Enough to Kill a Horse (3 page)

He had a rapid, jerky walk with his shoulders thrown back and his arms held stiffly at his sides without swinging at all.

At the door he called out, ‘Good morning,’ and was answered with polite good mornings from most of the people there.

Emerging into the sunshine of the street, he set off briskly along it, at first looking a little doubtful of himself but soon recovering his usual air of defiant self-satisfaction. He just missed meeting Fanny Lynam, who, a moment after Tom had passed, came out of Harris’s, having ordered the lobster that she wanted for her party, and went towards The Waggoners.

Going inside and finding Colin she subsided with a sigh on the settle beside him and let a variety of parcels drop on to the table in front of her.

‘I thought I might find you here,’ she said. ‘I rang up your house and that passionately protective housekeeper of yours wouldn’t drop a hint as to your probable whereabouts, so I thought I could make a pretty good guess where I’d find you. Where’s Jean?’

‘At some committee meeting,’ Colin said. ‘What’ll you have to drink?’

‘Gin and tonic, please.’

He gave the order, then told her, ‘You’ve just missed something here.’

‘Tom out for trouble as usual?’

‘Got it in one.’

Fanny lit a cigarette. Her manner was absent-minded. ‘It’s awful, isn’t it? D’you think he’s been as bad as this all his life, or is it the effect retirement’s had on him?’

‘I should think he’s always been pretty bad,’ Colin said. ‘But he used to have a lot of little boys to take it out on and little boys take such a poor view of human nature anyway that they may have tolerated him better than we do.’

‘You and I tolerate him remarkably well,’ Fanny said. ‘I do it because I’m sorry for Minnie and you do it because you can’t be bothered not to.’

‘And anyway, we both quite like the old devil, in spite of ourselves – possibly because he brings some diversion into our quiet lives.’ Colin passed up his mug for more beer. ‘Actually I think he’s got worse lately. He seems to be – well, nervous.’

‘I know, I know.’ Fanny’s tone was defensive, as if he had made an accusation of some sort.

Colin caught that note and said, ‘Never mind, my dear. There’s nothing you can do about it.’

‘But it makes it all the more difficult about my party on Saturday,’ she said. ‘With both him and Minnie being so extra touchy at the moment, I feel I’ll probably give offence whatever I do.’

‘What party is this?’ Colin asked. ‘Am I invited?’

‘Yes, of course – you and Jean. That’s why I was trying to track you down. Cocktails on Saturday. Kit’s young woman is coming for the week-end and she’s so beautiful and so brilliant that I feel I need all the moral support I can get.’

‘Kit’s young woman?’ Colin’s thoughtful eyes dwelt for a moment on Fanny’s rather flushed face. ‘The lovely in the photograph on your windowsill?’

‘Yes – Laura Greenslade – Mrs Greenslade, widow, with one child,’ Fanny said. ‘Can you imagine Kit a stepfather?’

‘Why not?’

‘Well, he’s so young, so … well, not really so young, of course, but unformed, isn’t he?’

‘I hadn’t noticed it particularly,’ Colin said.

‘Perhaps I’m prejudiced. It’s easy to be prejudiced about one’s own family. But you and Jean will come, won’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t miss it for anything.’

‘I’ve collected Sir Peter Poulter,’ Fanny said in a satisfied tone. ‘That ought to impress her. And Clare Forwood’s driving her down, so she’ll see that she’s marrying into a very distinguished circle.’

‘Won’t she just!’ His tone was amused but no smile came into his grey eyes. ‘Why does she have to be impressed, Fanny? What’s the matter with her?’

Fanny flicked cigarette ash on to the floor. She avoided his gaze.

‘I’m sure there’s nothing the matter with her,’ she said. ‘Basil, who used to know her a little, says there was something peculiar about her, but I’m sure that doesn’t mean anything. No, I’m sure she’s a charming, intelligent, nice-natured girl and that we’re all going to love her. The only thing is …’

‘Well?’

‘Well, damn it, Colin, what does someone as charming, intelligent and so on as all that want with my poor Kit?’

‘Kit’s very attractive – you ought to know that by now,’ he said.

‘Yes, but to
marry
 …’

Colin burst out laughing.

Fanny did not respond but sat frowning at the drink in front of her. Instead of helping to cheer her up, it was making the depression, which had weighed on her mind for the last day or two, start getting out of hand. But she did not want to let Colin, or anyone else, see any sign of it. She was pleased about Kit’s engagement, so she had told Kit, Basil, her friends and most forcibly of all, herself. She was determined to remain pleased at all costs. Fingering her glass, still frowning at it distantly, she said, ‘The trouble with me at the moment is stage fright. Know what I mean, Colin?’

‘Of course,’ he answered. ‘It’s quite natural too.’

‘But it isn’t a thing I suffer from much as a rule. Perhaps I’d have been a better actress if I’d had more of it – that’s what they tell you. But I always just enjoyed myself on the stage. Only that seems a long time ago now and I’ve altered a lot since then. I couldn’t go back to that life now for anything.’

She paused. She did not really know what she was trying to say to Colin, but for some reason she always tended to say more to him than she intended.

This happened without his apparently doing anything to encourage it. She thought it must be because he was really much more like the people among whom she had spent most of her life than anyone else among her present friends and neighbours. It was easy to imagine Colin an actor, a not very talented actor, able to live reasonably comfortably, however, on his looks and the earnings of a hard-working, devoted wife. That had been the pattern of Fanny’s first marriage. Now the thought of that time and the way that she had wasted all the passion of her youth on a worthless man when there were others like Basil Lynam in the world filled her with a kind of rage. Yet it was a disconcerting fact that when she had had a drink or two she always found it so easy to talk too much to Colin Gregory.

Not that he was really in the least like her first husband, except in the one respect, that he apparently saw no objection to letting his wife keep him. But it was not only on Jean’s dividends that he depended for his pleasant existence, nor on her hard work at a time when she might have been having children. Jean had a child and Colin, Fanny felt certain, adored both the child and Jean. And since he was lucky enough to be married to one of the few people left in this difficult world who had plenty of money, there was no reason that Fanny could see why he should not enjoy his good fortune in his own way.

‘Stage fright,’ Fanny repeated. ‘Because she’s beautiful and smart and belongs to that world that I couldn’t keep up with any longer.’

‘Or grew out of,’ Colin suggested.

She gave him a bright smile. ‘You’re such a comfort, Colin. But d’you know, there’s something I sometimes wonder about? … About Basil. You see, he thought he was marrying an actress. I weighed eight stone three, had my hair done properly every week, always wore high heels and paid the earth, as a matter of course, for black-market nylons. Now my weight’s nearly eleven stone, I cut my own hair as often as not, go about in gumboots and … well, look, suppose Basil really wanted those other things. D’you see what I mean? Suppose, just because he’s such a quiet, intellectual sort of person, those other things really had an awful lot of glamour for him, so that I’ve really let him down terribly badly …’

‘My guess is,’ Colin said, ‘that Basil never thinks of criticizing a single thing you do.’

‘But suppose …’

‘Have another drink,’ Colin said, ‘and cheer up. You’ve got the great Sir Peter coming to your party, and Clare Forwood – ’

‘Yes, and I’m going to make my special lobster patties,’ Fanny said, ‘which are almost the only thing I know how to make well. I’m a lousy cook, but I do know how to make those.’

‘So everything’s bound to be a tremendous success and you’ve nothing whatever to worry about.’

‘But I’m not worrying about the
party
, Colin.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s Laura – going on and on. But it had to happen some time, my dear. Kit’s a marrying sort of man.’

‘Sometimes you’re just too full of homely wisdom for words!’ Fanny said, her face darkening with a flash of bad temper. ‘Of course it had to happen some time – but why in hell did it have to go and happen with a Laura Greenslade?’

‘That’s just fate. You can’t escape fate.’ With an unusual touch of grimness, he added, ‘None of us can.’

Fanny began to gather up her parcels.

‘Well, tell Jean about the party,’ she said. ‘And I’ll see you on Saturday, if not before.’

Colin nodded with a good-humoured look of understanding.

Fanny got up and went out into the street.

The spring sunshine had a growing warmth in it and she paused just outside the door to feel the pleasantness on her face. There were no signs of green yet on the trees, but there were jonquils, grape hyacinths and crocuses in the cottage gardens. Just why she had become angry with Colin at just that moment, she did not know and now she did not want to think about it. So after a moment she started to walk along quickly, clutching her parcels to her with both arms, humming a tune, while her gumboots thudded softly on the grass verge of the street. It was wide, with two rows of elms along it. Set far back behind the trees, the houses, for the most part, were Queen Anne or older, with only one or two Victorian interruptions in the general charm of age. The village was a famous one, much visited in the summer by tourists.

The real trouble, Fanny thought as she walked along, the thing that she could not face, was that Laura meant change. That was funny, when you came to think of it, because once upon a time perpetual change had been the only thing that had made life endurable.

At the garden gate she met Minnie Mordue.

Minnie had been knocking at the door, and receiving no answer, had been just about to come away when, seeing Fanny, she had halted.

As Fanny came up to her, Minnie clutched eagerly at one of her arms so that several parcels fell to the ground.

‘I’ve hardly got a minute, dear,’ Minnie said in her hurried breathless way, ‘but I must just come in and tell you …’ She was stooping to rescue the parcels as she spoke. ‘Tom’s waiting for me to drive him home, you see, so I mustn’t stay, but I did want to tell you … Not that I’ve really anything to tell you, till I’ve spoken to Susan this evening, but at least Tom thinks there isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t come to the party on Saturday.’

Carrying the dropped parcels, she was trotting up the path behind Fanny. She was a tall, ungainly woman, only a year or two older than Fanny, but with a drained and faded elderly quality that made Fanny’s florid stoutness look like the well-being of youth. She had limp, shoulder-length grey hair and large, anxious, hazel eyes, always ringed with blue, so that, in spite of an extraordinary fund of physical energy, she looked as if she were in a continual state of exhaustion. Her clothes were shapeless, home-made and everlasting. She always carried a large leather bag, filled with mysterious pieces of paper, in which she had to rummage for minutes at a time to find such things as a comb, a handkerchief or money.

Following Fanny into the sitting-room, she sat down on the edge of a chair, repeating that she could only stay a minute. Fanny was accustomed, however, to a breathless air of transitoriness in Minnie and knew that in fact she might easily stay an hour. She at least had time this morning to have her usual conversation with Spike, a bull terrier with a touch of spaniel about him, who liked to rest his chin on her knee, gazing up at her intimately while she murmured compliments to him on his nature and appearance.

But her voice, as she did this today, had a deep sadness in it, as if she could not help a regretful comparison between his excellent qualities and some less satisfactory in certain human beings. It was a tone that played havoc with Fanny’s nerves. It felt like an accusation, a backhanded attack on herself. Suddenly, almost angrily, she exclaimed, ‘Well, it wasn’t my fault, Minnie! I’m as upset as you are. I always hoped, just as much as you did, that Kit and Susan would marry, but that isn’t the kind of thing one can arrange for other people.’

‘But Susan … Susan’s so unhappy!’ There was an unfamiliar wildness in Minnie’s voice. ‘I’m sure she is, I’m sure she’s really in love with the boy, Fanny, and I think she was quite sure he was in love with her. Of course I wouldn’t say that to anyone but you.’

‘I should hope not, for Susan’s sake!’

‘Of course I wouldn’t. But still, Fanny, it’s so terrible seeing her determined to smile it off and saying she’s longing to meet this Mrs Greenslade and hoping that Kit will be very happy. Fanny dear, I’m very fond of that boy, and I suppose in my heart I know I can’t blame him, because that’s the way things happen and there’s nothing one can do about it, but all the same, just at the minute …’ Her big, worn hands had gone on fondling Spike’s flopping spaniel ears, but now, for a moment, the long fingers changed into talons, threatening the dog. Startled, he jerked his head away from her. ‘Still, that wouldn’t help my Susan, would it?’ she said. ‘But that’s why I’m not sure about Saturday.’

Fanny nodded. ‘I know.’

‘Tom thinks we ought to come,’ Minnie went on. ‘He thinks Susan will want to. I think perhaps she will too, because she’s very proud and she’ll want to show people that she isn’t really hurt. But I’m not sure that she ought to make herself go through a thing like that.’ She looked across the room at the photograph on the windowsill. ‘That’s Laura, is it?’

Fanny nodded again.

The two women went on looking thoughtfully at the photograph.

After a minute, Minnie said, ‘Well, if it’s a good likeness, she’s very lovely and I can quite understand Kit falling in love with her, but to my mind there’s something peculiar about that face, though I can’t say just what it is that strikes me like that.’