Family and Friends

He gripped the receiver tightly, oblivious of Pierson motionless in his chair, no longer bothering to identify the substance of his wife’s complaints, plunged into the bitter past, assailed by the stabs and hurts of memories he had fancied decently interred and forgotten.

It had been a long and painful time in dying, that old and powerful love, but it had died at last, completely and for ever, closing its eyes in the end against the renewal of intolerable suffering.

‘You could have asked Emily Bond to go out and get the tonic,’ he said suddenly into Zena’s fluent stream of words. ‘She’s still with you, isn’t she? You could send her out now if you’re so anxious to have it.’

‘Emily? She’s behind enough in her work as it is, without breaking off to go running errands in the town.’ Zena was deflected into an angry appraisal of the old charwoman’s shortcomings.

She had worked for Zena right from the Yorkes’ wedding-day. In all the difficult times when domestic help had grown scarce and then almost unobtainable she had turned up faithfully, week in and week out. She might not have been the most skilled of workers but she had always been there. She was turned seventy now and old age had done nothing to improve her efficiency–but she was still there, and that, Owen thought, defensive on Emily’s behalf, was surely something.

‘I’ll be home shortly,’ he said abruptly, abandoning suddenly all further resistance. ‘I’ll bring the tonic with me, I won’t forget.’ He replaced the receiver and sat looking down at it for a few moments, his face set in lines of anger and frustration.

‘I’ll be locking up, then,’ Arnold said at last, confident that Yorke had forgotten all about the date of the audit which could surely now be left till Monday to discuss. He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘You’ll be wanting to get off home yourself.’ There was still time to call in at Mrs Fleming’s shop; the encounter would cast a glow over the whole evening, would extend its gentle radiance across the entire weekend.

‘Oh–yes. Right ho, then.’ Owen got to his feet, pulled back to the present. ‘If you let me know on Monday–about your sister, that you’ve briefed her.’ He had some elusive notion that there was something else he’d intended to mention, but he couldn’t recall it now. He raised his shoulders, letting it go till after the weekend. ‘I hope you find your father improved,’ he remembered to say as Pierson opened the door to make his escape.

When the door closed again Owen crossed to the row of hooks on the wall by the window and jerked down his overcoat.

He glanced at his watch–better get a move on, the shops would be closing soon and he didn’t relish the thought of Zena’s welcome if he arrived home without the precious tonic.

But he didn’t immediately shrug his coat on. He stood looking out of the window at the descending twilight, at a couple of gaily chattering girls released from the typing pool to the pleasures of the weekend. To boyfriends and lovers, dates and parties, he thought with a startling wash of envy that held him motionless, his eyes fixed on the graceful girls with their lovely fluid movements.

He watched them out of sight in the uncertain dusk. I’m not old, he thought, I could marry again, and the words dropped one by one into the depths of his mind with the slowness and finality of a decision that has been a long and shadowy time in forming.

He turned and stared at his unsmiling features in the mirror above the mantelpiece, seeing the face of a man in his prime. I could marry again, he repeated silently, and the moment seemed to illumine his future with a great shaft of glittering light. I could have children. He had always wanted children; he had neither comprehended nor forgiven Zena’s unwavering refusal even to countenance the idea. And now he saw that it was still not too late. A vast wave of joy swept through him, momentarily blinding him to the problem of Zena, who was scarcely likely to be reasonable about making way for a successor when she had been reasonable about little else.

He saw himself holding a child by the hand, he saw other children laughing and calling from a summer garden. And the face that he saw smiling out at him from that flowering doorway was the gentle, pretty face of Linda Fleming.

In the corridor outside his office a cleaner rattled a bucket down on to the floor and the sound brought him abruptly back to reality. He picked up a bunch of keys and moved swiftly round the room, locking up for the night. One or two calls to be made on the way home.

Zena, he thought, there’s something I have to get for Zena . . . He stopped suddenly, frowning, remembering, looking down at his arrested hands for an endless moment. Then he straightened himself, raised his head and met his own intent gaze in the mirror.

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