The Face That Must Die

Chapter XIX

A van large as a room stood outside the house. Men were furnishing the van from Mr Harty’s flat. “Are you going tonight?” Cathy asked him. Her own plaintiveness dismayed her.

“ Yes, I am.”

Peter dropped the shopping bag about which he’d been complaining mutely all the way from Lodge Lane. “You’ve found somewhere better then, have you?”

“ I’m afraid that anywhere else would be better now, so far as I’m concerned. But yes, I’m going to a pleasant flat. I should think about a move yourselves if I were you.”

“ Sometime,” Peter muttered, stooping reluctantly to the bag.

The van was growling, eager for its run. “Goodbye, Mrs Gardner, Mr Gardner,” Mr Harty said.

Echoes seemed to be invading the stairs. It was as though a plague of desertion were spreading through the house. At least Fanny wasn’t gone forever. Halfway up the stairs, intuition too vague to define halted Cathy. Had Fanny returned? There was nothing to hear, and she couldn’t knock while Peter was watching: that would need too much explanation.

As she unpacked the shopping she said “I want to see Frank and Angie.”

“ When?” He tried not to hear by making plastic crackle.

“ Tonight.”

“ Oh come on. Jesus Christ, we only saw them on New Year’s Eve.”

“ I thought you quite liked them.”

“ What? I can stand them sometimes, when I have to. They’d be all right if they were younger, maybe. I mean, we might just as well go to your mother’s.”

Her mother had rung her today, in case she needed reassurance. Cathy would have liked to visit her, but her concern would only annoy Peter. Besides, she didn’t think much of him at the best of times; neither she nor Cathy’s father nor Lewis had liked him – he resembled none of them. Was that why Cathy had married him?

“ I’m not going to argue,” she said. “I want to go. I want to talk.”

Irritability roughened his voice; he must have a cannabis hangover. “So talk to me, for Christ’s sake.”

How? Their private language had died, and very little had replaced it. “I rang Angie this afternoon,” she said. “They’re expecting us.”

He gobbled his dinner without comment. When she washed up he wiped a few plates and smoked a joint. Before he could roll another she said “I want to go now.”

She drove the van past Penny Lane. Boys stood eating out of newspapers. Beside her, Peter swayed like a bag of shopping. It was a good job that he couldn’t drive. On Allerton Road couples were window-shopping; a young man staggered out of a wine store, bearing a carton of bottles of spirits to his sports car. Shops or petitions barred pubs from the area.

Queens Drive was an avenue of trees and sodium lamp-standards. The Halliwells’ Cortina occupied their driveway. Each semi-detached house was guarded by a large car.

The doorbell chimed a half-hour. Soon Angie appeared in a long dress entwined with cotton vines. The hall walls were crowded: a nostalgic pub mirror, Frank in an old school photograph, the Desiderata: “Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence…”

Angie finished massaging Frank’s neck. “I didn’t know you had massage parlours round here,” Peter said. He stood frowning at Angie’s Royal Family portrait album, at the very fat new leather suite. When he sat down, his chair was audibly rude to him.

Frank opened the flap of the bar counter: homemade, of glossy pine. “Cathy, what would you like to drink?”

“ A huge gin and tonic.”

“ Peter?”

“ What, a little drinkie?” His tone stopped just short of mocking. “Beer’s all right,” he said.

“ I know what you want,” Frank told his wife, pouring tequila. “Et pour moi – le vin!” he announced gravely.

Unbuttoning his waistcoat, he sank into his chair, which humphed. “I hear you’re thinking of buying a house,” he said to Peter.

“ You hear wrong.”

“ That isn’t what I said, Frank. He knows what computers are talking about but doesn’t understand me,” Angie complained.

“ Sorry, sorry. Still, it’s worth thinking about,” Frank said. “Apart from all the other advantages, property is an investment.”

“ Don’t give me that stuff, brother. I’ve had one capitalist at me today already.”

Cathy shifted uneasily; her chair made sure that everyone noticed. “How about you?” Frank asked her. “How do you feel?”

“ I’d like to move soon. I want a house before we have children.”

“ Mm.” His eyes flickered: he didn’t want Angie reminded of their barrenness. “That looked a promising house we passed the other night,” he said to Angie. “In that road.”

“ Which road?”

“ Er – oh, you know.”

“ I don’t.”

“ Of course you do. You know.”

“ Which one?”

“ You know.” He was almost squeaking – he sounded like a man determined to overcome a language barrier by shouting, anything to steer them away from the subject of children.

“ Husbands.” Angie’s grimace was gentle. Had she known what he was doing? She was glancing about at her collection of elaborately ethnic dolls, most of which he’d bought. One, which was shaped like a fat skittle, unscrewed to yield up a smaller which unscrewed too, until a whole family emerged.

Peter looked bored, excluded. “When are you finishing work?” Angie asked him.

“ Tomorrow.”

“ Eighteen more months as a student, isn’t it? Will you be glad when it’s over?”

“ I don’t know. It isn’t a bad life.”

“ Living off us poor overtaxed workers, you mean?”

She smiled to show that was a joke, but his voice was low as a dog’s warning as he said “I thought all the workers were on the factory floor. That’s who I’d call workers.”

“ That doesn’t say much for your library work then, does it?”

“ Right.”

Angie frowned, then shrugged. “You’ll manage while he isn’t working, will you?”

“ I expect so. We’ve been all right so far. Touch wood,” Cathy added, touching Peter’s head.

He recoiled; his dislike shocked through her like electricity. She hadn’t meant anything. “Come and see what I’m making for supper,” Angie said.

In the kitchen she said “What’s wrong, Cathy?”

“ Oh, Angie, I want a house. I don’t like the flat any more.” She felt close to weeping. “I try to save for the deposit. But if we move to another flat I may not be able to save.”

“ Maybe you could look for just a small house. You’ve got to start somewhere. They might give you a mortgage even if Peter’s not working. They can’t all be male chauvinists.” She gazed at Cathy.

“ What’s really wrong?”

“ I wish I knew. Peter and I seem to be getting on each other’s nerves so much.”

“ You’re bound to be nervous after what happened, even now they’ve caught him.”

“ That’s what I try to tell myself. But it’s so horrible.” She was weeping. “I keep thinking of my parents. They got so they couldn’t bear to be in the same room together.”

Angie hugged her, trying to contain and calm her trembling. “These things happen. Listen, I’m going to tell you something. When we found we couldn’t have children we couldn’t stand each other for a while. Do you know what it was? We couldn’t bear secretly blaming each other. Eventually we had to talk it out, and that brought us closer than we were before. But believe me, Cathy, for a while we felt like separating.”

Perhaps she and Peter were just going through a phase. A child might mature Peter, make him aware of his responsibilities. Maybe she ought to find a small house and take him to see it. “Thanks, Angie,” she said and kissed her. “I needed cheering up.”

Down the hall the television announced the news. “He’d have the box on all night if I didn’t stop him,” Angie said.

“ I hope you switch off before the National Anthem. Otherwise you get bad luck.”

“ Watch it. You’ll end up as bad as Trotsky in there. Let’s go and interrupt them before there’s a war.”

They hurried in the pub mirror, ready for another drink. “ – in a police raid on a London house,” the announcer said.

“ Bastards,” Peter muttered.

Frank glanced quizzically at him. “I take it you aren’t fond of the police?”

“ What do you think? It shows up what you were saying, doesn’t it? You tell me what use it is to own property when the fuzz can break in.”

“ But they won’t, unless you break the law.”

Peter’s eyes grew thin. “You’re in favour of drug raids as well, are you?”

“ Will you get us another drink?” Angie said to separate them.

“ The law must be upheld. I’d rather have a visit from the police than have my house invaded by a mob of anarchists.”

Peter stared as though Frank were possessed. “You know what you are? You’re a fuckingfascist.” It sounded like a single word.

“ Well, if you feel that way – ”

“ Don’t worry.” Had he meant to achieve this from the start? “We’re going,” he said, rising quickly. “Or at least I am.”

Let him walk home: serve him right – but Cathy remembered what Angie had told her. Perhaps she and Peter could talk out all that was wrong. “I’m sorry,” she told Frank, who refused to look at anyone.

“ Maybe Angie will be able to explain. I’ll phone you,” she promised Angie.

Before she reached Penny Lane she had to halt the van; her hands were shaking. Slabs of light lay beneath shop windows. Empty shoes bunched in a window, like fruit. The deserted pavements looked bleak. Everyone was at home or out enjoying themselves.

“ If he didn’t want an argument why did he give me that shit? I bet he thought I’d have to be all middle-class and polite. No chance, brother.”

Once her hands were controllable she ground her heel into the accelerator and drove home. As she opened the porch door, a man with a lopsided face whom she had never seen before emerged. The house would be overrun with strangers now. Nothing could have changed its atmosphere more jarringly. Oh, when could they move? Peter strode into the hall without switching on the light. As though to escape the threatened discussion, he climbed into the resounding dark.