Homesickness (30 page)

Look, the majority were men in their forties, early fifties, with ballpoints protruding from their coats: they openly gazed, all of them. One smoked a pipe. Like the rest he had small eyes. It was almost enough to dispel suspicions. They had regular features, uncongested, nothing to hide. One who smiled stood out (by the door). He was bald and wore a propeller-shaped bowtie, an exception, perhaps even a bit soft in the head. Aside from the smooth foreheads, remarkable for men of their years, the only telling sign was in fact the very absence of ‘signs', as if a hand had passed over their features—although a surprising percentage had shaving nicks around the chins.

As the senior married person Mrs Cathcart assumed the natural mantle of leader or spokesman and was the first to break the curious silence, first by sucking spit and air through her teeth, then muttering ‘blighters' and ‘the beggars!' As the others kept studying the photographs she could no longer contain herself: ‘Rotten pigs! I'd shoot the lot of them, every one of them. The misery they cause.'

‘You tell 'em,' Garry clapped: at this stage he liked to pronounce his bachelorhood. ‘I reckon, Christ, they deserve medals—the Victoria Cross. To have two or three women on the go: one's trouble enough.' He turned to Phillip North. ‘How do they do it?'

‘The voice of experience,' Sasha jeered, almost including North.

‘Another ruddy feminist! They're everywhere,' he answered.

The redhead went over to him. ‘Why don't you,' she twanged in his ear, ‘shut your face. You're not funny.' To Mrs Cathcart she said, ‘I agree with you. Completely.'

A few smiled good-naturedly, to lighten the mood; and drifted around the walls. Hardly anyone heard Violet Hopper, ‘I knew a bigamist once…'

It caught only Sheila's interest. She gazed sideways at the floor. ‘That must have been—.' But she changed it to a characteristic dead question: ‘What was his name?'

What did it matter?

‘I think these men are essentially weak when you consider it,' Louisa said.

And since she had scarcely spoken, and walked alone, they turned, remembering her. ‘Anyone who can't make up his mind, or has to lie like that, I wonder what they think of themselves?'

It was almost worth another look. Garry felt for his cigarette lighter.

‘Come along,' the hostess called out, cracking the whip. She took Gerald's arm as an example. From behind they looked a natural couple.

A welcome change appeared through the door: set into the long side wall a brightly lit replica of a shop window. It could have been Tiffany's: only these velvet trays and turntables were crowded with rings of every description, almost indiscriminately. Unlucky opals rubbed shoulders with 40-carat diamonds which lay alongside mirror rings from the Punjab, and ultramarine lapis taken from Afghanistan. One slowly turning wheel, a Ferris wheel in miniature, scooped up wedding rings from a pile, raining them down again as it turned, a kind of perpetual motion.

Ingeniously, the window allowed up to a dozen or more to look over the merchandise, though again it was the women who had their noses and fingers to the glass. The slipping on of a ring symbolises the sacred sexual act. Hemmed in, Kaddok could only look back over the coiffured heads.

‘They're having a good time,' Doug beamed, standing back; so was he. Folding his arms he winked at North.

‘It's all they ever think about,' said Garry walking away. ‘I don't know what this place is driving at. It must have cost a fortune. What's the point? Say, does anyone know the time?'

Phillip North seemed to attract a response merely by his presence. Some liked to stand near to bounce off or soak in. He listened and so he seemed always interesting.

Violet Hopper came away from the window. Although softened somewhat, her face was not lit up like the others.

North nodded politely. They'd scarcely spoken before.

‘Very little surprises you,' he observed, nodding at the window. Such observations were possible with Violet Hopper.

‘If you mean this, it's old hat to me. Once or twice at the time it was nice; even then not always. It became irrelevant. You've been married, haven't you?' She looked at the window, at the crush. ‘Sasha,' she turned to him, ‘is a close friend…I like Sasha.'

North thought about this and looked at the window. ‘I know.'

‘Yes, you're not blind,' said Violet sharply.

Kaddok had brushed past, pulled by his wife. Turning to North again Violet opened here eyes wide. ‘I've put my foot in it again. Have I?'

Sasha had arrived. She stood with them quietly.

‘Not at all,' said North.

Marriage is big business, bigger than tourism. Is only marginally affected by economic, political, climatic downturns, if at all. Not only is there the outlay on the gold and diamonds: consider the wedding cars and uniformed chauffeurs, ribbons, and the fuel they burn; remember the cost of new clothing, the wedding haircut, the tons of scattered rice and confetti; feast food, jugs of beer and bubbly; the stenographers, photographers (film emulsion, the price of silver); there must be shoe repairs of waitresses and priests; above all, the shower of gifts, usually consumer durables, often electrical in nature; cutlery or sheets don't come cheap; and without honeymoons, the motel and leathergoods industries would collapse. These out-goings filter through all sectors of the economy. The institution of marriage is fuel to the capitalist engine.

Are there any questions—?

Marriage brokers, marriage guidance counsellors, private detectives and legal costs.

Following their leader, Sasha marched ahead with North, taking his arm in full view, and her breast squashed against him as she leaned; so Sasha then took an even greater interest in the exhibits. In allowing it Phillip North could merely have been urbane, giftedly so; could have been: but Mrs Cathcart apparently still fuming at the idea of bigamy, and recalling her position of seniority, made the clicking sound with her tongue (in her lifetime these had often been effective) and to those around her, shook her head: ‘And I believe he's recently bereaved. I don't understand it.'

The androgynous zones of…marriage.

They surrounded the redhead. Both she and Gerald were handing out printed sheets: a glossary of terms, of endearment. A kind of love dictionary. It could be folded and kept in a pocket (or under a pillow: extraordinary the partners who find trouble expressing themselves). The nouns and adjectives were printed in an ornate style but were easy to read. Non-words and harmless white lies and whispered obscenities are essential—aren't they?—for the successful marriage. New words, including nicknames and adhesive pet nouns which were demonstrably inaccurate and yet perfectly apt were listed in alphabetical order. A penetrating new language is required, solely for the requirements of love. It can be as private as you like.

Holding the paper close to her eyes Sasha tried a few out on North. This was no time for jokes. ‘Kinsey's Twentieth-Century Dictionary,' he'd begun to crack, to dismiss. ‘Good God, they might have crossed some of those out.'

‘Don't be a prude,' said Sasha; and she held onto his arm as she read out more words. ‘Listen…'

And in the half-dark, in a corner, Sheila trembled as Violet still held her hand, as warm as a sparrow's now, and touched her cheek, so understanding. It had been all of a sudden: almost all engulfing. Sheila could have cried, could have cried out. A glance showed Violet's experience. She was unsmiling.

Brass beds, water beds, electrically driven models (circular; Made in Germany), and the inevitable sturdy four-poster, and bed of roses. There were double sleeping-bags and camp-stretchers; and a small but hypnotic collection of stained mattresses. Bloody sheets from Sicily had been randomly selected the morning after and were preserved between sheets of glass; enough to make Atlas flinch; factual and historical to the others.

Sasha wanted to know all. She wanted to participate. ‘Where did you meet one another?' she asked. The question flew with the spirit of things and like the lasso settled on Mrs Cathcart. For the first time they heard her laugh. It was generous and unexpectedly high—a girl's.

‘Oh I saw him at a friend's wedding. He came with friends on a filthy motorbike. I said to myself, what a silly little man, and he kept blowing his nose. I wouldn't care if I never saw
him
again.'

‘You were proved right there,' Doug had to nudge. He winked at Sasha and Louisa, enjoying himself. All listened in an interested congratulatory way.

‘He's been good to me,' Mrs Cathcart returned to firmness, ‘We have a family,' she said simply. Her mouth and jaw suggested early economic hardships. Sasha and Louisa had their heads inclined, measuring Mrs Cathcart's echo. All Doug could do was keep glancing at the others vaguely grinning, ‘There you are…so…Well!'

They had to find Gerald and the redhead. These two had turned not one corner but several. Broken with irregular, spaced doors and alcoves the corridor resembled an out-of-the-way hotel: purple carpet lay underfoot. Glancing over his shoulder—at the passage, empty—Gerald cleared his throat. With an ease which suggested she had done this before the North American put Gerald's hand down her front and onto her powdered breast.

‘There now. That'll keep you warm.'

And yet that part of the building was definitely overheated, perhaps deliberately. Not only to Gerald: others had complained.

She had large rough nipples and five minutes passed before the others came.

‘Gotcha! There you are!' Garry shouted. ‘Here they are.'

‘We have an annual congress,' the redhead resumed quickly taking the handle of a door, ‘where every aspect of marriage is thrashed out.'

They followed as she pushed open the door.

It was a small motel room. It had a green TV set, drawn curtains and two horizontal suitcases by the mirror with their lids raised. A lamp in the corner illuminated a champagne bucket and—

HEY
!

Rapid twisting movement on the bed.

‘Oh excuse us. I am sorry.'

A young man with his bride had turned, glazed. The pale legs around his waist froze.

Kaddok stepped back onto Gerald's foot. Retreating backwards the others fell into the corridor, a pack of cards.

‘What's up?' Garry demanded. He wanted to see.

‘My mistake,' murmured the redhead, gently closing the door. ‘Ask one of the others,' she smiled.

It was then difficult to know whether it was real or merely an accident planned by the institution.

Her smirk spreading, adding two and two, Garry wanted to hear it. Nothing—nothing is sacred any more,

‘Never mind,' Louisa told him. She was pensive for the woman disturbed. In the dark she had glimpsed the young man's moustache.

Garry kept on. He wanted it all.

‘It was someone's room,' Louisa sighed. ‘They were making love,' she murmured, and frowned, ‘when we barged in.'

Ah. Garry smacked his forehead. ‘The poor bastard!' Then he turned over her choice of words. ‘They were making…love…'

‘God,' Sasha wheeled around, ‘you're crass. When will you grow up?'

Scientists are saying we are essentially machines for the propagation of our genes. Nothing more or less. So it is said. The Institution of Marriage implies there is more.

Dust sheets in the next room were removed; Gerald gave a hand. Gradually, they revealed a classic nuclear family at leisure: kneeling in front of a gas-fire, playing Monopoly. The smooth-faced mother and father with their offspring (boy and a girl), were the equal of anything by Madame Tussaud. It looked like a Sunday night. Dad in a real cardigan held a pipe. So convincing was the setting they felt compelled like all good travellers to stand a while, searching for inaccuracies.

‘The living room is a cave,' Phillip North pointed out. ‘There's the fire. Take away the decorations which seem anyway faintly self-conscious.'

The hearth fire held the family in a circle of approximately four yards diameter. Central heating, said to be a sign of civilisation, has been largely responsible for the disintegration of marriages, of traditional family life. It encourages each member to sit in distant rooms, alone. The subsequent fall in communion, communication,
family warmth
, is a cause for concern. Consider this before installing C.H.

‘We don't have that as a problem,' Doug laughed. ‘Where we come from it's as hot as blazes. You need fans.'

As hot as Hades.

‘We had a fire in the lounge,' his spouse cried out. She looked at the other women, telling them.

‘The Parsees,' Kaddok threw in for no apparent reason; and kept searching. In fact he didn't finish it.

Under perspex on an unstable pedestal a gum-pink toothbrush lay horizontal, like an avant garde sculptural object. The institution rightly saw it as a valuable trophy, one possessing vague sexual undertones; it summarised the act of sharing, important in any Western marriage. This toothbrush had been shared by a married couple for seventeen years (donated by the Knudsens, 31 Dakota Ave, Algonquin Is., Toronto). It spoke of intimacy, barriers finally down. There was nothing more to say.