Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [24]
‘Is he?’ Edward was surprised. Simpson was small and swarthy and he was losing his hair. ‘Well, I’m no judge of that,’ he said bleakly, and managed to smile. He was consumed with jealousy.
‘He played footsie with me under the table,’ hissed Binny. ‘The moment we sat down.’
Edward could think of nothing to say. He felt old and tired. He struggled upright and looked down at her, as she rocked backwards and forwards on her haunches in front of the oven. He wondered what he was doing in this dark room, suffering. ‘I simply can’t understand how you managed to lose the pudding,’ he said. Oh, how he loved her! He confessed it to himself with an anguish that he had never known before. He wanted to put on his coat and leave the house without a word, but he knew he would only succeed in punishing himself. She couldn’t run after him and he wouldn’t be able to return until tomorrow. She would remain with the Simpsons and list his deceptions and conceits. Far into the night they’d discuss the blemishes of his body and the defects of his mind. They would know he was a silly man.
Excusing himself, he walked down the dark passage to the bathroom and locked the door. He looked at his watch and saw it was five minutes after ten o’clock. Helen would be home at eleven by the latest. He wished he hadn’t gone on to that Miriam woman about his garden; describing his wife sitting on a striped deckchair in the sunshine had made him feel uncomfortable, disloyal. There were things he hadn’t said. It wasn’t only his home-grown vegetables that gave him a sense of achievement; it was having Helen there to appreciate them that counted. Not in a million years would Binny tell him the peas were firm and sweet, and economical into the bargain.
He drew the bolt on the outer door leading to the garden, and flung it wide. The rain bounced on the concrete yard below. Beyond the high wall rimmed with pieces of broken glass, there were cultivated lawns edged with trees; behind the sycamore leaves and the apple blossom, lights shone in the houses. He stepped gingerly on to the little wooden veranda and leant on the rail. The party wall was crumbling in places. The rambling rose in next door’s garden, old and fiercely stemmed, clung to the perished bricks and snaked in an impenetrable thicket along the top. He had tried to encourage Binny to see the possibilities of a town garden. It’s no good, she’d said. I can’t be bothered. He didn’t think he would have done very much himself, for all his talk – a few dwarf roses, a Climbing Caroline, some bulbs in spring. There wasn’t the scope for landscape gardening on a grand scale.
He was startled at that moment by a loud knocking on the front door. He gripped the rail of the veranda tightly and stared down at the dark pit of the yard. Who in hell’s name could it be? He felt the beat of his heart accelerate wildly. The most dreadful coincidences leapt to his mind. Helen had driven someone home from her meeting, male or female, someone taken frightfully ill – no, not frightfully, they’d have called an ambulance, just unwell. This sick person happened to live in Fulton Street, and damn and blast she hadn’t wanted to go home straight away but had decided to visit a friend. That was it . . . this female was often taken ill and this friend of hers had the right sort of medicine. Even now, Helen was on the step supporting this god-awful invalid, and Binny was insisting that both of them should come inside . . .
He looked desperately about the yard, searching for a way of escape. He couldn’t climb over the rambling rose; he’d be ripped to pieces. Nor could he manage to straddle the four foot of stout chicken wire that the neighbours on the other side had added to their wall to keep out Binny’s children.
He strained his ears listening for voices at the door, footsteps up the hall. His hair was so plastered to his head with rain that drops ran down his cheeks like tears. The house was silent. After a while he relaxed, thinking he must have imagined the sounds. The city was never