Chestnut Street (23 page)

“Anna tells me you travel a lot now. That must be nice. Or is it just tiring? Where do you go?” Sally’s voice was clear and straightforward as it was in television, no fuzziness or leaving room for vague answers.

David looked rattled. He immediately went on the defensive. “Well, it’s easy to say it’s all fun and games but it has to be done,
in a business like ours. It has to grow, expand, be open to new ideas, see what’s going on. It’s not all drinking cocktails in hotel bars, you know.” He glowered at them both.

Anna was stung. “I never said for a moment that it was. I said it was tiring for you, that’s all.” She looked hurt and very put out.

And he hastened to reassure her. “Sorry, I got the wrong end of the stick—I thought you were telling Sally that I was always swanning off to places.”

“Lord, David, why would you think that?” Sally asked, her blue eyes clear and unfaltering in their look.

David shrugged and turned away. “I don’t know.”

Then he recovered and turned his famous smile on them both. “Just executive stress, and sheer bad temper and bad manners. Am I forgiven?”

Anna rushed to give him a hug; Sally gave a broad smile.

“What’s to forgive, David? Simple misunderstanding,” she said.

On the night of the Chinese dinner, Anna said that she was going to get her hair done. It had been a gift from the rest of the girls, a voucher so that she would look terrific in the photographs that they took every time Sally came to town. It was the late-opening night in the salon. Marigold had made the appointment for her at Lilian’s place.

“Perhaps I’ll come and get my hair done with you?” Sally suggested. She knew she had been hijacked by the girls.

“No, no, they want you to themselves for a bit. I’ll join you later.” Anna was proud that her friends all liked Sally so much. It would openly cause a scene now if Sally were to refuse. Grimly she walked into the Chinese restaurant and explained to the waiter that she was paying for the wine, which should come now, and that the food, which would be Menu C, should wait for a while.

“Right,” she said looking around the eight faces, “we have three quarters of an hour. Tell me about it as quickly and as clearly as you can without wasting a single second.”

There was a pause.
Nobody
was direct like Sally was direct. Then the story came out.

A sorry tale of deception and this odd, pale, unlikable girl, Rita. A photographer who had sadly come to choose frames for an exhibition and had fallen for David. She was thought to have had a man up to that time, but the man had been sent away. She lived in a big studio flat not far away. David was spending more and more time there, parking the van outside in the afternoons. At any gathering where Rita was present, David stood by her side, grinning sheepishly and smiling proudly. They all wanted to smack the smile off his face.

“Maybe he loves her,” Sally said simply.

This silenced them all.

Love
wasn’t a word they expected to hear mentioned. Betrayal, yes, or cheating, adultery, unfaithful, total liar. Not love.

“He has no business loving her,” said Emily, David’s sister.

“He doesn’t know how to love,” sniffed Marigold. The others shook their heads and thought that whatever it was, it was not that.

Sally’s face remained bright and interested. “And Anna doesn’t speak of it at all—is that it?”

She was identifying the problem. They all agreed: that was indeed the problem. So Sally summed it up again. “Which means that she doesn’t know about it … possibly?”

There was a clamor of voices—she
had
to know, it was obvious to everyone.

“Or that she does know, but doesn’t want to talk about it?”

Again Sally looked round at them, kind, concerned women, outraged on behalf of the big-hearted, trusting Anna. There was a muttered agreement: that would appear to be the way things were.

Sally smiled triumphantly. “Then that’s what we do, then. We don’t talk about it,” she said.

They didn’t like this. They had schemed to get her on her
own, they wanted a leader, they needed advice. They didn’t want it to remain forever an unsolved mystery. They couldn’t abide a mystery.

“But he’s making such a fool of her,” Marigold said. “He’s humiliating her.”

“No, he’s not. Just because
he
may be behaving badly doesn’t make me think that Anna’s a fool or that she has something to be humble about. She’s still exactly the same to me.”

It was true, and yet it was also not true.

They came up with all kinds of objections and wild plans.

“She will be so furious when she does discover, and she’ll know we all knew.”

“She won’t think we were real friends.”

“She should be forewarned.”

“It’s not fair.”

“Could we send her an anonymous letter?”

“Could Sally go and deal with Rita?”

Sally’s voice cut straight through. “Every time I come here I wonder why on earth I live in London—you’re just a great group of friends, and you can understand that often the hardest thing to do is to do nothing, just to be there. That’s what we have to do.”

Her hand shaking, she picked up the menu and looked at the choices.

“We can have soup
or
a spring roll, but not both for a starter. Shall we order that to keep body and soul together and Anna can catch up when she comes to join us in about ten minutes?”

By the time Anna came in with her smart new hairdo they were deep into conversation about their children, their jobs, their gardens, their plans for holidays. Anna joined in easily and Sally felt herself breathe more easily. She was surprised at the anger she felt, and the sense of outrage on her friend’s behalf.

Oh, yes, she had been able to stop the others from making some stupid, insensitive interventions, she had bossily told them that inaction was the only action. But it didn’t sort out her own
raging emotion. Sally was almost shaking with anger at the way David had treated the wife who loved him, the wife who sat in an office filing papers to make money for the household. Money that David spent taking this Rita to expensive hotels.

Sally smiled and sort of joined in the conversation, laughing when the others laughed, but she felt that she was on automatic pilot. All the time her brain was working overtime.

Sally and Anna had no secrets. Ever. Was there any kind of a case for telling her about David? Or was it an infatuation that would burn itself out? What would she like in her own case? Suppose her Johnny had a Rita in his life and Sally was the only person not to know—would she not want Anna to tell her? Could she bear the actual news being given? Would it not be better if she found out on her own and then went to cry on her friend’s shoulder? Sally was going back to London next day. If she were to talk to Anna it would have to be tonight. She would sit on the plane tomorrow, and wonder had she been right or wrong.

She looked at the lively face of her friend as she persuaded the Chinese waiter to take their picture. Ten women, nine of them with a secret about the woman who sat in the center.

When they got home David was there.

“Well, girls, is it more wine or is it glasses of water and Alka-Seltzer?”

His smile was the usual heartbreaking grin.

Sally wondered where Rita was tonight. Was she alone in the studio flat, hoping that this attractive man would eventually tell his wife what everyone else seemed to know already? She could hardly bear speaking to him. She said nothing at all.

“Oh, wine I think, David,” Anna said. “It’s Sally’s last night—we’ll want a chat.”

“Two glasses, one bottle, one corkscrew. Now who’s good to you?”

He kissed them both lightly on their foreheads.

“I’ll leave you to it.”

But instead of going up to bed, he moved towards the door.

“Hey, David, you’re not going out, you’re not going to work at this hour?” Anna was amazed.

“Someone’s got to pay for all this wine drinking. I just waited until the drinky ladies came home. Now you two can mind the boys and I’ll get back to the office.”

Sally spoke sharply. “David, what on earth can you do at ten-thirty at night in the office?”

He looked at her without his glance faltering.

“Now, Sally, I don’t know what time you write your column, or do your reporting, but I’d never dream of suggesting that there was one time better than another. And in my case sorting out accounts, and arranging woods, and bringing mailing lists up to date … those can be done at any time of the day or night, also.”

He was looking at her, smiling, daring her to speak.

“Sure,” Sally said in a voice that was barely above a whisper.

“Don’t stay too late, love,” Anna said, full of concern.

“If it gets too late, I’ll sleep there.”

He was gone with a wave.

Sally dared not raise her eyes to meet those of her friend. He was going to
sleep
at the office, a workshop not half a mile away. And Anna was going along with this fiction.

They poured the wine and talked about the girls that they had eaten dinner with. They talked about their children, they went up to look at the sleeping boys, and looked forward to the time, three years hence, when they could go to London on their own and Sally would meet them at the station. They talked about Sally’s teenagers and what they would study if they got their A levels. They talked about Johnny and his wine bar. And all the time Sally wanted to cry.

She managed to make it to her bedroom before the tears came. She laid a towel on her nice new pillowcase and cried silently into it as the clock struck midnight and every hour until seven. At no stage did she hear the door open or David come up the stairs. He
had stayed in the office. She could hardly force down the coffee that Anna had prepared. The taxi came to take her to the airport. She shook hands formally with the two little boys who had already got many items on their list of things to do in London. They were getting ready for school; their mother would lead them there by the hand before she went back to work.

It was so desperately sad. Unfair and sad.

Sally looked out the window for the entire journey. She never unfolded her paper, opened her book. When she got to London she took out her mobile phone and called Johnny. There was a message on the machine.

“Darling, if that’s you, I’m coming to meet you. If it’s not you, then could you please leave a message.”

Sally spoke into the phone softly.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to leave a message as well. I love you, Johnny—you’re a good man.”

And she looked out for him.

“I’m so sorry to have to tell you bad news,” he began. “It’s Anna.”

“No, no, Johnny, tell me what happened.” She had dropped her case on the ground.

“She rang. It’s her husband.”

“Oh, God, when did she find out?”

“The hospital rang—apparently it was all over very quickly.”

“What was over?”

“He died, Sally, darling. I’m so sorry to have to tell you this. I thought it better to come to the airport.”

“He
died
!”

“Yes, in his office, last night, apparently.”

“He really was in the office—he died in his office?”

“I don’t know, darling. She said he was got to the hospital but it was too late … and then the hospital called to tell her … it must have been just after you left.”

“And who got him to hospital?”

“Sweetheart, how do I know? I only know what happened. Does it matter?”

Sally was very pale and very quiet.

“Yes, Johnny, it does. It matters terribly.”

Sally sat very still at home for a while before she made any telephone calls. She could call Marigold, or David’s sister, Emily. She could call any of the women she had eaten dinner with last night. But it would be disloyal, somehow. She must not learn from them whether David had begun to die in the arms of Rita.

Had Rita taken him to the hospital and left him there?

Had she crept away and asked the authorities not to mention her involvement?

Sally ached to know, but by asking them she would somehow betray the sense of independence and importance that she had gained for her friend.

There were a million questions that she wanted answered but she must not ask them. She had been so strong yesterday … was it only last night they had been in the Chinese restaurant? She must not give in now and weaken the dignity that she had fought so hard to create.

She would have to do it herself. Ring Anna, her friend. She dialed the number and waited to know what she would discover.

Anna was very calm.

“He worked too hard, Sally,” Anna said. “He has had no proper life for the past two years—you saw yourself.”

“I’m so sorry, dear Anna.”

“I know you are, Sally. You are such a friend and I know you loved him too.”

“And … did he get the attack, the heart attack, in the office? Is that what happened?”

“No, thankfully—it was one of the things I have to hold on to and say that it was like a miracle. All the way to the hospital I couldn’t bear to think of him dying alone in the office, maybe struggling to get to a phone.”

“So where
did
it happen?” Sally’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“The most extraordinary thing. When he was in the office he got a call late there, and he went to deliver an order.”

“An order?”

“Yes, there’s this photographer, she buys a lot of frames from us, and anyway he went round there to deliver some rushed things she needed for an exhibition, and he had a drink in her house and that’s where it happened, and that’s where it came on.”

“In her house?”

“Yes, and Rita, that’s her name, she said there was no pain, he just clutched his chest and he said my name. He said, ‘Anna,’ and she called the ambulance and they got him to hospital, they did everything they could, but they said he died instantly.”

“It must have been a shock for her too,” Sally said, not fully able to believe that she was having this conversation.

“Terrible—she was quite distraught this morning. I asked her to come over to us, but she said no.”