Dark Undertakings (10 page)

But Pauline had been kind today, a friend in a time of need, and much appreciated. What had she said about having someone else to see? That was Pauline all over – only happy if she
was ministering to as many people as possible.
So I’m really doing her the favour,
thought Monica, with a little smile.

A whining noise brought her back to reality. Looking round, she remembered with a shock that she had shut the dog outside early that morning, and never let the wretched thing back in again. With a stab of guilt, she rushed through the kitchen to the back door, and flung it open. The animal was quivering on the mat, the picture of misery. Its coat was flat and the head drooped. ‘Oh, Cassie, I’m sorry,’ Monica apologised. ‘Come in and have some dinner.’

She tipped a whole tinful of Butcher’s Tripe into a dish, and offered it to the dog. But Cassie ignored it, turning her head away as if it offended her. ‘Come on, you fool,’ said Monica. ‘You must be hungry.’ But the dog would not be persuaded. Instead, it went to its basket, and flopped down on the cushion, as if unspeakably weary. ‘You look a bit off colour to me,’ Monica observed. ‘I hope it’s just that you’re missing Jim. I can’t cope with you being poorly, not right now.’ Cassie moved her small stump of a tail a few millimetres to left and right, as acknowledgment that she’d heard herself addressed, but could manage no more than that. ‘I’ll give you a bath when you’re better,’ Monica promised. ‘Your coat doesn’t look its best.’

Then she went to phone Philip.

She could tell from his abrupt, overly businesslike tone that he was in the middle of something important. He’d been in this job for nearly two years, and Monica had the impression that he was still struggling to keep up with its demands. She hadn’t really tried to understand what it was he did, beyond knowing that success or failure rested on sales figures and product development, and that each month he dreaded the latest statistics. But he had never allowed her to share his worries. As a boy he had maintained a relentlessly cheerful demeanour with her and Jim, until they had come to believe in it. ‘Philip’s never been any trouble,’ they would boast. She did her best to forget the occasions when a teacher or schoolfriend would let drop some story about Philip hurting himself, or crying over poor exam marks or in despair about a difficult girlfriend.

She had looked forward to depending more and more on her capable elder son, as their roles gradually reversed. His failure to accompany her to the undertaker’s had caused a small pang of disappointment which slowly matured to a substantial lump of resentment lodged in her chest. If he dismissed her now in favour of some stupid office meeting, she might not be able to conceal her umbrage.

‘I’m just back from Plant’s,’ she said, with
deliberate lack of emphasis. ‘We’ve got a date for the funeral.’

She could hear the quality of his attention improving, and sighed with relief. ‘Oh, good,’ he said. ‘I mean—’

‘It’s on Tuesday next week, at eleven-thirty. At the crematorium. Pauline came with me.’ She couldn’t resist this slight prick to his conscience.

He murmured ‘Eleven-thirty,’ and she knew he was writing it down in a diary.

‘Oh, yes,’ she added brightly, ‘and I’m having him back here to the house on Monday evening, for the night. I thought you and David should come and say goodbye to him then.’

A strangled coughing sound came down the airwaves. ‘Christ, Mum – what do you want to do that for?’

‘For Jim,’ she said coldly. ‘It’s what he would have wanted.’

‘Couldn’t we just have gone to see him in the chapel of rest? Like other people do.’

‘I don’t care what other people do. I want what’s right for Jim. I couldn’t just let him be burnt without some sort of – I don’t know – wake, I suppose. Jim’s grandfather was a strong Catholic, after all. It was their family tradition for generations. It’s a
nice
idea, Phil. Don’t go and spoil it.’ She could hear herself whining, and clamped her lips together.

‘Well, I suppose I might just bear it, but you’re never going to get David to something like that. He’ll go ape at the very thought. Don’t you think your first duty is to the living, Mum?’

Monica’s anger told her that she was not yet ready for the role reversal which she thought she’d enjoy. How
dare
he refer to her duty? What did he know about her responsibilites to Jim? ‘I think I’m the best judge of that,’ she told him stiffly.

‘Okay,’ he retreated. ‘It’s up to you. Now, is there anything else?’ His impatience had returned, and the sense of being peripheral to his life added to the bleakness of the empty house.

‘No, that’s all. Except the dratted dog’s not very well. I left her outside all morning, by mistake, and now she’s in a real state. She probably ought to see a vet.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, Mum, but there’s no chance that it’ll be me that takes her. Try one of the old dears next door, why don’t you?’

Monica felt herself rebuffed. ‘Bye, then. I’ll keep in touch.’

‘Bye, Mum.’

Odd, she reflected, what a crisis did to your relationships. Phil had only occasionally been impatient with her, embarrassed by her as an adolescent. Since setting up home with Nerina, he’d been a less frequent visitor, making sporadic
phone calls, but not inviting her into his life. The death of his father didn’t seem to have made much difference. His manner was more prickly than usual, yet she felt she could trust him. Underneath, he was rock-solid reliable. Philip was a plodder; he spoke his mind and followed the rules. ‘He’s just like you,’ Jim had often told her.

Monica had hated this assessment. Perhaps that was the main reason she had done what she did – to discover her own hidden depths and break a few constricting rules.

Cassie seemed to be sleeping quite peacefully in her basket, and Monica decided to leave her to recover in her own way. Grief wasn’t something a vet could cure. After all, the animal was ten years old. That was seventy in dog years – she probably just needed a nice long rest. Monica knew how she felt.

Daphne greeted Doctor Lloyd with a friendly smile. ‘Jim Lapsford? His wife was here earlier on. I’ve typed out a form for you. Oh, you’ve done it already. I should have known. You won’t need to see him again, then?’

‘Nope. He got the thorough once-over yesterday, and I’m happy to stick to what I found then. Ginnie Parton’s coming in sometime, and then it’s all clear. When’s the cremation?’

‘Not till next Tuesday.’

‘The wife seemed a nice woman, from what I saw of her. She’s not one of my patients, and I don’t remember coming across her before. Nice little dog, too. All over the body, it was, licking him. Pathetic. Made me quite choked for a minute. Funny, the things that get to you. Shows we’re human, I guess. I could cheerfully have adopted that little dog on the spot. Specially as Lapsford’s wife doesn’t seem to know what to do with it. I like dogs.’ He tailed off, staring at the road beyond Daphne’s window.

‘Dogs are good company,’ she replied, after a moment. ‘So it’s Dr Parton. Better have her fee ready. She usually doesn’t stay more than about fifty seconds.’

‘Don’t tell me … Now, the burning question for me is, shall I go and visit Mrs Sinclair with the bad foot?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Oh, what the hell. It’ll make me feel virtuous. Cheer the old bird up, too, if Susie can be believed.’

‘And maybe she’ll remember you in her will,’ said Daphne, pertly.

‘Maybe she will,’ he laughed. ‘Now wouldn’t that be a turn-up for the book!’

Pauline made the trek across Roxanne’s field that afternoon, as promised, following the ribbonlike path which her sister had trodden
out during the years of living there. A gate in the diagonally opposite corner from the caravan opened onto a small country lane, with a passing place just big enough to park a car. A few Hereford bullocks shared the field with Roxanne: big friendly beasts, with broad, benign brows, and rich mahogany coats. They followed Pauline curiously, and she ignored them. Only when she had to step off the path into a patch of thistles to avoid one of their circular deposits of manure did she turn to scowl at them. ‘Darned nuisances,’ she mumbled.

Roxanne was sitting on the caravan steps and had seen her coming. She made no move of welcome, simply sat and observed the walk across the field. It took perhaps four minutes. Her thoughts ranged across a number of related topics: how the two of them had always been uneasy together from early infancy; how strange it was that they still lived in the same locality; how much she knew about Pauline, things that Pauline didn’t know she knew; how she and Jim had actually come together through Pauline; and how she might yet come out of this encounter with her dignity intact and some sisterly points scored in the eternal contest that raged between them.

‘All right?’ said Pauline, when she was still
fifty yards away. ‘Got nothing to do?’

‘Plenty. Just don’t feel like it. Day like today, Jim would likely have come by for a quickie. Would have phoned me, anyway. It’s going to be weird without him. Don’t suppose I’ll even be able to go to his funeral. Awkward questions if I did.’ She lit a cigarette from a pack in her lap, and blew smoke upwards, her head tilted back. Pauline searched for somewhere to sit, and found an old wooden box, which threatened to barely hold up under her weight. She brushed it several times with her hand before sitting down.

‘Well, you won’t be able to see him at the undertaker’s. She’s having the wake at home, Monday night, in the old-fashioned way. I shouldn’t think even you would have the nerve to turn up there.’ Self-righteousness oiled her words and enraged her sister.

‘I might,’ she said, with narrowed eyes. ‘I just bloody might. What have I got to lose, after all? And how come you know so much already?’

‘I went with her to organise it all. Those useless sons of hers didn’t want to know. Wouldn’t like to do it again in a hurry. Bit depressing, talking about hearses and coffins.’

‘I imagine it is. I’ve no intention of ever putting myself through it.’

‘Who’s going to do Mum, then?’

‘Mum will outlive us all.’ They laughed at one of the few things they shared – an impatient amused reverence for their mother, who had suffered from a confusing array of ailments for fifty years or more and still possessed more energy at seventy-five than anyone else they knew.

‘How is she, anyway? Monica, I mean?’ Roxanne returned to the unavoidable subject. Pauline noticed her sister’s hand was shaking as she put the cigarette to her mouth again.

‘She keeps on about Jim never being ill, and it all being a tremendous shock. She
is
shocked, obviously. But I get a funny feeling that she isn’t actually terribly
surprised
. I mean – that would be my main feeling, in her position. She’s numb, like people usually are, but there’s something else. This business of having him back to the house. It seemed to me as if she was trying to make up for something.’

‘What – make up to Jim? Do you mean she feels guilty?’

‘Sort of, yes. I thought you’d have a better idea than me about why that might be.’

‘Well, I certainly never got the impression that she starved him of sex. He wasn’t one of those husbands who bleat on about their wife being frigid and driving them away. Jim didn’t play that sort of game. He was just into sex, and
took it anywhere he could find it. With as many variations as he could get.’

‘I don’t want to know,’ said Pauline primly.

‘Listen, duckie, there
is
only one thing to know about Jim Lapsford, and that’s his addiction to sex. Okay, he had his job, and he enjoyed his pint with the lads at the pub, and playing with that creepy Jack on the computer, but basically, sex was his thing. If Monica’s feeling guilty about something, you can bet your last fag it’s got something to do with sex.’

‘Okay, okay, I believe you,’ Pauline conceded. ‘And it’s true, I presume, about that little bimbo – what’s her name?’

‘Lorraine. Poor little cow. He was out of order there. Turned her inside out, so she won’t know how to cope without him. He used to talk to me about her, proud as you like.’

Pauline pulled a face. ‘That’s perverted. How could you let him?’

Roxanne shrugged. ‘Didn’t bother me. But don’t you go saying anything about her. There’ll be hell to pay if her Frank finds out what she was up to.’

‘Just tell me this, then. Weren’t you ever jealous? Not of Monica – that’s all part of the package if you take up with a married man. But surely you weren’t best pleased about Lorraine?
Apart from anything else, she’s twenty years younger than you.’

‘Sixteen, actually. I’ve no time for jealousy. I wasn’t in love with Jim, you know. He was just satisfying my urges, same as I was for him. I’m going to miss the bugger, all the same.’

Roxanne drew deeply on the last inch of the cigarette. Her thick hair was in a tangle round her face, one or two grass seeds lodged in it; her big bare feet were muddy, resting on the bottom step. The only obvious similarity between the sisters was the shape of their faces and the hazel eyes under black brows. Pauline was slighter, neater in every way, although her hair was similarly difficult to control.

‘He was the sort of chap you couldn’t really ignore,’ Pauline contributed weakly, feeling more than a little out of her depth. She’d come to offer Roxanne sympathy and information; she was unprepared for the confidences that were spilling out.

‘You said yesterday that secrets always come out when a person dies,’ Roxanne remembered. ‘Are you sure Monica doesn’t know about me and the bimbo, and the others over the years? Surely she can’t be completely blind?’

‘I think she took care not to know – the details, anyway. She gave him all the space he wanted, especially when she finally woke up to
the fact that that gave
her
more freedom.’

‘But she never had anyone else, did she? Jim was always quite certain she’d never in her life slept with anybody but him.’

‘Then it’s my belief that Jim was fooling himself,’ said Pauline, with a triumphant laugh.

Roxanne shook her head disbelievingly. ‘He’d have killed her if he’d known.’

Pauline laughed again, genuinely amused. ‘Have you any idea how funny that sounds?’ she spluttered. ‘In the circumstances.’