Breaking the Chain (8 page)

Now Phoebe had seen her face, she felt she knew her; could imagine her here in her own flat. She had become a real person who would have had real feelings. She wouldn’t have wept to see the mess Peter’s family had made of her home. She would have been furious. Phoebe felt slightly better. Ghostly fury was easier to come to terms with than ghostly grief. She looked up towards the ceiling again and apologized out loud to Nancy’s spirit.

‘Who’re you t-talking to?’ Duncan asked, appearing in the doorway.

‘No one.’ Phoebe held the passport behind her back, out of his sight. Someone in Duncan’s family had made this mess; someone who didn’t give a damn about Nancy. Perhaps Duncan felt like that too? Phoebe felt estranged from the whole Moon family; more than that, she felt as if she wanted to protect Nancy from them all. ‘I was just thinking aloud,’ she said.

‘G-God, what a shit h-heap!’ Duncan said, looking about him.

Phoebe slipped the passport quickly into the two-ended muff-like pocket on the front of her sweatshirt. It just fitted, unseen. ‘Who could have done it?’ she asked him.

‘A-A-Anyone,’ Duncan said, without great interest. ‘D-D’you want this d-dressing table?’

‘I don’t think it would go in our bedroom,’ Phoebe said. ‘It’s too elegant. I’d love the little chest of drawers, though.’

‘Have you b-been all round yet?’

‘All except the bathroom.’ Phoebe put her head round its door. It was a small room with an old, badly stained porcelain bath and a lavatory with a cistern high on the wall and a long chain. The bathmat was square and had a cheerful zigzag pattern round the edges. I’ll have that, Phoebe thought, and bent down to pick it up. When she straightened up, however, she found herself gazing straight at a pathetic elderly nightgown which was hanging on the back of the door. It looked as though it were waiting for Nancy to come through at any moment and put it on. Tears came to Phoebe’s eyes. Nancy had not been middle-aged and strong. She had been old and ill, maybe frightened, certainly lonely. Phoebe had a sudden vision of her mother in the future, perhaps in similar circumstances, and couldn’t bear the thought.

She dropped the bathmat onto the floor again. She didn’t want any part of the pillaging of this flat. Then she remembered Duncan saying that it would all be dispersed anyway, and sold or burnt. She might as well have what was going. She could look after it in Nancy’s honour. She picked up the bathmat again, carefully avoiding the nightie, and went back into the sitting room, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. Duncan was tying a label onto one of the brass drop handles of the desk.

They spent that night staying with Herry and Becky in their untidy rented rooms just round the corner from Nancy’s flat. Over supper Phoebe described to Becky her shock at seeing the mess that had been made of Nancy’s things.

‘Mmmm,’ Becky said. It obviously hadn’t upset her in the least. ‘I suppose it was a sort of mini revenge.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ Phoebe asked. She glanced at Duncan. He was silent and looked moody. He clearly did not like this conversation at all.

‘A small way of getting her own back,’ Becky said.

‘But who …?’

‘Why, Hope, of course. Who else?’

Duncan felt gripped by depression, that familiar drowning lassitude which deprived him of hope, of enterprise, and even of introspection. He sat at Becky’s table, ate little and said nothing. As was often the case, his mood had been delayed in its onset; had given him a day in which to hope that perhaps it wouldn’t appear after all. Perhaps he would be able to overcome the blow to his esteem that his wife had dealt him. Perhaps he could ignore it as ill-conceived, even malicious. Perhaps the fault lay with her, not with him at all. But as usual it finally got him and when it came, it was sudden and inexorable and weighed him down like a thick layer of tar. There was nothing to be done but endure until it decided to go away.

Duncan resented the conversation they were having. He felt a fierce loyalty to his mother and hated her to be criticized in any way. Of course Hope had tipped out those drawers -although he wouldn’t have admitted as much to Phoebe. Hope was probably looking for evidence and it was the quickest way to find it. It wasn’t revenge or anything so melodramatic. She wouldn’t be so spiteful or so small-minded, Duncan was sure of that. He couldn’t however bring himself to say so. He didn’t want to have to explain. It would be all too difficult, and anyway it was an unsuitable subject in front of Herry’s three children. He looked across at Phoebe. She was expressing surprise and outrage. He considered her manner to be unnecessarily theatrical. His frown deepened.

Earlier that afternoon he had wondered if she was in some way cheating him. He had gone into Nancy’s spare room to help her pack their chosen books into cardboard boxes, and she had looked almost shifty, as though she didn’t want him to see something. She had declined his offer of help rather brusquely and he had retired, hurt. Now he wondered whether he could trust her. If you harboured a person under your roof, it was very necessary that you should be able to, wasn’t it? If you found you couldn’t, what then?

The teenage children seemed to him to be taking an impertinent interest in matters which were none of their business, the girl especially. Becky hadn’t ‘brought them up’ at all, and Herry
didn’t appear to care. Their table manners were revolting and their social graces nonexistent. And Phoebe wanted one? It was too much. He couldn’t cope with the noise, the jockeying egos, his own unsettling suspicions, and the requirement that he be sociable. He got to his feet.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m g-going to b-bed.’

Phoebe was not surprised when Duncan abruptly left them in the middle of supper. He always retreated when depressed. She supposed that it was her fault. She shouldn’t have told him that he was no good in bed. She saw Becky regarding her with sympathy and wondered if she could confide in her. Perhaps she would understand? Maybe Herry had similar problems?

Herry didn’t look as though he had any problems at all. He was busy arm-wresding his stepson and laughing at his own inevitable defeat. The brown muscular forearm of the boy was already stronger than Herry’s and it easily pressed his arm down towards the table and held it there triumphantly, squashing a banana in the process, to the amusement of the other two.

‘You can bloody well eat that now,’ Becky said to him amiably.

‘Gimme some cream and sugar and I will,’ the boy grinned.

‘Bollocks!’ Herry said, separating the yellow skin and oozing pulp from the back of his hand. ‘Get it down you!’

The boy made a great play of having to eat something totally disgusting with elaborate facial expressions including the rolling of his eyes, and with affectedly fastidious fingers. Phoebe laughed with the others. She liked the relaxed way that Becky and Herry dealt with their children. They were allowed more or less to do as they pleased and they seemed to have cheerful characters with no hang-ups. They lived in an absolute tip, she thought, looking around her at the things all over the floor, at the gaping cupboards and the crowded dusty surfaces, but they appeared to be happy. Herry rarely passed his partner without touching her lightly in greeting. His daughter often hung onto his shoulder to get his attention, and his sons beat him up in as many friendly physical ways as they could devise. They were like a pride of lions, apparently undisciplined and competitive in play, but actually a united and functioning co-operative.
Phoebe wondered how Becky had taught Herry to relax and be like that. Perhaps she hadn’t had to?

Phoebe got her chance to talk to Becky alone later that evening when she had insisted upon washing up, Herry and the children having disappeared furtively like badgers at dawn.

‘Leave them,’ Becky said, gesturing at the supper things. ‘One of the kids will do them in the morning.’

‘No,’ Phoebe said, running hot water into the greasy plastic bowl. ‘I’d like to, really.’ So Becky had dried up a few things to keep her company and put them away in an arbitrary fashion as though they didn’t have fixed places in the kitchen, but went wherever they would fit that day. ‘I’m sorry about Duncan,’ Phoebe said. ‘It wasn’t that he didn’t like the food, you know.’

‘That’s okay,’ Becky said. ‘He’s like Hope sometimes, isn’t he? I recognize the signs.’

‘Why did Hope really do what she did?’ Phoebe had been longing to discuss this further at supper but had been quelled, both by the look on Duncan’s face and by the overeager interest of the children.

‘She hated Nancy, or so I gather,’ Becky said. ‘She thought she’d behaved like a bitch. Perhaps she was just getting those feelings off her chest.’

‘But what did Nancy
do?’

‘She had a long affair with Peter, years ago, and left her husband, I think. I did ask Herry once, but he was a bit vague about it.’

‘But Duncan told me Nancy wasn’t one of Peter’s so-called friends,’ Phoebe protested. ‘And Peter wasn’t a bit upset when Nancy died. I spoke to him on the phone that very day!’

‘Peter never shows his emotions,’ Becky said, ‘and Duncan always protects Hope. You must have noticed that? He won’t have a word spoken against her.’

‘Duncan hardly speaks to me at all,’ Phoebe said, ‘not
properly;
not about the things that matter.’ She suddenly found that her eyes were leaking. She went on washing up while the tears dripped down her nose and onto the foamy plates. ‘He doesn’t seem to have any feelings, and he won’t even try to understand himself, let alone me.’ She gave a little sob.

‘Hey,’ Becky said, ‘don’t get upset. Have a tissue.’ She tore
off a piece of kitchen paper towel and handed it to Phoebe. ‘We all know that Duncan finds it physically difficult to say
anything,’
she said, ‘and there’s no point in trying to understand the Moons. They don’t feel like we do. I don’t believe in all that stuff about “finding” yourself anyway. Life’s too short. You’ve just got to get on with it and enjoy the best bits.’

‘You mean sex?’ Phoebe asked, sniffing.

‘Yeah, amongst others. Personally I prefer a really deep Badedas bath to sex, but the odd good fuck really bucks you up, know what I mean?’

Phoebe did. She remembered it well. Now she realized that it was no use trying to confide in Becky. Becky was one of those people who lived life on the surface, took what good things it offered and wasted no tears on might-have-beens. Phoebe blew her nose on the paper towel and wished that she hadn’t tried to talk to her. The trouble was, who could she talk to? The people at work were too distant and offhand. The people in the village had known the Moons for years and years and would gossip. She sooke to her mother on the phone every week, but she didn’t want to worry her. Wynne had been so relieved and delighted when they had got married. Phoebe’s old friends in Hexham might understand, but she was reluctant to commit such thoughts to paper and confer on them the authority and permanence of the written word. Becky had been her best hope; someone in the family who was nearest to her in age and had a real chance of understanding, but she had failed her.

Phoebe glanced sideways at Becky to see if she was embarrassed or worse still, scornful, but Becky smiled at her encouragingly and patted her on the back.

‘Time of the month?’ she enquired sympathetically. ‘It’s a sod, isn’t it? I’d get that coil out if I was you. Kids don’t half take your mind off worrying on about the meaning of life!’

Duncan was asleep when Phoebe finally crept in beside him. She lay against his back, grateful for its warmth, and tried to think positively about the day. In the back of their van were boxes and boxes of lovely books which now belonged to them! Better still, underneath the books there were still better treasures, which she had found hidden at the back of the bookcases,
behind the taller books; discoveries which she had surreptitiously stowed away to examine later. They were Nancy Sedgemoor’s diaries, years and years of them, and a beautiful, really old book about animals and mythical beasts with illuminated pages. Phoebe wasn’t sure why she had secretly taken these things and not showed them to Duncan. Perhaps it was part of her wish to protect Nancy from all the Moons. Perhaps it was misguided. Perhaps Nancy was a wicked immoral woman who deserved neither pity nor defence. Phoebe snuggled down comfortably against her husband and looked forward to the possibility of finding out.

Hope was furious. She had celebrated her own triumphant survival when Nancy had died, but it had proved to be a fleeting victory. Then she had sunk again into her familiar quicksand of depression, blaming it as always upon her husband. Now she was very angry indeed. After the disposal of the will had been made known, Peter had offered her
Nancy’s jewellery!
Had he no sensitivity at all? Hope had refused it contemptuously, sight unseen, and had been rewarded for the upholding of her principles later on by observing that the very small amount of jewellery that Nancy had owned, had in any case been of no great value. Peter had then extrapolated wildly beyond her expressed wishes and assumed that she had not wanted any of Nancy’s money either. The man was off his head! He said he’d told all the boys that they would be getting a cut.

‘Over my dead body,’ Hope told him.

‘They’ll get it then anyway!’ Peter said, looking pleased with himself.

‘Well, you’ll simply have to untell them,’ Hope said, unsmiling. ‘We can’t just throw money around at this stage of our lives. What if we’re ill? What if we need specialized care? Really, Peter, I do think you might have consulted me before you went about making rash promises like that. It’s too bad of you!’

‘It was left to
me,’
Peter observed sardonically,‘if you remember …’

‘Conscience money!’ Hope snorted. ‘It’s morally mine!’

‘I had a case like that once,’ Peter said, leaning back in his armchair and putting his feet up on the coffee table. ‘The woman concerned just couldn’t get it into her thick head that the law is not in any way concerned with morality. Whether the verdit is moral or not, simply doesn’t come into it. The newspapers of the day bleated on a lot about “where was our
famous British justice?”. They should have known better.’ Hope remained tight-lipped. Peter took a gulp of his pre-prandial gin and tonic. ‘Before I forget,’ he said, ‘I’m away for a week from tomorrow. Got to go to Manchester.’