Chapter 17: Resolution

25/01/12

Chapter 17: Resolution
“The whole thing is absurd,” Noreen said to her over the phone an hour later, after the two detectives had departed taking with them the young man who had put up no resistance at all; not, at least until he was in the car when, for some reason, he had started shouting at Sarah, standing there at the front door watching them leave.
“But it’s all over now,” Sarah said. “Apparently the young man is well known by the police – a real crank, you know?”
“Quite, darling, but why on earth should he choose you?”
“Just my bad luck, I suppose,” Sarah said, laughing rather too obviously for Noreen’s liking.
“But you are alright?” Noreen asked, genuinely worried about her. “I mean the shock you’ve suffered today and everything.”
“I feel a bit tired, that’s all.”
“And here I am keeping you talking when you should be resting. What does David think of it all?”
“Yes. You have told him, haven’t you?”
“Well no, not exactly.”
“Naughty, Sarah, naughty. But I suppose you know best. Where is he, by the way? Gone to bed or in the kitchen? He is home, isn’t he?”
“Yes, been here an hour at least.”
“Well, that’s good to hear anyway. So you have him to keep you warm then,” she said, giggling. “Take care then, Sarah, I’ll see you in the morning – I’ll call round, shall I?”
“Yes of course. Why not?”
“ ‘Bye then.”
“Bye,” said Sarah, putting the receiver down gently as if laying it to rest before looking again, for the hundredth time at the clock on the wall.
Why hadn’t she told Noreen that David had not yet come home? Why was she still lying about him? She had lied to her mother, to Noreen, to the police and, more than anyone else, to herself. Lies, lies, all the time until she didn’t know herself what the truth might be.
And where was he all this time? She had said he was working late but this was not true since she had, only an hour before, at nine o’clock, phoned his office – the phone had just rung and rung without anyone answering it. Why hadn’t he told her he would be late instead of letting her worry like that? And why should he be so late on the very day that that man, the crank, the crazy man, the insane crackpot – she couldn’t find sufficient words to express her feelings about him – on the very day he had made those phone calls and those terrible accusations?
This question troubled and scared her more than anything. Try as she may she could not, even now after the young man had been caught, and, indeed, proved to be a crank, crazy, insane and so on, ignore the remarks he had made over the telephone that day.
Then there were his last words shouted at her from the back of the police car as they drove him away. Sarah had not actually heard them because the windows of the car had been closed but had lip-read what he was saying. Silent and taciturn ever since the two policemen had arrived, first his stupefying silence as he came to his senses after being knocked unconscious, then sullenly silent later as if the very presence of the policemen bore down on him, at the last minute when he was about to leave, he roused himself to some sort of action and shouted to her the instruction to “get away from here while you can”.
She hadn’t taken any notice then of this injunction from an evident crackpot, and both the policemen had helped to reassure her with knowing smiles and the sorts of expressions which indicated the man’s unbalanced state of mind. But now, alone, the look on the young man’s drawn, pallid, miserable face came back to mind and the sincerity together with the concern with which he had uttered the silent words.
Suddenly she was filled with a feeling of great pity towards the young man. How had he become involved in this anyway?
Why, of course, because of the girl – not a nice girl either but one who played around, probably slept around, “played the field” as the saying goes – because of his involvement with a girl who was attractive, sexy and who fell in love with.... someone else.
Sarah gave out a gasp of horror. By imagining the young man’s grief, despair, misery arose out of the break-up of a romance, she was assuming that what he had told her was the truth.
“Don’t think any more about it,” she told herself. “The more you think about it, the more involved it becomes and the more David seems to.... seems to....”
She couldn’t even think the last remark through let alone say it aloud to herself.
But where was he until this late hour?
She should phone the police: he might have had an accident in his car – the green car that Noreen had said she had seen, or may have seen, or imagined she had seen that morning. Then again, he might have been taken ill – he might be sitting in his car somewhere, on his way home, in a lay-by, feeling too ill to drive.
So what was she doing just sitting here, immobile and impotent, irresolute and lethargic, dejected and miserable, wanting to weep again but somehow not even having the strength to do that?
Ronald Naylor came to mind. That was the name of the man David had said he was going to meet a few evenings ago when he had arrived home late – the same evening as the one specified by the young man on the phone – the evening on which it had been alluded David had spent with the girl.
Sarah picked up the telephone and dialled. She did so quickly before she had time to change her mind. And it was answered almost immediately so she had no time then to ponder on the efficacy of her decision.
“John Stratton here,” the man said.
“Hello, this is Sarah Woodruff, David Woodruff’s wife. I’m so sorry to bother you this time of night but my husband, you see....”
“O yes, I see.... David’s wife.” He sounded a bit uncertain or even nervous. “You phoned today, didn’t you? One of the fellows took the call I believe. Yes, he was out then I’m afraid. Anything the matter?”
“He hasn’t arrived home, you see, and I was wondering if there was any work he had to do this evening that might have kept him or that he had to visit someone... or something.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Stratton said. “Not that I am aware of anyway. In fact, most of the work is tied up this week – not much going on these days what with the cut-backs in finance and so on, and inflation, you know.....”
“So he hasn’t any work on outside the office,” she said, interrupting him.
“No, Mrs Woodruff. But....”
He paused in hesitation as to what to say next.
“Yes?”
“Well, we hardly ever have.”
“What?”
“Work to do outside the office. I don’t want to be disrespectful to you Mrs Woodruff, but, as you know, he hasn’t been with the company for very long and so he isn’t exactly in a senior position here. I mean, only myself and the director are really the only ones who need to operate outside the office. And that takes place, I have to say, quite rarely.”
“So it’s you or... I’m afraid I don’t know his name, your director....”
“Ralston. Jeremy Ralston.”
“You or Mr Ralston then who would have any dealings with Ronald Naylor.”
Stratton gave a little cough.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Who?”“Ronald Naylor.”
He did not reply for a while; then, when he did, it was in the most sympathetic, low tones.
“I am sorry about this, Mrs Woodruff, but I have to say that I have never heard of the man.”
“I see,” she said tonelessly.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s quite alright,” she said, trying her best to appear cheery but feeling a cold tear trickle down her cheek, all the way down to her lips. “I’m sorry to disturb you at this time of the evening.”
“Mrs Woodruff,” he said, suddenly taking on a determined tone of voice. “Perhaps you’ll excuse my manner when you spoke first but, you see, I was quite surprised to hear your voice. I was under the impression that you had gone with David.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, I’m beginning to see that you don’t. Perhaps I shouldn’t say anything at all.”
“No – go on. Please.”
“Well, I was surprised to hear your voice because I understood from David that you were going to the North of England somewhere.”
“The North of England! Why on earth...”
“He didn’t say why, Mrs Woodruff. Just asked me for tomorrow off, that was all. I didn’t know what to say. In fact we had a little bit of a barney about it to tell you the truth. I mean, half a day’s notice isn’t much. Then there was the business this morning – just sloping off as he did – that didn’t help.”
“This morning?” Sarah asked in a whisper, almost choking with despair but somehow managing to hold on.
“Going out without permission. And having one of the staff to try to cover for him. It’s just not on. So I wasn’t in too good a mood for this day-off business. So.... he said I could take it or leave it, he didn’t care.”
“He said that?”
“I’m afraid so. So when you phoned and I didn’t know quite what to say, I tried to be straight with you – as straight as I could be in the circumstances – I mean, all that I told you about his not going out during office hours or after, for that matter, was perfectly true; but I have to admit that I was just keeping the conversation going then.... do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“So you haven’t both gone to the North of England?”
“No.”
“And he’s not home yet?!
“No.”“And you don’t know where he is?”
“No.”
“I hope what I’ve told you hasn’t upset you – I did it because....”
“You felt sorry for me.”
“No,” he said quickly. Then: “well yes, in a way. I mean I’m prejudiced, Mrs Woodruff.... We’ve never got on, your husband and I, not for weeks and...”
“And?”
“Just that. Better leave it there, I think.”
“You too! You too think he’s no good for me.”
“I didn’t say that, Mrs Woodruff.”
“You meant it, didn’t you?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” he said, sorry he had said those things about Woodruff, even though they had all been true.
“No one wanted me to marry him,” Sarah said, crying. “Not my mother. No one.”
“Well I don’t know anything about that,” he said.
“No one. And now everything’s falling to pieces.”
“Why not phone the police? See if they know anything. He might have had an accident or something.”
“I can’t phone the police.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t. I just can’t.”
“I see,” he said, though he didn’t “see” at all. “I don’t know what to suggest.”
“Nothing. Suggest nothing. Please. I have to go. I’m sorry for bothering you. Please forgive me. It’s been too much today. I’m going now.”
“Goodbye then, Mrs Woodruff, and if there’s anything I can do....”
She put the phone down quickly and, burying her face in a cushion on the sofa, cried desperately.
It was all true then. Everything the young man had said on the telephone. The girl. The meeting that had taken place in her flat. It couldn’t have been anything but true. How could the young man with the lean, miserable countenance make up such a yarn? And, moreover, for what purpose?
Desperately, as she cried, her face still in the cushion – she almost wished to suffocate – the truth of it all became more and more evident. The fuse wire. The man’s words from the back seat of the car. The green car seen that morning when he should have been at the office and wasn’t. Everything. The photograph of him looking back over his shoulder at someone – even on his wedding day! Looking over his shoulder at the young woman – who else? – with a half smile of admiration – or lust! – on his face. He wasn’t looking at her, at Sarah, certainly not, not at dowdy, old-fashioned, old, old Sarah who had never had a boy-friend in her youth, who had never had a man-friend in her twenties – certainly not looking at her!
Gradually she recovered from the shock of her newfound knowledge, from the almost hysterical weeping. She sat up, drying her eyes.
“What sort of a fool have I been all these months?” she asked herself.
She was beginning to face up to the reality, see things as they really were. And the feelings that came with this seemed to imbue her with a new resolve. She would, in fact, do what the young man had advised: she would get out of the house; not wait to pack but just get out. But where? Anywhere. After all, she had all their money in the bank, all in her account. And she didn’t want to see the house ever again. She would just get out. Now.