Breaking the Chain (27 page)

Phoebe reached out and took her mug and drank from it, looking at him thoughtfully over the rim.

‘Herry,’ she said, putting it down suddenly.

‘Phoebe?’

‘Do you think I’m at all attractive?’ Having said this she clearly wished she hadn’t, because she blushed scarlet and looked down at her hands. They were clutching the duvet.

Hey up! Herry thought to himself. I’m in with a chance here.

‘From where I’m sitting,’ he said, ‘you look positively irresistible.’

‘Don’t tease,’ she said, with still-lowered eyes. ‘I want to know, seriously.’

‘Right,’ Herry said, ‘in that case I have to tell you that I find you seriously attractive. That do?’

‘Honestly?’

‘Cross my heart.’

She looked up at him with a tremulous smile. ‘I don’t know how to do this sort of thing,’ she said. ‘I never have before.’

‘Were you, by any happy chance considering making me an offer I couldn’t refuse?’ Herry’s underpants felt several sizes too small.

‘Well I … Yes, I suppose I was …’

‘I consider that to be very charming of you,’ Herry said, putting his mug down and then bending low over her. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a better invitation.’ Her lips, when he kissed them, parted a little. They too were full, in fact everything about her was generous. She helped him with some eagerness to take his clothes off, and she pulled him inside her with such enthusiasm that he nearly lost his famous control.

‘Wait!’ he commanded her. ‘Take it slowly … very slowly … like this.’

She was a real peach, Herry thought, a ripe juicy peach just made for the job. She didn’t seem to have any bones, unlike Becky! He thought about Becky briefly and without any particular emotion. He hoped she was having as good a time as he was. Afterwards as he and Phoebe lay together, he thought about Duncan and wondered how he could neglect such a prime source of pleasure. He shook his head. He would never understand his brothers, any of them. Perhaps he had been switched at birth.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Phoebe asked him.

‘I think I’m a changeling,’ he told her.

She giggled. ‘Well, they say a changeling’s as good as a rest,’ she said.

Fay was just about to go to a meeting when the call from Phoebe was put through to her.

‘I’m sorry about bothering you at work,’ Phoebe said, all in a rush. ‘I just wanted to tell you that I don’t care about what you told me, I just want us to be friends like we were before.’

‘That’s very good news,’ Fay said carefully, conscious that she could be overheard.

‘And I’d really love to see you again soon,’ Phoebe said entreatingly.

‘Of course. Are you all right?’

‘Not really. I’ve just done something incredibly stupid, just to prove a point which didn’t need proving. I don’t know what came over me! And Duncan and I have had a row and I’m just going home now to make it up. I’m not worried about that; I’m sure it will be all right. It’s the other thing …’

‘Where are you?’

‘At Paddington. My train goes in five minutes. Herry even had to lend me the money for the phone. I felt such a fool …’

‘What’s Herry got to do with this?’

‘We were staying there after the funeral, but Duncan –’ Rapid pips announced imminent cut-off. ‘No more money,’ Phoebe said hurriedly. ‘Sorry. See you soo –’

Fay put the receiver down thoughtfully. Of course, they would all have gathered for Peter’s funeral. She wondered how it had gone. She picked up her briefcase and walked along the corridor towards the committee room with a light step, and only when she went inside and saw the answering smiles on the faces of her waiting staff, did she realize that she was grinning from ear to ear.

Phoebe wanted very much to go on talking to Fay, but she needed to keep some change to phone Duncan from the station at the end of her journey. She saw that she would have just enough. She could use her credit card to buy her ticket, and, with luck, Duncan would meet her at the other end. She found it almost intolerable to be without any income of her own. The sooner she got herself a new job, the better it would be.

I seem to be making a habit of anxious train journeys, she thought, settling herself into a window seat and watching as Paddington Station slid backwards out of her view. She stared out of the window with unfocused eyes, letting the London suburbs coalesce into a long grey blur as the train gathered speed. She felt soiled and remorseful. She had come back to reality suddenly and with a shock of self-disgust when Herry had climbed out of bed that afternoon and said something which shook her to the core.

Up to then, it had been a kind of game, an ego trip, an acting out of the fantasy of the previous night. She had wanted to be desirable again; worthy of love. She wanted the reassurance that she could still be important to a man. She longed to be totally uninhibited again, appreciated by and completely at one with someone. She wanted to throw herself into lovemaking with all her former verve and enthusiasm; to forget everything in the excitement of the moment. So she had done so, and it had worked! She had offered herself to him with no reservations, and all her self-confidence had been magically restored. She lay in his arms feeling the old familiar mixture of triumph and exhaustion. Their skin was welded together by drying sweat. Her left arm was squashed by his weight and tingling with pins and needles, but she didn’t care. She noticed that Herry was grinning away to himself and asked him why, and then made some feeble pun, and they both laughed. It had seemed entirely right, innocent even.

Then Herry rolled over her to look at his watch and said, ‘This is no good. I’ve got work to do,’ and extricated himself gently from her embrace and began to pull his clothes on. As he pushed his arms into the sleeves and then dragged his shirt over his head without undoing any of its buttons, he said casually, ‘One of these days I suppose I really ought to get around to so-called safe sex.’

The train was going along parallel to the Downs. Phoebe could just make out the long cat-like shape of the Uffington White Horse, cut into the chalk on the brow of the distant ridge of hills. She made a point of looking out for it every trip, for good luck, but today it gave her no pleasure. All she could think, over and over again, was that for the first time in her life she had been unfaithful and that it hadn’t been lovemaking at all. She had ‘had sex’ and that was all it was. It didn’t mean that she was desirable or loved or any of the things she needed to feel. It didn’t prove anything. Even unpleasant, ugly, undeserving people had sex. You only had to look about you in a railway carriage, clamorous with tiresome undisciplined children, to see the evidence for that. But worse, far worse, had been Phoebe’s sudden comprehension of the network of relationships which she had carelessly joined. She hadn’t just gone to bed with Herry, but with all the other women he might have bedded, and with all the men that Becky had ever had. Any one of these could be a carrier of disease: hepatitis or herpes … but especially AIDS. It was not a problem Phoebe had ever had to contemplate before. No one she had ever known in Northumberland or in Somerset had those sorts of illnesses, but in London … She had been lulled into a false sense of security because Herry was family. Now she saw him more as a casual stranger with a high-risk life-style. He could be bisexual too for all she knew, which would make it a thousand times worse. What if I’ve caught AIDS? she kept thinking, panic-stricken. How could I have been so
stupid?

Duncan was beginning to feel bad about having burnt Phoebe’s trunk, but salved his conscience with the thought that some punishment was entirely justifiable. Now that he had calmed down a bit, he could see that there were advantages in
discovering the bestiary after his father’s death rather than before it. If it truly was worth as much as Peter had suggested, then the problem of the will faded into insignificance. He and his brothers could afford to be generous to Brendan and there would be a lot less fuss. Secondly he had burnt all those unsuitable diaries – he so disapproved of people writing down their every transient whinge. It lent them a significance out of all proportion to their real pettiness – so at least that chapter was closed. The only thing that still caused him unease was the thought that Phoebe might never have confessed to having taken those things secretly from Nancy’s flat. How could he be sure that she was telling him the truth when she said she had intended to tell him all along? How could he trust her?

He wondered idly what had happened after he had absented himself from the funeral. He supposed that Phoebe would eventually find her way home again, but he was not concerned to think about how she would do it. That was up to her. He wasn’t any longer planning to throw her out. That was something he had contemplated in the heat of the moment, and he now saw it to be unreasonable. He would just have to watch her in future and make it impossible for her to cheat him again.

He thought it all out as he dug a client’s vegetable patch. It should have been done the autumn before and it was really too wet. Each spit of clay soil was heavy and stuck to the spade. It was also infested with the brittle white roots of bindweed, each broken-off section of which was capable of growing into a new plant. It was slow going but he wanted to get shot of the job, so he continued to dig as the light faded and went on until it was too dark to see what he was doing.

When he finally got home to the cottage, the lights were on inside and one of the panes of glass in the kitchen window was broken. He went inside cautiously, holding Diggory back by his collar, in case it was burglars. Phoebe was sitting with her elbows on the kitchen table, cradling a mug of coffee in both hands.

‘Where have you been?’ she demanded at once. ‘I kept ringing from Weston Station but you didn’t answer, so in the
end I had to get a taxi, which cost me twelve quid that I haven’t got, and then you weren’t here to pay him, so I had to write a cheque and he was really sniffy about taking it.’

Duncan sighed. Here we go, he thought. ‘Well, you’re h-home now,’ he said.

‘No thanks to you. Why did you go off without me like that? I couldn’t believe you had!’

‘It’s n-not i-i-important,’ Duncan said. ‘What happened to the w-window?’

‘I had to break it to get in. I didn’t take my keys with me, because I knew you had one … And anyway, it
is
important to me, Duncan. I wanted to be with you at the funeral – face it together and all that. I’m sorry you had to find out about the diaries just then, but it shouldn’t have separated us just at the moment when we most needed to be together.’ She looked pleadingly at him. ‘Come on, Duncan, we’ve been doing so much better lately. Don’t let’s screw it up now.’

She looked as though she meant it, Duncan thought. After all, she could have told me about the diaries and not mentioned the bestiary. I’d never have known. She could even have sold it and hidden the money, but she didn’t …

‘Well?’ Phoebe asked.

‘The thing i-is,’ Duncan said hesitantly, ‘how do I know that you r-really were g-going to tell me e-everything?’

Phoebe made a kind of despairing face and put her mug down firmly on the table. ‘You don’t,’ she said, ‘unless you trust what I say. I was going to tell you, but the mess in the washing machine made it happen sooner than I planned, and that’s the truth. What more can I say?’

‘So you have a-a-absolutely no s-s-secrets from me now?’ He looked directly at her, challenging her to be straightforward with him. He was sure she blushed. Her eyes didn’t waver from his, but her cheeks got redder and her whole body looked tense.

‘No,’ she said.

‘N-None at all?’

‘None.’

He supposed that would have to do, even though it didn’t satisfy him. He didn’t know what else to say. So he began his
usual displacement activity; when in doubt, put the kettle on. ‘More tea?’ he asked.

‘It’s coffee, but I’d like another cup, thanks.’ She had relaxed again. Her shoulders had dropped and her voice sounded less tight. She is still hiding something from me, Duncan thought uneasily.

When Phoebe had got home, one of the first things she had done after getting into the cottage and unlocking the front door, was to open the boot of the blue Polo and look for her overnight bag. It was still there. Duncan must have forgotten about it. She looked inside, pulling her clothes out in handfuls to check that the diaries were still hidden underneath. They were. She breathed a quick breath of relief. Then she went back indoors and swept up the broken glass with a dustpan and brush, wrapped it carefully in newspaper to render it safe, and put it in the bin. Duncan would be able to reglaze the window. It was no problem. She wondered where the hell he was. It was far too dark outside for him still to be working, surely? Then, as she sat down to a much-needed coffee, she heard his van in the lane.

She rehearsed her new resolutions in her head. There were things she needed to ask him, but she was not going to quarrel with him. She knew she had behaved badly, but it was not too late to retrieve the situation. She would try to forget all about Herry and concentrate on her marriage to Duncan, and if, please God, she had got away with it and had not caught AIDS, then life could go on as before. It would just be one of those crazy mistakes everyone makes at least once in a lifetime, which serves to bring you up short and makes you consider your priorities.

Good intentions are all very well, she thought later, but they so easily get brushed aside. When Duncan had actually come into the kitchen, Phoebe felt all her irritations with him return. She had had to bite her lip after a couple of unanswered questions, to prevent herself from launching straight into another argument. Then he had challenged her about secrets and she thought at once of sex with Herry, but had looked him steadfastly in the eye and hoped against hope that her confusion
didn’t show. She drank her second cup of coffee quickly and then went upstairs. She was dying to change out of her funeral clothes at last. In the bedroom, she put on clean underclothes, her baggy jeans and sweatshirt and felt straightaway more like her real self. Then she looked under the bed. No trunk. So I was right, she thought, he has done something with the diaries. Thank goodness I’ve got at least some of them safe. But what about the rest of the things?