Weekend (20 page)

The euphoria of Saturday afternoon, every impulse of joy she had found expression for, came back to mock her now: the laughter mixed with sisterly tears she had shared with Angela; the insistence that she would call the baby Angela after her mother; the pleasure of holding something so minutely beautiful and feeling as if she were a perfect fit; the inability to wait until he came, to tell him of their incredible good luck; the adventure of travelling on the delayed ferry, crossing the
darkened sea like the heroine of a romantic novel; the stranger who had driven her to the hotel, not knowing how casually important he was being; bringing the best of the Polaroid photographs she had taken so that David could see who had become the most important person in their lives.

She turned the photograph over. The small white face seemed effulgent to her, glowing out of the dubious half-light of her photographic incompetence. She couldn’t bear to lose her now. But surely she wouldn’t be allowed to adopt her into a broken marriage. That was how he had hurt her most. It was as if he had kicked her during a pregnancy and cost her the baby she was having. She couldn’t accept that. But how could she avoid accepting it? That was what she had to come to terms with.

Three

The man was completely white. The costume that covered his entire body was white. The things that looked like cloth overshoes were white. The gloves were white. What could have been a shower-cap was white. Even his face had been sprayed with the same metallic paint. His head jerked round in a series of broken movements, apparently scanning the small crowd around him. Then the head lowered itself in three distinct stages and his eyes became fixed in a stare. His right hand took a flower from the small bunch he had in his left. The hand with the single flower in it extended itself like a slide-rule until it was projecting straight out. With the arm held rigidly in front of him, he took a series of stiff and very slow robotic steps towards the crowd, his stare still fixed on whatever it was he had seen. Eventually he stopped in front of a small blonde girl, holding the flower out to her. Encouraged by her mother, she took the flower reluctantly, as if she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do with it. There was a smattering of faint applause.

‘Uh-huh,’ the small woman beside him said. She looked up at him. ‘I don’t know who’s dafter. Him for goin’ on like that. Or us for standin’ here watchin’ ’im. It’s great whit ye see when ye’ve left yer gun in the hoose.’

She harrumphed and walked away. He laughed and threw a couple of coins into the cardboard box that lay not far from him. He wasn’t rewarding the performance. He thought the small woman’s review was fair enough. He didn’t intend to stand here any longer, watching flowers being distributed slowly enough to give you softening of the brain.

The money was tribute paid to the city, its multitudinous crazy energy. It was good to be back. It was like plugging into a generator. The relentless thrust of living all around him pulled him into its careless force, let him feed off it so that he felt new possibilities.

The claustrophobic introversion of Willowvale seemed like an unhealthy self-indulgence, a sick-room he was glad to be out of. A Glasgow sky like a dustbin-lid banalised the problems he had imagined he had on Cannamore. Life was just something you got on with, whatever the weather. Jacqui Forsyth was only a worry if you were trapped in a room with her. He was glad he had managed to avoid her on the ferry and ignore the discreet opera of her tears on the bus back to Glasgow. If he had shown any concern, they might have had a full-blown Victorian melodrama:
The Rejected Woman
.

Also, he thought as he walked, maybe the money dropped into the cardboard box was payment for an idea the robot had given him. Flowers. He had been thinking about phoning Veronica before he turned up at her place. But it would be better just to appear, flowers in hand. And maybe chocolates. A suitor arrives. The initial surprise might prepare her for the bigger one to follow.

For Sandra’s refusal to let him into the room this morning had clarified something in him with surprising speed. He didn’t really want to talk to her about a reconciliation. He had stood in the corridor outside the locked door, wishing
he hadn’t left his key in the room when he went with Jacqui. He had felt foolish sending whispers through an imaginary megaphone (‘Sandra, open the door, please.’ ‘Sandra, we have to talk!’) until Marion Gibson looked out from a door along the corridor and he shrugged at her with elaborate playfulness and she went back in. What was that shrug supposed to have meant? ‘Ah, there you are. This is just a little marital game we play. I know it’s silly but we like it’?

He cringed at the memory. But at least the one response he had received (‘No!’) had reassured him that she was still quietly if bitterly present. And he was able to collect his toilet-bag from the corridor. If she hadn’t caused too dramatic a scene during the night, she wasn’t likely to do it when she had calmed down, was she? With the problem of scandal in Cannamore averted, he was spared the need to play conciliatory roles he didn’t believe in. He could confront himself honestly and decide what he truly felt about the imminent break-up of his marriage.

The answer was: not much. Their relationship had been a travesty for some time now. The threatened adoption of a child had been the X-ray plate that showed him the incurable nature of their marriage. They looked at it and saw two different things. She saw it like a baby-scan, the promise of a future that stretched indefinitely ahead of them. He saw it like the shadow of a cancer. He dreaded what would grow remorselessly from it.

Yet he hadn’t had the courage to tell her. When the adoption fell through, he had kept secret the massive relief he felt. But he knew it was just remission. The longevity scare was an early-warning signal, obliging him to face up to where he was. He was in a marriage he didn’t believe in. For the first
time he had obliged himself to see his infidelities for what they were. They weren’t casual furloughs from the marriage, leaving it intact. They were sustained subversions of it, defying the possibility of its meaningful survival. The fact that it had taken him so long to admit such an obvious truth was proof of how unhealthily deceitful he had been, even to himself.

Whatever impulse had brought Sandra to Willowvale on Saturday, he couldn’t regret it as some unlucky accident without which their marriage would have survived. It was an accident which had expressed the inevitable. Once over the initial shock, he had to admit that he welcomed it. At one stroke circumstances had brought him where it might have taken a lot of exhausting machinations to reach by himself. The relief he felt was not deniable.

It was as if a hair-shirt had been removed from him. It felt good again to be inside his own body. The day was alive with new beginnings. The world had dew on it.

In the flower shop he bought a dozen roses. The woman raised her eyebrows and said, ‘Romance is in the air?’ She didn’t know the half of it. He wasn’t just going to visit Veronica. He was going to snow her. She was unaware of it but they were going to set up house together. It was so much the obvious thing to do, he couldn’t believe they hadn’t done it already. Veronica had suggested it herself more than once. The time was now.

The choice of chocolates in the small grocer’s shop wasn’t lavish but he managed to get a box of After Eight. The charm of the Pakistani behind the counter was like an omen. All things were wishing him well. It was a little awkward carrying the flowers and the chocolates and his weekend bag. Still, it wasn’t exactly a lot of luggage to carry into a new life with
him. A taxi might help, though. First establish his new base and then begin negotiations with Sandra.

‘Clarkston Road,’ he said.

The cab-driver kept eyeing him in the rear-view mirror in that way that warned him he was being sized up for a conversation. He didn’t mind. Today his unexpected euphoria was something even strangers could share in.

‘Have ye ever wondered,’ the driver said, ‘what would win in a fight between a crocodile and a shark?’

It was not an unarresting question. He had to admit to himself that in all his deep ponderings upon life’s big issues, he had so far incomprehensibly ignored this one.

‘No,’ he said, a bit shamefaced. ‘I can’t say I have.’

The driver nodded, as if he’d known all along he had another unthinking automaton in his taxi. He let a few moments pass.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I bet you’re thinking about it now.’

It seemed to him that the driver hadn’t stopped watching him in the mirror since the cab moved off.

‘I am, I am,’ he said placatively. And wouldn’t it be a good idea to give the road the occasional glance? Who knows, there might be another car there or something.

‘And?’

‘And?’

‘So what do you think?’

He had to admit he was hooked. What would win in a fight between a crocodile and a shark? And, anyway, how would you ever know? Presumably, crocodiles and sharks weren’t constantly bumping into one another. Had somebody arranged a special contest between them, like an Aquatic Championship of the World? The questioner obviously knew. Philosophers only like posing problems to
which they think they already have the answers. But what was the answer?

‘I give up,’ he said.

The driver had suddenly remembered that the road was something he should perhaps keep an eye on.

‘Ah suppose it’s obvious when you think of it,’ he said, giving the stiff digit to a passing motorist. ‘Certainly when Ah found out, Ah thought: Yes! Ya beauty! That had to be the answer.’

‘Well?’

‘Ye know how Ah found out? Ah’m sittin’ in the hoose, readin’ the paper one night. And Ah shouts tae the wife. “Jean,” Ah says. “Know how Ah’m always wonderin’ what would win between a crocodile an’ a shark?” ’

He had a sudden surrealistic vision of marital conversations between Jean and her husband. (‘Nothing in the papers again today, Jean, about crocodiles and sharks.’)

‘Well, the answer’s in the paper here.’

The road seemed to have become a matter of absorbing interest again.

‘Well?’

‘It seems there’s a river in Australia. Got a big estuary, like. And the sharks swim there. Your Great Whites an’ things. An’ the crocodiles is waitin’. A square go between them is not unusual.’

‘So what happens?’

‘Same result every time.’

‘Like what?’

‘The crocodile, intit? Seems it takes one bite intae the shark. Holds on to the death. Ta ta, shark.’

He couldn’t help smiling. Another nibble at the apple of infinite knowledge. He wasn’t sure that he believed the driver,
but so what? What sort of pedant would quibble about stepping into a Glasgow taxi to find himself swimming with the crocodiles and sharks? It was like Dorothy stepping from the black-and-white of a dull life into the technicolour of her search for Oz. This was his day all right.

‘I’ll get out here,’ he said.

They were round the corner from Veronica’s flat. He didn’t want her to hear a taxi arriving outside her window. It would kill the surprise. He wanted to appear sudden and full-blown outside her door, bearing gifts and shocking her into acceptance of their new life.

He gave a good tip. To the alchemist his due. He walked round the corner and glanced up at Veronica’s first-floor place. A sedate Sunday window. Soon the interior would contradict that.

It was one of only two tenements in Glasgow he knew of that had no secured door. He went into the entry, walked along the ground-floor level and climbed the stairs. Outside Veronica’s door, he put down his weekend bag and took the flowers in his right hand, the chocolates in his left. He pressed the bell with his right elbow and waited. Nothing happened. He hoped she wasn’t out. He rang again. The ringing dwindled into silence. He was about to curse silently when he heard movement within the flat. He prepared himself as he heard the bolts being drawn behind the door. He held his offerings behind his back.

The door opened. He couldn’t have wished to see a sweeter image. She was wearing a white dressing-gown which didn’t effectively conceal the voluptuousness of her breasts. Her long hair was dishevelled, as if she had been sleeping late. The face without makeup looked defencelessly sensuous. He was making the right choice. He had come home. He produced the
chocolates and flowers with a flourish in front of her and held them up.

‘Tah-dah!’ he said.

‘David?’

Didn’t she recognise him?

‘It’s not a good time,’ she mumbled.

‘Veronica,’ he said. ‘It’s always a good time. Come on. Let me in.’

But she seemed transfixed, staring at him. Her stillness spread to him. He stayed with his presents held in his hands. The feeling he suddenly had was of something bad about to happen. It was one of those long, frozen seconds when you realise that life has ambushed you once again but you still don’t know where the attack is coming from.

Into the stillness in which they stared helplessly at each other came a padding sound, as of something very heavy approaching. Behind her appeared what might as well have been the Creature from the Black Lagoon, so exotic was its impact. It put a large paw round her shoulders. It spoke. Even the voice was on steroids.

‘Is there a problem, Nica?’

I hope not, he thought, looking at the size of the man. The flowers and chocolates are for you. You can decide which ones you want to eat first. The man must have been about six feet four and he had the kind of body you used to see only in comic strips. He was wearing only jockey shorts, which looked as if he had stuffed a piece of the furniture into them, perhaps as a secret weapon.

The familiarity of the ‘Nica’ was interesting. It distracted him irrelevantly, like a condemned man noticing a fly alighting on the barrel of the rifle that is pointed at him. It suggested a certain length of acquaintanceship which he didn’t feel like
questioning at the moment. He just remembered that Veronica had begun going to a gym. It looked as if she had started bringing one of the exercise machines home with her.