Heaven's On Hold Read online

  ‘You. Just tip me the wink.’

  This leaving plan was something they’d always gone in for – who was going to make the decision and when, according to mood. Going through the motions of making the plan this evening provided the small but hollow comfort of familiarity, a reminder of a closeness they’d lost.

  While they were there it seemed for a while to return. In the safety of congenial company and warmed by the Martins’ easy hospitality they regrouped, conforming to their hosts’ perception of them. Freya took a while to go to sleep and required another bottle to help her do so – ‘ I always find that,’ commented Maurice – but once she dropped off and was safely bestowed in Maurice’s study with the baby alarm, she remained quiet.

  Supper was at the kitchen table. Mediterranean fish stew of awesome authenticity (Della had a tame fish man in the market who got her things) and a strictly English cheese board with stooks of giant celery.

  It was preceded by grace. ‘For friends and food and decent but affordable wine we thank you, Lord,’ intoned Maurice, adding fervently: ‘From washing up deliver us.’

  ‘You should start leaving that bit off,’ said Della as they sat down, ‘we’ve got a perfectly good dishwasher.’

  ‘But he likes to leave it in,’ protested Annet. ‘Because it makes him seem like a regular sort of guy, aren’t I right Maurice?’

  ‘Damn – rumbled! And by a woman, too.’

  There were a good many of these exchanges, because in this context Annet enjoyed the atheist’s freedom to say pretty much what she liked as long as it was amusing, and Maurice took pleasure in playing up to her. Seeing his wife in good form was for David like watching her through glass – a strange and interesting phenomenon, no longer connected to himself. The best of her seemed always these days reserved for others.

  After the stew, while the two of them were wrangling happily on the upkeep of church buildings, he helped Della clear. They carried the plates and dishes through into what had originally been the scullery, now a utility room. The Martins’ Labrador rose from its beanbag to greet them and Della pushed the door to behind them. ‘No you don’t. Excuse the mess.’

  Two cassocks were suspended on wire hangers from a pipe over the sink and there were animal dishes on newspaper on the floor into the largest of which Della scraped some leavings of bread and fish skin.

  David stared doubtfully as the dog wolfed this offering down. ‘Is that wise?’

  ‘She’ll eat anything. There were no bones in that lot. If there were some that by chance I missed we’ll know all about it come dawn patrol tomorrow. Or Maurice will – he’s got communion so it’ll be his turn with the bucket and cloth.’ She pressed her hands together with a delighted smile. ‘ Oh yes, I knew there was something I wanted to tell you.’

  ‘Unconnected, I hope?’

  ‘Totally, that’s how my mind works these days, or fails to. Do you remember at your party we talked about Robert Townsend, the man who died recently?’

  ‘Yes – George Bryce knew him.’

  ‘Everybody knew him. You know she’s moving?’

  ‘Actually we’re handling the sale.’

  ‘No—’ Della was an incurable gossip. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A whited sepulchre.’

  He had to smile at the unashamed relish with which this judgement was delivered. ‘Why?’

  ‘He led a double life. Had a complete secret orchard in town, for years.’

  Instinctively, David believed this, but for form’s sake said: ‘May one ask what your sources are?’

  ‘The best – queue at the village post office. I think the Reverend knows something more officially, but of course he wouldn’t dream of mentioning it. I’m only saying this to you like King Midas telling the ears of corn or whatever – I’ve got to tell someone and I know you’re the soul of discretion – but isn’t it fascinating?’

  ‘It’s rather sad. His poor widow.’

  ‘May I say something? I never liked her. A cold, miniature sort of person. Iced tea in her veins. Whereas he was lovely. I just hope his other life made him happy.’

  David returned to the table with plenty of food for thought. Maurice got up to fill glasses. ‘So what did you talk about? There isn’t a burning issue that hasn’t received the lighter-fuel treatment in here, I can tell you.’

  ‘We were gossiping,’ said Della, transferring the cheese from sideboard to table. ‘MYOB.’

  ‘I said people would start to talk,’ said Annet out of the side of her mouth to Maurice. ‘ We mustn’t make it so obvious.’

  On the way home – it had turned so cold that they’d borrowed Della’s quilted jacket to lay over the Moses basket – Annet asked:

  ‘So what were you gossiping about?’

  His decision was instantaneous, he was scarcely conscious of making it. ‘She was joking about that. We were discussing dogs and their upkeep. She’d just given hers the remains of the fish stew.’

  ‘And the best of British.’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  When they got home Annet took Freya upstairs. David found himself pottering a little longer than was strictly necessary. When he heard her go into their room, followed by the sound of the tap running, he waited another five minutes, then filled the kettle, a sound which bought him another two. When he eventually went upstairs her bedside light was off and she lay turned away from his, her eyes closed, hands folded child-like beneath her cheek. Her shoulder rose and fell evenly with her breathing, in a perfect – he hoped not practised – simulation of sleep.

  More in hope than expectation he looked out of the window. The night was sharp and clear, the ground bleached with moonlight, the black sky littered with an infinite dazzle of stars. But there was no one out there, either.

  On Sunday they were both suffering from a slight hangover, which had a temporary bonding effect. Freya woke at five a.m. in sparkling form.

  ‘It’s pathetic,’ said Annet. ‘Look at us, we’re out of practice. We don’t get out enough.’

  ‘Pity poor Maurice,’ David reminded her. ‘He has to spread the good news in this condition.’

  ‘Serve him right.…’

  During the morning they passed the baton of responsibility back and forth while attempting to read the papers. In addition David took Freya up to the studio for a while and doodled, and Annet, silent and headachey, dried out a chicken and reduced sprouts to a pulp. Afterwards she confessed herself beaten and took Freya upstairs for a nap. David lay on the sofa with his stockinged feet up on the arm and prepared finally to complete the week’s instalment of pitiless memoirs penned by the straying politician’s wife. But over the ensuing quarter of an hour it was clear Freya was having none of it and he trudged upstairs.

  ‘No go?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it. I can’t understand it, she’s been awake for hours, surely she’s knackered.’

  ‘She’ll drop off eventually,’ he said, picking his daughter up, and addressing her: ‘Won’t you?’

  ‘Don’t bet on it.’

  ‘I’ll take her out for a while.’

  ‘Would you, could you? I think I’ll die if I don’t close my eyes.’

  ‘Go ahead. We’ll go for a walk.’

  As he went down the stairs he tried not to think of Annet’s eyelids drooping as the delicious, warm tide of sleep washed over her, nor of the three thousand deliciously vengeful words left still unread on the drawing-room sofa. Since the birth of his daughter he had rediscovered, under threat of their loss, the keenest pleasure in small things. Bone-tired himself, he vowed that he would never again take for granted an afternoon nap, or nipping out to the pictures, or an undisturbed pint in the pub, or reading the Sundays … There had even been times, not so very long ago but scarcely imaginable now, when Sunday afternoons, drowsy with wine and food, had been occasions of sin.

  Just the same there were compensations. Following a crescendo of disapproval as he put on he
r pram suit, Freya went quiet when laid in the buggy, and her quietness was like a blessing bestowed on all three of them.

  So he was cheered, on setting out, to think that this simple exercise was enabling Annet to sleep.

  It was cold and bright, not a day for dawdling, and he set himself a straightforward out-and-back along the Stoneyhaye road. There was scarcely any traffic, and the village itself was closed. He encountered a couple of serious walkers with dogs, and one group which seemed to consist of hosts and visitors, surrounded by a loose scrum of small children. This reminded him of Tim and Mags and their difficulties. He remembered with affection his bruising honesty and her loyal dissembling, the combined effect of which had been to make him think more, not less, of their marriage. Stupidly he had always assumed that his brother and sister-in-law were pre-programmed for the long haul, that perhaps (it made him blush) they were simply too unimaginative to see the pitfalls. That both these assumptions were false both shamed and moved him. Almost superstitiously he clung to the hope that they would come through their time of trial.

  And then there was Gina. The idea was forming in his mind that he had to speak to her, to find out why she’d gone.

  Long before he’d turned for home, Freya had fallen asleep and now that he felt warmer he slowed down and walked at a more leisurely pace through the village. He resisted a temptation to revisit Orchard End, and not just because he’d been caught snooping there once already this week. He recognised in himself the base instinct to revisit the scene of the crime – or to be more accurate, the scene of the crime’s victim. It was true that he felt little sympathy for Mary Townsend. Not because of Della’s brisk condemnation of her, but because in his view of the story she was not much more than a cypher: it was Robert Townsend that interested him. What was clearly viewed by the village as a betrayal of the grossest kind, one that made a sham of the marriage vows, he could not help seeing as a perverse, almost sacrificial fidelity. Fidelity to two women, it was true, but fidelity nonetheless, an honouring of those vows made in the face of God and passionate, private promises.

  He did, however, pause at the school gate. Doing so now, with Freya, when the playground was still and empty except for a few yellowing leaves, went some way towards exorcising the ghost of his earlier humiliation. But the thought of how the incident would have been described by the young teacher in the staff room still made him acutely uncomfortable.

  After stopping at the school he described a figure of eight and looped back towards the church. There had been a service there that morning, they’d heard the bells – electronic these days – pealing for about fifteen mnutes from nine-thirty. Early for some, but their day had felt half over.

  Next to the churchyard from the direction in which he was approaching there was the field where the November the fifth bonfire was traditionally held – last year’s site was still visible like a dark corn circle, and the parish council had already made a start on this year’s bonfire with some old car tyres and a tepee of dead branches.

  Also in the field were the Fox-Herbert horses, grazing peaceably. David wasn’t much interested in horses, but these days they represented new possibilities as a diversion for Freya. She was a little young yet, but he could picture himself bringing her down here in the spring, perching her on the top of the gate to see them, perhaps bringing sugar lumps and bits of carrot … He paused and clicked his tongue experimentally. To his slight consternation both the horses lifted their heads and trotted briskly towards him, snorting, ears pricked, tails waving like flags. As they came to the gate and stretched their huge heads towards him he backed off respectfully. He had forgotten – or more likely never properly appreciated – the sheer size of these animals, the great eyes fringed with luxuriant lashes, the cavernous nostrils, the bewhiskered prehensile lips that groped and trembled in expectation of a titbit. One of them began to knock impatiently with his foreleg against the bottom rung of the gate, a rung which David could see was already cracked presumably from this very treatment, A little anxiously, in case he’d accidentally perpetrated some frightful breach of rural etiquette, he glanced about. The banging continued, and the other horse nodded its head so violently that a shower of greenish spittle landed on David’s sweater.

  He withdrew, reminding himself that when he did bring Freya he should be extremely circumspect: gate-perching such as he’d envisaged would be out of the question. When he looked over his shoulder the horses were standing to attention, watching him go with ears still at the high port, incensed no doubt at having been led up the garden path.

  Prompted by earlier reflections, David went round the church, towing the buggy behind him over the bumpy ground. Knowing what he now did, he wanted to see if Robert Townsend’s grave was still so conspicuously neglected. But someone was there before him – a woman kneeling alongside the plot, flanked by a handbag on one side and a green refuse sack on the other. He paused, unsure whether a widow nursing not just a grief but a grievance would wish to be disturbed.

  Just then she sat back on her heels, and at the same moment that he realised it wasn’t Mary Townsend, she looked over her shoulder and saw him.

  ‘Oh – hello,’ said Jean Samms. ‘You crept up on me.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ He was disconcerted. ‘Am I intruding?’

  ‘It’s common land as far as I know.’ She got to her feet in well-managed stages and took off her gardening gloves. ‘I was doing a spot of tidying.’

  ‘It needed doing,’ he agreed. ‘It was looking pretty sad last time I was here.’ He left the buggy where it was and went to inspect her handiwork. The plot was pin neat. ‘Forgive my asking, but – are you a relation?’

  ‘No. Just a friend.’

  He watched as she tied the top of the refuse sack, which was full of weeds and dead stuff.

  ‘His widow probably hasn’t had much time,’ he said, feeling it incumbent upon him as a resident to offer some excuse for the neglect. ‘She’s about to move house, and what with that.…’

  ‘Yes of course.’ She gazed thoughtfully at the plot. ‘ I might put a few bulbs in, do you think that would be taken amiss?’

  He wondered why on earth she would ask him, a stranger, such a thing. He certainly had no idea what the protocol was in such matters, and confessed as much.

  ‘Why not drop in on them,’ he suggested. ‘And ask.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Mrs Townsend’s daughter’s staying with her at the moment and I’m sure she’d be perfectly straight with you.’

  ‘I’m sure she would.’ She smoothed her hair back off her face with her strong, plain hands. And with this simple, sensuous gesture, gave herself away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said David. ‘ I think—’

  ‘Don’t let’s,’ she said. She stooped to pick up handbag and gardening gloves, and he quickly took charge of the bag of debris.

  ‘Allow me.’

  ‘There’s a bin next to the north porch.’

  He collected the buggy and they dumped the rubbish and returned to the path that led to the lychgate.

  She stole a look at Freya. ‘Your daughter looks none the worse for her adventure the other week.’

  ‘Quite the opposite. She doesn’t give a damn for the grownups’ day of rest. The price of this peace was a five-mile hike.’

  She smiled. ‘Still, you’re lucky.’

  ‘I know. I need reminding of that sometimes.’

  ‘I consider I’ve been lucky as well,’ she said. She said it firmly, meeting his eye squarely, quelling question or comment.

  ‘Good.’ With so much precluded, it was all he could think of to say. ‘I’m pleased.’

  A battered VW beetle chugged round the corner and pulled over a few yards short of them.

  ‘My carriage.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Well I never, perfect timing. Goodbye, it was nice to bump into you again. And the little one.’

  ‘Goodbye.’

  David found he could hardly bear to watch her go,
with her story untold, their conversation stillborn. She got into the passenger seat of the beetle and sat with studied calm as it started and stalled a couple of times before moving off.

  She didn’t look David’s way as they passed, but the driver did, bestowing on him the swift, uninterested appraisal of the young.

  The face that David saw, studded with metal and shadowed with stubble, was that of a youthful Robert Townsend.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There had been a time, David clearly remembered it, when he’d feared the arrival of a nanny because of the possibility of her coming between them. Now that Lara was here, and quite unwittingly did, he was glad of it. Her large, benign presence interposed itself like a cushion, absorbing the tensions, deflecting the anxieties, stifling those antagonisms which at the moment stalked their every exchange, waiting to pounce.

  The game plan, now that they were both back at work, was that Lara would arrive at eight-thirty, and that they would take it in turns to synchronise their departures with her arrival. In reality this meant that it was usually he who waited, because he had the shorter journey. The early mornings found him bleak and jaded. He tended to go to sleep wondering what had become of Gina, and wake up wondering much the same about his life. But the few minutes in which he handed over to Lara cheered him up, with the sense of the responsibility easing from his shoulders, and her unfailing breezy amiability.

  Perhaps this was why, halfway through his second week back, he couldn’t help noticing an infinitesimal cloud, not even as big as a man’s hand, on her generally sunny demeanour.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked, as she cupped Freya’s head beneath her chin, eyes closed, in the unashamedly tactile rapture that was one of her most endearing qualities. ‘You seem a bit subdued if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  ‘Say what you like boss, you pay me,’ was her predictable response, followed by: ‘You could be right.’

  He peered at her anxiously. ‘You’re not feeling ill, are you? Because if so I really think—’