Maidments’ middle age; they go their ways and yet remain together.
‘Oh, it is better so,’ Zenobia comments, offering the opinion to her employer’s child.
*
In the small room that opens out of the bedroom in which Thaddeus Davenant was born are the personal possessions he has kept by him, and photographs and papers. For the five years of his sojourn in this house Maidment has repeatedly examined them, expertly poking about in drawers and in the pigeon-holes of a writing desk, anywherethat is unsecured. Box-files are marked
Insurance, Receipts, Bank Statements
,
Accounts
. In a flat tin that once contained mint sweets there are keys that have never been thrown away, old fountain-pens, old watches, a yo-yo, an empty notebook, cufflinks separated from their match, tie-pins, dice, marbles. A shallow drawer is full of half-used seed packets. A silver hip-flask bears the initials
P. de S. D
., and at the wheel of a sports car is a genial man whom Maidment has long ago recognized as the initials’ source. He it was who attempted to resurrect the family’s past by manufacturing soap instead of the tallow that for generations had made its fortune, travelling the countries of Europe in search of orders. Pasted into an album now, he’s there among trams and motor-cars in Vienna, and again in Amsterdam. He skates with a tall, beautiful girl on a frozen lake, is with her among the wild flowers of a hillside. Maidment knows her well: Hitler’s war came, Eva Paczkowska was brought from Poland to England in the nick of time. Still beautiful, she stands smiling by the summer-house. Still beautiful, she’s on the front-door steps, holding a child by the hand. But beside her the genial man she married is cadaverous now.
Maidment has searched but has never found snapshots of that child growing up. The camera seemed to have been put away. Only among the gowned ranks of schoolboys, framed on the room’s dark wallpaper, is there a face he recognizes, reticent and private at that time.
Some tidying has taken place, he notices this morning. The wastepaper basket is full, papers that have accumulated since the death are no longer in a bunch beneath the bronze horseman on the windowsill. Cheque-book stubs indicatepayments made that were not possible a week or so ago, before a simple probate was completed. Correspondence from solicitors has been relegated to a relevant file, letters of condolence ticked when they’ve been answered. The hiatus is over, the debris of death disposed of. The woman who asked for money has been visited, faith kept with a wife’s last wish.
On the landing Maidment arranges towels and sheets in the hot cupboard, placing those not yet aired closer to the cistern. In the bedroom that is to be Mrs Iveson’s he raises a window sash in order to expel a wasp, satisfies himself that the bulbs of the bedside lamps do not need to be replaced, extracts from the welcoming flowers a sweet-pea whose stem has failed to reach the water in the vase. ‘The Rib, four thirty,’ he keeps his voice low to instruct on the landing telephone. Palm cupped around the mouthpiece, he gives the racecourse details and makes his wager.
Outside, a car door bangs, there’s Rosie’s bark. Not hurrying, for Maidment never does, he makes his way downstairs, to carry up Mrs Iveson’s suitcases.
*
The canal doesn’t have any barges on it and only a sludge where there should be water. She discovered the towpath that runs by it the night she stayed late at the door in the wall and there wasn’t a bus to the railway station. No one is about when she passes the broken petrol pump and the shop and the public house.
Seven times in all she has phoned in the weeks that have passed, five times replaced the receiver when it wasn’t his voice. Twice she has put down flowers for him to find, but this afternoon she hurries by the graveyard, not going in tosee if he has put fresh flowers down himself. This afternoon she’s anxious to get to the
‘Oh, it is better so,’ Zenobia comments, offering the opinion to her employer’s child.
*
In the small room that opens out of the bedroom in which Thaddeus Davenant was born are the personal possessions he has kept by him, and photographs and papers. For the five years of his sojourn in this house Maidment has repeatedly examined them, expertly poking about in drawers and in the pigeon-holes of a writing desk, anywherethat is unsecured. Box-files are marked
Insurance, Receipts, Bank Statements
,
Accounts
. In a flat tin that once contained mint sweets there are keys that have never been thrown away, old fountain-pens, old watches, a yo-yo, an empty notebook, cufflinks separated from their match, tie-pins, dice, marbles. A shallow drawer is full of half-used seed packets. A silver hip-flask bears the initials
P. de S. D
., and at the wheel of a sports car is a genial man whom Maidment has long ago recognized as the initials’ source. He it was who attempted to resurrect the family’s past by manufacturing soap instead of the tallow that for generations had made its fortune, travelling the countries of Europe in search of orders. Pasted into an album now, he’s there among trams and motor-cars in Vienna, and again in Amsterdam. He skates with a tall, beautiful girl on a frozen lake, is with her among the wild flowers of a hillside. Maidment knows her well: Hitler’s war came, Eva Paczkowska was brought from Poland to England in the nick of time. Still beautiful, she stands smiling by the summer-house. Still beautiful, she’s on the front-door steps, holding a child by the hand. But beside her the genial man she married is cadaverous now.
Maidment has searched but has never found snapshots of that child growing up. The camera seemed to have been put away. Only among the gowned ranks of schoolboys, framed on the room’s dark wallpaper, is there a face he recognizes, reticent and private at that time.
Some tidying has taken place, he notices this morning. The wastepaper basket is full, papers that have accumulated since the death are no longer in a bunch beneath the bronze horseman on the windowsill. Cheque-book stubs indicatepayments made that were not possible a week or so ago, before a simple probate was completed. Correspondence from solicitors has been relegated to a relevant file, letters of condolence ticked when they’ve been answered. The hiatus is over, the debris of death disposed of. The woman who asked for money has been visited, faith kept with a wife’s last wish.
On the landing Maidment arranges towels and sheets in the hot cupboard, placing those not yet aired closer to the cistern. In the bedroom that is to be Mrs Iveson’s he raises a window sash in order to expel a wasp, satisfies himself that the bulbs of the bedside lamps do not need to be replaced, extracts from the welcoming flowers a sweet-pea whose stem has failed to reach the water in the vase. ‘The Rib, four thirty,’ he keeps his voice low to instruct on the landing telephone. Palm cupped around the mouthpiece, he gives the racecourse details and makes his wager.
Outside, a car door bangs, there’s Rosie’s bark. Not hurrying, for Maidment never does, he makes his way downstairs, to carry up Mrs Iveson’s suitcases.
*
The canal doesn’t have any barges on it and only a sludge where there should be water. She discovered the towpath that runs by it the night she stayed late at the door in the wall and there wasn’t a bus to the railway station. No one is about when she passes the broken petrol pump and the shop and the public house.
Seven times in all she has phoned in the weeks that have passed, five times replaced the receiver when it wasn’t his voice. Twice she has put down flowers for him to find, but this afternoon she hurries by the graveyard, not going in tosee if he has put fresh flowers down himself. This afternoon she’s anxious to get to the
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