Holiday (28 page)

‘I think Daddy wants to talk.’

‘About what?’

‘I’m not sure. I expect he feels the need to get us to express our minds, each before the other.’ Precious.

‘Did he know you were going to India? He must have.’

‘He didn’t suggest it, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Why did you?’

‘Travel brochures. I’m very conventional, you know.’

He could have slapped her though he realized she had not noticed his shocked defeat. He’d stood at the door, his manhood whacked out of him, and she’d not bothered to turn her head. Perhaps she had not dared; concerned with her own inadequacies, she carefully avoided his.

Now, not unhappy, she swung her legs, from the knees, almost girlishly, a child at exercise, in a pedal car.

‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘But you were glad when I left you. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s what you said.’

‘I say a lot of things I don’t mean. That’s so, Teddy. It is.’ She glared. ‘You ought to know that it is. I was furious, and you were tired.’

‘Won’t,’ he asked, without heat, ‘the same thing happen again?’

‘Very likely.’

‘Then why should we bother? If we’re going to break up, as soon now as in a month or two’s time.’

‘That’s silly.’ That dismissed him. ‘We’re married. Doesn’t that mean anything?’

‘What’s it mean to you, then?’

‘You asked me to marry you. And you wanted to. I thought about it, as hard as I could. And I wanted to marry you. I can think back exactly as I felt.’

‘Can you?’

‘I can think back, Edwin, think back. I know what I wanted . . .’

‘When we were married, was that anything like you expected?’

‘Yes, it was,’ Meg said. ‘Not in every particular, but it was. And I wasn’t disappointed in you. You annoyed me, and you were childish, but you worked hard, and you considered me, and you did your utmost when Donald died. It’s just like you now to ask all these awkward questions when we’ve almost settled things. You don’t want to be bested. You don’t want Daddy to trap you.’

‘You’ve thought about it,’ he said, ‘and you’ve decided you want me back.’

‘That’s right.’

‘On what terms?’

‘On no terms.’ She was crying, but in a flurry of anger as though she’d shake the tears to the far corners of the room. ‘We’re just spouting words. You aren’t saying what you mean. You’re making your side right for yourself, in your own little mind.’

He knew now, as well as such things could be known that Meg had been conditioned or bullied or cajoled into acceptance of the marriage, of his return, by her father and mother. Therefore this afternoon’s tears meant little. She was to try him out, to assert herself with polemics, with a stately announcement of the oriental jaunt, and then take his hand, renew her vows.

That did not displease him.

He liked her tears, hated dangerous indifference.

When he was nearly eighteen, doing ‘A’ levels, he’d visited a girl in a mental hospital. She, Valerie Watson, two years older than he, was the daughter of a shopkeeper no wealthier than Authur Fisher but who’d left the rooms over his business to live in a prosperous suburb. Valerie had been at Edwin’s school, but it wasn’t until she’d left that the pair of them struck up a friendship at a chapel social. She was shy, not unattractive, with beautifully white hands, blue-veined, and they settled at once to discuss Beethoven. Sometimes they exchanged letters, or visits and then they’d listen to records or play piano duets of Mozart Symphonies together. It would be wrong to say there was nothing sexual in the relationship, for the young Fisher could not see women in any other way but they kissed hardly at all, barely touched fingers. At this time, he saw himself in love with two other girls, but not with Valerie.

His parents, as usual, displayed gawky concern.

Valerie was ‘Ted’s young lady’ to them. They inquired about her, made a fuss of her when she came, reported that they had seen her in the street, described her character favourably as if he were incapable of making an assessment for himself. Looking back now, Fisher quessed they regarded her as a suitable match, in spite of the difference in age. Watson wasn’t short, and Val an only child. But the boy himself did not know what to make of the arrangement. She was pretty in a straight-backed way, with wide eyes open at him, and possessed of a different intelligence; he bullied her, and she allowed it, though now and then she opposed his argument, sometimes beat him. She read widely, could contradict his facts, but still preferred a secondary, submissive role, and that pleased him. He could strut and lay down, when he badly needed that confidence.

In her second year at the university she had been taken ill. He had seen her not a fortnight before his parents announced her nervous breakdown, and she had seemed no different from any other time. They had met less frequently since both were preparing for exams, but he’d been invited to tea, and they’d listened to the Beethoven Trio, Op. 70, No. 2 in E
b.
They’d played it through twice, commenting favourably, and wondering why the composer had written so popular a work at this period. They’d squatted on the carpet in front of the gas fire and she had sat with her chin on her knees so that he could see her unstockinged thighs, a triangle of white knickers. This was unusual, and had excited him, but nothing came of it; they talked about William Cobbett and Spenser before she’d made him a cup of coffee at nine-thirty and sent him packing.

His parents gave no account of her breakdown. They questioned him about his last visit, and hinted that matters had not been normal for some months, that she had been under treatment. He could not say, honestly, that he had noticed the slightest difference, except for that careless exposure of underclothes, nor had her parents shown any anxiety.

This annoyed him. At eighteen he prided himself on his insight, often criticised friends for failing to notice small signs of distress and anger in others, announced that given those circumstances he would have had the nous to act otherwise. Yet Valerie had been normal, outwardly friendly and humble, listening, expressing approval of his theories about Keats’s illness, Beethoven’s professionalism.

In the next few weeks he had meant to visit the Watson house, but he was busy, with examinations, societies, games. He never admitted his fear to himself. Messages came through his parents; she was no better; consultants hovered, she had been admitted to a mental hospital; they tried bizarre treatments.

He received a summons through his mother. Mrs Watson had phoned to ask if he would accompany them one evening to the St Francis Hospital. He trembled.

As usually, he walked round to the house where the father spoke affably, even boisterously, shaking his hand, calling him Ted. The mother crept round the place, powdered white as death, drained of energy, but it was she who told him that Valerie had ‘withdrawn.’ He nodded, face arranged into seriousness, but dared not ask further. The drive to the hospital quietened the father, so that the three slunk across the car park.

As they approached the ward, a new one-storey annexe, built in the yard of the Victorian, dark-brick prison of the parent hospital, they braced themselves, put a front on, slapped feet on the coloured squares of lino in the passage, held heads up in the ward. First there was chair-sorting to be done, and Fisher made himself useful, carting not only a third for himself, but two for the elderly ladies visiting a plump, laughing matron in the next bed. When this chore was finished, he found the parents, either side of the bed, leaning over their daughter.

Valerie appeared to sleep.

Her hands were outside the sheets, but perhaps the parents, each holding one now, had rescued them. Mrs Watson talked feverishly, in a whisper, keeping it private, head down to her daughter’s.

‘Look who’s come to see you, Valerie. Do you know him? Look who it is. It’s Edwin Fisher, y’know. Say hello to her, Edwin. She knows you. Look who it is, darling.’

Fisher mumbled.

Valerie’s face lay pasty on the pillow, as though she struggled to open her eyes, dark blue and unreal. After some moments, she murmured, sound like a sigh, and Mrs Watson jack-knifed over to catch the drift, arms astride the inert body, putting her husband away. The eyes closed; the voice died.

‘What is it, Mother?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t make out. I think she’s pleased to see Edwin.’

The blatant lie annoyed him. One must face reality. He’d come here, and not for soft soap. For the next half-hour they tried to coax the girl into communication, and though she murmured, moaned, almost by chance, and once, a tear, a single tear, formed itself from the nearly closed eye. At the end of this time, and Fisher sat aghast at the energy of the mother, bending, willing her girl back into the wide awake world, Watson touched the young man on the sleeve to announce they were going out for a smoke.

Mrs Watson lifted her head.

‘See the sister, will you?’ she ordered, and returned to her vigilance.

Certainly they called in the small room at the end of the ward, but Watson seemed relieved rather than otherwise to find it empty.

‘They can’t tell you much,’ he said. ‘We’ll look in on the way back.’

Outside it had rained, a brief shower which Fisher had not noticed, but the air blew spring-like, warm for late February. Watson flourished his case, offering his companion a cigarette which was refused. The lighting proceeded with ceremony, ritual gestures, set cupping of hands, but there was no mistaking the huge relief of that first inhaling breath.

They began to walk along the tarmac paths; touches of green decorated the winter bareness of the shrubs, spiraea, beauty-bush, while clumps of purple or orange crocuses opened to the flash of sunshine.

Watson made a remark or two about gardening, then led the boy to the car park where he praised or blamed vehicles like a salesman, lighting a second cigarette from the first. The man spoke strongly, but uncomfortably, clenching his hairy right fist to slap it in the palm of the left, pointing a finger, blubbering his lips, a strong man in weakness, bolstering himself, impressing his companion. When he finally announced that they had to return, he flung his dog-end violently into the bushes, and the pair returned without a word.

From the corridor Fisher could see Mrs Watson bent over Valerie, who had not apparently moved. The father touched his elbow, and the two went into the nurses’ room where a dark woman sat at the desk, stirring tea with one hand and reading a large card she held in the other.

‘Ah, Mr Watson.’ Scots accent.

Watson placed himself in front of her desk, asserting himself, feet apart.

‘Good afternoon, sister,’

‘What can I do for you?’ A wrinkling of eyes in a false smile.

‘How is she, then?’

The woman shrugged, shrinking herself.

‘It’s a slow process, Mr Watson.’ The word, ‘slow’ dragged itself out. Dorically long. ‘But I honestly think there’s an improvement. It’s slight, but it’s there.’ She laid down the card as if to stress her certainty. The father questioned her for some minutes but got no further information, merely put back the time when they had to return to the bedside. As they left the office, Watson blew a sigh, an involuntary sound, and walked with feet outspread on legs of sponge.

Valerie lay pale as her mother, but naturally so, skin smooth and delicate. Now her eyes were open, if not fully, but she made no attempt to greet them. Mrs. Watson burst into a volley of words. ‘Here’s your father. Look at Daddy’s new tie he’s put on for you. You know Edwin, don’t you? Isn’t it kind of him to pay you a visit? Now, I’ve brought you some lemon and barley and put it in the locker. Tell the nurse to let you have some, because it’s always done you good, and it’s very hot in here.’ The garrulity was pitiful; its bright energy wasted itself, but cut Fisher deep.

When they left at the bell, Mrs Watson composed Valerie’s limbs as if she were dead, darted at the pillow, kissed the still face. Watson bent, blowing; rose, rubbing the stretched cloth of his belly. Fisher, for a moment, grasped the white left hand; it was warm, in no way unpleasant.

He went once more, when Valerie was a little better, and spoke awkwardly to her, as she pulled her bedjacket across her chest. His mother reported to him later that she had recovered, though she never returned to the university, and two years afterwards she married, some young man in business who lived in Watford. He did not visit her while she was convalescent, nor write. After his ‘A’ levels, he made for France, worked there, until he returned for a term to prepare for Oxford. His part in the affair was inconclusive, if not shameful, and when he listened to the third movement of Op. 70, No 2, he hated its simplicity of hapiness which mocked his self-approbation.

Now, this summer afternoon, he recalled the incident as Meg sat, face wooden as Valerie’s, as incommunicative as she flung words at him. His wife had not withdrawn, but had seceded from decision, left it to her father to order this part of her life. He had no time for her as a zombie, preferring her moody volatility to this flabby acquiescence. Should he say so? Should he worry her now back into her own mind?

‘I’m making it right for myself, I agree,’ he said. It sounded patronising. ‘It’s a failing of mine, as well you know. But there is one thing worrying me.’

She made a slight gesture of interrogation.

‘It’s this. Do you want me back?’

‘I’ve said so.’ Quick, firm.

‘You’ve not been pushed into it by your father?’

‘No, I haven’t.’

The answers lacked enthusiasm, delivered however promptly.

‘I want to be sure, Meg. You sit there as if you didn’t care either way. No, that’s wrong. You sit as if you’re so badly damaged that nothing matters any more.’

‘I can’t help it.’

‘You’re not like yourself. There’s no go about you. You look as if you’re waiting for your father or Kathleen or somebody to push in and rescue you.’

‘What do you look like, then?’

‘Good question. I’m undecided. I’ve had this silly week’s holiday. I’ve got plenty of work to do. I think I might start my play. I promised your father I’d come back to look at you, at least.’