Fraud Read online

  There was another brief silence, as they digested this discovery. Rallying first, Lady Martin decided to repair her own defences, which, she thought, had suffered in this recent exchange.

  ‘That accident of yours, Vera,’ she said. ‘You’re quite sure you’re recovered? You want to be careful, you know.’

  ‘Oh, it was nothing, Phyllis. I just use the stick as a precaution. It was just a silly fall, a lot of fuss over nothing. I only called the doctor because Philippa insisted.’

  ‘Halliday?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lady Martin began to sparkle. Vera Marsh could only admire her stamina. In the course of their friendship she had witnessed many lightings-up of this sort, usually when the name of a man was introduced into what was evidently considered to be the essentially predictable conversation of women.

  ‘Now you must agree, Vera, Halliday is a very attractive man. Dishy,’ she pronounced audaciously.

  ‘He is quite good-looking, yes.’

  ‘Of course, he has a soft spot for me. He came when I had bronchitis, last year, you remember. Such lovely hands, and such nice manners.’

  ‘He appeals to women, that is quite clear. I dare say it helps him professionally.’

  ‘He married that very amusing girl, Miriam Lloyd’s daughter. She married that rather fat man, Miriam, I mean. I believe there’s quite a lot of money there. Miriam was a cut above him, of course. But the daughter turned out to be quite attractive, don’t you think? Vivacious. I do like a girl to be vivacious.’

  ‘I don’t know the wife—Vickie, isn’t it?—all that well. To be honest she struck me as rather tiresome. But she made that little party of mine go off rather well.’

  ‘That’s where I last saw her. In a clever little red frock. Quite expensive, if I’m any judge. Do they get on well, do you know?’

  ‘Do who get on well?’

  ‘Halliday and his wife.’

  ‘Really, Phyllis, how on earth should I know?’ said Mrs Marsh with some distaste. Her friend’s insistence on sexual speculation frequently pained her.

  ‘Only a man like that spells trouble, in my opinion. Although I have to admit that his wife looks as if she could keep an eye on him.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Mrs Marsh repressively. ‘He didn’t think there was anything wrong with my leg.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said her friend, disappointed. ‘But how did you manage? Getting about, I mean.’

  ‘Well, I managed. I stayed in for a couple of days. All I wanted, really, was something to read.’

  Anna, she thought, and almost blushed. How could I have forgotten her?

  Aloud, she said, ‘A friend went to the library for me. Anna Durrant,’ she added scrupulously.

  ‘That young woman whom Nick brought to your party?’

  ‘Oh, he didn’t bring her, Phyllis. She attached herself to him. He was longing to get away from her—I could see it. No, poor Anna is not Nick’s type at all. He likes sophisticated women. Anna, I’m afraid, is rather simple.’

  ‘Who was she with, then?’ asked Lady Martin, losing interest.

  ‘She came on her own, I expect,’ replied Mrs Marsh, peering into the depths of her handbag and snapping it shut with a finality which signalled the end of the conversation.

  ‘I must go, Phyllis. Nick said he’d look in this evening. Right in the middle of The Archers, I expect, although of course I love to see him.’

  Both rose stiffly.

  ‘You must come to me next time,’ said Mrs Marsh, bending down to kiss her friend’s soft powdery cheek, and inhaling the scent of Jolie Madame mingled with something a little older, the smell of age. This saddened her, for she knew from her own experience how it clung, was never entirely banished. She thought of it as not belonging to this life but as a sort of emanation from the grave, an indication that one’s time on earth was coming to a close, and that nothing could save one from the approaching end. Chastened by this reminder that even one as determinedly sprightly as Phyllis Martin was vulnerable, she lingered awkwardly. She would have liked to have embraced her friend once more, but such expansiveness was not in her nature. I am old too, she reminded herself: there is not much to choose between us. We both of us smell of mortality, and there is nothing to be done about it.

  She had noticed old people in supermarkets, hesitating over their frugal purchases, treating themselves to something sweet, an indulgence remembered from remote childhood, and smelt their careful poverty as she passed them. She had put this down to poor diet, poor hygiene, to the fatigue of old age, but now she knew that what she had witnessed was ineluctable decline, that inching nearer to the abyss against which one had no defence. She had, at the time, felt closer to the poor old men, the pugnacious old women, with their woollen hats, without knowing why. Now, bending to kiss Phyllis Martin, who was comfortably off and self-indulgent, she realized that both she and her friend were at one with those old people, instantly recognizable to the young, who would wrinkle their noses and long to escape from them. It should make one philosophical, she thought: one should be impressed by the ways of nature. Yet one felt sadness and fear. If only God would give a sign; yet He remained obstinately invisible. She then remembered that she had not gone to the Oratory, where she carried on her angry conversation with God, for some weeks, and resolved to go again as soon as the weather brightened.

  Failing God, one turned to Nature. If only the year would turn, she thought longingly, as she plodded down the stairs to her own flat. If only I could smell grass and feel heat and see the sun! For now she craved only light, and thought that if she lived until the summer she would stare at the sun, taking its radiance into her very substance, letting her eyes burn until they were sightless. She would not mind dying, if it could be in the summer. She would have liked someone to expose her on a hillside, at dawn, and leave her there to die: she would endure the midday heat and the pitiless afternoon with exaltation, and then, when the light went, she would expire without regret. She glanced out of the landing window at the dry sticks of leafless shrubs, at the blackness of leafless branches. The grass below the flats had a sour sapless look, and the red of the Post Office van parked across the street provided a dull crude contrast, as if only the harshest of colours could be allowed to exist at this cruel time. She knew that spring would come eventually, but she knew that it would be too slow, too gradual for her needs. She was astonished to recognize desire, for that had long been dead. Now her desire was almost abstract, metaphysical. She desired transformation, and knew that it was not yet time, that winter was holding her prisoner, and that she must not let go until the order of release came with the returning sun. It is not yet time, she thought, as she put her key into the lock, and the thought, if anything, left her slightly cheered.

  The stick impeded her, and she hung it over her arm, where it impeded her still further. Well, she could get rid of that for a start. She hung it in the hall cupboard and felt an immediate sense of relief. She would in future resist all attempts to turn her into an old woman. It was Philippa who had insisted on the stick, a kindly harassed suggestion which it would have been ungracious to resist. She had brought Bill’s stick home from the hospital, when he lay dying, and had known that he would never need it again. She had appropriated it timidly when her leg was bad, wondering if she would feel any nearer to her dead husband, but had felt nothing but guilty irritation at his refusal to re-enter her life in any way. Even his memory was fading, yet she thought quite frequently of her parents, saw them in dreams as she had never seen them in life. They had been a serene but distant couple, whereas in her dreams they smiled at her eagerly, lovingly, as though she were a child. They must have worn those eager loving smiles when I was a baby, she thought, learning to walk. She marvelled at the circuitousness of time, which returned her nightly to babyhood, leaving her middle years untouched.

  The thought interested her: she immediately felt the need to discuss it. But there was only Phyllis Martin with whom such a matter might be discussed:
no-one else was old enough. And poor Phyllis would take fright: she was basically a very fragile person. Take, for example, her refusal to offer one a drink, on the pretext that because Archie, her late husband, drank so heavily, she rarely kept any drink in the house, and when she did, for guests, almost hated to serve it. As if husbands could influence one from the grave! But Archie had made Phyllis vulnerable, as she had never been before she married him. In a way she was enjoying whatever freedom came with widowhood, but at the same time she would allow no encroachments on that freedom. There was no way in which Phyllis Martin would enjoy a discussion of memory, either recent or distant. Amazing really, she thought, that we get on so well. We have absolutely nothing in common.

  She poured herself a large whisky and switched on the radio for the News, which, after a few minutes, she failed to hear. She picked up The Times and turned to the back page, where she scanned the weather reports from foreign cities. Then she let the paper fall, and rested her head on the back of her chair. She was quite comfortable, and even mildly regretted the prospect of being disturbed by Nick, to whom she would wish to give her full attention. He was proving more difficult in middle age than he had ever been as a child, although Philippa had always been the easier of the two. Nick had been taciturn but obedient. Now he was taciturn and struck her as dangerous. This, she knew, had to do with his attitude towards women, which she saw as a civilized form of denial. He would pay them compliments, but expect these compliments not to be taken seriously. Everything must be a joke, a farce: the teasing tone, once established, must be sustained. She imagined women bound by sheer good manners to respond to this, yet thought they must be puzzled, even infuriated, by his prudence. For he was both laughing at them and protecting himself. She had seen this happening, had seen him flap a hand at a woman’s importunity. She longed for him to change, to be married, yet knew that she was not to be allowed to intervene, was not even supposed to notice or to understand his stratagems. Look how angry he had been when she had mentioned Anna Durrant’s name! And how angry she had been with herself ever since for dragging, even by implication, a woman such as Anna into a context in which she had no place. She acknowledged, reluctantly, that Anna had been kind when she had had her fall, but it had been a remote rather than a familial kindness. There was no need to attach her further. And Nick deserved a real woman, a mature exciting woman, a woman with experience who would take him in hand and teach him some humility and gratitude. He needed, she knew, to be taught both. But he was a good son, if not a demonstrative one: he looked in on her regularly, even though it was out of his way, and in any event had more exciting things to do. With that one, admittedly major, exception, she would not want him changed.

  She was listening to The Archers when she heard his key in the door. He had had a key ever since she had moved into the flat after Bill’s death. It gave her some comfort to know that if she died without somehow alerting the children her body would eventually be found. Mrs Duncan also had a key, but she had almost ceased to rely on Mrs Duncan for this office. Mrs Duncan, it was clear, was interested only in Mrs Duncan and her exciting future. There was no faulting her: she worked well and efficiently, but there had been a slight falling off in intimacy after that so promising beginning. Once Mrs Marsh had been on the telephone when Mrs Duncan arrived. ‘Oh, do excuse me a moment,’ she had said. ‘I want to have a word with my daily help. May I ring you back?’ She had gone into the kitchen to put on the kettle, and had found Mrs Duncan stiff with disapproval. ‘Is anything wrong?’ she had asked. ‘Housekeeper, if you don’t mind, Madam, not daily help.’ The ‘Madam’ had expressed not deference but its opposite. ‘After all, I am a professional. “You’re a professional, Mum,” my son says.’ ‘I am so sorry,’ she had apologized. ‘You must forgive me. I’m afraid I’m living in the past these days.’ She forebore to go into details of her former cook, parlourmaid, and daily woman—who really was daily—and busied herself with Mrs Duncan’s coffee and biscuits. After a moment Mrs Duncan sat down on the other side of the kitchen table. But she seemed to eat her biscuit with pursed lips, and things had never been the same since.

  She thought Nick looked swarthy, but put the effect of congestion down to an unhelpful overhead light. He sat down heavily, his coat unbuttoned. After a minute he handed her the evening paper. She could smell a faint emanation of whisky.

  ‘I won’t offer you a drink,’ she said. ‘You seem to have had one already.’

  ‘Don’t start on me, Mother. I’m not well.’

  ‘You’re not well?’ she repeated, trying to still the alarm she felt. She moved over to his chair and put her dry old hand to his forehead.

  ‘You’ve got a temperature,’ she pronounced.

  ‘I’m supposed to be going out to dinner.’

  ‘Ring them up and cancel it. You’re staying here tonight. You can wear Daddy’s pyjamas and dressing-gown. The spare bed’s already made up. I’m going to get you a hot drink and a hot-water bottle.’

  He protested feebly, longing to be overruled. He was already collapsing into illness, trailing after her, coat unbuttoned and dragging on his shoulders, his voice regressing by at least three decades.

  ‘It is only flu,’ she told him brutally. ‘You had better get into bed. Let me know when you’re ready for your drink.’

  For he had never, even as a boy, wanted her to see him undressed.

  He allowed her to sit by him and to watch him as he took his aspirin and drank his tea. I must buy lemons tomorrow, she thought. She was energized by this reprieve, which had removed the sad thoughts of old age plaguing her earlier in the evening. She put his light out firmly, although it was only eight o’clock. Then she crept from the room, as she used to do when he was young. That night she lay half awake, listening for him. Yet in the morning she felt brighter than usual. So all is not gone, she thought, with something like a return of optimism, and wondered if he could eat a little toast and marmite for his breakfast.

  14

  HALLIDAY RESTED HIS folded hands on Anna’s case notes.

  ‘You’ve lost more weight, you know. Oh, very little, I agree, but every weight loss is significant. Do you feel quite well?’

  ‘I’m not ill …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I feel a heaviness, a drowsiness. I long for sleep, yet I wake up exhausted.’

  ‘Do you have a temperature in the evenings?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She looked at him, surprised. ‘I’m not ill, Lawrence. But sometimes I feel I can’t go on as I am.’

  ‘Perhaps we should talk about that.’

  ‘I am a useless woman, I know. I feel ashamed. I have never worked, never had a child …’

  ‘And why have you never done these things?’

  She looked at him again. ‘I think you know why. My mother needed me. She was of that generation of women who expected to be protected. She was a widow, not very competent, used to being spoilt. I loved her. She loved me—not in any very helpful way, I admit. You must remember that we were used to each other. We knew so few people! My mother’s illness began when I was about fourteen, and we were both very frightened. But she seemed to recover for a while, I remember, and life was almost normal, normal enough for me to go to school and university, and then have my year abroad. After that, she got worse. The piece of work I had started hung fire: it wasn’t important, just something that interested me. Then she got worse again, and it was difficult for her to go out alone. When she did … Well, she usually had to be brought home. On the whole people were very kind.’

  She closed her lips on the whole confession. She never spoke of the Ainsworth incident, feeling a need to protect her mother even in death. It was a matter of indifference to her that several people, including Halliday, knew about it, but even Halliday was not in possession of all the facts, merely remembering that Mrs Durrant had made an abortive second marriage, which ended, as he thought—as most people thought—in divorce or separation. When he had got to know her she was alone, with her
daughter: there had been no trace of a man in the flat. He had sensed a tragedy of some sort, had recognized the bracing quality of the younger woman’s affection, and the languor of his patient, had put it down to mourning. Perhaps the husband had died? No-one had told him anything, but as he was new to the practice, he did not expect to be given the full story, especially if it were scandalous, though he had no reason to believe that this was the case.

  He preferred not to think of the years in which he had known Anna and her mother, and the way in which Anna had removed them both from his care. That had hurt him: he had thought her implacable, and he had always been sensitive to the withdrawal of favour. He was perfectly capable of maintaining his professional detachment, and in any event was fond of Mrs Durrant. He was, as he had since realized, more than fond of Anna, who had banished him. For that reason he desired her forgiveness, as he would have desired his mother’s, had he ever hurt her. But he thought that he had never done so. Anna represented a monstrous wrong-doing, perhaps the worst he had ever committed, in the course of a relatively blameless life. Uneasy now, in the middle years of that life, wondering why he could not be pleased, even cynically pleased, at his upward progress, he felt that at some point he had made a fatal decision, had abandoned the simple standards of truth and honesty with which he had grown up, in favour of a satisfaction which he now saw as illusory.

  One of the things which separated him from his wife was the fact that she hated her mother, whom she saw as a rival for her adored father’s affection. Initially he had thought this situation to be of more than passing clinical interest: he had never before come up against so clear-cut an illustration of what he had privately believed to be a psychiatric myth. It came to repel him. All parties in the case seemed to him crude, without shame. He was married by then, and used to hearing his wife’s indignant denunciations of her mother: he suspected that his mother-in-law, a dry uncommunicative sort of woman with whom he had nothing in common, looked on her daughter with some distaste. This in its turn increased his pity for his wife, whom he now saw as a victim of debased familial affections. He was bound to her by rage and compassion, the one emotion usually cancelling out the other. He supposed that he would continue to be involved in this way until one of them died. But he found it tiring, and ultimately disappointing, that his marriage should have come to this, and blamed himself for succumbing so easily to the sexual lure, defiantly enjoying its excitement, while uneasily aware, all the time, that he would have to deal with his wife’s conflicts, of which she, in her turn, remained remarkably ignorant.