“It was only a local call—it won’t bankrupt you.”
“I’m not bothered about the cost of the call. I’m genuinely interested in finding out what you had to add to the day’s deliberations. What were you talking about?”
“Women’s things. You’re being childish, Willett.” Muriel rummaged below her seat, selected flat-heeled shoes from the three pairs she kept in a clutter around the seat-positioning mechanism and worked her feet into them. Willett watched the performance with bafflement and, in spite of his best intentions, a growing annoyance. Would any man, anywhere, have thought of treating the car as a kind of travelling wardrobe?
“That’s better.” Muriel fastened her safety belt and switched on the ignition with the key Willett had left in the lock, illuminating the square plastic buttons on the dash. He waited for her to begin the ritual struggle with the handbrake, then became aware that she was staring at the instrument display as though never having seen it before.
“Willett,” she said in tones of wonderment, “why is the little watering-can lit up?”
He closed his eyes in exaggerated disbelief. “What did you just say?”
“Are you going deaf? Why is the little watering-can lit up?”
“Are you by any chance,” he ground out, “referring to the oil pressure warning light?”
“I don’t care what you call it,” she snapped. “Why is it lit up?”
Willett kept his eyes shut. “Muriel, are you telling me—after all the hours I’ve spent explaining the workings of the car to you—that you think the oilcan symbol is meant to be a watering-can?”
Muriel giggled. “How was I to know? It looks just like the little green one I use for the house plants.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Willett said, a painful acidity welling in his stomach.
“There’s no need to blaspheme,” Muriel said angrily. “And I don’t care about your rotten old warning lights if you don’t.” She switched on the engine, released the handbrake with her customary struggle and silent mouthings, put the car into gear and made a take-off so violent that it would have resulted in a stall had not the back wheels spun on the loose surface of the drive. Willett winced as the gravel spattered through his dwarf dahlias like grapeshot. On reaching the avenue Muriel turned left and drove towards the Bath Road, and now, suddenly, she was in an airy good humour.
“For goodness’ sake try to relax, Willett,” she said. “I don’t want you having a heart attack on me.”
Don’t you? Willett thought, then realised he was in danger of becoming as paranoid as Hank had been at the end. For a moment his thoughts strayed towards his deceased friend…
Hank had refused point blank to have anything to do with his own wife’s driving tuition—”That’s sticking your head into the lioness’s mouth, old son.”—and had been fond of pointing out that it had been when he was teaching Beryl that Edward Cookson’s silted-up cardiovascular system had finally clenched him out of existence.
“Beryl could have learned to drive ages ago, but she waited till Edward’s health wasn’t up to the strain. It was her ultimate weapon, you see—and that’s why she refused to go to a driving school.”
“Cobblers,” Willett had said comfortably.
“You’ll see I’m right! Just pray that Muriel never uses the same tactic against you, old son. If she ever asks you to give her driving lessons, don’t hang around! Emigrate to Australia—that’s what Edward should have done!”
Willett remembered Edward Cookson as an unnecessarily gloomy man, but he had redeemed himself to some extent by producing one beautifully mordant line concerning his experience with Beryl at the wheel. Every time she stalled the engine she gave me an accusing look and switched on the windscreen wipers. Willett and Hank had often smirked into their lunchtime pints as they savoured the amount of sheer bitterness, frustration and male misery distilled into that single sentence.
“He’s letting her get to him,” Hank had once predicted—accurately, as it turned out—while staring into the malty oracle of his tankard. “He’s going to go the same way as old Clive. Mark my words!”
“But where’s the sense in it?” Willett had protested humorously. “Why should middle-aged women want to do away with their husbands?”
“We become redundant, old son. You see, after a man has fathered the children a woman wants and has burned himself out in providing financial stability for the family he isn’t needed any more. He’s actually in the way. It’s insurance policy time.”
“So he gets murdered!”
“Murdered isn’t too strong a word for it, though in most cases it’s an instinctive thing. In the battle of the sexes women have observed that men are susceptible to stress, so that’s the preferred weapon to be used against us, and they employ it effortlessly and naturally.”
“Sometimes I think you’re serious about all this,” Willett had said. “Don’t women ever suffer from stress?”
“They’re built to withstand its—physically and mentally. Nature has given them the upper hand, old son. They can go on for ever.” Hank had lowered his voice in case the inquisitive barmaid at the Rifleman’s was trying to eavesdrop. “Look how easy it is for them in bed.”
“Bed! I don’t get you.”
“When a man gets on a bit in years it’s harder for him to do the jobs—and, what’s more, it’s obvious that he is having difficulties. Therefore it’s a stressful situation for him, but not for the woman s—no matter how old she is. All she needs is a crafty squirt of that K-Y jelly and for all intents and purposes she’s as good as an eighteen-year-old.
“I tell you, Willett,” Hank had concluded dolefully, “the cards are stacked against us.”
Willett remembered having laughed aloud at that one, and he still thought of it as a prime example of Hank’s quirky humour, perhaps because Hank had died a few days later…
Some four hundred yards ahead of the car the brake lights of a lorry beaconed a warning, their ruby brilliance enhanced by the shade of the avenue’s overhanging trees. Willett glanced at his wife. Her face was calm, her eyes intent on the road. Reassured, Willett sent relaxation commands down through his body and waited for Muriel either to slow down or drift the car to the right. It continued in the left-hand lane, speed unchecked as it headed straight for the stationary lorry’s tailgate, with Muriel staring directly ahead and looking as coolly professional as an airline captain.
How long dare I wait? The question yammered in Willett’s head as diplomacy battled with the urge for self-preservation. The lorry’s brake lights swam apart as their range decreased. Willett opened his mouth to shout a warning and in the same instant the lights went out, showing that the lorry driver had eased up on the brake pedal. The disappearance of the ruby suns somehow galvanised Muriel into belated action. She stamped on the brake and the car dipped to a halt with its nose almost below the lorry’s mud-streaked tailgate.
“Did you see that?” Muriel turned to Willett with a scandalised expression.
“I certainly did,” he said, over the clamour in his nervous system. His forehead and cheeks tingled coldly and he felt ill.
“No lights! No signals! I’ve a good mind to report that maniac to the police.” Muriel backed the car a short distance and drove past the lorry, her head turned and tilted in an effort to spear the driver with a look of outrage. Willett considered telling her what had actually happened, but quickly relinquished the idea. Muriel would have been both disbelieving and furious, and another row would have a bad effect on her driving. He remained silent as she took the car to the end of the avenue and manouevred it into the Bath Road with an overt display of safety consciousness. Willett’s heart rate was returning to normal, but his spirits sank when he saw that the out-of-town traffic was already building up. He had been hoping to get the excursion over and done with before the rush hour got under way.