Valley of Decision (27 page)

‘What are you going to say to him?' she'd be asking shortly.

David, even catching in his mind the exact intonation of the question, could not return the answer. Now, when weeks of his spare time had been painfully spent accounting to himself for his wife's behaviour, for he could easily imagine the raw temptation which had led her to fall for Red Gage and the opportunities he represented. To abort her child, to dump her marriage in order to achieve musical consequence seemed understandable, hardly even reprehensible. In a new country, flattered and admired, he himself might have acted no differently. But to come back, creeping back, and to Derby, was incomprehensible. Perhaps her permit had run out; he did not know how long she had applied to stay. The hiatus of ignorance appalled; he had let his wife disappear from his life with no more inquiry than on a half-day trip to a stately home. Mary must have been battered. She'd not return if she could have prospered, survived, or marginally existed there. And
Semele
. That must have collapsed past devastation.

He used the last minutes before the starting time he had decided on so carelessly, so indecisively that he set off later than he expected, but found no trouble. The roads to Derby were relatively free of Saturday-night traffic. At two minutes to eight he had parked in the side street fifty yards from the shop. As he locked his car, he bluntly asked himself what he'd know next time he inserted his key. A clock chimed, eight, from the open door of a terraced house. A West Indian, well-dressed elderly man came into the small front garden and adjusted his trilby hat. Grey jacket, sky-blue shirt, multicoloured tie, trousers with turn-ups, suede shoes. He nodded at David, then turned back with a start into the still open door, closing it behind him. David gave himself a little time to wait for the re-emergence. Nothing happened.

He turned the corner. The rear of the shop was reached by an entry and then a passage behind four backyards with short gardens. In the first, the ground was piled high with cardboard boxes, litter prolific on an earth trodden bare. One could see nothing of the second; a dirty trellis perched high on the brick wall was backed by thujas. The gate, ramshackle yet solid, carried a notice, roughly painted on a square of hardboard: ‘BeWARe of Dog AlsAtion' in a mixture of capitals and small letters without punctuation. The spelling mistake jarred, the secrecy, but no growl or bark warned. Upper windows were black. In the third a large ash tree tilted winter-naked, leaning away from the house; music sounded, unrecognizable with a thumping bass. He pushed open the Stileses' gate; it hung well, the hinges were oiled. A path of flagstones leading to the yard was flanked by two narrow stretches of lawn, two lengths of privet hedge. Up three steps to the back door, on which he knocked, having failed in the darkness to find a bell. He hammered again. The switching on of lights rewarded him.

In this house Mary existed.

Waiting he could neither think nor notice thought, but his numbness fell short of comfort. He had braced himself, he concluded, to face a wooden door without a knocker. This world of backyards offered him little beyond shabbiness, neat or tidy according to effort. George Stiles would come out here on a summer evening to mow his lawns inside ten minutes, or whiningly plugged-in trim his hedge. The coal place housed his mower; the outside lavatory, white-painted, was unused; the row of dustbins and full plastic bags stood in strict lines. Mrs Stiles emerged on Mondays and Thursdays to hang out her washing. The back windows were stoutly barred. He could detect no movement inside; it was as if the bar lights had flickered on, beamed steadily now by chance, not in answer to his fist.

Bolts were finally drawn. George Stiles opened up.

‘Thought we heard somebody. We didn't expect you this way,' he said. ‘We left the shop door open for you.'

There was something, a credit mark, with these theft-conscious burghers. David wondered at what time, ten to eight, five to, one minute to, they had made the supreme sacrifice. He stepped past his father-in-law, who bent to rebolt.

‘You go first,' David ordered. ‘I'll turn the lights off.'

The younger man felt antagonistic.

‘Not been a bad day,' Stiles ventured and went unanswered.

The downstairs behind the shop was shelved storeroom; new planks were piled in the middle, with two sawing horses. The smell reminded David of the workshops at school where he had hated the woodwork master.

‘Careful with these stairs,' Stiles warned. ‘They're awkward. We're getting near the age when I'll have to put a handrail up.'

At the top of the blatantly uncarpeted treads a white door faced them out. Across the whole of the square landing before it stretched a thick institutional rope doormat on which Stiles now cleansed his feet. He was wearing, David noticed, brand-new leather slippers.

‘Go on in,' he said. ‘I'll see to the last light.'

The door beautifully painted, Stiles had been apprenticed to a decorator, reflected the shadeless lamp in an atmosphere without dust. As soon as David stepped through on to a landing he knew rich change. The carpets were red and navy blue, two golden frames housed oils of high trees and lurid skies done by Eva's father, or was it grandfather?; and the space was illuminated from an elaborate candelabra and three shell wall-lights.

‘Straight across,' Stiles shouted, as if his son-in-law were a stranger.

David knocked at the door, entered.

Curtains were drawn in this room which sparkled with an equality of brilliance. He remembered it by day when it was never properly lit, but now the place seemed to dazzle. They had imported standard lamps.

‘Come in, David,' Eva said. She stood by the table, by a starched white cloth, by elaborate places laid, but aggressively, apprehensively welcoming. ‘You're not late.'

‘I am,' he answered.

‘Only a few minutes then.'

Mary sat in a high-backed modern chair by the gas fire, upright, legs together, wearing a simple white dress with blue polka dots. Her hands rested on the arms of the chair, the position awkward as her mother's.

‘What about a glass of sherry, then?' Stiles shouted from behind. ‘It'll give us an appetite.' He bustled round, out of character. ‘Mary?' She nodded. ‘Evie?' – ‘Yes, please.' ‘David?' David refused; Stiles filled three of the largish glasses straight from the bottle on the sideboard.

‘Hello.' David greeted his wife neutrally.

‘Hello.' She lifted her eyes, stared him straight in the face, holding the scrutiny, wide-eyed, pale, unsmiling, neither one thing nor the other.

He moved towards her holding out his hand, which she took firmly but without rising. Her palm was clammy.

‘Are you well?' he asked. It seemed preferable to ‘How are you?', more friendly.

‘Yes, thank you.'

‘A good journey?'

‘I suppose so.' That was grudging enough. Stiles bounced out, in front of David, with glasses for the ladies.

‘Are you sure, David, you won't join us?' he said on his return. ‘Good stuff. Best the beer-off could provide.' The man sounded jovial, excitable, savouring every minute, while his women were dumb. Perhaps he could not control his delight at his daughter's return, and nothing else mattered. ‘The good health of all.' Up went his glass.

After the ritual wetting of the lips, there was silence which no one attempted to break. David at last in the presence of his wife felt embarrassment, nothing stronger, so that if anyone had invited him to leave he might have complied without compunction. He was sorry for Mary, in that her parents, her mother, had forced her into this situation, but she had thrown him over without excuse or word and it would do her no harm to make reparation for that. He had backed away, and stood by the door, as if to run. Hands in pockets, he tested his grievances without result. Mary wore plain blue shoes; he lifted his head no higher; little mattered very seriously. He could make his way through the evening without undue disturbance.

He realized that his jaw, his lips, his arms inside the sleeves of a well-cut dark sports jacket were stiff with tension, and he shrugged, smiled tentatively, limbering up. His mother-in-law watched him, glass in her hand, still by the table. She stood, a bundle of clothes, though her best, but crumpled by uncertainty, understanding nothing, expecting catastrophe. Perhaps, he thought, she would have imposed a vow of silence on them until they were used to each other, used to the idea that they could breathe the air of a room together, without consequent earthquake. He stole a glance at Mary who sullenly contemplated a curvetting bronze horse with pedestal which had been dumped, oddly, on the floor in the corner. Somebody had moved it, he decided, from its place of honour on the sideboard to make space for the sherry tray. Father Stiles was pouring himself a second.

‘I think we should sit down,' he said, glass upraised.

‘Right.' His wife found herself. ‘You that end, David. Dad, that side. Mary, this.'

‘Up to the scratch,' Stiles shouted.

Mrs Stiles made for the kitchen and the potato dish. George hummed to himself, imbibed alcohol already potent. The other two did not speak. David, keeping his eyes religiously away from his wife's profile, knew he acted ridiculously, but did nothing to thaw out his frozen social skills. The word ‘frozen', it was presented to him, exactly described him; he could sit there, but he could not feel, either anger or disappointment or pity. It would have been better if he had swilled down a couple of George's big sherries, to loosen his tongue. He straightened his puritan back as Mrs Stiles returned.

The serving of the meal, and he had guessed correctly: ham, tongue, brawn, haslet, pork pie, salad, beetroot in a cut-glass dish, pickles, piccalilli, two styles of chutney, demanded question and answer. They spoke to each other, handed large gold-rimmed plates about, organized moves with the cruet so that for a few minutes friendliness managed a bogus appearance. Stiles and his wife both stood, both issuing orders or countermanding them, piling David's plate past reason.

‘Nothing but lettuce,' Stiles said, forking up another segment of ham to drop without permission across David's meal. ‘Off the bone.'

‘You sit down, Dad, and see to yourself,' Eva said.

George laughed out loud, looking to others to join him, but obeyed only to leap up again.

‘The wine,' he said. He knocked over his half-empty glass. ‘Oh, Hanover.' His wife rounded the table, mopped successfully. ‘You'll join us in a glass of red, David, now, won't you?' He seemed nowise abashed.

‘No, thank you. If you don't mind.'

‘No? Why not?'

‘I have to drive back.'

‘One glass won't stop you.'

‘No, thank you.' He was determined on ungraciousness.

‘Mary, then?'

‘Not for me, thank you.'

‘It's not worth opening the bottle for us,' Eva answered. ‘It gives me indigestion, and you've had more than enough.'

Stiles subsided with a clown's ludicrous face.

Such conversation as there was crossed leadenly between the parents. Stiles had been subdued. Plates were cleared of food; no second helpings were taken. Mrs Stiles brought in ice cream, tinned fruit salad; clearly Mary had taken no part in preparing the meal.

David refusing replenishment, thanked his mother-in-law.

‘It wasn't really what I intended,' she said bluntly, voicing perhaps her disappointment with her daughter.

‘It was delicious.'

‘You could have prepared exactly the same for yourself, with no need to go out.'

‘And when I do, what do I get? Limp lettuce, wet ham, bottled salad cream.' He felt sorry for the woman.

‘Dad and I will clear away,' Eva continued grimly, ineluctably. ‘And we'll wash up. I expect you and Mary have things to say to each other. We'll be outside for half an hour. Then we'll bring you a cup of coffee.'

‘Or the first-aid box,' Stiles said, recovering. Eva sneered him down.

‘Is that agreed?' she asked, irritably. It sounded like a game of forfeits.

Nobody spoke. All four rose to clear the table, and this was not forbidden. When the dishes were piled after procession into the scullery next door, Eva replaced the white cloth with a red, and pointed the young people to the chairs in front of the gas fire. She looked at the clock.

‘I'll knock on that door at twenty-five past nine,' she said.

David could have smiled at her lugubriously determined goodwill. As the door clicked to, he turned to Mary for a lead. She hesitated, then gracefully took the chair she had occupied when he arrived. He did not sit down at once, but after a minute's fidgets and feeling disadvantaged on his feet made for the chair opposite.

She said nothing, appeared to muse.

‘Welcome home,' he burst out, and wished at once he'd kept his mouth shut.

She looked at him, dartingly. In alarm?

‘I had to make a start,' he said.

She did not answer that. He pulled at his chin, waiting. In the end she raised her head and in a perfectly normal voice said, ‘Well, go on then. Say whatever it is you've got to say.'

‘What do you mean?' He'd return unfriendliness with unfriendliness.

‘My mother thinks I should see you, talk to you. I get the impression from her that you think so too.'

‘And you don't?'

‘It's too late, isn't it?'

‘For what?'

‘Talk.'

This was not good, but neither was it yet disastrous. They listened to each other testing out with something other than ‘Would you pass the mustard, please?' Nervously awkward, his arms limp, David tried again.

‘Have you considered coming home?' he asked.

‘To Station Road?' That mildly encouraged.

‘Where else?'

She held her breath, mouth open, head turned away from him, nose beaky.

‘Is that what you want?'