Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [17]
‘Washing?’ he queried, playing for time.
‘Do you wash your smalls?’
‘We’ve a washing machine,’ he said.
‘Even for your smalls?’
‘It’s for everything,’ he said. ‘Big or small.’
She wanted him to describe his washing arrangements in detail.
It seemed a funny thing to be interested in. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I put my clothing, underpants, socks and so forth, in a polythene bag in the bathroom and Helen places them, in due course, in the machine.’
‘And you let her?’ Binny cried, as though they were discussing coal-heaving or some equally strenuous job.
Inwardly he grew rattled. It was unfair of Binny to attack him over his underpants just because the Simpsons were late and she was worried about the chops. ‘Look here,’ he protested, ‘I have enough to do in the office, you know, without worrying about the washing. Helen’s in all day. It’s no trouble if you’ve got a machine. Besides, I don’t know how to load the thing. As a matter of fact she won’t let me touch it. It’s her department.’
‘Do you sleep with her?’
The question was so unexpected that his mouth fell open. He felt he’d suffered a minor stroke. ‘My love,’ he began inadequately.
‘You do, don’t you?’
‘No, no,’ he protested. He knew she knew he was not telling the truth. ‘She’s not one for that sort of thing,’ he floundered. ‘Not now. She’s gone off it.’
Binny abandoned her place at the stove and came to sit at the table. She smiled lovingly at him.
He said uneasily, ‘I do care for you, you know. I really do.’
‘We all go off it,’ said Binny. ‘Us women.’ She held her fourth glass of wine to her lips and drank. ‘Until somebody exciting comes along. Like you,’ she added generously and, reaching out, attempted to touch his cheek.
He ducked, thinking she was going to strike him.
‘Take Helen,’ she continued. ‘She’s used to you. You’re the old sod that’s part of the furniture.’
It wasn’t, he felt, a flattering description. Still, Binny was smiling in an affectionate manner. He allowed her, without flinching, to caress his face.
‘You’re not a mystery any more,’ she told him. ‘Probably if you stayed very still she’d run a duster over you. But if a bloke came along, someone she’d never set eyes on, well . . . stands to reason, doesn’t it?’
‘Does it?’ he said.
Binny withdrew her hand and thumped the table. ‘I bet you if the milkman rushed in and grabbed old Helen, she wouldn’t say no.’
‘Perhaps not,’ he said dubiously. He had a mental picture of his wife moving serenely about the kitchen in her housecoat, and the youth from United Diaries running through the door in his striped apron and flinging her to the floor. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘There’s always the possibility that she might phone the police instead.’
Outside it had grown dark. The block of flats across the street was transformed into a glittering mass of glass and concrete. Behind net curtains shadowed with the leaves of rubber plants, blurred figures moved across rooms that blazed with light.
‘Six letters,’ said Edward, looking down at his paper. ‘Beginning with T.’
‘Terror,’ said Binny.
‘A hard case,’ said Edward. ‘Turtle.’ And he pencilled it in.
5
Driving in their car across London, the Simpsons exchanged bitter words. Outwardly it was on account of Muriel’s interpretation of the street map of N.W.6. They took a left turning instead of a right and ended up on the wrong side of the park.
‘Well, go through the park then,’ advised Muriel, but in fact the gates were locked. They made a minor detour, during which Simpson hunched his shoulders meanly and swore several times.
‘Why are you behaving like a fool?’ she asked.
‘You never see anything clearly,’ he accused. ‘You haven’t the wit.’
‘I try,’ she murmured, thinking he was referring to her map reading. ‘I don’t have X-ray vision. I did tell you to stop under a lamp.’
‘God knows what we’re getting mixed up in,’ shouted Simpson. ‘We don’t know this woman from Adam.’
Muriel pointed out reasonably that they didn’t know a lot of people. Why, only last week they’d had dinner with a young couple neither of them had met before.