Kitabı oku: «Old Dogs, New Tricks»

1

Marjorie Benson was drowning. She struggled beneath the hands, tried to hold on to her breath, fought the cold clamp that clutched the back of her neck. She was about to black out. She was going …

But a second later she was allowed up from the sink and the world returned to normal – except that there was still that startling news she’d just heard.

‘What was it he said?’ she demanded of the young stylist hovering over her. ‘That chap on the radio just now?’

Angie tightened the towel around Marjorie’s head so that her words, too, came as if from another world.

‘Um … something about Spittal’s closing down, I think … Oh –’ the girl sucked in a gasp, ‘– that’s where your old man works, isn’t it? Spittal’s?’

‘Yes, yes, he does.’ Marjorie put up a hand to blot a cold trickle, and found that it was trembling.

‘I didn’t really take in much of what he was saying,’ Angie said. She shrugged. The radio was only on in the background for the music – nobody really bothered to listen to it.

Marjorie frowned. She hadn’t paid much attention either. She thought the cheerfully delivered information had included such time-worn phrases as ‘job cuts’, ‘redundancies’, and ‘bitter blow to the area’, but her ears had only pricked up on the one word: Spittal’s.

‘I can’t believe it, if it’s true,’ she muttered, allowing herself to be guided across to the cutting chair. Groping for the padded arms she sank down on to the seat, the black cape billowing around her and making her feel like a crow.

The salon’s attempt at smart black and white decor did nothing for Marjorie’s complexion. She tried not to see the tired pale oval of her face reflected back at her, or the big bare forehead that was normally hidden. Angie always seemed to manage to wash away most of her make-up, she tutted to herself. Or was it the harsh lighting from those spots in the ceiling that was responsible for the bags under her eyes? Perhaps it was the shock that had made her look so haggard.

‘Are you sure he said “Spittal’s”?’ she asked Angie, but Angie could tell her no more, and as the scissors began to snip and slash, to grind and grunt, Marjorie forced herself to pay attention to the matter in hand. Not that she could do much to stop the carnage taking place. She could only sit there and witness it.

She knew from many years of experience that Angie, like every other hairdresser she had ever come across, was programmed to carry out a certain series of manoeuvres on whatever head lay beneath her hands, irrespective of the wishes that head might try to communicate to her, or what would suit it best.

‘Thought any more about highlights?’ Angie suddenly asked, perhaps thinking it best to distract her client from the unpalatable news. ‘Or how about a coloured rinse – to blend in, sort of thing?’

Marjorie compressed her lips. Every month over the past few years it had been the same sort of suggestion. Yes, she was going a bit grey, but she wasn’t yet ready to succumb to it.

‘No thank you, Angie,’ she said, gritting her teeth in anguish as the scissors hacked into her fringe. It was going to end up far shorter than she wanted. And wasn’t it crooked on the left-hand side? Why was there a bit of a gap over one eye, for heaven’s sake?

‘That OK?’ Angie asked finally, her scissors poised above Marjorie’s head, ready to swoop for another bite if only given a word of encouragement.

Marjorie nodded and grinned back at her, dismayed at her stark eyebrows, her naked ears and her over-long neck. It would be at least three weeks before she could look in the mirror again with anything approaching equanimity.

But worse was to come. The drier whirred into action and began to scorch her scalp as Angie wielded her fiercest, most root-tugging brush. Tufts of hair were tortured and teased, blasted and blown, yanked this way and that without mercy, as Angie contrived to puff them out where they should have been allowed to lie flat and flattened them where she ought to have puffed. It was all Marjorie could do, not to wrest the brush from the girl’s hand and beg to finish the job herself.

‘There!’ Angie declared at last, adding to Marjorie’s agony by giving her a glimpse of ragged neckline with her hand-held mirror. ‘That all right for you now, do you think? Yes? All right? OK?’

‘Fine. Fine. Lovely. Thank you very much.’ Marjorie nodded at herself in the mirror, turned her head and nodded again.

Angie began rubbing her hands together then – with satisfaction Marjorie thought at first, only realising her mistake on finding waxy stuff being fingered through her hair. Why on earth had the girl done that? Now it looked greasier than before she’d walked into the salon.

She wanted to steal home by dead of night; crawl under the nearest stone. No one must see her like this. Instead, she stood up, scattering hair round her feet, and fished in her handbag for her purse. Angie conveyed her usual surprised pleasure over her generous tip, and the frightful ritual came to a close.

Only as Marjorie handed her credit card to the girl at the desk did the news hit her again. Could it possibly be true that Spittal’s was closing down?

She pulled open the door to the street and stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine of a perfect spring day. No, it was absolutely inconceivable. Spittal’s was a successful, modern and go-ahead company. They made microprocessors and other hi-tec components. How could they think of closing down?

And Philip, occupying a senior position with the company, would surely have had advance warning of any such possibility. But he’d not breathed a word about it. Not a single word. So of course it couldn’t be true.

At home, Marjorie reached for the flexible spray on the end of the bath and waited for the water to run warm. Kneeling on the bath mat she bent over the tub and set to work with shampoo. Soon she had erased most of Angie’s efforts in a glut of medicated foam. Wax, mousse and all kinds of gunk were banished down the plug hole, along with a few more hairs. At this rate, she thought grimly, chasing them round the bath, she would be bald. As well as a little too heavy round the hips. And droopy round the mouth. She sighed. Life could be so cruel.

And what if Spittal’s really did close down? Not only would it be dreadful for the hundreds of people who worked there – and God help all of them and their families – but for her, personally, it would be disastrous. Particularly right now. Because just as she’d been thinking events were swinging her way and her months of hard work were beginning to pay off, it looked as though she’d be having Phil hanging about at home with time on his hands while he looked around for another job. Time to get under her feet and throw all manner of spanners in the works. Time to dismantle the plan that she and his parents had been secretly hatching for the past couple of months. He might even – for want of something better to do – try muscling in on her act!

Now that simply wasn’t to be borne. Phil had always refused to have anything to do with his father’s business, so why should he be allowed to step in at this late stage? No, not now that she was about to do that very thing.

Although elderly, Philip’s father still ran the three small hardware shops that he’d started as a young man, but recently he had been forced to admit to Marjorie that they were really getting too much for him. Philip’s mother was already semi-invalid and had not been able to assist for some while. In fact, had it not been for Marjorie’s unstinting efforts in recent times, both with helping Eric in the shops and in doing all she could for Sheila, some other arrangement would have had to have been considered.

Marjorie hadn’t planned to help out her father-in-law; it was something she’d fallen into one day when she’d dropped by at the largest of the shops for a bag of rose fertiliser and found him agonising over VAT.

It so happened that she had a talent for all types of figure-work: taxes, book-keeping, cash-flows – all these she could handle with ease. She had worked for a firm of accountants on leaving school and would have trained up to become one herself if Becky, their first daughter, had not put in an appearance. Family life, she had then discovered, suited her even more than accountancy, and she had never felt the urge to go back to doing anything like that – until she saw Eric huffing over his official forms.

‘My oh my,’ he’d said gleefully, when she’d asked if he needed a hand, ‘I’d quite forgotten. This is right up your street, love, isn’t it?’

He’d gladly handed her all the paperwork – along with a back-log from an old cardboard box – and from then on she’d been fully involved in all aspects of the business, learning as she went along.

And now the plan that the three of them – Eric, Sheila and herself – had been working on was that, since neither Philip nor his siblings had ever shown any interest in the shops, Marjorie would take over the complete running of them from the beginning of next month. She was to accept a proper salary, which she had never been offered before and wouldn’t have dreamed of accepting if she had, since she was only too happy to help out, and she would be allowed carte blanche to make of the business what she could.

Eric and Sheila would take things more easily from then on, although Eric said he would still ‘pop in now and again to keep an eye on things’. And they would only draw from the business what little they felt they needed to live on.

‘But –’ Marjorie’s face had clouded a little after her initial burst of euphoria ‘– what are Colin and Chrissie going to think of all this?’ Her brother-in-law and sister-in-law might raise all sorts of objections to their inheritance being ‘taken over’ in this way, even though they wouldn’t want anything to do with the shops themselves.

Both Philip’s brother and his sister had elected to go their own ways, just as he had done. In fact, much to his father’s disgust, it was Philip who seemed to have set the trend, paved the way, made it easier for the others to stand up to parental authority and say no. Heedless of Eric’s protests, Colin had gone into the leisure industry and Chrissie was married to a trout farmer in North Wales.

‘Colin and Chrissie can think what they like,’ Eric grunted. ‘They’ve had their chances and blown ‘em, as far as I’m concerned. They’ve not been forgotten in our wills, if that’s what’s bothering you, and that’s all they can rightfully expect.’

Marjorie noticed that he’d not included her husband in his condemnation. Philip had always been his favourite in spite of everything, though he would never admit it. Did he still harbour a hope that his firstborn might yet one day step into his father’s shoes? And was Marjorie merely the next best thing?

But she swept the notion aside. Eric’s proposal had touched and flattered her; why should she look a gift horse in the mouth? She had always felt as much loved by the couple as their own children were – perhaps even more so since her own parents’ tragic death – and to be trusted with Eric’s pride and joy … well, it was surely to be taken as an accolade. An accolade that she had been hoping for all along but one that she’d dared not expect.

She’d not whispered a word to anyone about her troubles of late, but the truth was that she had been feeling a little low and oddly insecure, what with it being that time of life when a woman feels less than her best and society conspires to make her feel utterly useless – fit only for the scrap-heap. The future had begun to look so empty and she had been desperately seeking something she could look forward to, with pleasure or even zeal.

Next year she and Phil would be celebrating twenty-five years of marriage; and with modern medicine being what it was, and people living longer and more healthily, it looked as though they stood a fair chance of maybe twenty-five more together. What on earth were they going to do with all that time? Or more to the point, since he at least had a busy career for a while, what was she going to do? These were the thoughts that had begun to haunt her, even before their two daughters had left home and her ‘caring’ role had already begun to dwindle. Since the girls had physically removed themselves from the family home and needed her even less, a kind of panic had set in.

But she had not let her concerns remain mere thoughts. No one could accuse her of sitting back, bemoaning her fate and wailing that there was nothing to be done about it. Instead she had started sowing seeds. And it wasn’t entirely by chance that Eric had come up with his proposal, if she was honest about it: she had been slowly and carefully working on him as she helped him in his shops, slipping in the odd suggestions here and intelligent comments there, and making herself pretty well indispensable, until one evening, just after Christmas, he’d hung up his overall, turned to her with a grave expression, and said he had something to say.

He had then proceeded to put forward what were essentially her own ideas for the future of the business as though they were all his own. It seemed not to have occurred to him to promote one of his managers to do the job in his place; his only thought was of her. And what a boost it had given her! Especially when she realised the size of the salary he was considering paying her, and the degree of control she was to be given. It was all far more than she’d ever imagined.

So now her life was mapped out. With the shops to keep her occupied and the prospect of grandchildren on the way, she could happily spend her remaining years here in London where she’d always lived, amongst family and friends, and not ask for anything more.

But what if Spittal’s closed down?

Whipping a towel from the radiator she scrambled to her feet. She must see Eric and Sheila at once.

By the time she reached her in-laws’ house, two blocks away from her own, the half-heard news about Spittal’s possible closure had become hard fact in Marjorie’s mind, and the only possible outcome a dead certainty. Grimly, her keys rattling in the lock, she let herself in at the front door.

She had had free access to the house for many years, but only in recent times, when Sheila’s joints had begun to grow too painful for her to greet guests at the door, had she taken advantage of it.

Stepping into the wide, well-polished hall with its thick Indian rug she never ceased to be impressed by her surroundings. She tried not to be because Philip always referred to the house – behind his mother’s back and well out of earshot – as ‘hideous’.

Never, he had been known to say, his eyes narrowed against the clashing wall-papers, the gaudy paint work and the eclectic assortment of ornaments, had so much money been squandered to such disastrous effect.

Certainly Marjorie would not have chosen such bold patterns either, or so many of them crowded together in quite the way they were – above the dado, below the dado, outlined with borders, panelled with borders; nor would she have considered the over-large crystal chandeliers as fitting for such a house. She would not have lain inch-thick ornate rugs on top of deep-piled patterned carpets. And the swags and drapes at the window were way over the top. Yet the whole was immaculately kept and gave out a sensation of luxurious comfort. Stepping into number fourteen Rosewood Gardens was like entering a secure, well-padded sanctuary.

Marjorie slipped off her shoes, as was the custom in this household, and waded across yards of Axminster in search of her mother-in-law, calling out as she went. She found the stout little figure of Sheila Benson sitting in the breakfast room, as usual, busy with her needlepoint.

‘Thought you were going to the hairdresser’s,’ the older woman said, blinking up at Marjorie through glasses that magnified her eyes.

Marjorie gave a weak smile. ‘Oh … yes, that’s right,’ she said vaguely, her hand straying up to her hair. ‘But first I’ve some mind-blowing news for you.’

‘What? Not the baby already?’

‘No, no!’ Marjorie fluttered her hands at the idea. Her first grandchild wasn’t due for another ten weeks at least.

‘Wow, you gave me quite a turn.’ Sheila had struggled halfway out of her chair; now she fumbled her way back to it. ‘What is it, then, this news? You’re looking rather upset.’

Marjorie flopped into the large wing chair on the other side of the French window and sat with her feet tucked up under her skirt. A smell of spring and fresh-mown grass wafted through the open door, but she was hardly in the mood to enjoy it. For a while, ordering her thoughts, she watched the gardener that her in-laws hired for two mornings a week plough up and down the long lawn, making the first striped cut of the year. The man’s irritation with the ungainly cupid that had been cemented to the centre of his work area since last autumn was obvious by the way he kept hurling aside the electric cable.

‘Well,’ she said at last, ‘I suppose you haven’t had the radio on? And perhaps it wasn’t on the local TV news. I could hardly believe it at first. But, really, it must be true.’ She turned wide, incredulous eyes to her mother-in-law. ‘Spittal’s is closing down.’

Sheila let fall her embroidery frame. She dropped her scissors as well. ‘But … but surely that can’t be true?’ She put a hand to her chest. ‘My but you’ve given me another turn!’

‘I’m sorry.’ Marjorie knelt down to retrieve the scattered items, barely managing to locate the tiny scissors amongst the swirls of leaves and flowers. ‘I didn’t mean to alarm you. I should have broken this to you more gently.’

Sheila waved the apology aside and put a hand on Marjorie’s arm. ‘It was just the thought of all those poor people. Not to mention Philip. Whenever I hear of places closing down and folk being put out of work I’m reminded of my childhood and my father losing his job.’

For a moment her face reflected her bad memories but she quickly rallied. ‘Anyway, let’s not look on the black side. These days there are redundancy payments, aren’t there? Help from the government too. Not that it’ll matter so much to Philip; he won’t be needing it, will he?’

Marjorie was about to lay down the horse-and-cart tapestry in her mother-in-law’s lap, having first admired all the tiny stitches, though she had no patience herself for anything involving needles and thread. Now she glanced up sharply at Sheila’s words.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well –’ Sheila spread her hands as though she thought an explanation superfluous ‘– it looks as though he will be going in with his father after all. I mean to say, he’ll have no other choice now, will he? No one will give him another job at his age. So you see, it’s an answer to all our prayers – and not a minute before time. Just what we’ve always wanted.’

‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ Marjorie’s voice was faint.

‘It’s what he should have done long ago,’ Sheila went on, ‘when his father reached retirement age. In fact he should have done it right from the start, the minute he got his degree. But what he should do and what he wants to do, are two different things to Phil.’ She gathered up some loose ends of wool, took off her glasses and chewed on one of the arms. Absorbed in her thoughts she failed to notice the dismay in Marjorie’s expression.

‘What makes you think,’ Marjorie said, trying to keep her voice calm, ‘what makes you think that Phil will agree to take over the business even now? Maybe he’ll have other plans.’

‘Well, I can’t think what they would be. This must have come as a shock to him; he won’t have had time to plan anything. My feeling is that he’ll be only too glad he has this to fall back on. Ha!’ She let out a chuckle, still oblivious to Marjorie’s agony. ‘Life’s full of nice little surprises, isn’t it? There you were, thinking you’d have to soldier on alone with all the shops, and what happens? Suddenly there’s Phil beside you, free to help after all. And Eric will be so thrilled when he hears the news.’

‘But – but I thought we had it all planned …’

Marjorie watched helplessly as Sheila wrapped her tapestry frame in an old pillow case and stowed it with her wools inside a hinged footstool. Something in Marjorie’s tone must have penetrated at last; she paused before shutting the lid, then put it down at half-speed.

‘You don’t sound very happy about this,’ she exclaimed with concern and surprise.

Marjorie looked away, embarrassed, hardly trusting herself to speak. Well, she silently scolded herself, what else could she have expected? Phil was Sheila’s son after all. It was perfectly understandable that she should be more pleased at the prospect of having him run the shops than anyone else on this earth. Certainly more than a mere daughter-in-law, no matter how much they loved her.

And perfectly right it was, too. The way it should really be. Yes, really. Who could deny it? Blood was thicker than water, when all was said and done.

Right or not, though, it was cruel. A ‘nice little surprise’ it was not. How easily she had dismissed the possibility of such a thing happening! How silly to have assumed that Philip would go more or less straight into another job. For of course Sheila was right, wasn’t she? No one would take him on in another firm now, not at his age. There was nothing else he could do but kow-tow at last to his parents.

But where did this leave her? She had never for one moment pictured Phil working alongside her in her new venture. Not that that would be the case; if they attempted to run the shops together she was sure he would immediately assume control of everything – see himself as her superior.

He wasn’t as bossy as his father could be at times, but he undoubtedly had that streak in him. He wouldn’t have got where he was today without strength and determination. Which meant that she wouldn’t get a look-in. In no time at all she would find herself relegated to the more menial tasks; not even allowed a say. As they were in their marriage, so it would be at work. How could she expect it to be different?

Oh, the idea was quite intolerable. She had wanted so much for herself. Had wanted to prove her capabilities and show Phil that she was no longer the dependent appendage that he had always seen her as; she was a person in her own right.

Glancing at Sheila she forced a smile. ‘Events are moving too quickly for me. I need to get used to the idea. And perhaps, before we speculate any further, we’d better see what Phil has to say. He doesn’t even know what we’ve been planning yet.’

‘No.’ Sheila gave a little shudder to emphasise her disapproval of this fact; she didn’t like secrets between spouses. They were unhealthy.

Twiddling her wedding ring round her finger Marjorie could only agree with her. She glanced down at the gold band that had once had a pattern on it but had now worn smooth; both it and the diamond engagement ring had channelled grooves in her flesh. Married all those years, she thought with a pang of conscience, and she’d been keeping secrets from Phil because he wouldn’t have liked what she was doing. Whatever would that old vicar who’d married them have to say about that?

Of course he was probably pushing up daisies by now, but recently, for some strange reason, his words had been coming back to her. Not so much about being honest with each other – presumably he’d thought that went without saying – but all manner of other unasked-for advice that he’d seen fit to offer them on the run-up to their wedding day. For example, it was his view that in all their future life-decisions the final word should be Philip’s. He should be the one to wear the trousers and Marjorie should defer to him.

Sitting side by side on the musty vicarage sofa as he delivered this instruction, they had stared at him in silence, hardly able to believe their ears, for even in those days such notions were so out of date as to be laughable.

Marjorie had sensed Phil’s suppressed mirth bubbling up, his hand tightening round hers as they solemnly nodded their heads, and she’d found it hard to keep a straight face. They had escaped from the interview as soon as they could, running hard to get well away from the vicarage before their laughter came spluttering out.

Nevertheless, a few days later Marjorie had found herself promising to obey her husband for ever more until they were parted by death. And she had largely adhered to the vicar’s words throughout her marriage; she had let Philip wear the trousers and had always deferred to him, even if at times he had jokingly had to threaten her with hell-fire and brimstone.

At least it had had the advantage that Phil had no one to blame but himself whenever things turned out badly – a neat cop-out for her, to be true, but it didn’t always suit. It certainly wasn’t going to suit her now if his plans clashed with her own …

‘Come and have dinner with us this evening,’ she urged Sheila. ‘I’m going to tell Philip everything. It’s time to sort all this out.’