Think Ingrid Bergman in the closing moments of George Cukor’s Gaslight. Evil Gregory, who has lately been persuading his wife Paula, played by Bergman, that she is mad, is – owing to an elaborate series of events – now tied to a chair. He begs Paula to find a knife and cut him free. She, newly empowered, indulges in a little low-grade mental torture of her own, taunting the man who was once her oppressor.
So it was at the deathbed of Evil Rob, as he lay in his cheerless, cell-like bedroom in a flat in Penny Hassett. Evil Rob’s sheer, venomous nastiness remained fully intact to the end, despite the rapid approach of the grim reaper. “You’re not a proper mother! You’re aloof, you’re weak, you’re always whining about something!” And yet Helen somehow resisted his peremptorily issued command to suffocate him with a pillow. I rather wish Helen had succumbed, first because it would have made for an interesting moment, aurally speaking, and second, because I rather like it when Ambridge is wreathed in gothic fog. As it was, Evil Rob died all on his own without any outside help. He will be missed, at least by me: his moustache-twirling, snarling wickedness always brightened up Borsetshire’s beige.
