3. 6 Six months of suspense
I suppose it was, by their standards, quite a whirlwind romance that culminated in their getting married six months or so later, but it wasn’t at all the straightforward business that Angie and I anticipated.
I was half expecting Richard to announce their engagement when he came into work the Monday after being released from captivity, but he made no mention at all of Bernie or of the fact, which Eddie had imparted to us, following his own personal surveillance operation, that his car had spent the whole weekend from Friday afternoon to Monday morning parked outside Bernie’s house. The only perceptible difference that the events of the previous week appeared to have made to Richard was that he seemed somehow serene and confident in a way that he had not previously. It’s hard to describe, because it’s not as if he used to be jumpy or had ever lacked confidence in his own abilities, but there was definitely something there that he hadn’t had before. Looking back, and knowing so much more about him, I think he had at last started to believe that it might be possible for someone to really care about him for himself.
Angie and I had a frustrating time over the next few months as we watched the romance – if you can describe it as that – between Richard and Bernie going nowhere fast. Bernie was Angie’s best friend and she naturally wanted to see her settled happily in a permanent relationship. Although Richard was my boss, he had also become a good friend of mine and I’d often thought how sad it was that he had never appeared to have any sort of life outside of his job. So we were both rooting for them to get it together and were both disappointed that it was taking them so long.
They continued to share meals together four days a week – and I rather fancy they often spent most of the weekend together as well – but, as far as we could tell, through judicious spying – they were always both safely back in their own separate homes each night. And Richard continued to come alone to all those formal events for senior officers that included and invitation to bring a partner.
I don’t know whether Richard would ever had got round to popping the question if it hadn’t been for an incident that provided the final push for him into realisation that, whatever he might think, someone did actually care about him.
You may remember that Bernie had been engaged before – as an undergraduate – and that her fiancé had killed himself. The upshot of all that was that Bernie had formed a close relationship with the boy’s parents, Stan and Sylvia Corbridge. They lived in Newcastle-upon-Tyne – way up in the North East –, which meant that Bernie only got to see them once or twice a year. Both of her own parents were dead and they had no other children, so Bernie saw herself as having some sort of filial responsibility for them. She’d mentioned to Angie years previously that she’d like to find a job up there so that she could move closer to them. I think that, as well as jus for friendship’s sake, she felt that she had an obligation to look after them in their old age, when it came.
Anyway, there was this professorship advertised at the university up there and Bernie applied. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried, but this time she was shortlisted. I remember her being very nervous of going to the interview because there was so much hanging on it. Angie was round at Bernie’s when the phone call came through offering her the job, and she told me about it afterwards. Bernie went very white and then flushed red in confusion and said, in a very small voice, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve decided I don’t want to leave Oxford after all.’
According to Angie, there was quite a long conversation in which the person at the other end of the line appeared to be trying to persuade Bernie to change her mind, but she held her ground, while apologising profusely wasting their time, told them that her decision was for personal reasons and, a minute or two later, put the phone down.
Well! You can imagine what conclusions Angie drew from all that. I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased that she wasn’t going off and leaving Richard or annoyed that she’d had to give up both a step up in her career and the opportunity to move closer to Stan and Sylvia, who were such old friends and probably more deserving in many ways than Richard. Richard was already old enough to retire from the Police Service if he had a mind to, so why couldn’t he move up to Newcastle with her? (Not that I wanted either of them to go, but it seemed the obvious solution.)
The final straw for me came later that week, when Richard and I were at lunch in the canteen. I was trying to make small talk and I happened to ask about what he was doing at the weekend. He told me he was taking Bernie out to cheer her up after missing out on the Newcastle job.
She hadn’t told him, had she? She hadn’t told him that she’d been offered the job, because she didn’t want him to know that she’d turned it down in order to stay in Oxford with him. All she’d said to Richard was that she wouldn’t be moving to Newcastle after all, and he’d naturally assumed that her application had been unsuccessful.
I wasn’t sure which of them I was most angry and frustrated with: Bernie for not being honest with Richard for fear of hurting him by making him feel guilty that he’d messed up her career, or Richard for not being able to see how much she cared about him. Why couldn’t he have told her before the interview that, if she got the job, he’d move up there with her? I’m sure that’s what he would have wanted to do – except that, I suppose he would have thought it was presumptuous of him to imagine that she would want him to!
Anyway, something snapped and I gave him a right rollicking over his denseness in not seeing what was going on. I spelled out to him the fact that Bernie had turned the job down, even though the university were very keen to get her to come. I told him in words of one syllabus that she had decided to stay in Oxford in order to be with him. He looked sort of bewildered and didn’t seem able to believe me. Then he went and shut himself up in his office with strict instructions that he wasn’t to be disturbed, because he had an important report to write.
About half an hour later, he came out and headed off down the stairs without speaking to anyone. He was back again after an hour or so, still saying nothing, but there was something about him that was different. The important report was apparently not important any more and he spent the rest of the afternoon do the rounds of all his senior officers, checking how they were progressing with the work in hand and offering advice. When it came to me, he called me into his room and closed the door. I waited for him to open the conversation, but he didn’t seem to know how to begin, so I started on an account of the spate of burglaries that I’d been investigating in Botley.
He showed polite interest, but clearly wasn’t really listening. After I’d had to repeat what I’d said a couple of times, he apologised and then, with apparently a great effort, blurted out that he and Bernie were getting married and would I be his Best Man? Of course, I was delighted – and so was Angie when Bernie told her alter that day. We both hoped that they would have a long and happy marriage. Obviously it couldn’t be a long as we might have wished for, because Richard was nearly twenty years older than Bernie, but he was very fit for his age and we never for a moment thought that he would be killed within a couple of years – but that’s another story.