The Likes of Us (32 page)

He waved his hand. ‘The fact that you're sensible about it is something.' He paused. ‘You are a virgin?'

‘Yes.'

‘You've played tennis, ridden a little, led an active life... You should be all right in that respect. As to the other matter, I'm afraid there's not much I can suggest.' He coughed. ‘At this stage, it should be up to him.'

‘But I can't broach the subject till it happens. And if he hasn't
–
'

‘Do you know anything about the so-called safe periods?'

‘A little.'

‘All I can say is rely on that until you can discuss the other ways with him.'

‘But how do I know it will happen during...?' Madge stopped. She knew he'd seen through her. She didn't care. It was her business.

‘It's a risk, though, isn't it?' she said.

He swung round in his swivel chair and looked directly at her.

‘I take it you intend to marry the young man?'

‘Oh, yes. When he asks me.'

It happened some weeks later, when Adam Greenaway was absent on business and Madge had the house to herself. They came back from a cinema and sat drinking gin and tonic on the sofa in front of the fire. They held hands and Collins kissed her. Before long, he put aside his glass, took Madge's from her, and pushed her back into the cushions.

In a few moments Madge said firmly, ‘No!'

Collins drew away at once. ‘What's wrong?'

‘This sordid fumbling. It's like kids with mum and dad in the other room.' She got up and stood by the fire. ‘Do you seriously want me, Edgar?'

‘I've wanted you for ages.'

She turned and looked at him levelly before speaking again.

‘Will you give me five minutes and then come up? It's the door facing the stairs, at the end of the corridor.'

She went quickly up to her room and took off her clothes. She stood then before the full-length glass in the wardrobe door and looked at herself. Her body was one she need not be ashamed of. She wondered if she should let Collins see it now. But that, she thought, was altogether too brazen. She shivered and, turning back the sheets, got into bed, leaving only the bedside light.

Collins tapped on the door before coming in. She did not look at him and he said nothing. The rustle of his undressing was followed by a long pause because she felt his weight on the bed. Then he slid down beside her and switched off the light. He felt for her in the darkness, his hands soft and light in their touch. ‘Oh, Madge, Madge, you're so very beautiful.' His breath on her face smelled of pipe tobacco and gin.

‘Am I?'

His mouth felt for her breasts. It was a gamble for her. It could go wrong now in the worst possible way, make her a conquest, available again. It wasn't comfortable, either. There must be more to it than this. She stiffened under him and caught her breath.

‘I'm hurting you.'

‘No, it's all right. It's just that I've never…'

‘Never?' Collins asked.

She shook her head against the pillow. ‘No.'

‘Darling Madge. I love you.'

‘Oh, do you, Edgar?'

‘Madge... will you marry me?'

Her mouth curved as she smiled in the darkness.

‘Yes, Edgar. Oh, yes.'

Some time later she felt the shaking of his body beside her.

‘Edgar… what's the matter?'

He was laughing!

‘Oh, God,' he said at last. ‘I was beginning to think I'd never find the nerve to ask you.'

They were married in the parish church. Edgar Collins' parents and other members of his family came up from the Midlands. Madge's sisters, Catherine and Angela, were matrons of honour, and she had three bridesmaids as well. Women shoppers stood in their dozens along the churchyard railings while photographs were taken on the sun-dappled lawn. Afterwards, a string of hired limousines and private cars drove fifteen miles to Beech Hall Country Club, which was known for the skill with which it handled private functions such as this. The champagne flowed without stint and those guests who, having travelled some distance, had eaten early or not at all sat down to the wedding breakfast in a fuddled but happy state of mind. Adam Greenaway had spared nothing in giving his firstborn, the last-to-be-married daughter, a splendid send-off.

In the late afternoon, Madge and Edgar Collins drove to London where they stayed the night. The next morning they went on to Lydd and flew with their car to Le Touquet. From there they motored south, staying single nights in towns which took their fancy along the route:
Troyes, Dijon, Valence and finally Arles. They had intended to go right down on to the C
ô
te d'Azur, but Arles charmed them and thinking of the crowds they would find on the coast they decided to stay there until it was time for them to go north again. Apart from excursions into the countryside and to nearby towns the pattern of their days was quiet and leisurely. In the mornings they walked about the town, looking at the Roman remains and the shops, Edgar talking a lot about Gauguin and Van Gogh; in the evenings they ate dinner in a small but admirable restaurant they had found by the Rh
ô
ne bridge, then drank liqueurs and coffee sitting at a pavement table outside one of the caf
é
s along the Marseilles road. During the afternoons, in the fiercest heat of the day, they stayed in the hotel near the Place du Forum, lying naked on one of the two wide beds in their room, making love then sleeping, with the shutters open onto a small sunlit courtyard.

Observing the sensuality that frequent lovemaking had kindled in her after all the years of abstinence, Madge was both involved and detached. She knew that Collins was madly in love with her body, living in a state of heightened sexual awareness that the tautening of the line of her breast or the movement of her thighs under her light skirts could explode into urgent desire; and if she were to be proficient in satisfying him it was as well that she should enjoy it also. Yet even in the moments when they were most closely locked together there was a part of her which stood outside and observed it all as a performance. She observed and judged and found it satisfactory.

 

The old man Collins worked with died and Collins took over the business. His affairs began to prosper. He had for a long time chafed under the restrictions the old man's conservative attitude had imposed on the firm; now he began to strike out after more ambitious jobs, and get them. He designed a new bus station for the town where his office was, and a small shopping precinct with flats. He found bigger premises, hired more staff, and was called in as consultant to the Borough Surveyor's department when several blocks of multi-storey flats were planned for a slum-clearance area. Madge's judgement in marrying him was vindicated. Collins was known as a coming man, and, what was more, one who was getting on through his own energy and ability. Madge encouraged him at every step, and when it was advantageous for his professional and private lives to overlap she was there with her direct support, ever the courteous and discerning hostess. If some of their guests felt a certain abrasiveness behind her charm, it was a not unfitting complement to Collins' own quiet unassuming warmth. Others succumbed without reservation. ‘A delightful couple.' ‘He's lucky to have a wife like that. It's hard luck when a man starts to climb and his wife can't keep up.'
‘
They're so very polite to each other, too. I wonder if they're like that in private.'

They were. For by this time what the world saw of them together was virtually all there was to be seen.

Two years after their marriage, Madge Collins lost a child through a miscarriage in her third month. The bad time she suffered then and the warning of a specialist about the dangers of another pregnancy were enough to kill her already failing sexual appetite. It had been pleasant enough for a time, but even in those very early days when she had most enjoyed the act some fastidious side of her nature had recoiled from so blatant an offering of herself. Once – just once – when Collins had reached and exposed a nerve she had not known she possessed, what she remembered afterwards was not the ecstasy but, with shame, the moment when she had yelled, and reared under him, and he had seen her lost. So, little by little, during the subsequent years she discouraged their intimacies, and without encouragement Collins' desires, too, seemed to die.

But in this assumption she was mistaken, and the revelation of her error shook her as nothing ever had before.

When their guests had left on that evening Collins stood looking into the sitting-room fire while Madge plumped up cushions and emptied ashtrays before sinking into a chair and lighting the last cigarette of the day.

‘What would you say if I told you I had a mistress?' Collins turned as he spoke.

She didn't think she could have heard him properly. She looked at him. Her heart had quickened its beat to an uncomfortable rate.

‘Are you serious, Edgar?'

‘What would you say?'

‘I take it it is a hypothetical question?'

‘Would you mind? I mean, we haven't been lovers for years now.'

‘I certainly wouldn't share you with anyone.'

‘Not even though she wouldn't be taking anything you want for yourself?'

‘I'm your wife, Edgar. I want, and expect, my due.'

‘You mean you must own all of me so that the parts you're not interested in you can accept or reject as you like.'

‘You're talking in riddles, Edgar.'

‘Was it really the fear of becoming pregnant that turned you away from me, or did you just never enjoy it as I did?'

‘We had our... our time of passion; I thought we'd both settled happily into a relationship of affection and mutual respect.'

‘I'm sorry,' Collins said. ‘It's not good enough. And it's much too late to remedy it now. Perhaps at one time, if I'd been a bit more persistent... But I hated to think you were doing anything against your will. Humouring me. “Being nice”, they call it, don't they?'

‘So you're trying to tell me you've found consolation elsewhere?' She must keep calm; not let him suspect the panic growing in her.

‘The question was – would you mind?'

‘And I believe I answered that by saying I wouldn't share you.'

Collins rattled a box of matches on the mantelshelf with the tips of his fingers. ‘No,' he said eventually. ‘Neither will she, not any longer.'

‘You mean there really is somebody? What are you telling me this for? Are you trying to punish me for something?'

‘I'm coming round to telling you that I want to leave you.'

She was proud of herself. It was really admirable the way she held herself in, taking this bombshell with no more sign of distress than a deep sigh.

‘Is she someone I know?'

‘No.'

‘How old is she?'

‘Twenty-five.'

‘Pretty?'

He shrugged. ‘So-so.'

‘Prettier than I am?'

‘It's not the point.'

‘Younger, anyway.'

‘That's not the point, either. I love her.'

‘You used to say you loved me.'

‘Oh, yes, I did.'

‘But not any more?'

‘I'm not satisfied with the way our marriage has gone, Madge. There was a time when I thought that if only I could get you there'd be nothing I couldn't do. But it's sterile – all surface show, appearances.'

‘You miss not having children?'

‘I do, of course I do, but that wouldn't have mattered so much if I'd still had you.'

‘You've got me. I'm not the one who's talking of leaving.'

‘Madge, we don't live together, we live side by side.'

‘I just don't know how we've come to this, Edgar. I never realised, not for one moment, that you were so... so unhappy.'

‘It happened gradually,' Collins said, ‘through all the years when you pulled away from me and into yourself. Even before that; even in the very early days when just some little unconscious movement would make me tremble with wanting you. Even then I knew there was a part of you holding back. As though you felt you'd lose something absolutely vital to yourself if you ever really gave yourself up to me. Marriage to you is a social convenience. I don't think you were ever capable of the kind of relationship I hoped for and needed.'

‘Thank you for telling me. What do you intend to do?'

‘Leave here, give you the evidence you need, and ask you to divorce me.'

‘Where will you go?'

‘I have a flat. I've had it for some time. It's furnished and ready for me to move into.'

‘My God, Edgar, you have got it all worked out, haven't you? Well, go and live in your little love-nest and take her with you; but if you plan to marry her you'd better tell her she'll have to wait a long time, because you'll get no divorce from me.'

‘I hoped you'd see it more reasonably than that.'

‘Did you expect my blessing?'

‘Madge, you're like a selfish child with a cupboard full of dolls. You don't play with most of them but you wouldn't dream of giving them to someone more needy than yourself.'

‘I need you. Does that satisfy you?'

‘You need me for what? Look, I'm a living, breathing human being. I want someone I can cling to, who'll cling to me. I want
warmth
, Madge, and tenderness. I want
love
, not a social contract, an arrangement for the eyes of the world. I'm stifling, Madge, and I want
life
.'

‘And what about me? What do I get?'

‘You've got yourself,' he said. ‘You've taken good care of that, and it's all you've ever needed.'