Past Reason Hated

‘Some people say there’s no love in them, but I don’t agree. Sometimes I think it would be best if we were all childless. Childless and parentless.’ She caught the paradox and smiled. ‘Impossible, I realize. There’d be no one here to feel anything. I know I feel alone and it hurts because Caroline isn’t here. But at the same time I seem to be saying we’d all be better off without any feelings or any other attachments. I want it both ways, don’t I?’

‘Don’t we all? Look, this philosophy’s made me thirsty. I know it’s early, but how about a drink?’

Veronica laughed. ‘Have I driven you to drink already? All right, I’ll have a gin and tonic.’

Banks made his way down to the buffet car, holding on to the tops of seats to keep his balance in the rocking train. Most of the other passengers seemed to be business people with their heads buried deep in the Financial Times or briefcases full of papers open in front of them. One man even tapped away at the keys of a laptop computer. After a short queue, Banks got Veronica’s drink and a miniature Bell’s for himself. Going back one-handed was a little more difficult, but he made it without falling or dropping anything.

Back in his seat, he poured the drinks. They passed a small town: smoking chimneys; grimy factory yards stacked with pallets; a new red-brick school with hardly any windows; a roundabout; snow-covered playing fields as white as the rugby posts. The train’s rhythm was soothing, even if it wasn’t the same as the steam-train journeys Banks remembered taking with his father when he was young. The sound was different, and he missed the tangy smell of the smoke, the sight of it curling over trees by a wooded embankment where the track curved and he could see the engine through the window.

Veronica seemed content to sip her drink in silence. There was so much more he wanted to ask her, to understand about her relationship with Caroline Hartley, but he didn’t feel he could justify his questions. He thought of what she had said about a childless and parentless life and remembered the Philip Larkin poem, which he had recently reread. It was certainly depressing – the ending as much as the beginning – but he found something in the wit and gusto of Larkin’s colloquial style that brought a smile to the lips, too. Perhaps that was the secret of great art, it could engender more than one feeling in the spectator at the same time: tragedy and comedy, laughter and tears, irony and passion, hope and despair.

‘What’s your wife like?’

The suddenness of the question surprised Banks, and he guessed he must have shown it.

‘I’m sorry,’ Veronica went on quickly, blushing, ‘I hope I’m not being presumptuous.’

‘No. I was just thinking about something else, that’s all. My wife? Well, she’s just an inch or so shorter than I am. She’s slim, with an oval face, blonde hair and dark eyebrows, what I’d call a no-nonsense personality and… let me think…’

Veronica laughed and held up her hand. ‘No, no. That’ll do. I didn’t want a policeman’s description. I suppose I hadn’t thought how difficult it is to answer off the cuff like that. If anyone had asked me to describe Caroline I wouldn’t have known where to start.’

‘You did well enough earlier.’

‘But that was just scratching the surface.’

She drank some more gin and tonic and looked at her reflection in the window, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

‘I suppose my wife and I are still together,’ Banks said, ‘because she has always been determined and independent. She’d hate to be a housewife worrying about meals and threepence-off coupons in the papers. Some people might see that as a fault, but I don’t. It’s what she is and I wouldn’t want to turn her into some sort of chattel or slave. And she wouldn’t want to depend on me to entertain her or keep her happy. Oh, we’ve had some dull patches and a few close shaves on both sides, but I think we do pretty well.’

‘And you put it down to her independence?’

‘Mostly, yes. More an independent spirit, really. And intelligence. It’s very hard being a policeman’s wife. It’s not so much the worry, though that’s there, but the long absences and the unpredictability. I’ve seen plenty of marriages go down the tubes because the wife hasn’t been able to take it any more. But Sandra has always had a mind of her own. And a life of her own – photography, the gallery, friends, books. She doesn’t let herself get bored – she loves life too much – so I don’t feel I have to be around to entertain her or pay attention to her all the time.’

‘That sounds like Caroline and me. Though I suppose I depended on her quite a lot, especially at first. But she helped me become more independent, she and Ursula.’

Banks wondered why on earth he had opened up that way to Veronica. There was something about the woman he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A terrible honesty, a visible effort she made to communicate, to be open. She was working at living, not simply coasting through life like so many. She didn’t shirk experience, and Banks found it was impossible not to be as frank in return with someone like that. Was he letting his feelings overrun his judgement? After all, this woman could be a murderess.

‘How long had you known Caroline before you left your husband?’ Banks asked.

‘Known her? A few months, but mostly just casually.’

‘But how did you know how you felt, what you wanted to do?’

‘I just knew. Do you mean sexually?’

‘Well…’

‘I don’t know,’ she went on, cutting through his embarrassment. ‘Certainly it wasn’t anything I’d experienced or even thought about before. I suppose I must have, but I don’t remember. Of course, there were crushes and a little petting at school, but I imagine everyone indulges in that. I don’t know. It was awkward. We were at her flat and she just… took me. After that, I knew. I knew what had been missing in my life, what I had been repressing, if you like. And I knew I had to change things. I was buoyant with love and I suppose I expected Claude to understand when I told him.’

‘But he didn’t?’

‘It was the closest he ever came to hitting me.’

Banks remembered the ex-husband’s anger, his humiliation. ‘What happened?’

‘Oh, I know what I did wrong now. At least I think I do.’ She laughed at herself. ‘I was crazy with joy then. I expected him to feel happy for me. Can you believe that? Anyway, I moved out the next day and went to live with Caroline in her flat. Then he sold the house and left Eastvale. Later we got the little place on Oakwood Mews. The rest you know.’

‘And you never looked back.’

‘Never. I’d found what I was looking for.’

‘And now?’

Veronica’s face darkened. ‘Now I don’t know.’

‘But you wouldn’t go back to him?’

‘To Claude? I couldn’t do that. Even if he wanted to.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘No, whatever the future holds for me, it’s certainly not more of my miserable mistake of a past.’

In the silence that followed, Banks glanced out the window and was surprised to find the train was passing Peterborough. The landmarks were so familiar: the tall kiln chimneys of the brick factory growing straight from the ground; the white sign of the Great Northern Hotel against its charcoal-grey stone; the truncated cathedral tower.

‘What is it?’ Veronica asked. ‘You look so engrossed. Have you seen something?’

‘My home town,’ Banks explained. ‘Not much of a place, but mine own.’

Veronica laughed.

‘Where do you come from?’ Banks asked.

‘Crosby. Near Liverpool, but light-years away, really. It’s a horribly stuck-up suburb, at least it was then.’

‘I’d hardly say Peterborough was stuck-up,’ Banks said. Doesn’t your poet, Larkin, have something to say about childhood places?’

‘You’ve been doing your research, I see. Yes, he does. And he set it on a train journey like this. It’s very funny and very sad. It ends, “Nothing, like something, can happen anywhere.”’

‘Do you read a lot of poetry?’

‘Yes. Quite a bit.’

‘Do you read any journals?’

‘Some. The Poetry Review occasionally. Mostly I read old stuff. I prefer rhyme and metre, so I tend to stay away from contemporary work, except Larkin, Seamus Heaney and a couple of others, of course. That’s one area Caroline and I disagreed on. She liked free verse and I never could see the point of it. What was it Robert Frost said? Like playing tennis without a net?’

‘But you’ve never noticed Ruth Dunne’s name in print, never come across her work?’

Veronica tightened her lips and looked out the window She seemed irritated that Banks had broken the spell and plunged into what must have felt like an interrogation.

‘I don’t remember it, no. Why?’

‘I just wondered what kind of stuff she writes, and why Caroline didn’t tell you about her.’

‘Because she tended to be secretive about her past. Sketchy, anyway. I also suspect that maybe she didn’t want to make me jealous.’

‘Were they still seeing one another?’

‘As far as I know, Caroline made no trips to London while we were together, I haven’t even been myself for at least three years. No, I mean jealous of a past lover. It can happen, you know – people have even been jealous over dead lovers – and I was especially vulnerable, being in such a new and frightening relationship.’

‘Frightening?’

‘Well, yes. Of course. Especially at first. Do you imagine it was easy for me, with my background and my sheltered existence, to go to bed with a woman, to give up my marriage and live with one?’

‘Was there anyone else who might have been jealous enough of Caroline’s relationship with you?’

Veronica raised her eyebrows. ‘You’re never very far away from your job, are you? It makes it hard to trust you, to open up to you. I can never tell what you’re thinking from your expression.’

Banks laughed. ‘That’s because I’m a good poker player. But seriously, despite all evidence to the contrary, I am a human being. And I’d