A Friend of the Family (18 page)

 

WHEN FELICITY WOKE ON
the morning after her lunch with Kate she felt so deeply depressed that she could barely find the will to get out of bed. She went downstairs feeling miserable and when she cracked her favourite cup on the tap she felt a wave of such black despair that she had to clutch at the sink. The day went from bad to worse. She dropped a bag of sugar that exploded all over the flagstones on the larder floor and banged her head on the low beam in the bathroom as she stepped back from opening the window. Suddenly she found herself screaming.

‘Bloody thing!' She struck uselessly at the beam. ‘Bloody, bloody thing!'

The screams became sobs and she collapsed on to the loo seat, weeping uncontrollably and nursing her bruised hand. Forgetting that during the last year her monthly cycle had become a very difficult time to live through, she imagined that she must be going mad, that life simply wasn't worth living. Exhausted physically through lack of sleep, emotionally drained, it didn't occur to her that she had felt rather like this every month of her adult life nor that for the last year it had got progressively worse, the depression blacker, the anger more violent. The possibility that she was in the grip of menopausal despair did not suggest itself to her.

By the evening she had decided that she would take one more chance. If David refused to speak to her she would know that it was
all over and she would never bother him again. She hadn't eaten since the few mouthful s of shepherd's pie at Kate's and her head was beginning to throb but she poured herself a large gin and tonic to boost her courage and settled herself at her bureau. She felt her heart give its usual jolt when the ringing tone was replaced by the click and the voice gave the number.

‘Hello.' Felicity felt breathless and her voice had a tremulous quality. ‘Oh, hello. May I speak to David Porteous please?'

‘It's Mrs Mainwaring, isn't it?' The young voice was cool. ‘I've just been talking to my father about you. I have a message from him. It is Mrs Mainwaring, isn't it?'

‘Yes. Yes, it is.' Felicity clutched the receiver in her trembling hand. Her heart jumped in her breast as hope flamed joyfully within it.

‘He doesn't want to speak to you. He says he's sorry if he gave the wrong impression whilst he was staying with you but he assumed you understood the situation and felt as he did. That it was just a bit of fun. He knew your reputation, you see. My fiance is Thea's cousin, that's who my father was staying with, so he knew that you were a woman of the world and how you'd tried to break up Thea's marriage and all that. He's behaved rather badly, I'm afraid, but that's how he is. I'm sure you'll be able to understand that. He made my mother very unhappy so really you're well out of it. Anyway, he's made it quite clear that he doesn't want to communicate with you, so I would be glad if you'd leave us alone now.'

There was a long silence and then the little click and the familiar buzzing sound. Felicity sat on, clutching the receiver, her eyes tight shut against the appalling things that tried to show themselves to her: David knowing about George, knowing how she had behaved to Thea, using her when she thought that he was loving her. Her heart beat with thick heavy strokes and the shock and pain seemed to create a huge lump in her chest, threatening to suffocate her. Presently she put the receiver down and picked up her glass. She drank the gin back as though it were water and stood up. Things seemed to move and rock around her and she steadied herself before she made her way to
the cupboard and poured herself another drink, Her head pounded rhythmically and she knew that she must take some of her tablets. She gulped back some more gin and made a noise that was somewhere between a sob and a cry. The cool voice seemed to have got inside her head . . . knew your reputation . . . woman of the world . . . break up Thea's marriage . . . that's how he is . . .' She shook her head to try to dislodge the voice and winced at the pain. Mustn't think about that voice saying those dreadful things. Think about something else. Tablets. Must get some tablets.

The carpet seemed to be rocking up and down as she stumbled across it to the kitchen. She opened the cupboard, almost hanging on to the doors for support, and seized the bottle. After some difficulty with the lid, she shook out two tablets and looked around. Lightning seemed to flash behind her eyes and she saw that a glass of water was standing at hand. She took the tablets, washed them down with the gin and made a wry face. Oh, dear. Not water after all. She staggered back into the sitting room still clutching the glass and collapsed on to the sofa. The voice started up again. ‘. . . doesn't want to communicate . . . just a bit of fun.' Felicity began to weep. He had never loved her. She had imagined it all. He had known about her and George and had thought her fair game. She cried out, ‘Oh, no,' at the thought of it and, getting up, went to the drinks cupboard. She seemed to be holding a glass in her hand already and she sloshed the gin in untidily, spilling it. She poured in some tonic and staggered back to the sofa. The voice muttered in her ear. ‘. . . made my mother very unhappy . . . very unhappy.' Mustn't think about it. Think about something else. She closed her eyes against the pain in her head and tried to concentrate on the music. The second half of the concert had started. Sibelius's First Symphony. She must listen, let it calm her. If only her head would stop. She simply couldn't bear the pain. She must take some tablets. Yes. That's what she had meant to do.

She took another gulp from her glass and scrambled up. On her way to the kitchen the pieces of furniture seemed to come out of their places, looming up at her, bumping her knees. She stood for
some time in the kitchen, leaning against the wall. Presently she opened her eyes and saw the tablets standing on the working surface. That's it. That's what she'd come for. She must have taken them out of the cupboard without realising it. She shook some out and took two. Oh, how her head hurt! She might just take one extra one, perhaps a few extra, and then she could sleep. She washed them back with the gin and staggered back into the sitting room, collapsing on to the sofa . . . just a bit of fun . . . a bit of fun.' Don't listen to the voice. Listen to the music. It filled her ears and rolled around the room. She saw herself with David on the moor, she could feel the wind blowing her hair and he was smiling at her, waving, and she was going towards him. He would take her in his arms and she would never be lonely again. She began to weep soundlessly, her mouth stretched open, tears streaming down her face. It seemed as though her head would burst and she felt sick. She found that she was clutching a glass in one hand and the bottle of tablets in the other. Had she taken them yet? Surely not. Her head wouldn't be such agony if she had. She took some more, finished off the gin and lay back, closing her eyes, dimly aware of the last movement of the symphony. It lulled her and she began to lose consciousness.

After a while the music stopped and another sound took its place: an insistent, rhythmic shrilling. The noise went on and on, penetrating Felicity's drugged torpor. With an immense effort she tried to drag herself back to wakefulness. Her lids fluttered a little and she tried to raise herself but she was too tired, too heavy, too peaceful to care about it. Her hand swung clear of the chair and the empty glass rolled away over the carpet. Her snoring breaths grew slower and presently the telephone stopped ringing and there was silence.

 

‘. . . AND EVEN NOW, WITH
the funeral over, I can't believe it,' Kate wrote to Cass. ‘I keep thinking of things I might have done or said. Oh, Cass, she lay there for two days. Isn't it dreadful? To get over George and then have some other guy kick you in the teeth. Nobody knows about that but me so don't breathe a word, not even to
Tom. Thea and George are away on holiday so they don't know yet and there were only a few people at the crematorium, mainly Navy. She didn't seem to have any family. It was terribly depressing. I kept remembering things when we were all young. Parties and balls and things. Awful. I still can't believe she did it on purpose. Her GP says that so many of these deaths are accidents, that people have a few drinks and then forget how many tablets they've taken and just take more and more. Felicity of all people! She was so tough, so hard. But when she came to lunch it was as if something had broken, like she'd been encased in a hard shell all those years and it had been smashed by her love for this man and she was left all tender and vulnerable and unprotected. You felt that there was another Felicity who had been there all the time and none of us knew it. God! The sadness of it. I can't help thinking of those last awful hours when she was all alone and how desperately unhappy she must have been. But even more amazing, totally unbelievable! You'll never believe this, never in a million years! She changed her will the day before she died, almost as if she knew. Cass, she left everything she had to me . . .'

 

Nineteen

 

IT WAS KATE WHO
told George. Anxious lest he or Thea should hear of it from one of Felicity's cronies—who might feel that in some way George was to blame—she discovered from Maggie Tabb the date of their return from holiday and telephoned the following morning. It was sheer good fortune that George answered. Thea, he explained, was wrestling with the washing machine and two weeks of dirty washing and when Kate told him that she had something very important that she wanted to say to him privately his tone became puzzled and a little wary.

‘Come on, George.' Kate's nervousness and horror at the task in store lent an edge of impatience to her voice. ‘It's really serious or I wouldn't ask. You know me well enough for that. Surely there's some shopping Thea needs. You could offer to get it while she's busy.'

With a certain amount of reluctance George agreed to the meeting place which Kate had already decided on, well away from prying eyes and wagging tongues: a lane that ran beside a pine wood just beyond Princetown. It led on to the army ranges and wasn't much used by anyone else but there were two lay-bys placed at intervals and Kate parked in the second one. It was a wild blowy day and Kate remained huddled in the car watching for George's Rover. She was already beginning to question her choice of locality in which to tell George the tragic news. When she knew that she was going to have to be the one to tell him she had imagined a series of encounters, none of which had seemed suitable. For Kate, the moor had always been a healing place. The high tors, the sweeping grasslands, the great elemental force of it
all must surely help him to assimilate and bear the things that she had to say to him. Now, she began to wonder. Had she been attributing her own emotions to George? Panic seized her. Well, it was too late now and, although it was windy, at least it wasn't raining. Perhaps they could sit inside the car. Even as the thought occurred to her she instinctively rejected it. The cramped interior of a car was not the place for this. At length, in the rear-view mirror, she saw George's car approach and watched it pull in behind. George waved and, as he got out, she left her own car and went to meet him. He held out both hands to her and she took them and kissed him on the cheek. The wind roared round them, buffeting them as they stood together, howling through the wood.

‘Hello, George.' She held on to his hands and smiled at him and had to raise her voice above the gale. ‘Sorry about the secrecy and silence stuff. I've got some bad news, I'm afraid. Felicity's dead.' She said it quickly, holding his hands tightly against her breast. ‘She died of an overdose of her migraine tablets but her GP is quite certain it was an accident.'

She registered his expression of disbelief and horror and felt that it was important to keep talking. Or rather shouting. It was awful to be saying these terrible things at the top of her voice whilst the wind snatched the words from her lips and whirled them into the grey void.

‘She'd met another man during the last few weeks and had been quite swept off her feet by him. She came to see me. So I know that it's true. She told me so herself. She was in a desperate state. They'd been lovers and then he'd gone off without a word and she was terribly unhappy.' She felt the convulsive start that George gave and guessed that he was drawing the parallels between his own behaviour and this unknown man's. She gripped his hands and shook them, determined to make her point. ‘It was nothing to do with you, George. She was waiting to hear from him, you see, and the doctor thinks that she got into a state and took some tablets after she'd been drinking. They found the glass.'

‘Felicity never took her tablets when she'd been drinking,' said George flatly and Kate strained to hear his words. He squeezed her hands, released them and began to feel for his cigarettes. ‘You know that. It was an absolute rule. She must have been in a very bad state, or it was intentional.'

His expression was bleak and Kate folded her arms across her breast as the wind screamed through the tops of the pines and the trees creaked beneath its force.

‘George.' Kate realised that her teeth were chattering and that she was shivering but whether from cold or nerves she couldn't tell. ‘Honestly, George. It was nothing to do with you. She told me all about this man. She was completely head over heels in love with him. I'd never seen Felicity like that before.' She bit her lip as she realised that she'd been tactless and then decided to let it stand. ‘She was almost unbalanced by it. Perhaps that was the trouble. Why she took the tablets when she'd been drinking. She was in a terrible state when I saw her.'

George turned from her, trying to light a cigarette in the shelter of his jacket. When he'd succeeded he inhaled deeply, greedily, and then turned back to her.

‘When did it happen?'

‘Over a week ago. Accidental death was decided and she's . . . they took her to the crematorium in Plymouth. Where her mum went.' For some reason Kate couldn't get her tongue round the word ‘cremated'. It seemed worse, somehow, than ‘buried'. ‘I was there and one or two of her friends. Pat. And Barbara. Oh, George. I'm sorry.'

George, who had been staring over the moor watching the tall fading grasses flatten beneath the wind, looked down at her. He tried to smile.

‘Sorry. Dreadful shock.' He shook his head. ‘Bless you, Kate. For everything. For telling me. And being there. You know. Look, don't think I'm being rude but if you don't mind I'd like to be on my own for a bit.'

‘Yes, of course.' Kate hesitated. ‘You'll be OK?'

He nodded and, leaning forward, he kissed her. She put her arms around him, hugged him and then left him, the wind tearing and dragging at her, and climbed with relief into the shelter of her car. Her eyes were watering and, dashing her sleeve across them, she peered in the mirror at him as she started the car. He was still standing quite still, smoking his cigarette. Helplessly she pulled out of the lay-by and drove slowly back to the main road. He raised a hand to her as she passed him and she drove on wondering if she'd handled it properly. How on earth did you tell a man that his mistress of twenty years' standing had died of an overdose? Chilled to the bone, trembling like a dog, Kate turned the heater to maximum and pulled on to the main road.

George watched her go and then turned back to his contemplation of the moor. The whole thing was unbelievable. Felicity dead. He shook his head, frowning out on the grey forbidding landscape, and, flinging away his cigarette, thrust his hands deep into his pockets. Felicity dead. It seemed unreal. That anyone as vitally alive, as forceful, as positive as Felicity should have passed into a mere handful of dust was inconceivable. He remembered her biting tongue and caustic wit, her fierce glance—judgmental, condemnatory—and her passion. He recalled the black hair, the flashing eyes, her sharp features and the overall impression of speed and movement: a bird in flight or, more recently, a bird of prey. George felt a stab of remorse and shame. During these last two years he had feared her, hated her, wanted her out of his life. And now she was. Permanently removed, gone for ever. He swallowed and, wrapping his arms across his chest, dropped his head. He remembered when Mark had first introduced her to him at a party. She'd been wearing one of the new mini-skirts and was as brown as a gypsy. He'd taken the thin fingers and raised them to his lips and she'd laughed, raising her black-winged brows.

‘How fearfully French,' she'd mocked and her black eyes had danced and flashed, captivating his stolid, very English heart. ‘Not a Frog, are you?' What a long road it had been from that gay beginning to this lonely end. He thought of her, pleading with him in London,
desperate, lonely, and him, forgetful of their shared love that had spanned twenty years, caring only for his new love, mindful of a new life and indifferent to her misery. He lifted his head and felt the first drops of rain, cold on his face. Suddenly, he longed to be back at the Old Station House, feeling Thea's warmth, rejoicing in the knowledge of their unborn child, their offering to a hopeful future. No use to dwell upon the past and all the mistakes that it contained. Thea would help him to bear the pain of it, to see it in proportion.

He stumbled to the car and lowered himself into the driving seat, taking his handkerchief from his pocket and wiping the rain from his face. He drove back to the road and turned towards Tavistock, switching on the windscreen wipers and huddling into his coat. Several times he wiped the moisture from his face and it wasn't until he was nearly home that he realised it was not rain upon his cheeks but tears that slipped unbidden from his eyes and, though he tried, would not be checked.

 

ON THE FOLLOWING MONDAY
George returned to Northwood and in the evening Thea telephoned Polly and told her the whole story. Polly was shocked into silence and Thea was able to pour out her own horror, which she had not been able to do with George. He had needed comfort and support and Thea thanked God that she had seen Felicity, changed out of all recognition by her happiness, and that they had had that moment of reconciliation and understanding. She had been able to tell George about that, confirming Kate's story of another man, and it had helped George in his attempt to come to terms with the tragedy. Thea remembered how she and Felicity had hugged each other and felt grateful. She said all this to Polly several times before she hung up, exhausted, but comforted and relieved to get it all out of her system.

Polly replaced the receiver thoughtfully and Paul glanced up from his book.

‘So what was that all about?'

‘Awful.' Polly shivered a little. Ά friend of Thea's has died. She
fell in love with a man who didn't care for her that much and when he left her she took an overdose.'

Paul's expression indicated a faint contempt for the irrationality of female behaviour. ‘Bit extreme, isn't it?'

Polly pulled herself together and regarded him. ‘Depends on how strong your feelings are, I suppose,' she said, deliberately omitting to tell him that Felicity's death was viewed as an accident.

Paul shrugged. ‘Or how weak your intellect.'

Remembering the great drama which had surrounded Fiona's recent discovery, Polly raised her eyebrows. ‘Perhaps it's simply that you've never experienced any great emotion outside a laboratory,' she suggested.

Paul stared at her. A contemptuous look curled his lip a little. ‘Perhaps you're right,' he said and picked up his book.

It was only later that Polly noticed the possible ambiguity in Paul's answer. After all, Fiona spent a great deal of time with him in the laboratory.

 

WHEN DAVID CONTINUED TO
get no reply from Felicity's telephone number he decided to go down to see her. He thought of writing to her but felt, on reflection, that it would be better to have it out face to face. It was only right to talk the whole thing through thoroughly and then, if Felicity were prepared to take the chance, they would take up the threads and go on together. He was still very much in two minds as to whether the relationship would work but he was, by now, deeply ashamed of his behaviour and wanted to make amends. He was very fond of her and the more he thought about it the more he thought it was worth a try. Things were still very strained with Miranda and he was glad to leave her with Tim at Broadhayes and drive the well-known road to Mary Tavy.

Felicity's car was in the track but there was no reply to his ring and the place seemed deserted. He wandered round peering in at the windows and then gave up and drove away, wondering what to do with himself until he could go back and try again. Of course, she might
have gone away. He remembered that she sometimes took a taxi to the station if she intended to be away for any length of time and he pulled in at the local garage from which this service was run.

The young man who operated the pumps raised a hand to him, recognising him from his previous visit, and David, who had filled the car up at Moretonhampstead, pulled well over on the forecourt and got out.

‘Hello there. How are you? I'm trying to find Mrs Mainwaring. Don't happen to know if she's away, do you?'

The young man's shocked expression alerted him and he felt his heart give a little tick.

‘You 'aven't 'eard then, sir? Oh,'twas terrible. The poor lady's dead. Took too many of ‘er tablets, seemin'ly. Lyin' dead she was fer two days before anyone found ‘er. Shockin', isn't it, sir?'

David felt for the car behind him and leaned back against it. The young man looked at him closely. ‘You all right, sir?'

David nodded. ‘When . . . when did she . . . die?'

The young man shook his head consideringly. ‘ ‘Twas a few days ago now. Might be a week. Funeral was yesterday. Sorry to give you such a shock, sir. Fancy you not kno win'.'

‘I . . . I've been away. I had no idea . . . '