Imaginative Experience (6 page)

Madge said, ‘Oh, do, thank you,’ and began pouring tea. ‘I brought a large cup,’ she said. ‘Men like large cups, Clodagh always had a large cup for Giles. Help yourself to whisky, it was a present from Giles. He was so thoughtful—’

Maurice said, ‘Later, perhaps. Just tea would be lovely, milk, no sugar.’ Watching her pour (Edwardian silver teapot, common, but even so can fetch a lot these days), he took the cup from her and sat back in his chair.

Madge dolloped whisky into her cup, drank, sighed, said, ‘That’s good, that’s better,’ and stared into the fire.

Maurice said, ‘Interesting photographs,’ nodding up at the mantelpiece. ‘Your family?’

‘Oh! Oh
yes.
I think of them as my family. I have no blood relations except some sort of cousin in Canada. Clodagh has always—and Giles, of course, and little Christy. Oh, I can hardly bear—Oh! That’s Clodagh, and that’s Clodagh with Giles, and Clodagh and Christy, and little Christy alone. Such a darling—Clodagh’s younger than me but we’ve been so close so long and then Giles—That’s a very good one of Giles, the one with his head thrown back, and his hair all—Taken before Julia broke his nose, of course.’

‘Broke his nose?’

‘Of course! Didn’t you know?’

‘Um, I’d forgotten. Um—er—how?’

‘With a frying-pan. The plastic surgeon had the devil of a job; the cartilage was pulped.’ Madge stopped speaking and closed her eyes.

‘The little boy is like his father, isn’t he?’ Maurice gave a gentle lead, watching his hostess drink her tea, refill her cup, add whisky. ‘Little Christy was very like his father.’ Maurice raised his voice slightly. ‘Took after him, wouldn’t you say?’ He stood up to re-examine the photographs. What was it they’d said in the pub? Bit of a lad, very matey with his mother-in-law, dodgy with money, liked the girls. Temper? Oh yes, bit dodgy there too, but flash, and charm the birds off the trees. ‘Very pretty little boy. Not like his mother. Funny,’ he ventured.

Madge said, ‘He was Giles’s son and Clodagh’s grandson. Why should he be like Julia? She was only a vehicle.’

‘A what?’ Maurice was startled.

‘You heard.’ Madge swallowed her tea, sniffed and added inconsequentially, ‘She was barely in time for the funeral.’

‘Oh?’

‘She wasn’t here, never
was
here once she grew up, left home at sixteen. Giles was here with Christy, staying with Clodagh. It was ridiculous that Julia had custody; Clodagh thinks the judge was bribed. Oh, not money, words, sweet talk, lies. Then Giles had this dreadful crash with the child in his car—’

‘And they were both killed.’ (The pub had provided details: car a write-off, father and child killed instantly, child’s head practically severed at the neck, lorry driver in hospital with shock.) ‘How very sad.’

‘And
that’s
the understatement of the year. That accident was wholly preventable.’

‘Oh.’ Maurice sipped his tea, wishing he had not refused whisky. Too late now. ‘How—?’ What was it that fellow had said in the pub? Kamikaze? ‘How,’ he repeated, speaking clearly, ‘did it happen?’

‘How indeed.’ Madge raised her voice. ‘Julia always did the driving when they were married. Giles was a bit adventurous, you might call it, yes, adventurous will do. Julia put him down, said he was a hopeless driver. He may have been; some people are. Anyway, she drove. You must have noticed she always drove.’

‘Well, I, well, I’d for—’

‘Well, she
did.
Then there was—Oh, I think the police were mistaken, but for some time I believe he had no licence.’

‘Banned from driving?’

‘That’s what they call it, yes.’ Madge looked ruffled. ‘Too silly.’

‘Ah.’

‘Clodagh says they were over-zealous. Anyway, the point I am trying to make is that if Julia had been driving, there would not have been an accident.
That
is the point I am making and Clodagh is making.
If
Julia had been at the wheel Giles and Christy would be alive today.’

Maurice said, ‘But forgive me, I understood Julia was not here when—’

Madge snapped, ‘Of course she wasn’t. Clodagh liked to have Giles and Christy on their own. Julia never fitted.’

Pondering this inconsistency, Maurice watched his hostess swallow her euphemistic tea and put up a hand to hide a smile as he tried to fit the girl who had raced across the field into the picture presently being painted by her mother’s friend. ‘So she did not fit in,’ he said.

Madge said, ‘Come to think of it, she never did.’ Then. she said, ‘Fit or no fit, she’s responsible, it’s obvious.’

‘You are making her out a murderess,’ said Maurice. I usually watch birds, he thought. I am only here because the girl intrigued me slightly. And she would not have done that if that stuck-up bloke in the First Class carriage had not tried to prevent me talking to her. He practically forced me to take an interest. ‘I wouldn’t hold her responsible,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t blame her.’

‘Oh,’ said Madge, ‘maybe
you
wouldn’t, but her mother does, and so do I. Are you sure,’ she asked, suddenly belligerent, ‘that you are not Press? You haven’t really said what you are here for. Are you sure you are not a journalist? I thought for a moment you might be Police, plain clothes, but you don’t look—’

‘No, no,’ Maurice said. ‘Just a friend. I was hoping to get in touch with Julia; there was something Giles had asked me to do.’ Less risky, since he was dead, to claim friendship with Giles than acquaintance with Julia. ‘It was to do with her interest in sheep,’ he said.

‘Sheep?’ The woman gaped. ‘Sheep? What would Julia want with sheep?’

Maurice fumbled, ‘Giles suggested I—’

‘That girl wouldn’t know anything about sheep. She’s a murderess. Giles must have been pulling your leg.’ She stared, unfocused by whisky, at her visitor. ‘I will give you her telephone number. You can tell her from her mother, and from me if you like, that she is a murderess. We don’t talk, of course; it would be wrong.’ She got up and, moving to a bureau, began rummaging into pigeonholes. ‘I know I have it somewhere,’ she said.

Maurice, too, rose and studied the photographs, the girl’s mother, husband and child, searching for some likeness to the figure seen fleetingly from the train. ‘I was out of the country,’ he improvised. ‘What was the reason for the divorce?’ The pub had provided snide hints of something other than mere adultery and violence.

Madge spoke with her back to him. ‘It was a put-up job. The real reason, the reason she gave her mother, was too piffling for words.’

Encouragingly, Maurice said, ‘Oh?’

Madge said, ‘I know I have put that number somewhere, I refuse to be defeated. Do smoke if you want and help yourself to whisky, and do please sit down. You are making me nervous.’

Maurice sat. ‘I’m a bird-watcher,’ he said. ‘You have to keep very still watching birds.’ He reached for his cigarettes and lit up, then poured a tot of whisky into his empty cup. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘the piffling comes close to the truth.’

‘Well, if you
must
know,’ said his hostess, still searching, ‘when pressed by her mother, Julia said Giles’s feet smelled, his pits smelled, and his breath reeked of tobacco. Her words.’

Maurice, inhaling, felt sympathy for Giles. ‘She must have known he smoked when she married him,’ he suggested.

‘He had given it up but he took to it again, and I dare say before they married he did not take off his socks.’ Madge let out a harsh laugh. ‘Eureka!’ she exclaimed. ‘Here we are, I’ve found it. I’ll write it down for you. Then,’ she said, ‘I’ll join you in a cigarette, mention of Julia brings on the urge. And you,’ she said, writing, ‘can tell me what brings you to these parts, besides friendship with Giles. Here’s the number,’ she said. ‘I wonder what you are really after?’

Maurice pocketed the piece of paper. Her tone was growing suspicious; the whisky was at work. It was inconceivable that he should tell this woman that the sight of Julia from the train window had briefly roused in him an erotic twinge; stubbing out his cigarette, he was conscious that like the defunct Giles he, too, smelled of stale tobacco. The woman’s remark put a damper on lust, yet reminded him irritatingly of the fellow in the First Glass carriage who had recoiled from him and snubbed his friendly overture. Would it be possible to get back at him through the girl? Maurice drained the last of the whisky and lit another cigarette. ‘You have been very kind,’ he said. ‘I should be on my way. I suppose,’ he said casually, ‘that she had another chap handy when she divorced.’

‘Absolutely
not,’
said Madge. ‘Nobody who had been married to Giles would want anyone else.’

Maurice savoured this ambiguous statement and rose to leave. ‘When Julia left home at sixteen, as you say, what did she do?’ he asked.

‘She moved out of Clodagh’s orbit.’

‘Oh.’

Madge lowered her voice. ‘Out of Clodagh’s class.’

Maurice again said, ‘Oh,’ and then, ‘How was that?’

‘She became some sort of domestic, I mean, really!’ Madge almost whispered.

‘Ah.’

‘Clodagh says, and I am inclined to agree, that she found her proper level and that Giles should have left her there.’

‘Indeed.’ Maurice moved towards the door.

‘Shall you go and see Clodagh?’ Madge tried to delay him.

‘Another time. I don’t want to intrude.’

‘What shall I tell her?’

‘A friend’—he had reached the door—‘and my deepest sympathy.’ He made his escape.

Walking back to his car, Maurice mulled over information gained and wondered to what possible use he could put it.

He drove slowly out of the village. He would go west to the Exe estuary, see whether the avocets had arrived, put up at the pub at Starcross, eat some oysters. He passed the cemetery and Madge Brownlow’s cottage; the front door was closed and the curtains drawn, though the sun was not yet set. By contrast there was activity in the garden of the cottage next door. Clodagh May was piling weeds into a barrow.

Maurice slowed to a stop, rolled down his window and said, ‘Good afternoon.’

Clodagh May was as tall as her daughter but there the resemblance ended; her hair was auburn, she had heavily lidded pale blue eyes, a Grecian nose and a large mouth turning down at the corners from the effort of heaving wet weeds into a barrow already overloaded. She looked, Maurice thought, a bit of all right. She said, ‘You have been visiting Madge Brownlow.’

Maurice said, ‘Yes,’ and switched off his engine.

‘She’s watching
Neighbours.’
Clodagh May nodded towards the drawn curtains. ‘She’s addicted to soaps.’

Maurice got out of his car. ‘Could I give you a hand with that barrow?’ He put a hand on the garden gate.

‘Are you the man from the Pru?’ Clodagh May dropped her forkful of weeds onto an ill-balanced load.

‘I was a friend of Giles,’ said Maurice. ‘My name is Maurice Benson.’

‘I never heard him mention you.’ Clodagh May pushed the prongs of her fork hard into the pile of weeds. ‘Weeds!’

‘Long ago. We rather lost touch. I only heard the other day that—’

‘It was all in the papers. Ghastly, absolutely ghastly.’

‘Yes.’

‘He always did the heavy work for me.’ She gripped the handles of the barrow.

‘Please. Let me.’ Maurice pushed the gate open. ‘Where do you want it to go?’

Clodagh May stood aside. ‘Round the back onto the compost heap. Thanks.’ She led the way. Maurice followed pushing the barrow, which was extremely heavy.

‘You should not do this, you might strain your back,’ he said.

The woman gave a short laugh and, pointing, said, ‘The compost heap is down there. Don’t let the barrow run away with you, it always did with Giles.’ She stood watching while he trundled the barrow down a steep incline, tipped its contents onto the compost heap and then forked them evenly into place.

‘You can leave the barrow there.’ Clodagh May raised her voice.

‘Right.’ Maurice tipped the barrow on its side and walked back up the path.

‘So you know about compost.’ She took the fork from him and leaned it against the house. ‘You’ve earned yourself a drink. How did you come to know Giles?’

‘It was before his marriage—er—quite some time ago,’ Maurice murmured.

‘Oh,’ she said, the Oh sounding like Ugh!

‘Could you—um—could you tell me—er—if it’s not too—er—put me in the picture? As a friend, I’d like to be up to date.’

‘A disaster.’ She opened a french window. ‘Come in, wipe your feet.’

‘Such an—’

‘I mean the marriage. Come in. I don’t know what Madge told you, she has been known to be discreet.’

So that’s discretion. Maurice followed Clodagh May into the house. ‘What a pretty room—’

‘Yes. Giles had such taste.’

‘She told me the bare facts, that Giles married your daughter—’

‘That girl—’ Clodagh May curdled the word girl into an epithet. ‘You’d better sit down,’ she said. ‘No, not that chair, that’s Giles’s. Sit there, in that one.’

Shying from the comfortable chair he had aimed for, Maurice sat in the one indicated. His hostess moved towards a drinks table. ‘Whisky?’ she offered.

‘Thank you. Weak, I’m driving.’

‘And I am not.’ Mrs May measured a small whisky for her guest and a generous one for herself. ‘Help yourself to water.’

Maurice sloshed a little water into his miserly portion and resumed his seat. ‘You were saying?’

‘I was not saying anything.’

She was a handsome woman, Maurice thought, long legs, deep bosom, sexy, eat you alive. She would have been his cup of tea a few years ago but was now rather alarming. He searched the room for inspiration. ‘No photos,’ he said.

‘Who needs photos?’

‘Your friend—um—your neighbour Mrs Brownlow.’

‘Miss.’

‘Oh? Not married?’

‘Old maid.’

‘Sentimental?’

‘Never experienced passion.’

‘I see.’

‘You don’t see anything.’

‘I don’t?’

‘Not a thing.’

Maurice Benson said, ‘Then tell me.’

‘Why not?’ She stretched her legs out, quizzed him over her glass. ‘If I don’t, you will get a garbled version and I will not have my Christy and Giles garbled. Those, by the way,’ she said, pointing to a recess behind Maurice, ‘are my grandson’s toys.’