Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [4]
Dreadfully agitated, Edward shuffled the papers on his desk and thought he experienced a sharp pain in his chest.
‘What’s up with you?’ asked Binny. ‘What did you make that noise for?’
He denied that he had made any noise out of the ordinary. There was silence for several seconds until Binny said he was to stop worrying about being caught out. He protested it was the last thing on his mind.
‘Liar,’ she cried exultantly. ‘You’re scared rigid someone will tell your wife. You didn’t have to come to dinner, you know.’
‘But I want to come to dinner—’
‘Nobody forced you. Nobody pulled your toenails out.’
He insisted he was looking forward to the evening ahead and Binny said like hell he was and she didn’t understand the way his mind worked; he was completely foreign to her, complaining on the one hand that until they met he had found his life dull, sordid—
‘Not sordid,’ he objected. ‘My life has never been sordid.’
‘Well, squalid, then. You were bothered about growing old.
‘Whereas now,’ he observed sharply, ‘I doubt if I’ll live that long.’
It seemed to put her in a better mood, his fear of untimely death. She laughed a lot and told him he was lovely and that if he was very good she wouldn’t argue with him for a whole week.
When he put the phone down his hands were trembling.
2
Binny was disturbed in the middle of washing down the paintwork in the kitchen by the arrival of her friend Alma Waterhouse who had come in a taxi to borrow the hoover.
It was an awkward situation with the meter ticking over.
‘It won’t work,’ improvised Binny. ‘Someone’s taken the plug off the end.’
Alma went into the street to send the taxi man away. Binny dragged the hoover from under the stairs and threw it down the back steps into the yard. It wouldn’t do to let Alma know that she herself wanted to use the machine. It would arouse suspicion. Binny rarely hoovered. If she admitted that guests were coming for the evening, Alma would expect to be invited. She was having husband trouble and needed taking out of herself.
On the draining-board glittered four cooking apples, stuffed with raisins and wrapped in silver foil. Hastily bundling them into a carrier bag, Binny dropped them behind the fridge. Alma returned. She took from the pocket of her camel coat a quarter bottle of whisky and approached the cupboard where the glasses were kept.
‘I can’t allow it,’ said Binny. Defiantly she barred the way.
‘Whatever’s the matter?’ cried Alma, astonished at her attitude. ‘We could do with a little swiggie, darling. It’s awfully cold out.’ Alma was a great believer in swiggies, whatever the temperature.
Binny stood her ground and adopted a crucified position against the mahogany wall cupboard. She gazed seriously at Alma and after a pause added the words ‘Not now’, holding aloft a pink sponge with which she had rinsed the woodwork; lukewarm water trickled down her arm. Impressed, Alma stepped back and put away the bottle. Binny said she had shopping to do. She tied a scarf over her newly washed hair and pushed Alma out of the house, striding ahead along the alleyway toward the High Street. Behind the wire netting of the play centre, children crawled along concrete pipes, screaming.
‘Have I said anything out of turn?’ asked Alma, teetering over the cobblestones in her high-heeled boots.
Binny was feeling terribly emotional. She wished she hadn’t spoken so harshly to Edward on the telephone and regretted she’d been unkind about his friend, old Woodford. It wasn’t very nice, the government taking his money off him like that. She wouldn’t like it. It was the way Edward hadn’t said Hello that had put a damper on things. She’d been