Midnight is a Lonely Place

XLVIII

The kitchen was spotless, the joint in the oven, the potatoes roasting slowly beneath it. Cissy looked round with a pleased smile. Even Joe’s Sunday papers had been marshalled into a more-or-less tidy heap at the far end of the kitchen table. There would be nothing now to jog her conscience if she and Sue drove down to Redall Farmhouse and had a cup of Diana’s wonderful specially ground coffee from the shop in Ipswich, by her untidy, ash-spattered inglenook.

She often wondered why she liked Diana’s house so much; the living room at Redall was just that – a room for living, always knee-deep in newspapers and sewing and cats, with Greg’s paints and Patrick’s books lying around in heaps. The untidy and often dusty surfaces were always filled with fresh flowers, though; even in the depths of winter Diana managed to find something in the woods and the house always smelled of coffee and home-baked bread and drying herbs, and even if there was the occasional whiff of cat, it was all wonderful.

She sighed, looking round her own kitchen. However hard she tried she could not be comfortable with Diana’s mess. Not in her own house. She had tried to dry flowers, but they dropped shrivelled little petals all over the floor; she tried to bake bread, but the sight of the cloth-draped pans of dough rising on the side irritated her; and the results, though smelling good, were as heavy as lead.

‘Sue!’ She stood at the foot of the stairs and called up. ‘Do you want to come down to Redall?’

‘Coming.’ For once Sue was in contact, the Walkman for some reason (no batteries, her mother concluded) abandoned on her bedside table. Available for human communication, Sue appeared. ‘Great. Are they coming back for lunch?’

‘I hope so. Get your gloves darling.’ Cissy looked critically at her daughter’s attire – black leggings, black tee shirt, black jumper which came to her knees in front and only just covered her bottom behind, black scarf knotted around her head and black eye liner – and she sighed. When she had got up that morning the child had looked like a pretty teenager. Now she looked like a zombie from the swamp.

With an exasperated sigh Cissy collected the keys of the Range Rover from the hall table and led the way outside. It was a cold, damp morning, the sky heavily overcast; any moment the snow would start again. They climbed into the Range Rover and Cissy started the engine, letting it run for a few moments as she switched on the windscreen wipers to clear the screen, and rubbed at the condensation with a duster.

‘I hate this weather.’ Sue leaned forward to turn on the radio, flicking through the stations.

Her mother winced as Radio One blasted into the quiet cold. ‘Must you?’

‘Oh come on, Mum. You’ll be telling me you want to hear the birds next.’

‘Why not?’ Cissy shrugged, unequal to the argument. With a sigh she released the handbrake and swung the heavy vehicle out of the yard and onto the road. The sanders had been down in the night and the two-lane road was slushy with yellow mud; there were no other cars in sight as she drove cautiously the couple of miles to the turning which marked Redall Lane. ‘I hope their track is not too bad,’ she murmured as she turned in. ‘I can’t think why Roger doesn’t get it tarmacked. Anyone would think they wanted to get cut off from the world, down here.’

‘They haven’t got enough money for things like that,’ Sue put in. She crossed her ankle across her knee, leaning against the door, trying to be casual and comfortable as the car lurched over the potholes. ‘If Dad was any kind of a neighbour he would do it for them. It wouldn’t cost him anything – he’s always doing the farm roads and it would make no end of difference to the Lindseys.’

Cissy caught her breath, about to retort that things didn’t work like that – Joe would never do it, and Roger would never accept anyway – when she thought better of it. The young sometimes saw with shining clarity what needed to be done, and often they did it. It was adults who loused things up with their dithering and self-imposed rules. She bit her lip at the choice of words which had spilt into her mind. A fuck up. It described so much of her life; and Joe’s. A fuck up from beginning to end. Well, why shouldn’t they help someone else for a change? Joe could easily say he had over-ordered gravel or tarmac or whatever they used to make roads; a white lie to save Roger’s pride.

‘What are you smiling at?’ Sue was staring at her, defying her to tell her to sit in a ladylike fashion. Sue smiled even more broadly. Well, fuck that too. The child could sit how she liked. It was her life.

The Range Rover slithered round the first of the steep corners without mishap and moved steadily towards the next. Daringly, Cissy accelerated a little, longing to be there. Overhead the trees arched beneath a fine mist of snow, their leaves crumpled and stripped to skeletons by the frost. The wet ruts gleamed darkly, reflecting no light from the sky, She flicked on the headlights with an irritated exclamation. The next moment she let out a scream as the arcing flash of the lights illuminated a figure in front of them on the track. Jamming on the brakes she wrestled frantically with the wheel as the heavy Range Rover began to slide.

‘Oh God!’

Desperately she fought for control, conscious of Sue being flung sideways against the window with a resounding crack.

‘Oh God!’ her voice rose to a scream again as the figure seemed to fill her vision, his hands raised, then the car swung sideways over the edge of the track and spun into the ditch, slamming Cissie’s head against the steering column as the engine stalled.

In the silence that followed the voice of Bruce Springsteen floated suddenly from the radio over the sound of the ticking engine and the hiss of steam from the shattered radiator.