Tickled to Death and Other Stories of Crime and Suspense Read online

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe. Will you have a little more, Elizabeth? Fine. No, I saw something about one of these weekend teaching courses, you know, in shooting. . . . We all have to learn some time, don’t we?” Kevin laughed again.

  “Oh yes,” Alex agreed. “If we don’t already know.”

  Philip Wilkinson came kindly into the pause. “You know, anyone who’s keen on shooting ought to chat up that new girl who’s just started cooking the directors’ lunches. Davina Whatsername . . .”

  “Entick,” Kevin supplied.

  “Yes. Her old man’s Sir Richard Entick.”

  Alex Paton was impressed. “Really? I hadn’t made that connection. Well, he’s got some of the best shooting in the country. Yes, keep on chatting her up, Kevin.”

  Kevin laughed again, but again alone. They were silent, though there was quite a lot of noise from the cutlery. Avril hoped the steak wasn’t too tough. She had done it exactly as the cordon bleu monthly part-work had said. Well, except that had said best grilling steak, but the best was so expensive. The stuff she had got had been expensive enough. She was sure it was all right.

  Maybe they weren’t talking because they were too busy eating. Enjoying it. The other two wives hadn’t said much all evening. Maybe the wives of stockbrokers from Andersen Small weren’t expected to say anything. Well, she wasn’t going to be totally silent and submissive. Particularly with an empty wine glass. “Hey, Kev, you missed me out on your rounds. Could I have a bit more wine?”

  Kevin somewhat ungraciously pushed the wine bottle towards her.

  “Kev,” Alex Paton repeated. “That’s rather an attractive coining.”

  Kevin was immediately on the defensive. Though he smiled, Avril recognized the tension in his jaw muscles. “Actually, the name Kevin is quite old. Came across something about it the other day. Means ‘handsome birth’. There was a St Kevin way back in the sixth century. A hermit, I think. In Ireland.”

  “Ah,” murmured Alex Paton. “In Ireland.”

  They all laughed at that, though neither Kevin nor Avril could have said exactly why. Emboldened by his success, Alex Paton went on, “And tell me, what about Hooson-Smith? Does that name go back to the sixth century?”

  After the laugh that greeted that one, they were all silent again. Kevin didn’t start any new topic of conversation, so Avril decided it was her duty as hostess to speak. The sound of a car at the front of the house provided her cue.

  “I bet that’s our next door neighbour moving his car. You know, he’s really strange. Very petty. He gets terribly upset if he can’t park his car exactly outside his front door. And I mean exactly. We have known him to get up at three in the morning and move it, if he hears someone moving theirs and leaving a space. I mean, isn’t that ridiculous? It’s no trouble just to walk a couple of yards, but he always wants to be exactly outside. I hope we never get as petty as that.”

  They were all looking at her. She didn’t know why. Maybe she had spoken rather louder than usual. She felt relaxed by the wine. It had been a long day. All the usual vexations of the children and tidying the house and then, on top of that, cooking this dinner party. Kevin insisted that everything had to be just so for his colleagues from Andersen Small. She didn’t really see why. It was not as if they had ever been invited to them. And the wives didn’t seem real, just exquisitely painted clothes-horses, not real women who you could have a good natter with.

  Alex Paton broke the pause and responded to her speech. “Yes, well, fortunately that’s a problem we don’t have to cope with. We are blessed with a rather quaint, old-fashioned device called a garage.”

  After the laugh, Philip Wilkinson started talking about the intention of Andersen Small to open an office in Manila, and the attention moved away from Avril.

  Only Kevin was still looking at her. She seemed to see him through a swimmy haze. And there was no love in his expression.

  “I don’t like to leave the washing-up till the morning, Kev.”

  “Well, do it now, if you feel that strongly about it.” He was already out of his suit and unbuttoning the silk shirt that had been a special offer in the Observer. “All I know is, it’s after one and I have a heavy day tomorrow. I have a long costing meeting with Andersen first thing.”

  “I’ve got a lot to do tomorrow too.”

  “Having coffee with some other under-employed woman, then tea with someone else.”

  “No, not that. I’ve hardly met anyone since we’ve been in Dulwich. Not like it was in Willesden.”

  “Equally the people here are rather different than those there were in Willesden. Better for the boys to grow up with.” Kevin was now down to his underpants. He turned away from her to take them off, as if ashamed.

  “But the boys don’t grow up with them. They spend all their time travelling back and forth to that bloody private school and don’t seem to make any friends.”

  “Don’t say ‘bloody’. It makes you sound more Northern than ever.”

  “Well, I am bloody Northern, aren’t I?”

  “There’s no need to rub everyone’s face in it all the time, though, is there?”

  “Anyway, I’m no more Northern than you are. I just haven’t tarted up my vowels and started talking in a phony accent that all my posh friends laugh at.”

  “They do not laugh at me!” Kevin was dangerously near the edge of violence.

  Avril bit back her rejoinder. No, calm down. She hadn’t wanted the evening to end like this. She lingered in front of the dressing table, unwilling to start removing her make-up. It had used to be a signal between them. Well, more than a signal. She would start to remove her make-up and he would say, “Come on, time enough for that. We’ve got more important things to do”, and pull her down on to the bed. Now he rarely seemed to think they had more important things to do. Now, she felt, he wouldn’t notice if she never even put on any make-up.

  He was in his pyjamas and under the duvet, his back unanswerably turned to her side of the bed. (Why a duvet? She hated it. She loved the secure strapped-in feeling of sheets and blankets, the tight little cocoon their bed had been back in the flat in Willesden.)

  Then she remembered their new chore. “Have you potted James?”

  “No.”

  “But I thought we’d agreed you’d do it.”

  “You may have agreed that. I haven’t agreed anything. Anyway, it’s ridiculous, a child of six needing to be potted.”

  “If he isn’t, he wets the bed.”

  “If he is, he still seems to wet it. It’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s only since he’s been at that new school.”

  “I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

  “It has everything to do with it. He hates it there. He hates how all the other boys make fun of him, hates how they imitate his accent.”

  “Perhaps that’ll teach him to improve his accent.”

  “What, you want another phony voice in the family?”

  “AVRIL! SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!” He was sitting up in bed, his face red with fury.

  Avril again retreated and went and potted James. When she came back, Kevin was pretending to be asleep. The rigidity of his body showed he wasn’t really. She knew his mind was working, rehearsing tiny humiliations, planning revenges, planning more success. He worked hard to make himself what he wanted to be.

  She sat down at the dressing table and picked up a new jar of cream to remove her make-up. But she didn’t open it. Somehow she felt something might still happen; he might get out of bed and put his arms round her. “Kevin . . .”

  The totality of his silence again gave the lie to his appearance of sleep.

  “Kev, did you mean that about not going away this weekend?”

  “No, I’m going.”

  “On this shooting course?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you told Alex you might not.”

  “Because it wasn’t his business. I was bloody annoyed at you for starting talking about
shooting anyway.”

  “But you only bought the gun this week. And they seemed to know about it. I thought at last there was a common subject we could all talk about.”

  “Well, you were wrong. In future, stick to talking about cooking or children or the next door neighbour’s car. And, for Christ’s sake, let me go to sleep!”

  “So you’re definitely going this weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “Taking the car?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  “I was thinking, if you weren’t here, I could take the kids up to see Mum.”

  “All the way to Rochdale?”

  “It’d be a break. She’d love to see them. And now you’ve taken over the fourth bedroom, it’s very difficult for her to come and stay down here.”

  “I need a study. But even more than that I need sleep.”

  “We could go up to Rochdale by train.”

  “What? Do you have any idea how much fares are these days?”

  “I’d just like to see Mum. She’s getting on and she was pretty knocked out by that bout of ’flu.”

  “If you can afford it out of the housekeeping, then go by all means.”

  “You know I can’t. You’d have to pay.”

  “Well, I can’t afford to.”

  “You can afford brand new shotguns and shooting courses and bottles of wine and—”

  “Avril!” Kevin sat up again in bed. This time he was icy cool, even more potentially violent than he had been when he was shouting. “I make all the money that comes into this household, so will you please leave it to me to decide how it should be spent. From an early age I have tried to better myself and I intend to continue to do that. When I die, the boys will be left in a much better position than where I started. I know what I’m doing.”

  Avril sighed. “It depends on your definition of ‘better’. From where I’m sitting, everything seems to be a lot worse than it ever was.”

  “I’m sorry, Avril. If you can’t appreciate the improvements that I have brought into our lives, then I’m afraid there is no point in continuing this rather fruitless discussion.”

  “Right.” Avril opened the jar of cream. “Right, I am now going to remove my make-up.”

  “Fine.” Kevin looked curiously at the jar. “What’s that stuff? It’s new.”

  “It’s called rejuvenating cream.”

  “Left it a bit late, haven’t you?” he said and turned back into the duvet.

  By eight o’clock on the Saturday night Avril was exhausted. The boys were so highly-strung at the moment. They were so tensely on their best behaviour at the new school that the release of the weekend made them manically high-spirited and quarrelsome. Kevin’s absence didn’t make things any easier. Though Avril often resented, or even laughed at, his performance as the stern Victorian paterfamilias, it did curb the boys’ worst excesses. Without him there, and having made no friends in the area, the boys put all their emotional pressure on to their mother. She had to be playleader, entertainer, referee and caterer.

  By eight o’clock, when she had finally dragged them away from the television and got them into bed, largely by brute force, she was absolutely drained. She collapsed on the sofa in the sitting-room and once again everything seemed to swim before her eyes.

  A pall of depression draped itself over her. She tried to lift it by using her mother’s eternal remedy, counting her blessings. She could hear her mother’s voice, with its warm Lancastrian vowels, saying, “Now come on, our Avril, cheer up. Remember, there’s always someone worse off than yourself. You just count your blessings, young lady.”

  She felt a terrible lonely nostalgia and an urge to ring her mother immediately. But no, Mum needed her help now; she mustn’t ring and burden the old lady with her troubles. That was giving in.

  No, come on, our Avril, count your blessings.

  Right, for a start, nice house, two lovely boys, husband very successful, making far more money than any of the other boys from Rochdale you might have married. Okay, marriage going through a sticky patch at the moment, but that was only to be expected from time to time. Kevin’s was an exacting job, and it was only to be expected that some of the tension he felt should be released at home. It was her job as a wife to make that home an attractive place for him to return to and relax in.

  And if he needed to get out sometimes on his own, she mustn’t make a fuss. This shooting weekend would probably do him a lot of good. Do them both a lot of good, give them a break from the claustrophobia of marriage.

  And he’d been so excited about the gun. He seemed to have spent all his spare time that week cleaning it and oiling it, fiddling with all the little pads and brushes that he had bought with it. And this weekend was his chance to show it off. It was no different from James’s desire to take his new Action Man to school on his birthday.

  And at least it wasn’t a woman. Let him fiddle with guns to his heart’s content, so long as he wasn’t fiddling with another woman. True, he hadn’t been fiddling with her much recently, but that again was just a phase. It’d get better.

  She started to feel more confident. Good God, they hadn’t kept the marriage going from Rochdale, through all his time at college, the squalid flat in Willesden, his awful job in I.C.I., bringing up small children, all that pressure and aggravation, for it to fall apart now.

  No, it’d be all right.

  Good old Mum. It always worked. Count your blessings and you’ll feel better. Come on, they breed them tough in Rochdale. Pick yourself up, get yourself a drink and cook yourself some supper.

  The sherry bottle was empty.

  Oh no. She couldn’t really go out to the off-licence and leave the boys alone in the house. They’d never wake, but . . . No, she couldn’t. Anyway, come to think of it, she hadn’t got any cash. The housekeeping didn’t seem to go far these days, and with that dinner party in the middle of the week, there was nothing left.

  Damn. She could really use a drink.

  On the other hand . . . Upstairs in Kevin’s study there was a whole huge rack full of wine. All those bottles that involved so much correspondence with what he called his “shipper” and so much consultation of books on wine appreciation and tables of good years and . . .

  Yes, Kevin could certainly spare her a bottle of wine. A small recompense for her letting him go off for the weekend on his own. She wouldn’t take one of his most precious ones, not one of the dinner party specials, just something modest and warming.

  His study was unlike the rest of the house. It was the spare bedroom, but he had moved the bed out and had the room decorated in dark green. There was an old (well, reproduction) desk and leather chairs. It sought to capture the look of a gentleman’s club.

  The boys were never allowed inside. Avril was discouraged from entering except to clean. The difference in decor seemed symbolic of a greater difference, as if the room had declared U.D.I. from the rest of the house.

  The wine-rack covered one whole wall. The range was extensive. Kevin approached the purchase of wine as he did everything else, with punctilious attention to detail and a desire to do the correct thing.

  Avril chose a bottle of 1977 Côtes du Rhône, which surely couldn’t be too important. Anyway, he owed her at least that.

  There was a corkscrew on his desk, so she opened it straight away. The presence of the corkscrew suggested that Kevin himself drank the occasional bottle up there, which in turn suggested that somewhere he must have glasses.

  She opened the cupboard by the window. She didn’t notice whether there were any glasses. Something else took her attention.

  Standing upright in the cupboard, with all its cleaning materials ranged neatly beside it, was Kevin’s new shotgun.

  Avril swayed for a moment. This dizziness was getting worse. She supported herself against the window frame and looked out into the road.

  Parked exactly in front of their house was a silver-grey Volkswagen Golf.

  It was the Monday evening
before she got a chance to confront him. He had arrived back late on the Sunday and Monday morning was the usual scrum of forcing breakfast into her three men and rushing the boys through heavy traffic to their distant private school.

  All day she phrased and rephrased what she was going to say to him, and when the opportunity came, she was determined not to shirk it. He had bought some sherry and poured her a drink, a perfunctory politeness which he performed automatically every evening before retiring upstairs with his brief-case to work until told that his supper was ready.

  She took the glass, and, before he could get out his “Just going up to do a bit of work”, said, “I see you didn’t take your shotgun away with you for your shooting weekend.”

  He looked first surprised, then very annoyed. “You’ve been up rooting round my study.” When he was angry, his voice lapsed back into Lancastrian. The “u” in “study” sounded as in “stood”.

  “I went up there.”

  “Well, I wish you bloody wouldn’t! I’ve got a lot of important papers up there and I don’t like the thought of getting them all out of order.”

  But she wasn’t going to be deflected so easily. “Stop changing the subject. I want to know why you didn’t take your precious brand-new shotgun with you when you went off on this shooting weekend.”

  He smiled patronizingly. “Oh really, Avril. You don’t know the first thing about shooting. It isn’t just something you can step straight into. You have to learn a lot of theoretical stuff first—you know, safety drill and so on. You don’t start handling guns straight away. I knew that, so I left the gun this time.”

  “This time? You mean there will be more weekends?”

  “Oh yes. As I say, it’s not something you can pick up overnight.”

  She looked downcast. He put his arms round her. “Why don’t we go upstairs?”

  She looked up into his eyes gratefully.

  The phone rang.

  “You get it. It’s bound to be for you. Join me upstairs.” And he went up.

  After the phone-call, she found him in the study rather than the bedroom, but she was too upset to register his change of intention. “It was Mrs Eady.”