Victoria Line, Central Line Read online

  VICTORIA LINE,

  CENTERAL LINE

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  Version 1.0

  Epub ISBN 9781409049180

  www.randomhouse.co.uk

  Published in the United Kingdom by Arrow Books in 2006

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Copyright © Maeve Binchy, 1978

  Maeve Binchy has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First published in the United Kingdom in 1983 by Century

  Arrow Books

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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  ISBN 9780099498636 (from Jan 2007)

  ISBN 0 09 949863 4

  Typeset by SX Composing DTP, Rayleigh, Essex

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Also by Maeve Binchy

  About the Author

  Praise for Victoria Line, Central Line

  Victoria Line

  Tottenham Hale

  Seven Sisters

  Finsbury Park

  Highbury & Islington

  King’s Cross

  Euston

  Warren Street

  Oxford Circus

  Green Park

  Victoria

  Pimlico

  Vauxhall

  Stockwell

  Brixton

  Central Line

  Shepherd’s Bush

  Holland Park

  Notting Hill Gate

  Queensway

  Lancaster Gate

  Marble Arch

  Bond Street

  Oxford Circus

  Tottenham Court Road

  Holborn

  Chancery Lane

  To Gordon

  with all my love

  VICTORIA LINE,

  CENTERAL LINE

  Maeve Binchy was born in County Dublin and was educated at the Holy Child Convent in Killiney and at University College Dublin. After a spell as a teacher in various girls’ schools, she joined the Irish Times, for which she wrote feature articles and columns. Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was published in 1982, and since then she has written more than a dozen novels and short-story collections, each one of them a bestseller. Several have been adapted for cinema and television, most notably Circle of Friends in 1995. She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement award at the British Book Awards in 1999. She is married to the writer and broadcaster Gordon Snell.

  Visit her website at www.maevebinchy.com

  Praise for Victoria Line, Central Line

  ‘Warm, witty and with a deep understanding of

  what makes us tick, it’s little wonder that Maeve

  Binchy’s bewitching stories have become world

  beaters’ OK Magazine

  ‘Full of warmth and pure delight’ Woman & Home

  Also by Maeve Binchy

  Fiction

  Light a Penny Candle

  Echoes

  The Lilac Bus

  Dublin 4

  Firefly Summer

  Circle of Friends

  The Copper Beech

  The Glass Lake

  Evening Class

  Tara Road

  Scarlet Feather

  Silver Wedding

  Quentins

  Nights of Rain and Stars

  Non-fiction

  Aches & Pains

  VICTORIA LINE

  TOTTENHAM HALE

  Amy watched six taxis avoid her and go deliberately towards other people. Then she began to realise she was suffering from advanced paranoia and that she had better cut her losses and take the tube home. She was already so late and angry, that the lurching crowded journey couldn’t make her much worse. And there was the danger that if she stood much longer on the side of the street being ignored by rush hour taxi drivers she might lose her small remaining ration of sanity. And she needed to hold on to what she had for tonight.

  Tonight Ed’s sister and her husband were coming to dinner. Tonight, for the first time, she would meet the Big Mama figure in Ed’s American family, the one they all bowed to, the one Ed had practically written to for permission to marry Amy. At the time Amy had thought it funny; she had even suggested that her dental reports and photostats of her GCE certificates be sent to New York. But three years later, after a period of watching Ed write his monthly letter to his big sister Bella, she found it less funny. She was never shown these letters and in pique she had opened one before posting it. It was an infantile report on how their life had been progressing since last month: childish details about the floor covering they had bought for the kitchen, aspirations that Ed’s salary would be reviewed and upped. Praise for a new dress that Amy had bought, minutiae about a picnic they had had with another couple. It had made Amy uneasy, because it had made Ed seem retarded. It was the kind of letter that a mother might expect from a small son who had gone off to summer camp, not something that a sister in far away America should need or want.

  Ed had been euphoric about the visit. It had been planned for over three months. Bella and her husband Blair were coming to London for three days as part of a European tour. They would arrive in the morning; they did not want to be met, they preferred to recover from their jet lag alone in the privacy of a good hotel with a comfortable bedroom and bathroom. Fully refreshed, at seven p.m. they would come and see their beloved Ed and welcome their new sister Amy to the family. Next day there would be a tour to Windsor and an evening at the theatre, with a dinner for the four of them; and on the Saturday morning, Amy might kindly take her new sister Bella shopping, and point out the best places, introduce her to the heads of departments in the better stores. They would have a super girly lunch, and then Bella and Blair would fly out of their lives to Paris.

  Normally
, on any ordinary Thursday, Amy came home from Harley Street, where she worked as a doctor’s receptionist, took off her shoes, put on her slippers, unpacked her shopping, organised a meal, lit the fire and then Ed would arrive home. Their evenings had begun to have a regular pattern. Ed came home tense and tired. Little by little, in front of the fire, he would unwind; little by little he relaxed his grip on the file of papers he had brought back from the office. He would have a sherry, his face would lose its lines; and then he would agree really that there was no point in trying to do too much work in the evening.

  With a glass of wine, he would say that the Labourer was worthy of his Hire, and he would expand about people being entitled to their leisure. And afterwards, he would carve away happily at the table he was making, or watch television, or do the crossword with Amy; and she realised happily that she was essential to him, because only her kind of understanding could make him uncoil and regard his life as a happy, unworrying thing.

  That was all before the threatened visit of Bella.

  For three months now, he hadn’t been able to relax. No matter how many blandishments and encouragements Amy put in his way, he seemed stressed and anxious. He was anxious on all fronts: Bella would think it strange that he hadn’t moved out of sales into middle management before this; he must show Bella what the structure of the company was, he must prove to her that he had done as much home work and extra work as he could possibly do. Every night his briefcase bulged with sheets of incomprehensible figures. But this wasn’t all. He couldn’t even concentrate on the office work, he would jump up and spot some defect in the house.

  ‘Heavens, Amy, that curtain rail is missing three hooks, can you fix it darling? Please.’

  Sometimes he said: ‘Before Bella comes’, sometimes he didn’t. He didn’t even need to, really. Amy knew.

  The phone mouthpiece was dirty, the bath-mat had got worn-looking, the window boxes needed repainting, the carving dish had one of its feet twisted the wrong way, the ice trays in the refrigerator were both cracked.

  About a dozen times, Amy had reacted and explained that Bella was not coming on a mission of inspection; she hadn’t flown the Atlantic to check the curtains, the telephone or the ice trays, she had come to see Ed. But his face just became more worried and he said that he would like things to be right.

  So right was everything, that Amy was almost a nervous wreck. The house had been polished within an inch of its life. A magnificent casserole was waiting to be reheated, good wine had been chosen, the table had been set before she left the house that morning. If Bella were to go through the house with a fleet of police specially trained in house-searches, nothing damaging could be revealed. No hidden mounds of rubbish or unsorted paraphernalia in any cupboard. If Bella decided to pull back the sitting-room carpet and examine the underlay she would not be able to find fault.

  Magazines and newspapers praising the excellence of this part of North London had been laid around strategically, so that Bella’s gaze could be diverted to them should she disapprove of the suburb where Ed and Amy lived. They had even alerted one set of neighbours of the possibility that they might take Bella and Blair over for a drink if they wanted to say ‘Hi’ to some local people.

  Amy had asked for the afternoon off, and she had spent it at the beautician’s. She had suggested it herself and Ed’s kind, worried face had lit up.

  ‘It’s not that you don’t look lovely already, Amy,’ he had said, afraid to offend her. ‘It’s just that . . . well, you know, I told Bella you were so groomed, and you know the photographs we send . . . well, we always send ones that make us look good.’

  Bella was no oil painting, Amy often thought in rage. She was downright plain; she was tall and rather severe. Her clothes in the pictures that Ed had shown her – photographs taken some years back – had been simple and neat with no concession to fashion. Why, then, had Ed spent nights deliberating over Amy’s wardrobe and planning what she should wear? Bella was a teacher, and Blair had some unspecified job in the same school, administration Ed thought, but he didn’t really give it any time. None of the family gave Blair any time, he was good to Bella as a consort. He was mute and supportive. That was all that was needed. Bella’s four younger brothers owed her everything. They would never have gone through school if she hadn’t urged them; they wouldn’t have got good jobs, and married suitable women without her wise influence; they would be nothings, hopeless orphans, rudderless, had not Bella persuaded the authorities to let her play Mama at the age of fifteen. Ed had only been five then, he couldn’t even remember the mother and father who went into a lake in a drunken motor-accident.

  Sometimes Amy wondered about the other sisters-in-law. Wasn’t it odd that the sons had all gone so far afield from beloved Bella? There was a brother who had gone to California – that was about as far as you could get from New York State; and one was in Vancouver, and one in Mexico, and Ed was in London. Amy suspected that her three sisters-in-law and she would get along famously. She felt sure they were united in a common hatred of Bella and what she was doing to their men.

  But no hint of this escaped in any of the family letters, all of which seemed to be full of Bella. When she had been in bed for three weeks with influenza, letters posted in San José, Vancouver and Mexico City had crashed on to the mat in Tottenham Hale giving the latest bulletins. The three brothers had written to Ed in terms of congratulation and encouragement once the visit of Bella to England had been announced. Bella’s own letters were short and terse, and offered little news of her own life, only praise or enquiry about the life of the recipient. The more Amy thought about her, the more she became convinced that Bella was mad.

  Now, beautifully coiffed, elegantly made-up, manicured, massaged at a cost which left her seething with rage, Amy stood on the platform waiting for the train to take her home to meet this monster. She got a couple of admiring looks which pleased her; a student pinched her bottom hard, which hurt her and annoyed her; but with confidence gained from parting with the huge sum of money to the beauty salon she said clearly and loudly, ‘Please don’t do that again,’ and everybody looked at the student who went scarlet and got out at the next station. Two men congratulated her and she felt pleased that she was becoming mature.

  She worked out that she would have two hours at home before the dreaded Bella arrived. That would be time to do the final fixing of the meal, have a bath and dress. Ed had taken the afternoon off and he was going to have arranged fresh flowers and done any last minute things.

  ‘Won’t she think it strange that you took time off work to do housework?’ asked Amy.

  ‘If she doesn’t ask, we mightn’t have to tell her,’ he said, giggling like a schoolboy.

  Amy told herself firmly that she was not a criminal, she hadn’t kidnapped Ed, she had loved him and married him. She looked after him well by any standards, she encouraged him when he felt down but she didn’t push him on to impossible heights. This appalling Bella couldn’t fault her on her performance, surely? And if that was all true, which it undoubtedly was, then why did she feel so apprehensive? The train gave a great lurch which flung all those still standing into each other’s arms. Carefully, they disentangled themselves, with little laughs and apologies; and it was a few moments before they realised that the train had actually stopped and they were not at a station.

  ‘That’s all we need,’ said a florid-looking man with a briefcase. ‘Told the wife I’d be home early, and now we’re going to be stuck here all night.’

  ‘Surely not?’ asked a woman who looked tired and miserable. She was carrying a heavy bag of shopping. ‘There’ll be nobody to let the children in,’ she added in a worried tone.

  Amy began to realize the situation. Every minute here was a minute less in the elaborate count-down for Bella’s arrival. If they were fifteen minutes delayed, then she might have to go without a bath. If they were half-an-hour delayed she might have to lose bath, and decorating the trifle. Her mind couldn’t take in anythin
g longer than half-an-hour’s delay.

  Very soon, a uniformed man came through the carriage assuring them that there was no danger, no crisis, but that there had been a fault which must be corrected, and that London Transport apologised infinitely but there would be a delay.

  No, he didn’t know how long the delay would be.

  Yes, he could assure them that there would be no danger.

  No, there was no possibility of another train running into them.

  Yes, he understood that it was a great inconvenience.

  No. There was no way of doing anything more quickly than it was already being done.

  Yes, people would be electrocuted and die if they stepped out on to the rails.

  ‘That would appear to be that,’ said the florid man. He looked at Amy appreciatively. ‘I suppose if we are to be marooned, I’m to be congratulated on finding such an elegant shipmate. I’m Gerald Brent by the way.’

  ‘I’m Amy Baker,’ said Amy smiling.

  ‘Mrs Baker, would you care to have a drink with me?’ said Gerald Brent. He took a bottle of wine out of his briefcase, a penknife with a corkscrew attachment, and the top of his vacuum flask.

  Laughing, Amy accepted.

  ‘I’ll drink from the other side,’ said Gerald.

  The well-known patience and docility of Londoners was beginning to be evident around the compartment. People were settling down to read the Standard and the News; one man was even having a little sleep of sorts; the worried woman had taken out a woman’s magazine and resigned herself.

  ‘Wife’s mother is coming to dinner,’ said Gerald. ‘Terrible old bat. I’m not sorry to miss her, really. Anyway, this wine is much too good for her. Have another drop.’

  Amy took the refill and looked at him to see if he was joking.

  ‘You don’t really think we’ll miss dinner, do you?’ she asked.

  ‘Bound to,’ said Gerald. He explained what must have gone wrong on the line, how a safety mechanism had worked properly but it would mean that it now had to be rewound by hand. They would have to bring personnel into the tunnel to do this.