Last Act of All Page 3

  Marcia, pouring boiling water into the mugs, stopped in astonishment, and some dismay. Impervious to atmosphere herself, she considered her husband’s sensitivity dangerous, and even a little self-indulgent.

  She pursed her lips, then said, with forced cheerfulness, ‘Dear me! You are getting yourself into a state. Look, I’ve just made you a nice cup of coffee—’

  He stared at her wildly. ‘I’m going across to the church,’ he said, and fled.

  She looked after him with a sigh. He took refuge in the church more and more often these days, and while naturally she would be the very last to suggest he shouldn’t, there were times when it might be more constructive to go out and tackle problems head on. She found herself contemplating, not for the first time, the prospects opening up with the ordination of women.

  *

  She looked so awful, that was the thing. And that horrendous artificial voice! Stephanie pulled a battered pack of forbidden cigarettes from her overnight bag and lit one.

  She had managed to say, ‘Hello, Mum,’ while Edward wittered on, trying to paper over the cracks. Then she had mumbled something about having unpacking to do, and fled.

  The puffing was soothing, even if she hadn’t mastered inhaling yet, and wasn’t sure if she liked it much. She needed to feel laid-back and adult, though, and this helped.

  She had almost convinced herself she hated her mother. But she didn’t want to hate her. She wanted to run into her arms, and be safe, and loved, and comfortable, like it had been before her mother became what she couldn’t believe she was, before that dreadful night when she had stolen the newspaper and read that her mother was pleading guilty. She’d insisted she never wanted to see her again, but nine months, when you are fourteen, is a long time.

  It had been wonderful when she was little. Daddy was so much handsomer and more exciting than other fathers, and spoiled her rotten and took her to places where none of her friends had been. He was unpredictable, of course, and when he was cross you felt sick inside, but once he was in a good mood again it was like the sun coming out on a dull day, and he would make Mummy laugh, and they would all be happy together.

  Naturally, as you grew up you stopped thinking your parents were so terrific. You wanted to hang out with your own friends, and then, somehow, Daddy changed.

  She noticed the change around the time they came to Radnesfield. Sometimes she felt it must have a curse — hateful, ugly, unfriendly little place, where people didn’t care about you at all.

  And even after Dad divorced Mummy and married loathsome Lilian, she couldn’t escape, because Edward dragged Mummy back to marry him.

  She didn’t really blame Edward. He’d always lived there, after all, and he did his best. It wasn’t his fault he wasn’t exactly dynamic, and that every so often she got a desperate craving for the excitement Dad always generated, even though she knew now how horrible he had been.

  Once she’d read all the papers Em Morley had saved her, she could see Dad had asked for it. But that was different from your mum actually killing him. That was heavy.

  Still, at least Edward hadn’t insisted on discussing it, and now he was obviously going to stiff-upper-lip the whole thing. As long as Mum would play along, they could make like nothing had happened, and in just over a year, when she had left school, she could start a new life. She would be sixteen, after all — almost an adult.

  So perhaps the stranger downstairs with the thin, bird-like body and the oddly-cut hair wasn’t so important. Once you were grown-up and independent, you didn’t need a mother, like you did when you were newly fifteen, and had only a gaping hole where your mother used to be.

  *

  Somehow, Helena got through the achingly long day. At mealtimes Stephanie sat avoiding her eyes, replying politely to Edward’s small talk and disappearing at the first possible moment.

  Somehow the robot-Helena, in her bright brittle voice, replied politely too, until at last Edward could say, ‘I really think you should have an early night, darling. I’m going to be masterful and make you go to bed.’

  Obediently she followed as he picked up her bag from the cloakroom and led the way upstairs.

  ‘By the way,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘I’ve told Martha to put my things in the spare room. I want you to get lots of rest, and you know what I’m like — late to bed and early to rise.’

  The relief was overwhelming. Despite the prohibitions of her conscious mind, the dread of physical intimacy had been a lurking shadow. An unexpected touch was enough to make her shrink, and it was a measure of her gratitude for the delicacy of his gift of privacy that she reached out, of her own volition, to squeeze his hand, wordlessly.

  He was ridiculously pleased, returning the pressure.

  ‘Not for ever, though, darling. We’ll be happy together again, won’t we?’

  She was still too absorbed in self-preservation to be sensitive to others, but the thought did occur to her that his remark might be meant as much to reassure himself, as her.

  Helena slept that night heavily and dreamlessly, as if she had been drugged. When at last she woke, the house was silent and it was full daylight.

  She picked up her watch, squinting at its hands with eyes still heavy from sleep. Was that really twelve o’clock? Fourteen hours! She hadn’t slept like that since she was a teenager.

  She had a long, luxurious bath, and by the time she was dressed, she felt better. She could almost pretend that the old remedy of a good night’s sleep had actually put things right.

  Downstairs, the house was empty and very tidy. Edward would be at work, of course. Martha Bateman had clearly been and gone, and on the kitchen table there was a note from Stephanie.

  ‘Gone to lunch at the Wagstaffs. Back later.’

  Well, that was normal enough. Steph had always spent half her time in the stables there, and Dora treated her like one of the family.

  Martha had left the mail there too, in a neat pile. Incuriously, she flipped through it.

  Mostly it was for Edward, boring letters with typed addresses or windows in the envelopes. There was one of those for her too, though she didn’t bother to open it.

  But there was one letter written in a strong, clear hand in black ink, addressed to her and marked ‘Personal’.

  She picked it up. She had had bitter experience of personal letters, and she had not read a letter which Edward had not vetted first since — well, for a very long time.

  She hesitated. But that was behind her now. This was ordinary life again, humdrum and unexciting. She tore open the envelope.

  It looked harmless enough. ‘Dear Mrs Radley...’ No threatening block capitals, no wild accusations or insults.

  She turned it over to study the signature, neat and unaffected. ‘Frances Howarth’, it read.

  She felt the blood drain from her head, and she sat down heavily in a kitchen chair. Her hands were shaking; she had to lay the letter on the table to read it.

  ‘Dear Mrs Radley, You may remember—’

  Remember! She didn’t want to remember. She had spent months perfecting the skill of not remembering. Yet now, like a sand wall naively built to repel the incoming tide, her defences were crumbling and the past swept back in all its hideous clarity. Recollection rose like bile in her throat, with a cold, metallic, poison taste.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Two

  Sky, Helena thought. Sky, and sky and sky. What in the world would anyone want with that much sky? It was positively bullying the meek, damp line of cringing Fenland earth into submission.

  She had almost ducked as she got out of the car to stand beside Neville who, at a little over six foot, was the highest point in the landscape. The universe seemed to close over them with a clang, like the visor of a helmet slamming shut.

  ‘It’s a bit much, isn’t it?’ she called into the chilly wind, but Neville only shouted back, ‘What?’ Using the Method approach to the part of prospective country-dweller, he was thinking himself into it, wor
king from the brogues upwards to the lovat thornproof jacket with the suede patches and the trilby with a fishing-fly tucked jauntily into the brim.

  There was a hedge, then only turnip fields and more flatness, with a marshy pond in the distance. Somewhere a crow was cawing; another pecked in the field. The grass verges were wide, grey with dried traffic mud, and the ground scrubby with a few diseased-looking furze bushes.

  It was a staggered crossroads, with no distinguishing features beyond two striped fingerposts, one at each road end, pointing in opposite directions off the main highway.

  Yet Helena could see, with a sinking heart, why it had caught Neville’s imagination. It was a very powerful statement, in its bleak isolation; so stark, so uncompromising, so ugly. And Neville, alongside his usual flirtations, was indulging in a full-blown love affair with ugliness. She could only hope that, like his other flirtations, it would burn itself out.

  Now he came over to her, pointing to the signpost to the north-west, marked ‘Radnesfield’. ‘See that?’ It was the smaller of the minor roads, flat and bare of habitation. He put his arm about her shoulders, pulling her to his side.

  ‘That’s it, Nella — that’s my road. This is the one that says to me, “Neville, this is for you.”’

  She paused, uncertain how to reply. One of the crows, tiring of his quest, flapped up to land on the signpost with a harsh caw.

  Neville’s sudden laughter frightened the bird off, and it flew away with another raucous cry.

  “The raven himself is hoarse...” he began, and with instinctive, theatrical superstition, she shuddered.

  ‘Don’t quote Macbeth, Neville,’ she said sharply. ‘It’s bad luck. And I’m simply freezing out here.’

  She shrugged off his arm and returned to the car, irritated by her own reaction as well as by his behaviour. If he had decided to ham it up, she wasn’t about to indulge him.

  Neville did not turn to watch her go, but he was keenly aware of her withdrawal. Withdrawal was always the weapon she used, like a lance to jab his Achilles heel.

  He needed to be the star: she knew that! He needed attention the way other people needed food, and warmth and shelter. And love.

  Love — somehow, he’d never quite got it sussed. He’d read enough about it, god knew, talked about it, acted it — on and off the stage — and yet he still had never figured out how you knew it was there. Perhaps when your mother had dumped you in a children’s home the first second she could, without doing you the courtesy of mentioning who your father was, you didn’t really have a reference point.

  So he had always been a pragmatist, and at least his unknown parents had given him one legacy — the sort of head-turning looks that gave him the edge on the other kids in that dreary, dismal hole. Being the centre of attention gave you the sort of warm, safe glow that seemed to be associated with love. But the indicators were more specific: you could tell when you were the star, when you weren’t insignificant and powerless any more. That was when he had learned the great truth about acting, long before they taught him about Stanislavsky; act it, you became it, and you could convince yourself you really were Neville Fielding, not Norman Smith. Hell, he’d never had a proper name, anyway.

  He was the star, all right, by the time he left for drama school, with old Ma Porter snivelling and making him promise to come back and see them. He hadn’t, of course; bleakness and squalor were hardly what you’d call a draw, when you were headed for a life of luxury and fast cars and sexy women, or thought you were. She still sent him a Christmas card; probably Helena sent her one back, though he wasn’t sure.

  Helena. Oh, dear god, Helena. She was under his skin like some festering thorn. He had been mad for her from the first moment he spotted her, cool, aloof, beautiful, everybody’s fantasy and nobody’s prize. Getting her attention was his only early success.

  Lust came into it, of course — he wasn’t trying to deny that — but the obsession that gripped him was more than just the spoliation of the Snow Queen. She was assured, middle-class and seriously talented, with all the qualities everyone admired.

  He wasn’t, but he had got the ring on her finger, which should have settled it. She said she loved him — but how could he ever believe her? Some demon prompted him to push her to the point where his fears would be justified, and he had done some bloody silly things to see if he had the power to hurt her. He did, and she forgave him, so that was all right — for a time. But then the doubts would begin again, the need would come back, and the test, this time, would be stiffer than ever.

  Surreptitiously, he glanced over his shoulder as he stamped his numbed feet. She was showing no sign of the impatience he was convinced she really felt. Sod it, why couldn’t she open the window and yell, ‘Come on, Neville, it’s bloody freezing out there!’

  But that wasn’t her style, to meet him on his own ground. That might allow him access to her very private self. She always, ultimately, eluded him, even in their moments of closest intimacy, and sometimes his love-making had been brutal in his desperation to possess and dominate. But increasingly, whenever he turned up the emotional thermostat, she, so to speak, slipped out of the room.

  But there had always been Stephanie to reassure him, looking up at her Dad with his own dark blue eyes, wide with wonder at his magnificence. In the days when having a real family seemed about as likely as winning the pools when you hadn’t posted the coupon, that was what he reckoned it was all about — unstinted love and admiration, given as of right.

  She didn’t look at him like that anymore. She would turn down an invitation from her father, who did just happen to be one of the best-known stars of television, only to go shopping with her scrubby friends.

  So, if it weren’t for Harry, he’d be feeling as unloved and as powerless as little Norman Smith. Harry had brought him the fix he needed, that warm glow which came now from the adulation of hundreds of thousands of fans. He didn’t need Helena’s approval or Stephanie’s admiration now Harry was freeing him to be himself.

  For years he had blanked out his background, pretending all that ugliness and lovelessness didn’t exist. But it was there, in his soul, burned deep, and it was Harry who validated his experience. And Radnesfield, he had felt with a profound sense of recognition, was Harry country.

  And in Radnesfield he was planning to rub Helena’s well-bred nose in it. He would be on home territory, and she, for the first time in their married life, would be at a disadvantage. Perhaps they could start again, on his terms this time.

  Perhaps they couldn’t. Harry, smart bastard, would have all the answers, if that was the way it went.

  So that was where his crossroads came in. He could just get back in the car, say, ‘Let’s forget it. You wouldn’t like it, and I’ve changed my mind.’ He could do that.

  He looked again at the signpost that said ‘Radnesfield’. He believed, almost, that he took the decision at that moment, but the attitudes which made his choice inevitable were long-established.

  The crow, seeing him move away, took possession of his perch once more, with three hoarse, minatory caws. For a bare second, Neville checked, frowning, then he shrugged and grinned. Blowing on his hands and stamping his feet to warm them, he went back to the car.

  *

  Radnesfield was even nastier than Helena feared. It was a mean little huddle of Fifties council houses, with a few older ones modernized in the fake-bow-window-with-bull’s-eye-glass style, and a pub with a garish plastic sign proclaiming ‘The Four Feathers’ on a concrete front with aluminium frame doors and windows. There was a post office and a shop, with its owner’s name on an orange and yellow advertisement sign.

  There was a decent Norman church, and a square about a town cross with a couple of pretty houses, but Neville drove on, humming contentedly, and bore left up a slight incline.

  Then, on the right, there was an old wall, broken down by tree-roots and badly maintained, and at last, at the top of the sort of rise that passed for a hill in this uncom
promisingly flat countryside, was a house.

  ‘There you are, Nella! Radnesfield House.’ Neville spoke with pride of possession, as if it were his already.

  In a different situation, she would have burst out laughing. It was late Victorian yellow brick and red tile, after the Lego-land school of architecture. Nightmare patterns of hideous complication defaced the frontage, and a wooden trellis, apparently constructed by a giant with a fretsaw and a lurid imagination, was improbably grafted on to it, the wood rotted in places and the paint peeling. It was so revolting that it was comic, but she was, after all, going to have to live in this place.

  ‘Neville,’ she said faintly, ‘it’s unspeakable.’

  He roared with satisfied laughter. ‘Isn’t it? Didn’t I say so? It really is the pits, the purest sample of the worst sort of Victorian vulgarity. I love it! And that, on top of the village! None of your rubbishy, tourist-trap, picture-postcard places, just a real, unspoiled, ancient English village. This guy has simply got to sell. It fits me like a glove.’

  It wasn’t Neville it fitted, of course. It fitted ‘Badman’ Harry Bradman, as if it were a new concept — the designer village.

  *

  It was three years since their marriage had become this weird ménage a trois, with the sinister shadow of Harry lurking like a paid heavy on the fringes of every conversation. Helena never knew when he would move stage centre, but she had no difficulty in recognizing him once he appeared, hard, bullying and blustering, as if Neville were using his alter ego as a suit of armour which became more impenetrable daily.

  She recognized her own complicity. Harry had been spawned long ago in Neville’s wretched childhood, but she had nurtured the monster by her own weakness in giving way to Neville’s demands. It was a form of self-indulgence, because it had always been easier to sacrifice her own satisfaction than to combat Neville’s selfishness.

  The groundwork had been laid long before by Helena’s father, Simon Groves, a joyless, self-styled Man of God, who filled the West Country vicarage with an atmosphere of sour, unloving disapproval of every blithe and youthful impulse his only child displayed. Her mother, gently-bred, weak and pretty, had died when the girl was twelve.