The Water's Lovely (7 page)

But they say it happens. The first time is the enormity. The next time would be easier … If only, she thought, before I told him, I could get Edmund to promise not to desert Heather. Even if he did undertake that (which no one would) he'd break his promise when he knew what she had done. She couldn't tell him. He must take his chance. And if Heather killed the man who had sacked him or the doctor who had failed to diagnose his illness or the driver of the car who hit his car or the little boy who teased their daughter – well, she would blame herself for the rest of her life.

‘My son wants to buy a flat,' said Irene. ‘I don't know why. I tell him he already has a house. I regard this place as as much his as mine.'

This was said in the presence of both Edmund and Marion, Edmund and his mother having already thrashed the matter out to exhaustion point earlier in the day. Excited as another woman might be by sexual desire or some great treat in prospect, Marion was stimulated by family rows, any sort of row and anyone's family. Her face had taken on youthful colour, her cheeks red and her eyes gleaming. Irene, by contrast, looked pale, even wan. Stately in a long black tunic over a long black skirt, her hair piled up on top of her head and kept in place precariously by silver pins, she sat like patience on a monument, wondering at the vagaries of men. In her lap lay the coral beads she had been stringing on to a length of thread.

‘You'd think he had everything he wanted here,' she said. ‘He doesn't have to lift a finger. Even though I say it who shouldn't, the food here is as good as anything cooked by that Jamie Oliver.' She turned to Marion. ‘You know who I mean.'

‘Oh, yes,' said Marion. ‘Frankly, I think your cooking is better.'

‘Cleaning the house from top to bottom, too. Bed making, the windows shining like – like diamonds, washing, ironing, all done for him.'

For a moment Edmund thought his mother was going to compare herself with some television star who demonstrated the arts of the laundry on screen, but instead she said, ‘What do you think, Marion, about this idea of leaving, of setting up home elsewhere? Have you ever heard anything so absurd?'

‘I'd rather not discuss this in front of Marion,' said Edmund.

‘Why on earth not?'

‘Believe me, Edmund,' said Marion, ‘I have nothing but your interests at heart. Who knows? After all, I am practically an estate agent and I may be able to help.'

‘Marion, you force me to say I don't need your help. I don't need anyone's help. I shall move out of here the moment the purchase of my flat is completed and that's all there is to it.'

Having already said more in front of Marion than he intended, Edmund went upstairs where he phoned Heather, told her there had been a row but he intended to move just the same. He sat in his bedroom, thinking about how Heather had said of course she'd move in with him once he had possession of the flat in Crouch End, how easy it had been to find the flat and how smoothly things appeared to be going, and that he must assess the size of Heather's ring finger – and propose.

Downstairs, tactful Marion thought a change of subject would be the most acceptable course to take and had begun chatting about Avice Conroy. Three times since Christmas she had called on her in her house in Pinner and once she had done a stint of rabbit-sitting while Avice had gone away for the night to a friend's funeral in Harrogate. Avice herself was very frail, Marion thought, though of course marvellous for an eighty-year-old. As for those rabbits – well, it took all sorts to make a world, didn't it?

‘She's eighty-four,' said Irene in a doleful voice, and then, ‘I suspect he's going to get engaged to that girl. I don't see why they can't live here. Not that I would allow it until they were married.'

‘I wouldn't think much of a girl who lived with a man without being married under his mother's roof.' Realising that she had got into a mess with that sentence, Marion amended it to, ‘I mean, I wouldn't think much of an unmarried girl living with an unmarried man in his mother's house.'

‘Wouldn't you, Marion?' said Irene wistfully. She sighed. ‘I wish things could have been otherwise.'

This was not a line Marion wanted the conversation to take, implying as it would that she had been left on the shelf. She reverted to her lame ducks and began talking about poor old Mr Hussein, his few sticks of furniture, his single lily and his childlessness. How he had loved the knuckle of ham! Irene interrupted her.

‘I'm making this necklace for you, Marion, though I wonder if it's quite your colour. Would malachite perhaps be better?'

Having no idea what colour malachite was, Marion said, ‘Anything you made would be delightful, I'm sure. May I look?'

Irene held out the uncompleted necklace listlessly. ‘I'm sure I don't know when it will be finished. I can't work when I'm upset. You'd better run away now, Marion. I've got terrible heartburn or it may be the start of a hiatus hernia.'

‘Running away' was something Marion did all the time. It wasn't in her nature to walk or stroll. She went home at breakneck speed, galloping down Chudleigh Hill and along Acol Road to Lithos Road. Though shabby, her flat was neat and pleasantly scented with floral air freshener.

Irene's saying she had heartburn reminded her that it was time to check on the morphine. When her mother died a year before, a whole unopened bottle of morphine sulphate had remained among the medicaments, as well as an already opened bottle containing about half the quantity. Like a good citizen, Marion had handed the half-empty bottle and all the remaining phials and jars and packets to the nurse, but since no one asked for it, she kept the unopened bottle. At that time she had considered trying it on Mrs Pringle, convincing herself that ‘putting her to sleep' would be a merciful release, a natural peaceful exit. The idea would be for Marion to pour a little on her own-make rhum baba, for instance, or a slice of tarte tatin. She was always taking such delicacies to the house in Fitzjohn's Avenue. But Mrs Pringle forestalled her and in the course of nature achieved an even more merciful release than Marion had had in mind, leaving behind her that thoughtful will.

On the principle of where do you hide a leaf but in a tree, she first put the morphine in her bedside cabinet. But mistaking it for a dyspepsia remedy about six months later, she was on the point of unsealing it and unscrewing the cap before she remembered. Goodness,
she might have killed herself! She took the morphine out and put it in the back of the bathroom cabinet along with items no one would consider consuming, a bottle of hand lotion and some vapour rub among other things. As soon as she got in she checked that it was still there. It was. Of course it was. Who would have moved it?

Well, Fowler might have. He'd drink anything if he thought it would intoxicate or stimulate him. Once, soon after Mrs Pringle died and she'd first moved in here, he made his way in while she was out and drank a whole can of silver polish and half a bottle of Lancôme eau de toilette. It wouldn't be easy for him to get in now, not easy even for him since she had had the locks changed. Still, it would be wise to take precautions. She found an adhesive label, one of many neatly stacked in the stationery drawer, wrote
Poison. Not To Be Taken
on it, added
Internally
, and stuck the label on the morphine bottle.

‘It may seem trivial to you,' said Andrew, coming back into Ismay's bedroom after his shower, ‘but I don't actually much like sharing this place with those two. I don't like joining the queue for the bathroom. And most of all I don't like coming back here after being out with you somewhere and finding them sitting on the sofa, then having to get up after half an hour and say, “Well, goodnight. Ismay and I are going to bed now.”

‘Oh, darling, you can't mean it embarrasses you.'

‘Not particularly. What I mean is I want to be allowed a bit of spontaneity. To make love to you on the sofa, for instance. On the floor – why not? In the bath. I don't want to be treated like half of an old married couple stopping the night with friends.'

‘It's not like that, Andrew.'

‘It is just like that. Are you going to tell me you don't keep quiet because they're there? You're not careful to stop the bed from creaking? If you have to go to the bathroom you're not conscious that one of them may be in it? Now that's embarrassing if you like.' Andrew was dressed by now, peering into the mirror to tie his tie. ‘And don't say it's as bad coming to me. You know Seb mostly stays in his room. Besides, I can't live in my place without his rent.'

‘I wasn't going to say anything.' Getting up, Ismay wondered if the bathroom was free but knew that if she asked Andrew another storm of protests would begin. ‘Edmund's found a flat, he's expecting to sign the contract soon. He and Heather are engaged and as soon as he can move he will and she'll go with him.'

‘And how long is that going to be? In my experience it's only when people pay for property with ready cash that these deals get done fast. Someone I know in chambers waited a year from signing a contract on a house until completion.' He turned round and put out his arms, holding her naked body against him. ‘I love you. I love holding you like this whenever I want. I want to be alone with you and I don't want to wait a year.'

‘Of course it won't be a year, darling.' Ismay took her dressing gown off the bed and wrapped it round her. ‘April is what Edmund's solicitor says.'

‘Look at you. You have to cover yourself up to go to the bathroom. In case your sister's boyfriend sees you. And in half an hour we're all supposed to sit round the kitchen table having breakfast together like two married couples sharing a
gîte
in the Dordogne. Oh, please. But I'm not doing that. Not this time. I'm going to leave now and call into Starbucks on my way.'

But they were engaged, Edmund and Heather, she thought when he had gone. They would marry as soon
as they had somewhere to live. Heather would go and Andrew could move in. It wouldn't be long, a few months at most. This will all work out, she told herself. It will come right. And as she made her way to the bathroom, passing Heather's door which was a little ajar, she caught a glimpse of Edmund and Heather standing as she and Andrew had stood a few moments before. Quickly she looked away but not before she had seen that Heather was naked, Edmund's arms enclosing her. The difference was that they were kissing.

Looking back, Ismay supposed she had been in love with Guy. He was her type, the prototype of her type really, the first one of a few that ended in Andrew, thin, tall, dark men with fine-drawn features and beautiful hands. When her mother first brought Guy Rolland home she and Heather had been antagonistic, loyal to their father's memory, absolutely unable to understand that Beatrix, at not quite thirty-nine, might not yet be past the age for love. And that attitude had continued as far as Heather was concerned. She liked Guy as little as she was to like Andrew. In fact, when Ismay thought about it, she saw that her sister reacted to both men in the same way, had been similarly hostile – though rather less so – to those boyfriends who had come in between. Was it that they all looked a bit like Guy?

The first evening that Guy came into the house with Beatrix they had been to the theatre and Guy brought her home. It was only their second date, the first being the dinner with Pamela and Michael. Guy was the marketing manager in the firm Pamela worked for at that time. There had been no matchmaking intended, she said afterwards, and it was hard to see how she could have seen Guy as a suitable husband for her sister. For one thing, he was five years her junior and, since her
husband's death, Beatrix had looked older than her age. Perhaps Pamela, only just over thirty at the time, had had her eye on him herself, Ismay had wondered, and considered he would be safe with Beatrix.

If that were so she couldn't have been more wrong. That first date led to another and another, and very soon Guy and Beatrix were a couple, an item. And Ismay developed a ‘crush' on him. She kept it dark; she was ashamed of it. He was her mother's and Ismay, young as she was, understood that her mother needed Guy, even deserved Guy, after the years of nursing their father and her long-drawn-out suffering after his death. Besides, she was only thirteen, a child in appearance. That was how Guy must see her, as a child. Heather, on the other hand, eleven years old, was already beginning to look like a woman. But she was childlike, innocent, even naïve, Ismay thought. At school Heather worked hard. She worked earnestly, her eyes too close to the book she was reading, her handwriting slow, deliberate and round. Far more than she and her mother did, Heather talked about their dead father. ‘Daddy' might not be still alive but he was present with Heather, a rock to lean on, male perfection and the role model she would look for in the men in her own life.

‘Why did Daddy have to die?' was a question she still occasionally asked. She didn't expect an answer. She knew there wasn't one.

For weeks she wouldn't speak to Guy. To do him justice – and Ismay was very willing to do him justice – he tried doing what he called ‘drawing her out'. He wasn't stupid. He didn't bring her presents or call her darling, as he soon did call Beatrix and Ismay, he didn't ask her how she was getting on at school or ask her anything except her opinion, come to that. She was almost twelve but he talked to her as if she were ten years older,
making it his business to find out what things she liked doing at school and after school, and trying to discuss these subjects with her. ‘Trying' was the word, Ismay thought. He never succeeded. Heather was learning Spanish and Ismay remembered – with pain now and a kind of fear – how Guy had talked to Heather about Spain and its history and language and the perils of the Spanish subjunctive, about tennis and Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras and about cooking, which she was already good at. Heather didn't ignore him. She answered with a ‘yes' or a ‘no' or an ‘I don't know'.