He'd thought about Elizabeth over the years once in a while, especially when he heard that Dusty Springfield song. He'd recall how they talked, how their eyes met, how they'd danced in the café and what they had almost done— and would have done— if the three punks hadn't jumped him outside. He'd felt guilt all these years because of how good he'd felt just dancing with her. How bad would it had felt if he'd spent that night with her?
He'd never cheated on his wife in all the years they'd been together and had always considered the café the place where he'd come the closest. As a younger man he'd felt that even the dance had been a betrayal, but now, thinking back, he knew it hadn't been. It had simply been a cleansing time for him, a few moments respite from a life that had suddenly become filled with turmoil.
There was no harm in that.
Robert Barnard
Nothing to Lose
INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED
as one of the masters of the mystery form, Robert Barnard has worked in a wide variety of styles, voices and forms over the years. He is one of the few writers certain to survive his time. Most of his novels have the feel of true classics. One of his most compelling quotes is that he never draws directly from life because, "People can be so much nastier, can act so much meaner, than they are usually allowed to do in books." In "Nothing to Lose," he is once again at the top of his game. This fine tale first appeared in the anthology
Malice Domestic 9.
Nothing to Lose
Robert Barnard
W
hen Emily Mortmain finally consented to go into an old people's home, her relatives predicted a spate of suicides by the other residents before her first week was over. If other possible outcomes of the move occurred to them, they did not speak of them openly.
Emily Mortmain had been a disagreeable woman all her life, and old age had intensified her cantankerousness. Her husband had volunteered for a suicide mission in World War II, and all his contemporaries in the RAF had said how heroic he was, since he was still young and had so much to live for. He had smiled heroically, and said nothing. Her daughter had emigrated with her family to Australia many years before, and had opined at the time that Australia's only drawback was that it was not far enough away. As Emily became increasingly unable to fend for herself, neighbors had tried to help, then fellow church members (for Emily was a "good" churchwoman), and then social workers. All attempts had ended in disaster— plates being thrown by or at her, screaming altercations at her back door, even an attempted throttling. When the local vicar lost his faith and left the church, the parish joke was that he had found himself unable to believe in a God who could create an Emily Mortmain.
The members of her family who came to see her off on the morning she left for the home were two nieces and a nephew. Their contact with her over the years had been sporadic, but had never dropped off entirely, for Emily had money, and it was known that her daughter had been ritually cursed by bell, book, and candle and cut out of the will. Who, if anyone, had been cut in was not known, but it was generally agreed that there was no charity with aims unpleasant enough for Emily to want to give it money.
There was no rivalry among the relatives. They knew no one could suck up to Emily Mortmain, because it was not in humankind to be pleasant to her for long enough to gain any favor. None of the three volunteered to drive her to the home, for each feared the inevitable bust-up in the car. They stood by the front gate waving cheerily as she was driven away in a taxi provided by the local social services. Then they gave a muffled cheer and went away to have a drink together and swap "Aunt Em" stories.
Emily was silent on the drive to Evening Glades. One did not talk to taxi drivers. One did not tip them either. A wheelchair was waiting for her in the driveway of Evening Glades, and the resident handyman got her into it and pushed her into the foyer. She did not thank him, and merely stared stonily ahead at Miss Protheroe the manageress when she introduced herself. She maintained her silence when she was taken up in the lift and shown her room, and preserved the same arctic chill when she was wheeled down into the communal sitting room to await lunch.
Miss Protheroe (whose only fault, if she had one, was a slight tendency to talk to the residents as if they were children) made a special effort to take her round and introduce her to her "new friends" as she called them.
"Miss Willcocks… Captain Freely… Miss Cartwright… Mr. Pottinger… Mrs. Freebody…"
But she needn't have bothered. Indeed, the introductions died away in her throat. Emily Mortmain had risen from her wheelchair with the aid of a stick, and placed herself in the nearest available armchair. She acknowledged neither the names, nor the tentative (or in some cases appalled) greetings of the other residents. When Miss Protheroe had finished she merely announced, "My room does not have a sea view."
Miss Protheroe, as was quite often necessary in her job, took a firm line.
"The rooms with a sea view are very highly prized here. Mrs. Freebody, Mrs. Johnstone, and Captain Freely have the sea views at the moment, as our residents of longest standing."
Emily Mortmain fixed each in turn with a look of malevolence that seemed designed to ensure that all three rooms shortly became available.
"And when— if— they should for any reason… become vacant," said Miss Willcocks, greatly daring, "there is a long waiting list."
Emily Mortmain's face took on an expression of relish, as if she was spoiling for a fight which she had no doubt she would win.
"Lunch in half an hour," said Miss Protheroe brightly.
It was predictable that lunch was not to Mrs. Mortmain's liking. The gravy was too thin, the beef was overdone, and the peas were tinned. She aroused in the others a vociferous and unusual enthusiasm for thin gravy, well-done beef, and tinned peas. This cut no ice with Emily Mortmain, who had all her life adopted the position that anyone who had an opinion contrary to her own on any subject whatsover was either a fool or a degenerate. When the pudding came, a rhubarb tart, she pushed it away. "I can't abide rhubarb."
As she made her way slowly, with the aid of a stick, toward the sitting room, she shouted to Miss Protheroe, "Remember, I can't abide rhubarb!"
"Funny," said Mr. Pottinger. "I'd have thought rhubarb and Mrs. Mortmain would have suited one another."
"I do
wonder
whether she's going to fit in here," said Miss Willcocks.
That was a matter on which there could be only one opinion, but it was an opinion that was bounced backwards and forwards over the rhubarb tart; it was productive of a satisfactory gloom at things not being what they used to be. This feeling was reinforced when they all trailed back to the sitting room and stood horrified in the doorway. Emily Mortmain had appropriated the armchair closest to the fire.
The comforts of Evening Glades were distributed with a rough-and-ready attempt at democracy. The possessors of the rooms with a sea view did not have the chair closest to the fire, and the person with the first rights to the
Daily Mail
in the mornings was someone else again. The armchair by the fire was Miss Willcocks's by right.
"Tell her!" Miss Willcocks urged Captain Freely, poking him quite painfully in the ribs.
Captain Freely was only just an officer and not quite a gentleman, but he could be quite splendidly officerly and gentlemanly if the occasion called for it. He advanced with the solemnity of Black Rod on a state occasion.
"Mrs.… er… Mortmain, I'm afraid you don't yet know our little ways here… our customs and conventions… The armchair you are sitting in is— hmm— reserved for the use of Miss Willcocks here."
The evil black eyes looked at him, then moved toward Miss Willcocks, then back to Captain Freely.
"Switch on the television, will you?" she said. "It's time for
Jacaranda Avenue
."
There was an immediate twitter of protest.
"We don't watch
Jacaranda Avenue
at Evening Glades," said Captain Freely. Then, aware that they had let themselves be sidetracked, he went on, quite severely, "I don't think you quite understood what I just said about—"
"Oh, I understood. Switch on the television."
The other residents stood round aghast. It was at this point that Captain Freely's military training told. Emily Mortmain had taken hold of her stick, and clearly intended to use it to press the appropriate button on the television set. Captain Freely, with great presence of mind, wheeled the set a further two feet away.
"Here at Evening Glades," he said sententiously, "we watch
Coronation Street
and
EastEnders
. We think that that is enough soap opera without adding an Australian one."
"Northern filth and cockney filth," sniffed Emily Mortmain. "At least the Australian program is
clean
."
But Captain Freely, with the nodded support of the other residents, had turned on a wildlife program. Emily Mortmain felt at an unusual moral disadvantage from the fact that she had preferred a soap to this.
"Such a graceful bird," said Mrs. Johnstone, as they watched a flying condor. "One can almost imagine angels' wings."
Such a rubbing in of superior taste drove Emily Mortmain to a suppressed frenzy. Her instinct— for she had all the childishness of the very old— was to get up and change the channel. On the other hand she knew that one of the others— in whom childishness was certainly not absent— would nip over and take her chair. Indeed, Captain Freely had remained standing while all the rest had sunk into chairs, and he hovered near her, no doubt meditating a chivalrous dash to rescue the chair on behalf of Miss Willcocks should the opportunity arise. Emily Mortmain fumed, but sat on.
At 2:30 precisely Emily Mortmain took up her stick and pressed the bell for Carter, the man of all work.
"Take me to my room," she ordered, hobbling towards her wheelchair. "It's my time for a lie-down. Remember that. Half past two is always my time to lie down."
The other residents watched her go in dignified silence, and no one scuttled over to take her chair. Only when the lift had gone up did Miss Willcocks walk over to her rightful place with great, if wounded, presence. She sat down to a little burst of applause, and Captain Freely summed up the general feeling when he said, "We shall have to fight back."
It was generally agreed that, though they would be scrupulously polite to the new resident, it was no use at all relying on good manners or conventional decencies. If the chair by the fire was to be kept for Miss Willcocks, this would have to be done by stratagem. After various possibilities were considered, Captain Freely dragged down from the bookshelves more than a dozen bound copies of
Punch
, dating from the 1920s. He placed them near the chair and declared that at meal times, or when Miss Willcocks took her constitutional, he himself would place these on the chair, which Mrs. Mortmain, with her limited ability to move, would find exceedingly difficult to remove. "I haven't lost
all
my strength yet, thank the Lord," he declared. It was agreed that for the moment the television would remain at some distance from all the chairs, however inconvenient this was for those with poor eyesight. It was also agreed that the morning paper would be kept for Mrs. Freebody in the office until she called for it after breakfast. Thus was the strategy conceived, and the mere discussion of the measures gave the old people an agreeable sense of having taken part in a council of war.
"Just like the Home Guard," said Mr. Summerson, the oldest inhabitant, "planning what to do when Jerry landed."
But of course Jerry had not landed, and it was typical of Mrs. Mortmain that by the next day she had decided to fight on a completely different front. What had most rankled about the skirmishes of her first day had been (not that she admitted it in these terms to herself) that she had allowed herself to be put at a moral disadvantage. Her insistence on the Australian soap when the others (
apparently
, and so they
said
) preferred to watch a wildlife program was, in retrospect, unwise. It was imperative to regain the moral initiative.
The following day was warmish, and Mrs. Mortmain affected not to have seen the piled copies of
Punch
on the chair by the fire. She took an armchair over by the bookcase, the farthest from the television, and she turned it away from the despised screen. She fortunately found among the stock of books a volume of sermons which had been the comfort of a previous resident, now gathered to the bosom of the Lord. This she opened and ploughed doggedly through, whatever program was on the television. She was not spoken to by any of the residents, but if addressed by Miss Protheroe or Carter she would read aloud the passage she was at, ostensibly to mark her place.
"Would you prefer carrots or greens with your meat loaf, Mrs. Mortmain?"
" '…the ungodly shall perish in a sea of tormenting fire.' What precisely do you mean by 'greens'?"
This ploy was gratifying to her sense of superiority, if in the long run monotonous. For the rest, too, it was a respite, and they found that life at the Glades could go on pretty much as normal, almost as if Mrs. Mortmain had not been there. This, though, was not Emily's intention in the long term. Having regained the moral heights, she was impelled once more to assert her presence.
