Seven For a Secret (32 page)

Heather sighed and surrendered. She hadn't the heart to summon the undertaker and demand the removal of Edward. Part of her understood and agreed about death being a natural part of life, and that it shouldn't be tidied away by people barely different from the specialist collectors who dispose of difficult refuse, like asbestos and old fridges. ‘Goodness knows what Tom will say,' she said eventually, hoping to give up and pass the buck.

Later, having showered and changed and had a good think about exactly
when
her mother had made these arrangements, and if it was anything connected, however obliquely, with the presence of Iain, she crept down the stairs and summoned enough courage to open the dining-room door. She hadn't minded Edward being dead at the hospital, that had been such a small progression from his last moments of life. But there was something so creepy, Uriah Heep-ish about having been got at by undertakers, she thought, that it turned death into a quite horribly artificial process, with all its secretive rituals – something similar to the sneaky addition of water and chemicals to bulk out bacon.

Edward was lying in the snug blue ruffled-satin nest in his best suit, which had obviously fitted him several, heavier, years ago. He looked as smart as if he was going to a Rotary Club dinner, with his tie militarily straight and his shoes richly polished. The wrong shade of blusher had been applied to his sagging cheeks and his eyelids were suspiciously bluish. Delia had closed the curtains and lit two pairs of geranium-scented candles in Heather's favourite silver holders, which told Heather that she must have been preparing this little surprise quite carefully on the sly – even ‘Inside Story' didn't stock candles like these, they must have been secretly purchased on the trip to Oxford. The discreet scent brought to mind pot pourri on lavatory window sills.
I'll think of this every time we have people to dinner
, she thought, trying to banish grumpy selfish thoughts and replace them with more humble ones in the presence of death.

Outside the dining-room door, furious whispering was going on.

‘I'm not going in there. Not if you paid me a million,' Suzy was saying.

‘I wouldn't mind for a million,' Kate whispered back. ‘But I'm not going to give myself nightmares just for Gran's satisfaction.'

There was a stifled giggle from Suzy. ‘I
dare
you!' she hissed at her sister.

‘Dare me how much?'

‘The new Blur CD, and Oasis. Simon's got loads of stuff apparently going spare, Tamsin says, and she can get them off him . . .'

‘Well . . . maybe,' Kate wavered greedily, faced with a bribe.

‘But it has to be at
night.
In the dark, just the candles.' Suzy was pushing her luck, Heather considered, at the same time having a passing thought about what Simon was doing with a load of spare CDs. The idea of crime did not, of course, enter her head. He wasn't that sort of boy.

‘So when the noise got too much with all the drunks yelling and laughing, this little chap asks the stewardess for ear plugs and she's too busy and waves him off in the direction of the loo.' Tom paused for breath and sipped his wine. ‘Couple of minutes later, back he comes with a Tampax sticking out of each ear with the string dangling! “You all right, Sir?” she says, and of course the things obviously work 'cos all he says is “Pardon?”!'

Suzy and Kate were spluttering over their chocolate mousse. Delia smiled politely to show no real hard feelings, but Heather saw her eyes turn worriedly towards the direction of the dining-room, as if Uncle Edward, in his condition, should not be exposed to such unseemly conversation. It was no good saying yet again that he couldn't
hear.
Since his arrival, Delia had been ostentatiously tiptoeing round the house, shushing anyone who dared to speak in more than a whisper. Kate had lost her temper and told her that it would take more than a Senseless Things album played at full volume to wake the dead, at which Delia had gone to her room for a new handkerchief to cry into down by the river, where everyone could see her. Kate had apologized, but warily, still smarting from when Delia had been so waspish about her going to the pub with Iain.

Tom seemed so grateful and relieved that, after the Hughie business, Heather allowed him back into the house at all, that he was being determinedly cheerful and entertaining.

‘He's being very
wearing
,' Delia complained as she watched Heather making coffee after supper.

‘Just glad to be home, I think,' Heather told her. ‘I'm glad he's here too,' she added, which she would have done, out of loyalty, whether she meant it or not. Luckily, she realized that she
did
.

‘Sorry about the presence of death,' she said to Tom as they got ready for bed, getting in first with the apologizing. It would be his turn soon enough.

‘I don't mind. It's not as if he's being any trouble – not like some visitors. And at least we don't have to feed him or listen to endless tales of golf triumphs,' Tom told her from the bed where he was flipping through the TV channels pretending he was trying to find something worth catching up on. ‘And if it makes your mother happy.'

‘You're being very accommodating.' she commented.

‘Yes, well.' He shifted and adjusted pillows, not looking at her. ‘Guilty conscience I suppose. Do you want to talk about it?'

Heather fleetingly thought he meant Iain, not Hughie. She only had a guilty conscience about
intent
and couldn't work out where that rated on the Richter scale of marital earthquake. ‘Did you honestly imagine I
wouldn't
want to?' she asked him, ‘I mean wouldn't most people rate it a fairly cataclysmic event, having your husband's boyfriend call you up from across the world and spill the beans?' Heather's hands were shaking as she folded her skirt, unfolded it and then threw it inaccurately towards the laundry basket in the bathroom. They'd spent the evening play-acting at happy families and now it was as if not just that one performance, but the whole run might be over.

‘Not much actually happened, not
actually
,' Tom muttered. ‘Things just got ever so slightly out of hand.'

Heather felt ridiculously inclined to giggle like a smutty child at his choice of phrase and put it down to nerves. ‘I wouldn't do anything to put you at risk.' he added.

‘Oh thank you so much for that. Goodness I
am
grateful.' She resorted to heavy, heartfelt sarcasm. ‘Actually I don't know
what
to be at all. There's probably a helpline one's supposed to ring for bloody counselling about this sort of thing,' she said, sitting heavily down on the bed and wondering when they would all be grown up enough to accept that romance was just a shimmering layer on the top of otherwise fairly murky water.

Tom shifted warily towards her. ‘God I'm sorry. I'm not surprised you're angry. I mean I would . . .'

Heather got up and paced to the window and back. ‘Would what? Be
slightly miffed
if I trotted off for a spot of girls-together afternoon fun with, oh, who? let's say Julia Merriman.' No, let's not, she suddenly thought. Her mouth started twitching into an involuntary smile at the very idea and she turned away to play with the curtain. She accepted that justified outrage at Tom was watered down by her own guilt, but couldn't allow it to be further diluted by an intrusive sense of farce as well.

‘No I mean you and well,
anyone
else. Unfair I know.' She heard him sigh and waited for him to move on to explaining.

‘It was just rather flattering, at first. But then of course as soon as I'd shown a bit of interest, it was all too intense.' He grinned nervously, as if afraid to gauge her reaction, ‘Hughie is simply looking for Captain Right. It couldn't possibly be me.'

‘Poor Hughie,' Heather commented, returning to sit beside him on the bed, ‘you've hurt him.'

‘I've hurt
you.
And I'm sorry,' he said, reaching across and touching the back of her neck carefully as if afraid she'd flinch and recoil. I'd have hurt you, too, terribly badly, if things had gone the way I'd planned, she told herself, but not him. Tom, sensing that his sins might eventually be forgiven, if not forgotten, smiled at her looking, she thought, rather like a grateful child let off a naughty deed by his mummy. But I'm
not
his mummy, Heather thought, wondering if all wives had to put up with an element of this. In some men, she knew, it took the form of boyish little questions like ‘Have I got a clean shirt?' or regarding the sharing of domestic chores as ‘helping'. In Tom, right now, it was a matter of off-loading guilt – clearing out his emotional toybox and waiting for Heather to tell him he was
such
a good boy. ‘Bloody Hughie,' he declared suddenly, as if, confession safely over, blame could now be successfully reallocated. ‘Why ever did he have to go blurting it all out to you?'

‘Do you mean that simple phrase: “what I never knew could never have hurt me?”' Heather asked, feeling at a loss in the face of such blatant naivety. How new to deception he must be. In which case, how much luckier she, with her trunk-load of untidy secrets, was than Tom.

Tamsin came round to see Suzy about last-minute arrangements for the night on the island just as she was getting ready to go to the funeral. Suzy wore a dark blue pinafore dress which looked, she thought, terrific with a T-shirt under it, but completely, humiliatingly infant-school with the white blouse and Peter Pan collar that her mother insisted she wore. She sulked down to the hall to talk to Tamsin, who snorted with laughter at her.

‘What
do
you look like?' she said. ‘You look about nine!'

‘It's only for a couple of hours. Gran thinks being smart shows respect.' The dress would never feel the same again, she thought miserably, whatever stunning little top she wore underneath it. She'd forever associate it with these awful bulbous sleeves that were just a tiny bit, uncomfortably too short when the horrible pearl buttons were fastened.

‘Yeah but . . .' Tamsin, in violet leggings and a bottom-covering Take That! sweatshirt, looked her up and down as if she'd never seen anything like it.

‘Anyway what do you want?' Suzy asked her, keeping her hovering on the doorstep in case Delia came and saw her and made a fuss about Visitors at Such a Time. The cars would be coming any minute.

‘You still on for tonight?' Tamsin asked anxiously, as well she might be, Suzy judged. ‘It's all fixed, Simon's organized it and everything. Don't forget your torch or your lantern and that. And bring some food.' She stopped and giggled slightly. ‘Don't come dressed like that, will you? I mean your chances with Simon are already zero, you don't want them to go down to a
minus
.'

Suzy glanced round the hall behind her. No-one was on the stairs, no sign of her gran or parents. ‘Look Tam, I've got to go now. Er . . . oh yes, my new lamp and loads of chocolate, they're in here, come in and take them with you now if you like.' She invited Tamsin in, opening the door and listening carefully for household noises. She pointed to the dining-room door, knowing the chocolate bait would be completely irresistible. ‘It's all in there, on the table. Bye . . .' And so she was halfway up the stairs before she heard Tamsin screaming and everyone else came running.

‘Yes!' she whispered loudly to herself in the safety of her bedroom, punching the air with the satisfaction of sweet revenge.

Heather sat in the back of the Daimler between her mother and Tom, feeling hot and sticky in her navy silk suit. She was aware of the soapy scent of her deodorant, which made her feel as if she was getting clammy under her arms. Delia, in a hat made entirely of bluish feathers that Kate was horribly sure were magpie, glared through the windscreen ahead at the hearse containing Uncle Edward, furious that the cars were too pale a grey instead of the more traditional black. American influence, she assumed. Heather was glaring at the driver – a thoughtful undertaker who, having carefully supervised the removal of the coffin from the house, had polished the dining-room table with what looked disgustingly like a much used handkerchief and left the room smelling strongly of Silk Cut.

Heather turned her unholy thoughts towards Iain, who seemed to have disappeared from her life again. Not a word since That Night. He must have realized she was practically throwing herself at him and gone into hiding. Or just gone – the film people were now in the process of breaking camp. Maybe in the restaurant he'd had a glimpse of the contents of her handbag, caught sight of the lacy black edge of her favourite bedtime-fun knickers and been frightened away. All evening he'd seemed to be on the edge of saying something that needed saying, but hadn't got round to it. Perhaps the word he'd had such trouble with had been ‘Goodbye', though she couldn't think why – he hadn't had any problem with it the last time they'd separated.

At the crematorium, only Kate looked as if she was having appropriate soulful thoughts about the sad transience of earthly life. Her face looked sorrowful and pale, and she listened to the short service with her oval face tipped sideways, like a serene Madonna in a holy portrait. Big gruff men in black overcoats and dark suits made up the numbers from Edward's British Legion, along with a bearded gingery warden from his sheltered housing who had brought along several of his neighbours in a mini-bus. Tom was fidgety, and Heather guessed he could hardly wait to get back home to the Test Match on TV. Suzy, she could see, wasn't concentrating at all on the procedures, but was reading the waxy marble plaques dedicated to the memories of the district's worthier citizens. When the awful theatrical moment came, of the purple velvet gold-fringed curtains swishing back and the coffin, whirring and clicking on its conveyor belt, trundled through the doors, Suzy gasped loudly and gripped her mother's hand. Heather put an arm round her and patted her gently for comfort, but Suzy stretched up and whispered to her, ‘It looks just like a puppet theatre, doesn't it?'