Tread Softly (29 page)

‘OK, we close the business down and find jobs somewhere else. That's the only alternative. Where do we start?'

‘I've started,' Ralph said bitterly. ‘I've already approached various people, but no one's the least bit interested. It's my age, obviously. They think I'm past it, but they're too polite to say.'

‘Past it? At fifty-three?'

‘I'm nearly fifty-four. Anyway, in some jobs you're past it at
thirty
-four.'

‘Well, that's me done for too.'

‘Oh,
you
're all right. With your computer skills you'd be snapped up in a trice.'

Did she detect a note of jealousy? ‘But surely that's an advantage, Ralph. One wage is better than none.'

Ralph knocked his pipe sharply against the ashtray. ‘I don't intend to be kept by my wife.'

‘You may not have much choice.'

‘There's no need to rub it in.'

‘I'm only trying to help.'

‘There isn't any help. Not now.'

‘I'm sorry, Ralph, I don't agree. I admit the Bowden thing's a terrible setback, but if I can keep working that'll tide us over.'

‘And where are we going to live?'

‘I've told you – we'll rent a flat.'

‘Great! Ending our days in a grotty little bedsit.'

Lorna tried to draw on Agnes's vigour, her refusal to exaggerate.

‘Come off it, Ralph, we're hardly ending our days! You're still twelve years away from your pension. And I didn't say a bedsit.'

‘That's all we'll be able to afford.'

She went over to the window and peered out at the garden. Everything was shadowy, wet, depressing, dead. She could feel herself capitulating already. Ralph's relentless negativity was too much for her to withstand. The panic was surging back, Agnes's determined voice drowned by the craven bleating of her fears.

She heard Ralph strike a match, then another and another. Each one fizzled out, followed by a muttered curse. His failure to light his pipe seemed to symbolize their predicament. She remained standing at the window, watching drops of rain snail down the glass. Shapes in the garden came gradually into focus: the wooden bench, the laurel-bush, the dark stump of the beech-tree. It had fallen last year in a gale and crashed through the roof of the shed. Luckily the insurance had …

‘Ralph!' She wheeled round. ‘We're mad, stark staring mad! We've forgotten the insurance. How could we be so stupid?
They
'll pay.'

Ralph's expression didn't change. He was sitting with his shoulders hunched, one hand fidgeting on the chair-arm.

‘
Ralph?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you hear? The public-liability policy. End of panic – we can relax! I'm just amazed we didn't think of it before. But I suppose with all the upheaval of Agnes and my father … Oh, darling, I'm so relieved! Come and give me a hug.'

He didn't move. The muscle in his cheek was twitching.

‘What's wrong?'

‘Nothing. Leave it, can't you. I'm tired.'

‘Leave it? With a solution staring us in the face! I'm beginning to think I'm married to a masochist.'

He drained his whisky. His hand was shaking as he put the glass down. ‘They … won't pay,' he grunted at last.

‘Why ever not?'

‘I can't explain.'

‘Look, I've read the policy enough times, and there's no reason why they shouldn't.'

He put his head in his hands and let out a muffled groan.

‘Ralph, what
is
all this? I don't understand. We should be jumping for joy.'

‘We haven't any insurance,' he mumbled.

‘
What?'

‘I … didn't renew it.'

She stared at him, incredulous. The efficient, prudent businessman letting his insurance lapse? There must be some mistake. ‘You can't mean you forgot it?'

‘No.' His voice rose querulously. ‘But money was so damned tight. The renewal came at the worst possible time. There was a tax demand, a VAT demand, that big repair on the car. I did intend to renew it, Lorna, every day, I swear, but whenever any money came in it was swallowed up by yet another bill. Besides, we've been shelling out on premiums for ten years without putting in a single claim on the business. Then I make one mistake and all hell breaks loose.'

‘Stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself.
You
landed us in this mess.' How weak he looked suddenly, and shifty, deliberately avoiding her eye, and that stupid muscle still twitching in his cheek. Kathy was right: he wasn't her great protector – he was a bungler and a fool. ‘I can't
believe
you didn't renew it, Ralph. You must be out of your mind.'

‘Look, you're the one who sees to all that side of things. You should have –'

‘Don't you dare blame me! I distinctly remember telling you it had to be paid in December and did you want me to do it before I went into hospital. And you said no, you'd take care of it yourself this year. But I see now – you'd already decided not to renew it, hadn't you? You didn't even have the decency to talk it over with me. I slave my guts out for the business, and then you go behind my back and land us both in the shit.'

‘Slave your guts out? You've been sitting on your arse for three months.'

‘If I can't even have an operation without you begrudging me the time to –'

‘I don't begrudge you anything – you know that. You're just determined to put me down. But if
you
had to cope with the pressure I'm under you'd crack up in half an hour.'

‘Thanks very much! At least I wouldn't be idiotic enough to cancel the insurance – the one thing that's absolutely crucial. No wonder you don't dare go to court. They'd make mincemeat of you, running a business like ours with no insurance cover. And don't give me that spiel about never having needed it before. If you used
that
as a defence you'd be laughed to scorn.'

‘It's easy for you to criticize. What else could we have economized on? We've already cut out new clothes, new cars, holidays, painting the house, repairs …'

‘Couldn't you have discussed it with me first, though? That's what really hurts. We're supposed to work in partnership, but when it comes to the crunch it's
your
business – like this house is yours, and all the important decisions are yours. I'm just a minion, too lowly to be consulted.' Her cheeks were flaming, her heart racing – with fury now, not panic. She seized his whisky glass. ‘
This
is what's wrong with you,' she shouted, slamming the glass on the sideboard. ‘You keep telling me we have to economize, but think of all the money that gets pissed down the drain every day. How can you expect to run a business when you're always half cut?'

He sprang to his feet, his right hand clenched in a fist. She cowered, terrified he was going to hit her, but he just punched the fist into his other palm. ‘That's rich, I must say, coming from you. At least I haven't managed to kill us both through drunk-driving.'

Without another word she turned on her heel and marched out. Grabbing her coat, car-keys and a pair of battered shoes, she wrested open the front door.

‘Goodbye!' she whispered. ‘Good riddance!'

She sat shivering in the car outside Clare's flat. Where
was
Clare at five past midnight? The street seemed deserted except for a skinny black cat crouching under the hedge. The lamp-posts cast an amber glaze across pavements glistening with rain and trembling with the shadows of gaunt and naked trees.

She counted the lighted windows in the flats: fewer now than half an hour ago. People were going to bed – normal, solvent people, cuddling up companionably; husbands and wives safe, at peace; children who had living, breathing parents.

Was Clare away, perhaps? They had spoken only two days ago, but if her mother's flu was worse she might have had to rush off to Wales. Alone, she was prey to ominous visions of the future: she and Ralph thrown out of the house, living on benefit, pitied by their friends. Or she back in some lonely bedsit, jobless and despondent.

Listlessly she traced a series of noughts on the misted-up window. The panic had burned itself out, leaving the usual dregs of dejection, shame, fatigue. Her earlier attempts to rouse Ralph from his pessimism now seemed crass and superficial. His gloom had seeped into her bloodstream like a virus and was killing off all hope.

On an impulse she started the car. Driving – somewhere, anywhere – would serve as a distraction, despite (or even because of) the throbbing in her foot. Also it would give Clare time to return. Only Clare would take her in. True friends were rare.

As she turned into the main road, she passed a guest-house with a Vacancies sign outside, and was tempted for a split second to stop and book a room – human contact, a friendly welcome … But, in a strange place on her own, the Terrors were bound to strike again as soon as she closed her bedroom door. Besides, she would seem suspicious, arriving so late and dressed in an old gardening coat over a nightie.

Perhaps she should just go home, admit defeat.

No, dammit. For once in her life she had stood up to Ralph. She would
not
go grovelling back.

She continued past the golf-course into a more prosperous part of the town. No poky little houses crumbling with dry rot or large ones about to be repossessed. Stone lions stood guard outside colonnaded porches, flanked by bay-trees in smart tubs; carriage-lamps gleamed on gold-tipped railings designed to keep out ne'er-do-wells and bankrupts.

A car overtook her, followed by another. Each time she glimpsed only the anonymous back of the driver's head before they were swallowed up in darkness. This was how it would be when she and Ralph had gone their separate ways: a world inhabited by faceless strangers.

She glanced at her watch: ten to one. Clare
must
be back by now.

But, as she drew up outside the flats again and switched off the engine, silence closed around her. The world had shut down for the night. Only the sky was restless: menacing clouds besieging a sliver of moon.

She got out of the car, pulling her coat around her. The wind knifed between her bare legs, ran cold, taunting fingers through her hair. She pressed Clare's bell. No answer.

She stood wretchedly in the shelter of the porch, listening to the rain drumming on the balconies. Her thoughts kept circling back to Ralph. Had he drunk himself into a stupor or was he, too, awake? Perhaps he was out searching for her, sick with remorse.

Unlikely.

Returning to the car, she drove on aimlessly, wondering what to do and where to go. Even if she found an all-night café, she had no money for food or drink, and in any case she shouldn't really be driving at all. It was her first time since the operation, and her foot was registering its protest. She also felt uncomfortable without socks or underclothes, her rain-spattered nightdress clinging soggily to her legs. If only she could stop thinking about the future.
Was
there any future? – with Ralph? In some new job? The past, too, had changed grotesquely from her cherished vision of it: her parents' happy, stable marriage before the crash …

Preoccupied with thoughts of death and debt, she lost track of her surroundings. Trees and buildings flashed by – mere shapes and shadows; the road itself a strip of sleepy black until startled by her headlamps. But suddenly one building sprang into focus: a red-brick church on a corner. Why did it seem familiar? And then she remembered: she had noticed it a fortnight ago on her way to …

She must stop. At once. Turn round and go straight back. She had resolved never to come here again. It was dangerous. Indefensible.

But what did it matter at this hour? – he wouldn't be in. He worked five nights out of seven. She'd simply drive past, not even turn her head to look.

Or perhaps she'd just slow down, to see if the lights were on. That couldn't do any harm.

The place was in darkness. Well, what did she expect? He'd be at Oakfield House, as she'd thought. No point getting out of the car – it would mean braving the wind again, and she was cold enough already. And why ring the bell when no one was there?

She got out.

She rang the bell.

Silence.

She rang again, louder.

Scuffling footsteps crossed the hall. The door was flung open and she stood face to face with a stocky black man wearing garish purple pyjamas.

‘Oh, gosh, Olu … I'm terribly sorry.' She had forgotten Oshoba's brother. Forgotten caution, common sense.

‘You woke me up,' he snapped.

‘I'm sorry,' she repeated, not daring to look him in the eye.

‘What d'you want?'

‘Nothing. I … I was just passing and …'

He startled her by yelling over his shoulder, ‘Oshoba! That woman's here.'

She froze. So Oshoba
was
in. He mustn't see her. ‘No, really, Olu, I'll leave. I'm going now.'

But Oshoba was already emerging from the bedroom, draped in an old grey blanket. Beneath it he was naked. She could see his long black legs; the skin gleamed smooth and hairless, and instinctively she took a step towards him. ‘I'm sorry to disturb you. I happened to be driving past your door.'

‘I like to be disturbed.' He gave her a dazzling smile. His voice was hoarse and scratchy, little more than a whisper. ‘Come in, beautiful lady.'

‘He's not meant to talk,' Olu complained. ‘He's recovering from laryngitis.'

‘Oh, if you're not well, I'll …'

‘I
am
well,' Oshoba croaked. ‘Now you're here I'm very, very well.'

With a sniff of annoyance, Olu strode back across the hall and disappeared into the bedroom, slamming the door.

Oshoba shrugged and took her arm. ‘We'll go into the other room. I'm so glad you managed to get away. Did they tell you I was off work?'