Unfaithfully Yours (12 page)

She looked, I am afraid to say, pretty fucking stupid lying there dead on our – no,
her
– oatmeal carpet. Her mouth was wide open as if she was going to say something about the carpets or the curtains or how Milly was going to Oxford and why Barnaby hadn’t really done what they said he had done in Thailand. But she wasn’t going to say anything ever again. She had told me to empty the dishwasher for the last time.

When I had finished pretending to check her pulse I stood up. That was when I saw the cushion. It was over by the french windows. A large dark blue job. It was unusual to see anything out of place in our sitting room. Pamela drilled the fixtures and fittings every morning, and if a chair tried to step out of line, it was put on report pretty quickly. That cushion looked as if someone had thrown it down in a rage. It was dented and crumpled.

More out of habit than anything else I picked it up and tossed it back on the sofa. That was something I later regretted. Then I went to the french windows. There was no sign of their having been forced. I went out into the garden. Everything looked as neat and undisturbed as usual. The only thing that was unusual was that the door to the side passage was open.

I did all this in a kind of dream. I think I was putting off the moment when I would have to call someone and say, out loud, the words that meant I was never, ever going to see Pamela alive again; or maybe it was something else. You see, from the first I just didn’t believe it. I felt, from the moment I saw her body, as if I was being asked to accept a version of events that somebody very clever – and very nasty – had devised. I just didn’t think she had committed suicide.

When the police arrived – they turned out to be even more stupid than I had feared they might be – they asked me if she had been depressed. So I told them about the not sleeping and the rages and the time she had taken herself to Putney Bridge and ‘tried to throw herself off it’. How do you ‘try’ to throw yourself off a bridge? Put one leg over? You either jump off or you don’t – in my view. She never seriously attempted suicide. Not Pamela. She loved herself far too much.

The other thing that made me think she had been murdered – and murdered by someone who knew her – was that bottle of wine by her body. Pamela never drank alone and, unless someone else was encouraging her to do so, she never drank red wine. There was only one glass. But in the cupboard where the glasses were kept, there was one goblet, matching the one by her body, which I could have sworn was put back in a different place from its accustomed one.

Someone had been there. Someone she knew. That was why the side door was open. I tried to tell them that but they were not interested. The more I tried to tell them, the more they asked me searching questions about our relationship and started to mention the screaming rows we had had over the previous six months. The neighbours were terrifically helpful there. Awfully Nice Sarah – who is nothing of the kind – said she had heard me yelling through the wall. Apparently I had said, several times, I was going to kill Pamela. If Poofy Basil hadn’t given me an alibi, I swear they would have arrested me.

In the end I was almost relieved to get a verdict of suicide.

It wasn’t until about nine months after she had died that I found the chain. It was a cheap man bracelet, actually, of the kind worn by very dodgy Mediterranean chaps on their hairy wrists. It was in one of the flowerbeds in the back garden. I only found it because, at the time, I had a Border terrier, which I had bought for company after Pamela died. And about the only thing that sent me out into the garden was picking up its crap. In one of the flowerbeds, right up near the fence, I found the bracelet and knew it instantly for what it was.

Maybe you remember it, Sam. Pamela bought it for Gerald when we were in that villa in Crete. It was a joke. ‘I bought Gerry this in the market!’ she said, at dinner one night. ‘Because he is such a phoney macho Mediterranean man!’ And Gerald – do you remember – said, ‘The day you see me wear that, Mrs Larner, is the day I strangle you for giving it to me!’ With which he pocketed the thing. I certainly never saw him wear it on that or any other holiday. But I never saw him throw it away. And it was instantly recognizable. They don’t make things as distinctively vulgar as that any more – not even in Greece.

There could have been a hundred and one reasons for its being in our back garden. It could be totally unrelated to the fact that the french windows were open on the night she died or that – this is something I have never told anyone – I could have sworn I could smell Gerald Price in the room that night. His sour man smell – the acrid tang of locker rooms and bullying and all the things I so hated about school and those triumphant products of the system who, like him, now dominate the law and the Conservative Party.

Medical fucking negligence. I only hope he falls under a bus and the guy deputed to save his life is one of the people he stitched up in the Court of Appeal.

I can’t believe I’m saying all these things to you. Well, writing them down anyway. Perhaps that makes it easier. Thanks again for listening, as they say. Or maybe you have already ripped up this self-pitying drivel, hurled it across the room and got on with something useful and important like – doing someone’s teeth!

I really do wish I could summon up the courage to go out with you in your boat. It sounds fun. I fear I would be absolutely useless at it and you would end up screaming at me for not belaying something correctly. I do not think I would enjoy being keelhauled or given a few strokes with the cat o’ nine tails! Although that would probably be not half as bad as trying to drive Pamela round the South Circular in the rush hour!

All best, Sam, and I really will remember to floss!

Mike Larner

From:

Samuel Dimmock

Dimmock Dentistry

‘Because Teeth Matter’

24 Beeston Crescent

Putney

1 October

To:

Mike Larner

24 Lawson Crescent

Putney

My dear Mike,

My heart goes out to you! I have never heard such a terrible story. I am amazed you have managed to hold yourself together over the last few years and I completely understand why you have let your teeth slip. I couldn’t help noticing, by the way, when you opened your mouth to yawn that night we were in the pub that your left back molars need urgent attention. Drop round any time and I will give you a look over.

If it is any comfort to you, my marriage is in a pretty bad state. Mary and I get along but there is no real spark any more. I have been wondering, recently, if she was getting interested in another man. I am not sure I would be too bothered if she was – so long as he was my type!

Seriously, though, there are times when I feel a night out with the boys would be preferable to a night in with her! A lot of people are down on homosexuality but, really, when I look at some of the heterosexual people I know I am appalled by their selfishness and narrow-minded attitude to the ‘gay community’. I think a lot of our ‘gay brothers’ are a deal more manly than some heterosexual men one sees about the place.

As if all this wasn’t enough, Mary seems to be going through a spell of bad luck. She has been attacked several times, recently, by some prankster. She seems convinced it is a woman – although I cannot see why she should think that. A few weeks ago she was hit on the head by someone while she was walking home from rehearsal and then, about ten days since, we were sitting in the front room of our house when a brick came through the window! Can you believe it? There was glass all over the carpet, and if the cat had been sitting in her usual place she might have had a very nasty injury.

Someone had wrapped a message round the offending object. It read simply, ‘DIE YOU BITCH!’ And Mary swore it was intended for her. I can’t think why as she is absolutely nothing like a bitch. If she has a fault it is that she is too kind and too generous to people. I tried to make a joke of it by saying it was probably intended for me and that many of my patients probably thought I was ‘a right bitch’ – I did what I thought was quite a funny ‘camp’ act as I said this, sticking the old bum out and raising the old eyebrows in what I thought was a fairly good impression of a poofter. She burst into tears and ran out of the room. Women! What can you do with them?

Funnily enough, she is convinced that the person behind all this is a woman! Well – the female of the species is more deadly than the male. I cannot think who would possibly want to hurt Mary. Apart from me, of course! That was a joke, Michael. I really respect her a lot and think she has been a wonderful mum to Elaine. I just do find I prefer masculine company these days as, from your letter, do you!

Elaine, by the way, is doing really well. She is a GP in Norwich and proving really popular with the locals. Including some bloke called Hanif, who is – as you may have guessed – a bit of a Muslim on the quiet. She seems to be quite stuck on him and he has been down to visit us once or twice. I was very diplomatic, of course, and didn’t mention 9/11 once – though I think I did touch on the London bombings and that bloke Abu Whatshisname who should, in my view, be strung up, never mind sent back to Yemen or whatever Godforsaken place he comes from.

But you can always feel the tension with them, can’t you? They are so self-righteous! They think they have the right to lecture us about our ‘colonial past’, whatever that means, although, as far as I can see, they’ve done pretty well out of it. This Hanif character went to Oxford (hoity-toity!) and now is involved in some rather dodgy fringe theatre in Suffolk; last time he was down he kept droning on about something called the Amritsar Massacre, of which I have never heard. From the way he went on you would have thought my uncle Arthur – who was actually in the Indian Civil Service – had personally shot up the local Islamic hordes. From what he said it sounded as if they were causing trouble in the local market and our boys were only trying to keep them in line. I wasn’t alive in 1910 or whenever it happened. I do not see what the hell it has to do with me! I sometimes want to speak my mind about the Prophet Muhammad, riding around Saudi Arabia as if he owned the place and waving his sword at any passing infidel, but I suppose if I did I would have a fatwa slapped on me by the local mosque quicker than you could say ‘samosa’.

Still, she’s obviously keen on him. I suppose if she gets any keener we shall have to meet the parents, who are both doctors. Trained over here, of course, and, as far as I can make out, perfectly respectable people who are no keener on terrorism than me and Mary. But you never know when you’re going to say the wrong thing, do you? I’ll have to watch my tongue! Stay off politics and try not to air my views on the old burka or the merits and demerits of stoning people for adultery.

What did happen to Barnaby? Elaine is very much the centre of our lives. If anything happened to her I do not know what I would do. It would be so nice to meet up again and have a good old yarn. I’m going to be very persistent about getting you on the boat. It sounds like we have a lot to talk about. And an idea has occurred to me. I have just acquired a new patient – a funny little bloke called Gibbons, who is, believe it or not, a private detective. I never knew such people existed or, if they did, thought they were grubby little men in mackintoshes – a word that nowadays seems to mean a kind of computer.

Anyway – drop me a line. A weekend in a stiff breeze is just the sort of thing you need. I can do any weekend this month apart from the 24th when I suppose I’m going to have to go and see Mary give her Ophelia in St Jude’s Church Hall. It does not sound promising. Apparently there is a lot of nakedness and at one point Gerald AND Mary both get their kit off and chase each other round the stage. Or maybe this was just a rehearsal getting out of hand!

The 12th would be ideal if you fancied it. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to crew. We could handle the
Jolly Roger
together easily. The accommodation is pretty basic. There is only one cabin in the forrard section of the aft but I normally doss down there pretty happily with a bloke called Bert, so you and I would be pretty snug, I think. I used to train people in sailoring when I was involved with the Sea Scouts and I am sure you would enjoy getting lessons from me about every aspect of life out at sea. I promise not to give you too many lashes or be too stern if I find you slacking as far as cabin duties are concerned!

Best

Sam

PS I shaved off my beard. Mary says it makes me look very sexy. But it hasn’t done much for our sex life, I fear!

From:

Mike Larner

24 Lawson Crescent

Putney

6 October

To:

Samuel Dimmock

Dimmock Dentistry

‘Because Teeth Matter’

24 Beeston Crescent

Putney

Dear Sam,

Isn’t it weird that we both live at number twenty-four? And both our streets are crescents. Just another thing it turns out we have in common that, all those years ago, we never quite appreciated.

And the Sea Scouts! The words summon up a wonderful image of lads scurrying about in the open air, all working together under the stern command of a naval type in one of those wonderful blue uniforms. I never realized, for example, that you had ever been involved with the Sea Scouts. Although I once got a letter from a rather interesting-sounding chap who was definitely into them – if you take my meaning. I really do think we are beginning to understand each other so much better, thanks to this exchange of letters. I had always wanted to join them as a lad but my family had the usual ridiculous prejudices about the organization being full of perverts! Who is to say what is perverted and what isn’t? What on earth is wrong with a few lads getting up to some pranks out on the water? And if a junior rating does something wrong he gets whacked on the bottom! I personally find it quite stimulating. There. I’ve said it!

Our little correspondence has totally changed my attitude to you, Sam! I think – as I may have pointed out in my last letter – I am probably one of those people who do not really pay enough attention to others.