The Good Father (11 page)

‘What will you do?'

‘Nothing.' He shrugged. ‘It's just a bit unsettling, having to turn down thousands and thousands of pounds. It's
especially
unsettling for an accountant.' He sighed. ‘They are not my thousands though – that's what I keep telling myself.'

They finished their drinks and talked about work and a little about his children, ordinary conversation as the pub became busier, the jukebox playing almost constantly, the air becoming thicker with cigarette smoke. All the time she imagined he was thinking about his strange friend and the huge amount of money he couldn't bring himself to accept. All the time he held her hand tightly and once, during a lull in their conversation, he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it, an act that was more intimate for its very absent-mindedness. And because she was tired she rested her head on his shoulder and they sat together in silence, watching the crowd of Teddy Boys and their girls drink and kiss and shuffle about to the music they chose.
We are companionable
, she thought, and this thought surprised her more than any other she had ever had. Paradoxically, it broke the companionable spell, and she sat up as suddenly as if he had shaken her awake.

‘I should go home,' she said.

He walked her to her door. There, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her, a soft, undemanding kiss. He said, ‘Thank you for tonight,' and kissed her again. She held her body stiffly from him, but this made her feel as though she was pretending to be someone else, that prick-teasing girl she had never had the heart to be. So she held him tightly and he groaned, holding her tighter still, lifting her off her feet. ‘Oh God, Val, I think I might be too old for this.'

Setting her down, he held her at arms' length. Searching her face he said, ‘Saturday night – the children are going to stay with their grandparents. I'll cook us supper.'

She nodded.

‘Yes?' He cleared his throat. ‘You sure? I just want to take you to bed . . . I love you.'

She wanted to tell him that he didn't have to say that, that it would be easier for her if he didn't lie to her. But if she did tell him, he would know without any doubt what kind of a woman she was. Anyway, why shouldn't he say it? Perhaps for a few seconds he even believed it.

Chapter 11

Standing at his upstairs office window, Harry watched his last client walk along the High Street towards a waiting taxi cab. She staggered a little as she fumbled in her handbag and pulled out a handkerchief. The lacy white square of Irish linen was sodden, he knew. For the last hour she had sat in this office and used the hanky to wipe her eyes and nose as she told him how really she shouldn't be there, that it would all blow over – all this silliness. She had laughed even as she wiped the tears away. ‘He won't go through with it. He won't, of course not. But he says I should find my own solicitor . . . '

He'd stood up and walked around his desk, resting against it, close to her, so he would seem to be less intimidating, less like the official who was to take part in the ending of her marriage. She had been married twenty years. She'd smiled at him tearfully. ‘We have two lovely children, but he says they're not children any more . . . that he doesn't have to stay any more . . . ' She wept and he waited silently for her to compose herself, except she didn't, not really, although she managed to smile at him again and apologise for the silly show she was making of herself. He could smell the gin on her breath.

He turned away from the window and the sight of this unhappy woman climbing half-drunk into the back of the cab. Going through to the outer office, he took a pile of letters typed ready for him to sign and read them quickly before scrawling his signature. His secretary Maureen came back carrying two cups of tea. She handed him one. ‘I supposed you could do with this.'

‘Thank you.'

‘You've eaten all the biscuits.'

‘Have I?' He glanced up at her from signing another letter. ‘Stop bringing biscuits, Maureen. Make me diet.'

‘
Make you
? Ha! That'll be the day.' Sitting down at her typewriter, she yanked out a finished letter and its carbons and held it out to him. ‘Last one and then you can go home. After you've seen the rather peculiar man sitting in reception.'

He frowned at her. ‘There's someone waiting?'

‘Yes, but I thought you might need that cup of tea first, after your last client.' She sighed. ‘Go and sit down; drink your tea. I'll send him in when you've caught your breath.'

Peter Wright said, ‘I hope this isn't an inconvenient time, Mr Dunn.'

Harry got up, holding out his hand. ‘No, of course not. Please, sit down.'

He sat, and Harry offered him a cigarette from the box he kept on his desk. Wright shook his head. ‘I don't smoke, thank you. And I won't stay long. It was just that I was in town and I saw your office and I thought I would come in and let you know that I've spoken to Jack – Mr Jackson. He knows now that he's to inherit.'

He had been clutching a string shopping bag on his knee, tins of soup and baked beans bulging through its net, brown paper bags of apples, onions and carrots resting on top. Now he put the bag down, steadying it so that its contents didn't roll all over the floor. Maureen had said he looked peculiar, perhaps because the macintosh he wore was so old-fashioned and too tightly belted, each button fastened, or perhaps because of the shopping – damning evidence that he was a bachelor. Unmarried men were odd, in Maureen's eyes. There had to be a good reason why they couldn't find a wife to look after them. Maureen wouldn't have noticed Peter Wright's gentle manner. Perhaps she had; he imagined that gentleness wasn't something Maureen admired in a man.

Smiling at him, Wright said, ‘So, that's what I wanted to tell you. I've told Jack.'

‘How did he take it?'

‘He was shocked, of course. And of course he insisted that he didn't want anything to do with it. I think I've persuaded him though. I told him that it's a wonderful house for the children – or it could be, once all our ugly old bits and pieces have been cleared out. I told him he'll need a few strong men with big vans.'

‘And what about you?'

‘Me? I've been looking at places to rent. Actually, I've found somewhere – a house on one of the terraces behind the High Street here. Just a two up, two down, but more than big enough for me. It's on Inkerman Terrace.'

Inkerman Terrace. Even hearing the name of the street where Val lived sent a shock of adrenalin through him. He saw himself in bed with her in that little house, her father's pigeons cooing on the roof above them as she lay sated and drowsy in his arms. Unable to sit still, he got up and went to the window, his hands clasped behind his back. On the street below, the market traders were dismantling their stalls; a tramp searched amongst the waste, finding a box of half-rotten fruit. He began sorting through the bruised apples and blackening bananas, stuffing them into the pockets of his Army greatcoat. Harry watched him blankly, his thoughts disorganised, unfocused. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the window and forgot about the man seated behind him, forgot everything but his own misery.

He felt a hand on his arm. ‘Mr Dunn, why don't you sit down?'

Harry shrugged him off and immediately felt rude. Even so, he said impatiently, ‘I'm all right. I'm fine.'

Wright said cautiously. ‘Are you sure? You look rather pale.'

Harry shook his head. ‘It's been a long day, that's all.' Managing to smile at him he said, ‘Don't worry about me. I'm pleased you've found a decent place to live. They're good, solid little houses . . . ' He trailed off, unable to think about Inkerman Terrace without wanting to cry.

Wright went back to the chair he'd been sitting in and picked up his shopping bag. Hesitantly he said, ‘Well, I'm sure I've kept you long enough. Good afternoon, Mr Dunn.'

Just as he had watched his last client walk along the High Street, Harry watched Wright make his way towards his car, a scarecrow of a man, one badly in need of someone to take care of him. As if he sensed he was being watched, Wright turned; looking up, he smiled and held up his hand in a brief wave. Harry found himself waving back, smiling too. As Wright got into his car and drove away, still Harry watched after him, touched by his gentleness, his concern. He thought that perhaps he could call on him at Inkerman Terrace, see how he was coping. If he was to bump into Val, well, he would have an excuse. Comforted by this plan, he turned from the window and prepared to go home.

In his kitchen, Harry found Esther sitting with Ava at the table. There was a jigsaw between them, half-completed, WindsorCastle suspended from blue sky, as yet unconnected with the ground. Esther stood up hastily, always slightly put out by him; her shyness gave him the impression that whenever he entered a room she immediately wanted to leave it. She was a rather mousy, sharp-featured girl, her hair tied up in a high ponytail. Dressed in slacks and an over-sized shirt cinched at the waist with a wide belt, she looked very young, too young for any kind of responsibility. As usual, Harry felt guilty that such a girl was taking care of Ava; he was afraid Esther might collapse in a fit of nervous exhaustion. She said, ‘Oh, Mr Dunn, you're home.' She glanced at the clock. ‘I didn't realise the time.'

Harry kissed Ava's head. His wife ignored him and went on moving the pieces of stone-coloured jigsaw about the table. Smiling at Esther, he said, ‘How have things been today?'

‘All right.'

He nodded, never sure what to say to her, except that he was grateful, desperately, desperately grateful that she continued to stay; but he had to think of more ordinary things to say to her, an effort that too often defeated him. He thought of her little bedroom, with its adjoining door to Ava's room and its narrow, single bed covered in a pink candlewick bedspread; there was a wardrobe and a chest of drawers and a Lloyd Loom chair and there was a picture of kittens in a basket above the bed. The window looked over the garden, and it was a nice, sunny little room, except that it seemed rather characterless. He had an idea that Esther was homesick, and whenever she left her bedroom door ajar it was as if she was allowing him a glimpse of her unhappiness. Once he had seen her Sunday dress, the one she wore on her visits home to her mother, hanging limply from the wardrobe, and he had quickly closed the bedroom door, not wanting to be reminded that Esther had a mother.

Harry said too brightly, ‘Shall I put the kettle on?'

His kitchen was large, its walls painted a pale primrose yellow so that the room seemed to capture and hold onto all of the sunlight that streamed through its large window. There was a smell of baking, a wire rack of small cakes cooling on the dresser beside a jug of pussy-willow. Next to the jug was an untidy pile of children's books and he imagined that a stranger would wonder where the children were because there was further evidence of them in a pair of tattered rag dolls sitting on an easy chair facing the kitchen's black-leaded range. The stray tabby cat Esther had befriended curled on the chair, too, the dolls smiling happily over its sleeping body. On the floor by the back door were two small pairs of muddy Wellington boots, Esther's and Ava's, both women's feet as tiny as children's. The door was propped open with a jar full of seashells, revealing the garden and its plundered willow tree. As the kettle boiled, the girl went to the door and closed it, placing the shells on the windowsill.

‘When we bake it gets too warm,' she said. Then, ‘Would you like a cake? They got a bit burned – I forgot about them.' She sat down, only to get up again as the kettle whistled shrilly. ‘I'll make the tea,' she said.

She made tea in a big brown pot, quick, deft, anxious still. Gesturing at the cakes she said, ‘We were going to make them into butterfly cakes. I don't think we shall, now.'

‘Butterfly cakes?'

‘It's silly. You cut out a little from the middle, top the hole with butter cream and make wings from the piece you cut out. It's something to do.'

Ava got up. Taking one of the rag dolls from the chair, she went out into the garden. Disturbed from sleep, the cat jumped down and followed her. The door hung open and Esther placed the shell-jar against it again. Standing in the doorway, she watched Ava cross the lawn before turning to him.

‘The cakes got burned because Mrs Dunn was upset. I was trying to calm her down.' With a rare flash of assertiveness she said, ‘Guy picked up one of her dolls.'

Harry sighed. ‘I'll speak to him.'

‘He didn't do anything really – just picked it up.'

‘But he knows not to go near the dolls. It's all right, Esther, don't worry. I won't let him know you told me. Where is he now, do you know?'

‘In his room, I think.'

The boy would be lying on his bed, Harry thought, smoking and listening to his music. He seemed to do little else since he arrived home. He heard himself sigh again. A cup of tea was placed in front of him and he smiled at Esther to reassure her. ‘I think I will have one of those cakes. They don't look too burned to me.'

Guy lay on his bed, fully clothed beneath the slippery silk of the eiderdown, his flies undone, his hand closed around his erection. He thought of Hope, and of Esther, the two of them naked and taking turns to suck his cock. Hope was the most eager, even though she looked so innocent, encouraging Esther, shy, timid Esther with her ratty, common little face. He would be less rough with Esther than he would be with Hope, who needed to be humbled, degraded even, because she was so coolly self-possessed. He would ruin Hope, make her filthy, he would make her perform the most perverted, indecent acts and he and Esther would watch. He groaned quietly, his hand moving faster around his cock. He came.

Lying very still, he stared at the ceiling and gradually, predictably, began to feel disgusted with himself. His hand was sticky. Groping blindly about the floor, his fingers searched out a discarded sock which he used to clean himself up. He thought of Esther, who was not ratty or common – these were descriptions that only occurred to him when he was wanking – but oddly pretty in a way he found difficult; he was constantly trying to work out why he found her so attractive. He suspected that she was attracted to him, although he could be wrong – there was absolutely no reason why she should be. If she was odd-looking, he was odder-looking still. His eye made him ridiculous. Hope had stared and stared at his eye, as if she wanted to shine a doctor's pencil-like torch into it.

Ava had told him never to mind if people stared. In her funny, accented English she'd said, ‘Don't care! Why should you care what any silly person thinks? You are a handsome, handsome boy – like your dear daddy!' He had begged her to speak German, because her English made him squirm with embarrassment for her, although he would never, ever tell her this. They spoke German together and it was his secret, a secret that made him feel powerful and superior to all the other boys who acted out their war games in the playground. In those games, all Germans were Nazis, torturers and murderers and ultimately cowards. He thought such games were beneath him.

Guy tossed the soiled sock down and zipped up his fly. He reached for a cigarette and lit one and practised blowing smoke rings at the ceiling. His thoughts strayed to Esther, as they often did, as she was this afternoon, weighing flour and sugar for the cakes, gently directing Ava so that it seemed that his stepmother was actually helping rather than just getting in Esther's way. And Esther's delicate hand had cracked one egg and then another and another into the bowl, a bowl she cradled against her breast as she beat the mixture, as she chatted to him, as the sunlight streaming through the window made her mousy hair shine. The cake mixture that had filled the kitchen with the smell of vanilla essence was spooned into paper cases. Esther ran a finger around the empty bowl and licked it; he watched her bend over to place the cakes in the oven, her backside firm and delicious-looking in tight black ski-pants. He had been telling her about school, making her laugh with his impression of the masters and, forgetting, he had picked up Danny Doll, the male rag doll Ava so guarded. All hell had then broken loose.