Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [1]
Even so, when lunch was over he took the lift to his office and denied himself the exertion of climbing three flights of stairs. The telephone rang as he came through the door. It was his wife Helen.
‘Are you going to be very late tonight?’ she asked. ‘Or just late?’
‘Oh, I shan’t be late,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’ll try to get away early.’
‘You usually try,’ she said.
There was a slight pause. Edward looked at the photograph of her, framed in leather, on the windowsill. She was holding a baby. On his desk was a snapshot of the same baby, several years older, crouched in a blurred garden cradling a rabbit in his arms.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘if I leave my meeting early and you don’t get back for hours, it’s a bit of a waste of effort . . . on my part. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I shouldn’t think old Simpson will want to hang on too long. Not with his leg.’
‘That’s true enough.’
‘Look here,’ he said desperately. ‘Better be on the safe side. One can never tell with old Simpson. I suppose I could be late . . . I don’t want to spoil your meeting. I don’t want you to scamper away only to find I’ve got caught up.’
‘All right then, dear,’ she said. ‘I won’t.’
When she’d rung off he felt aggrieved. He wasn’t always late, not every night. Tuesday for instance he never visited Binny, and hardly ever on a Thursday. That was the night her youngest daughter went to Brownies and was inclined to be boisterous afterwards. And what about those numerous occasions when he’d made a special effort to get home early, left his evening post unsigned, faced the frightful rush-hour traffic and arrived in time to catch Helen backing down the path in the Mini, gadding off to yet another meeting? She wasn’t the only one who could imply there was cause for complaint, not by any means.
The telephone rang again. He knew at once it was Binny, because when he said Hello there was no reply, merely a sort of offended breathing. There had evidently been some deficiency of feeling in his voice when he first greeted her, a degree of casualness that she hadn’t liked. ‘Hello, Hello,’ he persisted. He kept his eyes fixed on the snapshot of the rabbit struggling in his son’s arms. He couldn’t remember what they’d called the animal . . . Tiger? . . . Twinkle? The beastly thing had turned the garden into a waste land before dying of old age and being shovelled under the damson tree.
‘Look here,’ he lied. ‘I’m frightfully busy. May I ring you back?’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Binny, and put down the receiver.
He dialled her number immediately. She made him wait at least half a minute before answering. ‘Look, don’t be angry,’ he pleaded. ‘I had somebody in my room.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘You don’t seem to realise I’m a very busy man. I had poor old Woodford with me.’
‘What’s poor about him?’
‘They’re leaving him with nothing,’ Edward said. ‘The Inland Revenue are bleeding him white.’
‘What do you call nothing?’ demanded Binny.
He knew he shouldn’t get involved in this sort of discussion – he always came off the worse for wear and was apt to be indiscreet about clients’ accounts. ‘They’re taking eighty-three pence in the pound,’ he confided, voice thin with outrage.
‘If they take that much,’ said Binny, ‘he must be rolling. It still leaves him with seventeen p and if he’s paying super-tax I bet the seventeen ps jolly well add up. You can hardly expect me to pass round the hat.’
They dwelt on old Woodford’s tax problems, loudly, for quite some time. Edward found her tone of voice offensive. After all, he’d taken a considerable risk in agreeing to invite Simpson and his wife to dinner at Binny’s house. He hadn’t so much agreed