More figures pushed through the crowd, horror opening their mouths. Lucy, Edwin and Serena, running, stumbling, looking alternately from the wounded house to me and Malcolm.
Lucy was crying, 'You're alive, you're alive!' Tears ran down her cheeks. 'Vivien said you were dead.'
'I was told they were dead,' Vivien said defensively. Dim-witted… Joyce's judgement came back.
Serena was swaying, pale as pale. Ferdinand put an arm round her and hugged her. 'It's all right, girl, they're not dead after all. The old house's a bit knocked about, eh?' He squeezed her affectionately.
'I don't feel well,' she said faintly. 'What happened?'
'Too soon to say for certain,' Gervase said assertively. 'But I'd say one can't rule out a bomb.'
They repudiated the word, shaking their heads, covering their ears. Bombs were for wars, for wicked schemes in aero planes for bus stations in far places, for cold-hearted terrorists… for other people. Bombs weren't for a family house outside a Berkshire village, a house surrounded by quiet green fields, lived in by an ordinary family.
Except that we weren't an ordinary family. Ordinary families didn't have fifth wives murdered while planting geraniums. I looked around at the familiar faces and couldn't see on any of them either malice or dismay that Malcolm had escaped. They were all beginning to recover from the shock of the wrongly reported death and also beginning to realise how much damage had been done to the house. Gervase grew angry. 'Whoever did this shall pay for it!' He sounded pompous more than effective.
'Where's Thomas?' I asked.
Berenice shrugged waspishly. 'Dear Thomas went out early on one of his useless job-hunting missions. I've no idea where he was going. Vivien telephoned after he'd left.'
Edwin said, 'Is the house insured against bombs, Malcolm?'
Malcolm looked at him with dislike and didn't answer.
Gervase said masterfully, 'You'd better come home with me, Malcolm. Ursula will look after you.'
None of the others liked that. They all instantly made counter- proposals. The superintendent, who had been listening with attentive eyes, said at this point that plans to take Malcolm home would have to be shelved for a few hours.
'Oh, really?' Gervase stared down his nose. 'And who are you?'
'Detective Superintendent Yale, sir.'
Gervase raised his eyebrows but didn't back down. 'Malcolm's done nothing wrong.'
'I want to talk to the superintendent myself,' Malcolm said. 'I want him to find out who tried to destroy my house.'
'Surely it was an accident,' Serena said, very upset.
Ferdinand still had his arm round her. 'Face facts, girl.' He hesitated, looking at me. 'Vivien and Alicia told everyone you were both living here again… so how come you escaped being hurt?'
'Yes,' Berenice said. 'That's what I asked.'
'We went to London for a night out and stayed there,' I said.
'Very lucky,' Donald said heartily, and Helen, who stood at his elbow and hadn't spoken so far at all, nodded a shade too enthusiastically and said, 'Yes, yes.'
'But if we'd been in the office,' I said, 'we would have been all right.'
They looked along the front of the house to the far corner where the office windows were broken but the walls still stood.
'You wouldn't be in the office at four-thirty in the morning,'Alicia said crossly. 'Why should you be?'
Malcolm was growing tired of them. Not one had hugged him, kissed him, or made warm gestures over his survival. Lucy's tears, if they were genuine, had come nearest. The family obviously could have accommodated his death easily, murmuring regrets at his graveside, maybe even meaning them, but looking forward also with well- hidden pleasure to a safely affluent future. Malcolm dead could spend no more. Malcolm dead would free them to spend instead.
'Let's go,' he said to the superintendent, 'I'm cold.'
An unwelcome thought struck me. 'Did any of you,' I asked the family, 'tell Joyce… about the house?'
Donald cleared his throat. 'Yes, I… er… broke it to her.'
His meaning was clear. 'You told her we were dead?'
'Vivien said you were dead,' he said, sounding as defensive as she had. 'She said I should tell Joyce, so I did.'
'My God,' I said to the superintendent, 'Joyce is my mother. I'll have to phone her at once.'
I turned instinctively back to the house, but the superintendent stopped me, saying the telephones weren't working.
He, I and Malcolm began to move towards the gates, but we had gone only halfway when Joyce herself pushed through the crowd and ran forward, frantically, fearfully distraught.
She stopped when she saw us. Her face went white and she swayed as Serena had done, and I sprinted three or four long strides and caught her upright before she fell.
'It's all right,' I said, holding her. 'It's all right. We're alive.'
'Malcolm…'
'Yes, we're both fine.'
'Oh, I thought… Donald said… I've been crying all the way here, I couldn't see the road…' She put her face against my jacket and cried again with a few deep gulps, then pushed herself off determinedly and began searching her tailored Pockets for a handkerchief. She found a tissue and blew her nose. 'Well, darling,' she said, 'as you're alive, what the hell's been going on?' She looked behind Malcolm and me and her eyes widened. 'The whole bloody tribe come to the wake?' To Malcolm she said, 'You've the luck of the devil, you old bugger.'
Malcolm grinned at hera distinct sign of revival.
The three ex-wives eyed each other warily. Any mushy idea that the near-death of the man they'd all married and the near-destruction of the house they'd all managed might have brought them to sisterly sympathy was a total non-starter.
'Malcolm can come and stay with me, 'Joyce said.
'Certainly not,' Alicia said instantly, clearly alarmed. 'You can take your precious Ian. Malcolm can go with Gervase.'
'I won't have it,' Vivien said sharply. 'If Malcolm's going anywhere, it's fitting he should stay with Donald, his eldest son.'
Malcolm looked as if he didn't know whether to laugh or scream.
'He's staying with me,' I said. 'If he wants to.'
'In your flat?' Ferdinand asked.
I had an appalling vision of my flat disintegrating like Quantum but, unlike Quantum, killing people above and below. 'No, not there,' I said.
'Then where, darling?' Joyce asked.
'Wherever we happen to be.'
Lucy smiled. It was the sort of thing she was happy with. She pulled her big brown cloak closer round her large form and said that it sounded a thoroughly sensible proposal. The others looked at her as if she were retarded instead of the brains of the tribe.
'I'll go wherever I want to,' Malcolm said flatly, 'and with Ian.'
I collected a battery of baleful glares, all of them as ever afraid I would scoop their shares of the pool: all except Joyce, who wanted me to.
'As that's settled,' she said with a hint of maternal smugness which infuriated all the others, 'I want to see just how bad the damage is to the house.' She looked at me briefly. 'Come along, darling, you can show me.'
'Run along, mummy's boy,' Gervase said spitefully, smarting from having been spurned by Malcolm.
'Poor dear Ian, tied to mummy's apron strings.' Berenice's effort came out thick with detestation. 'Greedy little Ian.'
'it isn't fair,' Serena said plaintively. 'Ian gets everything, always. I think it's beastly.'
'Come on, darling, 'Joyce said. 'I'm waiting.'
I felt rebellious, tried to smother it, and sought for a different solution.
