The Anderson Question Read online

  Adrian Wright polished a glass. ‘Well that MP did, didn’t he? What was his name? – John Stonehouse, that’s right. He nearly managed it. Course, it was a woman in that case. He married her later.’ The publican looked round with the expression he had been wearing since noon; as if he were privy, if not to actual secrets, then certainly to advance information about the human condition. The salesman noticed it, as the mirror of his own, ‘Well,’ he said, picking up his briefcase and, with the other hand, easing his trousers from between his buttocks. ‘I’ve met men who’d sell their mothers for what they call love. I call it sex, myself. Anyway, I’d best be off, Squire. I’ll keep my eye on the papers. Cheers!’

  Jack Ainslie glowered after him, and a few seconds later he turned and stomped out into the sunlight without saying a word. In the afternoon, digging furiously at the large circular bed cut into the Misses Ryans’ front lawn, he swore softly to himself when he remembered their looks. ‘They do love it,’ he muttered aloud, tossing the clods aside, ‘them with their dirty minds and grins. They’re not fit to lick Dr Anderson’s boots.’

  He stood still for a moment, staring down at the dark, reddish earth and smelling its familiar smell: the scent, at once fresh and rotting, of the crumbling solids he had watched scattering down on the small, light oak box, as if in slow motion, splattering with gentle pitter-pattering sounds like rain. And the doctor was standing next to Margaret, his head bowed, one arm around her shoulders, and wearing an expression of such gentleness and sadness that Jack still turned from it, in his mind, with embarrassed gratitude, because it was his gift for them.

  Paul Anderson signalled left at the new council estate and turned from Stoke Road into the High Street, grimacing at the village school as he passed. On the noticeboard outside the school was a large pink poster, roughly done in marker pen, announcing, ‘Coming Soon! Winterstoke Concert! Watch this Space!’ He groaned inwardly. Every year it was the same, with Adrian Wright in a shiny mulberry dinner jacket, pink frilly shirt, and mulberry velvet bow tie, shouting his introductions with the bonhomie of the bar; Margaret Ainslie trilling songs from My Fair Lady, Enid Ryan playing two bits of Chopin, somebody’s child giving a recorder solo, a crooner and a comedian, and the first prize in the raffle a box of fruit nobody realty wants. ‘Oh God,’ said Paul aloud, feeling as always that the years he had spent in this place were dishonest, somehow; although they had happened to him with no choice, just as the village children, clinging to the playground railings like so many little zoo animals, had no choice.

  The King’s Head, the newsagent, the small supermarket, the old-fashioned draper’s called ‘Susan’, with women’s tights pinned like a sunburst in the window, surrounded by cotton tea towels, cotton reels arranged tastefully in little mountains, and polyester sun-tops – he could picture it at night before sleeping, and each time he returned (Christmas, Easter, Eleanor’s birthday) he gazed around with the same absurd disbelief, as if he half-expected and half-hoped that a divine bull-dozer might have razed Winterstoke’s pleasant mellow buildings to the ground.

  Daphne Ryan saw his battered Citroen 2CV, like a snub-nosed insect, cruise past, and waved frantically, but he did not notice. ‘Poor boy,’ she thought, noticing how young he looked, especially with that odd hairstyle, long on top and short at the sides, ‘still like a schoolboy, though he must be twenty-two now.’ She changed direction, making as if to follow the car and greet him at the Andersons’ house, then stopped, irresolute, watching the little yellow car turn right between the parked police cars and disappear from view.

  It was three days now, and the police returned again and again to Eleanor’s house, asking questions and gradually (Daphne noticed, awestruck) wearing down her friend’s composure. That morning her hands had quivered and Daphne had reached out, silent for once, to still their shaking. They had looked at each other, knowing their thoughts were the same, and for a wild, irresponsible moment Daphne had felt a welling thankfulness for the absence that had made this closeness possible. At last Eleanor had spoken, controlling her voice with difficulty. ‘There was a point, Daphne, when I think they thought I might have … murdered David. It was too awful; imagine it …’

  ‘Hush, dear, don’t think about it. Don’t.’

  ‘But I’m sure they still think he’s gone off with another woman, Daphne, I’m sure they do. They’ve asked everyone in Winterstoke, and everybody’s shocked at the idea, but they still seem to hint.’

  Daphne tutted loudly. Eleanor looked terrible, she thought; the strain was showing. She had been wearing that blouse for two days now, which Daphne had never known before, and though her hair was still neatly swept into its usual chignon, there was no trace of silver-grey eye-shadow at her red-rimmed eyes. Yet even then, to Daphne’s amazement, she had insisted on discussing the village concert.

  ‘You must go ahead … whatever happens.’

  ‘But what if …?’ Daphne had frowned. ‘Oh Eleanor, we mustn’t make any plans at all. Not until.’

  Eleanor shook her head firmly, compressing her lips in the old determined way. ‘Look, if the rector had a stroke (which is hardly likely at his age, thank God) someone would take the service, wouldn’t they? You can’t imagine cancelling the Easter Sunday service, for example, because something had happened to the rector. Things have to go on, in villages. If you cancel the concert because David is missing it will … upset people. And you know the village hall is booked every Saturday night for the next four months, except that one, and then we’ll really be into the summer with everyone away. No,’ she folded her arms, ‘you’ve got to keep it going, Daphne, for the sake of the village. I’m only sorry I can’t help you with the organisation.’

  Was it that Eleanor did not trust others to get it right, Daphne wondered afterwards, or that she could not fill her time unless it were with minutes and meetings, and felt afraid of giving up her bulwark against emptiness? Certainly there was no one better. Daphne’s own weakness was to submit to those who suggested ‘jazzing things up’, in the suspicion that she herself was as dull as she was overweight. Eleanor always had answers, yet sometimes she seemed lonely as she shut the door behind her and came out, with David’s light shining from the study window. Marriage was strange, Daphne thought wistfully, stifling her old regret that she had missed the chance to try it. She had sampled the dreams of romance, passion, people being ‘all in all’ to each other, but her natural common sense had soon barred them forever; and most of the marriages she observed consisted of two chums sharing roof, bed and television, but living separate lives – ‘of the soul’, as she liked to put it. People like the Simmondses clearly detested each other, but then they lived on the estate, where people were known to shout with the windows open. Even a really perfect marriage like the Andersons’ (which Daphne had watched and envied in secret for years) was a mystery, she thought now, thinking of Paul, and the police.

  A car tooted its horn at her; she smiled and waved with exaggerated jollity, then stood as before, not realising that she had not noticed who was driving. Strange, she thought, but we are married too. Enid leaning forward in her favourite chintz chair, asking for another cup of tea, or an ashtray, or that library book over there … no, not that one, that one, and by the way, Daphne’s taste in books was growing worse and surely she knew by now the sort of books? Daphne winced. Yoked together, the Misses Ryan, just like all those other married couples; but they at least had privacy at night, retiring to the single beds they had slept in since they were children, and listening to the cistern’s hideous gurgle which now (in their maturity) could not frighten them anymore. The thought decided her. She would leave Paul and Eleanor alone, and go to see if Enid wanted anything. Daphne pulled her navy blue cardigan down over her ample hips, and set off in the direction of her own house with a determined rolling stride.

  Paul threw his nylon hold-all on the brown flowered bedspread, which echoed the pattern on the walls and curtains. As soon as he had gone to London his mother had asked Jack Ai
nslie to redecorate his bedroom. Somehow her relief at being rid of his purple walls, posters, and silver-painted chest of drawers decorated with transfers of rainbows, showed in the fussy curlicues of stylised flowers, which bore no relation to nature. ‘Not much to art, either,’ he thought, hanging his crumpled cotton blouson jacket in the wardrobe and looking critically at the small room.

  He despised what he saw – the completeness of the picture and its slavish adherence to narrow canons of taste: Homes and Gardens and Good Housekeeping to the last detail, with the pine curtain pole, the round table by the bed, covered with a white cloth, and the cream long-haired rug by the bed. ‘Safe, and middle-class and completely cowardly’ was Paul’s judgement, and he felt his ill-temper rise, as he contrasted this with his own one-room flat in Archway: scarlet and black, with the divan at an angle in the middle of the room, piled with the little silver cushions he had made from blowing up the inner containers of wine boxes. Paul prided himself on his style.

  He glanced at the mirror, ran a hand over the hair which sprang back under his touch, like a nailbrush, then walked to the window. ‘I don’t want to go downstairs’ was the one thought in his mind, as he stared at the policeman, pulled by an Alsatian dog, who walked, apparently aimlessly, up the path. ‘Oh shit, shit, shit!’ he said aloud.

  Eleanor was waiting for him; rather, she was hovering at the foot of the stairs, as if on the point of coming up to get him. ‘Better?’ she asked. ‘Sure,’ he said. They walked into the sitting room, almost bumping in the doorway, both apologising at the same minute. Eleanor had laid a tray on the coffee table: two small cups, china pot and milk jug, silver sugar tongs – all decorated with tiny silver dots. She offered him a biscuit.

  ‘What were the roads like?’

  ‘Not too bad. It only took me three hours.’

  ‘I thought you’d be here this morning.’

  ‘Well, that was the idea, but I had a late night last night.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You weren’t worried, were you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Eleanor said dryly, ‘I’ve got too many other things to occupy my mind.’

  There was an awkward silence, broken by Paul’s apology. She shook her head.‘It really doesn’t matter. What is half a day, after all? It’s good of you to come at all, Paul.’

  He flinched. ‘She always looks at me like someone on the stage who’s forgotten their lines and is waiting for the prompt,’ he thought, watching her pour the coffee, ‘and yet if I was to rush over to her and shout that we both love Dad and where the hell is he for Christ’s sake, it might remind her of everything that should be between us but isn’t. It might break her.’ He had a fleeting mental image of being cradled in his mother’s arms, and almost experienced that voluptuous sensation from so far back in time, in a second of acute longing. Then Eleanor handed him his cup, and he concentrated on the strain of holding it, absurdly fragile and silly, in his large bony hand.

  ‘Had your father written to you lately, Paul?’

  ‘Oh mum, I told you, the police asked me that on the phone.’

  ‘Sorry, I forgot.’

  ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s just that I keep going over and over the same thing in my mind and it drives me mad.’

  ‘What did he say in his last letter? Did he … hint at anything?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. He might have let something slip. A plan perhaps. Or that he was depressed.’

  ‘He’d hardly tell me something he hadn’t told you.’ Paul’s emphasis was self-diminishing, but the voice was gentle. She looked at him with a hard, bright gaze. ‘What do you think then? Is it amnesia? He wouldn’t go, would he, Paul? He couldn’t possibly leave me for no reason, not after all these years. You know that, don’t you?’

  He looked away, awkwardly. ‘Yes, of course, I know.’

  As if he had not spoken, she continued, rapidly, ‘It’s what people in the village have been saying, Paul. All around me. It’s odd, you know, but I’ve lived here for twenty years and it’s never occurred to me that people might not like me. Yet suddenly I feel a kind of wave of possible scandal run through the whole place, that David might have been having an affair, and it seems as if they’re glad, Paul.’

  ‘Oh, Winterstoke,’ he said scornfully, ‘it’s like all villages. Nothing to do but gossip. Don’t forget I wasn’t too popular with the locals, mum, especially in my new-wave phase.’

  She smiled, ‘Which one was that? He grinned back at her, holding out his cup for more coffee. But the hunted look slid back across her face right away, and the moment was lost. ‘Well, did he, Paul, did he?’

  ‘Did he what?’

  ‘Let anything drop to you. He might have done, you know, man to man.’

  He made a strangled noise of impatience and ran a hand across his hair, looking at her in exasperation. ‘Oh, come on! You know quite well we didn’t have that sort of relationship, mother! Dad would never tell me anything he couldn’t tell you much sooner. He wrote to me every two or three weeks, just telling me about the village and funny stories about his patients, and what he’d been reading or talking to Conrad about, and that was it. He never wrote about his feelings much. I mean, Dad was never moody, was he?’ She shook her head.

  Yet did he know that for sure, Paul wondered, as he walked in the garden afterwards, nodding to the policeman with cool hostility? The images in his mind were powerful – his father’s particular smell, a warm dry smell like the pages of books and spicy soap; the odd whiteness of his hands that were washed dozens of times each day; well-polished brogues. And more than appearance, the stillness, the calm of that figure, which enabled David to sit quite still, when most other people would shuffle their feet or scratch. They used to make models together, when Paul was nine or ten, and it was David who laboriously finished the gluing and sticking, long after his son had lost patience with the tiny pieces. Then there were the walks on Sunday afternoons, to collect things or (more likely) to kick a football about whilst Eleanor had a rest after lunch; Dad helping him with homework, teaching him to drive, arguing with him about the University course … All those scenes were vivid in Paul’s memory. Yet what did you ever know of your parents, really know? All the guys at work complained about theirs; non-communication seemed to be the norm and it relieved Paul to discover he was not the only living disappointment in the world. He knew now what was missing in all the visions of his father he summoned: words. He could not remember anything his father had told him; or was it that he had just stopped listening? Miserably, he kicked a stone, and looked back at the house, studying its leaded windows as if there might be a message hidden in the blank, grey squares.

  WPC Dix stared in amazement around the old man’s sitting room. He had welcomed her politely, in words precisely enunciated with what her father always called ‘an educated accent’, and yet he lived like a pig. The contrast challenged her; she dabbed a distasteful finger in the dust on an inlaid table, and felt contempt for the owner of all these books and knick-knacks.

  Conrad shuffled in, walking painfully slowly with bent shoulders, and carrying two mugs of coffee. He was wearing an ancient tweed jacket that reeked of tobacco, though he had ceased his pipe years before; the shiny grey trousers bagged at the knee. He handed the policewoman her mug and went to place his own on the table she had touched. It was too much for her. ‘Oh don’t put that hot thing down on the wood, it’ll make a ring. Here.’ And she reached for the first book that came to her hand, slipping a leather-bound nineteenth-century volume under the old mug. Conrad did not notice; he had remembered he had forgotten the sugar.

  At last, when he was sitting opposite her, WPC Dix began, but her voice had grown stiff with the waiting. ‘Let’s try to be as quick as possible, Mr Hartley. Now, were you a close friend of Dr Anderson?’

  ‘Oh yes, I think you could safely say that. Though of course I’m a great deal older than David. But close, yes, a close friend.’

  ‘How often di
d you see him?’

  ‘Let me see, oh, two or three times a week, I should say. He used to drop in, you know. He knew I’d always be here, because you see, I don’t go out much these days. My work keeps me at home, and in any case I’m getting too old to gad about.’

  ‘So when did you see him last?’

  ‘I think it must have been Sunday. What day is it now …? Oh yes, now let me think, yes, it must have been Sunday. He came in after church for a quick sherry. Yes.’

  ‘Was Mrs Anderson with him?’

  ‘No, no. She’d gone on to check the lunch. David said he felt dreadful about me eating alone here whilst they had their joint, but I told him it didn’t matter. Though I don’t bother to cook for myself; you don’t when you live alone. I’m used to it, and one doesn’t like to impose. But David was always so kind – and Eleanor, too, of course.’

  The policewoman sighed and scribbled the one word ‘Sunday’ in her notebook. If he answered every question with five sentences she would be in this filthy house all day, and already she was bored by the missing doctor. He was dull – no skeleton had tumbled from the Anderson cupboard to rattle accusations, and in the absence of drama WPC Dix lost interest. ‘If another person tells me what a good, kind, reliable and pleasant man he is, or was, I’ll scream,’ she thought, but forced an understanding smile across the room. ‘Did you notice anything unusual about Dr Anderson? Any signs of strain? Anything that might have suggested that he was thinking of, well, running away?’

  The old man’s round pink face creased into a puzzled grimace, and slowly he shook his head. ‘Not at all, my dear, not at all. But you see, how do we know? None of us really know, do we?’ He nodded his head as if to emphasise each word, and she frowned; ‘How do you mean?’ He looked at the ceiling. ‘Oh, I simply mean that most of us tend to remain strangers even to those closest to us. You may ask me if David seemed strange, and perhaps the truest reply would be that to me he always seemed strange. Even his normality seemed strange to me at times, in as much as I knew that beneath its smooth surface the depths could be quite turbulent. Full of strange, prodding creatures.’