The Gropes (8 page)

Mr Wiley had also called her a harridan, a virago and a shrew. Once again Esmond had recourse to the dictionary and had come away with an even more terrifying impression of Aunt Belinda, made worse by his mother’s agreement that what his father had said was perfectly true. But from his own experience, going on what little he’d seen of his aunt on the very infrequent visits the Ponsons had made to the Wileys, she had seemed quite good-looking, if a bit snooty and quiet.

All in all, the drive had done nothing to give Esmond any confidence in his future – if he had one, which was starting to seem unlikely. Mrs Wiley’s driving, ever-erratic, had been made positively lethal by the impending loss of her son for however short a time and, less importantly, the conviction that Horace was a murderous and philandering lunatic who would have to be placed in a mental hospital. Vera had come down to the kitchen that morning to find her husband
sharpening carving knives – ‘honing’ would have been a more accurate word – until they had blades as dangerous as old-fashioned cut-throat razors. And then after breakfast – a difficult, largely silent affair – she’d caught him in the bathroom, his face covered in lather and evidently about to shave with the knife that had previously been reserved for Sunday roasts and special occasions. She had dragged it away from him, cutting her hand in the process, and had been horrified by the gleeful expression on his face and insane laughter that came from the bedroom when she had forced him back there and locked the door.

Having taken the precaution of keeping his door locked as much as possible and of sleeping in the spare bedroom, she had been alarmed to hear Horace pacing the floor nightly and then laughing maniacally. As a result her sleep had been disturbed to the point where she frequently fell asleep at the kitchen table after getting Esmond his breakfast and then hurrying him out of the house with some money for his lunch and orders not to come home until seven in the evening. All this nodding off meant that, to add to her problems, she was unable to read any of her romances in a leisurely fashion or even on a daily basis. She’d scarcely even been able to risk leaving the house to go shopping. Returning home from a quick trip to the corner shop on Thursday, she found that the window cleaner had arrived to do inside and out. To her horror, there stood Horace, still in his pyjamas,
standing where the bottom of the man’s ladder had been. Horace had let the ladder fall and now seemed to be closely examining the water butt at the back of the house, oblivious to the window cleaner’s demands that he put the ladder back so he could get down and on with his work.

‘For God’s sake, get him to put the ladder back up,’ the window cleaner yelled. ‘I’ve been stuck up here in your bedroom for forty minutes and I’ve got fifteen more houses to do today. That bloody man …’

Mrs Wiley grabbed Horace and dragged him into the house and up to the bedroom. She unlocked the door, shoved him inside and let the man out. That done, she had made herself what in normal circumstances she’d have called ‘a nice cup of tea’ and tried to think. At least Esmond was going to the Ponsons’ and obviously she would have to … No, she couldn’t let a psychiatrist see Horace. He’d lose his job at the bank if he was sent to a loony bin or even if it got out that he had had a nervous breakdown. Loony bin was not the politically correct term she’d have used in polite society but in Horace’s case it seemed entirely appropriate; he was loony.

So with these thoughts turbulently rising in what there was left of her own mind, it was hardly surprising that her driving was even more dangerously erratic than usual, leaving Esmond in a state of nervous exhaustion and terror.

By the time they reached the Ponsons’ bungalow
he was practically speechless. They were greeted by Uncle Albert, bubbling with false bonhomie. In the background, Belinda was far less enthusiastic, eventually offering them tea in a tone of voice that suggested it was the last thing she wanted to offer.

‘Now come on in and make yourselves at home,’ said Albert, but Vera was too upset to accept.

‘I’ve simply got to get home to poor Horace. He’s in a dreadful state,’ she said, and clasping Esmond to her ample bosom promptly burst into tears. Then, tearing herself away and kissing Esmond, much to his embarrassment, on his lips, she turned away from her darling boy and a moment later was driving back to Croydon and to her evidently demented husband.

In Vera’s absence, Horace had had a marvellous day. She had been so distraught at the prospect of losing her darling son to that awful Belinda that she had forgotten to take the key to the bedroom out of the door and Horace had managed to push it through onto a sheet of newspaper and pull this into the bedroom. Five minutes later he had found his razor in the bathroom where Vera had hidden it. He shaved and then, dressed in his best suit and carrying a hastily packed suitcase, he locked the door of the bedroom, pocketed the key and hurriedly left the house with a smile on his face.

It was more than a smile; it was a look of triumph. For the first time since his marriage, Horace Wiley
felt a free man, a new man, a man with none of the ghastly emotional encumbrances his bloody wife had foisted onto him.

Spending the week in bed feigning madness – walking the floor at night and laughing maniacally whenever he thought Vera might be listening – had given him time to think. He’d decided that, finally, enough was enough. He was done with Vera, with her horrible relatives and with his lurking beast of a son. He wasn’t going back to his job at the bank. He didn’t need the salary now that he had escaped his responsibilities. For years he had been putting money into a private pension fund and an even larger amount he’d made on the stock market into a numbered account in Switzerland, both without telling his damnable wife. From now on she could fend for herself and for her wretched son.

Horace strode down Selhurst Road and, finding himself passing the Swan & Sugar Loaf, a pub he’d never frequented and where he wouldn’t be recognised, went in and ordered a large whisky by way of celebration.

Horace took his drink to an empty corner and considered his next move. It was going to be a radical one. Going abroad was the obvious answer: Vera would never imagine him doing that. She was too scared of flying and until this moment he hadn’t been too keen on it himself. But now he was a free man, a new man, he no longer cared how he travelled, only that he got as far away as possible.

Because of their fear of flying the Wileys had never been abroad, and Horace realised that his first priority was to get a passport. He wasn’t at all certain, now he came to think about it, just how one went about it but he had an awful feeling that it involved filling in lots of forms and having photographs signed by doctors or fellow bank managers. He was sure that he had had to sign, in an official capacity, a photograph of a very dodgy-looking Jenkins when the junior clerk had been off to Amsterdam on his stag do. Horace wouldn’t even be able to take the first step of getting a photograph taken quickly since it was Saturday and the post office where there was a photo booth was closed in the afternoon.

For a while Horace was crestfallen at this early curtailment of his plans but he brightened up when a fresh idea struck him. Finishing his whisky, he went down to the bank, unlocked the door and cut off the alarm system before entering. Once inside he locked the door again and unlocked the safe containing the personal documents etc. of the clients. It took over an hour to sift through the various last wills and testaments, ancient Premium Bonds and frayed and faded love letters stored in the safety-deposit boxes, but finally he found a passport with a photograph which bore at least a passing resemblance to him. It was perhaps less than ideal that it was held in the name of one Mr Ludwig Jansens who had been born in Jelgava some seventy years previously but the toll
recent events had taken on Horace’s looks meant that in a dim light it might do.

Having finished and locked the door once more, he set the alarm and went further along the high street where he caught a bus to the station on East Road. Two hours later, he was happily installed in an expensive hotel in London under his new false name. From now on he was going to treat himself well, and besides, it was the last place Vera would look for him.

That night Horace had an excellent dinner and got uproariously drunk to celebrate his freedom.

The next morning he had breakfast in his hotel bedroom trying to think how he could escape Britain without leaving any evidence of his ultimate destination. It would have to be in Europe. He now had a passport but that could be recorded if he tried to get into somewhere like America and his whereabouts subsequently traced. He would be safe enough once he was in the EU. There were no records of frontier crossings between Italy and France or Germany for that matter.

Horace still wasn’t sure where he would hide from that dreadful wife he had so insanely married. And from the son he had obviously conceived, and whose mirror image had driven him to drink and, almost, to madness. It was only when he went down to settle his bill that he was inspired by an article in a newspaper on a side table. It mentioned Latvia belonging to the European Union. It was meant to be. Why on
earth hadn’t Ludwig’s passport made him think of Latvia in the first place? It was perfect. From there he could get into Poland and then into Germany or anywhere else leaving no trail behind him.

Horace paid the hotel in cash and went to a travel agency where he explained that he had a phobia about flying and wanted instead to travel by boat to Latvia.

‘The boats to Latvia are not liners. They are essentially steamers carrying cargo,’ the clerk told Horace.

‘Why are they called tramp steamers?’

‘I’ve always thought it’s because they’re so slow. And I have to warn you that the passenger accommodation is nothing to write home about.’

Horace was about to say that writing home was the last thing he was going to do, but kept his thoughts to himself. He booked a passage and paid for it, then went out into the street with his documents. He was particularly pleased that the clerk had merely glanced at his passport and had written the wrong name down. Things were going well.

Vera’s feelings were the exact opposite to those of Horace. To say she was unhappy would be the understatement of far more than a year. She’d never been so desperately miserable in her life and of course she blamed Horace. If he hadn’t gone off his head she wouldn’t have had to send her love child to stay with that dreadful Belinda. She had never liked the woman and even before the wedding she had told Albert he had fallen for a hard and bitter gold-digger who would treat him like dirt. But he’d ignored her warning and look where it had got him: he was completely under her thumb to the point where, he told her, Belinda made him take his shoes off before he entered the house when he came home from work to prevent him making the thick carpet dirty.

By the time she had driven back through the evening rush-hour traffic – ‘crawled’ was a more precise word – accompanied by the shouts of furious drivers to ‘move on, you stupid bitch’, Vera was exhausted emotionally and physically. She dropped into a kitchen chair, put her head on the table and burst into tears. Finally she fell asleep, waking two hours later to find the sun had set and she was in darkness.

Vera turned the light on and although she wondered whether she should go upstairs to check on Horace she decided against it. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t become an alcoholic none of this would have happened. He could go without his supper. He could go without his breakfast too for all she cared. Horrible, horrible man to have driven away her sweet boy.

Vera wasn’t hungry herself but all the same she knew she had to keep her strength up. She opened a tin of baked beans and made some toast and having eaten them went upstairs to her room and bed.

Just before she dropped off it did occur to her that the bedside lamp in Horace’s bedroom wasn’t on. Well, he was probably asleep. Whatever he was, she didn’t care. All her thoughts, such as they were, centred on her darling son.

Vera need not have bothered. Esmond was having a wonderful time. Belinda had proved to be much more friendly than he had been led to expect.

Soon after his arrival, Belinda had insisted that Esmond change out of his blue suit and into something more comfortable – and, quickly realising that casual clothes were evidently not part of Esmond’s wardrobe, she’d loaned him a pair of Albert’s tracksuit bottoms. They looked a trifle odd teamed with Esmond’s customary shirt and tie, but he had to admit that they were very comfortable indeed.

Belinda had then shown him how to use the jacuzzi. Esmond had never seen a jacuzzi before and thought it looked very exciting, although he had been a little
embarrassed by Aunt Belinda’s enthusiasm when she started to take her clothes off and get in to demonstrate how it worked properly, and he politely declined the invitation to join her in it.

In fact, everything about the bungalow seemed both exciting and wonderfully modern to him. His bedroom had a television in it and even a small espresso machine for making coffee. And just outside, he could see a large kidney-shaped swimming pool. In short, Ponson Place was as luxurious as anything he’d ever seen and decked out with stuff which was quite unlike the dull furniture at 143 Selhurst Road.

By the time Esmond came back to the sitting room with a still-rather-damp Belinda he had made up his mind that he was going to enjoy staying with the Ponsons. Uncle Albert had just poured himself a large Scotch.

‘Have a drink,’ he said. ‘What’s your poison?’

Esmond hesitated. He’d never heard the expression before.

‘Poison?’ he asked.

‘What do you want to drink, lad?’

‘I think I’ll have a Coke.’

‘Haven’t got any. Try a good malt,’ said his uncle and, without waiting for an answer, handed Esmond a glass half filled with brown liquid from a bottle. It was labelled Glenmorangie. Esmond looked at the date on the front of the bottle. It was a very tattered label and said the contents were twenty years old.