Mavis Belfrage (5 page)

“Do you care how I feel?”

“You haven't scrubbed my back for
years
Mavis,” said Bill querulously. He stood in the doorway, barefoot and in his dressing-gown. Mavis said, “Get into the bath, I'll be with you in a minute.”

Bill left and Colin said firmly, “Bill must not know about this. If he finds out you must both leave here at once. I mean that, Mavis.”

“Of course Bill won't find out. I'll tell him I'm going to evening classes and I'll always be home long before breakfast. O don't look sad! I feel so happy and hopeful. I wish I could put half my good feelings into you, Colin.” He could think of nothing to say. From sounding wistful and cajoling she became brisk and sensible.

“I suppose you've a hot meal in the oven?”

“Casserole for two,” he said bitterly.

“I bought us a bottle of wine. I'll see to Bill and be down in half an hour. I'm not as hungry as you of course, but we'll still have a nice meal and a quiet evening together and you'll soon see everything in its proper perspective. Don't worry. Nothing dreadful is happening to us.”

But Colin thought it was.

When she returned from upstairs she served the meal, poured wine and played Scrabble afterward, treating him with gentle, unfamiliar tact which made him want to cling to her whenever he forgot the horrid reason for it. He won the game by over two hundred points. She chuckled and said, “That's a healthy sign.”

“What's a healthy sign?”

“You usually make me win by deliberately playing badly in the last fifteen minutes.”

He smiled slightly and said, “I thought you hadn't noticed.”

“I enjoy winning but I'm not stupid. Come to bed, Colin.”

She got up and kissed the top of his head.

“In a while.”

He sat by the living-room fire wondering how to share the bed with her and respect himself. He also wondered what would happen if he ordered her not to see Evans as she had suggested, but the result seemed obvious: she would pretend to submit and deceive him.

“Don't make a liar of her,” he told himself. “That would be even worse.”

When he went to the bedroom at half past two she was sound asleep. He undressed quietly in the dark, slid between the sheets and lay apart from her. A little later she rolled without waking into the gap between them, pressed her length against him and embraced him with an inarticulate murmur like the purr of a cat. He had no will to pull away from his only source of comfort. He hoped the instinctive acts of a sleeping woman meant more than the conscious acts of a waking one. He hoped so for a long time before falling asleep.

He passed the next day in a numbness which she treated with the quiet efficiency of a good mother attending a convalescent child. She gave him breakfast and the Sunday papers in bed and later ran water for his bath. The weather was pleasantly mild so she suggested a visit to the seaside. He did not reject the idea. She made a picnic lunch and drove them to a long lonely beach approached by a farm track. They found a sheltered hollow and sat reading the Sunday papers while Bill floated driftwood in pools, combed the beach for shells and flotsam, used a stick to engrave huge aeroplanes and airships on smooth sand. When they returned home Mavis made an evening meal with deft rapidity, put Bill to bed at his usual hour, read him a story (which was usually Colin's job) then drove off in the car.

Colin heard it return as he lay on his back staring at darkness. He had lain like that since going to bed and intended to act as if sleeping when she entered the room. Misery made him less stoical. She entered softly and switched on a bedside lamp. He did not move but stared at the yellow circle cast by the lamp on the ceiling. He heard her undress and say gently, “Hullo Colin. You should be asleep. It's nearly four.”

He did not move. He felt the mattress dip as she sat on the edge and asked sympathetically, “Are you very miserable?”

He did not move.

“Am I hurting you a lot? Am I being wicked?”

There was fear in her voice. She fumbled under the bedclothes for his hand and grasped it pleading, “Colin please tell me I'm not wicked!”

He said wearily, “It's all right Mavis.”

She caressed his face crying, “Yes it
is
all right isn't it Colin? Make me believe it's all right, make me believe it.”

Roused by her greater need he sat up and cuddled her saying, “Don't worry Mavis, you're beautiful, you're a queen. Queens don't need to care. Queens can do what they like.”

Panic-stricken she commanded, “Say that again Colin! Make me believe it!
Make
me believe it!”

She grabbed him, clawing so desperately that pain made him grip her wrists and use the weight of his body to control her. Their fucking became mutual rape. After it they lay back to back and again he felt cold, hard and defeated. He wondered bitterly, “Is that what she enjoys doing with Clive Evans? Will she give him up now she can do it with me?”

But two nights later she visited Evans again.

Colin Kerr usually found his college work a dull business but now it started giving him moments of peaceful happiness, moments when he forgot Mavis Belfrage. He could not forget her at home. On nights when she was away the pain of remembering made sleep
impossible. On the third such night he got up two hours after going to bed. In dressing-gown and slippers he filled a Thermos jug with hot milky tea, carried it with a mug to the living-room, put them on the mantelshelf and strolled morosely round the city of Glonda. It was dusty from neglect. Balloons, wrinkled from loss of gas, lolled between towers or dangled by their strings from the edge. Stretching across to the central tower he detached the upper half and placed it on the fireside table. For a few minutes he sipped a mug of tea while contemplating it, then sat down and made changes which would crown it with a revolving gun platform.

A while later someone said, “Do you think that's an improvement?”

Bill, also in dressing-gown and slippers, stood nearby watching. Colin frowned at his handiwork then muttered, “Yes I do. Why aren't you sleeping?”

“Nobody can sleep
every
night of the year.”

“I suppose not.”

“This is the first time you've touched Glonda since we added the balloons.”

“Yes, I've had other things on my mind. Please go back to bed.”

“That tower will collapse if an enemy as much as whistles at it.”

Springing up from the sofa Colin screamed,
“Leave me alone! Get to bed will you
?”

Bill's pale face grew slightly paler but his expression did not change. Without moving he said, “I worry too when she's out all night.”

Colin stared at him. Bill said, “I know it's depressing
but one develops a certain tolerance.”

“Have some tea Bill,” said Colin. He filled his empty mug and handed it over. They sat side by side, the boy sipping and watching while the man deftly completed his tower, carried it to the table and fixed it in place.

“Our war plans have been languishing for some time,” said Bill.

“Yes, I really have had a lot on my mind.”

“Well is there any
point
in waiting for the fifth of November? That's what I want to know.”

Colin folded his arms, considered Glonda then said quietly, “You're right. There's no point in waiting. We'll destroy it now.”

“We? Aren't you going to defend it?”

“Not me,” said Colin pacing round the walls. “This is an evil city which has grown great by conquering weaker people outside. But now she has sunk into decadence and corruption. Her defences are neglected. Her balloons are out of gas. This is our opportunity.”

“Who are we?”

“Brilliant but neglected scientists who belong to the exploited outsiders. Carefully, in the secrecy of an abandoned coalmine, we have invented and constructed two aeroplanes. Take this one.”

A recently assembled model Messerschmitt lay beside the Spitfire on the bookcase. Bill took the Messerschmitt grumbling, “There's no oil on this planet.”

“None, but the engines of these planes are fuelled by alcohol – distilled spirit – a discovery which only a genius like
you
, Herr Professor Bill Belfrage, could possibly have hit upon.”

“I think
someone
ought to defend the city,” said Bill
though Colin's purposeful manner had begun to excite him.

“Our planes can carry only one bomb at a time,” said Colin taking books from the shelves and carrying them to a corner, “and since we have only managed to make six of them each bomb must be made to do the maximum damage. We must circle the entire city while picking our target and choose it carefully. I will strike from the north …” (Colin laid down three books with the Spitfire on top then strode to the diagonally opposite corner) “… you will strike from the south.”

“Are three bombs each enough?”

“Your
three will be enough. I am giving you Plato, Rousseau, and the most potent explosive known to mankind – Hoffman and MacKinlay's
Outline of Educational Theory
. Down on your knees man! Remain in hiding until you receive my signal.”

Bill, trembling with excitement, knelt in the corner with book in one hand and Messerschmitt in the other. Colin went to the window, pulled back the curtains and looked out. In dark-grey light the tiny garden was still indistinct. He looked at his watch and sighed

then turned to the room and said quietly, “Twenty past six. Dawn has not yet broken over the doomed city's final day as, weakened by a night of debauchery, she writhes in uneasy slumber. But from beyond the horizon (get ready for your first flight Bill) from beyond the southern horizon there slowly rises –”

“Let's have music like in the pictures!” shouted Bill.

“Good idea,” said Colin. He went to the radiogram and looked along a stand of records murmuring, “Holst's
Planets
Suite? Trite. Wagner? Equally trite. Why should destruction be sombre and strenuous? It is building and keeping things up which is strenuous. Destruction should be gay, don't you agree Bill? All things built get knocked down again and those who knock them down are gay.”

“Hurry up with it!”

Colin fitted a disc onto the turntable, set it turning and after a couple of trials held the end of the arm above the groove he wanted. He said, “I'll provide the commentary. Don't drop your first bomb before the music starts, then I'll drop the next bomb. Where was I?”

“The debauchery bit.”

“Weakened by debauchery Glonda writhes in uneasy slumber until gradually, from beyond the southern horizon, there slowly rises, very slowly Bill, the hitherto undreamed of shape of a deadly aircraft, the first this planet has ever seen! Warily it approaches the fortress city and circles her titanic battlements. A few sleepy sentries observe with wonder as she carefully selects her target. Have you done that? –”

“Yes –”

“BLITZKRIEG!”

Colin lowered the needle into Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. Bill, stalking round the big table on tiptoe holding his plane as high as possible, threw with the other hand a book which rebounded harmlessly from the central tower. Colin rushed to the other corner, lifted a volume with both hands and hurled it with an
accuracy which brought down the central tower and several others.

“You aren't using your plane!” screamed Bill.

“In this phase of warfare all rules are abandoned!” cried Colin shying two more books which destroyed great sections of wall and burst some balloons.

“Then I'm getting more bombs!” screamed Bill, hurling the remaining two and rushing to the shelves. “Throw them spine first you idiot!” roared Colin.

“I'm NOT an idiot! You're the idiot!” screamed Bill. Taking a heavy atlas he walked round the table, deliberately using the spine to hammer down anything that stood up. He was sobbing breathlessly, Colin thought from exertion, until Bill dropped the atlas, sat down, hid face in hands and wept. Colin realized Bill was sorry Glonda had been destroyed. He switched the record off and went to him across a carpet scattered with blue, yellow and white wreckage.

“Sorry Bill,” he said, sighing and patting the boy's shoulder, “sorry about that.”

Bill became as silent as if he too had been switched off. Mavis was in the room.

She stood with hand on hip, the other gripping the strap of her shoulder bag, on her face the look of a disapproving schoolmistress. She said, “What are you two crazy infants playing at?”

“War games,” said Colin.

“I'm not surprised at anything
you
do Colin but I thought Bill had some self-control.”

“I couldn't sleep either,” said Bill.

“Hm! And now I suppose you both expect me to
make a great big breakfast. All right. I will.”

She went to the kitchen.

“She's not angry with us,” Bill assured Colin in a whisper before following her. After a while Colin followed too.

The males sat side by side at the kitchen table while Mavis made omelettes. Bill said, “Will you build another city to knock down?”

“No. It takes too long.”

“What will we do now?”

“I'll have to think about that.”

“Do you know what our trouble is Colin Kerr?” said Mavis. “We don't have enough fun together.”

“I'm bad at fun.”

“Well I'm going to teach you to be good at it. We're going to have a party.”

“What a great idea!” shouted Bill. She said, “Don't fool yourself Bill Belfrage. This party will only start when
you
are tucked up in bed.”

“A party,” said Colin, pondering.

“Yes. You must have friends, Colin.”

“I have friendly acquaintances – colleagues, mostly.”

“Invite them and we'll make them drunk on doped whisky. Dull people can be quite entertaining when they're drunk.”