Vacant Possession Read online

  She went into the bedroom and opened Colin’s top drawer. A tangle of underwear, and socks he never wore, rolled into balls, fraying round the tops. A colour film, some small change, some bottles of aftershave; most of it bought by Florence, gentle hints from the year when Colin had decided to grow a beard. It hadn’t lasted long, the beard. Nothing lasted long with Colin; the enthusiasms he took up at evening classes, his project for growing vegetables, his ardour for joining the Social Democratic Party—which had fizzled out, come to think of it, when he couldn’t find a stamp to send off his application form. Only his neckties evoked constancy. What was this greasy grey string, left over from the last time ties were narrow? Here was a yellow knitted one, and here was a great flowery orange thing, a relic of the sixties. Dear God. Kipper ties, they called them.

  She heard the front door bang.

  “Mum? Mum, it’s me, Claire, I’m home.”

  “All right, Claire,” she called. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  “Mum, can I get waffles out of the freezer?”

  “Get what you like. I won’t be long.”

  With a sudden urgency, she began to rummage through the drawer. Here at the back was the five-year diary that she had once given Colin for Christmas. It was not locked; its key was still taped to it, in a tiny polythene envelope. Colin had never filled the diary in. He considered, he told her, that he had no life worth recording, and to be sure that he was right, she had checked every few months and found the pages blank. He could have filled it in, she thought, after I took such trouble to get it for him. Being a history teacher you’d think he’d like to keep a record. She felt she would like to make sense of the past; of those white years, 1975, 1976, ’77, ’78, ’79. Where had they gone? She had a mental picture of an autumn evening, the year they had moved to Buckingham Avenue; Colin sulking in the garden, refusing to come in though it was getting cold and dark. He hated the sight of me, she thought, he would have left me for two pins; it was only after Claire was born that he calmed down. Presumably his affair was over by then. Something was missing afterwards, as if a large part of his vitality had been drained away. At times she caught him watching her. He looked like someone staring out of a famine poster; preternaturally wise, still, and lacking in a future that was of interest to anybody.

  Here it was: a crumpled snapshot under his oldest socks. Its presence there was a tacit admission. He must know that she went through his drawers at intervals; after twenty years he was familiar with her methods of keeping one step ahead. He was not one of those self-contained men who can keep their love affairs a secret. He was one of those pathetic, guilty men, whose deepest need is to be found out.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, switched on the bedside light, and held the photograph under it. She had done all this before, at intervals separated by months when the knowledge that he still kept the picture would nibble away at her complacency, like a woodworm in furniture. Staring and staring didn’t give you any more information. She was young and slim, the girlfriend; woollen hat and scarf, boots, hands thrust into the pockets of a rather anonymous jacket. She leaned against the offside wing of the family Fiat, the one they had got rid of in 1976. Dark hair, shadowy eyes; the effortful smile was like Colin’s own. There was a dim backdrop of leafless trees.

  Perhaps she was a teacher. Who else did he meet? Sylvia sucked her lip, brooding. A second later she leaped from the bed in alarm. Her heart pounded; a jangling scream split the air. She tore out of the room, yelled down at her daughter below. “Claire, for God’s sake stop that cooker timer!”

  “What?”

  “Push the knob in, make it stop, it’s driving me spare.”

  The noise stopped. “I didn’t set it off,” Claire called up indignantly.

  “Who did then?”

  “Alistair.”

  “Don’t be daft, he’s in his bedroom.”

  Slowly she made her way back, clutching the photograph. Time’s up, she thought sourly. Life’s solid all through, done to a turn, a little bit longer and we’ll smell burning. She took a deep breath, trying to control the thumping behind her ribs.

  “Mum, are you coming?”

  Claire was whining from the foot of the stairs. “In a second.” She picked up the photograph she had discarded earlier, the one of herself from the family album. She held up the two for comparison. Her hands shook a little. No wonder he preferred the young girl; for a time, anyway. Date for date they matched. Winter 1974; summer, 1975. I’d know her anywhere, she thought; I’d know her right away. She ripped the photographs through and slipped them into the pocket of her jeans, meaning to drop them in the kitchen bin when no one was looking.

  CONFESSIONS etc. (2)

  “…that very strange people do congregate. They find each other out and form ghettos. The inadequate personality, the incipient schizophrenic, they feel under threat. Their identity is precarious and human relationships threaten to overwhelm them. But even when a person is totally alienated the need for minimal human contact is still there. So tramps live under bridges, and derelicts in common lodging houses.”

  Isabel put down her pen. She wasn’t making headway. Whenever she tried to express herself, jargon got in the way. Years ago, she had been to an evening class to improve her writing skills. It didn’t seem to have improved them. It had been pointless.

  And yet, not quite. It was at the writing class that she’d met her Married Man. Everybody has one; you have to meet them somewhere. Colin hadn’t taken the course very seriously. He’d sat there, looking about him, smirking at people’s efforts. They’d gone to the pub after the class and he’d asked her to run away with him. She’d thought he was joking. At first.

  Her mind wandered as she tried to put events in order. Her Confessions kept straying off the point. I’ll make an outline, she thought, and work from that.

  “AXON: The records are lost/inconsistent/have gaps in them. So many different workers have been on the case. By the time it got to me it was nearly hopeless.

  THEN: for months at a time I couldn’t get into the house.

  WHEN I DID Mrs. Axon locked me in a bedroom.

  WHILE I WAS IN THE BEDROOM—”

  She hesitated, then wrote: “MRS. AXON DIED.”

  “I could have done better.

  “But I made a mess of it.

  “Why?

  “Because I was frightened.

  “Why?

  “The fact is I couldn’t keep my personal life straight. There was this awful problem of Colin, I didn’t know what to do about him, he was so emotional, he seemed to need me so much, but I didn’t have anything left over from my work to give to anybody. Everything was a problem, job/Colin/home.”

  I can’t send it to the newspapers like this, she thought crossly, I’ll have to tidy it up, there are times I wish I’d never, but no, don’t say that; what a relief it will be when it’s done.

  “At that time my father had just retired. (He was in banking, like my husband, and that’s why I went into it when I left social work, I thought it was safe.) He was always in his room, doing his hobbies, or so I thought. In fact he was doing much worse. He used to sneak off and pick up women, old women, awful women, the kind of woman who sleeps rough. It was all he could get, I suppose. He wasn’t very prepossessing himself. He said he was lonely.

  “He used to meet them in the launderette or at the park, or in the bus station café. He used to buy them cups of tea. They’d be grateful. They didn’t mind doing it out of doors, even in cold weather. He used to come home with clay on the knees of his trousers. I didn’t know what to do.

  “He started bringing them home, and I was frantic in case the neighbours found out. For me, in my position…He could have caught something, a disease. He could be getting them pregnant, they weren’t all old. There I was, telling other people how to run their lives. I used to hide his glasses. He could hardly see without them; but I think he used to get out, all the same.

  “And then the day cam
e when I did get into the Axon house. There was something funny about the way Muriel looked, and the way her mother talked; as if they were carrying on some elaborate piece of acting, and as if I couldn’t see what was right under my nose. Her mother said Muriel had been out of the house. ‘On the razzle’ was the expression she used.

  “I went away and the picture of Muriel remained in my mind, sitting, lumpen, her face downcast, in her peculiar blue smock made out of some kind of furnishing fabric. At first it didn’t occur to me that she might be pregnant. I only saw her, in my mind, ambling through the park, or drinking tea out of a paper cup down at the bus station. It occurred to me, as I ran down the Axons’ front path; and now, all these years later, the thought wakes me up in the middle of the night.

  “I didn’t report my suspicion. I didn’t do anything. I cleared off and left the Axons to their own devices. I didn’t go back to the house until I absolutely had to, and by that time Muriel (if she’d really been pregnant) had already given birth. What happened to the baby? Was it a boy or a girl? I think I read somewhere that babies’ corpses often mummify, and turn up years later, uncannily preserved.”

  She stopped writing. It didn’t seem very coherent. There was so much that only made sense in the light of her state of mind at the time, and no doubt she had been over-imaginative. That was a fault of hers.

  She took a clean sheet of paper and wrote on it,

  “I think my husband is having an affair. I don’t know who she is and I hope I don’t find out. I like deceiving myself. It is comfortable. It is the House Speciality.”

  Perhaps I should have a drink, she thought. My style leaves something to be desired and perhaps after a drink it would improve. Perhaps a drink would help her to see the connection between things, the connections she sensed and sought. There was no gin, so she had whisky. She wasn’t fussy these days. Alcohol takes you to the heart; you see the True Nature of Events.

  There was a feeling of circular motion. It was not entirely the effect of the Scotch on an empty stomach. Here she was, back in town. Here she was, the Wronged Wife; she’d once been the Other Woman. It is a progression people make, but she didn’t see that. Her situation seemed special, sinister, ensnaring. Funny that it’s only after ten years things seem to fit together.

  What I need, Colin thought, is a large gin and tonic.

  “Anybody home?” No answer. He dropped his jacket—he had not worn it all day—on the chair in the hall, and went into the living room. “Why doesn’t anybody let a bit of air in around here?” He swung open the french windows that looked over the garden. Ought to spray for blackfly this weekend, he thought. He turned to the wall units and opened a cupboard gingerly; he could not trust the door to stay in place, having constructed the units himself last summer with the help of screwdriver provided and simple instructions in Japanese. He held the gin bottle up for inspection; it was a quarter full, so he poured himself a measure into a tumbler which came to hand and, picking it up, set off for the kitchen to look for ice and tonic. There would be lemons, for sure; there were always lemons around Sylvia. She cooked them and squeezed them and ate them and rubbed them on her elbows, like the Esquimaux using up every part of the beast. He found a drop of tonic in a bottle at the back of the fridge. It looked flat. He shook it and watched it fizz, then opened the freezer. There was something like raspberry jam all over the ice cubes. He sighed, slid out the tray, and took it to the sink. He twisted it and nothing happened, so he hammered it against the stainless steel for a while, looking out of the kitchen window; he twisted it again, and the ice cubes flew out and fell into the sink with a clatter. He picked up a couple, pursuing them as they shot away from his fingers, and ran them under the tap to try to get the jam off; before long the ice and water were indistinguishable, and both were running through his fingers.

  “Hello, Dad,” said Claire, coming in. “What are you washing the ice cubes for?”

  “Because somebody, I don’t say who, has been smearing jam all over the place.”

  “It must have been Alistair.”

  “It’s funny that he put it round your mouth too, isn’t it?”

  “Is this your drink?” Claire put her forefinger into his tumbler and licked it. “Yuk, that’s horrible.”

  “Watch out, you’ll have jam in it.”

  “I tell you what, Dad, I could make you some tea.”

  “This will do me nicely, Claire. If you’ll take your fingers out of it, I’ll have it without the ice.”

  “You could have tea as well. I’ve got my forms for Brownies.”

  “Perhaps later, pet. Where is Alistair, is he still upstairs?”

  “No, I saw him with Austin. They’re in the churchyard.”

  “Oh yes, what are they doing? Exhuming somebody?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Digging up bodies. Really, Claire, we’ll have to do something about your vocabulary.”

  “No, stupid, they weren’t digging up bodies. They were singing. They’ve got some beer.”

  “Really, at this time of day?”

  “They’ve not got a bottle opener, so they’re knocking the tops off on the gravestones. They wouldn’t let me do it.”

  “I wonder what the vicar would have to say.”

  “About what?” Sylvia asked, trundling in with the laundry basket. She stared at him. “Drinking?”

  “Yes. Why not? Would you like to join me?”

  “Why are you saying that?” She stopped dead, eyeing him. “As if we were in a TV play. As if I were some other woman.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. I only asked—”

  “There must be at least three hundred calories in that. Is it Slimline Tonic or not?”

  “It’s flat anyway,” Colin said. Its momentary sparkle had subsided by the time he emptied it into his glass. “I can make up for it if I go carefully over the weekend.”

  “Very likely; when Florence comes round with shortbread on Sunday afternoon and gets into a state if you don’t eat it.”

  “Well, perhaps I could just have one piece, and hope she’ll take it in good part. Would you pass me a knife for my lemon, please? Besides, you know, if you want the honest truth—”

  “If I want the honest truth, I suppose I’ll go begging.”

  “Sylvia, what is this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m not really interested in losing any more weight.”

  “You’ll regret it,” she sang. She moved across the kitchen towards him, trying to lighten her tone.

  “Mum,” said Claire, “you shouldn’t carry a knife with the pointy side like that, it’s dangerous.”

  “It’s called a blade, Claire,” Sylvia said calmly. “You’ll regret it when you go off to the squash club, and collapse and die.”

  “You’re not allowed to die at my squash club,” Colin said. He took the knife and stuck it in his lemon. “It’s like the Palace of Westminster, no one is allowed to expire within the precincts. They’d run you outside and leave you on the pavement.”

  “It’s hardly a thing to joke about, in front of Claire.”

  “Claire might laugh.” Colin stood with the slice of lemon poised on the blade of his knife. “I know you won’t. Humour’s not your strong point, is it?”

  “When did you start hating me?” Sylvia asked. “I’d like to know. Can you remember what year it was? When did you start hating me, and when, if ever, did you stop?”

  Colin turned away, letting his slice of lemon fall on the counter top. He could not imagine what had prompted this. The photograph of his former mistress lay snugly under his wife’s pelvic bone, the bleak little face staring at the lining of her pocket. A bluebottle alighted on his glass and walked slowly and purposefully round the rim.

  The hospital where Mrs. Wilmot worked was named not for St. Luke, the physician, but for the tax collector, St. Matthew. Its main building, within the memory of many of its patients—memories most acute for their early lives—had been the union wor
khouse. It still looked like a workhouse, grey and draughty, with its high ceilings and stained walls. In the part of the building which was now taken over by offices, you could still see the old wooden benches, built with a ridge in their backs so that the paupers would not lounge about and get too comfortable. Its general air was so depressing, its inmates so futureless, and its corridors so drab that even though the area unemployment rate was 16 per cent, the hospital could not keep its staff. They could not live, they found, with the prospect of what was in store for them.

  The wards here did not have interesting names, just letters. The best patients were in C Ward; the worst were in A. Perhaps this psychological ploy was meant for the staff, for the patients were beyond encouragement.

  The Staff Nurse called out to Poor Mrs. Wilmot as she trailed in: “Hello there, love. Would you mind mopping up after Mrs. Anderson? She’s had an accident.”

  “Course, I don’t have to.” She took her coat off and laid it over a chair. “Course, I’m entitled to a nurse to do that. Course, I don’t mind.”

  “Oh, you are a brick, Mrs. Wilmot,” Staff said. “I don’t know where we’d be without you.”

  The ward smelled; not of its incontinent patients, but of what was almost worse, disinfectant, air freshener, talcum powder, drug-induced sleep. And now of food; the dinner trolley rolled in, purées and mashes under their metal covers.

  Staff took up a bowl, and perched on the edge of a bed.

  “Try this potato, love,” she urged, forking it appetisingly.