Past Praying For (28 page)

He
wasn’t either, as it transpired. His mother, a highly-strung lady now under continual tension about her husband’s health, reacted badly to the suggestion that only Ben should be fleeing. She wanted her own son removed to safety with almost as much insistence as Suzanne had shown, and Patrick found that telling himself she meant well and had had a difficult time lately didn’t stop him feeling irritated, it merely made him feel guilty for wanting to yell at her at the top of his voice. Perhaps he too was more strained than he was allowing himself to admit; everywhere you went these days, people seemed to be twitching.

He
had felt tired before he even set off on the two-hour drive, beside a sullen Ben, who had protested to his mother but found that he too seemed to be dream-talking. Having to leave Tigger behind had been the worst part.

‘
But if it’s so dangerous, it’s dangerous for Tigger too! And he’s only small, perhaps Granny wouldn’t notice him much. I don’t want anything to happen to Tigger,’ he had wailed.

Perhaps
it wasn’t entirely tactful to be so worried about Tigger when he obviously had no qualms about leaving Suzanne; her lips tightened and she remained implacable as she swiftly packed a depressingly large suitcase for him.

‘
He won’t be away that long,’ Patrick protested. ‘The police will pick someone up any minute. You could hardly move for policemen in the village last night, apparently.’

But
she had ignored that, like everything else.

Patrick
deposited Ben at his parents’ house, had a cup of tea and did his best to reassure his mother, then extricated himself from her still-anxious clutches for the long dreary drive home, with nothing to take his mind off his problems.

He
was seriously worried about Suzanne. She was behaving as if she were heading for some sort of breakdown, but supposing she – they – did manage to hold things together, what was their future? Even after this awful business had been cleared up, was there the slightest chance they could return to the sort of loving relationship they had once had? It all seemed a very long time ago now: he had practically forgotten what the girl he had fallen in love with had been like. She was certainly unrecognizable in the hard, bitter shrew he seemed to be married to now.

There
had been so many quarrels, so many hurtful words hurled in temper. People might talk about saying in anger things you didn’t mean; in his now-extensive experience of the state, you meant them all right. It was just that in a saner moment you would realize that they should never be said. Once spoken the words might be withdrawn – perhaps – but they would be entered indelibly in the black book of resentment that every unhappy couple keeps as meticulously as a ledger: occasion, date and reciprocal insult.

And
that was an attitude that fed on itself and grew until it smothered love and changed the tone of everyday life. Could they change it back? Did he – and this was the shameful heart of the matter – even
want
to change it?

About
him the traffic was slow. There was a hold-up on the motorway with roadworks, and when he fiddled impatiently with the radio, looking for distraction, all he could find were tired-sounding carols and dogged, desperate good cheer. He snapped it off and sat drumming his fingers on the wheel.

Outside,
it was cold and grey, with a hint that fog might descend later, and as he inched along the windows began to steam up. Within his personal mental cocoon he felt detached from reality, insulated briefly from the problems behind and the pressures ahead, both imposed and self-induced.

He
had made a genuine effort to put her out of his mind. It was disloyal, it was pointless, it was wrong. But here, in this strange little pocket of disconnected time, he permitted himself to pretend it didn’t count. Just till the traffic moved off, he promised himself. Just these few minutes of the dangerous indulgence of thinking about her.

Lizzie.
Elizabeth. He murmured the name luxuriously aloud, and her face swam up before his eyes, her face as he had seen it across the unromantic plastic of the table in the supermarket café: her lips quivering and the tears spilling over from her sea-grey eyes, so soft, so vulnerable. All he had wanted to do was to take her in his arms and protect her from the world, and in particular from her slob of a husband. Patrick liked to think that he was as civilized as the next man, and it shocked him to discover that at some deep and primitive level what he wanted to do was punch that smug, freckled face until the man screamed for mercy.

It
was a very long time since Suzanne had made him feel like a man instead of a peculiarly inept and irritating child.

The
traffic was picking up speed now. He changed gear and accelerated. He changed gear mentally as well. There was, as he had told himself a thousand times, no point in torturing himself with thoughts of Lizzie. Like most over-indulgences, you paid with later pain. They were both trapped; by duty, by children and by long habit. He didn’t even know if she thought of him in any way other than as a kind friend. Like the lanes of the motorway running ahead under the sweep of the headlights, the future looked grey, dreary and featureless.

Home
at last, he parked the car in the driveway behind Suzanne’s hired replacement, outside the ruined garage. It was six o’clock; a wasted Saturday. As he got out of the car, three of the new security lights came on, making him jump.

As
if that were an awaited signal, the front door swung open and Suzanne stood there, wearing her coat and carrying the hold-all she always took to hospital with her.

‘
Oh, there you are, Patrick! You’re terribly late – I expected you ages ago.’

Put
on the defensive, he said, ‘Well, the motorway was horrendous. And I could hardly just dump Ben on the doorstep and get back in the car, you know. But what –’

She
cut across him. ‘You’ll have to move the car. I can’t think why you didn’t park it in the road, as usual. There’s no way I can get mine out with yours there.’

‘
You’re surely not going to the hospital!’

In
the harsh light he could see her high colour. Her eyes were hard and bright and she was clasping her bag so tightly that her knuckles gleamed white.

He
strove for tact. ‘You’re still very tired and shocked. I thought you’d warned them you wouldn’t be back for a day or two? You really don’t look well enough to cope with a night-shift.’

He
thought he caught the gleam of tears in her eyes, but all she said fiercely was, ‘Life has to go on. There are patients who need me, you know, and I’m a trained nurse. Your training gives you the discipline to put other things out of your mind.’

Patrick
opened his mouth to speak, thought the better of it, shrugged, then got back into his car and reversed it out into the street.

Suzanne
followed him, then put down her window as he passed her on his way back.

‘
You will test all the alarms to make sure they’re working, won’t you? And if you hear anything, be sure and phone the police.’

And
will I call the fire brigade if the house goes on fire, he thought of asking, but decided against such provocation.

‘
Don’t overdo it,’ he said instead. ‘And drive carefully. It’s going to be foggy tonight.’

He
raised his hand in farewell but she drove off without looking at him, and feeling foolish he lowered his hand and went into the silent house.

It
was blazing with light. All the curtains had been drawn, but in each room every light was on; the reading lights as well as the overhead light in the sitting room, the light over the mirror in the bathroom, even the hob light on the kitchen cooker. What fiends of darkness could she be trying to hold at bay?

The
thought made him deeply uncomfortable. He went through the house, Tigger bounding enthusiastically round him as he switched them off. Was this really within the bounds of normal behaviour, or was Suzanne...He shied away from articulating that fear.

He
certainly pitied the people she would be dealing with tonight at the hospital. She was probably more in need of medical help than they were. He decided to have a quiet word with Richard Jones the next time he saw him.

Tigger
was still dancing round his feet; he couldn’t have been fed, though Suzanne normally did it before she went out at night. He opened a tin of dogfood and scooped it into the little dog’s bowl; Tigger wolfed it gratefully, his whole body waggling in the brief ecstasy of eating.

Patrick
was tired and hungry himself. He mixed a gin and tonic, sipping it as he checked in the oven and fridge to see whether Suzanne had left something for him. Once, there would have been a place laid at the kitchen table, a casserole in the oven or a plate to put in the microwave; it was the sort of thing on which she had prided herself. Now there wasn’t even a note to say what she wanted him to use from the freezer, and if he took the wrong thing – and somehow he inevitably would – there would be more tight-lipped patience to endure.

He
took another sip of his drink. There was a long evening stretching ahead, and he hardly needed to look to see if there was anything on the box. At this time of year it was a diet of films you had seen three times already and re-runs of sitcoms which had been only slightly funny the first time round. And Suzanne was clearly expecting him to be on fire-watch all evening; he was only surprised she hadn’t left buckets of water everywhere as well.

He
set his glass down rebelliously. He wasn’t going to let her dictate to him; she hadn’t even bothered to make a meal for him, when she had been at home all day while he spent five hours on a tedious expedition pandering to her neurosis. He picked up his car keys again and went out.

11

It was such a relief to get out of hospital. Hospital was, Margaret Moon reflected, the last place anyone would choose to be ill in. This morning she had been roused from sound sleep to breakfast at 6.30: after that, every time she had fallen into a comfortable doze, she had been wakened by noise, visitors or a nurse taking her temperature or giving her another eyewash.

Now
she sank into the deep soft cushions of the Brancombes’ sofa, under the crocheted comforter Jean had insisted on, and looked round the big farm-house sitting room with a sigh of content.

There
were no signs of Christmas past in the tidy room, apart from a neat pile of cards waiting to be checked off on the Christmas card list beside them. It was Jean’s practice to clear the house the day after Boxing Day: it just made her nervous, she said, sitting there waiting for pine needles to fall on the carpet, and the housework took twice as long when you had to take all the cards down each day to chase the dust from your polished surfaces, and then set them all up again.

It
was eight o’clock. They had been sumptuously fed, and Robert had left after supper for another consultation with Rod Vezey. Ted had gone out to check on the cows, and Jean had insisted on popping along to the vicarage with a list of things Margaret might need for the next few days, until her home should be habitable again.

Pyewacket
lay on the hearthrug, purring his satisfaction at his first experience of an open fire, and the only other sound in the room was the muted roar of the log blaze and the occasional crackle as a dry twig caught. Survival, sight restored and the kindness of friends; she was a lucky woman. Tomorrow she would have to deal with all the problems of the aftermath of fire and the details of her losses, but following St Matthew’s sage advice about the sufficiency of each day’s troubles, she put such considerations out of her mind and closed her eyes in unarticulated thankfulness. She was drifting agreeably between sleep and wakefulness when Jean returned.

‘
I’ve put your clothes up in your room, dear,’ she said. ‘Here are the books you wanted, and I picked up the post while I was there.

‘
And do you know, we’ve got such a nice young man outside? He says he’s been detailed to keep an eye on the house, with you being here. I tell you, I’ll get the first sound night’s sleep I’ve had since this whole dreadful business began.’

‘
I’m glad I’m able to be of some service to you, even if it’s only by proxy,’ Margaret said, taking the books and the pile of mail from her. ‘You look worn out, and I feel so guilty that Robert and I have billeted ourselves on you too.’

Ted,
his rounds finished, had come into the room behind his wife, and put his arm round her shoulders.

‘
Ah, Margaret, when you’ve known Jean as long as I have you’ll realize that this is her chosen state. Never happy unless she’s overworking and has something to worry about. And if she hasn’t got a big worry, she can always find a little one to be going on with.’

‘
Well, if it was left to you, Ted, the world would run down and stop,’ his wife retorted, pulling a face at him. The look they exchanged was one of perfect understanding.