Distant Voices

At the back door of the house she stopped. ‘Can I go in once more? To see the dining room?’

‘Of course.’ He stood back so that she could go ahead of him through the kitchen and out into the corridor. The dining room door stood open, a wedge of light pouring from it across the floor.

They could both hear the music. Glen Miller. And the talk and laughter. The chink of knives and forks on crockery; they could both smell the cigar smoke, and through it all the faintest trace of oil paint.

Jan found she was holding Simon’s hand. She was trembling, but she could not resist going nearer. Slowly, step by step, they crept towards the dining room as gradually the noise of the dinner party got louder. She could smell other things now. Cooking. Carefully hoarded coffee. Wine. A woman’s scent. One hand firmly clutching Simon’s, she reached forward with the other and gently she pushed the door open a fraction.

The room was empty.

In the echoing silence she gave a little sob of disappointment.

It was Simon who spotted the soft curl of an ostrich feather drifting on the bare boards.

The Drop Out (#ucb02431f-148f-514c-8134-1ff71355e2c9)

Of course he wouldn’t really come. The idea was too bizarre. But then, a husband is a husband, even if this one had hardly fulfilled his matrimonial duties to the letter.

Zara leaned forward and gazed into the mirror. If he did come he was going to see quite a change in her after all this time. She vaguely recollected that her hair had been not only a different style but a different colour then. Her figure had improved out of recognition and maturity had brought sophistication and confidence.

‘I wonder if he’s got a paunch?’ she asked her reflection out loud. And giggled. Gerald with a paunch was unthinkable.

She looked at the letter again. It began, ‘Darling,’ – That too was unlike him. Gerald had never been one for endearments. He must be in trouble, she decided as she slipped on her elegant silk suit.

Money? She had always understood that he had plenty. He had been ‘something in the city’ when they married. She had never bothered to find out what. Certainly he had from time to time continued to pay handsome amounts into her account. For old times’ sake and when he remembered, she always thought, rather than for any mundane idea that he should support his wife. Not that she had needed supporting for years, of course, thank God. But, come to think of it, there had been no money now for nearly a year.

She stood sideways to the mirror and ran a critical hand down her flat stomach. No. She was the kind of woman who did well in business and thrived on it. Gerald’s conscience money or whatever it was had brought her some nice little extras, like the small Mercedes in the driveway. It had in no way gone towards her upkeep.

Well. If not money, what? Women. She knew some wives were called on to extricate their husbands from the clutches of too-persistent girlfriends, but Gerald had never had that problem. She had heard in fact that he merely turned the latest woman onto the last with a cold-blooded delight which often shocked both parties into flight. She paused for a moment. Perhaps he wanted a divorce? No. It was unthinkable. He, like her, found the state of absentee matrimony far too useful and pleasant an arrangement to end it.

The police? She looked at the mirror for a moment, her eyes wide, and then shrugged the idea away. It was too ridiculous to contemplate.

Zara gave up the idle speculation with a glance at her watch, ran downstairs, collected the car keys from the mantelpiece and went to the door. She was not usually given to conjecture and certainly not to day dreaming, and she had made herself uncharacte‌ristically late for the board meeting.

He was sitting on the doorstep.

In rags.

For fully two minutes Zara looked down at her husband without speaking. Then, bleakly, she stood back and motioned him into the house, wrinkling her nose ostentatiously as he passed in front of her.

He walked straight to the drinks table and poured himself a Scotch. Then he turned and looked her up and down. He was slim still, no sign of a paunch, lean and hard, brown and fit, and his eyes twinkled mischievously.

‘Go and run me a bath, Za-Za, dear. Then you can stop holding your nose, and we can talk.’

‘But, Gerald!’ Her usually well-modulated voice had risen to a squeak. ‘What’s happened to you?’

‘Fate hasn’t been kind, lady.’ He put on what sounded like a very professional whine. But still his face was laughing. ‘Go on woman, before my fleas start hopping onto your Persian rugs.’

With a cry of horror she fled upstairs and, turning both taps on full, groped for the small bottle of Dettol in the medicine cabinet. It smelled very strong in the steam, but anything was better than Gerald’s … aroma.

While he bathed she washed his glass assiduously, sponged the outside of the whisky bottle and then got out the vacuum cleaner and ran it over the carpet where he had been standing. Fleas indeed! She shuddered.

With a sudden pang of guilt that she could so completely have forgotten her meeting she went to the phone and called the office to instruct her PA. ‘I don’t feel too well,’ she explained quietly into the receiver and was amazed to find it was the truth. She felt sick and slightly feverish.

He reappeared in half an hour wearing her bathrobe. Voluminous on her, it sat on him like an outgrown coat on a gangly schoolboy, exposing long muscular legs and arms, and an expanse of hard brown chest.

‘No sign of a man up there,’ he commented as he threw himself down on the leather sofa. ‘I could have borrowed his razor.’ He sounded faintly aggrieved.

‘I suppose you’re hungry?’ Zara ignored his remark loftily. She was indignant to find that her heart had started to bang rather hard beneath her ribs as it had, she distinctly remembered, when she first knew him.

‘I’m starving, lady. Not eaten since the day before yesterday.’ He reverted to his whine. She ignored it.

‘I hope you don’t still expect oysters for breakfast,’ she commented sarcastically from the kitchen as she filled the kettle, remembering some of his more extravagant tastes. Her hands were shaking.

‘A crust will do, lady, just a crust.’ He appeared immediately behind her suddenly, and put his hands gently on her shoulders. ‘I suppose you want an explanation?’

‘I think I do rather.’ She gave a small laugh.

‘You could say I’d been down on my luck.’ He looked at her hopefully, then on second thoughts shook his head. ‘No, I know. It’s not me is it. Would you believe that I did it on purpose?’ He paused. ‘You’d never credit the things people put in their dustbins, Za-Za. Someone ought to write a monograph on it: The world’s great untapped source of wealth.’

‘I’m sure the dustmen tap it successfully,’ she commented acidly, slipping two slices of bread into the toaster. ‘Judging by the things they nail to the fronts of their vans.’

‘Teddies,’ Gerald said reflectively. ‘Your dustman here nails teddies to his van. I saw him as I came up the road. How anyone could bear to throw their teddy out I shall never know. It’s worse than homicide.’

‘Gerald! You never kept yours!’

‘I did!’ Her perched on the edge of the breakfast table to take the toast as it popped up, snatched his fingers away and blew on them hastily. ‘Didn’t you even search my trunks and the things I left?’

‘Of course not. They were private.’

Gerald stared at her. ‘You are truly a wonderful woman Za-Za. I wonder why I left you?’ He buttered the piece of toast thoughtfully. She was also, he noted, slimmer, taller, if that were possible, and overall a thousand times more stunning than he remembered her.

‘You couldn’t stand me, dear.’ She smiled. ‘It’s a shame because I really rather liked you.’

‘Liked?’ He raised an eyebrow.

‘Loved, then.’

‘Still in the past tense?’

She smiled. ‘Stop fishing Gerald and tell me what you’ve been up to.’

The black coffee had steadied her, and she sat down opposite him, elegantly crossing her legs, waiting for him to begin.

For a few minutes he ate in silence, giving every impression that he really hadn’t eaten for days, then he sat back with a sigh and reached for his own cup.

‘One morning on the way to office, I thought, Gerald, old chap, what does it all mean? You know, the way one does? I couldn’t find a convincing answer. So I thought, Right. If there’s no reason for doing it, don’t.’ He grinned and reached for the sugar.

‘There’s always the need for money, Gerald.’ She tried not to sound prim.