The Only Problem (5 page)

Ruth
was very much in the business. Effie, meanwhile, went off the rails, and when
this was pointed out to her in so many words, she said, ‘What rails? Whose
rails?’ It was Effie who first called Edward an actor more than a man of God,
and she probably put the idea in his mind.

Effie
was doing social work when Ruth got married. The sisters looked very much alike
in their separate features; it was one of those cases where the sum total of
each came out with a difference, to the effect that Effie was extremely
beautiful and Ruth was nothing remarkable; perhaps it was a question of
colouring and complexion. Whatever the reason, everyone looked at Effie in a
special way. Both sisters were fair with the fair-lashed look and faint
eyebrows of some Dutch portraits.

It was
Edward who introduced Effie to Harvey Gotham. Effie was in the habit of
despising the rich, but she married him. They had a small house in Chelsea and
at first they travelled everywhere together.

When
Edward became an actor Ruth got a job in a university, teaching twentieth
century history. Edward had a television part which came to an end about the
time Ruth discerned that Effie and Harvey were not getting on. Effie’s young
men-friends from her days of welfare-work were always in her house, discussing
their social conscience. Harvey was often away.

‘You’re
sleeping around,’ Ruth said to Effie.

‘What
do you mean?’ she said.

‘I
know,’ Ruth said.

‘What
do you know?’

Ruth
said, ‘I know all about it.’ What she meant was that she knew Effie.

‘You
must be guessing,’ said Effie, very shaken.

‘I
know,’ Ruth said, ‘that you’re having affairs. Not one only. Plural.’

Edward
was still out of a job. They hadn’t any prospect of a holiday that year, but
Effie and Harvey had planned a motoring trip in Italy.

Ruth
said, ‘Why don’t you get Harvey to invite us to join you on your holiday in
Italy?’

‘He
wouldn’t like that,’ she said. ‘Four in the car.

‘It’s a
big car.’

‘You
couldn’t afford your share,’ said Effie, ‘could you?’

‘No,
not all of it.’

‘What
all this has to do with my love affairs, real or imagined,’ said Effie, ‘I
really do not know.’

‘Don’t
you?’ said Ruth.

‘Ruth,’
she said, ‘you’re a blackmailer, aren’t you?’

‘Only
in your eyes. In my eyes it is simply that we’re going to come to Italy with
you. Harvey won’t mind the money.’

‘Oh,
God,’ she said, ‘I’d rather you went ahead and told him all you know. Think of
all the suffering in the world, the starving multitudes. Can’t you sacrifice a
pleasure? Go ahead and tell Harvey what you know. Your sordid self-interest,
your —’You shock me,’ Ruth said. ‘Stick to the point. Is it likely that I would
go to your husband and say…?’

They
went on holiday with Effie and Harvey, and they took Ruth’s student, Nathan, as
well. Effie stole two bars of chocolate from the supermarket on the
autostrada
and Harvey left them abruptly. It was the end of their marriage.
Fortunately Effie had enough money on her to pay for the rest of the trip. It
was a holiday of great beauty. Effie tried to appreciate the pictures in the
art galleries, the fountains in the squares, the ancient monuments and the
Mediterranean abundance, but even basking on the beach she was uneasy.

Harvey saw Effie’s
features in Ruth; it struck him frequently that she was what Effie should have
been. It had been that situation where the visitor who came to stay remained to
live. (Harvey had heard of an author who had reluctantly granted an interview
to a young critic, who then remained with him for life. ) The arrangement was
not as uncomfortable as it might have been, for Ruth had claimed and cleared
one of the shacks outside the house, where she spent most of the daytime with
the baby. She was careful to make the changes unobtrusively. Delivery vans
drove up with rugs or with an extra stove, but it was all done in a morning.
Harvey paid for the things. When the baby cried it upset him, but that was
seldom, for Ruth drove off frequently with the child, no doubt to let it cry
elsewhere. She took it with her when she went shopping.

It was
three weeks after she had arrived that Ruth said, ‘I’m going to write to
Edward.’

‘I have
written,’ said Harvey.

‘I
know,’ she said, and he wondered how she knew, since he had posted the letter
himself. ‘But I’ll write myself. I couldn’t be the wife of an actor again.

‘If he
was a famous actor?’

‘Well,
he isn’t a famous actor. A part here, a part there, and sometimes a film. So
full of himself when he has a part. It was a much better life for me when he
was a curate.’

But she
had no nostalgia even for those days of church fêtes, evening lectures and
sewing classes. She already had a grip of her new life, dominated as it was by
the
Book of Job.

‘You feel
safer when you’re living with someone who’s in the God-business,’ Harvey said. ‘More
at home.’

‘Perhaps
that’s it,’ she said.

‘And a
steadier income.’

‘Such
as it is,’ she said, for she asked little for herself. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I was
bored. He always agreed with me, and you don’t.’

‘That’s
because you’re one of my comforters,’ Harvey said. ‘Job had his comforters to
contend with; why shouldn’t I?’

‘Do you
think of yourself as Job?’

‘Not
exactly, but one can’t help sympathising with the man.’

‘I don’t
know about that,’ said Ruth. ‘Job was a very rich man. He lost all his goods,
and all his sons and daughters, and took it all very philosophically. He said, “The
Lord gave, the Lord taketh away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” Then he gets
covered with boils; and it’s only then that his nerve gives way, he’s touched
personally. He starts his complaint against God at that point only. No question
of why his sons should have lost their lives, no enquiries of God about the
cause of their fate. It’s his skin disease that sets him off.’

‘Maybe
it was shingles,’ Harvey said. ‘A nervous disease. Anyway, it got on his
nerves.

Ruth
said, ‘He had to be touched himself before he would react. Touched in his own
body. Utterly selfish. He doesn’t seem to have suffered much or he wouldn’t
have been able to go into all that long argument. He couldn’t have had a
temperature.’

‘I don’t
agree. I think he had a high temperature all through the argument,’ Harvey
said. ‘Because it’s high poetry. Or else, maybe you’re right; maybe it was the
author who had the temperature. Job himself just sat there with a long face
arguing against the theories of his friends.’

‘Make a
note of that,’ Ruth commanded.

‘I’ll
make a note.’ He did so.

‘Someone
must have fed him,’ said Ruth. ‘Someone must have brought him meals to eat as
he sat on the dung—hill outside the town.’

‘I’m
not sure he sat on a dung-hill outside the town. That is an assumption based on
an unverified Greek version of the text. He is merely said to have sat in the
ashes on the ground. Presumably at his own hearth. And his good wife, no doubt,
brought him his meals.’

Ruth
had proved to be an excellent cook, cramped in the kitchen with that weird
three-tiered kerosene stove of hers.

‘What
do you mean, “his good wife”?’ Ruth said. ‘She told him, “Curse God and die.”‘

‘That
was a way of expressing her exasperation. She was tired of his griping and she
merely wanted him to get it off his chest quickly, and finish.’

‘I
suppose the wife suffered,’ said Ruth. ‘But whoever wrote the book made nothing
of her. Job deserved all he got.’

‘That
was the point that his three friends tried to get across to him,’ Harvey said. ‘But
Job made the point that he didn’t deserve it. Suffering isn’t in proportion to
what the sufferer deserves.’

Ruth
wrote in September:

Dear Edward,

I suppose you have gathered by now that I’ve changed my mind about
Harvey. I don’t know what he’s written to you.

He really is a most interesting man. I believe I can help Harvey. I
can’t return to face the life we had together, ever again. My dear, I don’t
know how I could have thought I would. My plan was, as you know, entirely
different. I feel Harvey needs me. I am playing a role in his life. He is
serious. Don’t imagine I’m living in luxury. He never mentions his wealth. But
of course I am aware that if there is anything I require for myself or Clara, I
can have it.

You may have heard from Ernie Howe that he is coming to visit Clara.
She’s well and pretty, and full of life.

I’m sure you have heard from Harvey how things are between him and
me. It’s too soon to talk of the future.

This has been a difficult letter to write. I know that you’ll agree
with what I say. You always do.

Ruth

She gave Harvey the letter
to read, watching him while he read it. He looked younger than Edward, probably
because of Edward’s beard, although he was a little older. Harvey was lean and
dark, tall, stringy.

‘It’s a
bit dry,’ Harvey said.

‘It’s
all I can do. Edward knows what I’m like.’

‘I
suppose,’ said Harvey, ‘he’ll be hurt.’ ‘He doesn’t love me,’ Ruth said.

‘How do
you know?’

‘How
does one know?’

‘Still,
he won’t want to lose his property.’

‘That’s
something else.’

Now, in October, Ruth was
talking about sending to England for cretonne fabric. ‘One can’t get exactly
what I want in France,’ she said.

Harvey
wrote:

Dear Edward,

Thanks for yours.

The infant is cutting a tooth and makes a din at night. Ruth has
very disturbed nights. So do I. It’s been raining steadily for three days.
Ernie Howe came. We had a chat. He seems to feel fraternal towards me because
we both had to do with Effie. He wants to talk about Effie. I don’t.
Afterwards, in the place next door that Ruth has fixed up for herself and
Clara, Ernie asked her if she would go home and live with him and bring the
baby. Ruth said no. I think he’s after Ruth because she reminds him of Effie.
He said he wouldn’t take the child away from Ruth if she doesn’t want to part
with it, which she doesn’t.

I’m sorry to hear that you don’t miss Ruth. You ought to.

Cheque enclosed. I know you’re not ‘selling your wife’. Why should I
think you are? You took money before I was sleeping with Ruth, so where’s the
difference?

I don’t agree the comforters just came to gloat. They relieved Job’s
suffering by arguing with him, keeping him talking. In different ways they keep
insinuating that Job ‘deserved’ his misfortunes; he must have done something
wrong. While Job insists that he hasn’t, that the massed calamities that came
on him haven’t any relation to his own actions. He upsets all their theology.
Those three friends of his are very patient and considerate, given their
historical position. But Job is having a nervous crisis. He can’t sleep. See 7,
13—16.

When I say, My bed shall

comfort me, my couch shall ease

my complaint;

Then thou scarest me with

dreams, and terrifiest me through

visions:

So that my soul chooseth

strangling, and death rather than

my life.

I loathe it; I would not

live alway: let me alone …

So I say, at
least the three comforters kept him company. And they took turns as analyst.
Job was like the patient on the couch.

Ruth doesn’t sympathise with Job. She sees the male pig in him. That’s
a point of view.

The baby has started to squawk. I don’t know what I’m going to do
about the noise.

Yours,

Harvey

Ruth came in, jogging in
her arms the baby Clara who had a whole fist in her mouth and who made noises
of half-laughing, half-crying. Soon, she would start to bawl. Ruth’s hair fell
over her face, no longer like that of a curate’s wife.

‘Did
you know that they want to sell the château?’ she said.

The
château was half a mile up the grassy pathway which led away from the cottage.
Harvey knew the owner and had seen the house; that was when he first rented the
cottage. He knew it was up for sale, and had been for some years.

‘It’s
falling to bits,’ he said to Ruth.

‘What a
pity to neglect it like that!’ Ruth said. ‘It’s a charming house. It reminds me
of something from my childhood, I don’t know quite what. Perhaps somewhere we
visited. I think something could be done to it.’