Injury Time (7 page)

‘With a call box?’

‘There’s an office in the house. The fellow’s a merchant banker. I wondered if you’re free tomorrow night?’

‘Oh, sweetie . . . what a shame. I’m not.’

‘Well, what about lunch then?’

He thought he heard someone whispering at the other end of the line.

‘Look here, sweetie,’ Marcia said. ‘Give me a tinkle at the office in the morning. I’ll let you know then.’

‘All right,’ he said.

Hobbling, he scurried back up the road.

Edward gave the guests a little sherry to sip before dinner. He didn’t offer any to Binny. The Simpsons wanted to sit on the sofa, but Edward forestalled them. ‘It’s a shade uncomfortable,’ he said, and laughed. He had made love to Binny many times on the sofa, though it was too short for him to lie full length upon it. His left knee, exposed to constant friction on the hair-cord covering of the floor, was permanently scarred. When he was in the car sometimes, driving to work, or in the office talking to a client, he would gently touch this proof of passion with his fingertips and wince with happiness. He was ready, should Helen notice the wound, to tell her he feared he was becoming increasingly knock-kneed as the years advanced.

‘I do admire those cushions,’ Muriel said. She would have liked to go somewhere and attend to her wet hair.

‘Have one,’ said Binny. ‘Have one.’ And she placed a cushion on a chair at the table and told everybody to sit down. She couldn’t concentrate on the cooking with the Simpsons standing about looking uncomfortable. Edward opened a bottle of wine.

The guests perched on the damaged chairs and put their elbows on the table to steady themselves.

Muriel frowned at her husband. He was bent sideways, dragging the cloth with his stomach, doing something out of sight. ‘The traffic,’ she said. ‘It was simply chaotic. We thought we’d never get here, didn’t we, George?’

‘Don’t tell me,’ protested Edward. He walked backward and forward in front of the mirror, holding a glass in his hand.

‘No trouble with parking though,’ said Simpson. ‘Not here at any rate.’

‘Never any trouble here,’ Edward agreed.

‘You don’t do any parking here,’ said Binny.

T
hey began dinner at a quarter past nine. Edward wondered agitatedly how he could possibly manage to eat, help with the washing up, and be out of the house by half past ten at the latest. It would seem fearfully abrupt.

There was grapefruit to start with.

‘Excellent, excellent,’ Simpson said, gouging the fruit from its skin with a spoon that had buckled, without warning, in his hand.

‘The reason the loaf looks funny,’ explained Binny, ‘is because one of my children was hungry.’ Her voice quivered slightly. Recovering, she handed the sugar bowl to Muriel. ‘You’ve got four, haven’t you? All boys. Edward told me.’

‘Two, actually,’ interrupted Simpson.

‘Two girls,’ Muriel said. ‘We’re quite pleased with them. Of course, I never went out to work or anything like that, and I didn’t have a nanny when they were younger. I think it’s important to give them one’s undivided attention, don’t you? And I’m glad now that I had them all to myself.’

‘I’m glad I didn’t have a weapon in the house,’ said Binny. ‘I’d have murdered mine years ago.’

‘My father,’ Edward told them, ‘had a nanny who hanged herself.’

‘No,’ screamed Muriel.

‘Yes, she did. It’s as true as I’m sitting here. My father was grown up of course, but he heard about it. It seemed her mind snapped under the strain. One by one, losing her babies in the mud. Master Charles, Master Guy—’

‘In the mud?’ said Binny. ‘Are you sure?’

‘The trenches,’ explained Simpson. ‘In France.’ He shook his head sombrely from side to side.

Anxious to change the subject, Muriel confided that her daughters were musically inclined; she hinted that they were fairly competent on the recorder.

‘My girls have frightful voices,’ said Binny, thinking of tape machines. ‘And their language—’ Her eyes filled with tears.

She put down her spoon and stared distressed at a segment of grapefruit on her plate. Nobody noticed. Edward was telling the Simpsons that houses like these were a jolly sensible investment. Gilt-edged in fact. With inflation and so forth, and the cutting back of the government building programme, superior properties in London would eventually be unobtainable. ‘We’ve seen the end of the downward spiral in prices,’ he said. ‘The slump is over.’

‘How many floors are there?’ asked Simpson. The house didn’t seem particularly superior, what little he could see of it. He wondered if the place was divided into flats. There was certainly something wrong with the electricity supply; the room was full of shadows. He sought with his foot for the table leg and gently worked at removing his shoe.

‘Three,’ said Edward.

‘Four with the basement,’ Binny said. ‘I’ve let it at the moment.’ She tried not to look at Simpson. Edward had told her that Simpson’s little sortie to the VD clinic was to do with some woman he’d met in the bar at a theatre. She’d written her telephone number on his programme when his wife had slipped off to the Ladies. Edward said Simpson had given good money for getting his leg over, because that way his lapse would be more likely to be understood, should he be caught out. Binny hadn’t been able to understand it. Neither she nor any of her friends had ever been paid for doing it. She’d thought at the time that Simpson had made the whole thing up out of his head; he was boasting. Now she wasn’t so sure.

‘My dear girl,’ cried Edward. He rapped boisterously on his plate with a spoon. ‘Who’s telling a little white lie?’ He turned to Muriel and explained that Binny’s ex-husband had sold off the basement several years ago to meet various business commitments. As he spoke he regretted that he’d addressed Binny as his dear girl; Simpson had warned him about hanky panky. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘the basement isn’t really much of an asset. It’s a little dark and there’s no garden to speak of at the back. No garden at all, actually. We’ve got quite a large garden – fruit trees, roses, one or two vegetables. I do a little potting in the greenhouse . . . take a few cuttings . . . nothing special. Are you a gardener, Miriam?’

‘Muriel,’ said Simpson.

Confused, Edward poured out more wine. He said loudly, ‘Helen’s not too keen on the spade work, but she likes it in summer – tea on the lawn, that sort of caper.’

Binny rose abruptly and took the saucers to the sink.

‘Get up, George,’ ordered Muriel. ‘Take things into the kitchen.’ She herself, seeing Edward was puffing at his pipe, took a cigarette from her handbag and lit it.

Simpson carried the sugar bowl and spoons through to Binny. As she stood there at the stove, the top of her tongue protruding as she concentrated on arranging chops and grilled tomatoes on a large blue plate, he thought how young she looked. Of course he knew the lighting was poor and she was no chicken, but the droop of her narrow shoulders and the little curls falling about her neck enchanted him. Muriel was tall with wide shoulders and strong as an ox. She had on two occasions moved their upright piano single-handed from one wall to another. He had refused to help, on the grounds that he might strain his back. He didn’t want to mark the parquet floor and he never dreamt she could do it alone. Putting her firm buttocks against the back of the heavy instrument and bending at the knees like Groucho Marx, she had shoved it clear across the room.

‘You mustn’t lift that,’ he said, stricken, as Binny gripped the blue plate in both hands. He took it from her, thinking she was far too fragile to carry such a load.

Edward was speaking in low tones to Muriel. He champed on the stem of his pipe and nodded his head emphatically. Binny, bringing the roast potatoes to the table, imagined he was saying that there was nothing between them, that he just felt sorry for her.

At the arrival of the meat, Edward jumped to his feet and removed his jacket. He flung it carelessly on the sofa. A comb and a fountain pen slid from his pocket and fell to the carpet. Because of his belly, which was large, he was obliged to wear braces to keep up his trousers. Finding the elastic too uncomfortable on his shoulders, he jerked the braces free and let them dangle about his thighs.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ said Binny. He looked a sight, with his rumpled shirt and those striped lengths of elastic hanging like two large catapults from his waist.

‘It’s damned hot in here,’ he said, forgetting that earlier he had used the coldness of the room as an excuse to close the shutters. He scooped up his belongings from the floor, lost his balance, and careered against the table. Spluttering with laughter and red in the face, he collapsed heavily on to his chair. ‘Aren’t there any greens?’ he asked.

‘Salad only,’ Binny told him.

‘Rabbit fodder,’ he said sadly, and undid the top button of his shirt.

Simpson couldn’t help admiring the man. He was definitely an eccentric. Of course he could afford to be, on his salary, but still. He asked if anybody minded if he too removed his coat.

‘Do as you please,’ said Muriel. She found the food plentiful and well cooked; the salad had the right amount of garlic in the dressing and the roast potatoes were crisp. It was obvious to her that Edward Freeman was in no danger from Binny. It was just the reverse.
He
was evidently using
her.
Some women liked that sort of thing, she knew. Binny was the right size and weight to be submissive; perhaps she had a father complex and liked some big rough man treating her in a patronising fashion and ticking her off about the vegetables. She wouldn’t be at all surprised if Edward didn’t slap her now and then.

He, for his part, found Muriel very pleasant to talk to. Simpson must have been over-reacting when he’d implied she might be standoffish this evening. After all, any woman who had been involved in that X, Y and Z business must be jolly approachable; he couldn’t imagine anyone asking Helen if they could borrow the spare room. Muriel cared about gardening too, he could tell. She wasn’t lyrical over it, but she seemed knowledgeable about insecticides.

‘Of course, I was brought up in the country,’ he said. ‘So I suppose it’s in the blood. This feeling for the land. My father inherited an estate in Norfolk and I learned early to have a healthy respect for the soil. Just a small estate,’ he added hastily, hoping Binny hadn’t overheard. Whenever he’d mentioned his father’s property before, she’d doffed an imaginary cap and talked about tugging his forelock. ‘My earliest memories,’ he told Simpson’s wife, ‘are of being woken by father at dawn, and going out with the guns to shoot.’

‘How lovely,’ murmured Muriel.

‘I had to stand up to my waist in icy water for hours, waiting for the duck to fly. Couldn’t have been more than eight or nine years of age.’

‘How ghastly,’ said Muriel.

‘You’ve no idea what pleasure it gives me to see Helen in the garden, sitting in the deckchair by the fence, shelling peas that I’ve grown myself. It’s the sense of achievement. Nothing like it. Have some more wine.’

Muriel said thank you and held out her glass for him to fill.

She was a pretty woman, he realised, and fond of her food. She wore the right clothes; pale blue was a favourite colour of his. He looked across at Binny. She was wearing a severe black dress that personally he thought dowdy. She had little broken veins on her cheeks and chest. He couldn’t see them without his reading glasses but he knew they were there. When she got up from the table, as she did frequently, to fetch butter knives and salt, she waddled.

‘Does George do much in the garden?’ Edward asked.

‘No,’ said Muriel. ‘Not much. He works late most nights, and then he has trouble with his back.’

One day, thought Edward gloomily, Simpson was going to be caught out. They were all going to be caught out – Simpson, himself, those other foolish men drinking in public houses, jingling the loose change in their pockets and boasting of affairs. It was astonishing how fashionable it was to be unfaithful. He often wondered if it had anything to do with going without a hat. No sooner had the homburgs and the bowlers disappeared from the City than everyone grew their hair longer, and after that nothing was sacred.

Flushed with the wine and wanting to make amends to someone, Edward leaned towards Muriel and said softly: ‘You got me out of a hole, you know. I’m very grateful.’

Muriel didn’t quite catch what he’d said. She thought perhaps he was offering her another drink. ‘No,’ she protested. ‘I can’t take any more.’ She raised her hand and made a little gesture of refusal that Edward found charming.

‘Seriously,’ he murmured, twisting round in his chair so that Binny wouldn’t hear, ‘I can’t tell you, Miriam, how much I appreciate it. She’s a wonderful girl, but in the past she’s sneered at people. People I’ve mentioned. You know . . . friends of mine. She says I don’t know any people, not real people, not ones with flesh and blood—’

‘Yes, of course,’ agreed Muriel.

‘When she says “blood”, she sort of curls her lip back . . . over her teeth . . . like a vampire.’ Here Edward gave a facial imitation of Binny in one of her more contemptuous moments. ‘See what I mean?’ he said.

Muriel noticed that he had a fragment of watercress lodged in his teeth at the side. ‘I think I saw it on television,’ she said, but he was leaning back in his chair and watching Simpson.

How lucky, thought Edward, to have such friends. Look at the way Simpson was putting himself out to be nice to Binny – cracking jokes, taking off his jacket, talking to her quite naturally. Perhaps there was some way round that business of the office cleaning expenses. He knew Simpson probably thought Binny a bit of an oddity. He’d met Simpson’s latest woman – she was tall and brisk and called Simpson ‘sweetie’. She had a flat somewhere off the Kilburn High Road, which she shared with two men, one of whom was a Liberal party candidate. Though it wasn’t likely that Helen would know him, it was a bit of a shock when he’d first heard about it. He inclined his head and listened to what Simpson was saying.