Family and Friends

‘You’ll feel even more dreadful if you keep on as you’re doing. Where’s Owen? Is he in? Let me speak to him. Go on,’ he added as she broke in. ‘Get him. I’ve got patients waiting to see me.’ He drummed his fingers on the table, glanced at his watch, did his best to control the irritation which had become habitual with him. ‘Oh, there you are, Owen. Anything really wrong with Zena? Or just looking for notice as usual?’

‘I’m sorry she bothered you,’ Owen said. ‘It isn’t really anything. She overdid things last night, New Year’s Eve, you know how it is.’

‘Make sure she keeps on with the insulin. I’ll try to look in on her tomorrow, talk some sense into her. You’ll be burying her one of these fine days if she doesn’t mend her ways.’ He rang off abruptly, nodded to the girl and went back to his room.

Happily married himself until his wife had died twenty years ago, he hated to see a decent fellow like Yorke caught up in the destructive toils of a wretched union like that.

Balance and discipline, he repeated in his mind, the twin essentials for the control of diabetes. Zena was conspicuously lacking in both qualities. It wasn’t medical assistance she required, it was miracles.

Self-pity, self-dramatization, boredom–what drugs could be prescribed for those? A woman at a kind of malicious loose end in life, he found it impossible to feel a shred of sympathy for her. He stretched out a hand and pressed a bell on his desk. When the door opened to admit his first patient he saw with a feeling of relief and pleasure that it was one of his elderly arthritics, someone suffering from an identifiable complaint that could be eased and made tolerable.

‘Good evening,’ he said gently. ‘And how are we today?’

‘There’s plenty of cold stuff in the fridge.’ Zena settled herself back in bed. ‘You can open a tin of soup if you want something hot. I think I’ll go down later and watch television.’ She picked up the glass Owen had set down on the table. ‘Do you know what’s on?’

‘I haven’t the remotest idea.’ He stood watching her take a long drink. ‘I’m going down to the club. I’ll get a bite to eat there.’

She pulled a face. ‘Oh–this is bitter. They must have changed the formula. I’m sure it didn’t taste like this last time.’ But she drained the glass, feeling the tonic doing her good, much better than old Gethin’s mixtures. Her mind registered what Owen had said. ‘You mean you’re going out again, leaving me here all by myself?’

She gave him a searching glance, actually seeing him for the first time that evening. Something decidedly odd about his expression, a fixed, strained look. She had a sense of a good deal going on in his mind, things she couldn’t get at and drag out into the open. I do believe he’s up to something, she thought, experiencing in successive flashes anger, resentment, curiosity and finally a sharp pleasure at having a whole new area of interest to poke about and pry into. She almost smiled at him.

‘You won’t be by yourself,’ Owen said. He was pleased to find he could look at her now without emotion of any sort. A couple of seconds more and he succeeded into shifting his mind into the correct gear, achieving the mood of detached pity that allowed him to live with her at all. ‘You said this morning that your brother would be coming in.’

‘That won’t be till later on. In the meantime—’

‘There’s plenty to occupy you.’ He jerked his head at the radio, the pile of magazines and novels. ‘Or you could get some sleep before Neil comes. Will Ruth be coming too?’ No point in asking if Jane would also be tagging along; a pretty girl of seventeen would have better things to do on New Year’s Day than trot dutifully beside her father to visit an egotistic aunt.

Zena pouted. ‘I don’t suppose so. Ruth’s never liked me.’ Her brother’s second wife, many years younger than Zena, slender, well-dressed, strikingly beautiful, conducting a successful career in addition to running a comfortable home.

Ruth Underwood had been prepared on her marriage, almost a year ago, to make a genuine effort to get on with her difficult sister-in-law. But it was scarcely to be expected that Zena could welcome into the family a newcomer whose entire mode of life threw her own shortcomings into even greater prominence. And Owen whole-heartedly liked and admired Ruth, which was enough in itself to make Zena detest her.

‘I’ll be off then.’ It did cross Owen’s mind that he ought to tell Zena about his decision to close the High Street shop. She would have to be told sooner or later–she was joint owner with him of the whole business enterprise that still traded under her father’s name of Underwood. And she could be relied on to make a fuss about the closure whether she secretly considered it wise or not, simply in order to demonstrate that she still legally controlled half the purse-strings.

‘Leave the front door on the latch for Neil,’ Zena said.

I could mention the shop now, Owen thought, then I could cut and run for it; give her time to come off the boil before I get back.

‘This room is like a pigsty,’ Zena said suddenly, realizing how it would appear to her brother with his liking for more orderly ways. ‘Emily Bond is the limit these days. I told her to clean up in here, but would she? Oh no, she had to go running off to her Mrs Fleming’s.’

A warm glow of pleasure spread through Owen’s frame. I’ll call in on Linda Fleming after I’ve been to the club, he decided, I can speak to her about jobbing off the leftover stock.

No wish now to embark on the tedious chore of breaking the news about the shop. He felt again the exhilarating sense that in a very short time everything might be entirely different. He went from the room at a rush, only just remembering in the doorway to turn and raise a hand in a gesture of farewell.

Zena threw back the bedclothes. There was nothing for it, she’d have to make some show of tidying the room herself. She still cared what Neil thought about her. He had worshipped her all during their carefree childhood, given her admiring affection throughout their youth. She felt that he still loved her, that he was probably the only person alive who could look at her and see the lovely Zena Underwood; his image of her had been too deeply engraved too long ago to be altered by anything as trivial as the passage of time.

She shuffled her feet into fluffy mules. As she straightened herself to begin her task she frowned, recalling the strangeness of Owen’s manner, his preoccupation, his casual attitude towards her health. She moved slowly about the room, picking up garments, closing drawers and cupboards. It was only in the last few weeks that she’d really noticed the change in him. Had anything happened to spark off that change? Had any new factor appeared in his life? She was by now quite certain that he was up to something.

Abstractedly she rearranged the heap of magazines and books. I could do a great deal worse than have him followed, she thought. A nice little job for Arnold Pierson. She drew a long breath, savouring the notion. It was so exactly the kind of thing she most keenly relished, killing, as it undoubtedly would, half a dozen birds with one skilfully-aimed stone.

It would arm her with information about Owen’s carryings-on, allow her to jerk the string that bound Arnold to her, gratify her taste for deviousness and intrigue, keep boredom at bay–and all without the necessity so much as to set foot outside her own bedroom.

Yes, she would do it, her mind was made up. She glanced at the clock. Seven-fifteen. Arnold would be home from work by now, he would probably be eating his supper. Phone him, say, in twenty or thirty minutes, catch him before he had a chance to go out again, he would be here and gone long before Neil’s arrival. And he would just be in nice time to get down to the Independents’ to keep an unobtrusive eye on Owen’s car.

What especially delighted her about the scheme was the deep revulsion she knew it would inspire in Arnold–and his total inability to do anything but fall in with her commands.

Her movements grew quite brisk; she finished tidying the room in another few minutes. Then she spent a little time on improving her own appearance, discarding the woollen dressing gown for an elaborate affair of silk and tulle, a flattering shade of turquoise that did what it could for her and drew a discreet veil or two over the rest.

She switched on the radio as she made up her face and attended to her hair. Gay, inspiriting music burst into the room; she smiled at her face in the glass, feeling well and lively, better than she’d felt for quite some time.

A few liberal sprayings of expensive perfume and she was ready for the fray. A little remaking of the bed, a plumping-up of the pillows. And that was about it. She looked at the clock and decided to give it a few more minutes. Just enough time for some slight refreshment.

She knelt down and plunged a hand under the quilted drapes. Still the whole of the second layer of petit-fours. Before she climbed back into bed she opened the cabinet and took out the brandy bottle. One–or perhaps two–plenty of time before Arnold actually got here.

She poured out a generous measure, settled herself comfortably into her nest and lifted the lid from the box of confectionery. The radio began to play a tune from the old days, carrying her back twenty or thirty years to the golden time before everything turned sour.

‘A-ah!’ she said aloud on a long note of satisfaction. All in all, it promised to be a very agreeable evening.

Owen drove slowly through the misty streets towards the club. Not many folk about on this dismal evening. He let his mind slip back to its current preoccupation, trying to look at his total situation with the dispassionate eyes of an intelligent outsider. One of the many shrewd businessmen down at the club, for instance. He imagined himself confiding in such a man–not that he would be fool enough ever to indulge such an insane impulse. What would this sensible adviser suggest?

Can’t quite see your problem, he might say with a lift of his eyebrows. Divorce your wife, marry again, start a family. Plenty of time left to you. Other men have done it; why can’t you? We live in less rigidly puritanical times, old boy; no one expects a fellow to live in misery these days; the laws are more humane, public opinion more enlightened.

Owen halted his car at the traffic lights. It isn’t quite as simple as that, he told his shadowy listener. Zena would never agree to a divorce. She’s a vain woman, and vanity, injured pride, do more than anything else to keep one partner in a dying marriage clinging fiercely to an unwilling mate. If I left Zena, it would be five years before I would be free to marry again.

Five years! He set the car in motion again. A pretty young woman like Linda Fleming was scarcely likely to be unmarried in five years’ time.

There are other women in the world besides Mrs Fleming, said that insistent voice. Owen shook his head. He didn’t want the other women, he wanted Linda.

And simply setting up house with her, living together without benefit of legal ceremony, was totally out of the question. It might be all right in London or some other great city but not in a place like Milbourne with its narrower, more censorious views. He couldn’t visualize himself even opening his mouth to mention such a scheme to Mrs Fleming.

And I can’t uproot myself and move away, he thought with finality. My business is here, the new factory–it’s not possible to contemplate such a step.

The factory–there you are! he said to the imaginary adviser. The new laws may be a fraction more humane, but they’re a good deal more stringent about the division of property. Everything I possess would be split down the middle, Zena would be entitled to half. And she would take a vicious pleasure in insisting on that half in cash. It would be the end of Underwood’s. He’d have to sell up in order to pay her.

No possibility these days of raising such a massive loan; he’d been hard put to it to find enough borrowed capital for the new factory. And he could never repay the additional loan even if it could be raised. The interest alone would probably bankrupt him.

He turned the car into the park beside the Independents’. Grossly unfair, this new ruling on property division, he thought with a surge of anger.

Old Ralph Underwood had bequeathed his daughter the High Street business and half of his fairly substantial savings; the other half had gone to Neil. But it was Owen who had slaved night and day to develop the really quite modest business, who’d built the old factory after the war and would shortly see the new factory begin to take shape.

What had Zena to do with all that expansion? She’d run the gown shop until she’d grown too idle even to go down there once a month. Left to herself, she would by now have been merely the owner of a failing, out-of-date business and she’d have frittered away her capital. True, she’d agreed years ago to let Owen raise a mortgage on the shop. And she’d put her money into the postwar factory readily enough in those friendlier years when their marriage was young.

He switched off the car engine, not caring at this hostile moment to contemplate that happier time. She knew I was an ambitious and enterprising man, he told himself, dismissing sentimentality; she knew I’d put her money to good use, she was well aware when she was on to a good thing.

For a harshly cynical moment he allowed himself to believe that that was why she’d married him, then he shook his head slowly, compelled in justice to admit it wasn’t true. But he refused to dwell on the complex motives that had led her to say Yes. It was all a long time ago; it no longer mattered very much. Whatever she had done for him in the past didn’t give her a moral claim now to half his assets, in spite of anything the law might say.

He squared his shoulders and set his mouth in a grim line. Divorce might be a non-starter but there were surely other ways of resolving his difficulties; there must be other ways.

He opened the car door and stepped out on to the asphalt. He stood looking up at the solid face of the club. In a short time he would be president, he would stand even higher in the opinion of Milbourne.