Distant Voices Page 30

  He sat down suddenly on the edge of the bath looking pitifully defeated and I went to take him in my arms. I could at least promise him that I would allow no more weekends to come between us. Slowly his arms came up and round me, and at his touch I felt relaxed and happy – more so than I had felt for years.

  We both began to be happy again after that. Derek seemed a different person and it was weeks and then months since we had had a row. He stopped coming home late, as well. I suppose the urgent order had been finished at last; and now that I no longer, guiltily, saw criticism and sarcasm in his every word we talked happily without the hurtful, loaded comments.

  I was content – most of the time. Sometimes I would panic though, as I had known I would. I would sit in my office clutching the edge of my desk, feeling the sweat breaking through the careful make-up on my forehead, unable to bear the thought of giving it all up. Those days I would bring work home, clutching my briefcase like a talisman. Then after a few days the curse would come and I would relax again, perhaps even a little disappointed, knowing that it hadn’t happened this time.

  Slowly winter passed. I watched the birth of spring, a time I had always loved, with the swelling buds in the garden and the slow emergence of the bulbs and then the glory of the daffodils and narcissi in the orchard. It was a glorious season.

  When at last it happened there was no panic and no doubt. I found that I knew quite calmly that this time it was for real. I waited for two months, hugging my secret, then I went to see Dr Forbes.

  It was a sunny spring day, glorious with streaming clouds, the milky horse chestnut blossom outside the surgery showering a confetti of white petals on to the pavement as I walked home up the lane. It was hard not to tell Maggie, though I think with her unerring woman’s instinct she guessed the second I had said I was taking a few days off work.

  ‘It’s a celebration, is it?’ she enquired when I began to prepare the supper that afternoon; all Derek’s favourite things.

  I nodded, trying to hide my excitement and she didn’t ask any more.

  He came home early, but the moment he entered the front door I realised that something was very wrong. He had the grey hunted look of the winter again and he went straight to the drinks tray and poured himself a large Scotch before he said hello.

  Only then did he smile, acknowledging with a brief widening of the eyes that he liked my new dress.

  ‘What is it, Derek?’ I kept my voice carefully neutral as I poured myself a drink.

  ‘Oh sorry, I should have got you one. It’s nothing, Janet. A lousy day at the office, that’s all.’

  I didn’t press him. He poured himself another drink and walked over to the fire, kicking the logs, so that the sparks shot up. It was still cold in the evenings and I had lit the fire to make the room more attractive, knowing how much he liked it.

  He picked up the poker, the hand holding the glass resting on the mantelpiece and began to draw patterns in the dead white ash round the edge of the fire and I sat down pretending not to watch him, trying to ignore the selfish little lump of disappointment which had firmly lodged in my throat. I had for so many months been consciously and unconsciously preparing for this moment that I had forgotten that Derek knew nothing about it; had had nothing particular to look forward to this evening. It was obvious that he was in no mood for a celebration.

  He did his best to hide his mood and his obvious worry. I wanted him to tell me what was wrong, so perhaps I could help him, but I knew better than to ask. I had kept my secret so long I could keep it another day or two.

  We ate the celebration meal in a silence broken only by the quiet record which I put on in an attempt to dispel the tension in the room. He did not seem to notice the choice of his favourite food, or the wine, which he drank fast and desperately. I had no inkling of what was really wrong. Until the next morning.

  The post was early. He brought it as usual to the breakfast table, two for me, two for himself. I saw him turn one of the envelopes over and over, puzzled, as though not recognising the hand. I kept my eyes on my plate. He had slept badly, tossing and turning and getting up at least twice in the night and I had hoped that the coming of the morning might persuade him to confide in me. But no.

  He picked up his knife and slid it into the envelope. He pulled out a sheet of pale blue paper and read it slowly. I sipped my coffee.

  He put the letter back into the envelope without comment and tucked it into the newspaper beside his plate. Then he drank his own coffee and rose, glancing at his watch as usual. ‘I must go Janet. Usual time tonight, darling.’ He smiled, a strained, absent smile and picked up the newspaper to put it in his briefcase.

  The letter fell out of it to the floor unnoticed and I said nothing. Had I, even then, instinctively guessed what was in it?

  My Darling Derek, it said in a loopy, so very feminine hand. I am so sorry that I misunderstood what you wanted. I truly thought it would make you happy. Please forgive me. We have had such a lovely two years together – Two years! – and I love you so much. I could not bear it to end like this. I want very badly to keep the baby, but I promise I will make no claim on you now or in the future. Just love us a little, and keep in touch. You will have my love always, Tina.

  I put the letter carefully back into the envelope and only then did I notice that it said Private on the top left-hand corner.

  It was my own ignorance which hurt most. The fact that I had trusted and believed and been proved naive. I poured myself another cup of coffee, my hand shaking so much I slopped it on the table cloth. Then as I sipped it I felt a sudden constriction in my stomach. I set down the cup with a crash. I was shivering suddenly and there was no doubt at all, I was going to be sick. And I was already late for my train.

  The Inheritance

  Looking down at her empty cup Jacqueline fixed her attention with determination on the muddy dregs in the bottom; she had made up her mind it would not be right to show any emotion at all when her turn came. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her mother’s hand beginning to shake as she opened the letter and the sight unnerved her. The solicitor’s letter held no surprises for Mrs Percival of course; she knew exactly what she had inherited. Her hand was probably shaking because the letter had reminded her of her own mother’s death and Jacqueline could tell from the strained expression and the two white dimples beneath her cheekbones that her mother was determined not to cry.

  ‘This letter concerns you three.’ She looked up at her children and sniffed. Then she smiled wanly. ‘I hope you’ll be pleased. Great-Grandma has left you all something. Debbie, you and Greg, you each get five thousand pounds.’ She glanced at each of the twins in turn. ‘That’s a lot of money,’ she added unnecessarily. ‘And you must be careful what you do with it.’

  Debbie and Greg stared at her open-mouthed, then Greg let out a whoop of delight. ‘I can get that new racing bike at last.’ He launched himself from behind his plate of scrambled eggs and planted a kiss on his mother’s head. Debbie seemed to have been struck dumb. She sat there with a glazed look on her face and then slowly began to crumble a piece of toast between her fingers onto the table cloth.

  Once again Jacqueline began to gaze earnestly into the depths of her coffee cup. She swallowed. She was by a long way the eldest, and had been the acknowledged favourite.

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply as her mother chose that moment to set the letter down amongst the plates and empty cups and sticky knives and blow her nose. Then she glanced up. It came almost as an afterthought. ‘Granny has left you her clock, Jackie, of course.’

  Jacqueline waited expectantly.

  Her father at last emerged from behind the paper. He refolded it noisily and glanced down at his watch. ‘Come on, twins; I’ll drop you off at school if you’re quick. Jackie, you’re going to be late for work again.’ He stood up, obviously unmoved by the news; perhaps he hadn’t heard it at all; dropped an absent-minded kiss on his wife’s hair and strode from the room, followed by his
two younger children, who were trying with scant success to keep the triumph out of their faces.

  Jacqueline sat where she was, her eyes fixed on the letter. Her mother hadn’t picked it up again. Her mother was standing up. She had begun to stack the plates.

  ‘Come on, Jackie; get a move on. You heard your father.’ She was bustling; efficient; trying to make up for the blown nose.

  ‘Is that all?’ Jacqueline’s voice came out at last, strangled.

  ‘Is what all, dear? Come on, come on.’ Mrs Percival had swept the letter away and thrown it on the dresser.

  ‘The clock. Don’t I get any money?’ She knew it was a dreadful thing to say. Swallowing guiltily she stood up.

  As expected her mother turned on her. ‘All? All! That clock was your great-grandmother’s most treasured possession! She adored that clock!’ She burst suddenly into a storm of noisy tears.

  ‘I know.’ Jacqueline was anguished. ‘I’m sorry; I don’t mean to be ungrateful; it’s just that I hoped – well, I hoped for some money like the twins. Then I could pay for the modelling course and give up that job with Mr Grenside …’ Her voice tailed away as she saw her mother’s lips tighten into their accustomed thin line.

  Mrs Percival groped for her handkerchief once more. ‘Oh Jackie, can’t you get that ridiculous idea out of your head. Your father and I must have told you a hundred times. You’ve got a good job with Grenside. It’s solid and respectable and it’s well-paid. Modelling is so insecure. It’s not the glamorous life you think, really it isn’t. I wish you wouldn’t keep mentioning it.’

  Jacqueline knew better than to argue. She turned and disconsolately began to shrug herself into her coat. It wasn’t as if she had expected any money in the will at all; none of them had. But in the glorious few minutes between hearing of the twins’ bequest and her own she had known real, ecstatic hope. For a moment she toyed with the idea of trying to borrow the money from the twins, then she shrugged it aside. There wouldn’t be a chance.

  When the clock was at last delivered Jacqueline retired with the brown paper parcel to the privacy of her bedroom and sat down with it on the bed. She remembered the clock clearly. It had always sat in its battered leather case on the chest of drawers in her great-grandmother’s bedroom, surrounded by sewing boxes and bags of old stockings and patent medicine bottles. The white face, startlingly clear and precise in the surround of scratched red morocco through which it peered, had seemed to her to be insufferably pompous. ‘That’s my most treasured possession.’ Great-Granny’s voice echoed back to her as she began to fumble with the string. ‘That clock is a little beauty. It belonged to my grandfather you know, and one day it will belong to you Jacqueline, as you’re the eldest.’

  Jacqueline patiently coaxed the string from the parcel into a neat coil and dropped it on her bedside table. Of course, ever since she could remember Granny had been saying that. Most of the family things would go to Mum and then probably to Greg, just because he was the boy, but the clock would come to her.

  She removed the paper and threw it on the floor and there was the clock, its face as prim as ever, peering from the case. For once it was wrong. Its hands had stopped together at midday – or was it midnight? Gazing at it Jacqueline wondered suddenly if it had stopped the moment Great-Granny died, never-to-go-again.

  ‘It keeps perfect time, that clock. Perfect time.’ Her great-grandmother’s voice sounded in her ears.

  Taped inside the case was an envelope. Inside was a key.

  So all it needed was winding.

  She smiled at the clock and then child-like, stuck her tongue out at it. ‘Supposing I never wind you up again. You wouldn’t be so smug then.’

  She put it on her own chest of drawers and instantly was reminded of the rather sour old-people smell of her great-grandmother’s bedroom. Her own began to take on a different look. All it needed was the thick stockings and the bottles of linctus. Shuddering she picked it up. Immediately the room became itself again.

  Eventually she wedged it into a gap between some books on one of her shelves. It held them upright nicely.

  She never gave it another thought until she knocked her alarm clock off the bedside table. She shook it hopefully and was rewarded with an ominous rattle; no tick. She dropped it off at the jeweller on her way to work and that evening pulled Great-Granny’s clock from its position between Dylan Thomas and Jilly Cooper. She blew off the dust. It wouldn’t have an alarm of course, but with a noisy twin on either side of her she didn’t really need one.

  She pulled the envelope off and took out the key. Surprisingly it was exquisitely chased gilt. Tiny and delicate.

  Gingerly she undid the leather case. Inside, the clock nestled down into a velvet lining, its gilt handle folded neatly down on a glass top. Gripping it, she lifted the clock out of its case and sat it on her bedside table beside her lamp.

  She looked at it for a long time.

  The gilt winked and glittered in the lamplight, untarnished and perfect. All round the sides and corners the clock was decorated with a tiny glittering inlay of coloured enamels, and around the face was a ring of minute diamonds. It was exquisite. Inside, through the glass panels at the top and round the sides, she could see the intricate details of the movement which gleamed like gold. Liberated from its case at long last the white ivory of the face no longer looked prim. It was beautiful.

  With a shaking hand Jacqueline fitted the key into one of the two holes at the back and began to wind. The rick was surprisingly loud for such a small clock. She put the key into the other hole, expecting it to move the hands, and the clock chimed; a delicate silvery chime followed by twelve mellow velvet notes.

  The clock was alive and she was enchanted.

  She kept glancing at it as she changed from her office skirt into her jeans. Then she knelt down beside it and rested her finger lightly on the glass top. It vibrated with energy.

  It was a long while before she called the rest of the family.

  ‘In all the years I remember that clock I’ve never seen it without its case,’ her mother exclaimed. ‘No wonder your great-grandmother made such a fuss about it.’

  ‘It’s lovely, Jackie, you lucky thing.’ For the first time Greg seemed to have a moment’s regret about his share in the bequest, over which he had not stopped crowing unkindly.

  ‘Are those real diamonds?’ Debbie had fallen to her knees before it to get a better view as it stood on the low table. ‘Oh Jackie, it’s lovely. Why on earth have you left it so long to take it out of its case?’

  ‘That clock must be worth a fortune, Jackie,’ her father commented, frowning. ‘I suppose we ought to see about getting it insured. Unless you want to sell it, of course?’ He glanced at her and winked. ‘I reckon that would pay a good bit towards that course you were hankering after.’ He grinned.

  ‘Roger!’ Mrs Percival turned on him. ‘How could you suggest such a thing. Sell grandmother’s clock! Of course she wouldn’t. I’ve never heard such nonsense. She must keep it forever.’ She sat down heavily on the bed and groped for her handkerchief. ‘It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ She sniffed. ‘And to think that none of us realised …’

  The modelling course. Jacqueline looked at the clock and then at her father.

  ‘How can we find out what it’s worth?’ Her heart was beating with excitement.

  ‘I can take it up to town with me on Wednesday. I should think I could find someone to give me a rough idea.’ He leaned forward and picked it up. ‘Pretty thing. But better sold, I’d say, if it’s worth anything.’

  It was worth a great deal. The jeweller to whom he showed it respectfully mentioned Sotheby’s or Christie’s and padded the clock with several layers of corrugated cardboard before allowing Mr Percival to carry it home. Once there, through tact or natural caution, he said nothing to his wife, waiting for his daughter to come in.

  Jacqueline went straight to her room, flinging the curtains shut and turning on the light and gas f
ire before beginning to unbutton her dress. She was in her dressing gown when her father knocked on the door.

  ‘It’s more money than one could ever hope to be handed, Jackie,’ he said quietly, after he had told her. They sat side by side on the bed, gazing at the clock, as with a small important series of clicks and whirrs it prepared to strike the hour.

  ‘It’s the most beautiful and valuable thing I’ve ever owned.’ Wistfully Jackie pulled her dressing gown closer round her.

  ‘It would buy you that course, Jackie, and leave you a nest egg to put in the bank.’ Mr Percival put his arm round her. ‘I know how much you’ve wanted to have a go at modelling, love. I think you deserve the chance. You’ve got a lovely figure and face. You’ve got what it takes, I’m sure of it.’ He smiled at her fondly.

  ‘Mummy doesn’t think so; she’s always been dead against it.’ She frowned.

  ‘Your mother’s a sensible woman. She knows how much hard slog and possible heartache is involved.’ He got up and, with his back to the fire, he stood looking down at her. ‘She’s wanted to save you from disappointment, Jackie, and I agree, up to a point. But,’ he sighed. ‘There’s another way of looking at it. After all, faint heart never won fair lady, and all that.’

  Jackie smiled at him fondly. ‘You think I should have a go?’

  ‘I think you’ll wonder for the rest of your life if you could have been a cover girl if you don’t. Better know, one way or the other.’

  Jacqueline stared at the clock. There was a strange lump in her throat. ‘The awful thing is,’ she said suddenly, ‘I can’t bear the idea of selling it.’

  ‘No. It’s a beautiful thing, certainly.’

  ‘I collected my alarm clock today.’ She dived into her bag and brought out a box. She stood the clock up beside her bed. ‘It works now; it’s accurate. It only cost a couple of pounds to mend. It has an alarm. It’s really much more useful in every way …’