t minded at all. It had taken her back to her childhood, years before, when she had stayed at a schoolfriend’s house and they had slept, giggling together, in a huge bed. This had the same quality of conspiratorial fun about it. It was simply friendship, Phoebe thought, warm, comforting and entirely innocent. Sex did not come into it, although these days it seemed to have to come into everything (with Duncan as the notable exception). True, Phoebe had been taken aback that first morning when Fay had got out of bed quite unselfconscious and stark naked. Phoebe had never seen an adult female body other than her own, apart from unreal ones on television, and she couldn’t help looking at Fay’s with envy. She could quite understand why artists liked to paint them. At the time, she was busy grovelling on the phone to Rick, but she still noticed that Fay’s pubic hair was only a fraction darker than her head hair, which made her a natural blonde. Then she had realized that she was staring and had got all confused and embarrassed and turned away, redoubling her apologies to Rick. Luckily Fay had gone out at that point to make tea, and by the time she came back Phoebe had covered herself up so that Fay wouldn’t see how fat and unattractive Phoebe was in comparison to herself.

The next night Fay had found herself a nightshirt and wore that in bed, so there wasn’t a hint of awkwardness between them. Phoebe marvelled at how easy this friendship was, and how ridiculous that no one would believe it. Women in the past used to have very close relationships and no one sniggered
about them, she thought. She sighed. The next few weeks were going to be difficult, but Phoebe felt buoyed up by Fay’s help and encouragement. The main thing was that Duncan, at last, really seemed to need her. Perhaps, Phoebe thought, Peter’s death will bring us closer together. She hoped so.

When the train arrived at Bristol Parkway Phoebe got out and looked about for Duncan. He wasn’t there. She carried her bag up the stairs and over the bridge, and it wasn’t until she was going down the other side that she saw him coming up towards her. He looked exactly the same as usual. Phoebe didn’t know what she had expected but she was surprised that he looked so untouched. There hadn’t been space to give him a hug, because of all the other people on the stairs, so they did without, and Duncan carried Phoebe’s bag to the car park. He looked perfectly under control, Phoebe saw. As they drove down the motorway towards home she didn’t like to question him too deeply about his father’s death in case he broke down again and crashed the van into something, but she did find out that Peter had fallen and been drowned in the pond, and that he had been lying there for some hours in the cold, before Hope had found him.

‘How is Hope?’ Phoebe asked.

‘She’s a-all right n-now,’ Duncan said. ‘It was a t-terrible shock of c-course.’

‘It would be.’ Phoebe patted his knee in sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry I was away,’ she said, ‘just at the wrong moment.’

‘Not your f-fault,’ Duncan said.

‘Did you miss me?’

‘You’ve only been away a c-c-couple of d-days,’ Duncan said.

Three days after Peter’s death, Hope began to feel more like herself. It was the shock, of course, which had upset everything. Once she had got over that, she felt she could cope. After the first night she had refused all offers of help, insisting that she was perfectly all right and would in fact
prefer
to be alone. Duncan called in every day, of course, and Phoebe.

Hope was sure that Phoebe meant well, but she didn’t feel much like talking to her. Phoebe had read somewhere, she said,
that it was a good thing to talk about a deceased person to the bereaved relatives, and that the worst thing possible was to avoid mentioning them as if they had never existed. That was all very well, Hope thought, but she had spent the last fifty years existing with Peter, and that was quite enough thank you. So she said merely, ‘Not just at the moment, Phoebe, if you don’t mind.’

Phoebe had blushed and said, ‘No, of course not. How silly of me!’

Hope had been relieved when Phoebe had told her about the car she was going to have and had suggested tentatively that she was thinking of going up to Northumberland to fetch it.

‘I’d like to have it as soon as possible,’ Phoebe explained, ‘because it will be such a help in looking for another job. I’ll only be away for one night. You don’t think that now is the wrong time to be going away? Perhaps, I should wait until after the funeral.’

‘Oh, I should go now,’ Hope said at once. ‘There’s got to be an inquest, of course, before any funeral; plenty of time.’

‘That’s what Duncan said. I thought he’d need me to be here, but apparently not.’ She sounded piqued. Hope wondered whether theirs was a happy marriage, though she wouldn’t have dreamt of asking.

‘Duncan’s like me,’ she said briskly, ‘quite used to being solitary.’

So Phoebe had gone up to Newcastle on the train and wouldn’t be visiting her for two days. Duncan had resumed his usual working routine, and Hope found herself temporarily unencumbered by anxieties or responsibilities, apart from answering letters of condolence. Duncan and Phoebe between them had informed all the friends and relatives. The will would have to be sorted out, but there would be time for that after the funeral. She would have to give up the flat in The Temple, of course, and all the furniture there would have to be found a new home, but again not yet.

Odd, Hope thought guiltily, the main thing that I always worried about was where Peter
was,
and what was he was doing. Now I know he’s safely at the undertakers, I don’t need to worry any more. She felt like a lifer scenting freedom.

*

Duncan had suffered over the years from his relationship with his father, but he had never consciously thought about it or tried to exorcise its demons. Before Peter died, he had always rather assumed that sometime in the future – when his father was no longer around to be disappointed in him – he, Duncan, would be off the hook and free to become himself at last. As a consequence, he was quite unprepared for the despair he now felt. It was far worse that his usual self-castigation or his habitual depressions. It was a final, irrevocable, feeling of failure. Duncan had always admired his father, but he knew he had never come up to his expectations. He had never tried to confide in him. He had no idea how his mind worked. He should have made an effort to talk to him. He should have discussed the traumas he had endured at his hands, and then perhaps he might have understood them.

Perhaps after all his father
had
valued him; had loved him, even. Now it was too late. He would never know. The tangle at the heart of his stifled emotions would never be unsnarled and nothing would ever be resolved. Duncan himself could not analyse this inner misery. It did not even form itself into coherent sentences. It just festered inside his head, inarticulate, hopeless and utterly consuming.

He was glad that Phoebe was away for a couple of days. She would keep asking him to try and talk about what was bothering him. She said she understood, of course, that he was upset by his father’s death, but that it would help him to get it off his chest and start to grieve properly. She didn’t seem to realize how impossible this was. She kept badgering him …

Why, Duncan asked himself, did Peter have to die such a pointless death? The newspapers were full of it:
QC DROWNS IN FOOT OF WATER.
Duncan read the obituary in
The Times,
written by a fellow barrister, and was amazed by it. There was so much he hadn’t known of his father. It was like reading about a stranger. What had clearly begun as a brilliant career, somehow hadn’t quite made it, as though he had got so far and
then run out of steam. Had he glimpsed how hollow ambition may be and decided not to pursue it after all? Or had he tried and failed? Either way, it was of no consequence now, but why had he died so ignominiously? Why couldn’t he have gone out with dignity?

I wish I’d never built the bloody pond! Duncan raged. If I hadn’t, then he would still be alive. He, who never cried, found tears seeping from his eyes again and oozing between his fingers.

Phoebe drove back to Somerset from Northumberland in her new car. It was a cold day but the sun was shining and her mood was light and open. It was quite the newest car she had ever owned and it was very smooth to drive. She wondered how she had managed to do without one for so long. Cars were so much more than just transport; they represented independence and freedom. I shouldn’t really have accepted it, Phoebe thought. Now I’m just like everybody else, burning up the earth’s nonrenewable resources and polluting its environment. She smiled ruefully and then put her foot down hard on the accelerator and zipped past a line of lorries. Nancy had worried about the world’s ecology and the future of the planet. She had written about it in her diaries often. If Nancy were my age now, Phoebe wondered, would she refuse to run a car? Would she take a stand on it on a matter of principle? Or would she be like me and think, Yes, there should be a reduction in the number of cars on Britain’s roads, but not
mine,
not just yet anyway …? Phoebe had aired this dilemma to George, her mother’s new man, and he had pooh-poohed it.

‘You don’t want to take any notice of those environmentalists,’ he said. ‘Doom and gloom merchants, the lot of them! There’s no way society is going to go backwards. It’ll be through technology that we sort ourselves out, you mark my words. If we’ve got problems in the future then science will see us right. It always has, and I reckon it always will.’

‘Will it cope with the greenhouse effect?’ Phoebe had asked.

George snorted. ‘Three hot summers and they call it global
warming! Why, not so long since they were warning us about another ice age coming soon. They want to make up their tiny minds!’

Phoebe warmed to George. He was just the right mixture of bigot and optimist. He would suit Wynne down to the ground. He was nothing to look at; late middle-aged, fattish and bald, but he was sincere in his regard for her mother and clearly anxious not to alienate her daughter. Phoebe had been pleased to witness their closeness and glad they seemed so happy. She had also felt annoyed, and it struck her only now as she travelled southwards, why this was. She was jealous! Her mother had got herself a man who had opinions and didn’t mind expressing them. He
talked
to her. He had every intention of looking after her. Phoebe was unconditionally glad for Wynne, but she wanted her own man to do the same.

She realized that she hadn’t thought of Duncan for over twenty-four hours. Her heart sank at the prospect of going home to him and having to cope with his moods. She had done everything she could think of to help him, but he resolutely refused to confide in her. She felt left out, superfluous and hurt.

I need to be needed, she thought, and he doesn’t need me at all. He’s never said he loves me – not once! Phoebe invented a scene in her head where Duncan rushed out to greet her with open arms when she got home, saying that he’d missed her so much and he’d never realized before how essential she was to him … She felt tears rising in her eyes and sniffed them back crossly. There was nothing to be done about that particular problem. If someone didn’t tell you they loved you, then that was that. You couldn’t risk asking them if they did, because if they said ‘no’, then everything collapsed into hopelessness, and if they said
‘yes’, then you
wondered why they hadn’t thought to say so themselves, so you didn’t believe them. You couldn’t win. By the time she did arrive at home, she was tired. It had been a long journey. No one was at the door to meet her, and when she found Duncan sitting at the kitchen table he did not greet her with any obvious enthusiasm.