“We were looking at brochures today,” Muriel said, deciding to chat just when the greatest demands were about to be made on her concentration.
“How nice.” Willett had no need to enquire about the content of the brochures. Gina Sturmey and the three daughters who had become widows were planning to go on an extended cruise next winter, and the planning of it was already taking up much of their time. Muriel sat in on all the sessions even though finances precluded her going on the voyage, and the others had not thought of making her their guest. Willett was not sure if it was because possessing a living spouse set her apart from them to some extent, or if they were simply being tight with their inherited money. He had noticed that, no matter how unified by mutual love the Sturmey women were, when it came to matters of hard cash there was very little give and take. It was only natural, he supposed, that anybody who had killed her husband to get hold of his savings and insurance was not going to …
Stop it! he told himself. You’re straying into Hank’s old fantasy too often these days.
“Yes,” Muriel went on, “the four-berth cabins on the Minora seem fabulous.”
“Four berths? That’s not so good, is it?”
“Why?”
“I thought the whole point of those ocean cruises was a spot of the old shipboard romance. All four in one room is going to be a bit awkward, unless they’re thinking of group sexs—and your mum is a bit too old for that.”
“Willett!” Muriel looked at him with disgust and, as always happened when she took her eyes off the road, the car immediately veered from its proper line.
“Watch that cyclist,” Willett said urgently.
“You watch what you say about my mother. You’ve got a filthy tongue, Willett Morris.”
“It was only a joke,” he said, vowing never again to distract his wife while she was at the wheel. Muriel had once possessed a strong sex drive, and he knew she had had several affairs after their marriage cooled, but—like her mother and sisters—she was ultra-prudish in her speech. He still remembered the occasion when he had been describing a machine and had aroused her curiosity with a reference to a female component. When he had explained it was so called because a male component slid into it she had accused him of being sex-crazed and had flatly refused to believe that the terms were standard throughout the engineering world. After he had proved the point with the aid of a parts catalogue her opinion of men in general had sunk to a new low.
In the remaining fifty minutes of the driving lesson Muriel punished Willett to the full for the tasteless remark concerning her mother and sisters. Her tactics included making near-homicidal raids on pedestrian crossings; performing dangerous right turns in the face of looming heavy goods vehicles; refusing to dip the headlights after dark, thus instigating beam duels with a half-dozen other drivers; repeatedly switching on the starter motor when waiting at traffic lights, even though the engine was running, thereby whipping up the whole motive system into a humming frenzy; and—as a final masterstroke—loftily assuring him that he could cure a squeaking windscreen wiper by spraying it with UB40.
By the time the car had crunched backwards into the drive at home Willett had an invisible steel band around his chest, a giant Jubilee clip whose screw tightened with every word Muriel spoke. There was a brief respite for him after the car had stopped, becauses—in accordance with her own imponderable ruless—Muriel remained in the vehicle to check her appearance in the mirror and to change her shoes for the ten-yard walk to the house. The delay gave him time to get to the whisky decanter in the sitting-room and gulp a half-tumbler of Bell’s. He braced himself for the inevitable accusations of alcoholism, and was scarcely able to believe his luck when he heard the telephone dial whirring in the hall. Muriel was reporting in to her mother or one of the sisters, ands—mercifullys—he had time for another drink. He poured a second bumper, equivalent to about four pub measures, and was getting the last of it down him as Muriel came into the room.
“You’re an alcoholic,” she said briskly, but without concern. “I want you to pop over to Mum’s house and borrow a bag of icing sugar. Not ordinary sugars—icing sugar. Can you remember that?”
“I think my brain can cope with that mammoth task,” Willett said. “When do you want me to go?”
“Now, of course. You’ve nothing better to do, have you?”
Willett had been looking forward to reassembling the carburettor of his lawn mower before dinner, but consoled himself with the thought that going to Gina’s would enable him to have another drink in the guilt-free atmosphere of the Rifleman’s. “Nothing that can’t wait,” he said. “Have I time to walk? I feel like stretching the old legs.”
“Just don’t be late for dinner—we eat at seven.” Muriel went upstairs to change out of her driving outfit, leaving Willett alone in the sitting-room. He glanced at the whisky, decided there would be little to be gained from another furtive drink, and set off on his errand. The air was mild and scented with greenery, and the trees in the avenue seemed to be artfully screening the streetlights, contriving new patterns of illumination for his benefit as he walked.
This is more like it, he thought, taking deep and pleasurable breaths. Relax, relax, relax! That’s the way to fight back against the K-Y warriors.
He had two more glasses of Bell’s in the orange-spangled cosiness of the Rifleman’s and by the time he had completed the half-mile walk to Gina Sturmey’s house was feeling reasonably fit and capable of dealing with his mother-in-law. Her house was a large detached affair, well over a century old, but although Gina was in her seventies she somehow managed to keep it clean and in good repair with very little outside assistance. A hall light shone through the leaded glass of the front door, suggesting that he was expected, but there was no response to his ringing of the bell. He rang twice more, then turned the door’s ceramic handle and went inside. Faint illumination seeped from the upper reaches of the panelled stairwell and the rear of the house, where the kitchen was situated, was augmented by a whiter glow.
“Gina?” Willett called out. “Are you home?”
Feeling uncomfortably like a law-breaker, he went along the hall, through the unlit dining room and into the fluorescent brilliance of the empty kitchen. Reflective cupboards and counters reproached him for having entered their presence unbidden, warning him not to try searching for icing sugar without their owner’s consent.
“Gina!” Willett shouted in aggrieved tones. He now felt like a prisoner in his mother-in-law’s kitchen, because were he to venture into another part of the house he might startle her or—unthinkably—surprise her in a state of undress. Muttering disconsolately, he glanced around the square room and in that strange moment of isolation memory cells fired off a salvo in his brain, thus recreating a scene from the past.
Grandma Gina’s fridge runs without being plugged into the electricity, little Tommy Beveridge had said one day last summer.
The notion was as ridiculous as ever, but it prompted Willett to take special notice of the refrigerator. It was rather large and old-fashioned, with rounded edges which made it look like something from a 1940s Hollywood movie. It hummed faintly, introspectively. Willett moved past it, bringing a wall socket into view, and saw at once that the refrigerator was not plugged in. The electrical flex from it trailed down to a narrow strip of flooring between the fridge and adjacent cupboard, terminating in a three-pin plug. Bemused, Willett hunkered down, picked up the plug and found its top to be loose. He selected an appropriate screwdriver from the four in the breast pocket of his jacket and opened the plug. The fuse was missing.