The Spring Madness of Mr Sermon (23 page)

^{"You won't believe me, Olga, so maybe I won't tell you. You'll just shrug it off as an attempt on my part to be gallant-or gentle if you like."}

^{"Tell me, nevertheless," she said.}

^{I should like you to know that never before was it so complete or real or rewarding."}

^{Her expression changed and it seemed to him that now she looked}

^I4S

^{at him with the eagerness of a child receiving praise from an adult it respects. Then, before he could speak again, her expression clouded again, almost as though her instincts told her he was making gentle fun of her and it was this shift of expression, this hint of disappointment, that finally decided him, for when she moved round the chair to pick up the coffee tray they had forgotten, he caught her by the wrist and said, "No, Olga, wait a little! I've got to tell you something before I find another excuse."}

^{"I think I know what you want to tell me, Martin," she said, quietly, "and it can wait while I get fresh coffee."}

^{He was disconcerted by the note of resignation in her voice and said, quickly, "I don't know why I've put off telling you until now, Olga. It was a very stupid way to begin. I've been married nearly twenty years!"}

^{She smiled. "You surprise me after all; my guess would have been twelve to fifteen." Then, flatly, "Have you any children?"}

^{"Two, a girl and a boy. The girl is eighteen and the boy nearly seventeen!"}

^{For a moment they faced one another in silence.}

^{"All right," she said at length, "now you've told me and perhaps we'll talk about it later. You've had nothing to eat, would you prefer ham on a plate with a salad or just sandwiches?" Her calmness was an affront.}

^{"I've already told you, I'm not in the least hungry!" he growled.}

^{"Well I am, I've suddenly developed quite an appetite!" she said, and picking up the tray went out into the kitchen, leaving him ruffled and uncertain. Presently, however, he heard her moving about and humming one of the Schubert songs they had played on her radiogram the previous evening and the sound of her voice above the rattle of china had a miraculously soothing effect upon him, so that his spurt of nervous irritation spent itself and he slipped back into the musing mood that had preceded it when she was asleep in his arms. He thought: 'Godammit, she's a most unusual person and quite maddeningly difficult to assess! Was she bluffing when she said she knew from the first I was married, or was it simply a defensive reaction that could pass as a sneer? What does she think about it ? Does she look at me as a possible husband in}

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^{spite of Sybil and the children? Or could it be that she just doesn't care one way or the other, so long as I go on living here ? I wish to God I had more experience with women! Most men would know exactly what to do in this situation but I'm floundering like a seventeen-year-old boy at his first dance!' and he slumped back in the chair and tried to console himself with a cigarette while she went on getting supper and humming, of all things, 'The Merry Peasant Returning from Work'. Then, with the facility to turn his back on problems that he had acquired since his flight, he voluntarily surrendered to the cosiness of the room and when she walked in with fresh coffee and ham salad he was half-asleep.}

^{"You'll have some coffee ?" she asked.}

^{"Yes," and he rose and joined her at the table, "I'll have supper too! What made you think of that tune, the one you were humming ?"}

^{"I didn't know I was humming. What tune?"}

^{He chuckled, laughing because her serenity was so close to smugness that it went some way towards proving an equally smug theory, prevalent among the kind of men who boast of successes with women. Perhaps, he reflected, there was something in the gibe after all, and perhaps women did change their personalities the instant they ceased to be virgins. He had found very little to criticise in her before and now, he decided, he liked her more than ever, but there was clearly a difference between the woman he had kissed in the beechwood a few hours ago and this bustling, cheerful self-assured person helping him to salad and pouring coffee. It was a difference sensed rather than seen and he wondered briefly if a third party would have noticed it and then dismissed this as fanciful. It was there but surely only for him, and the thought drew her even closer so that he stopped himself saying 'This is excellent ham,' or something equally banal and instead reached across the table and squeezed her hand.}

^{It's for you to decide whether we talk about it, Olga. It was just that I suddenly felt cheap posing as a bachelor."}

^{She said, lightly, "No woman alive would mistake you for a bachelor, Martin!"}

^{"Are married men that easily identified?"}

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^{"Not all married men, just you."}

^{He digested this, thinking that it explained a good deal, the indifference of pretty girls in railway carriages and 'buses, the amused tolerance with which middle-aged woman had met his attempts to say something mildly gallant at social gatherings in and about the suburb. He looked married. Perhaps that was what was wrong with him.}

^{"The curious thing is it seemed to me a happy marriage, at all events, a pleasantly humdrum one," he mused, thinking aloud. "We didn't quarrel or nag one another, it was all a bit flat I suppose but in some ways it seemed more satisfactory than most marriages nowadays. It isn't as if I ran away from Sybil or from home when I panicked at school, yet that must have been part of what I despaired of or I should have stopped running the moment I arrived home. I made straight for Sybil when the balloon went up, but there wasn't a thought in my head about carrying the mutiny past the front door. Things seemed to happen one after the other so that suddenly the entire life I was leading seemed futile and stupid, unbearably so! All of it! Sybil, the children, the suburb, the house, the furniture, the school, the lot!"}

^{Most of what he said made no sense to her but she was attentive and some of her newly-acquired poise had treacherously abandoned her, so that she stopped eating and concentrated.}

^{"Very well, Martin, tell me as much as you want to and leave out any part you don't. Start where you like too, as far back as you feel inclined or from the break onwards!"}

^{He began to talk, easily yet carefully, sifting among his memories for the relevant and isolating suppressed shames and vanities so that he could assess their importance and present them objectively, resisting the temptation to flaunt them like a man enjoying psychoanalysis. He told her of his childhood under the goad of his chapel-going father and the soggy, protective mantle of his mother, who had always regarded him as the intellectual swan of the family. He spoke of his schooldays, the rather weedy boy who stood by the railings with a Ransome's History of England in his pocket, holding his hand over it lest some boisterous classmate should turn aside from a game of Highcockalorum and denounce him as a swot and}

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^{arse-creeper. He told of his loneliness at University and how desperately he had sought to drug it with study and of his meeting with Sybil at a Speech Day to which she and her father had come to hear a boy-cousin deliver a Latin Ode.}

^{"I thought her very beautiful," he said, "and I suppose she still is, for she hasn't changed very much except to put on a bit of weight. I don't think I noticed that until the night I ran off. The thing that staggered me after we met was that she was interested in me, and I still can't explain that, satisfactorily. In a few days I was calling there regularly, you know, not as a suitor exactly but as a family friend. I was ten years older than her and she had plenty of admirers, younger, pushing men most of them, you know the type-cars, golf-handicaps and a whole lot of slang, 'Chin-chin', 'Down the hatch' and 'I say old bean", but I don't suppose you remember that period do you ?"}

^{"I'm afraid I do," she said smiling, "just about, but why should you be so surprised she chose you? I daresay you were as good-looking as any of them and a lot less brash and bossy!"}

^{"You might have something there," he said, laughing a little, "she was a strong-minded woman and I dare say in the end she preferred a husband who was unsure of himself. The main thing in my favour, however, was her father's approval. He rather fancied himself as an intellectual, which he wasn't, and I was sufficiently smitten to submit to being bored by him night after night! I daresay the others thought the price was a bit high, notwithstanding her money."}

^{"She had money?"}

^{"Oh yes, not a vast amount but more than a person in my position had any right to expect. After all, I hadn't a penny but I honestly didn't think of her money, not once, can you believe that?"}

^{"I can with you!"}

^{'Well, as I say, I didn't think I stood a chance. She was unofficially engaged to a noisy young chap called Norman who used to call for her in a sports car that could be heard a mile off. Then one week-end everything fell my way. This fellow dashed off abroad and Sybil and I were married almost at once. It was like . . ." But here he broke off, smiling down at her as she sat watching him, one knee clasped in her hands, "why am I boring you with this? It's a very ordinary story and it all happened twenty years ago!"}

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^{"I'm not bored, Martin. You could never bore me. What was it like?"}

^{"I was going to say like Albert and Victoria," he went on, reassured by her obvious interest, "you see, it was Sybil who really proposed. She made a joke of it, of course, saying I should never get round to it and I don't suppose I should have done in the circumstances."}

^{"And after? Did she go on taking the initiative?"}

^{He thought a moment before answering.}

^{"No, not really, although you might find that hard to believe. I don't think she ever gave other people the impression that I was a Queen's husband, or if they got that impression it wasn't her fault. Sometimes she made quite a point of pretending I was the boss, except as far as the children were concerned!"}

^{"How about the children, Martin?"}

^{"Jonquil and Keith?" He moved away from the fireplace, still thinking hard and choosing his words. "They meant a lot to me when they were little but not any more, not for some time now! I suppose that sounds heartless but it's a fact. They might be grown-up step-children or young people lodging in the house. Mind you, I don't think there's anything very remarkable about that. I imagine it's the same with most teenagers these days. Nothing's the same any more and the different generations aren't within shouting distance of one another."}

^{"Isn't that true of every age?"}

^{"No, no, it isn't, Olga, or not nearly to the same degree. I wasn't particularly fond of my father but he stood for something solid, permanent and worth having. I mean even less to them than they mean to me and that's something else I've realised since I came away."}

^{She sighed and got up, drifting over to the fire and raking among the coals. Presently she said: "Have you told your wife where you are?"}

^{"No! I wrote a letter but I tore it up!"}

^{She seemed mildly surprised. "You haven't phoned or written since leaving?"}

^{"No, and I know why I haven't. This last fortnight, particularly since I've been here with you, has been the happiest period of my}

^{rfe and I daren't risk putting a term to it. Sybil's comfortably off so it isn't as if she was likely to need money and somehow I can't believe she'll be worried about me or miss me much. Sooner or later of course I'll have to get in touch, but it will have to wait until I've some kind of proposition to put to her."}

^{"Proposition? You mean, a divorce?"}

^{She said the word without looking at him and he was surprised and a little alarmed to note that the mere utterance of the word threw his situation, and perhaps hers also, into a sinister focus for it was a word that he had never conjured with, a newspaper and film word that had never entered his personal life. Now, for the first time, it meant precisely the same thing to him as it meant to the people one read about in newspapers, for surely it was not improbable that both he and she might figure in a divorce suit. This, he realised, was an altogether new development, for whereas Sybil could not divorce him on the grounds of a fortnight's desertion she could certainly do so if she could prove adultery.}

^{He knew that panic must be showing in his face and turned away from her, looking gloomily into the fire. Then, like the cheerful hail of a coastguard to a climber perched half-way down a cliff face, her quiet voice reached him, coaxing him down on to level ground. She was saying:}

^{"You don't have to be scared of anything, Martin, and you don't have to make decisions, not about me, not now and not at any time, you understand ? What happened here tonight was by my choice and I should be very ashamed if it encouraged you to think I had any sort of claim on you!"}

^{He said, slowly: "All the things one feels about loving anyone have been cheapened by popular music, TV, plays and books, particularly the kind of books people seem to prefer nowadays. When you want to say what is in your heart you can't say it because, as the words take shape in your head, you find yourself despising them as cliches. I know very well what I feel for you, Olga, but I should need time to find words to express it, real words that is! Does that make sense to you?"}