Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense (16 page)

Avril again retreated and went and potted James. When she came back, Kevin was pretending to be asleep. The rigidity of his body showed he wasn't really. She knew his mind was working, rehearsing tiny humiliations, planning revenges, planning more success. He worked hard to make himself what he wanted to be.

She sat down at the dressing table and picked up a new jar of cream to remove her make-up. But she didn't open it. Somehow she felt something might still happen; he might get out of bed and put his arms round her. “Kevin . . .”

The totality of his silence again gave the lie to his appearance of sleep.

“Kev, did you mean that about not going away this weekend?”

“No, I'm going.”

“On this shooting course?”

“Yes.”

“But you told Alex you might not.”

“Because it wasn't his business. I was bloody annoyed at you for starting talking about shooting anyway.”

“But you only bought the gun this week. And they seemed to know about it. I thought at last there was a common subject we could all talk about.”

“Well, you were wrong. In future, stick to talking about cooking or children or the next door neighbour's car. And, for Christ's sake, let me go to sleep!”

“So you're definitely going this weekend?”

“Yes.”

“Taking the car?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking, if you weren't here, I could take the kids up to see Mum.”

“All the way to Rochdale?”

“It'd be a break. She'd love to see them. And now you've taken over the fourth bedroom, it's very difficult for her to come and stay down here.”

“I need a study. But even more than that I need sleep.”

“We could go up to Rochdale by train.”

“What? Do you have any idea how much fares are these days?”

“I'd just like to see Mum. She's getting on and she was pretty knocked out by that bout of 'flu.”

“If you can afford it out of the housekeeping, then go by all means.”

“You know I can't. You'd have to pay.”

“Well, I can't afford to.”

“You can afford brand new shotguns and shooting courses and bottles of wine and—”

“Avril!” Kevin sat up again in bed. This time he was icy cool, even more potentially violent than he had been when he was shouting. “I make all the money that comes into this household, so will you please leave it to me to decide how it should be spent. From an early age I have tried to better myself and I intend to continue to do that. When I die, the boys will be left in a much better position than where I started. I know what I'm doing.”

Avril sighed. “It depends on your definition of ‘better'. From where I'm sitting, everything seems to be a lot worse than it ever was.”

“I'm sorry, Avril. If you can't appreciate the improvements that I have brought into our lives, then I'm afraid there is no point in continuing this rather fruitless discussion.”

“Right.” Avril opened the jar of cream. “Right, I am now going to remove my make-up.”

“Fine.” Kevin looked curiously at the jar. “What's that stuff? It's new.”

“It's called rejuvenating cream.”

“Left it a bit late, haven't you?” he said and turned back into the duvet.

By eight o'clock on the Saturday night Avril was exhausted. The boys were so highly-strung at the moment. They were so tensely on their best behaviour at the new school that the release of the weekend made them manically high-spirited and quarrelsome. Kevin's absence didn't make things any easier. Though Avril often resented, or even laughed at, his performance as the stern Victorian
paterfamilias
, it did curb the boys' worst excesses. Without him there, and having made no friends in the area, the boys put all their emotional pressure on to their mother. She had to be playleader, entertainer, referee and caterer.

By eight o'clock, when she had finally dragged them away from the television and got them into bed, largely by brute force, she was absolutely drained. She collapsed on the sofa in the sitting-room and once again everything seemed to swim before her eyes.

A pall of depression draped itself over her. She tried to lift it by using her mother's eternal remedy, counting her blessings. She could hear her mother's voice, with its warm Lancastrian vowels, saying, “Now come on, our Avril, cheer up. Remember, there's always someone worse off than yourself. You just count your blessings, young lady.”

She felt a terrible lonely nostalgia and an urge to ring her mother immediately. But no, Mum needed her help now; she mustn't ring and burden the old lady with her troubles. That was giving in.

No, come on, our Avril, count your blessings.

Right, for a start, nice house, two lovely boys, husband very successful, making far more money than any of the other boys from Rochdale you might have married. Okay, marriage going through a sticky patch at the moment, but that was only to be expected from time to time. Kevin's was an exacting job, and it was only to be expected that some of the tension he felt should be released at home. It was her job as a wife to make that home an attractive place for him to return to and relax in.

And if he needed to get out sometimes on his own, she mustn't make a fuss. This shooting weekend would probably do him a lot of good. Do them both a lot of good, give them a break from the claustrophobia of marriage.

And he'd been so excited about the gun. He seemed to have spent all his spare time that week cleaning it and oiling it, fiddling with all the little pads and brushes that he had bought with it. And this weekend was his chance to show it off. It was no different from James's desire to take his new Action Man to school on his birthday.

And at least it wasn't a woman. Let him fiddle with guns to his heart's content, so long as he wasn't fiddling with another woman. True, he hadn't been fiddling with her much recently, but that again was just a phase. It'd get better.

She started to feel more confident. Good God, they hadn't kept the marriage going from Rochdale, through all his time at college, the squalid flat in Willesden, his awful job in I.C.I., bringing up small children, all that pressure and aggravation, for it to fall apart now.

No, it'd be all right.

Good old Mum. It always worked. Count your blessings and you'll feel better. Come on, they breed them tough in Rochdale. Pick yourself up, get yourself a drink and cook yourself some supper.

The sherry bottle was empty.

Oh no. She couldn't really go out to the off-licence and leave the boys alone in the house. They'd never wake, but . . . No, she couldn't. Anyway, come to think of it, she hadn't got any cash. The housekeeping didn't seem to go far these days, and with that dinner party in the middle of the week, there was nothing left.

Damn. She could really use a drink.

On the other hand . . . Upstairs in Kevin's study there was a whole huge rack full of wine. All those bottles that involved so much correspondence with what he called his “shipper” and so much consultation of books on wine appreciation and tables of good years and . . .

Yes, Kevin could certainly spare her a bottle of wine. A small recompense for her letting him go off for the weekend on his own. She wouldn't take one of his most precious ones, not one of the dinner party specials, just something modest and warming.

His study was unlike the rest of the house. It was the spare bedroom, but he had moved the bed out and had the room decorated in dark green. There was an old (well, reproduction) desk and leather chairs. It sought to capture the look of a gentleman's club.

The boys were never allowed inside. Avril was discouraged from entering except to clean. The difference in decor seemed symbolic of a greater difference, as if the room had declared U.D.I. from the rest of the house.

The wine-rack covered one whole wall. The range was extensive. Kevin approached the purchase of wine as he did everything else, with punctilious attention to detail and a desire to do the correct thing.

Avril chose a bottle of 1977 Côtes du Rhône, which surely couldn't be too important. Anyway, he owed her at least that.

There was a corkscrew on his desk, so she opened it straight away. The presence of the corkscrew suggested that Kevin himself drank the occasional bottle up there, which in turn suggested that somewhere he must have glasses.

She opened the cupboard by the window. She didn't notice whether there were any glasses. Something else took her attention.

Standing upright in the cupboard, with all its cleaning materials ranged neatly beside it, was Kevin's new shotgun.

Avril swayed for a moment. This dizziness was getting worse. She supported herself against the window frame and looked out into the road.

Parked exactly in front of their house was a silver-grey Volkswagen Golf.

It was the Monday evening before she got a chance to confront him. He had arrived back late on the Sunday and Monday morning was the usual scrum of forcing breakfast into her three men and rushing the boys through heavy traffic to their distant private school.

All day she phrased and rephrased what she was going to say to him, and when the opportunity came, she was determined not to shirk it. He had bought some sherry and poured her a drink, a perfunctory politeness which he performed automatically every evening before retiring upstairs with his brief-case to work until told that his supper was ready.

She took the glass, and, before he could get out his “Just going up to do a bit of work”, said, “I see you didn't take your shotgun away with you for your shooting weekend.”

He looked first surprised, then very annoyed. “You've been up rooting round my study.” When he was angry, his voice lapsed back into Lancastrian. The “u” in “study” sounded as in “stood”.

“I went up there.”

“Well, I wish you bloody wouldn't! I've got a lot of important papers up there and I don't like the thought of getting them all out of order.”

But she wasn't going to be deflected so easily. “Stop changing the subject. I want to know why you didn't take your precious brand-new shotgun with you when you went off on this shooting weekend.”

He smiled patronizingly. “Oh really, Avril. You don't know the first thing about shooting. It isn't just something you can step straight into. You have to learn a lot of theoretical stuff first—you know, safety drill and so on. You don't start handling guns straight away. I knew that, so I left the gun this time.”

“This time? You mean there will be more weekends?”

“Oh yes. As I say, it's not something you can pick up overnight.”

She looked downcast. He put his arms round her. “Why don't we go upstairs?”

She looked up into his eyes gratefully.

The phone rang.

“You get it. It's bound to be for you. Join me upstairs.” And he went up.

After the phone-call, she found him in the study rather than the bedroom, but she was too upset to register his change of intention. “It was Mrs Eady.”

“Mrs Eady?”

“Who lives next door to Mum. Kev, Mum's had a stroke.”

“Oh no. Is she . . . I mean, how is she?”

“Mrs Eady says it wasn't a bad one, but I don't know what that means. I'll have to go up there.”

“I suppose so.”

“Straight away. I'll have to. Can I take the car?”

“It's not going to be very convenient. I've got one or—”

“Kev . . .”

He crumbled in the face of this appeal. “Of course. Are you really going to go straight off?”

“I must. I can't just leave her.”

“What about the boys?”

“You can manage for a couple of days.”

“But getting them to school? If you've got the car . . .”

“Oh God, yes. Look, there's Mrs Bentley. Lives round in Parsons Road. Her son goes to the school. I'm sure she'd take them too.”

“How well do you know her?”

“Hardly at all. But this is an emergency.”

“Will you ring her?”

“No, you do it, Kev. I've got to dash.” She started looking round the room for a holdall to take with her.

“I think it'd be better if you rang, Avril. Avril. What are you looking at, Avril?”

It was nearly dark, but the study curtains were still open. The light from a street-lamp shone on the silver top of the Volkswagen Golf.

“That car. It's the third day it's been parked outside.”

“So what? Lots of people park round here. It's near the station.”

“But that car hasn't moved for three days.”

“Perhaps someone's left it while they go on holiday.”

“I don't think so.”

“Well, what do you think?”

“I don't know, Kev.” Abruptly she moved from the window. “I must go.”

The cars on the Mi kept blurring, losing their shape and becoming little blobs of colour. Avril clenched her jaw and tensed the muscles round her eyes, fighting to keep them open. In three nights she couldn't have had more than half an hour's sleep. Driving through Monday night and then the worry about Mum.

The fact that the stroke had been so slight and Mum had seemed so little affected by it only made things worse. The incident became a divine admonition. It's nothing this time, but next time it could be serious, and there's you living over two hundred miles away.

Not that Mum had said that. She wouldn't. She was temperamentally incapable of using any sort of emotional blackmail. But Avril's mind supplied the pressure.

No, Mum had been remarkably cheerful. She fully expected to die soon and regarded this mild stroke as an unexpected bonus, a remission. And she was delighted to see Avril, though very apologetic at having “dragged her all this way”.

Mum would be all right. Even if she were taken seriously ill, there would be no problem. She was surrounded by friends. Mrs Eady kept an eye on her and there were lots more ready at a moment's notice to perform any small service that might be required. That was what really upset Avril, the knowledge that her mother didn't need her. That, and the warmth that she encountered in her home town. The world of ever-open back doors and ever-topped-up teapots contrasted painfully with the frosty genteel anonymity of Dulwich.