Marriage and Other Games (12 page)
He walked over and hooked back his curtain cautiously. The night outside was smoky-grey velvet, softly wrapping itself around the rooftops.
‘I’m in the phone box.’
He looked up the street towards the post office. Sure enough, he could see the shadowy outline of a figure. It waved up to him.
‘And?’ he demanded, bemused.
‘Come and see,’ she commanded.
Fitch stood at the window for a moment, not sure what to do. He had a gut instinct that this was one of those moments where his decision would dictate his future. He let his eyes wander back to the phone box. His curiosity was going to get the better of him. He was only human, for heaven’s sake.
‘Give me two minutes.’ His voice was husky with desire as he spoke the words, then hung up and pulled on his jeans.
She was wearing a floor-length mink coat, hold-up stockings and four-inch stilettos. He opened the door, expecting to be hit with the traditional phone-box aroma of urine and stale fags, but all he could smell was her.
She pulled him inside. He ran his hands over the soft fur.
‘Not very politically correct,’ he murmured.
She shrugged. ‘It’s not as if I went out and bought it,’ she replied. ‘It was my grandmother’s. Not wearing it isn’t going to bring them back to life.’
She put her arms around his neck and pulled her to him. The warmth of her skin, the softness of the fur, the sweetness of her mouth, the dizzying scent, the claustrophobic confines of the phone box: add to all of these the fact that he hadn’t had sex for nearly a year and he wasn’t going to last a minute.
Hold on a minute. Sex in a phone box?
‘Everyone will see,’ he objected.
‘Well, you’ll have to be quick, then.’
She wrapped the capacious coat around the two of them and he sank into its warmth. Her warmth. It was, quite simply, bliss.
Six months later they got married. It was a proper country wedding, in the church in Withybrook, then back to the Poltimores’ farm where the brood had made an enormous effort to clean the place up - the scrapped cars had vanished, every square inch of concrete was jet-washed, the fences were repaired, and although it would never merit a spread in Country Living it looked a thousand times more presentable. The barn was filled with hay bales and trestle tables and everyone ate pork pie and coleslaw and got totally smashed on pints of Exmoor ale and scrumpy. Fitch remembered thinking it was positively Hardyesque: flushed wenches in low-cut frocks dancing with young men awkward in their best suits and dusty work boots. And he adored his beautiful bride, who danced with every man at the wedding but who only had eyes for him.
Less than a year later, Amber was born, followed almost indecently quickly by Jade. Fitch thought he was the happiest he’d ever been. He was delighted with his new little family, his dark-haired, round-eyed baby girls. The house became a home. He worked hard, but at the end of the day he looked forward to finishing and coming home. Marrying Hayley gave him automatic acceptance by the locals. He went out to the pub with the lads on a Thursday night, though he didn’t take the piss and stay out till gone midnight like some of them. At last he had found somewhere he belonged. He knew that technically he would always be an outsider, but at least he had a place in Withybrook. He knew where he was in the pecking order. Marrying a Poltimore meant he was higher up than some people who had been born and bred in the village. He enjoyed his status, his work, and being a husband and father. He figured he’d worked out the equation at long last. It was as if his past had never happened. He blotted it out of his memory. He was living for the present.
But his contentment was to be short-lived. It soon became apparent that motherhood didn’t suit Hayley one bit. She put on weight, lost her spark, became sulky and resentful and found even the most menial of tasks beyond her capabilities. She’d stopped hunting after her mare had been put down two years ago. She could barely be bothered to cook, just chucked unidentifiable frozen food into the deep-fat fryer every evening. Fitch found himself taking over the catering, getting up extra early to put a casserole into the slow cooker before he left. He didn’t want to argue with her, or put his foot down, or make unreasonably sexist demands. It was easier to do it himself. Meanwhile, Hayley plummeted further into a deep fug of sluttishness, chain-smoking John Player Specials which one of her brothers got off the back of a lorry and watching endless daytime telly. Fitch hit the roof when he got the phone bill and realised she had been calling prime-time competition numbers.
‘It’s the only chance I’ve got,’ she shouted, ‘of anything exciting happening to me.’
As he looked at her, her hair now lank, her skin lacklustre, her eyes bloodshot, the realisation came to him. She’d seen him as a way out. Whereas he’d seen her as a way in. And the fact that he seemed to so enjoy the way of life in Withybrook that she was hoping to escape seemed to enrage her.
‘I’m trapped!’ she screamed at him one night. ‘Fucking trapped in this God-forsaken place.’
‘You’ve got no idea how lucky you are,’ Fitch fired back, but he knew he couldn’t convince her.
He thought she’d turned the corner when she decided to go beating with the local shoot. It was the beaters’ job to stride through the rough flushing the birds out for the guns to take aim. Fitch was pleased. Beating was tough work but good fun and would get Hayley out of the house; get her some fresh air, as well as giving her a social life. It would give her something to think about.
Perhaps too much to think about. The strenuous exercise meant the weight fell off her, and she enjoyed the social side of it so much that she frequently didn’t come back till gone midnight, having followed the other beaters and loaders back to the Speckled Trout for liquid sustenance. And then one day she met Kirk Lambert, who belonged to the shooting syndicate and had caught sight of her inviting cleavage during lunch.
With his shaved head and his thick neck and his dark glasses, his top-of-the-range Range Rover and shiny, shiny new shotguns, Kirk represented everything Fitch loathed. Conspicuous consumption, status symbols, disregard for everyone who didn’t treat him as if he was the dog’s bollocks. Kirk was an ex-boxer who now had a string of what he called ‘elf’ clubs. Fitch had a mental image of a gym full of pixies and leprechauns. Hayley told him he shouldn’t laugh, because Kirk was loaded. Beyond loaded.
He could see she was hooked. The weeks Kirk came shooting, she became effervescent, spending hours on her appearance before venturing out in her tightest jeans underneath the wax jacket and Dubarry boots that were prescribed beating gear. And although the shoot was incredibly feudal, and the guns didn’t really mix with the beaters, it didn’t seem to bother Kirk. Fitch reasoned he was the type who didn’t care who he got his leg over; he was the sort who would happily fork out for a private dance in a lap-dancing club and would think it a fair transaction. But Hayley, poor, naïve Hayley, who was clearly on a quest for something that was never going to make her any happier, couldn’t see that Kirk was morally bankrupt. His actual bank balance blinded her to the fact.
Fitch felt sad. Incredibly sad. He knew he was going to lose her. He tried his best to stop it happening, but he knew that, at this point in her life, he wasn’t what she wanted. After all, he’d seen it before with his mother. His feckless, dissatisfied, slattern of a mother, who blamed everyone else for her unhappiness, who had slept with every other Sunday fisherman on the banks of the river Severn in the hope of finding escape. She’d trawled the riverbanks in her too-short denim skirt, her tanned freckled breasts bursting out of skimpy tops she might as well not bother with. Fitch’s father had known what she got up to only too well, but had tolerated her behaviour with a lugubrious passivity because it had been his own fault, for being a loser, for not earning enough for them to buy their own house, for not having a flash enough car.
Fitch knew all about unsatisfied women, and how they nearly always came to a sticky end.
‘Hayley,’ he pleaded, ‘I’m begging you not to go near him. Not because of me, but because he’ll hurt you.’
She just rolled her eyes and gave him a look that said it all. The next time she went beating, she didn’t come home, and didn’t even attempt to apologise for the fact that she had spent the night in Kirk’s hotel room when she eventually turned up.
Fitch didn’t put up a fuss. He figured it was best for her to get it out of her system. He was confident that Kirk would show his true colours before long. All that concerned him was that Jade and Amber were looked after and kept happy and secure and had no inkling of the hideous cracks in their marriage. So he didn’t rock the boat. He felt sure it was a phase.
It wasn’t. Hayley professed herself in love with Kirk, declared their marriage over and insisted on moving out of the house and back to her parents’ farm. Fitch was accepting, until he realised that she intended to take Jade and Amber with her. She broke his heart the day they all left, but somehow she managed to make him feel that it was his fault. That he had in some way neglected her. Fitch was bewildered. How had he become the enemy, when he had done nothing but support her? It didn’t occur to him that perhaps she didn’t like herself very much, that she knew her behaviour was appalling, and that Fitch’s tolerance only made her feel more unworthy, and that was why she was leaving.
Every weekend she dropped the children off with him after school so she could drive full-pelt up to Kirk’s place. During the weeks she didn’t bother with her appearance, but she clearly spent all day Friday on it. On Sunday nights she returned, her skin pasty, her eyes swollen and her breath smelling of stale booze and cigarettes. They had got used to the routine. To her credit, she wasn’t usually late, which was why he had been so concerned when she hadn’t turned up on time.
Fitch sighed and looked at the kitchen clock. Another two hours till opening time. He’d go down to the Trout, have a couple of beers and maybe a game of darts. He slumped onto the sofa and put his head back on a cushion. He’d shut his eyes for ten minutes. He always felt exhausted after a confrontation with Hayley. Dido jumped on his lap and he scratched between her ears. He should have stuck to being a loner with just his dog for company, he thought ruefully. But then, he wouldn’t have had his girls, his beautiful girls. Frankly, they were all he lived for these days.
Five
C
harlotte prayed that her truck didn’t give up the ghost while she was crossing the moor. She had no idea where she was, or how far away Withybrook might be. The last sign had clearly stated three miles, yet she was sure she must have been at least six since then. She’d passed nothing that might give her a clue as to her whereabouts. Just miles and miles of bleak, scrubby, dun-coloured moorland that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was, allegedly, an area of outstanding natural beauty, but Charlotte shuddered as she took in its relentless emptiness. Dramatic, maybe, but beautiful? She was yet to be convinced, although to be fair she wasn’t in the most forgiving of moods and the sulky grey sky wasn’t doing the landscape any favours.
harlotte prayed that her truck didn’t give up the ghost while she was crossing the moor. She had no idea where she was, or how far away Withybrook might be. The last sign had clearly stated three miles, yet she was sure she must have been at least six since then. She’d passed nothing that might give her a clue as to her whereabouts. Just miles and miles of bleak, scrubby, dun-coloured moorland that stretched as far as the eye could see. It was, allegedly, an area of outstanding natural beauty, but Charlotte shuddered as she took in its relentless emptiness. Dramatic, maybe, but beautiful? She was yet to be convinced, although to be fair she wasn’t in the most forgiving of moods and the sulky grey sky wasn’t doing the landscape any favours.
There had been times in the last few months when Charlotte had thought she was going to go under, and if it hadn’t been for the stalwart Gussie, bolstering her up, then she might well have lost the will to carry on. The stress had been huge. She’d blanked most of it out of her mind, but it had been a living nightmare. The house had been sold, to pay back the charity - at least Ed had been gentleman enough to insist on that straight away. But there had been nothing left, once they had paid the debt, and the mortgage, and the legal fees. All their years of hard work, evaporated into nothing. Then there was the trial. Charlotte had stayed away. She’d had no desire to see Ed in the dock, or listen to him being sentenced, or to have her photo taken as she left. Two years, he’d got, though he’d probably be out in six months.
In the meantime, Charlotte had hidden in Gussie’s attic, virtually a recluse, although Gussie had tried to drag her to the cinema, to the gym. Finally, she had felt strong enough to take on Gussie’s project. She needed a clean slate, to start again. After all, she had her entire self to rebuild. There was nothing left of her former life or identity. She was just an empty shell.
And so here she was. The journey had taken her twice as long as she expected, as she had barely been able to urge the truck past sixty on the motorway. She’d bought the tired old pick-up for two hundred quid off the car dealer down the road. It had six months’ tax and MOT left, but after that it would be ready for the dump. At that price she could afford to run it into the ground and then chuck it away, but in the meantime it would be perfect for trips to the builders’ merchants. If there were builders’ merchants on Exmoor. She hadn’t seen a shop of any description for the past thirty miles.
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