Second Chance (10 page)

Most of this we heard from Uncle Ted himself who still came up to visit us from time to time. ‘I'm no good without Jane,' he used to say in a thick, drunken voice. ‘Jane managed to keep me on the straight and narrow. Well, perhaps it wasn't entirely straight or entirely narrow, but at least I was usually facing the right way when Jane was alive. Now I'm anywhere.'

‘You should still think about your sons,' my mother would say. ‘I know what it is to lose someone, but I still try to look after Katie.'

‘And she looks after you as well,' Uncle Ted would say. ‘And so did Jane look after you. Don' you go and forget that.'

At this point, feeling he'd had as much sympathy as he was likely to, he'd raise himself unsteadily from the chair. ‘Listen, both of you,' he'd say – we knew what was coming – ‘Listen, I want you to meet Madge who's a very nice woman. She's not Jane, but she's a very nice woman, a very nice...'

‘No, Ted,' my mother would say each time. ‘I couldn't bear to meet her, however nice she is. When I see you I can only think of Jane.'

Poor Uncle Ted. By this time I didn't dislike him as much as I had.

I walked to the village shop in the afternoon. Since Grace was bringing a steak and kidney pie, I felt called upon to make some sort of effort as well. The shop where I used to buy my mother's groceries is now a small supermarket. Yes, they have wine, a fair selection, they have avocados, garlic, mushrooms, frozen raspberries, frozen blueberries, whipping cream, Stilton cheese; everything I want. When I was a girl, I can only remember sugar and tea, jam and tinned fruit. But at that time they had two huge slabs of cheese on the counter – mild and tasty – and they let you taste a sliver of each every time you went in.

There was an elderly lady standing in front of me at the check-out. ‘Do you remember that tasty cheese with blue rind they used to have here? ' I asked her.

‘Good gracious,' she said, ‘it's Kate Rivers isn't it?

Good gracious yes, I used to serve here years ago. I used to cut you little morsels of cheese so that you'd have something to put in your belly on your way home. You used to come here for old Mrs Bevan, didn't you? As well as for your mam? Yes, I heard that your poor mam had passed on. When is the funeral? I'll try to be there. Yes, I was talking to poor old George Williams earlier this week, he and I are neighbours you know, and he told me the sad news. Why don't you call in and have a cup of tea with me before you go home? For old times' sake? T
ˆ
y Gwyn. It's only a step from here. Good. I won't wait for you, I'll hurry back to shake the mat and put the kettle on. See you very soon, then.'

‘Do you know her name?' I asked the girl at the check-out. ‘The woman I was talking to?'

‘Sorry,' she sang out at me. ‘I'm only here to do the till, me.'

She had a large, vacant face glistening with eyeshadow, lipstick and blusher, but she wasn't interested in anyone. She didn't care that my mother had died or that someone was hurrying home to shake a mat before I arrived for a cup of tea.

‘Thank you,' I sang back at her after she'd taken my money and given me my change.

I stared in at Mrs Bevan's house as I passed it after my tea and chat at
T
ˆ
y
Gwyn. It had been renovated and extended. There was a too-large Victorian conservatory, all wrought iron and coloured glass, on the side nearest the village and something that looked like a stable block in the back where the garden shed had stood. Of course, Garth Wen was always a better-than-average house, it had three or four bedrooms and a bathroom, a dining room as well as a large living room and kitchen. Mr Bevan, after all, had been ‘in business'. Neither my mother nor I knew what that meant, except that it meant a big house and money in the bank. ‘I may decide to have an indoor toilet by the back door,' Mrs Bevan would say. ‘I'll have to see if there's enough money in the bank.' Sometimes my mother and I would use the same words, but with heavy irony. Not that we resented Mrs Bevan her good fortune, indeed we often benefited from it. After Auntie Jane's death, Mrs Bevan's bank account provided many of the extras I needed for school. ‘Not a word to Leslie,' she always said when she handed over any extra sum of money. That was another phrase my mother and I often bandied about whenever we had any little treat. ‘Not a word to Leslie.'

Mrs Bevan liked to think of Leslie as a very forceful character; any suggestion he made having to be acted upon as if it was God's law. ‘Leslie thinks I should put all my brass ornaments away to save you work, Mrs Rivers,' she said one day. So then she and my mother wrapped them all in tissue paper and packed them carefully away in a cardboard box, in spite of the fact that she loved looking at them and telling us where every piece had come from. And the fact that my mother took great pride in polishing them.

Of course I'd long realised that Leslie was a softy; he'd spent several Saturday afternoons taking my mother and me to Gorsgoch to see Auntie Jane during her last illness, had even offered to take a day off work to drive us to the funeral, though in fact that hadn't proved necessary since Uncle Ted had found time to fetch us. ‘Leslie would do anything for Kate,' Mrs Bevan used to say. ‘Leslie loves children.'

So on the Saturday afternoon after the incident with the ornaments, I had no worries about calling in to explain to Leslie how his kind thought of saving my mother work had misfired. I found him in the garage, sorting out apples for storing. I can still remember the heavy smell of ripe apples. ‘I'm very sorry,' he said after I'd explained the position to him. Indeed he looked stricken with remorse.

‘Don't worry,' I said. Just tell your mother that you miss seeing them and then she and my mother can have a lovely afternoon unpacking them again.'

He didn't say anything for a minute or so, simply stared at me as though he was about to cry. ‘I took them to my wife,' he said at last. ‘You see, my wife has wanted them for such a long time.'

I didn't know what to say. I was angry, of course; Mrs Bevan was ninety-four or five by this time, surely he could have waited a little longer before taking the ugly things. I was also surprised. I'd always assumed that Leslie was unmarried. Mrs Bevan had never mentioned a daughter-in-law. I think I must have just stood and gaped at him; this pathetic old man – he must have been in his mid-sixties – behaving so badly. Then, before I'd managed to say a word, he lurched towards me and started hugging me and weeping over me. I tried to pull away from him, but though I was strong – I'd be thirteen or fourteen by this time – he was stronger. He was crying in strange spasms and holding me so tightly I could hardly breathe. He was shuffling about too. And then he took my hand and put it over his penis which was big and sticky and horrible. I felt I was going to faint, but I pulled myself together and pushed him under the chin with such force that he had to let me go. ‘You pig,' I was shouting. ‘You pig, you pig, you pig.' He'd fallen back on to a box of apples and was standing there holding himself. I turned and rushed out of the garage. There was a key in the lock so I locked him in. There was no need for it; he was making no attempt to come after me, but I turned the key in the lock anyway. He'd have a hard time getting out of the small window in the back – plenty of time, I hoped, to think over his wretched behaviour to his mother and to me.

Especially to me, I sobbed under my breath as I ran home. It was a long time before I could get rid of that sickly smell from my hand. And even now, almost thirty years later, the smell of ripe apples still disturbs me.

Mrs Bevan died that same year, a few days before Christmas. Perhaps she'd begun to realise she couldn't trust Leslie, because the previous week she had hired a car, gone to the bank and taken out fifty pounds in five pound notes for my mother, a small fortune in those days. She handed it to her in a brown paper bag, just as she used to hand me the biscuits and sweets. ‘For Christmas?' my mother asked her, with no idea what it was. But Mrs Bevan had lapsed into unconsciousness. She was taken to hospital later that day and died the next morning.

My mother was of course, distraught; for several days keeping to her bed and refusing to eat, refusing even to discuss her little windfall. (What did we do, eventually, with that fifty pounds? I can't remember.)

In the local paper, Mr and Mrs Leslie Bevan were named as chief mourners. ‘Great Heavens,' my mother said, when I read her the account, ‘I didn't know he had a wife. Mrs Bevan told me everything, but she never told me that. I wish I'd pulled myself together and gone to the funeral so that I could have seen her. Leslie was such a lovely, kind gentleman, I'd have really liked to meet his wife.'

The house was sold soon afterwards to a local doctor who begged my mother to carry on working for him and his wife. She did. Two hours a day at a much better wage than she'd got from Mrs Bevan. But they never took over Mrs Bevan's place in her affection. It was Mrs Bevan she still talked about, Mrs Bevan she still loved.

And now my mother was also dead. I walked the rest of the way home very slowly.

There was a knock on the door while I was unpacking the shopping later. The man in the doorway was a stranger, but I immediately knew who it was.

‘George Williams,' he said. We shook hands. I invited him in.

He was short and stocky; earth-coloured face and a thatch of white hair.

‘Please sit down. I'll make a cup of tea.'

I was beginning to understand the social relevance of the cup of tea. It might not be needed by anyone or particularly wanted, but as well as being a gesture of good will, making it gave you a moment to collect yourself. It suddenly seemed crucial to our civilisation.

‘I'm pleased to meet you at last,' I said when I got back to the living room.

He looked me up and down. ‘Likewise,' he said.

I poured out a cup of tea and passed it to him. He took a spoonful of sugar and stirred it vigorously. Sad time,' he said, still stirring.

‘Sad time for both of us,' I said.

He acknowledged it with a slight nod of the head. He refused a digestive biscuit, but drank his tea calmly and without hurry. I wondered whether to ask him when he'd last seen my mother, but decided it might upset him.

‘Did you have any inkling that she was ill?' I asked at last.

He thought about the question for what seemed a full minute, then very carefully put his cup back on the saucer and got to his feet. ‘I knew she was feeling nervous,' he said at last. ‘I knew she was nervous about the wedding, but her death was a terrible shock.'

‘I'm so sorry,' I murmured. Tears filled my eyes again as I squeezed his hands.

She hadn't, of course, mentioned the wedding – or him – to me, but I hoped I hadn't shown any surprise. ‘I'll see you at the funeral,' I said. ‘And I hope you'll sit with me in the front pew.'

When he'd gone I felt quite light-headed and though it was still only five o'clock, started on the whisky.

Some time later, the phone rang. It was Paul. He was sorry he hadn't managed to ring before, but Annabel was in serious trouble. He paused, expecting me to question him, but I didn't. I didn't at all want to know about Annabel's problems, having plenty of my own. ‘I think she's being charged with manslaughter,' he said. ‘One of her friends died as a result of taking Ecstasy or one of these other things, and she's being accused of selling it to her. It's a lie, of course. It was some young chap from the town who'd sold the stuff, but she happened to be carrying one or two of the tablets in her bra and...'

I took a deep breath. ‘Try to stay calm,' I said. ‘The police have to pounce on someone so that people know they're taking it seriously, but they come to their senses after a while. I know you'll have got her the best possible lawyer. And that's all you can do at the moment.'

‘Oh God, how can you be so detached? What's happened to you? We want you here. Annabel's been asking for you and so has Francesca and I'm going to pieces without you.'

‘You're still in Cambridge, Paul?' I suddenly realised that he hadn't heard my news.

‘Of course I am. Do you think I can leave Annabel while she's in this state?'

‘My mother died on Sunday, Paul. And the funeral is on Friday. I can't seem to think of much else at the moment.'

‘Oh Christ, I'm sorry. I took it, of course, that you were just visiting her while you had some time off. Oh Christ.'

‘I'll come to Cambridge as soon as I can. Tell Annabel I'm thinking of her.'

‘Listen, I'll try to make it on Friday. What time is the service?'

‘Eleven at the chapel. But...'

‘I'll do my best to be there. I can get there and back in a day, can't I? I'll see you, darling. Oh, I'm so sorry about your mother. I'll phone again tomorrow, darling.'

Of course, I felt wretched about Annabel. I knew I'd be going to Cambridge as soon as I possibly could after the funeral. Even as I chopped up the vegetables for the evening meal, I was rehearsing the part I'd be called upon to play. ‘Look, Paul, even if you accept what the police say, even if you accept that Annabel did give, or even sell the drugs to this girl who died, she's still innocent. How could she possibly have known what effect they were going to have on her? Paul, a wasp sting can prove fatal to certain people. You can be quite certain that Annabel takes these drugs and that they make her happy. How could she be expected to know that this particular supplier was selling contaminated goods? I took drugs when I was young, didn't you, Paul? Pot, of course, and LSD from time to time. Well, there wasn't any Ecstasy then, but I'd certainly have taken it if there was. How could anyone resist Ecstasy?'