Colin Dexter - Last Bus To Woodstock

At 5.30 on the afternoon of Saturday, 2 October, she stood at the sink with bitter thoughts. She had cooked poached eggs for tea ('What, again?') and was now washing up the sticky yellow plates. The children were glued to the television and wouldn't be bored again for an hour or so yet. Bernard (she ought to be thankful for small mercies) was cutting the privet hedge at the back of the house. She knew how he hated gardening, but that was one thing she was not going to do. She wished he would get a move on. The meticulous care he devoted to each square foot of the wretched hedge exasperated her. He'd be in soon to say his arms were aching. She looked at him. He was balding now and getting stout, but he was still, she supposed, an attractive man to some women. Until recently she had never regretted that she had married him fifteen years ago. Did she regret the children? She wasn't sure. From the time they were in arms she had been worried by her inability to gossip in easy, cosy terms with other mums about the precious little darlings. She had read a book on Mothercraft and came to the worrying conclusion that much of motherhood was distasteful to her — even nauseating. Her maternal instincts, she decided, were sadly underdeveloped. As the children grew into toddlers, she had enjoyed them more, and on occasion she had only little difficulty in convincing herself that she loved them both dearly. But now they seemed to be getting older and worse. Thoughtless, selfish and cheeky. Perhaps it was all her fault — or Bernard's. She looked out again as she stacked the last of the plates upright on the draining rack.

It was already getting dusk after another glorious day. She wondered, like the bees, if these warm days would never cease. . Bernard had managed to advance the neatly clipped and rounded hedge by half a foot in the last five minutes. She wondered what he was thinking about, but she knew that she couldn't ask him.

The truth was, and Margaret had descried it dimly for several years now, that they were drifting apart. Was that her fault, too? Did Bernard realize it? She thought he did. She wished she could leave him, leave everything and go off somewhere and start a new life. But of course she couldn't. She would have to stick it out. Unless something tragic happened — or was it until something tragic happened? And then she knew she would stand by him — in spite of everything.

Margaret wiped the formica tops around the sink, lit a cigarette and went to sit in the dining-room. She just could not face the petty arguments and the noise in the lounge. She picked up the book Bernard had been reading that afternoon, The Collected Works of Ernest Dowson . The name was vaguely familiar to her from her school-certificate days and she turned slowly through the poems until she found the lines her class had been made to learn. She was surprised how well she could recall them:

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,

But when the feast is finish'd and the lamps expire,

Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;

And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

She read them again and for the first time seemed to catch the rhythm of their magical sound. But what did they mean Forbidden fruits, a sort of languorous, illicit, painful delight. Of course, Bernard could tell her all about it. He spent his life exploring and expounding the beautiful world of poetry. But he wouldn't tell her because she couldn't ask.

It must have been an awful strain for Bernard meeting another woman once a week. How long had she known? Well, for certain, no more than a month or so. But in a strangely intuitive way, much longer than that. Six months? A year? Perhaps more. Not with that particular girl, but there may have been others. Her head was aching. But she'd taken so many codeine recently. Oh, let it ache! What a mess! Her mind was going round and round. Privet hedge, poached eggs, Ernest Dowson, Bernard, the tension and deceit of the past four days. My God! What was she going to do? It couldn't go on like this.

Bernard came in. 'My poor arms don't half ache!'

'Finished the hedge?'

'I'll finish it off in the morning. It's those abhorred shears. I shouldn't think they've been sharpened since we moved here.'

'You could always take them in.'

'And get 'em back in about six months.'

'You exaggerate.'

'I'll get it finished in the morning.'

'It'll probably be raining.'

'Well, we could do with a drop of rain. Have you seen the lawn? It's like the plains of Abyssinia.'

'You've never been to Abyssinia.'

The conversation dropped. Bernard went to his desk and took out some papers. 'I thought you'd be watching the telly.'

'I can't stick being with the children.'

Bernard looked at her sharply. She was near to tears. "No,' he said. 'I know what you mean.' He looked soberly and almost tenderly at Margaret. Margaret, his wife! Sometimes he treated her so thoughtlessly, so very thoughtlessly. He walked across and laid a hand on her shoulder.

'They're pretty insufferable, aren't they? But don't worry about it. All kids are the same. I'll tell you what. .'

'Oh, don't bother! You've made all those promises before. I don't care. I don't care, I tell you. As far as I'm concerned they can go to hell — and you with them!'

She began to sob convulsively and ran from the room. He heard her go into their bedroom above, and listened as the sobs continued. He put his head in his hands. He would have to do something, and he would have to do it very soon. He was in real danger now of losing everything. He might even have lost it already. . Could he tell Margaret everything? She would never, never forgive him. What about the police? He'd almost told them, or, at least, he'd almost told them part of it. He looked down at Dowson's works and saw where the page was open. He knew that Margaret had been reading it and his eyes fell upon the same poem:

Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;

But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

When I awoke and found the dawn was gray:

I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.

Yes, it had been sweet enough, it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise; but how sour it tasted now. It would have been a huge relief to have ended it all long ago, above all to have broken free from the web of lies and deceit he had spun around himself. Yet how beguiling had been the prospect of those extra-marital delights. Conscience. Damned conscience. Nurtured in a sensitive school. Fatal.

Though not a believer himself, Bernard conceded the empirical truth of the Pauline assertion that the wages of sin is death. He wanted desperately to be rid of the guilt and the remorse, and remembered vaguely from his school days in the bible-class how lustily they had all given voice to many a chorus on sin:

Though your sins be as scarlet, scarlet, scarlet,

They shall be whiter, yea whiter than snow.

But he couldn't pray these days — his spirit was parched and desolate. His primitive, eager religiosity was dulled now and overlaid with a deep and hard veneer of learning, culture and cynicism. He was well rehearsed in all the theological paradoxes, and the fizz of academic controversy was no longer a delight. Whiter than snow, indeed! More like the driven slush.

He walked over to the window which looked out on to the quiet road. Lights shone in most of the windows. A few people walked past; a neighbour was taking his dog to foul some other pavement. An L-driver was struggling to turn her car around, and was painfully succeeding, though the line of symmetry through MAC's Self-drive Zodiac rarely progressed more than seven or eight degrees at any one manoeuvre. More like a thirty-three point turn, he thought. The instructor must be a patient chap. He had tried to teach Margaret to drive once. . Still, he had made up for that. She had her own Mini now. He watched for several minutes. A man walked by, but though he thought he seemed familiar, Bernard didn't recognize him. He wondered who he was and where he was going, and kept him in sight until he turned right into Charlton Road.