Authors: Jonathan Coe
‘Is he here?’ one of the policemen asked.
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
‘Good work. Now let’s have a word with him.’
Lawrence turned and fled up the stairs. The policemen started to clatter after him but Paul told them, ‘It’s all right, he can’t get out that way’, and they came back down.
‘You fool, that’s not what we should be worried about,’ said Amanda. ‘What about the upstairs windows? Let me go up and talk to him.’
She climbed two flights of stairs and found Lawrence in the topmost room of the house, in the process of opening the window and scrambling out onto the window ledge.
‘Come any nearer,’ he said, ‘and I’ll jump. I mean it.’
He was telling the truth, for, if we might undertake a bit of psychology at this point (it hasn’t been the strong point of this story so far, I admit), Lawrence genuinely did not consider his life to be of any value, not even to himself; and if the chain of circumstances which we have been following had obliged him to perform a premature and involuntary suicide, that would have been fine by him. As he stood on that window ledge, poised between Amanda in the bedroom behind him, and Paul and two watchful policemen in the garden beneath, he was half inclined to jump. He could easily have jumped.
What, then, prevented him? Well, he was prevented, as it happened, by the bursting of a water-pipe the previous evening in a house four miles away on the other side of Sheffield. The explanation, had Lawrence ever heard it, would doubtless have pleased him. The house in question was the property of one Norman Lunt, who made his living by teaching maths at the secondary school which stood in the street just opposite the front garden of Paul’s home. As a consequence of having had to spend the whole evening mopping up water from his kitchen floor, Mr Lunt was now behind with his marking, and had no less than thirty-four sets of homework to get through during his lunch hour. Finding himself distracted from this task by an extremely noisy and foul-mouthed game of football which was taking place in the playground just outside the staffroom window, he had told the players, in no uncertain terms, to go away and continue their game elsewhere. Thus it was that these six children went to finish off the match at the very edge of the playground, near the road, where they never normally would have thought of playing; so that when one of their number, a promising young inside-right called Peter, took a flying shot at goal from well within his opponents’ half (which means that he would probably in any case have been offside), the ball soared straight over the fence, gathering speed and height, and hit Lawrence in the pit of the stomach just as he was about to jump. He was sent reeling backwards and had crashed down onto the bed before he even knew what was happening.
‘Are you all right?’ Amanda said. ‘Are you safe?’
She took him in her arms and held him tight. And Lawrence was shocked, more shocked than he had ever been in his life, by the fervour in her voice, by the depth of feeling which it betrayed, by the warmth and firmness of her arms as they clasped him and rocked him gently. He looked at her face, which was tearful, and wondered who she was and why she seemed to care so much for him. And he wondered, too, how this unexpected development would fit into his theory. He thought and he thought, as she rocked him back and forth, but still he could not decide whether everything he believed had, at a stroke, been disproved, or whether all that it meant was that another decision, perhaps the most important yet, had just been made on his behalf.
Emma’s first impulse on finishing the story was to telephone Robin. She was quite convinced that it could not be used against him, but she would like to have had certain questions clarified, there and then: there was something about it which left her uncomfortable, something about its intention, its position, which she did not understand. She could either go to the nearest call box, or she could wait until she got home; the problem with the second of these options, of course, was that Mark would probably listen in to the conversation. In a more lucid, or calmer moment, she would have stopped to consider how odd it was that she felt embarrassed at the thought of her husband listening to her as she made a business call to a client. But now, she did not even pause to reflect on the assumption which must have lain behind this embarrassment: the assumption that her husband would not have liked Robin, would not have liked him at all, had they met.
And so she attempted to phone Robin from a call box on her way back to Coventry; but there was no answer.
Two streets away from home, she parked the car for about ten minutes and sat in the dark, rehearsing her lines in the forthcoming argument. Where have you been? You realize it’s after ten. I had to go to Warwick. What for, work? Yes, sort of. I suppose you’re angry that I haven’t made you any supper. No, I don’t expect you to wait on me hand and foot, and besides, I’m quite capable of cooking myself a meal when I need to; it’s just nice to have some vague idea of where one’s wife is at ten o’clock on a Friday evening, that’s all. Well, would you like me to draw you a map of my route, with a complete timetable attached? Look, don’t hassle me, Emma, it’s been one of those days. Fine, join the club.
Silence.
She felt suddenly frightened to be sitting, alone, in that dark summer street, and when she started the engine again the noise seemed deafening. Then as soon as the house came into view she could see that there was nobody in. She felt relieved, and then immediately wary and cross with herself, because all those hateful suspicions which she had projected onto Mark at once began to seep through the cracks in her own fragile consciousness. Why should he be working late on a Friday night? It was a long time since that had been part of his routine; she had to cast her mind back to his houseman days. Perhaps he had gone tp get something to eat from the Chinese round the corner. But the burglar alarm was switched on, the curtains were drawn back, and the whole house, as she paced, like an intruder, from room to darkened room, had a dead and empty feel to it.
She made herself a sandwich, watching her reflection in the kitchen window, poured herself some milk, and found that she could touch neither. She shivered in the stillness. The fridge was humming quietly, and outside, from several gardens away, she could hear a dog barking.
By the time Emma found herself climbing the stairs, a serious unease had overtaken her. She had the sense of a malevolent presence in her home, a sense of intrusion and watchful hostility; it was more stressful, more threatening even than the experience of lunching with Alun and being bullied by him in that wearying legalistic way. Again she paused at the top of the stairs and listened closely to the nervous hush. Then she went into the bathroom and washed quickly and carelessly. Finally she hesitated before her bedroom door, wondering why it was closed, trying to remember whether she had closed it before leaving for work. She never normally closed the bedroom door before leaving for work.
She opened the door and turned the light on. Immediately Mark sat up in bed and blinked at her, and Emma made the mistake of screaming: only a short, high, quiet little scream, but a scream none the less.
‘What the hell’s the matter with you?’ he said.
She sat down on the very edge of the bed.
‘You frightened me. I got frightened, I don’t know why. I thought there was somebody in the house.’
‘Well there was. Me.’
‘Yes, I know. I thought you were out.’
‘Out? Where would I be at this time of night?’
He made a bit of a show of sitting up, adjusting his pyjama top, pulling the quilt slightly further over to his side. Emma, who had taken off her shoes as soon as she got in, began to unbutton her skirt.
‘I’m sorry, did I wake you?’
‘I was nearly asleep, yes.’
‘It’s a bit early to go to bed, on a Friday.’
‘I was tired.’
‘Why, has it been a busy day?’ It was strange how convenient these ritual questions could be, occasionally, as ways of buying time and building up defences.
‘Busy enough.’
Emma waited for him to ask where she had been, but he didn’t. She undressed down to her underwear and then put on a dressing gown.
‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’
‘Not yet. I made myself a snack. I thought there might be a film on television.’
‘Well,’ he said, as she left the room, ‘try to be quiet when you come back up.’
But two hours later, when Emma came to bed, Mark was not yet asleep. There had been a film, as it turned out, and it had been quite watchable. As she got into bed beside him, Mark did not move and did not say anything, but she sensed that he was still wakeful, and she allowed her hand to rest gently against his shoulder. When this produced no response she said, ‘I’m sorry I was so late getting back tonight.’
He turned over and hugged her.
‘That’s all right,’ he said; but he still did not ask her where she had been, and the moment of reconciliation, which she had been so tensely anticipating, was very transitory.
‘Has it been such a bad day?’ she asked, wanting to hear him talk.
‘Oh, it was OK. I feel I’m fighting a losing battle, though, as usual.’
There was a long pause, during which she could tell that there was something he very badly wanted to say to her. When it came, it was not at all what she had expected.
‘I had lunch with Liz today.’
‘Liz?’
‘Liz Seaton. You know, paediatrics. You met her once.’
‘Oh.’
‘You don’t remember?’
‘I don’t remember meeting her. I remember the name. You talk about her occasionally.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes. Her name seems to crop up. You see her a lot, do you? For lunch, and so on?’
‘No, not a lot. Very rarely, in fact.’
‘That’s funny, then, isn’t it?’
‘What’s funny?’
‘Well, it’s funny that you should talk about her so much if you hardly ever see her.’
‘I don’t talk about her that much.’
‘Why are you telling me this, anyway? Did anything interesting happen at this lunch?’
‘No, it was just a lunch, that’s all.’
‘So why mention it? Why is this the most pressing thing you have to tell me at one o’clock in the morning when we haven’t spoken all day?’
Mark disentangled himself from the embrace, which had become more and more distant, and sat up.
‘For God’s sake Emma, I was making conversation. I was telling you something about my day, like husbands and wives are supposed to do. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? I mean, it would even be nice if
you
did it occasionally. Tell me something. Tell me about your day. Where did
you
have lunch?’
‘It was nothing special. I took some sandwiches to Memorial Park,’ said Emma, after a slightly too obvious hesitation. Fearing the silence which immediately threatened to descend, she explained: ‘I wanted to think.’
‘Think? What about?’
‘Oh, just a case.’
‘I see. Anything interesting?’
‘Yes. Yes, it is interesting.’
At that particular moment, Emma had never felt less interested in the whole business of Robin and the allegations which surrounded him. And this feeling persisted until the morning, so that she read Ted’s letter, which arrived during breakfast, with a tired absence of surprise and disappointment which only a few days earlier would have been unthinkable.
‘The Beeches’,
34 Bellevue Rise,
Wokingham,
Surrey.
Dear Mrs Fitzpatrick,
I must first of all apologize for my delay in writing this letter. Rest assured that this has been due, and due only, to the seriousness with which I have been considering your request for information.
The news concerning Robin has come to me, as you can hardly fail to be aware, as a terrible shock. I still shiver to think that we had been drinking together – that he had been sitting, worse still, in the passenger seat of my car – only hours, minutes before he committed this atrocious deed (though one must remember, of course, that a man is innocent until proved guilty). Perhaps this seems ungenerous of me, ungenerous to someone whom I thought, in naivety, that I knew well: but the explanation is simple, you see – I have a son of my own.
Almost without realizing it, I think I have already set out my reasons for declining to testify on Robin’s behalf. (And I should perhaps tell you that I will be making a similar reply to Mr Barnes, who, as you might possibly know, is acting for the prosecution.) I feel too closely implicated in the events of that horrific day; I do not feel, yet, that I can achieve the necessary detachment. My wife agrees with me, and I feel sure that you too, as a woman, will understand.
Finally, if I wish you luck in your conduct of Robin’s case, I must also express the hope, as a lifelong believer in honesty and fair play, that justice comes to be done.
Yours faithfully,
Edward Parrish.
∗
By the time of Emma’s next visit to Port’s, a small revolution had taken place, beginning with the failure of that embrace in her bedroom in the small dark hours of the previous Saturday morning.
Very little had been said, between Mark and herself; neither of them felt that the subject was yet ready for discussion. But she knew, now, that he loved another woman, and she had allowed it to be shown that she knew. Conversation between them had in fact all but ceased, on any topic. All week he had been finding excuses for working late, for eating out at night, and on Wednesday he had not come home at all. On Thursday evening they had had a short but conclusive argument: Mark had announced, with a clear knowledge of the significance of what he was saying, that he would not be coming to the wedding of Emma’s old college friend Helen at the weekend. She would have to go on her own.
Meanwhile Emma found, at work, that she was pressing on with a kind of mechanical energy, and actually getting things done more quickly than usual; but at the same time she was aware that she was not bringing sufficient intelligence, sufficient thoroughness, sufficient engagement to bear on her work. By Friday, she was past caring. She had almost forgotten that she was meant to meet Alun at lunchtime and was nearly a quarter of an hour late. He made his annoyance very obvious.