Widows & Orphans (14 page)

‘Maybe it’s self-defence?’ Duncan said, angry at making excuses for a man who, no matter how hard he tried to block him out, cast a permanent shadow over their relationship. ‘He knows he can do nothing for them so he’s withdrawing emotionally. I find it hard enough being apart from Jamie and I’m not in jail.’

‘Do you think so? Yes, of course. Thank you. I couldn’t bear it if the one real thing – the only real thing – we’ve ever had meant nothing to him. He spent the entire visit chattering about his cellmate, what they watched on TV, the bowl he was making in the prison workshop, his weight loss course –’

‘I didn’t know he was fat.’

‘He is now. After almost an hour of telling me about table tennis and music appreciation and the over-forties gym
sessions and how his fellow inmates distrust the prison doctor so they come to him for a diagnosis, I felt sure he was putting on an act – talking big as he always has, desperate to prove he’s top dog. Then he let slip that he’s due to be transferred to a Category C prison –’

‘When?’

‘No idea. Neither has he. But it could be any day now and he isn’t pleased. He claims he couldn’t bear to start again from scratch, but that’s a smokescreen. The truth is that he thrives on all the rules and regulations. He doesn’t want to go into a more relaxed regime.’

‘But that’s perverse!’

‘And swindling an institution you described as “criminally underfunded” isn’t? Sorry, I’m still on edge. I listened to him and suddenly everything fell into place: the blind rage when one of us used his coat peg; the cast-iron timetables that turned the simplest journey into a military campaign; the desperate need for order to keep all his demons at bay.’

‘What demons?’

‘I wish I knew. If I did, I might have been able to help. But I’m convinced that the fraud was part and parcel of it. Why steal all that money? We didn’t need it; we didn’t use it. Sure, there was the house and the cars and the holidays and the parties (not that he showed much sign of enjoying them). But by getting away with it all for so long, he could fool himself that he was in control.’

‘He’ll have a job doing that now.’

‘Exactly. And, when I saw him looking more content than he has done in years, I realised that he no longer has to pretend. Far from being a punishment, his sentence is a kind of relief. The prison walls are nothing compared to the ones he built around himself.’

‘I’m struggling to take all this in.’

‘Do you think I’m on the wrong track?’

‘I don’t know; I don’t know him.’

‘The truth is that neither do I. How is it possible to live in the same house, to share the same bed and make love to a man for sixteen years and have so little idea of what’s going on inside his head? I suppose it would be the same if I’d found out he was having an affair. When the police first came to interview me, I assumed that’s why Matthew had done it. It was the only logical explanation. Now I know better than to look for one.’

Her voice cracked and Duncan was afraid that she was about to break down. ‘You’re free of him now,’ he said.

‘Am I? It’s not just the kids. I can push him to the back of my mind but I doubt I’ll ever push him out of it.’

‘I do understand.’

‘Of course. You and Linda get on so well, I sometimes forget you were ever married.’

‘Ah yes. The poster couple for divorce.’

‘From the outside, you seem so compatible that it’s hard to see why you ever split up. Sorry, I don’t mean to pry. Well, that’s not true, actually.’ She smiled for the first time all day.

‘You’re not prying. It’s very simple. I’m sure there were lots of subsidiary reasons but there was one overwhelming one. She wanted another child, which I couldn’t – well, a mixture of couldn’t and wouldn’t – give her.’

The bitter irony was that her much longed-for second child had been born severely disabled. He wondered whether, had Rose been his daughter (and, given his genetic make-up, it was a possibility he had often considered), their relationship might have been strengthened. He would have loved Rose so much; indeed, in moments of self-reproach he feared that her dependency would have made her easier to love than Jamie. Suppressing the thought, he asked Ellen to hand him a butterscotch from the packet in the dashboard. She unwrapped it with delicious intimacy before taking one herself. They savoured their sweets in silence, united, he suspected, by memories of their pasts.

In retrospect, it was clear that he should never have married
Linda. They met when she had just turned twenty and was widely held to be the most beautiful girl in Francombe: a verdict confirmed by the judges of the annual Seafood Festival who crowned her Queen. Fellow guests at a Chamber of Commerce reception for national travel agents, they sought refuge from the tedium, scarcely leaving one another’s side all evening. Over the next few months Duncan invited her out whenever he could and, on occasions when he was working late, brought her to the office, heedless of the smirks of the staff. She was funny and vibrant and sweet-natured, and far cleverer than her constant self-deprecation might suggest. Despite her protests, he was eager to introduce her to his university friends, but after a meal with Angus and Miles following a live recording of
The Carmichael Report
; a weekend in Jarrow with Alice and her new husband, Lesley, the area dean; and, most painfully, a reunion in Devon with the cast members of
Cambridge Marmalade
, he resolved to make a complete break with the past.

When they married after a two-year courtship, Duncan felt as though he were making a commitment not just to Linda but to Francombe, turning his back on the metropolis and pledging himself to the coast. By any standards – not least those that he had observed as a boy – their first years together were happy. Linda, while continuing to work in her parents’ shop, relished her connection with the
Mercury
, which, having fought off the challenge of the
Francombe Citizen
and BBC Southern Counties, was once again solvent. But for all her pride in his achievement, he knew that he had failed her in the one thing that mattered. Every christening mug and romper suit and rattle that she bought for a friend’s baby brought it home. Nothing in her life, even her love for him, could compare with her longing for a child.

Although he shared Linda’s hopes of parenthood, Duncan knew that it would not be easy. At the start of their relationship he had confessed that he suffered from Klinefelter
Syndrome, but he had been so frightened of scaring her off that having explained he was still able to produce some viable sperm he had failed to emphasise how few. It was not a subject on which he cared to dwell. He had been diagnosed at fifteen after two years as the butt of changing-room jokes about eunuchs and castrati. He had never felt so alone. With a father who made virility the yardstick of his identity and a mother who was repulsed by the least physical defect, he found little sympathy at home. The Germanic name and extra X chromosomes made him desperate to conceal the condition from his friends, who would have shown him no mercy. Even the medical dictionary in the school library – more often consulted as a masturbatory aid – produced only the threat of further hideous and degrading symptoms. Fortunately, an enlightened housemaster reassured him that he was a late developer while encouraging him to take up running, for which his rangy body was perfectly formed. As ever at school, sporting prowess held the key to acceptance. When he finally reached puberty the following year, he was so keen to display himself in the dormitory and showers that he risked fresh notoriety. Since then he had been determined to turn the condition to his advantage. Not only did his light beard free him from daily shaving but it brought unexpected success with women, for whom the Burt Reynolds look had lost its appeal. And whatever the medical dictionary might say about his low sex drive, he had striven to make up for it in performance.

Linda came off the Pill as soon as they were married, but her fervent conviction that ‘Nature will find a way’ was put to the test when, four years later, she was still not pregnant. For the first time in his life Duncan was faced with the full force of female obsession. They saw their GP, whom Duncan suspected of trivialising the issue with his sketch-show advice that he should stop cycling to work, wear boxer shorts instead of Y-fronts, and give up eating curry. When those failed to
achieve results, he proposed that they try surgical sperm retrieval coupled with testosterone therapy. The treatment was not without risks, including liver failure, heart attacks and strokes, and Duncan was shocked by how readily Linda brushed them aside. In the event he suffered little more than sore gums, a foul taste in his mouth and the acne that he had escaped during adolescence. He was also prone to fits of anger, particularly with Linda, although he was unsure how much of that was due to the drugs and how much to his dismay at her cavalier attitude to his health.

His sperm were extracted and implanted one by one in her eggs, in a procedure that seemed scarcely less miraculous than birth itself. When she finally fell pregnant, their elation was tinged with anxiety that if it were a boy he would inherit KS, and in a more acute form than his father. It was not until the tests revealed him to be clear of abnormalities that they could breathe freely. Then Jamie was born, so perfect that for the first time since childhood Duncan was tempted to see his life as divinely ordained. He hoped that Linda would feel the same sense of completion, but her boundless love for her baby made her all the more determined to try again. When he pointed out that they might have another boy who in turn might have the rogue chromosomes, she accused him of being more concerned about the dangers to himself. But it was her health that he was protecting as much as his own. She had suffered badly from overstimulated ovaries and mood swings during the treatment. The example of Gillian Canning, who had been so scarred by IVF that Stewart left her, should give them pause.

For her part, Linda grew convinced that his denial of her greatest desire was proof that he no longer loved her. Then at Geoffrey and Frances Weedon’s wedding she met a man who did. Whether or not Geoffrey’s aim in choosing Musclebound, the ‘Ultimate Eighties tribute band’, to play at the reception was to keep Duncan off the dance floor, it had that
effect. Meanwhile Linda, enjoying a rare chance to revisit the hits of her youth, and Derek, shrugging off the ticklish role of his ex-wife’s new brother-in-law, boogied through the night. Shortly afterwards they embarked on an affair, which, with a logic that would have been laughed out of any court but a divorce court, Linda maintained had been justified first by Duncan’s indifference to her needs and then by his blindness to her infidelity.

Feeling his mood darken and worried that it would infect Ellen, he asked her about her plans for the rest of the weekend, to which she replied wryly that, unless he had had any better offers, she was expecting to accompany him to the gala evening at the Metropole. Flustered, he seized on her request to sketch out his relationship with Charlie Lyndon, recounting how they had performed together in several Footlights Smokers and an outdoor production of
Cyrano de Bergerac
. He glossed over their subsequent fling, even though, of all his Cambridge girlfriends, she was the one for whom he retained the deepest affection. Wary of begging favours from his famous friends, particularly after the outcry over Miles Dorset’s act in the fund-raiser for the Fishermen’s Museum, he knew that he was safe with Charlie. He had written to her in January, soliciting her support for the FPT. She immediately offered to bring Mrs Thrale (‘all I need is a first class train ticket and some hot and cold running waiters’). The first date that she had free was 3 November and, although the pier had since been sold, she insisted on honouring the commitment, with the proceeds earmarked for any legal challenge to the development plans.

So it was with a heady sense of anticipation that he made his way to the Metropole to meet her on Sunday afternoon. As he walked into the fusty vestibule he felt a flicker of unease. After the
Mercury
’s splash on a recent
Good Hotel Guide
report that there was not a single hotel to recommend in Francombe, the manager had accused him of setting out to destroy the town’s
tourist industry and declared him persona non grata. Yet, far from berating him, he was the soul of deference, greeting him warmly and escorting him to the conservatory to meet the celebrity guest. Duncan felt the stardust lighting on him when, with the most effusive ‘darling’ he had heard in years, Charlie clambered out of her seat to give him a hug. He had forgotten how small she was until the cameo pendant perched on her bust rubbed against his waist. She sat down, still clasping his hand, and summoned a waitress, whose excitement was palpable. To Duncan’s surprise, Charlie ordered nothing but a pot of Earl Grey.

‘Don’t tell me you’ve given up cake?’

‘Don’t be absurd, darling. It’s strictly temporary. I’m filming a bedroom scene next month.’

‘Not the rom-com at last?’

‘I wish! I’m playing a gay nymphomaniac for Sky. Cue tastefully lit shots of the Lyndon boobs.’

‘How are Brian and Jasper?’ Duncan asked, aware of the eavesdroppers.

‘I trust that’s a non sequitur,’ Charlie replied with a chortle. ‘Tickety-boo. They send their love. At least Jasper does. He’s at some Frank Lloyd Wright symposium in Chicago. I’ve barely spoken to Brian for days. He’s in Halifax ministering to his aged mother. She’s in shock after discovering that the
barrister
her favourite granddaughter’s living with is actually dishing out coffee in Starbucks. Isn’t it priceless?’

‘Absolutely,’ Duncan replied, confused. ‘Any news of the old gang? I’m so out of touch.’

‘Best way to be. You’re so lucky to live in such a wholesome atmosphere – and I don’t just mean the sea air.’ Duncan smiled as she extolled Francombe, confident of the return ticket to Waterloo tucked in her bag. ‘I see Angus and Ross regularly, of course. And I was at a party last Sunday for Miles’s fiftieth.’

‘Really?’ Duncan frowned at the mention of Miles, whose
savage mockery of his ‘Well-loved Caretaker Retires’ headline still rankled.