‘Well, we’ll see how it goes. It’s a sad time but she has the love of God and his mercy.’
Roy nodded, a lump in his throat.
As the priest began his ministrations, touching Peggy’s eyes and nose and mouth with the oil and reciting the prayers for the ceremony, Roy held her hand. He had first met Peggy at church. Roy and Ann, his wife, had separated by then. Roy was still driving the wagon.
During his marriage he’d be away for days at a time, and it got so he dreaded coming home what with Ann complaining about everything, wanting him to be different, to be something he wasn’t. He never really understood what she wanted from him. She complained of his silence, his ignoring her, said she wanted holidays, so they went on holidays and then she complained that he was a miserable sod.
‘Why did you marry me, then?’ he blurted out one day when Ann was having a go.
‘I thought I loved you,’ she said, ‘and I thought you’d change. Wrong on both counts.’
That hurt and she knew it. She looked away and shook her head and said, ‘I think it was a mistake, Roy, I’m sorry. I’m just so unhappy.’
So they had parted ways and split the money from the sale of the house. She’d never tried to claim maintenance, at least that was something. Ann moved away, she met a man who was taking over a salon in Alicante and set up with him.
Roy started going to St Agnes’s, near his new digs – though his visits were irregular, depending on his schedule. Peggy went too. She got chatting to him one day after mass. Their mothers had known each other, Peggy said. Peggy and he had been to the same primary school, though she’d been three years ahead of him so she would never have noticed him back then.
The next time he saw her, she asked if he’d come with them as a helper for the trip to Lourdes. He was about to refuse, he saw enough of the continent as it was with the truck driving, but the way she smiled changed his mind.
It went on from there, the friendship growing quite slowly, unlike the sudden both-feet-first nature of him and Ann.
After a while he plucked up courage to invite Peggy out for a meal, to an Italian restaurant. He appreciated the company. She would chatter away but it wasn’t like the gossip Ann had shared, spiked with putdowns or disapproval. Peggy was more positive than that. She didn’t seem to be bothered by his reticence, either. She never chivvied him to talk which made it easier for him to do so.
That evening, outside the house she still shared with her parents, she had kissed him.
‘I can’t marry you,’ Roy said.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘we’ll just have to live in sin.’
He stared at her, shocked to the core. He knew how much her faith meant and what it might cost her once word got out.
‘It wouldn’t be fair,’ he said, ‘what about church, and your family?’
‘It wouldn’t be fair if we were kept apart because of some outdated dogma.’ Her eyes were warm, merry.
‘But people – you know what they’re like?’
‘Yes. We might have to go to a different church,’ she said.
He looked at her – did she mean it, would she really live with him outside of marriage?
‘Why should I have to choose between my faith and a chance at happiness?’ she said, ‘I want both.’
He kissed her then and she responded.
They moved in together a few months later and started going to St Edmund’s. Roy bought her a gold ring. Peggy began to use his surname. She had one proviso, she asked if he would consider doing a different job, if he could find something so he wasn’t away so much.
He agreed and got the job at the warehouse. He didn’t think he could be any happier and then they had Simon.
Now the priest began to recite a Hail Mary. Roy listened, one thumb stroking Peggy’s hand, but he didn’t join in. He didn’t pray anymore. He didn’t believe in it.
Chapter 4
‘Thank you, Mrs Halliwell.’
‘You’re welcome, Oliver, tell your mum that I’m very pleased with you. And have a think about the exam will you?’
‘Yes, Miss.’
Norma shut the front door. He was a sweet child, polite and good-mannered but natural enough to get the giggles sometimes when he made mistakes that sounded comical. And she laughed along with him. He was her last pupil of the day.
She put the music away in the piano stool, went through and turned the lamp on in the living room and closed the curtains.
An hour later, Don still wasn’t back. After all the strain of the inquest and with him completely exonerated she thought he might have come home to relax and well – perhaps celebrate wasn’t the right word – but give thanks that the ordeal was over, share that with her. She had made a Boer chicken pie with a beautiful puff top pastry and some cauliflower cheese. It would re-heat in the microwave. She wondered whether to have some herself or to wait and decided that she would have a glass of wine and if he wasn’t home by eight then she’d see if she was still hungry.
He had someone else to share his good news with, she was almost certain. That side of things had dwindled between them over time, especially since the menopause. It still happened, but rarely. When they did have sex she wondered why they didn’t do it more often. Norma never initiated it, never had, the thought made her toes curl. What if Don said no and turned her away? Sometimes she had dreams and woke aroused, even had an orgasm, but she had never told him.
Norma suspected he had a lover because his hours had got longer again, the partners’ meetings more frequent. And she had sensed a new energy to him. At least before the inquest loomed. You don’t live with somebody for thirty years without being able to read the smallest changes in mood and behaviour.
There was no point in dwelling on it. There had been other women, other flings. Discreet and short-lived. He would never leave her. She knew this like she knew the scales on the piano keyboard or that the sun would rise in the morning. There was too little loyalty these days, people gave up on marriage at the first hurdle. She was loyal to Don and vice versa.
Norma hadn’t attended the Marcie Young inquest. She had offered, dreading that Don might take her up on it, but he’d said, ‘I’d only be worrying about you. I’ll be fine.’
He wasn’t fine though, she had seen the signs of strain on him as the start date drew closer. Last night when he came home, he was ashen-faced, distracted. She teased it out of him, ‘How was it, did you have to speak?’
He said a little, then added to it, then elaborated until he was giving full vent to his sense of outrage at the whole charade. He was drinking more, a tumbler of whiskey as soon as he crossed the threshold, wine with his meal. But who was she to comment? He’d been under so much pressure, what with the inquest and problems at the surgery.
Don generally got along with people but one of the GPs, Fraser McKee he was called, got right up Don’s nose. A younger man, he was trying to tell Don how things should be done. He wanted to coach patients and staff to use the Internet, to research current medical thinking, he had ideas for setting up clinics for this, that and the other, as though Don’s thirty years in the job counted for nothing.
At first Don had appreciated Fraser’s clumsy attempts to innovate, then he began to complain mildly about him, putting it down to the man’s inexperience but as the months went on Don became increasingly hostile.
‘He’s after a partnership,’ Don had said, ‘he talks as though it’s a sure thing.’
‘And it’s not?’ Norma said.
‘Over my dead body,’ Don had said, ‘he’s no idea how to work as a member of the team. If you don’t agree with his projects and his buzzwords he writes you off.’
‘What do the others think?’ Norma said.
‘He’s not made himself popular,’ Don said. ‘I don’t think anyone will disagree.’
Norma wondered now, as she ironed his shirts, what sort of doctor she herself would have made, if things had turned out differently. Would she have gained the loyalty and affection of her patients and colleagues like Don had or been an irritant like Fraser? Would she even have been a GP? Perhaps she’d have chosen a specialty and gone for a hospital career instead.