Widows & Orphans (21 page)

‘What are you on about?’

‘It’s quite natural,’ Duncan said, feeling Neil tense beneath his touch. ‘Gay or straight, I’m here for you.’

‘Fuck off!’ Neil jumped up and grabbed his pillow, pummelling Duncan in an assault that only confirmed his impotence. ‘Barbara was right; you’re a pervert. Go on, fuck off!’

‘Of course. I don’t want to impose –’

‘Fuck off!’

‘Can’t we talk about this?’

‘Fuck off!’

Ruffled, Duncan returned downstairs where Ellen was waiting in the hall. ‘I heard shouts,’ she said.

‘It was all going so well when he suddenly turned on me. I don’t understand. Did your mother tell him I was some kind of pervert?’

‘Oh no! Oh, I’m so sorry.’ Ellen cupped her hand over her mouth as if she were the one who had maligned him. ‘Come in here.’ She grabbed his hand and pulled him into the sitting room. ‘My bloody mother! My bloody, bloody, bloody mother! Trust me, Duncan, this is about me not you. I’d no idea that Neil had overheard but then he’s always snooping around. He thinks it’s the only way to find out what’s going on.’

‘Overheard what?’ Duncan asked anxiously.

‘With her usual faith in my judgement, she warned me to be on my guard against you because men – paedophiles – sought out vulnerable women with kids –’

‘She thinks I’m a paedophile?’

‘She’s never met you; she knows nothing about you. It’s me she’s getting at: punishing me for marrying Matthew. In other words, how can any man – any decent man – be attracted to someone like me who had no idea that her husband was a swindler?’

‘What utter crap! In any case she can’t talk. What about her Roman boyfriend who came on to you?’

‘Polish. It’s just his name that was Roman.’

‘Either way.’

‘I agree, and when I put it to her she accused me of being vindictive and told me to see a healer.’

‘The bitch! I know she’s your mother, but still … She can say what she likes about me but she has no right – none at all – to denigrate you. What’s her number? I’ll ring and set her straight.’

‘There’s no point.’

‘I can be very persuasive.’

‘No, I mean her phone will be off. She’s on a week’s retreat in Carcassonne to find her inner goddess.’

‘On current form, it’ll be Kali.’

With a laugh that turned swiftly into a wail, she slid into his arms. He nuzzled her hair and stroked her back until her tears subsided. ‘I don’t know about you,’ she said, a sob lingering in her voice like damp in the air, ‘but I could murder another brandy.’

‘Good idea. I can always leave the car here and ring for a cab.’

‘If you want. But after tonight what do we have to lose? I’d like you to stay.’

She poured the drinks and they sat holding hands on the sofa, transfixed by the flickering of the artificial fire. Duncan felt a deep sense of tranquillity, which was shattered by the opening of the front door.

‘Just one moment, young lady!’ Ellen jumped up and hurried into the hall to confront Sue. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Out!’ From the sound of her voice, she was already halfway up the stairs.

‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’

‘Do you get a kick out of ruining my life?’

‘You’re managing that well enough on your own. Just look at you! You’re a beautiful girl. Why make yourself so grungy?’

‘Oh yes, like I’m going to take fashion tips from you!’ Duncan, a reluctant eavesdropper, moved to the sitting-room door in a show of support for Ellen. ‘No! It’s so not fair! You’re allowed to be with your boyfriend, but I can’t be with mine.’

‘You know perfectly well that it isn’t the same.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’m not going to argue. For the next two weeks you’re grounded. If you want to see Craig, you’ll have to ask him here.’

‘Oh sure! Like he’s going to come to this dump!’

‘He didn’t seem to mind this morning,’ Duncan interjected.

‘What?’ Ellen asked.

‘When I dropped off your watch. They were here during a study period.’

‘What study period? You don’t have one on a Monday.’

‘Yes we do,’ Sue said defiantly.

‘And why come all the way back? It’s a twenty-minute walk. Oh no, Sue! Please tell me you weren’t sleeping with him.’

‘You’re sick, Mum, do you know that? That’s all you ever think about: sex!’

‘I think they might have been smoking pot,’ Duncan said hesitantly.

‘What?’ Ellen asked.

‘Thanks a bunch, creep!’ Sue said.

‘I can’t say for sure.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t want to worry you. You had enough on your plate with Neil.’

‘I have two children, Duncan. It’s my job to worry about them.’

‘I know, but under the circumstances…’

‘No one keeps anything about my children from me. No one. I think you should go. I have things to discuss with Sue.’

‘But you said –’

‘I need to talk to her in private.’

‘Yes, of course.’ Taking a gulp of brandy, he placed the glass on the hall table. He moved to kiss Ellen but thought better of it. ‘Shall I call you tomorrow?’

‘Please do that.’

Opening the door, Duncan turned back to face Sue and realised that it was the first time he had seen her smile.

In Duncan's view, everything one needed to know about Trevor Vale was summed up in his formula for the perfect woman: ‘somebody half my age plus seven'. Having first assumed that it was a joke, he was appalled when Trevor's quest for a Russian mail order bride no older than twenty-five (and therefore more like a quarter of his age plus ten) had shown him to be deadly serious. Trevor was the sole survivor of a once vibrant advertising team, which had been decimated by the decline in the paper's fortunes. Over the past decade, the twin forces of the Internet and the Recession had reversed the paper's traditional 48 per cent editorial to 52 per cent advertising balance. Property adverts, previously as popular with curious neighbours as with serious buyers, had moved on to designated websites. Motoring and recruitment, the other mainstays of the classified pages, had been all but wiped out and, for the first time in living memory, the annual ‘In Memoriam' supplement had been dropped. Long gone were the days when Trevor could wine, dine and otherwise entertain prominent retailers, his huge expense claims justified by the full-page display ads he secured. Now he was reduced to making cold calls, offering cut-price rates and promising regular advertisers positive feature coverage.

The need to toady to his clients made him all the more combative with his colleagues, and Duncan had come to dread the Monday morning meetings when, invoking the spectre of bankruptcy, Trevor sought to win his approval for his more reckless schemes. The latest was that they should link the news and advertising on the website by, for example, selling sidebar space to life insurers after a fatal car crash or sailing accident. Duncan, who was as keen as anyone to exploit their web presence but not at the expense of common decency, dismissed the idea out of hand, whereupon Trevor accused him of turning his back on the twenty-first century, a theme to which he returned when Duncan yet again refused to accept adverts for massage parlours, among the few local businesses to have weathered the slump.

‘Shall we call a brothel a brothel? I may be the last person in Francombe to think of this as a family paper,' Duncan said, trying to ignore the razor burn on Trevor's neck, ‘but I hope I'm not alone in seeing it as an honourable one. How could we run, say, Rowena's story about the Estonian and Ukrainian women lured here with the promise of hotel jobs and forced to work as prostitutes, and at the same time take money from their pimps?'

‘Not everything's so black and white. I've spoken to the police; they're all for it so long as there's no mention of anyone's age or race. They see it as a way to keep tabs on operations they don't know about.'

‘Let them do their own dirty work! My father – not to mention my grandfather – would turn in his grave.'

‘Which means they're not in the market for buying papers. If even half the rumours about Weedon's plans for the pier turn out to be true, you're going to have to change your tune or lose the biggest new source of advertising revenue in town.'

‘It's a small price to pay for preserving our principles.'

‘Let's hope your principles pay for my pension,' Trevor said, unable to contain his anger. ‘Meanwhile, if you want to hold on to what advertising we have, I suggest you start coming up with some good news stories for a change. “Hoodie helps widow find cat”. “Study shows sea air cures cancer” – whatever. No business wants to be associated with an endless deluge of doom and gloom.'

Stung by Trevor's charge, Duncan waited impatiently for him to leave before picking up the flat page to assess the balance of stories in the next issue. While much of the paper remained to be set, including the first three pages, which, barring an attack on the Town Hall, would be devoted to the presentation of the pier development plans, there was enough material for him to make a fair appraisal. Opening his notepad, he drew two columns headed Negative and Positive. In the first, he put the children taken into care after a
rat infestation on the Edmund Hillary estate; the landlord of the Cod and Lobster found guilty of branding his wife; the £500,000 cocaine haul at the Salter and St Anselm yacht club; and the baby left alone on a tower block roof while her mother went out drinking. In the second, he put the entrants for the Pet Idol competition; the four generations of the Heathcote family who were running a charity marathon for Save the Rhino; the South-East lightweight bodybuilding champion whose name had inspired one of Stewart's happier puns (‘Everything's hunky dory for hunky Dorian'); and, most heartening of all, the leukaemia patient at the Princess Royal who, having received a perfect bone marrow match from a man who turned out to be her brother, had been reunited with the mother who gave her up for adoption at birth.

While the general tenor of the paper was more cheerful than Trevor had claimed, Duncan agreed that even without the commercial imperative they should take every opportunity for optimism in such troubled times. To that end, he headed into the reporters' room and spoke to Stewart.

‘This
nib
about the close call from the car crash: can you add a hundred words and put it above the fold?'

‘No probs. There's space on page eight. We'll need a photo.'

‘I'll handle that. I'm off for a sneak preview of Henry's mural. I can go via Hawksey Road.'

‘What was it?' Rowena asked. ‘Another joyrider?'

‘No,' Stewart said. ‘A woman drove her Polo into a lamp post. Only the bumper was scratched.'

‘You're kidding me!' Brian said. ‘Is that it? Forget “Small Earthquake in Chile. Not many dead”. Try “Car Collides with Lamp Post. Neither damaged”.'

‘Yes, that's it,' Duncan replied. ‘Maybe in the august pages of
The Times
the earthquake wouldn't have rated a mention, but our remit is different. Strange as it sounds, there are times when we have to think small. “Car collides with lamp post” is part of the fabric of local life. A rich tapestry if we're lucky; a
frayed patchwork if we're not. Either way, it's our job to record it.'

He left the office and drove to Hawksey Road where, unable to spot even the slightest scratch at bumper level, he chose a lamp post at random and, in a wide-angled shot that Bert Ponsonby would have commended, framed it against a street sign, a privet hedge and a passing toddler on a tricycle. He returned to Rocinante and made the short trip to St Edward's vicarage. Built to house a mid-Victorian family with its Sextus, Septimus and even Octavius, the three floors and warren of corridors was too large for the previous incumbent with his four young children, let alone for the unmarried Henry. Anywhere else in the country it would have been divided into flats or sold to a private care consortium and Henry dispatched to live among the Sunday morning car washers on a modern estate, but property values in Salter were so low that, its sea view and rambling garden notwithstanding, it remained in the hands of the Church.

Approaching the door, he found Brandy in his usual vantage point, poised on the back of a battered chaise longue against the hall window. His neck was encased in a white conical collar, as though his double on the HMV logo had caught his head in the throat of the gramophone horn by his side. Emitting only a token bark at Duncan's knock, he hung back when Henry opened the door, seemingly ashamed to let his old friend and walking companion see him in such a sorry state.

‘What is it, boy?' Duncan asked, stretching across Henry to stroke him. ‘Have you been in the wars?'

‘No, the vet's,' Henry said. ‘I had him spayed three days ago.'

‘No wonder he's so subdued. No little Brandies to carry on the line.'

‘Don't! I feel bad enough already. I held off as long as I could, but he was becoming a liability.'

‘With the local bitches?'

‘Well, with some of my female parishioners,' Henry said with a laugh. ‘Hayley Ridley's mother threatened to remove her from confirmation class after Brandy molested her leg. Still, at least it was only canine abuse. Let's go through. Shall I take your coat?'

‘I'll keep it on for now.' Wishing that the East Sussex humanists who regularly attacked clerical privilege could spend a day in the draughty vicarage, Duncan followed his host to the kitchen. He took his place at the table, while Henry stirred the soup and Brandy, who usually sat at his feet waiting for an illicit titbit, retreated to his basket unable even to lick his wounds.

As the meal progressed it became clear that Henry was as downcast as his dog. When Duncan asked the reason, he explained that he had just returned from visiting two elderly parishioners, Roy and Marjorie Tattersall. Although he recognised their names, Duncan failed to place them until Henry added that they had had a daughter with paranoid schizophrenia who was discharged in March after several years in psychiatric care. Eager to reintegrate her into family life, they had persuaded their more circumspect son and daughter-in-law to allow her to babysit their children. At first all had gone well, but in May she had sneaked her six-year-old nephew out of the house, taken him up the cliff and thrown him off before jumping herself. To add to her parents' anguish, their son and daughter-in-law held them responsible, publicly denouncing them at the funeral (one of the most harrowing Henry had ever taken) and refusing to let them see their two remaining grandsons.

‘Six months on and they're in despair, although they would never describe it as such. When I told them they had every right to rail at God, they were shocked. Instead, they look for comfort in the very place where they ought to be laying blame.'

‘Surely if they find it, that's all that counts?' Duncan said, more concerned with the emotional than the metaphysical impact. ‘Doctors don't torment themselves over the placebo effect, so why should you?'

‘To know that a piece of sugar or starch can have the same effect as a highly sophisticated pill must make any self-respecting doctor question his skill; his practice; his whole identity. At least it would me. Do you remember the fuss when I introduced incense and benediction to St Edward's? I explained that they were designed to induce a sense of mystery. Now I wonder if they're not a smokescreen to hide the horror beyond.'

Despite Duncan's best efforts, Henry's spirits remained low throughout lunch, lifting only when they entered the church hall, in whose whitewashed brick interior Duncan had spent many long evenings perched on a tubular chair listening to the competing sounds of the gurgling pipes and the tinny upright. The first thing to strike him, even before Henry switched on the lights, was the riot of colour suffusing the room. The second was the sheer size of the mural, which filled an entire wall: not just the paintwork but the joists, junction box, ventilation ducts and skirting board. Transfixed, he wavered between stepping up to study it in detail and standing back for a panoramic view.

Settling on the latter, he examined the picture, which, far from the envisaged caricature, put him in mind of both Douanier Rousseau, who had employed the same vibrant colours, bold lines and stylised figures, and Stanley Spencer, who had sanctified his home village. This Eden was not a garden but a beach, and one that bore more than a passing resemblance to Salter Cove. Might Jordan, like Duncan himself, have stumbled on the nudist beach as a child and seen it as an image of paradise? On closer inspection the childhood resonance grew stronger, since the lions, tigers, bears, penguins, rabbits and other animals scattered about
the landscape were not, as he had supposed, naïvely drawn but rather depictions of cuddly toys. Moreover, the yellow-and-pink striped snake, curled on a distant rock, a threat to neither man nor beast, was a knitted draught excluder. Was Jordan making a complex theological point about the frailty of evil or merely using a model that was close to hand?