Read Online Life Class by Pat Barker - Free Book Online

she got her dressmaking dummy out of the spare room, and went on with a jacket she was making. She was actually humming under her breath as she draped cloth along its curved side. He lay on the sofa pretending to read, but then got his sketch-book out and started drawing her, because this gave him the excuse to do what he was compelled to do anyway: search her face. Her eyes. Her mouth, thinned suddenly to a hard line, bristling with pins. He didn’t know what to think.
    That was Sunday. On the Friday following, they got back to Teresa’s flat from an evening at the music hall, and found a letter on the doormat. No postage. Obviously delivered by hand. While Paul locked and bolted the door, Teresa carried the letter through into the living room.
    He found her standing by the mantelpiece with a sheet of flimsy blue paper in her hand. Wordlessly, she handed it to him.
    He read: I’LL KILL THE PAIR OF YOU – JACK
    The capital letters exactly filled the space between the lines so the impression was of a child’s handwriting exercise. ‘Are they all like this?’
    ‘Pretty much.’
    She was waiting to see how he’d react. He’d have given anything, at that moment, to have believed her, but even as he took her in his arms his mind whirred with suspicion. Capital letters. Why go to the trouble of disguising your handwriting and then add your name? It seemed stupid, but then, for all he knew, Halliday was stupid. He knew nothing about him. No, this was madness. He had to believe her. If she was lying now she was … What? Manipulative? Insane?
    She was smiling in triumph. ‘There, you see? I told you he was hanging round.’
    ‘Why do you think he sends them?’
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Do you think he’s drunk when he writes them?’
    ‘I don’t know. Probably.’
    ‘Did he always drink? I mean, when you first met him?’
    ‘You mean, did I drive him to it?’
    ‘No, of course not.’
    ‘Yes, he drank. Only it didn’t seem to have the same effect on him then. He just got a bit …’ A faint, unconscious smile. ‘Cuddly. But then after we married he started drinking more and … Well, if he was bad-tempered when he started it made him fifty times worse. Whatever he was feeling it made it worse. I’ve seen him sometimes, on a Saturday night, he’d have offered his own Granny out to fight.’
    ‘Where did he get the money?’
    ‘He worked for it. He was a furnace man. They work bloody hard. And they do need the drink. You see them come off shift, it’s straight across the road into the pub. They’ll sink five, six pints, think nothing of it, and they’re not drunk on it either. And if he was ever short of a few bob he only had to go bare-knuckle fighting. Take anybody on. The other lads used to lay bets on him.’
    The warmth faded from her face.
    ‘Have you got a photograph of him?’
    She looked puzzled. ‘Why?’
    ‘If he’s going to kill me I’d like to be able to recognize him. If you don’t mind?’
    She went to the sideboard, reached under a tablecloth in the top drawer, and brought out a photograph. It was a wedding portrait, the two of them together, standing outside a church. Teresa was plump, smiling, full of hope, pretty, but not beautiful as she was now. Halliday was tall, dark-haired, not bad-looking, though his head and neck were unusually long so that his shoulders seemed to be surmounted by a tower.
    Teresa stared at the photograph and her expression softened. Oh, she’d loved him once. How on earth had they got from the moment outside the church to where they were now?
    ‘I suppose he still loves you.’
    She waved the letter. ‘You call that love?’
    Her face was white and shrivelled. Coarse. For the first time she repelled him. Knowing it was the wrong thing to do, he began interrogating her. When had she left Halliday? How often did he turn up? When was the last time? She became restless under the questioning, and no wonder. He was being tedious, bad-mannered. No, worse than