A Little Bit on the Side (23 page)

As he turned to leave he spotted Cynthia, one of Kate’s few dolls, lying on the bed. Fond as he was of Kate’s bears he’d taken against Cynthia from the outset. A po-faced, sniffy piece he’d called her, and despite the stress of his situation couldn’t help a smile when he remembered an earlier occasion when he’d spread Cynthia’s legs wide and left Felix lying on top of her. He recalled that Kate, usually ready to give him at least a smile in response to his cruder jokes, had not been particularly amused when she found them. Too near the mark perhaps, he thought.

When he moved on to the bedroom he was puzzled to see that all of Kate’s bears still seemed to be in place. It had been the same in the spare room: the bamboo étagère in the corner packed with the many that Kate had made or bought over the years. He couldn’t see that any had been taken. Roger not an enthusiast perhaps: that certainly wouldn’t please Kate. Hot sex or the bears: now that would be a tough call.

By this time it was almost seven. He’d already drunk far too much on an empty stomach, and needed something to eat before he walked over to have a word with Jimmy and Celia. Back in the kitchen he opened the fridge to find that Kate had left not one but two casseroles, and sellotaped a note to the door that there were four other prepared meals in the freezer. All very caring and solicitous Kate, he thought, but it doesn’t bloody help in the long run does it? Ignoring the casseroles he cut himself a couple of slices of bread and a hunk of cheese, and sat at the kitchen table gazing morosely into vacancy as he munched and sipped more whisky.

Eventually, when he knew that Jimmy and Celia would have finished their meal and be free for the evening, he locked the house and set off for the Croft. Already the worse for the whisky, and feeling very sorry for himself, he found himself thinking back to that bitter winter evening, now seeming so far away, when he and Kate had wandered across the fields to the Croft for an evening with the Gillans. The first of many very happy times together.

Oh Christ, he thought, as the lines came to him unbidden. Right on the button Kate: yet another bloody quotation dredged up from my ragbag golden treasury. And is this how it’s going to be from now on: a constant looking back at the good times? And with that thought he suddenly realised just how much he was going to miss Kate. Like one of his own limbs, he’d taken her for granted, and the loss was going to be the greater for that.

As he approached the Croft he saw that Jimmy was already outside, hanging over the pig pen and scratching Sadie’s back as she grunted her way through her evening meal, building up her reserves for yet another litter of piglets.

‘Lovely evening Jack’, said Jimmy looking up, and then returning to his back-scratching.

Giving him a half-hearted reply Jack joined him in his reflective activity, and happy as they were together with periods of silence they stood unspeaking, side by side in the calm of the evening watching Sadie lick the last of her swill from the sides of the trough, before withdrawing to gaze up at them questioningly from her litter of straw.

‘Everything OK Jack?’ asked Jim, who despite the competition from Sadie had no difficulty in detecting the strong aroma of whisky drifting to him on Jack’s breath, and was wondering why he’d been at the bottle so early. ‘Is Kate coming over?’

Jack, who continued to gaze fixedly at Sadie as though she might offer him some solace in his hour of need, ventured no reply, but simply shook his head, leaving Jim in some uncertainty whether the negative applied to both his questions, or just one, and if so which.

Jim endured the silence for another long minute or two, and then tried again.

‘Smoke?’

For the first time Jack turned to Jim and it needed no more than one look at his face for Jim to know that this was no ordinary or casual visit.

‘Bad news?’

‘You could say that.’

Jim waited for Jack to continue, but he merely paused to light up, returned to his contemplation of Sadie, and relapsed once more into a moody silence. Unused to such taciturnity from Jack, Jim waited a few minutes and then tried again.

‘Fancy a drink then, or have you already had more than enough?’

‘Let’s go in Jim. Celia’s got to hear this some time, so it may as well be at first hand. And no, I’ve not had more than enough.’

Celia had been upstairs while they were talking, but she heard them in the passage-way as they came in, and was back down in the sitting room before Jim had finished pouring the drinks. Unobservant of Jack’s demeanour, and believing it to be just another of his not infrequent visits, she greeted him with her customary peck on the cheek.

‘Hello Jack. This is a nice surprise. Where’s Kate?’

‘Not a casual call love,’ said Jim. ‘Jack’s got something he wants to say, and I think we should let him say it in his own way and his own time.’

Unseen by Jack he also managed with a very brief dumb show to advise her that Jack had already taken a good deal of booze on board.

‘About ten years ago,’ said Jack, having taken a good pull at his glass of Calvados, ‘I was working with a chap called George Pennington: knew him well, we were quite close for a while. And one morning George comes into my office and sits down with a face as long as a kite. He’d been out with his wife the previous night, he said. A bit of a celebratory bash with some friends on their anniversary, he said, and on the way home, just a few moments before they arrived, she turned to him and said, “I do hope we aren’t going to fall out over the division of the spoils.”’

Having delivered himself of what he seemed to feel was a comprehensive and crystal-clear explanation of his condition and the reason for his call, Jack once again fell silent and turned to an abstracted contemplation of the empty wood burner. Celia looked at Jim with a frown of puzzlement, but Jimmy simply shrugged his shoulders to indicate that he was equally confused.

When, after a long and awkward silence, Jack returned to them it seemed that he had been expecting something other than silence on their part.

‘Well?’ he asked.

‘Well what Jack?’ said Celia.

‘Well that was it, see? It was her way of telling him she was leaving him.’

That at last was enough: the meaning of Jack’s anecdote and the explanation of his condition now seemed to be clear, although Jimmy was still unbelieving.

‘Are you telling us that Kate …?’ said Jimmy.

‘That Kate …? Absolutely Jimmy boy. Right on the bloody nail. Gone. Skedaddled. Touch more class about Kate though. Left me a really stylish “Dear John” letter to find when I got home today. Wasn’t that thoughtful?’

From his pocket he pulled and held up the half-dozen or so handwritten sheets that constituted Kate’s letter.

‘Won’t embarrass either you or myself by suggesting you read it, but to put it briefly, she’s buggered off to live with Roger. You’ll remember Roger, you met him once. Personable sort of chap. One of my oldest friends Roger, from way back in the old days. What would we do without them eh, old friends?’

He paused, but both Celia and Jim had decided that it was best to say nothing yet: just let him run on and get it out of his system. They were surprised, however, when the next thing they heard was a drunken giggle.

‘Greater love hath no man than this, than that he lay down with the wife of his friend … Gospel of St Jack, that Jim. Newly minted too. Not bad for a chap in my condition eh?’

Deciding now that in Jack’s drunken and emotional state he was heading either for tears or laughter Celia stepped in, not with sympathy, which she felt Jack was not looking for, but with the very obvious question.

‘But did she say why in her letter Jack, or give any sort of reason for what she was doing?’

‘Bit tricky that one Celia. Rather embarrassing, but I can’t say nothing, can I? Could lie, rather good at it in fact, but not with friends. Well if I can put it in the rather tasteful language of the agony columns, she thinks that I’m not attentive enough to her physical needs as a woman. So there you go! Sex or rather the insufficiency thereof.’

‘Ah!’ said Celia. Jim was silent.

‘Ah!’ echoed Jack, now not quite so drunk it seemed. ‘Ah what? Ah sympathetic? Ah understanding? Ah, I can’t think what to say? Or Ah, I’m not the least bit surprised? Did Kate talk to you about it then Celia?’ His voice now had a sharper edge to it.

‘Hold on a bit Jack.’ Jimmy wasn’t happy with the way things were going, and thought it time to chip in.

‘No it’s alright Jim,’ said Celia. ‘No of course she didn’t talk to me about it Jack, any more than I’d talk about that sort of thing if it were me, although some do, and seem to enjoy it. But some while ago when I was laughing with her about our long, dark nights on North Uist, she made a few odd comments. I thought they were meant to be jokes. Never anything specific, and I certainly didn’t attach any great significance to it.’

‘Talked to me though, or at least tried to, if I’m honest. My fault I suppose. Too fond of voicing other people’s thoughts and feelings instead of my own. She called herself more quoted at than quoting … Nice one that. Described our years together as happy, interesting, and in one sense full of love, and ended her letter by saying that she still loved me… Know anything about the works of the Blessed Augustine Jimmy?’

Accustomed as they were by now to Jack’s non-sequiturs, this nevertheless took them by surprise.

‘Only what little was crammed into me by the Catholic Fathers Jack: original sin, that sort of stuff. Can’t say he’d be my bedside reading, if I ever did any.’

‘Some good stuff here and there though if you know where to look. There’s one lovely passage in the Confessions, one of my quotes that Kate actually enjoyed, where he’s writing about friendship, “to talk and joke together, to do kind offices by turns; to read together honied books, (honied books, isn’t that lovely) to play the fool or be earnest together, and to dissent at times without discontent.”

Kate’s turn of phrase brought it to mind, and I’d always thought that it was a pretty fair description of our marriage. Spot the missing ingredient — no prizes though.

And don’t look so bloody woebegone for Christ’s sake. I feel the better for having a talk, and perhaps Kate was right. I’m too semi-detached to be eaten up with jealousy or die of a broken heart, so let’s go for a wander through the parish. I don’t suppose I’ll be here much longer, and we can end up with a nightcap at the Shagger.’

A couple of hours later when Albert had called time in the Shagger, and Celia and Jimmy were struggling towards the end of their third nightcap, Jack downed his drink with a flourish, fixed them with a glazed eye and a drunken smirk, and declaimed far too loudly, “His Grace returned from the wars today and pleasured me twice in his top-boots …” Duchess of Marlborough that, full of praise for the Duke… That was my big problem: no top-boots and never twice. It’s a funny old life.’

‘Come on Jack,’ said Jim. ‘Now you have had enough. Home and bed, and come over for a meal tomorrow evening… If you’re in a fit state to remember.’

When Jack’s move to Barlow was being considered following the breakup with Kate, both he and everyone else assumed it would be to something small and compact. ‘Bachelor pad’ was the description most favoured, but having spent some time researching price movements in the town and discussing the matter with Parsons (only too happy to provide a little helpful advice to his District Inspector) Jack decided to stretch himself and take on something rather more substantial.

Secure in the knowledge that at the end of the day he had his Krugerrands to fall back on, Jack took up the largest possible mortgage offer he could find, and entered into solitary occupation of a late Victorian, four-bedroomed house at the bottom of Withy Lane. The garden was modest, but there were open views across the extensive graveyard of St Botolph’s to the ancient stonework of the church itself, and Jack regarded it as a very satisfactory exchange for his nine acres up on the hill. If there was an urban equivalent of the good life, then Jack was beginning to feel that he had found it.

Situated on the opposite bank of the river from the remains of the priory and a little to the north, the area was not seen as a particularly fashionable part of town, and the houses on the little Victorian development of Riverside lacked the grandeur and status of the older, larger houses on Priory Hill and to a lesser extent the High Street. But, said Parsons, it was an up and coming area increasingly attracting the attention of those incomers whose pockets were not quite deep enough for the houses on Priory Hill. It’s a good place to buy before prices there get out of hand, he said, and he was right.

Although scantily furnished at first, Jack continued and intensified the hobby he and Kate had shared of frequenting the local auction rooms and house sales. In this way over the course of almost three years he had not only furnished much of the house, but come to realise that he seemed to have a good eye for spotting a bargain, which meant that he had been able to sell on three or four items at a very decent profit, and was beginning to wonder whether he might perhaps give the game a try himself, to make a little money when he left the department.

His decision not to downsize also meant that he had been able to resolve without any difficulty the one aspect of his separation from Kate that had been troubling him, the teddy bears which she had left behind, for she had taken with her only Wilfred, a battered, old family bear from her childhood. She was over that phase of her life, she reported, now that she had all that London had to offer to occupy her. Was that an oblique reference to Roger’s services Jack wondered, or was Kate spreading her wings as well as her legs? He wasn’t usually that spiteful when thinking about her, but he wondered whether she really was now indifferent to the collection so lovingly built up over the years, or whether it was simply Roger’s resistance to having a house stuffed full of bears.

As a few in the collection were known to be of some value (she had a couple of early Steiff and Merrythought, a Shuco, a Gebruder Bing and an early Ideal) Kate had asked that he sell them for her through a decent auction room. Instead Jack got a valuation, choked at the total, took out a loan to cover it, as he was hard pressed for ready cash at the time, and sent a cheque off to Kate in an envelope enclosing a ‘With Sympathy’ card. He saw no reason why he should make things easy for her.