Puppies Are For Life
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Frankly relieved that she’d gone, Harvey watched her snatch underwear from an open drawer and waggle her way around the bedroom in search of other bits of clothing. Then she disappeared into the bathroom and turned the shower on full gush. Never mind that she switched off The Time, The Place en route without asking him whether he wanted to watch it or not; he did, as it happened. And never mind that she activated a country and western cassette in the hi-fi system without asking him whether he wanted that either. He didn’t. At least she had gone.
Without too much effort he managed to reach the remote control where she had tossed it, and retrieved the programme; it would at least stop him thinking. But as luck would have it what did he find? A group of po-faced people banging on about how they had had to face redundancy.
‘Terrific,’ he muttered, and was about to zap it to kingdom come when one of the speakers caught his attention. In spite of himself he was soon straining to cut out Julia’s sing-along with Tammy Wynette in the shower, and to concentrate on the tragedies of life.
Well, what should he do with the rest of his own, he wondered as the presenter signed off rapidly and the closing music began to clash with the Tammy/Julia duet. Open a restaurant with his redundancy money like that twit on the box? At least, having loaned thousands in the past for similar ventures, he knew all the pitfalls one had to avoid. That chap he’d just been watching hadn’t a clue: he was obviously grossly under-funded and going to come a cropper.
How about back-packing round the world? Even though he had all but forgotten how to put one foot in front of the other. No, better to sell the car – perish the thought – and sail round. He stared at the ceiling. He really must do something.
A cloud of ‘Obsession’ announced Julia’s return to the bedroom and unaccustomed jealousy licked through him. Julia had always found plenty to keep her occupied. Since leaving the bank where she had worked as his secretary she had, at various stages, taken up ‘hairdressing in the home’, sold underwear on the party plan, and taught aerobics, aromatherapy, yoga and more recently, reflexology. She was qualified in none of these things, it had to be said, and would have looked blank if anyone had suggested she ought to be. But she always got by, and no doubt she always would.
Harvey had often wondered whether the typing certificates that had got her the bank job were genuine.
In the early days, when she had first tripped into his office each morning trailing a blanket of powerful perfume and oozing sex, he had hardly cared whether she could type or not. She had pepped up his life no end at a time when it had begun to go stale because all his friends seemed suddenly to be married and unavailable.
He found her fascinating and different, like no other woman he knew. The fact that her lip would curl in a snarl if he dared to ask her to type something, or that his letters came back as mis-spelt missives set crookedly on the page, seemed somehow irrelevant. She would bat her long lashes at him, rendering futile any complaint, and make him feel horribly wrong for daring to be critical. He felt the need to protect her; to do things for her, when she was supposed to be looking after him! Before long he was in love and wondering how it had happened.
Re-discovering Lucy-Ann lying on the carpet Julia picked her up and sat her on the shelf where a crowd of other dolls and stuffed animals jostled for space.
‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’ she said, standing back with her head on one side. She smiled at Harvey where he lay spread out on the bed with his arms behind his head, and blew him another thank you kiss.
But Harvey knew it was the bracelet he had tucked inside the doll’s bloomers that had gone down best. It sparkled on Julia’s wrist as she dressed herself in a red stretchy body-suit and tight black jeans. He sighed. How much longer would she stay with him? Until his money ran out? He’d never felt absolutely sure of her; now he was even less certain. And she was so damned difficult to talk to. She kept her thoughts to herself – presumably in the belief that she had nothing worthy to say to a man of his superior intelligence. So he’d given up asking for her opinion, and if he were suddenly to defer to her after all these years he felt he would take a dive in her estimation.
He opened his eyes slowly. Julia had pulled on cream high-heeled boots and a matching leather jacket with fur lining. Her lips were an identical red to the body-suit, and her skin sported a false tan. Leaning towards him for a final kiss she gazed into his worried face.
‘You know, Harvey,’ she said in her earnest, oddly motherly way, ‘you really should find yourself something to do.’
The garnet and pearl bracelet clashed against the steering wheel as Julia started the engine. She clucked her tongue and secured the clasp. Really, she thought, Harvey should not have spent so much money. He might not get another job. He kept saying he would, but it wasn’t going to be that easy. She was more aware of the situation than he gave her credit for.
Huh! When did he give her credit for anything? He wouldn’t even discuss things with her – kept his own counsel about anything important on the assumption that she wasn’t clever enough to understand.
And she didn’t need to be given things like this, either, beautiful though they were. But he went on doing it year after year as if this was the only way he could hang on to her. It was annoying and somehow degrading; as if she could be bought. She loved him for himself, but he never seemed to believe it.
Her eyes fell on the pile of books in the passenger foot-well. He wouldn’t believe her capable of doing GCSEs either. Actually she could hardly believe it herself. Her tutor was constantly having to assure her that she really had it in her. Fancy! Dumb old Julia doing exams! Harvey would laugh his socks off if he knew.
But he wouldn’t know … yet. Wait until she passed and had certificates to prove it. Then he would have to laugh on the other side of his face.
She had thought the game was up when he was made redundant. How could she continue to keep her studying secret? But the past few weeks had shown how easy it was to pull the wool over his eyes, even with him being at home all day. He had simply assumed that she was out of the house so much because she had taken on more hairdressing; more yoga classes. He hadn’t objected at all. Presumably he felt he could hardly do that since what she earned would be their only income for a while.
Until recently she had wrestled with her assignments at home or in the college library, but of course home was out of the question now, and she had taken to going to the public library because it was eight miles nearer than the college and there were so many things to fit in to her day. This was undoubtedly risky but it couldn’t be helped. She just had to keep her fingers crossed that Harvey didn’t walk in one day and find her there. She would die if that were to happen. She would. She would die.
CHAPTER 5
‘Another corned beef sandwich?’
Uncle Bert’s elderly next-door neighbour advanced across the carpet with a mountainous plate in her hands. ‘Plenty more in the fridge, Mr May. Another three plates at least.’ Mrs Wardle looked sadly about her. ‘I didn’t know how many people to make them for, you see.’
Frank May, latterly headmaster of the Harold Vincent Comprehensive School, Middlesex, waved away the plate in a lordly manner. He also declined a chocolate finger and a lemon-flavoured cup-cake.
‘I suppose Bert didn’t keep any beer?’ he asked, getting up on a sudden hope. Tall, solidly built, and with a shiny pink dome of a head, he dominated the dingy front room of his brother’s terraced house. And, looking at him, it was difficult for Susannah to believe that her father lived permanently in the Dordogne. No amount of time in the sun seemed to turn his English ruddiness to a decent tan.
‘Beer?’ Mrs Wardle’s hat quivered as she looked round at her laden trays. She had made quantities of tea in large brown earthenware pots. ‘Well, I can’t say I would know about beer,’ she said stiffly, ‘but I’ll go and have a look in the scullery.’
Susannah felt obliged to help herself to another sandwich since there were so many about to go to waste, but her stomach protested after the first bite. She doubted whether she could manage to force down any more of the margarined monstrosities.
‘Family all right?’ Frank asked. They hadn’t had much chance to talk at the funeral.
‘Oh, we’re all very well, I’m glad to say.’ Susannah put down a thick crust. ‘Katy’s having a whale of a time in a flat with some friends – not far from here, as a matter of fact. I might look in on her later if I have time.
‘And Simon’s still doing well at the estate agent’s in Bristol. He and Natalie are getting on fine, though of course we’d still love them to get married. Justin is adorable – it’s hard to believe he’s ten months old already. As for Paul – well, he was going to come with me today but he found he had a meeting …’
Her voice trailed away and she looked down at her uncomfortably high black shoes. She didn’t like having to tell a white lie about Paul, and now she was going to have to ask after her wretched step-mother.
‘And Jan?’ she forced out. ‘She decided not to come with you?’
‘She’s – er – fine, thank you. Fine. But Bert was nothing to her, really – she only met him once or twice – so there didn’t seem much point in her coming all this way.’
‘You surprise me. It’s not like Jan to miss an opportunity to go round the London stores.’
‘Oh, how lovely to live abroad!’ Mrs Wardle broke in. She had come back into the room empty-handed, having apparently forgotten why she’d left it. ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. All that sea, sun and fresh air.’
‘We’re miles from the sea,’ Frank said abruptly, and he turned to look round the room in a dismissive manner that made Susannah feel even more awkward than she had before.
Mrs Wardle, it was true, was not the kind of woman her father would suffer gladly. She was niceness personified: one of those people who smile constantly and too closely into your face and can’t do enough to please you. No, definitely not his type; but that didn’t excuse his behaviour.
‘Er –’ Susannah thought quickly – ‘it was really very good of you to organise the funeral and everything, Mrs Wardle. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.’
‘Only too happy to do it, my dear. Not that there was much to be done. Bert had arranged everything years ago with the Co-op, you see. So very thoughtful of him, wasn’t it? But that was his way. Just like the vicar said.’
‘Yes …’ Susannah frowned as she recalled the brief eulogy. Words had streamed easily enough from the vicar’s lips, but what they had boiled down to was that Bert had been a nobody who had made no mark on the world – a fact that Susannah found profoundly disturbing in her current frame of mind. She had yet to make a mark of her own.
Frank coughed noisily, anxious to draw things to a close.
‘Well –’ he barked a laugh with no trace of humour in it – ‘can’t hang around here all day eating and drinking, can we? We – er – ahem – ought to get down to business.’
Susannah and Mrs Wardle looked blank.
‘The will, of course, the will,’ he was finally compelled to explain. ‘Now I know the poor old s—I mean poor old Bert’s only just been seen on his way, so to speak, but none of us has the time for life’s little niceties, do we? I’ve got a flight to catch, and Susannah’s got a train, so … well, where have you put it, Mrs Wardle?’
‘Put what?’ The woman flushed to find attention suddenly upon her.
‘The will.’ Frank visibly seethed. ‘My brother Albert’s will. He must have left one with you.’
But no amount of prompting could make Mrs Wardle recall a will. Or a solicitor. Or anything relevant. So Frank allocated them each a room and told them they must search it. Thoroughly.
‘Da-ad! You can’t!’ Susannah hissed, tugging at his sleeve.
‘What? Why not? What else d’you expect me to do?’
She jerked her head in the direction of Mrs Wardle. ‘It can wait, I’m sure,’ she declared loudly, and her father went off in a huff. She didn’t know what on earth he was doing upstairs; all she knew was that she was left to clear up the tea things.
Eventually she went to watch him turning out boxes and tipping drawers on to her uncle’s bed.
Bert had apparently collected silver paper and brown paper bags; bus tickets and bottle tops; string, candles and match books; books on fishing and fell-walking, and birds, and railways and trees.
‘Dad, this is really awful of you …’
Frank caught her expression and had the decency to show a little shame – if a slight deepening of his skin could be attributed to that emotion.
‘I don’t like having to do this, Susie, any more than you like standing there watching me. But this house is going to have to be disposed of, and the sooner I find the will the better. Someone must be named as executor. And it can’t be left through the winter with pipes freezing up and everything. There’ll be bills to sort out too: the gas, the electricity … it can’t all just be left.’
She looked up from a pile of old newspapers that had come to light. They went way back – one of them even mentioned food rationing. ‘But what makes you think Uncle Bert left the house to you?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t say that’s what I thought, did I?’
‘No. But … you do think so, don’t you?’
Frank grunted as he dragged a shoe box from under the bed. ‘Who else do you think he could have left it to? You? Since you were such great penpals?’
Susannah gritted her teeth at the little jibe. Dad would be out of her hair in an hour or so. Just put up with him for a bit longer, she told herself, and you needn’t see him again for – oh, ages.
‘Of course he won’t have left it to me,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t go building your hopes if I were you. It can’t be worth much, can it? Haringey isn’t exactly the up and coming area of London, you know. Anyway –’ she moved to peer over his shoulder as he blew grey dust off the lid of the box – ‘you’ve got loads of money, Dad. I don’t know what you’re getting worked up about.’
‘Why do children always assume that their parents are made of money? And I’m not getting worked up. If anyone’s getting worked up it’s you two hysterical women. Anyone would have thought I was trying to rob Bert’s grave.’
‘He hasn’t got a grave; he was cremated. And it’s not us making a fuss,’ she insisted, ‘it’s you.’
‘What’s got into you all of a sudden?’ Frank growled as the lid flew off. It wasn’t like Susannah to stand up to him like this.
‘Nothing. Nothing.’ Did everyone think she was behaving oddly? ‘Well, it looks like you’ve turned up trumps. That’s a will if ever I saw one.’
Frank didn’t need to be told. He’d already smoothed out the folds. ‘Christ!’ he muttered.
‘What? Tell me.’
He thrust the document towards her.
‘Who the hell’s this Dora Saxby?’ she said when she’d studied the interesting part. She could scarcely keep amusement from her voice: her father hadn’t benefited at all.
‘A woman he used to see.’ Frank’s watery pink eyes looked bleakly into the distant past. He put a finger in his ear, as he often did when upset about something, and absently raked it around. ‘I thought he’d given her up. She was married, you see. Perhaps he didn’t give her up after all. I lost track.’
‘A woman? I never knew.’ Susannah grinned. It was the best news she’d had all day. At least her Uncle Bert had lived a little. An image came to her mind. ‘There was an old dear at the back of the chapel today. I thought she’d got left behind by mistake. But I suppose it could have been her.’ She looked down at the will again and couldn’t resist rubbing salt into her father’s wound. ‘Did you see I’m to have five hundred pounds and the card table? Perhaps I’ll spend the money on air tickets for the family so we can all fly out to see you and Jan in your lovely romantic farmhouse. You must have finished all the renovations by now, surely? When would you like us to come?’
But they both knew she was only bluffing; Susannah would not voluntarily spend any amount of time in Jan’s company. Jan – a teacher at the same school as her father – had never been forgiven for befriending him and eventually taking her mother’s place. Even though her mother had been dead for several years by the time Frank and Jan married and Susannah then eighteen, she hadn’t been able to understand how her father could be so disloyal as to go after another woman. She still couldn’t.
The phone rang and rang in the empty cottage. Simon put down his receiver in disgust. Where had his mother got to? She hadn’t been at work – the guy who’d picked up the phone there had no idea where she was – and she wasn’t at home. But he badly needed her advice. He had no idea what he was going to do.
Reluctant to leave the comparative warmth of the phone booth, even though it smelled disgustingly of urine, he slumped against the Perspex wall. But his eyes fell on the baby buggy outside and he knew he ought to get moving. He would in a minute, he promised himself; right now he felt safe from the world.
Justin would be OK out there for a while. He was protected from the cutting wind by his plastic bubble and was fast asleep with three fingers in his mouth, blissfully unaware of his mother’s defection.
Simon made a fist and thumped the side of the booth. How could Natalie do this to her own child? How could she do it to him? Spurred by anger, he rolled out of the kiosk, grabbed the buggy, and set off down the street, hunched in his anorak and hoping no one would recognise him.
‘You aren’t normal!’ he’d flung at Natalie two days previously as she’d struggled out of their flat with a suitcase in one hand and a typewriter in the other.
‘Not all women are born mothers,’ she’d growled back. ‘I didn’t want him. And it was your fault we had him in the first place. So you can jolly well look after him.’
She humped her things down the stairs.
‘Oh, don’t keep dragging all that up!’ he groaned. ‘It wasn’t my fault the wretched thing burst.’
‘They test them to destruction, you know. Blow them up on machines. You just handled it wrongly.’
‘Well, there’s no point going over it again. It happened and we have to live with it. You should be thinking of Justin, not your stupid career.’
Simon couldn’t understand it. Justin was so cute and smart and lovable; a great kid. Nobody could not like him. How could his own mother be so set against him?
He had glared into the car that came to pick Natalie up. That friend of hers – Lara – had something to do with it, he was sure; she’d been putting all sorts of ideas into Natalie’s head, bit by bit. Feminist ideas. Ideas about independence and dedicating oneself to one’s career.
Of course, Simon acknowledged, jerking the buggy up a high kerb, feminism was nothing new to Natalie – she’d been brought up on it, after all – but she hadn’t pursued it so avidly before. Not until Lara had come on the scene. And everything had gone downhill from then on.
Losing his job had been the last straw.
‘Well, at least you can look after the baby now,’ Natalie had told him when he’d come home and broken the news. That was all the sympathy he’d got. ‘It’ll save me having to keep ferrying him around all the child-minders. And it’ll save the expense.’
‘But – but what are we going to live on? Your salary’s hardly enough.’ Teachers were notoriously poorly paid, and Natalie was at the bottom of the scale.
But she seemed to have worked things out already – as though she had been planning it all for months.
‘I –’ she cast him a wary glance before looking away again – ‘I think I’ll move in with Lara for a while. That should work out a lot cheaper.’
Simon blinked. And blinked again. ‘But what about me and Justin? There won’t be room for us – and I wouldn’t want to live with Lara if you paid me. We can’t go on living here either, with nothing coming in.’ He shook his head as though he had an insect in his ear. ‘Nat, none of this makes sense.’
‘Oh …’ She flapped him aside with one hand. ‘Go and move in with your parents. They’ll be delighted to have you, I’m sure.’
Had there been sarcasm in her tone? Simon reached the door of the flat that he must vacate at the end of the week. What had she been suggesting? That they wouldn’t welcome him with open arms? Well, they would; and they would love to see more of their grandchild.
Not that he could contemplate such a thing, of course. How would that make him look? A grown man, with responsibilities, running home to Mummy?
Not if he could help it.
‘Grief!’ Harvey muttered to himself when he finally got out of bed. His sleep-swollen eyes fell on the debris on Julia’s dressing table and followed a trail of jumble to the bathroom. He hadn’t noticed how untidy Julia was all the years he had been out working. Or if he had noticed it hadn’t bothered him. It was only now, stuck with it for most of the day, day after day, that it was really beginning to get to him.
Heaving himself from the bed he picked up a pair of red panties, two flimsy blouses, and a heap of wet towels. He dropped the clothes in a white wicker Ali Baba and hung the towels on a heated rail. He cleaned out the shower, tidied up the line of toiletries that ran almost the entire length of the bath tub, and then made the bed.
And he didn’t stop there. Fired by – well – he wasn’t sure what had brought on this aberration, he went on to clean the whole house. And when it was all in order and fit to be photographed for Homes and Gardens, he had a late lunch sandwich and a long, hot shower. Then he sat down at the piano in the lounge.
Mozart, he thought, his hands stiff and uncooperative; that’s what I need. Something to make me feel human again.
But he discovered that what he could hear in his head could no longer be reproduced by his fingers. Not surprising, since he hadn’t played for years. It didn’t matter though; there was no one around to listen. So he went on playing, stumbling over the cold keys and repeating his many mistakes, his thoughts drifting about with the music.
Was this real life, he asked himself: cleaning the house and strumming out tunes? Was this what soldiers dreamed of in the trenches when they were miles away at war? Did they really yearn only for their homes, for their loved ones safely about them, and all this crashing, unmitigated ordinariness? And when they were safe and sound at home did they yearn for excitement again, wishing they were back in the thick of it?
Harvey dropped the lid with a jangle and covered his eyes with his hands. Being out in the thick of things didn’t seem to be the answer either: caught up in the world of business, making money, dashing about in pursuit of an absorbing career. No. All that really gave you was an excuse for not addressing the big, burning question; you could simply tell yourself you hadn’t the time to think about it.
But now he had all the time in the world. The question stood before him, and nothing would make it go away. The ultimate riddle – a riddle he couldn’t begin to discuss with his nearest and dearest because she wouldn’t have the remotest idea what he was on about – was beginning to drive him crazy: what the hell was this life all about?
But a loud thundering at the front door prevented him having to come up with an answer just then.
‘Yes?’ he demanded, his eyes sweeping the small band of workmen he found propping up the porch.
‘Mr Webb? We’ve come early,’ their spokesman told him with a grin. ‘Now’s not often that happens, is it? We saw yer car on the drive, so we knew someone must be in, and we thought – well, you ain’t likely to object, are yer, mate?’
‘Object? To what?’ But Harvey had spotted a blue van with writing on the side and it began to trigger his memory.