6
The hearse had reached the outskirts of Saxby-on-Avon and, inevitably, its route took it past the entrance to Pye Hall with its stone griffins and now silent Lodge House. There was only one main road from Bath and to have approached the village any other way would have involved too much of a detour. Was there something unfortunate about carrying the dead woman past the very home where she had once lived? Had anyone asked them, the undertakers, Geoffrey Lanner and Martin Crane (both descended from the original founders) would have said quite the opposite. On the contrary, they would have insisted, is there not a certain symbolism in the coincidence, a sense even of closure? It was as if Mary Blakiston had come full circle.
Sitting in the back seat, and feeling sick and empty with the coffin lying behind him, Robert Blakiston glanced at his old house as if he had never seen it before. He did not turn his head to keep it in sight as they drove past. He did not even think about it. His mother had lived there. His mother was now dead, stretched out behind him. Robert was twenty-eight years old, pale and slender, with black hair cut short in a straight line that tracked across his forehead and continued in two perfect curves around each ear. He looked uncomfortable in the suit he was wearing, which was hardly surprising as it wasn’t his. It had been lent to him for the funeral. Robert did have a suit but his fiancée, Joy, had insisted that it wasn’t smart enough. She had managed to borrow a new suit from her father, which had been the cause of one argument, and had then persuaded him to wear it, which had led to another.
Joy was sitting next to him in the hearse. The two of them had barely spoken since they’d left Bath. Both of them were lost in their thoughts. Both of them were worried.
It sometimes seemed to Robert that he had been trying to escape from his mother almost from the day he had been born. He had actually grown up in the Lodge House, just the two of them living on top of each other, each of them dependent on the other but in different ways. He had nothing without her. She was nothing without him. Robert had gone to the local school where he had been considered a bright child, one that would do well if he could only set his mind to his studies a little more. He had few friends. It often worried the teachers to see him, standing on his own in the noisy playground, ignored by the other children. At the same time, it was completely understandable. There had been a tragedy when he was very young. His younger brother had died – a terrible accident – and his father had left the family soon afterwards, blaming himself. The sadness of it still clung to him and the other children avoided it as if they were afraid of becoming contaminated.
Robert never did very well in class. His teachers tried to make allowances for his poor behaviour and lack of progress, taking account of his circumstances, but even so they were secretly relieved when he reached sixteen and left. This, incidentally, had been in 1945, at the end of a war in which he had been too young to fight but which had taken his father away for long stretches of time. There were many children whose education had suffered and in that sense he was just another casualty. There was no question of his going to university. Even so, the year that followed was a disappointing one. He continued living with his mother, doing occasional odd jobs around the village. Everyone who knew him agreed that he was underselling himself. Despite everything, he was much too intelligent for that sort of life.
In the end it was Sir Magnus Pye – who employed Mary Blakiston and who had stood in loco parentis for the last seven years, who had persuaded Robert to get a proper job. On his return from National Service, Sir Magnus had helped him find an apprenticeship as a mechanic in the service department of the main Ford motorcar supplier in Bristol. Perhaps surprisingly, his mother had been far from grateful. It was the only time she ever argued with Sir Magnus. She was worried about Robert. She didn’t want him living alone in a distant city. She felt that Sir Magnus had acted without consulting her, even going behind her back.
It didn’t actually matter very much because the apprenticeship did not last long. Robert had been away for just three months when he went out drinking at a public house, the Blue Boar, in Brislington. He became involved in a fight, which turned nasty, and the police were called in. Robert was arrested and although he wasn’t charged, his employers took a dim view and ended the apprenticeship. Reluctantly, Robert came home again. His mother behaved as if she had somehow been vindicated. She had never wanted him to leave and if he had only listened to her, he would have saved them both a lot of trouble. It seemed to everyone who knew them that they never really got on well again from that day.
At least he had found his vocation. Robert liked cars and he was good at fixing them. As it happened, there was a vacancy for a full-time mechanic at the local garage and although Robert didn’t have quite enough experience, the owner had decided to give him a chance. The job didn’t pay much but it did offer accommodation in a small flat above the workshop as part of the package. That suited Robert very well. He had made it quite clear that he no longer wanted to live with his mother, that he found the Lodge House oppressive. He had moved into the flat and had been there ever since.