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Chapter 36
The rain had blown itself out in the night and Tuesday morning was fine, unusually mild for the first week in February.
In the spacious front bedroom of his substantial Edwardian dwelling in Oakfield Gardens, in one of the best residential suburbs of Brentworth, a thriving town of considerable size, James Milroy had slept soundly, as he did every night, from very soon after getting into bed. At six-thirty, as every weekday morning, the radio alarm on his bedside table sprang suddenly to life at the start of a news and current affairs programme.
James came awake, as always, on the instant. He threw back his covers and got out of bed, all his movements performed with his habitual minimum of noise. He gave his customary close attention to the recital of events and opinions, overnight market reports.
He was a tall, lean man of forty-nine, he looked fit and energetic. His hair was still thick and dark, he had kept his trim waistline; he could easily pass for ten years younger. He had a high forehead, a quiet face, shrewd and subtle, a penetrating gaze, a controlled manner. He looked very much what he was: a senior partner in a highly reputable firm of auditors and registrars, with its head office in Brentworth.
James had read law at the university, intending to make a career as a solicitor, but had later changed his mind, deciding instead to qualify as a chartered accountant. He had sprung from a background that was far from privileged and had made his way by dint of single-minded determination and unremitting hard work.
In the equally spacious front bedroom across the landing, the insistent trilling of her alarm clock finally roused James’s wife from a heavy, unrefreshing sleep; it was years since Esther had gone to bed without a sleeping pill.
She dragged herself out of bed to make a sketchy toilet before going down to cook breakfast for James. She was five years younger than her husband. She had married at eighteen in a flush of girlish romance; she had borne her first son before the year was out, her second, two years later. She had been very pretty as a girl, with a slender figure, delicate features, curly brown hair and a beautiful skin. Now she was thin and bony, with the look of a trapped bird. The curly brown hair had thinned and was showing threads of grey; the fine skin had developed a pervasive pattern of lines while she was still in her thirties. She appeared now a good ten years older than her husband.
Before she went downstairs, she drew back her curtains and opened wide the casement windows. The birds were astir, the sky was streaked with rose. She leaned out into the gentle air. To be away from it all, on her own, to be done with demands, routine, role-playing, to begin life all over again, in some far off, peaceful place, on her own terms this time – whatever those might prove to be. She drew a long sigh and turned from the window.
As she closed her bedroom door, James came out of his room on his way to the bathroom. She gave him a consciously bright greeting, adding in a rush, ‘It’s really quite warm this morning.’ He responded with detached courtesy. They might have been total strangers making conversation in a station waiting room.
Esther went on down to the kitchen and set about making her husband’s breakfast exactly as he liked it, as she had done throughout the twenty-six years of their marriage. She was an excellent cook, a punctilious housekeeper.
Upstairs, a little later, as James stood before the long mirror of his wardrobe, casting a final comprehensive glance over his reflection, he suddenly remembered the damp patch in the chimney breast in his wife’s bedroom, recently attended to by the local jobbing builder. He went across the landing to see how the repair had withstood the driving rain of yesterday evening.
It had stood up very well, not a sign of water coming through. As he turned to leave the room, he glanced about. He scarcely ever set foot in the room these days.
A couple of books on the bedside table caught his eye. He picked up the top book, looked at the cover, skimmed through the blurb. It was a best-selling blockbuster novel about a woman who left her cold-blooded, overbearing husband to branch out on her own, ending up, it seemed, with a succession of well-heeled lovers, spectacular business success, a sensational wardrobe and a lifestyle that whirled her continually about the globe.
As he picked up the second book, he saw beneath it a number of brightly-coloured travel brochures. His look sharpened. He set the book down again and picked up the brochures. They extolled the charms of distant islands, exotic lands. He glanced swiftly through them before replacing them exactly as he had found them.
He stood for some moments in thought, then he crossed the room to where framed family photographs were ranged on the chest of drawers. He selected one and stood gazing intently down at it: the formal wedding group of Esther’s brother, Matthew Dalton, five years her senior. James had been best man at the wedding, seventeen years ago. His own face looked back at him from the group, composed, faintly smiling, revealing nothing.
His eye travelled on and came to rest on the bride, Nina. Twenty-three years old on her wedding day, nine years younger than her bridegroom. Deliciously pretty, smiling confidently out at the camera.
Esther was there, as matron of honour, expensively dressed, without elegance, her youthful prettiness already fading, her expression anxious, her shoulders a little hunched.
He put the photograph back in its place and left the room. At seven-thirty on the dot, as every weekday morning, he went downstairs with a springy step. His breakfast was properly laid and served in the breakfast room opening off the kitchen, although there were only the two of them these days, now that both boys were grown up and gone. James would never have countenanced the slipshod eating of a meal at the kitchen table; things must be done with order and propriety. Esther joined him only in a cup of coffee, taken on the wing, as she fussed about between the two rooms.
James ate with a good appetite. He said not a word about the damp patch or his visit to his wife’s bedroom. He glanced through his newspaper as he ate. When Esther brought in the post he glanced through that too; there was nothing of any urgency.
Esther’s mail arose largely from her voluntary work for various charities, local and national; she concerned herself especially with the welfare of the elderly and the terminally ill.
‘Have you anything interesting on today?’ James asked casually as he proffered his cup for a refill.
‘I’m visiting one or two patients at the hospice,’ she told him. The Brentworth hospice was housed in large, rambling premises, soundly built, that had at one time been a private school. The hospice was long established, well supported locally; it had received a number of substantial legacies over the years and was in a strong financial position.
For some years now, Esther had given time to befriending individual patients. When death claimed one of their number she added another to her list. There had been a drive a year or two back to encourage the hospice volunteers to acquire some degree of nursing skills and a course had been arranged. Nina Dalton had been an enthusiastic advocate
