Holiday (10 page)

‘You talk just like your father,’ Fisher said.

‘I know. I do it to fluster you, darling.’

He could get no sense out of her in that mischievous frame of mind. Nevertheless, a wife looking and behaving publicly as Meg did was a social advantage. Moreover he was positive that if he left her, allowed her a divorce, it would not be long before she remarried, and this time made a success of it, with children, content, showing a settled face to the world. Even now in spite of his desperation, he could not bear that, because she belonged to him. He’d snatched her from rivals, and that was that; Mrs Fisher she was named.

She lived her life merely parallel to his.

Baffled, Fisher wondered if this were the case with others. At first, when she was teaching, she’d occasionally let drop some anecdote, but paid no more than perfunctory attention to his reciprocal pedagogic tidbits. To him it was odd that she never tried to derive common principles from his experience and hers; both did a job with similar grounds of interest but that was nothing to her.

When she became pregnant three years after their marriage, she seemed to withdraw more seriously or perhaps withold herself from him. She’d talk about the child, or her relaxation clinics, or visit to the hospital, would laugh about the old wives’ tales, but it all seemed a private business, between her and the baby. Pregnancy suited her; her pale skin shone healthily, her heavy hair took lively fire over the enormous swelling of her womb. But it concerned her alone.

‘Edwin’ll find his nose pushed out,’ Meg’s mother warned.

‘It is already.’

‘You’re number three,’ Vernon said. ‘We had no more than one. I couldn’t bear further relegation. I wouldn’t even let ’em have a dog.’

‘Or a goldfish.’ Meg.

‘My degradation was complete.’

‘Your selfishness, you mean’, his wife said.

‘Irene Vernon.’ He wagged a finger. ‘When we married I warned you that my instinct for self-preservation was strong.’

‘As if I didn’t know.’

One evening the house seemed unbearably quiet so that Fisher became uneasy. He called out for Meg. No answer. This was soon after they had moved into their present home on his appointment to the university’s education department, and neither was quite used yet to the spaciousness of either house or garden. Vernon had bought the place for them, arranged a private mortgage, so now, after their poky semi in London, they lived amongst the well-to-do. Fisher shouted again, not pleasantly; he’d been working all day on his research merely to discover that the last fortnight’s drudgery had been a waste of time. He needed somebody to talk to, not about his failure perhaps, but somebody with whom he could exchange words to show him that the universe had not combined in enmity against him. He knew his exaggeration, but dog-tired, depressed, he needed his wife to sit with him while they complained together about the television programmes until he felt human again.

He went into the garden. There one did not shout. He tried the little summerhouse, the privet hedge hiding the vegetable gardens, the shrubbery among ash and lime trees at the far end. What he did, pushing among winter-dark rhododendrons and laurels he would have been nonplussed to explain; in fact, he told himself he was childishly acting out his own perplexities, peering under bushes for a wife he knew would not be there. Cold, dispirited, feeling he had missed some clue, he kicked his muddy boots off indoors and began a round of the house.

All stood neat.

No scissors or knitting or dropped newspaper, open book indicated her prescence. The kitchen would have passed a barrack-inspection; in the lounge, dining and breakfast rooms every cushion was plumped, rounded. Only his study showed signs of occupation, the scattered dismal sheets of figures that spelt fourteen days of misused energy. He stumped upstairs.

The bedrooms were unoccupied.

He leaned for a moment with his hand violently clasping the rail of the cot they had bought second-hand in preparation. Angrily he shook the blue frame, and on the other side, the sliding panel clacked down, scaring him, puncturing his shoulder-blades with pain. He fastened the rail securely this time, glad of something to do, gaping at the transferred image of Donald Duck on the bed’s head.

Perhaps Meg was having a bath.

No sounds of tanks refilled. The bathroom was cold, unsteamy; the poreclain innocent of a drop of water. From the lavatory along the passage, he heard his wife gulp, sob, a large, uninhibited whoop of distress.

He moved there, called, stopped, spoke again.

Inside, she held silence, not giving herself away.

‘Meg, are you all right?’

Rattled the lock, gently, surprised at his shortage of breath, his fear.

‘Are you all right, Meg?’

The door was bolted so that this time he knocked, foolishly, with his finger-nails, cat-scratching.

‘Meg. Why don’t you answer?’ Exasperation retinted fear and embarrassment. Even in the seclusion of home, one did not appear at one’s best, whispering through a privy door. She sobbed, one huge sniffing heave of breath.

‘Open up, Meg.’

He waited, staring at the dulled sheen of the landing light on a leaded, stained-glass window.

‘Open the door, Meg. There’s a good girl.’

In the resultant silence, he felt daubed with foolishness. He had himself nothing to say, no opinion to offer as he stood staring downwards at the sea-green linoleum of the floor, so that when he heard the bolt move he floundered against the wall behind in relief. As his wife emerged, her hair pushed outwards, fingered into an expansion of untidiness, and her swollen belly seemed to account for the unsteadiness of her walk.

Fisher took her arm.

‘What is it, Meg?’

She sniffed, allowed herself to be conducted into the bedroom where they sat together on the edge of the double-bed.

‘What’s wrong?’

He knew he must ask these questions, soothing, stroking her back to normality. It appeared not difficult in the dark room. Finally, almost solemnly like a precocious child, she answered his reiterations, but in a whisper.

‘I feel so awful.’

‘Physically, do you mean?’

‘No. Not really. I just feel, feel, rotten.’

As soon as she’d outed the words, she began to cry, openly, without show. Her face rolled up with tears, but she did not make a disturbance, though her body shuddered now and then as if she expelled a fighting devil. Fisher held her shoulder with his right hand, smoothing the upper arm, then gripping her into him, strong and weak by turns, support and comfort.

Her hand groped beggar-like, but he, suddenly acute, recognised the signal and thrust his handkerchief there. Still crying, she mopped her face.

He had no idea what to say, but held her to him, leg against leg. Her shape bungled uncouth, smock rucked, stockings laddered as she sat so that to him she might have been a poor stranger. If he had known then what to do, he was made. She seemed in need, willing to sit in his embrace, borrow his handkerchief or strength. He began to be useful, but only marginally. There must be some line on conduct that could break the barrier between them, deepen mutual trust, confess interdependence, but if it existed, he did not know where, could not even begin to find it, unless this, this proximity, the silent negativeness of action encouraged its life. It did not do for him. He waited, undecided, inadequate.

‘What’s up, then, Meg?’ The colloquial approach masked uncertainty.

She shook her head, but it was a sign of revival.

‘This won’t do, y’know. Can’t have his nibs upset.’ He pointed at her womb.

Now she smiled, tentatively, with real bravery.

‘Come on, then.’ He put both arms around her, and her head, her wild hair, lay under his cheek. ‘Let’s hear all about it.’

‘I felt so awful. So low. I thought I’d die.’

She offered this diffidently enough to be believed.

‘I get so tired. And bored. I can’t sit down for a minute without my legs, and arms jumping on me. Jim-jams. And I feel like iron, stiff and heavy as lead. It’s all so long and so pointless. And I don’t have anybody to talk to, and you’re cooped up there with the work. Even at mealtimes, I can tell you’re thinking about it.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why should you be? It’s my fault. I ought to go out more but I’m so tired. It’s such a fag.’

‘I’ve neglected you,’ Fisher said. That seemed adequate.

‘No.’ A sharp word. ‘It’s silly to say that. You’ve got your work to do.’ She patted her stomach. ‘I’ve got mine.’ She straightened herself. ‘I feel better now. Honestly.’

She stood up, walked round the end of the bed, pulled the curtains to complete darkness, tugged the light-cord above, behind him, and squared up to the mirror.

‘I look a sight,’ she said, touching the ends of her hair comically with her palms. Then she brushed, two-handedly furious until she was satisfied, when she turned, tugged her smock and with a cocksure air said, ‘Let’s go downstairs.’

He took her arm, and she allowed it.

‘You must tell me what’s wrong,’ he said.

‘Nothing, really.’

‘Come on, now. Were you frightened? About the baby?’

‘No, no. I wasn’t.’ She began to walk him towards the door. ‘A bit edgy. Like anybody else, but nothing out of the way.’ Her voice laughed now. ‘I just get very tired, and it all seems too much. It’s silly. I’ll be glad when it’s over.’

‘And I neglect you.’ He made the effort.

‘I don’t think so. You can’t sit at home all day holding my hand.’

‘I can talk to you at mealtimes. Go shopping with you.’

‘Suppose you could.’ She looked over. ‘Wouldn’t be you, though.’

Now they stood at the top of the stairs, where she disengaged herself, easily, charmingly from his grasp to walk down. He noticed she kept her hand, well-manicured, on the banister to help balance, but she had recovered, broken away from him, refortified herself with herself. He followed in frustration and relief. The status quo, unsatisfactory or not, could be put up with.

‘I’ll make you a cup of coffee,’ he said, loudly assertive.

‘No. I’d like lemon and barley, please.’

‘It’s cold, Meg. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘I’ve got my baby to keep me warm.’

‘I shall have to improve on my performance,’ he said, bringing the drinks in. ‘I can’t have you doing your nut.’

She smiled, held a hand out for him to hold, but said,

‘Don’t make a thing of it, there’s a good boy.’

There, he blamed himself for his failure, though he knew she did not. He had done his bit, that exactly described it, but it did nothing to prevent him toying with the fairy story, juggling fictitious consequences into lively impossibility. Now, at the seaside, in a bright bedroom, having made his mind up which pair of shoes to pull on for the day’s pleasure, he recalled his own wry decision at the time to do better even though better was not there to be done.

Perhaps he’d be in her company tomorrow.

Her father could not be sure; she could barely show certainty herself. Now he looked back to the time of her carrying of Donald as idyllic, darkened with apprehension perhaps, but shared between rational human beings, who could adjust and compromise as necessary. Angrily he snatched on his jacket, though he had the sense to move slowly downstairs, not drawing attention to himself.

Outside, the street shone, paint glaring in sunshine with even the monkey-puzzles polished smart. Dozens of brushes had been dipped, stroked earlier this year for this new-pin effect; blue, black, some green, odd reds, but mainly white to reflect the brightness of the sky. Suddenly Fisher felt heartened by the activity; the choice, the visit to hardware merchants, the blow-lamps’ roaring, the humping about of ladders in order to make this street as fresh, as up-to-the-minute as the next. It merely attracted custom, he supposed, or preserved the property but this scurrying into a competition of cleanliness cheered him, so that he walked more jauntily and in his head shouted some favourite lines of his father’s:

Striding out, shoulders back, he hummed the Victorian slop. A yucca stood in full ridiculous bloom. A child smiled at him from a garden gate. Dark, dark has been the midnight. A window-cleaner in boiler suit continued the process of cleansing, his mop thumping the glass. An electric bread-van hummed past and from over the houses he heard the clash and rattle of milk-bottles, a whistle. And glory, glory dwelleth.

As it was almost eleven, he turned in near the front for self-service coffee. The restaurant, a new flat-roofed place in one storey, was neat with plate glass and pebble-dash, and inside, though not yet crowded, already scarred with litter, screwed crisp-bags, balls of silver paper, spillings of salt and sugar.

Fisher stirred his boiling coffee. The man on the other side of the formica table claimed it was a fine day, in a cultured voice. A bald old man, with the hairless, severe face of Sibelius, a black askew crease between the eyes, who wore a striped shirt under a shallow white collar. Fisher had noticed all this as he had sat down and had immediately forgotten it in his euphoria.

‘Ideal holiday weather,’ he said.

The old man began in an authoritarian voice as if he wished the people on the tables round him to reap benefit from his observations. He had driven here, and he pointed across the road at a 3.5 litre Rover, for company.

‘I walked this coast as a boy. I can still manage a mile or two. But the time is rapidly approaching when I shan’t be able to drive a car. And you realise what that means, of course?’

His voice hectored the stirring Fisher, who lowered his head, murmured, unwilling to commit himself to an incorrect answer.

‘I’ve a pleasant place, this side of Horncastle. But it’s private, secluded. When one is energetic, able to travel, that is what one wants. As one gets less mobile, privacy becomes imprisonment.’ He wheezed militarily at his word play; not its first outing. It appeared he owned land, which he had cared for, but now his son had taken over the old man was relieved.

‘Land needs bold decisions, these days,’ he said. ‘One has to be able to make one’s mind up. You’d think you’d all the time in the world to decide when to cut some trees down. Not so. Investment’s an easier game all told.’