She lowered the Guardian. Amanda had gone. Scooby Doo had come. As now had Brian, kicking his boots against the front step in an attention-seeking, exaggerated way for all the world as if he had just bid hail and farewell to Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
He came into the sitting room, grumbled at Mandy for throwing her things on to the floor, laughed over-heartily at Scoob then strode straight through the kitchen into the toilet. Here he withdrew his penis, which looked and felt as if it had spent the previous twenty-four hours marinading in a jar of chili paste, with extreme care. He urinated, tucked himself tenderly away and zipped up very, very slowly. Emerging from the bathroom he stared, much as Amanda had done, at the sight of his spouse sitting (lolling might be more accurate) with her feet up.
Brian gave the room a sharp once-over but everything looked clean and tidy and tea was, as usual, on the table. Propped against his mug was a letter. Brian picked it up. As soon as he saw the writing he knew it was from Edie. His stomach heaved. Feeling both excited and alarmed he wriggled into the piney niche and forced himself to sit calmly and make some show of eating.
The food nearly choked him. The food and apprehension. Coming to the house! He’d have to put a stop to that. That sort of thing could lead to trouble. She was obviously desperate to see him again. Understandable. He was pretty keen to see her too. In fact, during a day spent teaching on automatic pilot (not that his class had noticed the difference) Brian had done nothing but dream of the future. He had already decided that, once he had obtained his freedom, they would be married. His parents would kick up of course, because of the social gap, but they’d come round. And eventually he would want children, though obviously he and Edie would be all in all to each other for a long time first.
‘There’s a letter for you.’
‘I do have eyes, thank you.’ Brian picked it up and pursed his lips, casually judicious. ‘Any idea who brought it?’
‘No. It was here when I came back from play group.’ Brian was quite proud of the cool way he dropped the bulky envelope into his cardigan pocket and carried on munching his banana and walnut bap while it lay there, sizzling.
‘Probably someone can’t make rehearsal.’
‘How’s it doing? Your play?’
‘Fine.’
Sue watched him poking food into the pink hole in the middle of his beard, then priss up his lips and use his little finger to dab at the tight corners, checking for crumbs.
‘I shall be going to London on Tuesday.’
‘London?’ He stared across the room without seeing her. ‘What for?’
‘My lunch. With the editor.’
‘Oh. Right.’ It was no good. He couldn’t wait. Not another second. Not another heartbeat. Certainly not as long as it took to get out from the table and hide himself away. ‘Could you do me a favour, Sue? Please.’
His wife could not conceal her consternation. She said, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Would you mind getting me some dry socks? These are soaking.’
She took forever. Twenty-four hours to drag herself to the edge of her chair. A week to attain the vertical. A month to make it to the door. Six more to cross the sitting room. A year to climb - God’s truth! - she was coming back.
‘Any special sort?’
‘No, no, no. No. You choose.’
Somehow he waited, fists clenched and his body in a tight little ball. Holding his breath like a drowning man conserving energy. Then, when he heard her clogs clatter on the floorboards overhead he tore at the envelope, his fingers all thumbs. And drew out the contents.
When Barnaby got back to Arbury Crescent there was a postcard from Cully - in black and white, of the Radziwill Palace in Warsaw. The greeting was, as usual, dryly noncommittal. Playing to great houses, invited everywhere. The weather was fine, Nicholas was fine, she was fine. Don’t forget to video The Crucible. Love Cully. Cross, cross, cross.
Barnaby wondered, as he so frequently did, just how much she did love them. Or even if she loved them at all. Surely, she must. You couldn’t devote years of protective tenderness and concern, gut-wrenching anxiety and supportive admiration to someone and not have that person reciprocate, if only to a modest degree, in kind.
But of course you could. Beloved children took their place in your heart carelessly for granted and your devotion as no more than they deserved. They did not see it for what it was, the best you could do, but merely as the least you could do. It was only the desolate and deprived, the youthful walking wounded amongst whom Barnaby spent so much of his time, who saw the truly colossal magnificence of such a gift.
Joyce watched her husband, frowning down at the postcard in his hand. He was wearing his ‘better than nothing’ look. Half resentment, half relief. The light caught his grizzled sideboards and his still thick, black and silver hair. Thirteen hours since he had left for work and she could tell from his absent and distracted movements that he was still there in spirit.
Some cases were like this. She simply lost him. Watched as he became subsumed into an alternative universe in which there was no honestly relevant part for her to play. It was not that he didn’t, quite frequently, describe to her what was engaging his attention. But there was no way that these occasions could be mistaken for discussions.
Lying back on the sofa, Tom would ramble on in a shapeless, repetitive manner, with his eyes closed, rather on the ‘how do I know what I think till I say’ principle. And Joyce would listen with attentive and sympathetic interest even as she remained aware that, for quite long periods, he would have forgotten her presence entirely.
She had, very early in their marriage, seen exactly what a policeman’s wife was in for. Loneliness, disorienting time patterns, stressful periods of isolation and the constant apprehension that today might be the day he would be brought home, like a Roman soldier, lying on his shield.
Wives had various ways of coping - or not - with all these aspects of police life. Joyce chose what seemed to her the safest, most pleasant and most sensible. Whilst Tom and, later, Cully remained the emotional lynchpins in her life, from the earliest days of her marriage she had looked constantly outwards, developing and sustaining friendships (virtually none within the Force) and working on the second most important thing in her life, her music. She had a lovely, rich mezzo-soprano voice and still sang frequently in public. Lately she had started to teach.
Her husband, having laid the brief communication from their daughter on the television set, was staring gloomily into a mirror over the fireplace.
‘What’s it a sign of when policemen start looking older?’
‘That their wives are extremely hungry.’
‘Is that a fact?’ He smiled at her in the glass, turned, made his way to the kitchen. ‘Did you get everything?’
‘Nearly. I bought fromage frais though, instead of double cream.’
Expecting a rebuke, she was surprised when he said, ‘Good. I won’t use butter either.’
‘Tom?’ He was wrapping a blue-and-white striped tablier around his middle and didn’t look at her. It barely met round the back. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come on.’
‘What?’
‘Something’s happened.’
‘No.’
Barnaby set out his materials and batterie de cuisine. Copper bowl and pan. Whisk, kitchen scissors. Brown free-range eggs, smoked salmon, a day-old cob of French bread, pot of chives.
Best not to tell her. She would worry and fret and it wasn’t as if he was not already mending his ways. When the case was over he would go back to the doc. Get his progress monitored. Start taking proper care of himself. Maybe even do a spot of exercise.