The Night Following Page 7

  Bye for now

  Arthur

  THE COLD AND THE BEAUTY AND THE DARK

  1932

  Chapter 3: Only a Week to Go

  Evelyn saw Stan and his mother off from the door herself. It was a dry evening, but foggy. Mrs. Ashworth sniffed and turned up the fur collar on her good coat.

  “Nice spread, Evelyn,” she said, nodding.“Much obliged to your Mam. Come on, Stan, that train’ll be along.”

  Stan, winding his red scarf around his neck, glanced down at his mother and then at his fiancée.

  “Aye, right nice it was, say ta again for us, will you?” he muttered, shuffling towards Evelyn for a kiss. Mrs. Ashworth cleared her throat and stared hard at her son.

  She does it on purpose, the old curmudgeon, Evelyn thought. She wasn’t letting the two of them have even a minute alone to say good night. She could at least pretend to be busy putting on her gloves or looking up the street. But Evelyn didn’t care. They’d got through the ordeal of Stan with his mother in tow meeting all the assembled Leigh family for a special Sunday tea, a week before the wedding. Mrs. Leigh had soaked and braised a whole ham, and she and Evelyn and Auntie Peg had all been baking for days, to say nothing of the sweeping and polishing of the house, which was always spotless, anyway.

  But it had all gone off all right, and on top of that there was her lovely new locket. While Stan dithered about kissing her good night in front of his mother, Evelyn fingered it gently at her throat and smiled shyly at him. In less than a week they would be a married couple, and with her help he would start standing up to his mother at last. Mrs. Ashworth had had her own way with him too long, ever since his father cleared off. Everybody said so. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right for Stan. In the meantime, Evelyn wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

  “You’re very welcome I’m sure, Mrs. Ashworth. ’Night, then, Stan,” she said brightly. “See you tomorrow, six o’clock sharp. You haven’t forgotten you’re taking me to the pictures, have you?” She darted forward and pressed her lips to his cheek, kissing him with a loud smacking sound.

  And thank you again for the beautiful locket, Stan,” she said, loud enough for his Mam to hear. “Ta-ta, then, Mrs. Ashworth! Mind how you go in the fog.”

  Mrs. Ashworth’s only reply was a pursing of the lips. Evelyn didn’t care. Make all the nasty faces you like, she thought. By this time next week I’ll be kissing your precious Stan all I please, only right smack on his lips, and right in front of you in your own house. And you won’t be able to do a thing about it.

  Mrs. Ashworth took Stan’s arm decisively, turned him up Roper Street, and marched him away. They made a funny pair of shapes, her as wide as she was high, Stan so tall and rangy. He didn’t look back once, but Evelyn hadn’t expected him to. In the fog she could only make out the bright red scarf, anyway.

  Mam and her aunties Peg and Violet were seeing to the dishes and no doubt gossiping about their visitors, going over the details of Mrs. Ashworth’s frock no doubt, and the habit she had of sniffing ever so daintily at her teacup before she sipped from it. How even she hadn’t been able to resist Mam’s Eccles cakes and how Peg had tried not to stare when she had reached for her third one! How she tried to look down her nose, as if she were doing them a favour letting her Stan marry into the Leighs! And then when Evelyn had shown them all the pretty locket Stan had just given her, how the woman hadn’t known whether to bask in the Ashworths’ largesse, or tut over her son’s extravagance.

  The menfolk, Violet’s husband, Bill, and Peg’s sons, Bradley and Will, were in the front room, also ruminating over the meeting of their future relations by marriage. But they did so more contemplatively, puffing on cigarettes and pipes, their talk interspersed with many a grunt and long stare into the fire. Stanley Ashworth seemed a sound enough lad. On the quiet side, but this was no criticism; the Leigh menfolk weren’t big talkers themselves. Anyway, they never got too worked up about such matters. They didn’t speculate deeply about a man’s character, they waited to see what he was made of. It was better to stay slightly puzzled by it all, and let the lasses get on with unravelling all the ins and outs of courtship and marriage and the uneasy unions of families. It wasn’t that the men liked being puzzled by it all, it was just that they liked a quiet life and the best chance of that was not to interfere with woman talk that they could never hope to understand.

  That night in her bedroom Evelyn took off her locket and studied it carefully. Stan had given it to her sheepishly, hanging back in the hall as he’d arrived, while Mrs. Leigh had taken charge of his mother and led her away into the front room. He had pressed the box into Evelyn’s hand and said, “Hope it’s to your liking. Not had much call to go buying jewellery, it’s nothing to write home about. Hope it suits.”

  “Why, Stan!” she had cried, opening the little velvet box. “It’s lovely!”

  Now she held it up and gazed at the locket in her palm. Really, a locket was more useful than a ring, she told herself. A ring could get in the way if you were doing a dirty job like raking out the fire or scouring the front step. You’d either have to take it off and worry about losing it or you’d worry about scratching it. A locket you could just put on and forget about. There would be a little wedding band for her finger soon, for decency’s sake, and that was all anyone needed.

  “Oh, and it’s got ever such a strong clasp, Stan. No fear I’ll be losing it!” she had said to him, watching it spin from its chain. In the dark hall it hadn’t caught the eye half as much as it would in a brighter room. In proper sunshine, come the summer, the etched pattern of leaves on the silver surface would surely throw back the light quite beautifully.

  “It’s only silver,” grunted Stan.

  “But silver’s lovely!” Evelyn had reassured him. “Silver’s better on me, with my colouring. Silver’s much more flattering than gold, in my opinion. It’s much more wearable. In fact I believe I prefer it to gold. Honest, I do.”

  She had placed the locket against her throat while Stan watched her in silence. Eventually she had turned her back to him and dipped her head.

  “Do it up for me, Stan?” she’d said, lifting her hair from the back of her neck.

  “I can’t be doing with them fiddly things. My hands is too big.”

  “Oh, go on, do! At least try, Stanley Ashworth!”

  Stan, fumbling awkwardly, had managed to secure the clasp. Evelyn twirled around to face him again, smiling radiantly.

  “I shall have to get a nice photo of you now,” she had said. “To keep in it. A nice one of you, on our wedding day.”

  “Who’d want my ugly mug in a locket?” Stan had replied. “Wait and get one of this precious baby o’ yours, when it turns up. That’d be more like it.”

  That had caused Evelyn to gasp with excitement. “Oh, Stan!” she had said, her eyes filling with tears. He was as good as saying he wanted her to get a proper baby portrait taken, when the time came. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said about the baby!”

  But Stan hadn’t heard. He had already turned and was on his way into the front room where Mrs. Leigh’s special tea was waiting.

  In the dark of her bedroom Evelyn smiled to herself as she got into bed. Stan was so straightforward, really. A man’s hungry so he goes off to get his tea, what could be simpler than that? She was grateful for his good appetite, remembering the sight of him a little later, folding slices of ham and beetroot from his knife into his mouth, face bent low over his plate. That Mrs. Ashworth obviously didn’t overfeed him. But she, Evelyn, would try to learn to be as good a cook as her Mam, and everybody knew what satisfying a man’s stomach led to, if you were patient.

  27 Cardigan Avenue

  Dear Ruth

  Can’t a man sleep undisturbed in his own house at a time of his own choosing?

  Mrs. M from across the road barged in again. Said she was worried to see the curtains unopened in daytime-I wanted to say this was to DETER people like her, not have opposite effect and bring no
sy old bags knocking.

  Didn’t get the chance though because she came barrelling in, took one look at my sorting-out handiwork (another pile started in hall, thinking practically again, nearer the door come time for the final chuck-out) and of course she got the wrong end of the stick. I suppose I can see why, hall’s filling up and the dining room also pretty crammed now-but it’s only on the surface and did she give me a chance to explain the system?

  All these piles are either stuff for a particular purpose, or it’s stuff going eventually in a particular place eg: crockery. No need for all the china we managed to accumulate now there’s only me, so am streamlining operations in kitchen and dining room. Am considering including flowerpots in with crockery. Those ones in conservatory you’ve got begonias in. Are they begonias? Have to report all now deceased, therefore pots can go at some point. No real urgency.

  But lemonade bottles. They don’t go into same pile as cassettes and records. Obvious, I’d have thought. But Mrs. M’s the kind of woman who shouldn’t see anything half-finished. She’s clearly of limited intelligence and prone to overreacting.

  Last time, forgot to mention, she implied I wasn’t up to cutting the grass. Understandable to have let it go in the circumstances, she said, and would I like her precious son Tony to get it back to rights next time he comes over to see to hers. I was civil but firm. I’ll do it in my own good time. Maybe when this leg trouble has eased off.

  I don’t recall ever hearing he was a paramedic. She claims you knew. Obviously Tony can Do No Wrong. She subjected me to latest, he’s been on some extra training course or other.

  By the way-I hadn’t noticed till Mrs. M pointed it out, and Carole may have mentioned it, too. It’s not like you, but you slipped up this time. These new clothes don’t fit. You bought me all that cruise stuff in the wrong size. Everything is way too big-Mrs. M said I need to look for a belt for the slacks or there’s going to be a mishap! Didn’t like the look on her face when she said that.

  Couldn’t find a belt but made do with that checked tie we nearly quarrelled about. It IS too purple but it does the job.

  Nothing I can do about the shirt collars, they gape a bit. These days a sweater on the baggy side still passes muster, I suppose.

  At least there’s plenty of it, the cruise stuff, so I needn’t brave the dials on the washing machine just yet. All gobbledygook to me. I never saw so many clothes. Maybe you had in mind not just the cruise on the Belle Aurore Atlantis but the first couple of months in Oz as well, just in case our shipped crates didn’t arrive, or worse, went AWOL. You’re good about things like that. I may not have said so.

  Bye for now

  A

  later

  It’s raining tonight. Wonder what rain’s like when you’re out at sea. It’s only now we’re not cruising the ocean wave I wonder we ever thought we’d get away without mishap, small or great. We had a nerve, thinking we could pull a stunt like that, a six-week cruise and a new life waiting. Got rather upset with this line of thinking so resorted to reading.

  Iread about the accident in the paper, holding myself tight, my heart bumping against my folded arms.

  There was a poetic touch in the way the story of the FATAL HIT AND RUN was told. The paper reported that the scene of the incident was in the heart of idyllic countryside, in an area of outstanding natural beauty. There were two photographs of it: pre-outrage, innocent as a calendar, and afterward, tainted by a cordon of police tape and mounds of flowers in cellophane. “The horror scene” burgeoned treacherously with spring blossom and daffodils, a death trap masquerading as a beauty spot. The implication was that dying somewhere beautiful might have made a difference to childless, recently retired English teacher Ruth Mitchell (61) of 27 Cardigan Avenue, Monkwell Down, and her devastated husband, Arthur (68).

  The article didn’t suggest which way the difference might have gone, whether death’s random visitation upon that particular place would forever after sully its beauty or whether the place’s beauty had assuaged, if only momentarily, the bane of death. It did not ask what message about a life might be carried in the very last thing the eye beheld. I wanted to know, if that final blink closed on one last imprinted image of beauty rather than of ugliness, would a person reach a conclusion, just as she was leaving it, about the relative aggregations of glory and squalor in the world? It seemed important.

  The West Wiltshire Gazette did not speculate. It dwelled instead, naturally, on what kind of monster was responsible for such a crime. It seemed almost odd that I did not read my name in the same sentence as “the perpetrator of this callous and evil criminal act” and I found myself whispering, it’s me.

  I stared again at the two photographs in the paper. Suddenly I was back there, on that April afternoon. I retched and started to sweat; I saw again the hideous colours of the day and the burning sunlight, I felt the deep heavy jolt as the car struck her, and her fall to the ground. I heard the silence. I saw her on the road as only I had seen her, blood pumping from her dead brain and the crows gathering to feast.

  I forced myself to read to the end of the article. The police were appealing for witnesses and “pursuing every lead.” Why wouldn’t they come here, and find the Saab locked in the garage? I wanted them to come. I wouldn’t lie. Confession is supposed to relieve everyone, especially the guilt-laden. But even if the next headline on the front page of the West Wiltshire Gazette was FATAL HIT AND RUN: DOCTOR’S WIFE GUILTY, would it bring relief, would it make any difference at all?

  The piece ended with another photograph of the couple as young teachers: DEDICATED TO YOUTH WELFARE: RUTH AND ARTHUR AT OVERDALE OUTDOOR EDUCATION CENTRE, followed by an unpoetic paragraph about cycling fatality statistics and safety helmets.

  I slept in my clothes, and woke up, before the alarm clock sounded, at nine o’clock in the evening. No drifting around the house tonight; the place was eight miles away, not that the distance meant anything in itself, nor did the rain.

  The sky and the cold land together had sunk to an equal darkness, reaching a muffled, stony equilibrium through which I walked with the greatest care. Though the dark was not absolute, the night seemed marginless and I disembodied. I kept close by the hedges. Above the rain and the distant sighing of traffic from the motorway I heard everything: I heard the click of an insect’s wings as it landed on a stem by a garden wall and I heard the singing, empty vastness of the sky above me. It occurred to me that I should have been afraid to be out alone on the road at night, but fear didn’t come. Rather, what a freedom it was, to walk under this sky instead of the wide, lit gallery of the sun’s arc, illuminating every act and failure of a day in its long, sad slide towards nightfall.

  Above the high open stretch of road near the place, the moon was a dull ellipse of silver through the thinning cloud, and the houses behind the orchard wore the moonlight coldly, like a sheeting of ice. Under the trees, rainwater trapped in the leaves and blossoms fell on me in slower, wetter drops than on the open road. The traffic cones and cordon of tape had gone, but the bank of piled-up flowers and stuffed toys remained; sodden teddy bears and dripping cuddly dogs presided over a floral shrine almost touching in its pointlessness. Among the flowers lay sheets of waterlogged paper bearing half-obliterated messages, like handkerchiefs drenched in charcoal tears. The huge curling letters of RUTH were turning into watery ghosts of themselves, receding into vagueness. Water plocked down and pooled into little crevices in the cellophane under which the offerings of flowers, trapped in bunches by strings and wires, were already darkening with slime. I knelt down and tore at them, releasing from the crackling of wrappings a shower of cold water and a rank, drainy stench. I pulled some of the rotting blooms off their stems and picked at their petals, tidying and primping what was left of their lolling heads. Slippery black stuff clung to my fingers.

  Some of the flower heads were luminous; others seemed soaked in grey. Drifting through the smell of the dead flowers came the smell of the dying ones, cold and peppery: ca
rnations, roses, lilies, clouds of angel breath. I picked out the ones that reflected back the moon’s brightness and I discarded the ones that looked dead-they must be, by daylight, the red and orange and purple and blue. All this absorbed me for quite some time. I went through every bunch until I had picked out every pale flower and made a pile of them. The dark ones I threw away over the wall under the trees. When I got to my feet my knees buckled. I was freezing cold; I placed my fingers in my mouth to warm them and the sticky mixture of mud and stalks and crushed petals on my hands tasted bitter, though not poisonous, or at least not yet. It had the tang of something intermediate, something nearly dirty; poised between living sap and the sodden musk of last year’s leaves, it was a sharp, growing taste which was nonetheless prognostic of decay and irretrievable rot.

  One by one I lifted the pale flower heads from the pile and cast them out across the road which shone and shifted under the moon and swaying trees like a dark river. Then I started to walk away. At the crest of the hill I turned back. I could make out the swirl of flowers on the road, seeming astronomically distant, pale dots of whiteness gleaming in a paradox of a galaxy: infinite yet bordered, its darkness sheltered by a stand of trees. I turned away, and behind me a constellation of water-laden stars rolled across an endless sky, drifting and dispersing over the spot where she had died.

  Dear R

  Just as well I’m not venturing out of doors to any extent (legs) because I’d stick out like a sore thumb in these colours.

  It’s all way too bright, the cruise wear. I said as much to you at the time but as usual was overruled. And it’s a bit lightweight for June but if I put on enough layers I get by temperature-wise.

  Not an issue at night, of course, the colours. Everything gets damped down in the dark. Not just colours. Makes it easier to cope. In the dark it’s not so obvious you’re not here. I can imagine that you are and I just can’t see you.