“That’s the one. There’s no room for it in this new house—no room for hardly anything,” she added cheerfully and Teddy remembered how much he liked Gertie and why. “Anyway,” she carried on, “I know you’ve always admired it and so I thought you might like to have it. I can stick it on a van, one of those part-load ones, it shouldn’t cost too much. Otherwise I’m afraid it might have to go into a sale.”
“That’s very kind of you. I’d love it, but,” he added doubtfully, “I’m not sure that we have room.” He thought wistfully of Ayswick and how handsome the sideboard would have looked in the big farmhouse kitchen, but here, within the blandly ordinary walls of the York semi, it would surely look quite out of place. He was surprised by a sudden pang of desire—it was a piece of furniture that he remembered well from the Shawcrosses’ house. From the past. “What does Nancy say about it?”
“I’ve no idea,” Gertie said. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“Can you put her on?”
“Put her on?” Gertie said. “What do you mean?”
“Put her on the phone.”
“Can I put her on the phone?” Gertie sounded baffled.
“She’s there with you,” Teddy said, wondering how they had achieved such a cross-purpose with each other.
“No, she’s not,” Gertie said.
“She’s not in Lyme Regis? With you? Helping you move?”
There was an awkward silence before Gertie said cautiously, “No, not here.” Teddy sensed that she was anxious that she might have betrayed Nancy in some way and his first instinct (curiously) was to save Gertie from the flap she was getting into, so he said genially, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got mixed up. I’ll chase her down and get back to you. The sideboard is a lovely offer, by the way. Thank you, Gertie.” He got off the phone quickly, needing to review this odd information. I’m going down to Lyme to give Gertie a hand with her house move. It was hardly a statement that was open to misinterpretation.
If there had been something that Nancy had not wanted him to know, something that had necessitated her pretending to be in Dorset with Gertie, then surely she must have a reason? He knew she could lie with grace when necessary but Nancy was not furtive, in fact quite the opposite. Sometimes he felt that the intimacy of their marriage had been based on her breaching the Official Secrets Act. When she returned from “Dorset” he asked her nothing, other than “How was the move?” to which she replied, “Good, all went well.”
“Gertie’s new house is nice, is it?”
“Mm. Very nice,” she said rather vaguely and he left it at that, not wishing to seem as if he were interrogating her. Instead he would wait and see if something developed from this omission. Adultery was not high on his list of suspects, he found it almost impossible to consider Nancy as the sort of wife who would hoodwink a husband. He had always thought of her—still thought of her—as irreproachable, scrupulous in both thinking and doing the right thing. Nancy was not the sort to feign innocence. But then nor was she the sort to misdirect. If she had lied to him it must be a lie based on utilitarian principles. Perhaps there was a surprise hidden at the heart of this sleight of hand—a birthday treat or a family reunion? With Sylvie dead and Fox Corner sold it seemed there was nothing left to shepherd the whole Todd family together any more. Teddy and his more stalwart siblings—Ursula and Pamela—never seemed to be together in the same place at the same time, except at funerals. No weddings—there didn’t seem to be weddings any more, why was that? “It’s because we’re between generations,” Nancy said. “It’ll be Viola’s turn soon enough.”
Viola was the solitary arrow they had shot blindly into the future, not knowing where she would land. They should have aimed better, Teddy thought as he watched her (having sidestepped marriage to Dominic, the father of her children) finally tying the knot in Leeds Town Hall to Wilf Romaine—a botched-up job of a marriage if ever there was one. “He enjoys a drink, doesn’t he?” Teddy said cautiously the first time Viola introduced him to “my new man.” “If that’s a criticism,” Viola said, “—and when have you ever done anything but find fault with me?—you can go and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.” Oh, Viola.
When Nancy left next, to meet up with Millie in the Lake District, Teddy vowed to himself not to check up on her like some tawdry private detective. No birthday treat or family reunion had revealed itself since her return from Dorset but that was not proof of anything underhand. He resisted picking up the phone and calling Millie’s flat to see if Millie was there, but his unease must have infected Viola, who spent the whole fretful time that Nancy was absent nagging, “When is Mummy coming back?” It gave him a legitimate reason, he argued rather speciously with himself, for chasing up his discontented wife.