Holiday (18 page)

‘I wouldn’t put you up for that. Clean linen – Dinner. You kicking your muddy feet round the carpets.’

‘Mrs Knight looks well on it.’

‘That’s all you think about.’

‘No. Their small holding will provide a living. This will spread the jam.’

They argued prices. Supermarkets charged here no less than those in London. Tourists flashed their loose coin and spread inflation, Meg argued. Fisher knew she didn’t care. Just as she’d please Mrs Knight by a townswoman’s expected raptures over the cade lamb, she’d get her own back on a husband who’d forgotten the map, who’d delivered her to this dust-dry hill top.

‘Why don’t you enjoy your holiday,’ he asked, ‘and forget other people?’

‘It hits you in the face.’

‘It hits you.’

He moodily lobbed three stones at the rock tower, hating the clang, the ricochet or the failure to reach target. Nobody else had climbed; they seemed alone in a dry stream-bed, chewing unpalatable bread and foreign apples.

‘You’re probably right,’ he said pacifically.

‘I don’t like to see people cheated.’

‘My impression is that Mrs Knight’s got her head screwed on. She knows what people will pay, what will fetch ’em in.’

‘We’re exploiting her.’

So she blurted away at him, accusing him of hypocrisy, a Britisher living at the expense of sweated labour, short life-expectancy, misery, plague. As he lay back in the brightness of the sky, springy grass under the hands clasped behind his head, he could barely believe she was serious. Yet she seemed so. Before long he feared she’d throw her scone at him, but he became drowsy, immune to the attack, not answering.

In the end, he’d reached out, touched her bare knee, expecting a repulse. He pushed, stroking up the smooth warmth of her thigh as she opened to him.

‘That’s all you believe in,’ she said.

‘Better than nothing.’

She answered his love there on the quiet top of the world, powerfully submissive under him, and then sat wide-eyed, sun-drunk, fulfilled, her head against his pack.

‘It’s hot,’ she hummed.

‘Don’t blame me for that.’

‘I shan’t argue.’

She laid herself flat, primly, her skirt smoothed down now, blouse fastened, fell asleep, quiet beautiful, no harshness, no plangency, naturally in the grass. She had discovered one belief he thought. That claim was shameful, but her temper, her principles had withered, flowered themselves out of existence.

Grass-stalk between teeth, he watched the birds swoop about the rocks, and the hints of mist smudge the far surface of the valley, and his wife asleep, red-bright hair heavy over her hand.

He posted his card to Meg, then fetched his car out for the first time this week.

It was four o’clock now and he’d little joy as he ran out of the town into the flat countryside along a road that seemed composed of sandy dust. Why he bothered he did not know. He stopped by a house, built out on its own, surrounded by sheds, hen-coops, while in the untended square of ground in front a broken boat lay, massive, but holed, paintwork grubbily overlaid with pale dirt. Nobody moved in the place; no dog barked, cat slunk. He wound the window down to brood on this dump.

The house which might have been lifted from an industrial town had at one time been daubed white, but now the paint peeled from the bricks as from the woodwork of the sash-windows, the dull green doors, the drainpipes.

Still nobody moved, as the sun’s brightness emphasised the shabby exterior, the litter, the trodden grass, the ruts. Fisher leaned out for relief, patted the hot metal of his car. On this Thursday he did not feel depression, merely inertia, a lack of determination. He had decided, in a rush, to spend a week at the seaside, the kind of holiday he’d not known since he was a boy, and here he lounged, bored, staring at a pile of old wood, slightly distracted by a buzzing by his head. That was all he could expect; he’d deserved it.

He pulled himself up short.

A week or two back he had walked out on his wife.

After a series of nightly quarrels, none serious taken singly, but indulged in by both with an energy that now seemed mad, he said, steadying his voice,

‘The best thing I can do is leave you to it.’

He wondered now in what sense he’d meant that. The words were clearly enunciated, in a moderate tone, demanding and deploying reason, and yet he had not designed them seriously, to be aswered. The sentence merely attacked his wife from a new direction, suggesting that he, unlike her was willing to discuss their dilemma, act with an eye to the advantage of both. Thus, put in her place, her shouts and insults, her flounces and swearing, tantrums, gestures were shown for what they were, the infantile behaviour of an unbalanced woman.

‘You go, then.’

‘I’m serious, Meg.’

‘What the bloody hell d’you think I am?’

He’d sat down, furious but determined to speak coldly. He’d considered the pattern in the carpet by his shoes, crossed his legs, interwined his fingers around his knees before looking at her.

‘I mean what I say, Meg.’

‘Do it, then.’

‘You realise just what this will mean, don’t you?’

As he’d spoken he knew immediately that he’d not a notion of the significance of this.

‘What’s it matter?’ she’d asked.

‘Do you want me to leave you?’

‘You know best. You always do.’

He’d noticed that her voice was as controlled as his, as cool, though her mouth seemed tightly held, almost frozen.

‘I’m asking you a question’ he’d said. ‘Do you want me to clear out?’

‘Make your own mind up.’

The quarrel appeared to be petering out but as he’d sat a fiercer anger had flared, perhaps at his own ineptitude, perhaps at Meg’s casual disregard as she touched her nose in front of a mirror.

‘Tomorrow,’ he’d said. The word barely lobbed out.

‘What?’ She continued her beauty treatment.

‘I’m going.’ His breath was constricted as if his chest has suddenly shrunk. The whole centre of his being seemed concentrated above his mouth, behind his nose, in a thick snot of ignorance.

‘Good riddance,’ she’d said. Childishly. And sat down.

He’d jumped, leapt from the room, slamming the door shut. He slept in the guest room, drove at nine o’clock across to the university where he’d found Bill Price-Jones already in his lab, and demanded room in his flat. Price-Jones, pulling faces stroking his beard, asked Fisher if he was doing right.

‘How in bloody hell do I know?’

‘I can provide you with a bunk and a sitting room. Does it make sense, though? Meg’s your wife. I’m not married.’

Bill’s thin voice, disconnected sentences, hurt.

‘I want to come,’ he’d said.

‘Please yourself.’

Price-Jones sighed, returned to his page of mathematics, pushing his spectacles up. Fisher, deserted, sidled from the room, stood in the corridor before the heavy door of the laboratory, under the neat gold lettering, Dr W. A. C. Price-Jones, before pushing off to fidget in the library over a book he could not bring himself to understand. Now he was committed, had announced his decision, if Bill had not already forgotten it under a welter of integral scrolls.

Now here, today, in front of this hutch of a house he reported progress to himself. In spite of the sun, mist seemed to seep from the land so that distant objects over the flat earth were blurred. He had the apartment to himself, for Bill was away at a scientific congress in Austria, but he had not stayed there, had come out on instinct to this razamataz of a place. But when, against liklihood. he’d run up against David Vernon on the first Sunday, he’d seen luck turn his way, his matrimonial problems settle. Then suspiciously he’d dismissed coincidence; Vernon had ferreted him out, had followed. His dismissed that summarily; whatever Vernon’s arts he’d not hypnotised his son-in-law into the pub. Fisher, in his car, tapping the door panel, enjoyed the notion. Thought-transference. Vernon, veins in forehead knotted with concentration, sweat dripping in, squeezing out the order over the resistant air, into the reluctant brain telepathically compelling him to go in.

A young man had come from the back of the house to stare suspiciously. Fisher raised a hand, so that the other, screwing his eyes, dawdled over.

‘You all right?’

Fisher thanked him.

‘Not broken down, nor nothing?’

Greasy hair, not long, but combed back into swathes. Overall, with three cheap biros in the breast-pocket. A heavy pair of unpolished army boots.

Fisher, at ease, began to question the man, who, with only a token of unwillingness, seemed glad of the company. Well, no, he didn’t live here; it was his dad’s house. No, not his own, rented. His dad had worked on the roads and the county council had provided him with the place, allowing him to keep it on his retirement. No, the road menders worked in gangs, nowadays, bounced out from the towns in lorries. Nobody would want to live in a dead-and-alive hole like this, would they? He was redundant, a month ago, but had another job laid on, starting next week, because his dad had had him apprenticed. He lived in Leicester, and he’d go back on Sat’day.

Fisher remarked on the quietness.

‘My dad don’t hardly speak since me mam died. Not half a dozen words from morning till night. Healthy, apart from rheumatism; can look after himself; strong as a horse at sixty-six, but surely, says nowt, don’t shave, lets the clothes rot on his back bit by bit.’

‘Does he get bread deliveries, meat, and the like? Groceries?’

‘No. Not exactly. He shops once a week. There’s a bus as comes past. You’d be surprised what he puts up with. He can eat bread as stale and as hard as stones.’

‘Not much of a life.’

‘None at all, if y’ask me.’

‘He’s independent, I suppose.’

‘Independent my bollocks. What good’s that? I’d sooner enjoy myself, get a bit of pleasure, cock my leg over a bit o’th’other any day than have y’r independence, or owt like it. He’s a silly old man, obstinate, that’s all. There’s an old people’s flat for him, for the asking, in the town.’

The man eyed Fisher’s car professionally, nodding approval.

Above the sky stretched misty blue in from the sun, faded, dusted with faint fog like the distant ground.

Fisher, sky-dazed head back, looked at the individual stockily at his side. Here, at it again, he’d met, questioned, made friendly contact with a stranger when he ought to have been at home on his knees to his wife.

‘The trouble is,’ the young man said, ‘that people like my dad get used to this sort of hole, and think they like it. It’s damp, it’s miles from anywhere; I’d as sooner live in the middle of a turnip field. But he thinks it’s what he wants.’

‘As long as he’s satisfied.’

‘Ay, but it won’t be long before he’s a nuisance. Ill all winter. Heart attacks. Prostate. I’ve seen ’em. Then they have to haul ’em out, lug ’em into hospitals. Social workers running hither and thither wasting petrol.’

‘What should happen?’

‘At seventy, seventy-five they should put the lot together in homes, where they can be looked after. And then they could let places like this rot and crumble away.’

‘Would you like it to happen to you?’

‘At that age, I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You won’t be popular.’

The young man wiped his chin hard with the palm of his left hand as if deciding whether or not Fisher was worth arguing with.

‘I’ve seen old ’uns. They crack up. And in my dad’s case it won’t be long, I reckon. He was getting on when I was born. In his forties. And when he does get ill, I shall be expected to run up here and slave for him in every spare weekend I have.’

‘Who’ll expect it?’

‘He will, for one.’

‘And you?’

‘I don’t want to, I can tell you that.’ He ran his fingers back through his hair, leaving it in different, no tidier hunks. ‘I want a bit of pleasure out of my life. I work hard, and I’m entitled to it.’

‘What’s your pleasure?’

‘Same as yours. Drink, woman, bit o’ time on my back. I earn them.’

‘Because your father apprenticed you to a good trade.’

‘I’m not saying he’s not a decent man. He is. But as soon as he starts, or his body starts to pack in, he should be looked after.’

‘He’s a human being.’

‘What am I, then?’

‘We’ll all be old,’ Fisher said.

‘All the more reason for ’aving a fling while we can.’

A thumping on the window at the front of the house preceded pulling open of the plank door.

‘Who is it, Kevin?’ No one appeared yet at the first wide crack. ‘Who is it?’

‘A gentleman.’

‘What gentleman?’

‘One who’s just passin’.’ The young man mimed humorous exasperation. The door was pulled wider, with squeaking obstinacy.

‘Shall I light a fire?’

The old man appeared, powerfully built, dirty in ragged pullover. He’d been a somebody in his time, thrown his weight about, probably terrorised his lad. Now he stood, lines darkly deep into his face, a shy toothless grin like a beggar who knows his right but expects no alms.

‘Please yersen.’

‘What d’you think?’

‘Wouldn’t bother, if it was just for me.’

The father flapped his arms, shrugged indoors, squealed the protesting door shut.

‘You wouldn’t think a fire’d be necessary on a hot day like this,’ Kevin said, answering Fisher’s unasked query. ‘But in that hole, at night, it’s as wet as if the sea came oozing up.’

The two talked on about builders, houses, damp-courses and inevitably motor cars. The younger seemed glad of company, unwilling to let Fisher free.

‘Are you on holiday at Bealthorpe?’ he asked in the end. ‘I thought so. That’s a sewer for you, now. Shops and stalls. They’d have the clothes off your back to pay for a fivepenny orange.’

‘This is your holiday?’ Fisher asked.

‘It’ll have to be. And I’ll be glad to start work, I can tell you.’

‘You’re not fond of your father?’

The man stuck a finger noisily into his ear, poked roughly round, as if purging himself of Fisher’s impertinence.

‘How could you be?’

‘He was a bully?’

‘Ah. Bossed me about and my mother. Give us both a good hiding and think nothing of it.’