Puppies Are For Life (21 page)

She was right. Mrs Wardle wore Susannah out with her constant chatter as she emptied cupboards and drawers. She had no method of dealing with the contents and constantly consulted Susannah as to whether things should be saved.

‘You never know,’ she would say, peering into a tobacco tin containing what looked like fossilised worms – and probably was, ‘you never know whether something is valuable or not.’

‘Junk sack’, Susannah would tell her. Or ‘Boot sale’, if that were the case. She might as well have tackled the whole job herself.

And when it came to cleaning the place afterwards, the woman was no more effectual. It appeared that Mrs Wardle didn’t approve of Hoovers – or anything with a conveniently long handle. Floors had to be scrubbed on hands and knees with an old wooden brush and polished up afterwards with a tin of wax. Spray polishes and cleaning liquids were anathema to her, and windows had to be rubbed with wads of newspaper.

Later, she would complain of chronic back pain,
and stiffness in all her joints. Mrs Wardle was soon laid up, and Susannah’s sanity preserved. She got on much more quickly from then on and the mini-skip she’d had delivered to the roadside began to fill.

After three more days of hard work, Harvey Webb turned up.

Susannah was emptying a sack of old paint tins into the skip when she saw Harvey’s car pull up at the kerb. And the clatter of the tins as they hit the metal sides was no louder than the sudden thumping of her heart. She hadn’t imagined he would come here – and yet had wondered if he might. She found to her disgust that she began babbling at him, out of nervousness, the minute he stepped from the car.

‘Not a good place to leave it – lucky to find a space – kids around here are little terrors, you know. You’d better lock the – that’s right – and does that bonnet thing come off?’ And all the time she was trying to pull her sweater down over her stretch trousers to eliminate any unsightly bulges, and straighten her gypsy-style scarf.

Harvey looked her over and grinned, then glanced up and down the road. His keen eyes took in the shabby, hemmed-in houses with their filthy paintwork; the numerous boarded-up windows; the piles of scattered litter and damaged property. There was even a half-wrecked car opposite them,
its wheels long since spirited away. Harvey’s immaculate model shone smugly from under its soft-top hood.

‘What have you done to deserve this?’ he wanted to know. ‘You must feel like a fallen angel.’

Pain passed over her face. ‘Long way from Upper Heyford, isn’t it?’ she agreed. Sometimes over the past few days she’d had the feeling she was being punished for her defection from the family, and Harvey’s words didn’t help. This could hardly be seen as a step up in the world. And there were times, too, when she thought she must have taken leave of her senses.

‘You OK?’ He looked at her uncertainly as a gleam of sun struggled through the morning’s clouds.

‘Rushed off my feet,’ she told him, leading the way indoors.

‘Tea or coffee?’ she offered him, once they were in Bert’s old front room. She took a surreptitious breath, but the place still smelled damp and unused in spite of all her scrubbing. ‘I’m afraid that’s all I’ve got in at the moment.’

She watched Harvey step over her mosaic stuff, immaculate in a Harris tweed jacket and light wool trousers, his shoes as polished as his car. She had dumped things all over the floor while she cleaned up the back room for a studio. There was nowhere to sit: all the furniture had been taken to the auction room, except for two tub chairs that were at present stacked under a pile of household
articles, and the carpets had been taken up.

‘I’m afraid I haven’t had much time to organise anything much in the refreshment line,’ she apologised, ‘I really wasn’t expecting –’

‘Me?’

‘– any visitors yet.’ Her mouth had become clumsy and dry again, because of the way he was looking at her. What, she thought, scurrying out to the kitchen, had he come here for?

Once out of sight she snatched off the gypsy scarf and ran her fingers through her hair. She wished she could put a hand on her lipstick, but unfortunately it was up in the bedroom. She checked her face in a small square of speckled mirror that her uncle had wedged behind some pipework – for some reason best known to himself – and let out a groan of despair. Pasty-faced and hollow-eyed, this was not one of her better days.

When she came back into the lounge with a small tin tray on which she had balanced two blue-striped mugs and some Hobnobs, she found Harvey pacing about in the confined space and running a finger round his collar. He was hardly likely to be too warm, she thought; the house wasn’t centrally heated and all the grate had in it was an empty ash pan and a cleaned out grid.

‘I was wondering whether you could do with some company,’ he said, taking a mug of coffee from her. ‘Better still, a helping hand? I mean, you shouldn’t be wasting your time cleaning and
sorting stuff out, should you? You’re supposed to be establishing your business.’

‘Don’t I know it.’ She looked at him over the rim of her mug and tilted her head to one side in a wistful attitude. ‘It would be wonderful if you could help. But really, I can hardly expect you to do so. You aren’t even suitably dressed. Apart from which it would be a huge imposition.’

But Harvey correctly deduced that some of her uncle’s clothes might still be hanging around in the black sacks he’d just passed. They were currently lined up in the hall, waiting to be taken to the nearest textile bank. And he said he wouldn’t at all object to wearing old trousers and a sweater, so long as she didn’t mind.

‘Great!’ She shrugged and smiled her consent; then her smile faded. ‘But … er, what about – well – Julia?’

Harvey’s face froze as he looked across at her. ‘What about Julia?’ he grunted, before taking a gulp from his mug.

‘Well … what would she think of you doing this? I mean … well,
you
know’

He set the mug down on the mantelpiece. ‘Julia,’ he said, as though the name was a bad taste in his mouth, ‘has no idea that I’m here, and it wouldn’t make any difference if she did. She’s supposed to be visiting her mother right now – if you can believe a word of that.’

Susannah eyed him shrewdly. She had thought when he first walked in that he wasn’t quite
his usual ebullient self. Now, seeing him leaning dejectedly against the fireplace, she knew for certain that something was up.

‘You sound as though
you
don’t believe she’s at her mother’s.’

‘Too right. I don’t. Not a word.’

Susannah, a little embarrassed at being told things that were surely private between husband and wife, shook her head. ‘I – I’m sure Julia doesn’t tell lies. I mean, she just doesn’t look the sort.’

‘Shows how wrong you can be.’ Propping an elbow on the mantelshelf he picked at a flake of paint with one of his nails. It was several seconds before he went on. ‘My dear sweet Julia has been lying through her teeth for weeks on end. I’ve only recently got to know about it.’

He told Susannah how Julia had been attending college without telling him a word about it and that then he had quite by chance seen her with another man.

‘Oh, but surely that doesn’t mean a thing,’ Susannah said, when she had considered his detailed description of the event. ‘Two people meeting on their way into a building and having a bit of a laugh? It’s hardly anything to go on, is it?’ He was surely making a mountain out of a molehill. ‘Take that as evidence to a solicitor,’ she said, ‘and I think they’d laugh in your face.’

Harvey swivelled his jaw. He seemed intent on believing the worst. ‘She’s been lying all this time about college,’ he pointed out.

‘And perhaps there’s a very good reason.’

‘She seemed shifty when she told me she was going to her mother’s,’ he added.

Susannah closed her eyes. ‘In your present state of mind, Harvey, you could convince yourself that the tower of Pisa doesn’t lean.’

‘Well, I just happen to know that I’m right.’ He rubbed his chin, hesitated, and plunged on. ‘There are other matters to take into consideration too. Since I became redundant, things haven’t been going all that well between us. Our marriage is – not what it was.’ He held her eyes with his. ‘So you see, that makes two of us, doesn’t it? You and me both. And if you can consider yourself a free agent, then so can I.’

‘Yes … I see … but –’ Susannah felt for firm support among the largest cardboard boxes and gingerly sat on the edge of one. ‘I still see myself as married, actually …’

‘I suppose I do too, come to that. But I don’t feel particularly bound by my vows. Do you? And I don’t see why I shouldn’t come and go as I please. If I want to spend my time helping you, and you have no objection, then what’s to stop me? Anyway, enough of this talk, let’s get down to work.’

‘Yes. Work.’ Susannah looked round the room, her thoughts awry. She wondered why it was, if Harvey was so sure of his facts, that he didn’t challenge his wife on the matter? And why bring the tale here to her? What – exactly – was she supposed to make of it all?

But there was only one answer to that, really, and she thought she could guess what it was.

They were sitting by the fire that Harvey had laid that afternoon, eating kebabs from a takeaway. A candle flickered from the top of a wine bottle balanced on a stool, revealing them in their rag-bag clothes, and they ate in reflective silence. They could have been hard-up newly-weds, Susannah decided, except for the obvious signs of marching time stamped on their lived-in faces.

Harvey had been a real godsend. Her new studio was virtually ready and the front room had been straightened out furniture-wise. They were still clattering about on draughty floorboards but there was little they could do about that.

‘I’m not going to lash out on new carpets,’ she told him. ‘Not when it isn’t even my place.’

‘Perhaps just an ethnic rug of some sort? Shouldn’t cost too much.’ He looked down at the floor at the space between them where such an item might go. He seemed to be imagining things to himself.

‘Hmm.’ She looked at him from under her lashes, chewing contemplatively on her food. It was half-past nine and he had made no move whatsoever in a homeward direction – hadn’t said a word on the subject.

He shifted his knees and sent cutlery sliding to the floor. She picked up her glass and spilt wine. Meat turned to rubber in her throat.

When they had finished with the food and Harvey had declined anything more to drink – although he had taken only half a small glass of not-bad-at-all Chablis – she took the debris out to the kitchen. She was scraping rubbish into a flip-top bin when he came and stood behind her.

He’d brought the lighted candle with him and he placed it carefully on top of the fridge.

‘Susannah …’

She started, missed the bin, turned and put a hand to her hair, conscious of how bedraggled she must look. She had hardly had time that day to draw breath, let alone attend to her appearance.

‘You look fine,’ he assured her, reading her mind, and he slipped an arm round her waist. They stood for some time, surveying each other, as the fridge started up a noisy hum. ‘Are you glad I came?’ he asked her after a while.

‘Yes. Yes, of course I’m glad. I was feeling … a little bit lonely.’ She could feel his hand on her hip, warm and full of promise. Imagining what that hand might be capable of, she fought to keep calm, to play it cool; act like the mature woman of the world that she was far from feeling.

‘It’s getting rather late to drive back tonight,’ he told her. ‘And what’s there to go back for in any case?’

‘N-not a lot, from what you’ve been telling me.’ She put a hand against his chest. ‘I do think you may have got it wrong, though. About Julia, I mean.
She seems so – I don’t know – really nice. Oh, I know I scarcely know her but –’

‘No, you don’t. You know nothing. You’ll just have to let me be the judge, won’t you?’

‘And what if it turns out you’re wrong?’

He merely looked at her, his eyes glittering. His hand went out to the light-switch. ‘Will you let me stay the night?’ he wanted to know in the sudden darkness.

‘There’s only one bed, you know. One tiny little single bed.’

‘I know.’ His Adam’s apple moved twice, up and down as she watched it.

She swallowed hard, full of doubts. ‘I don’t know …’

But he allowed her no time for indecision. He picked up the candle, took her hand in his free one, and led her slowly towards the stairs. They walked up the thirteen steps, jostling side by side. And she could swear his fingers were crossed as they clung to hers. Every step of the way.

Harvey cried when it was over. Susannah didn’t know what to say.

‘Was – was I that disappointing?’ she forced herself to ask him. She stared at the window with its skimpy curtain. She thought she had acquitted herself reasonably well. What had she done wrong?

He reached for Uncle Bert’s trousers, dug about in the pockets for a handkerchief, then loudly blew his nose. ‘Don’t be so damned ridiculous.’ His
voice was muffled and cracked. ‘Don’t you ever cry?’

‘Oh … you mean with a climax? Urn, once or twice I have. Yes. I didn’t think men did too, though.’

‘Big boys don’t cry? Well, I’ve never done it before. Cried like that – over anything.’

‘So why did you do it just now?’

He turned to face her again, his eyes still wet, but beautiful. ‘Because you just made me so happy, Sue. You’ll never know how much.’