A Rather English Marriage (40 page)

‘It's not a bit like the sums we did when I was a lad,' he said, feigning stupidity so that Joe would have to explain. ‘How do you work out these difficult figures?'

‘It's
easy
with a calculator,' Joe told him, and he demonstrated patiently how it was done, his stubby fingers and bitten nails darting confidently over the numbered rubber squares.

‘Isn't that cheating?' Roy asked. ‘Aren't you meant to work it out in your head? Mental arithmetic,
we
used to call it.'

‘
No
, Grandad!' Joe scoffed. ‘You do it on the calculator. Everyone does. It still doesn't mean it's a doddle ‘cos you have to get the working method right else it doesn't come out.'

Such moments made up for the loss of his peace and privacy. He hankered for an afternoon nap that was not punctuated by the background roar of TV laughter rising to a crescendo and dying down to shrill yappings of hysteria. On other days the theme tune from one of June's favourite programmes would nag insistently in his head, interrupting his thoughts, imposing itself until he eased his legs off the bed and abandoned all hope of sleep.

As September presaged October, the weather became raw. Roy found himself acutely aware of the progress of the seasons. The days shortened, the street lights came on earlier, people's windows turned to golden squares suddenly obliterated by drawn curtains. Up at the allotment his plants grew brown and died. Trees took on the fading bronze of autumn. All flesh is grass, he remembered from the funeral service, and his own wrinkled, laborious flesh seemed out of place next to the vigour and tautness of the boys' limbs. Roy felt sure they must find him physically repulsive and tried not to upset them by contact with his skin or his smell. He got up early to use the bathroom before anyone else was about, shuffling through his ablutions with a new disgust for his own bodily decay.

Grace and her lingering, pervasive presence had almost vanished. She had come to represent all the lost sweetness of his life; the happy, haloed times. Those days had ended with
Alan's trial, his prison sentence and his death – images which still cut like scissors through the tissue paper in which Roy's imagination tried to swathe them. He had apologized to June for his cruel accusation, and after that neither of them ever mentioned Alan's name. Occasionally Roy found himself thinking wistfully about Sheila.

One afternoon, well over a month since the day when Reginald had been taken away by ambulance, Roy arrived at The Cedars to find a number of large brown envelopes lying on the doormat. Might as well drop them off at the hospital, he thought. It was on his way home and he hadn't seen the Squadron Leader since that dramatic afternoon when they had all been gathered round his bed – Mrs Franks and His Lordship and Sister.

He took the lift to the third floor and walked into the ward. The bed was empty. He stopped one of the bustling nurses in mid-stride. ‘Where's the Squadron Leader?'

‘Who? Bed number four? He was moved to another ward, couple of days ago. I wasn't on shift. You'd better find Sister: she'll know.'

Roy found Sister, pen to her lips, scrutinizing a patient's chart, and waited meekly until she had finished.

She looked up. ‘Oh, it's you. You're Mr C-J's friend, if I remember? I'm very sorry to have to tell you he's had another stroke. It often happens that one follows another, especially if the patient hasn't had complete peace and quiet. We don't think this one is as serious as the first; but it's not a good sign. Just when he was doing so well! We can't keep him here much longer: we're desperately short of beds. You'll find him in ward number three – second on the left. He could do with cheering up – he's not had many visitors. But don't stay long and, whatever you do, don't excite him.'

Roy was shocked by the blank expression on the Squadron Leader's face. All his fighting spirit seemed to have gone. His mouth sagged open like that of a dead man, his hands lay slackly uncurled on top of the bedcover. Roy approached gingerly, half hoping to be able to leave the envelopes and go.

As he came close, Reginald's eyes opened.

‘Hey-o,' he said. ‘Ishyou.'

‘Hello, sir. I was up at your house just now, making sure everything was all right, and I thought I'd pop in with your letters, case any was urgent. How are you?'

The liquid sound Reggie uttered could have meant ‘lousy' or ‘drowsy'. ‘I won't stay long, sir. Sister said you mustn't be excited. I'm ever so sorry you had another attack. You was doing so well.'

Reggie made another wetly explosive noise: ‘passed out', perhaps; or more likely ‘bastard'. He held out his left hand for the letters, but hardly glanced at them before letting them fall on to the bed.

‘Is there any you'd like me to read out to you?' Roy inquired, but Reginald shook his head.

‘Keep your pecker up, Squadron Leader,' Roy urged. ‘You're not the sort to give in. I was saying to June, that's my daughter-in-law, the one who lives with me now, you remember? – her and the boys? – well, I was saying to June, he's got such spirit, one look at him and you can see why we won the Battle of Britain.'

Reginald ignored this. Without even attempting a smile he pulled at Roy's sleeve. Roy bent closer. Reggie tried to whisper something, but try as he might, Roy could not get his meaning.

‘It's warm?' he guessed. ‘Undone?'

Reginald made sketching gestures.

‘You want to write it down?'

Reggie nodded. Roy found an old envelope in his jacket pocket and a pencil on the bedside table. He propped Reggie up in bed, noticing how much lighter he was. In big wavy capitals, using his left hand, Reggie wrote: LIZ GONE. As though worn out by the effort, he fell back against the pillows and closed his eyes again.

Roy stayed beside the bed, trying to gather his thoughts.

‘You
remember that night we danced together, sir: New Year's Eve? That must have been a lonely sight, you and me,
two blokes dancing. But it wasn't too bad, was it? All the old songs. That was only six months after your wife died, and my Grace. We was getting better already. Or there was the evening we sat over dinner – terrific storm that night, unless I'm mistaken – and I told you the story of Grace and the goose? We forgot our troubles that night, didn't we, sir? There was other times, too, out on the back terrace. You'll see: things pass, no matter how bad it looks at first. They say time heals and it's true, honest to God. It'll be the same with Mrs Franks. Main thing now is for you to get
better
. Buck up, sir. You got to make up your mind to it, eh?'

Roy looked into Reginald's face for some flicker of acknowledgement, but there was none. He stood irresolutely beside the bed for another moment or two, then gripped the Squadron Leader's shoulder, patted his arm and said, ‘Chin up, sir!' Then he walked away.

The sight of the Squadron Leader brought so low, all the fight gone out of him, troubled Roy. His own heart had been bothering him lately. There was a roaring in his ears sometimes, a rhythmical thunder like the sound of the sea in a shell. Who would look after him if he had a stroke? Not June, that was certain. He booked an appointment with his doctor and spent an anxious hour in the waiting room amid the débris of winter colds and flu. Whining children were getting under people's feet, trying to play with broken plastic toys and being snapped at by their weary mothers. Why didn't they wipe their noses and tell them to
sit still?
he wondered. He picked up a copy of
Waterways World
but could not concentrate.

Finally it was his turn. He described his symptoms. The doctor took his blood pressure and said, ‘Nothing much wrong with that! Let's shine some light in your ears.' A chill, pointed tube was inserted into Roy's obediently inclined ears, first one side and then the other. He felt his heartbeat accelerate.

‘Problem solved!' said the doctor. ‘Cerumen, that's all it is. Build-up of wax in the ears. I'll give you some oil to dislodge it. You'll be surprised how much better you can hear afterwards, too.'

‘But my heart, doctor?' asked Roy.

‘Going like a metronome. Heart of man fifteen years younger. No worries there. You're in very good shape for your age. What are you? Seventy?'

‘Seventy-two – nearly seventy-three,' said Roy.

‘What did I tell you? Fit as a fiddle! Good for you.'

The doctor warmed some oil in a tiny phial, poured it into Roy's ears and plugged them with cotton wool.

‘Wait outside for ten minutes or so,' he said, ‘and that will melt the cerumen. Come back in between patients – I'll tell the nurse – and I'll syringe them for you. OK?'

‘Yes, doctor,' Roy said, docile and trusting.

When his ears had been syringed, wiped, inspected, shaken and tested – and it was true: he
could
hear better – the doctor scribbled something on to a prescription pad and tore it off.

‘Here you are. In case it builds up again. As an OAP you won't have anything to pay. Very good day to you, Mr Southgate.'

As he left the surgery, Roy felt light-hearted and proud of himself. He stopped at the chemist on his way home and picked up his prescription. He told June what the doctor had said. ‘Heart of a man fifteen years younger …' When the boys got home, he told them, too. ‘Your old Grandad's got the heart of a man fifteen years younger!'

Finally, June said, ‘Oh put a sock in it, Dad! We've all heard it by now.'

He was hurt, and retreated upstairs to write a letter to Vera.
She
would be glad to hear his news.

From his bedroom he could hear the television blaring more loudly than ever. The boys ought to be doing their homework, not watching rubbish. June was obviously in there with them, laughing away. Nobody takes responsibility round here except me, he thought querulously. She's almost as much of a child as they are! He heard the telephone ring, and opened his bedroom door.

‘I'll go!' June sang up the stairs, and called out to the boys, ‘Turn the blasted telly down, will you?'

He shut the door again, but with his newly cleaned ears he could hear what she was saying and it was evident that she was talking to a man.

‘All right, love,' Roy heard, ‘I'm impatient too, but it's not
easy
…' Then she lowered her voice, so that Roy couldn't catch her words. He went to his door and opened it a wedge.

‘I'll be down the pub later on, then,' she was saying, in a hoarse whisper. ‘I'll be there before closing time. He'll be asleep by then. Poor old sod: early to bed, early to rise – I don't know why he bothers. Kept saying all day long he's got the heart of a man fifteen years younger. What the hell
for?
I wanted to say. Might as well be dead as live like him. Still, if it weren't for him I'd never have met you, would I, eh? Think of that!'

There was a pause, and then she laughed. ‘He can babysit – not that he'll know it! Don't matter, so long as they're not alone. Wouldn't be the first time.' There was another pause, and then Roy, straining his ears, heard June say, ‘Me too, darling, me too. Well, see how it goes. I'm not promising. And I can't stay the whole night.'

Roy shut the door silently before the conversation ended. His face burned, partly from shame for having eavesdropped, partly from outrage at what he had heard. Alan was scarcely three months dead and already she was making secret assignations! It isn't right, he thought – and using me as their babysitter, too. He was tempted to go down and confront her, to reveal what he had heard, but he knew he was in the wrong. Least said, soonest mended: no good creating a fuss now. ‘Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves,' Grace would have said, and she'd have been right.

Hastily he finished off his letter to Vera:

So there it is, Vera, love: your old Dad's got the heart of a 55-year old! What do you think of that, not bad, eh? Well, that's all for now. June and the boys send their love. Next week I'll start Christmas shopping so you get the parcel in good time. Any ideas, better let me know quickly
.

Ever your loving Dad

He licked the three sides of the airletter and stuck it down, addressed it and walked downstairs. June was in the kitchen ironing a blouse.

‘Just nipping out to post this,' he said.

‘When will you be back?' she asked.

‘Won't be long. Might look in at the pub for a Guinness.'

‘But you'll be back to say goodnight to the boys?' she persisted.

‘Bound to be.'

He took his cap and jacket from the hallstand and walked out into the foggy October evening, banging the door on the hullabaloo that had taken over his quiet refuge, the home that he and Grace had built. We come a long way, he thought, me and her. I started off in a seaside boarding house, and Lord knows how many nights I had to sleep in the same bed with my Grandma, her snoring like a train letting off steam, and when I got too big for that, sleeping under the kitchen table to make room for any latecomer who could pay a bob or two for my bed. Grace came from respectable people; not church-goers – Quakers, they were, but hard-working folk. No luxuries for
us
as kiddies. From that early hardship we built our own comfort; from blunt words and no nonsense we taught each other tenderness; from uncertainty we created security, for each other and for the children. June is trampling over all that, undoing the effort of years with her slovenly ways.

It's not working, he thought, all four of us living together. He corrected himself: it's working for them but not for me. The boys are happier and healthier, cleaner and better behaved; even their language has improved. June's a long way from the chain-smoking slut she was that day when I broke the news about Alan and found her with her arms cut to pieces, blood oozing through the tissues she'd stuck all over herself. Face it, Roy: it's three against one. You can't throw them out. But oh, he thought, my peace is gone – how all my peace is gone!