Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [11]
‘I think,’ said Edward, ‘that it’s his wife more than him.’
‘I’ll bet it is,’ Binny crowed. ‘She probably feels that if you’re doing it, then her old Simpson’s at it too.’
‘You are clever,’ he said tenderly. ‘I do love you, you know.’
‘Like bloody hell,’ she said, and told him she must get on.
She was a mystery to him; she had no small talk at all.
He returned to the office. Here he began to compose a fairly resentful letter to Simpson, indicating that he thought it inadvisable to claim such and such an amount for the cleaning of his business premises ‘. . . It would seem to me, in the circumstances, an unrealistic and preposterous sum, more in keeping with maintaining the hygienic standards of a research laboratory than a spare parts factory, and one which the Inspector of Taxes would undoubtedly and deservedly view with suspicion, etc., etc . . .’
4
Binny laid the dining-room table, still wearing her headscarf and outdoor coat. Underneath she had changed into her best black dress. The table was situated in the front half of the ground-floor room. The back half contained the kitchen. In it was a stove, a fridge and a very small draining-board. So great was Binny’s abhorrence of cooking that she’d torn down the shelving and plastic work surfaces installed by a previous owner and stacked everything – food, crockery, pans – into an article of furniture she called a wall cupboard. It was, in reality, a gentleman’s wardrobe, still fragrant with the smell of Havana cigars, complete with little compartments for starched and detachable collars in which Binny kept the knives and forks. From the back window there was a view of a yard, a brick wall, and a rabbit hutch that Edward had given her.
Moving about the table, cheerful and organised, Binny was interrupted by her daughter Lucy, who was eighteen and dressed as though ready for work on a building site.
‘Screw me,’ cried Lucy, smiling for once, eyeing the cut flowers and the folded napkins. ‘Having a knees-up, are we?’ She had known for days that Binny was expecting guests, but she liked to tease. She seized her mother by the shoulders and shook her. Binny’s headscarf slithered over her eyes. ‘Who’s a posh girl, then?’
‘Don’t, darling,’ said Binny.
Lucy flung herself sideways on to the sofa, crushing the newly plumped cushions. She began to roll a cigarette. She said critically, ‘I should wear something more suitable, if I were you. They’ll think you’re not stopping.’
Binny noticed that her daughter’s army boots, heavily studded, were scuffing a carpet already flecked with pieces of cotton thread and bits of fluff. It had started to rain when she’d returned from the bank and she hadn’t felt like going down into the yard to retrieve the hoover. The inside might have got wet and she didn’t want to risk being electrocuted. Perhaps no one would notice the carpet once the drink started going down.
‘I think, darling,’ said Binny, ‘you’d better be off. If that’s all right with you. Just pop the baby into the Evans’s, there’s a good girl.’
The baby, who was almost eleven years old, was quite capable of climbing the fence and going up the steps to the house next door, but Binny worried.
‘Where’s big-dick?’ asked Lucy.
‘Behave,’ pleaded Binny. She counted inwardly to ten and busied herself with titivating the table. Her son Gregory, bribed with a pound note, was, she hoped, halfway across London on the underground, bound for the house of his friend Adam.
Lucy appeared to have fallen asleep. Cigarette papers and grains of tobacco littered her chest. ‘Will you get up?’ said Binny. ‘At once. Please, dear.’
There was very little left for her to do. She’d peeled the potatoes, washed the lettuce, sprinkled herb things on the meat. Still, she wanted her daughters out of the way. Being constantly with the children was like wearing a pair of shoes that were expensive and too small. She couldn’t bear to throw them out, but they gave her blisters. It would be nice having Edward in the house with other people present. Adults.