Holiday (27 page)

‘What was the tablet?’ he asked

‘I don’t know.’ That sounded true.

‘Librium? Valium? Something of the sort?’

‘I suppose so.’

Meg was pale, but calm, with one white hand outside the blanket. Her eyes were shadowed with a pale violet.

‘I think I ought to go,’ he said.

‘No. Please. They’ll think we haven’t tried.’

‘They?’

‘Daddy. Mummy. Kathleen.’

‘Have we?’ It seemed cruel, unneccessarily so. He began to qualify. ‘I mean. We’ve not said anything, have we? Important?’

‘Would you come back if I asked you?’

‘Yes.’

He did not know why he answered so eagerly. Politeness, a gesture towards her status as a patient. For the life of him, he did not seem able to feel. As a boy he’d once chewed a dog biscuit. tasteless and unappetising. He’d spat the mush into his hand.

‘That’s nice,’ Meg said. ‘Even if you don’t mean it.’

She delivered without energy, as if the intelligence were there, but not the drive, the fire. It sounded more like a schoolgirl than his wife.

‘It’s the truth. Or the best I can do.’ Why he made that graceless modification he did not know. ‘Why did you cry just now? Because I mentioned Donald? Or you did?’

‘Yes. In a way. I felt I owed something to you on Donald’s account.’

‘No, Meg. You don’t.’ Stern. ‘You can put that right out of your head.’

‘He was such a weakling, though.’

‘That wasn’t your fault.’

‘It wasn’t yours, was it?’ She sounded petulant. ‘He made such a poor start he never recovered. That’s what they said at the hospital.’

‘Nobody could have been a better mother.’ Doggedly, like a man asserting what he barely believed. ‘You did all possible.’

Without turning to him, in the same pinched voice, she asked,

‘Do you ever look at photographs of him?’

‘I’ve only the one in my wallet. Yes. I sometimes look at it.’

‘What do you think . . . of? Then? When you . . .? Her voice tailed off, not because she could not go further, but because her question was perfectly posed.

‘Hard to say. I look. I remember him. I have a sort of pang. It’s going. I wonder if it happened to me. He looks so healthy.’

‘Which picture is it?’

He fetched out his wallet, opened it so that the photograph was revealed in its oval leather frame. The child sat in the push-chair, grinning, face chubby, arms up. She took the wallet, glanced down, away, down again thrusting her head back as if she had difficulty in focusing.

‘Oh, yes. The one in the bobble-hat. You took it out here. He was so cross, strapped in. It was very cold.’

‘Was it?’

‘It snowed that evening. Not much. A few flakes.’

That scatter of snow he did not recall seemed as important to him now as the dead child. That lived in her mind. She closed the wallet and returned it, and as she did so, her face looked drained, bruised, deprived. They said no more for a few minutes, but sat in the warmth, not uncomfortably, but unrelaxed.

‘Has what’s-her-name been here long?’

He could not bring himself to name her.

‘Kathleen? About a week after you left.’

‘I didn’t know you were so friendly.’

‘We weren’t.’

They’d worked together at the same school. Indeed, Twining was still there as deputy head. Meg played with her wedding ring.

‘I rang her up one evening. I wanted to talk to somebody who’d not bully me. Daddy, oh, you know what he’s like. Kathleen’s nice, and full of ideas. If you’re down in the mouth, she gets you on to making a complicated gâteau, that sort of thing.’

‘It wouldn’t suit me.’

‘I would have said that. She comes Thursday morning and goes back to her flat just Tuesday and Wednesday.’

‘Why?’

‘To live her own life.’

He smiled, nearly laughed, thought better of it.

‘I’m glad you’ve come to some sort of arrangement.’

‘Are you all right with Dr. Price-Jones?’

He put up a few interesting sentences, describing his host whom she did not know well. It seemed important that he should do his best, provide her with neat cameos for her entertainment, make her see that he was an interesting man exerting himself on her behalf. In return, she smiled at one or two of Bill’s eccentricities and her husband’s turns of phrase so that he found himself rewarded, enjoying his moment, putting himself out further. While embroidering Price-Jones’s idiocies in his Rover, Edwin realised, with a cold start that she was not listening. He paused.

‘You’ve not heard a word I’ve said.’

‘I beg your pardon.’ Startled by the new tone, she turned.

‘Doesn’t matter,’

‘I was listening, Edwin.’

It sounded so pathetic that he thought of moving towards her, touching her, but she bunched herself in the corner of the settee as if shrinking from the liberty. Outside a car cruched gravel, the doorbell blasted; Twining tripped and there was subdued talk in the hall.

‘You’ve got visitors,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Perhaps I’d better go.’

‘You don’t know who it is?’ Her voice conveyed no liveliness. He waited, concentrating on the corner of a low cupboard, and beyond that to a corn-dolly, pert and straw-pale on the polished oak. ‘Don’t you recognise voices?’

‘Usually.’

‘My father and mother.’

Again, he decided on silence, squeezing her speech, but this time she clasped her hands, rather malely, between her knees and sat forward, back bowed, ugly, awkward. A door was closed elsewhere, while these two protracted the pause, both edgy, half intent on advantage.

‘Did you know they were coming?’ At long last; generous.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘They’ll . . . What do they expect?’

She puckered her forehead, pushed at her bright hair, as if she needed to concentrate on this, but smiled, gratefully, broadly.

‘You know David,’ she said. He’s worked it out. First we’re given the chance to straighten our affairs, but in the middle of it, he appears. A sort of spur. He’s a very good opinion of himself. The voice of reason.’

‘Is that right’

Her account seemed intelligent, as if she suddenly livened herself, made the effort, but now she flagged, minutely expressing unconcern with her expression.

‘I don’t know.’

He should have pressed her.

‘It seemed likely enough.’ Too late, He never repaired faults with Meg. Broken meant smashed irreparably. Though he was never sure.

On their honeymoon they’d been out for a walk, on a showery day, and though both were cold they hadn’t the energy to strike out, warm themselves. They hugged each other, kissed in bleak fields, under wind-stunted trees, but seemed dazed, unable to find exhilaration in the weather, the whip of the gale, rain’s slashing. They worked their way down to a valley where a muddy lane led between hawthorn hedges and through a farm yard.

Down there all stood quiet, with the air almost warm as they consulted their map. They differed over that; Meg wanted to climb back over the hill into the next valley where they’d meet a main road; he argued that they’d do better to move straight on past the farm on to a secondary road and back home that way. He was polite; meticulously he measured the distances, courteously asking her to check every calculation. By this way they saved a mile and a half and kept to moderately level ground. She yielded, grudgingly.

As soon as they set off he knew he’d done wrong to insist. It was not the superiority of his route, nor his proof of this she resented, but the mud on this lane. Puddles clouded brown, and the top half inch of the surface shone with moisture, as slippery as glass. She put her feet down gingerly; her stockings were already splattered black. As they trudged past the outhouses, dogs barked, fierce as wolves, while at the last gate, the ground stank with mud a foot deep, churned and pitted.

‘Oh, to be in England,’ he’d said.

The grey blackened, and for a few minutes hail raked their way, so they had to stand with their backs to the storm. His arm circled her, but she no longer responded, dabbed at her reddened face with a wet handkerchief.

‘I can see blue sky,’ he said. ‘Won’t last long.’

His trousers were soaked. She sniffed.

‘We’ve more shelter here than we’d have up the hillside.’

Again she ignored him, shaking drops from her hood, shivering. Her face shone paler now, waxy with wet, as they set out again through a lane filthy as the yard.

‘We’ll walk in single file by the hedge-bottom,’ he said, mounting a narrow bank above the level of the path. ‘Shall I go first?’

She did not answer but he heard her behind him, plodding, uttering little gasps of displeasure as she slithered or brought a thrash of raindrops down from the twigs in the hedge.

‘We’re making good time,’ he called back.

He did not believe it, fearing that his feet would go from under him and he’d be flat out in the sludge.

No reply, but the sniffs, the rustle of sleeve on anorak.

‘We might have a bit of sunshine yet.’

A cloud mass was touched with gold once at its edges before the wind tore them into smoke.

Thud of feet, mud-soled; sullen silence; disgruntled breathing.

‘When we get over this little ridge we should see the road,’ he said. ‘It can’t be more than a mile off.’

Swish of coat, sleeve; toggle swing; dissatisfaction.

Here the surface was solider, grass-covered, and Fisher began to leg it, half to spite Meg. He heard her yelp of fright, the thump as she fell, but took three steps before he turned. She was down in the lane, on one knee and both her hands in the muck. Black water oozed over the fingers. He took her under the left arm and heaved her to her feet. Without a word she stepped the six inches upwards to the bank.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

He could not see her face, turned from him in its darkening hood.

Savagely, clumsy, she dragged the gloves from her hands, squeezed the pair, black drop by drop, before she flung the ball of soiled cloth into the hedge bottom. Now she lifted her skirt. Her right knee was splashed with shining mud. Immediately he snatched at his handkerchief to join her gloves.

She laughed.

He made her wear his heavy mittens, and soon they’d reached the road, arm in arm splashing. Her mood was light; he sang. Another shower did not stop them, merely caused them to walk faster and vie with each other in swearing at the weather. By the time they reached their lodgings, an hour and a half later, moderation had set in, they were temperate, but warmly friendly. That proved their best day as they talked by the sitting room fire, making subdued love in the vast creaking bed, dropping to sleep in an embrace. He remembered now the silver fat raindrops on the black hedges, bouncing and flying, the wind’s energy, the whirling débris of the disturbed sky and their walking, their strut, his proud ‘Road to the Isles.’

She had laughed.

And as he’d wiped at that muddy knee, that sweet of sex, its juicy symbol, he’d known his role as husband. She’d fallen, without humiliation, switched from sulky anger to laughter which had saved him, cleansed his faults, sainted her, manned him in youth, crowned him, serf on the wrong track, lord of all.

Perhaps that would happen now.

‘What are you smiling about?’ she asked.

When he told her, she looked puzzled, had to be reminded grudging, admitted that it had happened, but offered no corroborative detail to encourage further reminiscence. As far as he could read her expression, it showed mild exasperation, embarrassment.

‘You’d come back?’ she asked again.

‘Yes.’

She waited, in anticipation of qualifying clauses, but he left it there.

‘I’m going away,’ she said, distantly.

‘From here?’

‘Of course.’ She frowned, without anger, at his stupidity.

‘To live?’

Now she sat nursing clasped hands between her knees, in reverie. This annoyed him, because he knew now she was not trying, did not consider him, had some trick up her sleeve, but he forced himself to stay still, to rummage in his head for nothing in particular, to make a creative work of staring at the carpet.

‘I shall go on holiday,’

‘That’s good.’ A bonhomie he did not feel. ‘Where will you go?’

‘In September,’ she said, ‘I shall go to India.’

That flattened him.

‘By air?’ he said, gasping for it.

‘Yes. The monsoon is over then, and I shall get the best of the weather.’

‘Are you going on your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it, is it a sort of, of package-deal?’

‘Not really.’

‘Isn’t it very expensive?’

‘Daddy will pay.’

That smacked down, reduced him in hope. Depression wrote his part. Daddy will pay. Edwin does not count. He poked a finger-end into his mouth and bit, gnawed the nail, the knuckle. He’d taken a week in Bealthorpe, in a boarding house, bed and breakfast with evening meal, h. and c. in bedroom, all mod. cons, while she made grandly for the gorgeous east, the Taj Mahal, Char Minah, Ajanta Caves, the Western Ghats, the Nilgiris. His geographical knowledge deserted him. Clive, Tipu Sahib, Akhbar, Warren Hastings, Zamindars, Gandhiji. History evaporated.

‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’ she asked.

He shook his head, sat rejected. Dejection weakened the whole of his body so that he dare not speak for fear his voice collapsed into a hoarse cry, a howl, a sob, a hiccough of tears. He stumbled up to his feet, wagging an explanatory hand towards her, shambled across to the door.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Back.’ The word barked, croaked.

‘You haven’t seen Daddy, yet.’

He rested his forehead on the cool white paint of the door, with no attempt to disguise his distress. There, beaten, aware of his posture, doing nothing to correct it, he bent forward like a figure from a film, shot at the prision wall. Meg seemed not to notice, continued with her hand-hugging, until she said, sharply,

‘Oh. Come and sit down, Edwin.’

The sentence was badly delivered. Oh. Come and sit. Down. Edwin.

‘I’m going,’ he said, forcing speech through his lips.

‘Why should you? That’s not reasonable.’

He moved so that he could see himself in the ornate mirror above the fireplace. Crumpled, but perfectly normal, tie slightly askew, he gloomed back at himself, diminished, but twinned now by the elongated Modigliani face behind him.