‘Elizabeth. For behaving badly.’
‘What ever did you do?’
‘Didn’t try and pull Geraldine or Jennifer.’
‘Mary Whitehouse would have been proud of you,’ said Harriet.
‘I know,’ said Cory, ‘it’s a great source of consolation to me. Fix me another drink, there’s a good girl.’
‘Did she terribly want you to?’
‘She wanted me to try. She’s frightened of the future and she wants someone to blot out the loneliness and to describe as “the man in her life”. She even put more scent on in the car going home, very secretively so I wasn’t supposed to notice. She waited when we got to the house, wriggling down in the seat with her head tilted back but I need that sort of complication like a hole in the head, so I got out and opened the door for her, and she started to cry and fled up the path, and then the poor cow couldn’t find her latch key until she’d turned her bag out. And I felt such a sod. Some sort of instinct of self-preservation made me put on a safety belt for the first time in years, and I drove off down the Fairmile slap into a tree. Hostesses can’t resist a spare man.’ He was rambling now. ‘They’re gold dust round here, a going spare man, a going-to-sleepin-the-spare-room-every-night man. I got very used to spare rooms when I was married to Noel.’
His long eyelashes lifted, and his dark eyes frowned at her as though she was the one who had hurt him.
He must be pissed out of his mind, thought Harriet; it’s the first time he’s mentioned Noel since the interview.
‘They want to get their own back on her for pinching their husbands,’ he went on.
‘Did she pinch them?’ said Harriet.
‘The ones she wanted, she did, and the wives of the ones she didn’t were in a way more piqued that their husbands should be slavering over Noel and her not taking a blind bit of notice of them.’
He picked up Jonah’s homework composition book which was lying on the table. ‘People in India have no food,’ he read out, ‘and they often go to bed with no supper.’ He laughed. ‘And all the old harridan puts at the bottom of the page is “Try and write more clearly, and write out the word Tomorrow three times”.’
He picked up a penciclass="underline"
‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,’ he said, writing with great care, ‘creeps on this petty pace from. .’
‘Oh you mustn’t,’ cried Harriet in horror. ‘Jonah’s teacher will murder him.’
‘I pay the fees,’ said Cory. ‘If Miss Bickersteth wishes to flip her lid she can ring up and complain to me. People in India have no food,’ he repeated slowly, ‘and they often go to bed with no supper. People in Yorkshire have a great deal too much to drink, and often also go to bed with no supper. Please get me another drink,’ he said, ‘and don’t tell me I’ve had enough. I know I have.’
‘You look absolutely exhausted,’ said Harriet. ‘You’re the one who should be taking sleeping pills and eating regular meals.’
‘Stop trying to mother me,’ said Cory.
Harriet handed him a drink.
‘It’s a bloody weak one,’ he grumbled.
Their hands touched. ‘You’re cold,’ he said.
‘I’ve got a warm heart,’ said Harriet, flustered and wincing at the cliché. Cory didn’t notice.
‘My wife has hot little hands,’ said Cory, ‘but her heart is as cold as the grave. She’s a nymphomaniac. I suppose you’ve heard that.’
‘Well, something of the sort.’
‘She’s also the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.’
‘I know,’ said Harriet.
‘Do you think the children look like her?’
‘No,’ lied Harriet. ‘Much more like you.’
‘Today’s our wedding anniversary,’ said Cory.
‘Oh God,’ said Harriet, stricken. ‘How awful for you. I am sorry.’
‘You really are, aren’t you?’ said Cory. ‘All that messing around with three rings on the telephone was her trying to get through. It was our secret code.’
‘You’ll find someone else soon,’ said Harriet unconvincingly.
‘Easy lays aren’t the problem,’ he said. ‘It’s like pigs in clover working in the movie business; always plenty of pretty girls hanging about. Then you wake up in the morning, and it’s the wrong head on the pillow beside you, and you can’t get them out quick enough.’
He put his head in his hands, feeling gingerly at the bump on his forehead.
‘I could have Noel back tomorrow if I wanted, but it’s like being an alcoholic, one drink and I’d be lost.’
‘It’s that bit about shunning “the heaven that leads men to this hell”,’ said Harriet. She felt she was having a very adult conversation.
‘That’s right,’ said Cory. ‘If she came back she’d be all over me the first week or two. Then she’d get bored and start looking for distractions. I couldn’t even work properly when she was around. If she was at home she wanted constant attention. If she was out, I couldn’t concentrate for worrying where she was. Show business’s happiest couple indeed!’
He laughed, but the laugh had a break in it. She could see the chasm of his despair.
‘Today’s our tenth wedding anniversary,’ he went on, his voice slurring. ‘The bloody bitch was the beat of my heart for ten years. Being married to her meant drifting along from day to day on the edge of despair. Do you know what I did this afternoon? I went out and sent her six dozen roses. Imagine the smirk on her face when she gets them. My lost love is so utterly, utterly lost, but just the same I did it. All tough guys are hopeless sentimentalists. Jesus I’m wallowing in self-pity. I’m sorry.’
He was shivering now. I must get him into bed, thought Harriet.
He shot her a sideways glance. ‘I’m keeping you up,’ he said.
‘No, no,’ she said, gritting her teeth to hide a yawn.
She heard a faint wail from upstairs. ‘I’ll just go and see who that is.’
‘Sometimes they go to bed with no supper,’ muttered Cory.
Upstairs Chattie was lying out of bed, Ambrose curled up in her arms, her long white legs sticking out. Harriet tucked her up and replaced her blankets. William was sleeping peacefully too, and when she got downstairs she found Cory asleep as well, his elegant narrow-hipped length sprawled across the sofa, his half-smoked cigarette in his hand. She put it out, loosened his tie and took his shoes off, then got the duvet and a blanket from his bedroom and covered him up.
‘It’s you and me babe,’ she said to Tadpole, and suddenly felt very responsible and grown up, as she looked down at Cory’s face. In sleep it had lost all its anguish.
Chapter Thirteen
The next day was catastrophic. After two hours sleep, Harriet was walking round like a zombie. Matters grew worse as William regurgitated sieved carrot and cabbage over everything, the washing machine gave up the ghost, and in the usual rat race of rounding up homework books, pinnies and gymshoes, she realized there wasn’t any dinner-money left for Chattie in the housekeeping. Mrs Bottomley was away for the night and therefore not available for a touch. After rifling every pocket in her wardrobe, the only solution was to wake Cory — who was not best pleased at being roused from a heavy slumber to one of the worst hangovers in recorded history. His temper was not improved by the embarrassment of finding himself still in evening clothes and lying on the sofa.
‘Why the hell can’t you organize the bloody housekeeping?’ he howled.
It was hardly the moment, Harriet decided, to remind him that he had filched the last of it himself.
When she got back from driving Chattie to school, he had changed into day clothes, was trying to keep down a glass of alkaseltzer, and in the sort of picky mood that soon reduced her to screaming hysteria.