Death of a Dormouse

Janet glanced assessingly at her friend and then began to laugh.

‘I thought for a second you were being nasty there, but it’s not your style,’ she said. ‘Listen, want to know a secret? Something I’ve not even hinted at to all these so-called friends you’re so envious of? Here goes then. You’re right, I didn’t have to advertise for Frank exactly. But I did the next best thing. I met him through a dating agency, that’s how!’

Trudi regarded her incredulously.

‘What’s up, girl? Cat got your tongue?’ mocked Janet. ‘Let me spell it out. Me with my hectic social life you so envy, I went along and filled in a form, and I paid my money, and I waited!’

‘Oh, Jan.’

‘What’s that mean, disapproval? Pity? I don’t accept either. It was the best move I ever made. I got just what I needed out of it. Frank. We’re going to be very happy.’

‘Yes,’ said Trudi. ‘I can see that.’

She tried to speak brightly, approvingly, but didn’t feel that she succeeded. Janet glanced at her doubtfully, as if already regretting making the confidence.

They drove on in silence. The car was now beginning the winding uphill climb which would take them over the Snake Pass and down into Sheffield.

Behind them, the old blue pick-up drove in silence too.

The house was cold and unwelcoming and smelled of damp. There was a scattering of mail on the hall floor, mostly junk. Trudi went through it as Janet busied herself lighting the central heating boiler and making a cup of tea.

There were two letters from Austria, one from Astrid Fischer saying she had contacted Trent’s Viennese lawyers, but there was no record of a will or of any unrealized assets. She ended with affectionate good wishes and an offer to do anything else she could to help Trudi. The second letter was from the head office of Schiller-Reise. It expressed formal regret at the news of Trent’s death, so soon after the termination of his long and highly valued connection with Schiller-Reise. It made no mention of money, or the lack of it. And it was signed on behalf of Manfred Schiller, the firm’s founder and head.

Janet read it and said, ‘Bastards! I thought you said this fellow Schiller liked Trent and made a fuss of you both.’

‘That’s right,’ said Trudi. ‘But he’s ill. He probably doesn’t know anything about all this. Anyway, I never liked him and I don’t want favours.’

‘Pride is it, girl?’ murmured Janet. ‘You’ll learn.’

There was also a letter from Mr Ashburton, the solicitor. Despairing of ever getting Trudi to his office, he had set out baldly the state of her affairs as he saw them. They were not good. In Trent’s current account, there was about four thousand pounds which, unless there were insurances, bank accounts, or realty so far undisclosed, was the sum total of her inheritance. Hope House was rented on a nine-month lease, he pointed out. At the end of that time she would have to find and pay for alternative accommodation. He ended by suggesting that her main hope of improving her situation probably lay in a compensation claim against the fertilizer company whose truck was involved in the accident. He looked forward to hearing from her.

‘I bet he does!’ said Janet. ‘Leech! Are there any insurances or other accounts?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Trudi. ‘Astrid looked through his papers.’

Janet snorted her Celtic opinion of Teutonic interference and set about examining the contents of Trent’s personal files herself. In fact she soon had to admit that either Astrid or Trent himself had left everything in perfect order, except that everything meant nothing.

‘This is your life, girl,’ she joked finally, pointing at the papers neatly arranged on the dining room table.

It was an unintentioned cruelty, but Trudi’s eyes filled with tears as she looked at the papers. Here was her life, traced in bank accounts. The Midland in Staines where they had lived after their marriage; Neue Bank Schmidt-Immermann of Zürich where they had moved after Trent left his job at Heathrow; Société Générate de Banque in Brussels where they had gone when he had stopped flying and started working full time for Schiller-Reise; and the Banco di Sancto Spirito in Milan where they had been when Herr Schiller summoned Trent back to be one of his close aides in Vienna.

Janet had not noticed Trudi’s tears and she brushed them away furtively as her friend went on, ‘Everything’s in such perfect order there’s not a crack anywhere for a handful of loose change to slip into! See, account closed in Zürich, balance transferred to Brussels, and so on right through to Sheffield. Always about the same, taking inflation into account. Wasn’t much of a saver, your Trent, was he? Long as he had a few bob behind him, he clearly liked to spend the rest!’

‘Four thousand’s more than a few bob,’ said Trudi defensively.

‘Try telling that to the butcher when you can’t pay his bills in six months’ time, my girl!’ said Janet derisively. ‘You’d better go and see this lawyer fellow, Mr Bloodsucker or whatever his name is. Ring him now. No, I’ll ring him and make sure he fits you in tomorrow morning, then I can go with you.’

‘You’re staying?’ said Trudi. She hadn’t dared mention it earlier.

‘Just tonight, girl. After that, you’re on your own,’ said Janet severely.

They dined that night on tinned ham and half a bottle of Riesling which Janet had brought with her. Afterwards, though it was still early, Trudi announced, ‘I’m going to bed.’

As she started up the stairs the phone rang. She turned and looked at it. Janet came out of the lounge but halted when she saw Trudi was still there. The phone rang on.

‘Aren’t you going to answer it?’

With a sigh, Trudi stepped back down and picked up the receiver. Her reflection looked back at her from the gilded pier glass. The peeling frame no longer seemed to fit so well. This was a stranger setting out on a long and difficult journey.

‘Hello?’ she said, and listened.

After a few moments she put the phone down.

‘Well?’ said Janet.

‘Nothing. Must have been a wrong number.’

Trudi walked past her friend with great control and began once more to climb the stairs.

To show anything more, to show her inward agitation to Janet, was impossible. Her reaction, whether of doubt or belief, would certainly be that her friend was not fit to be left alone. Eventually her irritated anxiety might even make her insist that Trudi should extend her stay in Oldham.

That was what was really impossible, the shame and embarrassment of being carried back like a sick child to spoil Frank’s sense of relief and release.

Only time would show whether it was more impossible than remaining here where the phone could ring and out of a great hollow silence like the space behind the stars a voice, faint as a false dawn yet in accents as familiar as day, could breathe, ‘Trudi … I’m watching you …’

2 (#ulink_ca51dc2a-f9f5-5979-9585-0deabe24401c)

‘What about personal property, Mrs Adamson?’ said Ashburton. ‘Apart from the usual things like watches, cuff links, I mean. Did your husband collect stamps, for instance? Rare coins? Old china?’

‘No way!’ said Janet confidently. ‘But I’ll be going through everything with Mrs Adamson before I go back this afternoon.’

Janet had done most of the answering but Ashburton had courteously persisted in directing his questions at Trudi.

She felt stupid to be letting her friend answer for her, but her thoughts kept on drifting elsewhere. The truth was that it was not till here and now, listening to the little solicitor drily outlining her puny resources as he saw them, that she had really begun to understand the truth of her position. She had never thought of Trent and herself as wealthy, but she realized now this was because she had never had to think about such things at all. Not once from the start of their marriage had he ever denied her anything she wanted on the grounds of expense. Not that she had been extravagant, but as even the gentlest of streams where it finds no resistance will over time carve itself out a wide and wider bed, so her expenditure over the years had spread and never found a limit.

Now it sounded as if she was going to be penniless. This was a dawn knock she had never even imagined in her most fearful wakings. She felt panic fingering her throat and desperate to deny it she cut right across Mr Ashburton’s next sentence, saying, ‘He collected books.’

‘Books?’ echoed the solicitor.

‘Trent?’ exclaimed Janet.

‘Yes. Well, not books generally. George Orwell’s books.’

‘Orwell? What did Trent have to do with Orwell? I never saw him reading anything thicker than a newspaper, and then he was usually doing the crossword!’

Her friend’s incredulity was easy to understand. Trent was not a bookish kind of man in any sense, but at some point during his RAF career when he had run out of crosswords to while away pre-sortie longueurs, he had picked up something of Orwell’s and been hooked.

‘I asked him once why he liked Orwell,’ said Trudi. ‘He said he was a man who understood the rottenness of things. I’m not sure what he meant.’