The Men Read online

  Lucy knew that she and Tim might wait for ever. Five years of tests and specialists had lowered Lucy’s morale, made her feel inadequate, but she was also increasingly aware that she was already nursing her own frightened child. What kind of father would Tim have made? Even if fatherhood had been possible. She had not confided in either May or Sally because she didn’t want their pity or comfort – bustling in May’s case, thrusting in Sally’s. Only Tim knew and he had never referred to the ‘matter’ since Lucy had told him. Nor had he reacted to her talk of adoption. It was as if she had mentioned the war.

  ‘Did you hear?’ Sally stepped over the threshold, as elegant as ever in her white blouse and tailored slacks. ‘Did you hear about our gardener? The murder’s going to be on the radio tonight.’ Her voice held a mixture of excitement and shock. ‘We’re having a real week of it, aren’t we? What with the fire – and now this!’

  ‘May’s just told me,’ said Lucy flatly.

  Predictably, Sally pushed her long blonde hair out of her eyes and gave the plucky little smile that Lucy found so irritating. It was a slight consolation to know that her artificial ‘grit’ profoundly irritated May too. With her fresh good looks, her undoubted abilities at tennis and golf, her much displayed competence as a housewife, Sally appeared on the surface to be invulnerable.

  She had sex-appeal, bore a slight resemblance to Diana Dors but didn’t display her style. She did have the breasts, although Lucy suspected Sally also wore a brassiere upholstered with foam rubber to enhance them. She pushed her appearance to the limits, but she also often withdrew from life, taking to her bed for long periods with blinding migraines. During these absences her young daughter Alice had to be one hundred per cent in the care of the nanny instead of the normal ninety per cent. Sometimes Lucy imagined that because Sally lived at such an intense level of perfection, she had to lie low and regenerate new and glossy skin as well as a sheen of revitalized enthusiasm, not to mention the breasts.

  Lucy was still slightly puzzled by the shed burning episode. Sally had never had a social conscience before. So why should she berate bullies on Esher green? Lucy, however, supposed there was a first time for everything – even Sally’s crusade. Then there was the matter of the boy’s name. William Tell. She saw an apple on a child’s head sliced by an arrow. The child looked foxy. But he would, wouldn’t he? He came from Hersham.

  Sally walked across to the bowl of watercress. Lucy wondered if she was going to soil her hands for once, and help fill a sandwich, but she simply looked at the stuff in some distaste and said, ‘Baverstock worked for the Dowsetts and the Rentons, too. He’d only been with us a month. Isn’t it awful?’ She lowered her voice, the doll-like features perplexed. ‘He did a wonderful job on the dahlias and he promised to get rid of all that ground elder. He was even going to build us a new potting shed.’

  Clearly his violent death was an inconvenience, thought Lucy. He could at least have got the essential jobs done before allowing his throat to be cut.

  Conifers, the Davises’ Victorian dwelling with its extensive grounds, was just opposite Lucy’s own more modest red-brick home in Shrub Lane. She had liked Gables when she and Tim had bought the house just before the war, but now it felt dull and suburban, dwarfed by Conifers, whose windows seemed to stare watchfully into their own. Martin and May Latimer’s house, Old Linden, in the same thirties style, was only two doors down.

  ‘I just wondered if Baverstock was one of those types,’ said May awkwardly, concentrating on furiously carving ham. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

  Lucy felt a rush of flurried embarrassment. There then followed a stunned silence. Sally made a quick stab at changing the subject for they all knew what May was talking about. Something that was utterly taboo.

  ‘The police have done nothing about that fire. Not a dicky bird.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Lucy, a slight blush on her cheeks.

  The term ‘homosexual’ was hardly ever used, certainly not in the cricket pavilion. But of course May worked in a prep school. She would know. She would be able to speak about the problem, clinically and with thumping common sense.

  ‘I saw him from the Cut,’ continued May, ignoring the attempts at evasion. ‘He was with someone. A man.’ May paused, embarrassing herself now. She often ‘spoke out’, but this was clearly too much and Lucy wondered whether she was beating a retreat.

  The Cut, the path between the border fence of Conifers and a stream that ran down the length of Shrub Lane, was partly masked by foliage. May and Lucy, taking the path up to the High Street, often listened to the smack of tennis balls as Sally played with her friends on the court to the right of the house. Neither May nor Lucy could play, despite Sally’s persistent offers to teach them. Nor did they want to. She could be determinedly patronizing and, besides, in tennis clothes her breasts were a threat. May’s were matronly. Lucy’s were modest.

  Then May doggedly enlarged on what she had seen, as if she wished she hadn’t begun and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. After all, homosexuality was a criminal offence, punishable by law, and criminal offences didn’t happen that much in Esher. Unless you counted arson and murder. ‘I was walking up to the High Street and Baverstock was on your land with this chap,’ she said in her ‘I’ve got a duty to tell you’ voice. ‘Of course, it was only the most fleeting glimpse.’

  Sally brushed the hair out of her eyes again. How many times a day does she actually do that, wondered Lucy. Why doesn’t she get a hairdresser to alter her style? Or does she need the gesture?

  ‘The man disappeared into the woods. He moved fast but I couldn’t tell whether they’d seen me or not.’

  ‘Did you speak to Baverstock?’ asked Sally, looking away, forcing herself to ask.

  ‘No.’ May paused. ‘I just went on up to the shops.’

  ‘Why do you think this was – that kind of business?’ demanded Lucy, hardly able to bring out the unfamiliar, phrase, the blush creeping down her neck.

  ‘I thought when I first saw them –’ May paused – ‘that they were in each other’s arms.’

  In anyone else, Lucy would have suspected gossipy melodrama. But May wasn’t like that. She was too full of practical morality and was only remarking on this apparent deviance because she thought it might have a connection. All too obviously she was ‘trying it out’ on Sally but was, at the same time, awkward, as if she was really ‘talking dirty’.

  ‘They sprang apart?’ Lucy asked, realizing that she was using the vocabulary of the books in the romantic section of Boots library. Denise Robins, or even Ruby M. Ayres. She glanced at Sally but she refused to catch her eye.

  ‘I almost told Maggie Bretherton, but in the end I didn’t,’ continued May. ‘I mean – I don’t want to start anything. I’d really like your advice.’

  ‘You should tell the police what you saw,’ said Lucy immediately.

  ‘Yes.’ Sally was nodding encouragement. ‘There might be a perfectly acceptable explanation. You might have made a mistake. But you’ve got to tell them.’

  May nodded, frowning, clearly unsure, embarrassed again.

  The sandwiches were finished with minimal and preoccupied help from Sally and determined effort from May. Her Ladies Committee duties over, Lucy walked out into the hard sunlight, squinting at the white figures on the smooth turf, glancing down at her watch and hoping it would soon be time to draw stumps.

  ‘Hallo, old thing,’ said Tim, turning round awkwardly in the deckchair that he had placed at some distance from the small bunch of spectators.

  ‘You’re being antisocial,’ said Lucy, her love for him hurting inside. She had always been determined not to be protective, not to treat Tim like an invalid, to dignify what he had suffered. Yet she continually found herself fussing, watching, hoping for the first signs of recovery that never came. In fact, she knew he was getting worse.

  Despite the hot summer, Tim looked ashen out here in the sharp light, the lines on his face hard and dry. His fair
hair was so bleached by the sun that it had a curious flat, limp quality and shed dandruff over his blazer collar.

  ‘Fraid I was run out.’

  ‘Bad luck.’ She noticed he had that familiar distracted air and was tapping a finger on the frame of the deckchair, as if he was waiting for something to happen, someone to arrive.

  ‘Did you hear about young Baverstock?’ Tim asked her, his voice taut.

  ‘It’s awful,’ Lucy replied as expressionlessly as possible.

  But he seemed over-excited, wanting to communicate. ‘To think it could happen here. Esher of all places. Peter’s very shocked. Baverstock was a good worker. Came from Hersham. What with that fire and those ghastly boys, the Davises aren’t having a good week. I gather the vandals came from Hersham too.’ Like May, he spoke as if they had all come from some far-flung country. Hersham contained a large council estate near the reservoir, and allotments and light industry from which Esher determinedly held itself aloof. ‘Bit much,’ Tim added, gazing down the field. ‘Well played,’ he called, as one of the batsmen hit a six.

  ‘It’s almost time for tea,’ said Lucy. ‘Not made you feel bad, has it?’

  ‘The cricket?’

  ‘The murder.’

  ‘Well. It’s not pleasant. I don’t know what’s happening to this country. Was it worth fighting a war for?’ Tim was giving off a familiar rank body odour. She wondered yet again what caused it for he bathed regularly.

  Lucy felt a wave of self-pity. She had married a man who had led her into the light. Now she was trying to cope with an invalid in a deckchair, with scrawny arms and hair like fur, who would be thirty-one next month. It was as if a confidence trick had been played on her.

  ‘Ever felt like moving house?’ she asked, taking a risk and trying to jerk him out of his inertia. Lucy immediately felt shocked. She was usually so careful. But her father had died a few weeks ago, leaving her even more rudderless than before. While he had been alive she had just been able to cope with Tim’s withdrawal; now she felt completely isolated, with no one in her life to rely on.

  Her father had lain in the last bed by the door of the ward (he had claimed they always put no-hopers there so they could be wheeled out quickly when death was pronounced). He had said to Lucy, ‘Try and get Tim on his feet again. Why not move? You’ll have my money.’

  Now, for the first time, she was trying it on.

  ‘Move?’ Tim sat bolt upright, his veined right hand gripping the side of the chair.

  ‘Go down to Devon.’ Lucy felt a guilty rush of adrenalin.

  Tim gave an angry bark of laughter. ‘My dear girl –’ The phrase hung limply on the summer scented air. ‘What on earth would we live on?’

  ‘I’ll have Dad’s money and you could get another job with an estate agent. You’re experienced now.’

  ‘I’m just on the bottom rung of the ladder,’ he replied with gloomy relish. ‘Haven’t earned any kudos yet.’

  ‘It was only an idea.’ Her voice was neutral.

  Tim reached out to take her hand. His grip was damp and Lucy felt a wave of self-loathing. What the hell was the matter with her? Why was she so insensitive? Why couldn’t she accept mental illness on the same level as a physical injury?

  ‘Toby’s serving up some terrific googlies.’ He spoke as if he was still at prep school, trying to impress a prefect or even a teacher. Was the real Tim in there somewhere? In this bony bundle of subterfuge?

  Doctor Wayland had recently told her that Tim was hanging on to normality like a dangling man whose fingers were slowly slipping off a ledge. Yet, once again, Lucy recklessly dived into the attack, almost angry now, determined that he should tune into her feelings for once.

  ‘Have you thought any more about the adoption?’ The words were out in a rush and her trepidation rose. It was like being on a kamikaze bombing mission. How had she slipped into this foolhardy course? Lucy felt slightly dizzy and wondered if she was coming down with something.

  ‘Sorry?’

  She could see that he had heard, had probably been waiting for her to say this for months and had set up his own rehearsed programme of prevarication.

  ‘This is hardly the time or the place –’

  ‘It’s important to me.’ She spoke awkwardly. ‘To us. You know how–’

  ‘It’s a big issue,’ he broke in. ‘A very big issue. Bad form to bring it up here. What with the murder.’ Tim made it sound as if Lucy had dropped her knickers in church.

  Her eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Grand game,’ Tim muttered as the umpire at last pulled stumps.

  Peter and Martin strolled off the pitch together, heading towards them, faces tanned, jerseys over their shoulders, casually self-satisfied.

  Tim didn’t rise from his deckchair and the two men approached him as if visiting a patient in a hospital bed, cautiously, with a little embarrassment and far too much bonhomie.

  Captain Peter Davis, who had been Tim’s senior officer, was the shorter of the two, stocky with a mass of dark curly hair and an assertive manner that showed in his stride. He had a generous moustache, short but bushy, and Lucy noticed as she always did the black hairs sprouting from the open neck of his cricket shirt. She often wondered if he was too much of an animal in bed and that was another reason why Sally closed down so frequently. Peter Davis’s soft, gentle voice, however, belied his looks.

  Second Lieutenant Martin Latimer, who had been his second in command, was tall, amiable, lean and fit, and much less assertive than Peter. The dark blue eyes in his clean-shaven oval face were benign. He also had an authority to him, a casual efficiency and sporting prowess that had won him the captaincy of the cricket team. Of the two, Martin was the one she related to more easily, although he could be just as oppressive as Peter in his apparent watchfulness. Sometimes Lucy tried really hard to dismiss the men’s oppressiveness as overblown imagination, but when she was with them, her suspicions immediately resurfaced. Lucy had conveniently stereotyped the men as marauders. Tim’s jailors. She thought of them with a capital M. The Men were the Enemy.

  ‘What-ho!’ said Tim. They loomed over him with an almost parental air, grinning affectionately, their shadows cutting him off from the sun.

  It was a strange sensation that Lucy didn’t like. She always felt uncomfortable when the three of them were together, as if she was an intruder.

  ‘Bad luck about the run-out. Gerry should have known better,’ observed Peter.

  ‘One of those things,’ muttered Tim. He was trying unsuccessfully to get out of the deckchair and Martin had to give him a hand – or a ‘paw’ as Tim might easily have said, Lucy thought with a surge of irritation.

  ‘Bit stiff, old boy?’

  Now he was on his feet, Tim was giving a rueful grin.

  ‘How about a run one of these evenings?’ said Martin, yawning slightly.

  ‘Great idea.’

  ‘Put some muscle on those pins of yours.’

  The pavilion was crowded with white-flannelled cricketers and their ladies in summer prints, consuming Lucy’s sandwiches with boarding school appetites. There was a slightly institutionalized conviviality; hoots of laughter, raucous banter rose and fell as wasps buzzed the trestle table. The atmosphere was rapidly heating up until both teams and their supporters were running with perspiration.

  The war burnt us all out, thought Lucy, and we’re only just starting to recover. Pale creatures, battered and torn, like flowers rising out of frost, desperate for a hazy glimpse of the sun. We’ve endured so much, muddled on for too long. Now all we can do is to pretend to be what we used to be until we begin to thrive again. But Tim hadn’t surfaced. France was dragging him back. Only his veined hand had a grip.

  Gradually the news of the young gardener’s murder began to circulate and voices were lowered conspiratorially, with an undercurrent of excitement.

  Lisa Warburton, however, had either not heard of the incident or had chosen to dismiss it as too sordid for discussion. She was a
large florid woman with a booming sense of fun, who had gallantly struggled through the war until her man had returned intact and had slipped back into her vice-like grip. Now her mind had raced on to other, more positive issues.

  Lisa was talking vivaciously to Lucy, who was only half listening, her mind on the unreasonable demands she had made on Tim. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Why hadn’t she been more in control? She usually was.

  ‘Gerry and I had quite a fling at the festival on the South Bank,’ droned Lisa. ‘You and Tim really should get up there. I know he’s been off colour but it would take him out of himself to see the Skylon and the Emett railway’s a real hoot. And do you know – despite the rain – we danced under the floodlights -even though Gerry was wearing a trilby and we both had mackintoshes. We must have looked a sight but then so did everyone else.’ Lisa paused. ‘But the best thing about the festival is the people. They’re so full of fun. They haven’t had a foreign holiday in years or seen café tables with umbrellas or even any fresh paint.’ She paused again, this time rather breathlessly, even warily. ‘After all, Tim fought for what we’ve got, didn’t he? Like all the men did. The Festival gave us new heart. At least it promised some kind of future. I’m going to redecorate the house. I want that bright, clean “Festival” style.’

  We’re all still stuck with mock Tudor, thought Lucy. You won’t make Esher change that easily. She could imagine Lisa’s plans. ‘Contemporary’ wallpaper with jazzy patterns, the fireplace wall being made to ‘stand out’ with an even more vibrant wallpaper. Then there was the carpet. She would probably choose ‘Skaters Trails’, the latest best-seller, an equally jazzy pattern of thin curved lines on a background of grey or burnt red. Very modern. Very bold.

  Lucy and Tim hadn’t been to the South Bank yet. He kept putting the outing off. Besides, she didn’t really want to go. She didn’t want to be modern and she couldn’t imagine Tim dancing in the rain. In fact, she couldn’t imagine Tim dancing at all.