A Clubbable Woman (3 page)

Antony Wilkes was without doubt the smoothest man in the South Warwickshire College of Education at the moment. As he was in his third year and Jenny was in her first, the opportunities for the relationship to develop were limited. As it was, Jenny had decided to feel flattered that she was the second girl he had chosen from the year’s new supply. Her college ‘mother’ in the second year had assured her (rather sadly) that Antony was most discriminating in his selection. Her room-mate had been even more positive. She had been the first of the year. This gave Jenny the advantage of being well briefed in the Wilkesian technique, but being forewarned she was discovering did not prevent her from being disarmed. Antony was one of the few people she had met who really did talk in long well-organized speeches like people in plays. Most of her acquaintance, she realized, hardly ever strung together more than a couple of dozen words at a time except when telling an anecdote, and in fact the few who did talk at length were down in the catalogue as bores and therefore to be avoided.

But Antony talked eloquently, interestingly, without strain; with none of those changes of direction, grammatical substitutions, syntactical complexities, whose existence her linguistic lecturer assured her was the real framework of the spoken language.

His speech, Jenny decided, was the smooth, reassuring surface of his amatory technique. Even the slight sense of staginess it conveyed worked for him, creating a faintly non-real, therefore non-dangerous, context. But beneath the surface …

The obvious survival tactic was to stay afloat. She seized at a bit of driftwood in his last speech.

‘Is it important to please your parents?’

‘But of course. It’s important to please everyone who deserves it, even a little beyond desert if possible. Financially it’s not important. My father has a strict scale of values. He gave me the precise amount necessary to bring my grant up to the level he has worked out to be sufficient for my well-being. Less would be neglect; more would be luxury. So I never get more or less for any reason. And to use money as punishment or reward is quite out of the question.’

‘He sounds like a Puritan banker.’

‘Not at all. If you wish to combine his religion with his profession, you’d have to call him an Aston Villa butcher. Mind you, my mother slips me the odd note now and then. But, as I say, this has nothing to do with the question. The only real answer is that, despite the fact that in many ways they find me utterly incomprehensible, they have always felt inclined by nature to please me; similarly I them.’

‘You mean you love them?’ asked Jenny, half-consciously trying to embarrass him.

‘Yes, of course. Had I not made that clear? I’m sorry. And you, do you love your parents?’

‘Yes, I think so. My father, I like him a lot and we mean a lot to each other. It’s a matter of talking and understanding, but my mother’s different. Irritating in so many things. I want to scream at her sometimes.’

‘But you never do?’

Jenny grinned. She had tried to stop grinning. She thought it made her face fall apart in the middle, and she still had to count her teeth to assure herself she had not got twice as many as other people. But she kept on forgetting.

Antony Wilkes was glad she forgot.

‘Oh, sometimes. I give a quick forty-second-psychoanalysis. Rather nasty stuff it can be. She’s a bit of a snob; uses me to get at Dad, whom she resents in some odd way. She’s a few years older than he is, though I only use that as a last resort. I don’t know why, I suppose I just know that for her age is the ultimate insult, stuck a long way after vanity and dishonesty! But sometimes I feel I’m a lot more like her than Dad, than I’m like Dad I mean, though I like him more.’

Ruefully she compared her own performance as a speech-maker with Antony’s. Still, it wasn’t all that bad. And her hesitancies arose from uncertainties of emotion. Perhaps it would have flowed more smoothly if she hadn’t been so aware of the tensions, the fight for survival at home.

Antony’s hand patted her knee sympathetically. She realized that her attempt to stop on the surface had somehow gone wrong. She had entered into a conversational intimacy with him without even noticing it. She would have to keep very much on the alert now. His other hand was pressing her shoulders round. She turned to him and he kissed her. She’d have to do something about his other hand. But not yet. Mini-skirts and tights, she thought dreamily. Action and reaction. The invitation to attack might be more compelling than ever before, but the defences were stronger. She grinned again, which produced a very invigorating kind of kiss.

She could postpone her decision for a while yet.

‘Christ, Marcus, where the hell have you been? You just said half-an-hour. It’s been more like an hour and a half.’

Marcus Felstead manoeuvred his bulk under the flap into the bar.

‘Sorry, Ted, old son. Got held up a bit. Look, have a pint on me and push off now. I’ll spell you when you’ve got a Saturday.’

‘OK. And I’ll have that pint. I’ve been so bloody busy that not a drop’s passed my lips since you left.’

‘It’ll do you good. Give you an edge when they start fighting for the spare.’

‘Some hope. There won’t be much of that around now. See you, Marcus, Sid.’

Sid Hope, the club treasurer, looked askance at Marcus.

‘Nice of you to come back and give us a hand.’

‘Come off it, Sid. I did get Ted to stand in.’

‘Ted! Have you seen him at the till? He’s got some peculiar decimal system of his own. Where have you been to anyway? On the prowl?’

‘Nowhere important. Just out.’

A peal of uninhibited female laughter cut through the noise and fume of the bar. Marcus turned. Sitting in the furthermost corner surrounded by half a dozen men was the woman he expected to see after hearing that laugh. Dressed in a low-cut cocktail dress whose demure whiteness set off the gleaming black of her hair and the shining silver of her tights, she was looking up and smiling at the young man who bent over her, obviously telling a story.

The treasurer followed Marcus’s gaze and shook his head.

‘Trouble,’ he said laconically.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know what Arthur is. He’s been hopping around like a cat on hot bricks all evening waiting for his precious wife to turn up. Finally off he goes about half an hour ago to fetch her. Decides she must have forgotten. Forgotten! Well, he’s hardly out of the place before she comes sailing in like the figurehead on the good ship Venus. And of course within two minutes of coming into the most crowded room in the county with a queue six deep at the bar, she’s sitting in the corner surrounded by drinks. Just wait till Arthur gets back.’

Sid drew a couple of pints for a complaining customer, then looked over at Gwen Evans again.

‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘what a pair of bristols, Jesus! There hasn’t been anything like that in here since Nancy Jennings went off with that traveller. And Mary James - Connon, I mean - was the only thing I’ve ever known who could have beaten it.’

‘Connie’s wife?’

‘Yes. She doesn’t get in here much now, does she? Nor does Connie for that matter. But I can remember the days. Jesus! Connie was married when you came to live here, wasn’t he, Marcus?’

‘Yes. Just.’

‘It must have been a full-time business with that one. No wonder he lost his edge after that. God, he once looked a cert for a cap. First we’d have ever had. Never been a sniff since. All for love.’

Marcus poured himself a scotch.

‘He did crack his ankle.’

‘Of course he did. I’m not really suggesting, mind you, that kid of theirs came out pretty smartly. Like Connie’s pass, they said. And the responsibility can’t have helped.

But they seemed to make out all right. Didn’t see all that much of Mary after that. But it was before. Like her over there. And Nancy Jennings. Trouble.’

Marcus, his eyes still fixed on the noisy corner, ran his glass along his lower lip.

‘Are you putting forward as a general proposition, Sid, that women with big breasts cause trouble?’

‘Not absolutely. Though there’s a bit of truth in it, isn’t there?’

‘Mary Connon never caused any trouble down here that I saw.’

‘Like I said, after they married, she didn’t get in here so much. Tailed off. That’s an apt phrase if you like. She was six years older than him, you know.’

‘Still is, isn’t she?’

‘You know what I mean. She’d had her fling down here. Not here exactly. That was in the days before this bloody roadhouse came into being. Remember? We had the tea-hut. None of your polished floors. You could get splinters through your shoes if you weren’t careful. Then over to the Bird-in-Hand. No, Mary did the right thing - for her, anyway. Married someone half a dozen years younger. And stopped coming so much. Nancy Jennings, she buggered off. It’s when they marry someone ten years older than themselves
and
keep their wares in the shop window that the trouble starts. Here, my lad, if you’re going to have another whisky, pay for the last one first.’

‘Sorry, Sid. There it goes; and for this one too. Witnessed?’

But Sid wasn’t paying attention.

‘Here we go,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Here we go.’

Marcus had never seen anyone whose face was really black with rage, but Arthur Evans was pretty close to it as he pushed through the door. A path opened up before him. It led to the corner where his wife sat. She looked up, flashed him a quick smile, then returned her attention to the youngster who had been talking to her. But he had seen Arthur too and seemed disinclined to talk further.

With a tremendous effort, obvious to all who watched, which was about three-quarters of those in the room, Arthur turned to the bar. Marcus could almost feel the man’s will forcing his broad shoulders to turn. Then his trunk followed. And finally his legs.

Quickly Marcus thrust a glass up against the whisky optic. And again.

‘Arthur, old son, I’m in the chair. Wrap yourself round this and tell us about your childhood in the green valleys of old Wales.’

Evans took the drink in one.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

Over his shoulder, Marcus saw Gwen casually disengaging herself from the group in the corner. Exchanging a word here and there as she came, she passed easily across the room till she arrived at her husband’s shoulder.

‘Hello, dear. Going to buy me a drink? I’ve got no money and I can’t sponge off your friends all night.’

‘Where’ve you been, Gwen?’

She smiled ironically.

God, you’re a beauty, thought Marcus. Sid, in an excess of desire to share his admiration of the sight before them, kicked him painfully on the ankle.

‘Oh, I got tired of waiting, so I came on by myself.’

‘But you were supposed to be coming with Dick and Joy.’

‘Was I? Oh, I forgot.’

‘They called for you.’

‘Then I must have left.’

‘To come here? You took your time, didn’t you, girl?’

‘Do you want to quarrel, Arthur?’

She raised her voice just sufficiently to cut into the attention of those immediately adjacent to them.

Marcus looked at Arthur. Surprisingly, he seemed to be considering the question on its merits. Finally, calmly, ‘No,’ he said.

‘Then let’s have that drink. Marcus, love, see if you can add a bit of gin to that slice of dried-up lemon which seems to be all that’s left of a once-proud fruit.’

‘A pleasure, ma’am,’ said Marcus. ‘A real pleasure.’ He meant it.

Two hours or so later, just after eleven, he put the lights out in the bar. Outside he could hear the din of departure. Car doors. Impatient horns. Voices. Song.

As he passed the Gents, the door opened and a large figure fell out. ‘Marcus,’ it said.

‘Ted. Christ, you certainly caught up, didn’t you? Come on, old son. We’d better get you home.’

Arm in arm they walked out into the car park.

Jenny Connon opened the door to let her room-mate in.

‘Hello,’ said the newcomer brightly. ‘Not too early, am I? It’s after eleven.’

‘What you really mean is, not too late, you hope. How are you, Helen?’ said Antony. ‘Well, must be off. See you both. ‘Bye.’ Jenny watched him go down the corridor.

‘Had a nice time?’ asked Helen.

‘Oh yes,’ said Jenny noncommittally as she closed the door. She hoped she had done the right thing.

‘The time is ten minutes past eleven,’ said the announcer with evident relief. ‘You are watching …’

Alice Fernie switched him off in mid-sentence and yawned.

‘Well, I’m off to bed. Coming?’

Behind her, her husband stood in the small bay of the window looking out into the front garden.

‘No, dear. You go on. I’ll be up in a minute.’

‘What are you looking at?’

‘Nothing. I thought I saw that bloody black and white cat from next door digging up my lawn. Off you go.’

‘All right, then. Good night.’

‘Good night.’

And over the road, Sam Connon stood pale-faced and trembling in the darkened hall of his house, the telephone in his hand.

Behind him in the lounge, stretched out in the high-backed chair he would never want to call his own again, was his wife.

She was quite, quite dead.

Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was a big man. When he took his jacket off and dropped it over the back of a chair it was like a Bedouin pitching camp. He had a big head, greying now; big eyes, short-sighted, but losing nothing of their penetrating force behind a pair of solid-framed spectacles; and he blew his big nose into a khaki handkerchief a foot-and-a-half square. He had been a vicious lock forward in his time, which had been a time before speed and dexterity were placed higher in the list of a pack’s qualities than sheer indestructibility. The same order of priorities had brought him to his present office.

He was a man not difficult to mock. But it was dangerous sport. And perhaps therefore all the more tempting to a Detective-Sergeant who was twenty years younger, had a degree in social sciences and read works of criminology.

Dalziel sank over his chair and scratched himself vigorously between the legs. Not absent-mindedly - nothing he did was mannerism - but with conscious sensuousness. Like scratching a dog to keep it happy, a constable had once said within range of Dalziel’s very sharp hearing. He had liked the simile and therefore ignored it.