Willett stood up and looked behind the refrigerator, expecting to see alternate wiring leading to some other power source, but there was nothing of that nature visible. He opened the refrigerator’s curvaceous door and the internal light came on, wanly illuminating glass shelves of jars, bottles and plastic boxes. Cold air flowed downwards over his ankles.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Willett muttered. He knelt on the floor and—using his pen-light—looked underneath the refrigerator, hoping to find evidence that some untutored maverick of an electrician had brought a power cable up through the floor, but again there was nothing to fulfil his expectations.
“There’s something bloody haywire here,” he said in a louder voice as he stood up and returned the flashlight and screwdriver to his pocket. He left the kitchen, returned to the hall and was about to shout up the stairs when he heard a movement on the landing. A moment later Gina Sturmey came into view wearing a tangerine jump-suit which had been designed for a younger generation, but which looked right on her trim 75-year-old figure. In the soft light she appeared no older than any of her daughters, and for an instant Willett was unaccountably afraid of her.
“Hello, Willett,” she said, descending the staircase towards him. “I heard you at the door, but I was in the middle of varnishing my nails.” She held up her hands and displayed nails the exact colour of her suit. “How are you these days?”
“I’m…”
“I’ll fetch you the sugar,” Gina cut in. “Muriel says she feels so silly over having forgotten to buy icing sugar, especially as we were looking at it in Sainsbury’s only last week, but it was on Friday afternoon and the place was so crowded we could hardly move. I’m always telling her it’s much better to shop early in the morning, but she says you can go too early and then the shelves haven’t been properly restocked from the day before and you can …”
“There’s something not right about your fridge,” Willett said loudly. “Has some clever dick been working on it?”
Unexpectedly, Gina gave the classic Sturmey giggle. “Here I am talking about Muriel’s bad memory—and mine is even worse! I meant to tell her to tell you to bring a fuse over with you, and it flew right out of my head. Be a darling, Willett, and take the fuse off the Hoover for me. I can do without the cleaner till tomorrow, but …”
“You don’t understand,” Willett interrupted. “Your fridge is running without being plugged into the mains.”
“But that’s impossible.”
“You don’t have to tell me it’s impossible,” Willett said. “But it’s happening just the same—come and see for yourself.”
Gina’s expression was a blend of caution and concern. “Is this a joke?”
“Come into the kitchen!” Willett turned and strode towards the rear of the house, with Gina following. No sooner had he entered the kitchen’s cloud-white brilliance than he realised the refrigerator had fallen silent, and a premonition told him it was no longer working. He pulled open the door and the convenience light did not come on, making the interior seem dim and cavernous.
“It was working a minute ago,” Willett said, more baffled than ever. “I swear to you—it was!”
“You reek of whisky, Willett. How much have you had today?”
“Whisky has nothing to do with it. Put your hand inside the fridge—it’s still cold in there.”
“Of course it is,” Gina said gently, as though instructing a child. “The insulation will keep it cold for hours after the power is lost.”
“Spare me the elementary physics, you…” Willett stifled an insult, realising the incident was getting out of hand. The trouble was that he knew the refrigerator had been working without being connected to the mains, and the fact that Gina was so firm in her denials was an invert proof that she knew too. Why would she not admit it? What was it to her if a piece of domestic equipment had behaved freakishly? She knew next to nothing about machinery, and would probably have believed a technological fairy tale about the fridge’s cooling-grid picking up energy from the nearest radio station—so why was she giving him no argument?
Willett gazed helplessly at Gina’s neat, hard face, then inspiration came to him. His nephew had observed the phenomenon a good nine months earlier—a fact which demolished Gina’s claim that the refrigerator had been without a conventional power-source for only a matter of minutes. How would she wriggle out of that one? He was opening his mouth to challenge Gina when the telephone warbled. It was only a pace away from him, mounted on the tiled wall, and the unexpected loudness of it made him jump.
Gina took the handset and spoke her number into it. She listened for a short time, nodding and making little sounds of agreement, then said, “Don’t worry about the car, Muriel—the important thing is that you’re all right. Cars can easily be mended.”
On hearing his wife’s name and references to car damage, Willett moved closer to the phone, his heart lapsing into a bumping and unsteady rhythm.
“Yes, he’s right beside me,” Gina said into the instrument. Her eyes were watchful as she handed it over to Willett.
“What have you done, Muriel?” he said harshly. “What have you done to my car?”
“That’s all you think about! Your rotten, old car!” His wife had gone on the offensive immediately, which meant she had done something costly. “It doesn’t matter about me, does it? I could be seriously injured and you wouldn’t even …”
“The car, Muriel! What happened?”
There was a brief silence, then Muriel said, “I decided to put it into the garage to save you doing it when you got back, and…and it wouldn’t stop for me. When I pressed the brake the car went faster.”
“When you pressed the brake the car went faster.” Willett repeated the sentence in dull, noncommittal tones, hoping that merely hearing her own words would impress on Muriel just how nonsensical they were.
“That’s what I said.” Muriel sounded unrepentant.
Willett gave a deep sigh. “Muriel, if the car went faster you must have pressed the accelerator.”
“Willett, I’m not stupid—I know the difference between the accelerator and the brake,” Muriel said indignantly. “Anyway, your lathe got knocked over, and the back window of the car fell out.”
“My lathe!” Suddenly the giant Jubilee clip was again in place around Willett’s chest, squeezing inwards. “I’m coming home.” He hung up the phone, brushed past Gina without speaking and headed for the front door.
“Haven’t you forgotten something?” Gina called in his wake. “What about the icing sugar?”
“Stuff the icing sugar!” Willett snarled. Out in the avenue he set off in the direction of his house at a very fast walking pace, but within a few yards made the chastening discovery that the pressure in his chest had turned into actual pain. That’s the way they get you, he could almost hear Hank Beveridge saying. They kill you by making you kill yourself.
He immediately slowed to an amble and began the measured breathing he had been told was an aid to relaxation. The pain in his chest subsided reluctantly, producing a flicker of discomfort every now and then as he made his way home through shallow drifts of fallen cherry blossoms. The candle-coloured lights of the Rifleman’s beckoned in the distance, but he was not tempted. It had been a mistake, he now realised, to drink so much whisky in such a short time. The spirituous liquor was firing up his whole system just when it was imperative for him to be calm and cool. It had also given Gina the advantage of him, but then it had always been hard to best her in an argument. Look at the time…