Element of Chance

People began to push past them. ‘We’d better move,’ he said. He walked beside her to the door, came out and stood on the windy pavement.

‘What are you doing in Barbourne?’ she asked. ‘Do you live here now?’

‘I was transferred here a few weeks ago. I’m in the police. A detective sergeant, to be precise.’

She made a little grimace of affected awe. ‘Fancy!’ She scrutinized his face with a candour left over from the shared days of childhood. ‘You haven’t really changed all that much.’

‘Come and have a drink this evening,’ he suggested. Infinitely better than sitting alone in his lodgings. ‘Or dinner,’ he said. ‘We could have a good old gossip.’

She shook her head. ‘This evening’s no good. I have a committee meeting.’ She laughed. ‘It’s not really my style. I’ve been roped in to help with the Charities Fair. But I could make it another evening. Tomorrow – or Wednesday.’

‘Wednesday then,’ he said. ‘The Montrose Hotel? Seven-thirty?’

William Yoxall was the first member of the Charities Fair Committee to arrive at the Fords’ house. Robin Ford answered his ring at the door and ushered him into the dining room, where his parents were engaged in some last-minute rearrangement of the furniture.

‘It’s no good,’ Beryl Ford was saying sharply as Yoxall came in. ‘That trolley will have to go out, otherwise someone is going to have to sit on top of the sideboard.’ She gave Yoxall a distracted glance. ‘You here already? It’s not gone seven, surely?’

‘No,’ he said soothingly. ‘You’ve plenty of time. I’m on the early side.’

‘You can give me a hand with this then,’ Arthur Ford said. He jerked his head at the side table, laden now with china, cutlery, silverware. Plates of fancy biscuits, little cakes elaborately iced.

‘Certainly.’ Yoxall took one end of the table and heaved it back under Arthur’s directions into a more convenient position.

‘Always the same,’ Arthur said with philosophic joviality. ‘Beryl can never settle down to enjoy a social evening unless she’s made one hell of a domestic upset first.’

‘Another couple of chairs from the sitting room,’ Beryl said to Robin. ‘Those two straight chairs by the window.’ She darted an anxious glance into the mirror above the hearth, raised both hands and stabbed at her carefully constructed hairdo. She was wearing a tight-fitting dress of electric blue crepe festooned with pleated whorls and frills that did nothing for her bony figure.

‘That’s it then,’ Arthur said forcefully a few minutes later. ‘If you’re not satisfied now you never will be. Come on, Robin, we’ll make ourselves scarce before your mother has time to think up a fresh move.’

‘Come into the kitchen,’ Beryl said to Yoxall. ‘You can talk to me while I get on with one or two jobs. Oh – I was nearly forgetting,’ she added on a higher note. ‘You’ll never guess who Hazel Ratcliff has got to take over the Art stall.’ She flung William a look full of challenge. ‘Go on! See if you can tell me!’

‘I’ve no idea,’ William said mildly.

‘Mrs Rolt! There,’ she added as she saw his eyes blink open. ‘I knew you’d be surprised. She’s coming along this evening.’ She led the way into the kitchen. ‘We must have everything just so for her ladyship.’ She reached into a cupboard and took out a coffee percolator with important movements. ‘I’m not having her go away and say she found anything to criticize.’

‘No, indeed.’

‘I expect you think her very good-looking,’ Beryl said, almost accusatory.

‘She certainly has a striking appearance.’ His tone lacked enthusiasm. ‘I can’t say I greatly admire that type.’

‘My own opinion exactly,’ Beryl said with energy. ‘Altogether too exotic for my taste.’ She pulled down the corners of her mouth. ‘Her mother was a foreigner, I understand. A Greek, I believe.’

William nodded with a reflective air. Then he looked about him. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’

She sent a harassed glance round the room. ‘No, not really.’ She banged things down on to a tray. ‘That wretched creature Yardley phoned again to ask if he could serve on the committee,’ she said suddenly. ‘He’s got a nerve! After the way I choked him off last time, I really couldn’t credit that he’d ask again. He sounded as if he’d had more than enough to drink and that was at five o’clock in the afternoon.’

‘I hope you weren’t too hard on him,’ William said. At forty-two Yoxall was too young to have served in the war, but he had some kind of notion of what things had been like for Brian Yardley.

Now turned fifty, gaunt and greying, Yardley had been a local hero in 1940 when William was a child at primary school. A Battle of Britain pilot, shot down in the final days of that epic struggle, appallingly burned, put together again afterwards over a long period punctuated with bouts of despair and bitterness, Yardley had eventually forced himself to surface once more into the life of Barbourne, take his grotesque face – that had been so pleasing to look at when he had climbed into his plane that August day – and his disfigured body about the streets and thoroughfares. A course, William had often thought, requiring very nearly as much courage as anything Yardley had done in the war.

‘I’ve no patience with him,’ Beryl said. No, you haven’t, Yoxall thought. She would never trouble to look below the surface disorder of the personality that now served Yardley in some sort of fashion as his last remaining shield against the terrors of existence; she couldn’t be bothered to show mercy to the disturbed, distressed soul underneath.

‘He’s still trading on his war service,’ she said, ‘even if he doesn’t mention it. We’re all supposed to overlook the fact that he’s half drunk half the time.’

Yardley had tried his hand at a number of jobs in the painful time of his attempts at readjustment. He had succeeded at none of them. For the last few years he had run a small antique business; he seemed to be making a living out of it. At all events he hadn’t yet gone bankrupt.

‘It wouldn’t have done any harm to let him help with the Fair,’ Yoxall said.

Beryl made a sound of distaste. ‘He simply wants to be noticed. Anything to get attention. He’s prepared to force himself on people—’ She was interrupted by a ring at the front door. ‘I’ll go and answer that.’ She glanced at Yoxall. ‘You’d better go on into the dining room.’

‘Why, Mrs Rolt!’ he heard her exclaim a few moments later in a voice like syrup dripping from the blade of a knife. ‘How very nice to see you! Do come in. I was delighted when Hazel rang to tell me …’

I’d forgotten the atmosphere of this house, Alison thought as she suffered the attentions of Mrs Ford. She remembered all at once how it had seemed to her when she was a junior at CeeJay, sent to the house with some query when Arthur Ford was absent from the office because of a passing indisposition. Cramped and crowded as if some manic interior decorator had attempted to fill every inch of space.

And covers on everything that could conceivably be covered: the telephone, radio magazines, the backs of chairs, tops of furniture, even the seat in the lavatory. And what wasn’t hidden away was caged or confined, barricaded behind the doors of built-in fitments, thrust into decorated containers and canisters, enclosed in glass, fenced in behind metal grilles.

It hadn’t changed much since she had last stepped over the threshold. New carpets, a more violent shade of paint, wallpaper of a different but equally restless pattern; the essentials remained the same.

The doorbell rang again. Cars drew up outside. Beryl’s face took on a glow of pleasurable concentration as she darted about, admitting, ushering, chattering.

‘Seven o’clock!’ she cried as the clock on the mantelshelf chimed, just when she was closing the door of the dining room behind the last arrival. ‘All ready to start on time!’

An hour and a half later when the arguing, feuding and jostling for position had reached a temporary lull, Arthur put his head round the door. ‘I hope I’m not disturbing the cogitations,’ he said jovially. He nodded greetings round the table. ‘I’m just off,’ he said to his wife. He jerked his head in the direction of the outside world. ‘I shan’t be very late.’ He smiled expansively at the circle of faces. ‘Enjoy yourselves.’ His face vanished from the aperture.

‘We might as well take a break now,’ Beryl said as the front door closed behind him. Concentration had been effectively broken, refreshments would allow the combatants to restore themselves for the second half of the fray. She sprang to her feet and went out into the passage.

‘Robin!’ She sent a piercing shout into the upper regions. ‘Come down and give me a hand! ‘

He came down almost at once, made himself useful, handed cups and plates, talked politely to the committee members.

Alison accepted a canapé from the dish he held out. She gave him an unthinking, automatic smile. A faint flush rose in his cheeks. He lingered beside her, still holding out the dish.

‘Wake up there!’ Beryl called out sharply to him a few moments later. Alison caught her eye, briefly registered the quality of its gaze – controlling, possessive, more than a little tinged with suspicion and hostility. She looked up at Robin, flashed him another smile but this time fully switched on, brilliant.

‘I’ll have another of those,’ she said. ‘They’re delicious.’ She began to chat to him with animation, asked him about his interests, if he ever went to the theatre.