by Tim Parks
After eating, she asked permission, lit up a cigarette and then, for no reason I could see, simply smiled directly at me. Her lips, which weren’t well defined, had a rather sad wise twist, blowing out smoke. Her cheeks were full. And I recalled something I’d been thinking lately, on a bus somewhere, watching somebody kiss somebody: that all young women, however apparently plain or even ugly at first glance, all have their little attractions, their charms, their lures, not one without some way of catching your eye: a ready smile of complicity, a way of cocking the head so that hair falls to one side (why does this attract me so much?), a way of lightly touching your wrist perhaps, or of taking a knuckle in the mouth to laugh. One way or another, and consciously really I often think, they compensate for what they may not have, that archetypal body. So with Rosemary, her frank friendliness, utterly without flirtation, her acceptance of you, without any of the barriers of male-female social manoeuvring (viz Joyce, the more unnattainable the gigglier and flirtier she became), all this seemed to draw attention to the large fleshy presence of her body as something straightforward, animal, loveable, that might well embrace you, without difficulty, without anxiety, if only it could be unlocked from that angular uniform.
Her breasts were inescapably large, even extravagant.
And I was just getting definite ideas into my head, toying with breathtaking strategies, thinking it would be wise to drink a bit more for courage, when Peggy arrived, complete with baby Frederick and, after rushing up to see Mother, announced (she had cropped her hair since last I saw her) that she would be staying the night in her own room. So that in the event I was left with the rather less voluptuous, though not entirely unsatisfactory curves of the North Circular.
Wild Summer Rain
I don’t know what took hold of me that night. I went to bed, as usual, an hour or so after Shirley, having read, perfectly calmly, through a couple of hardware reviews I like to keep up with. I undressed and slipped under the quilt. It was July, but raining hard outside. In just two weeks we were supposed to be going to Turkey, except that all was up in the air with Shirley’s saying she didn’t want to come. Would I go on my own? Hardly. But the place on the ferry was booked. Why couldn’t Shirley be more reasonable?
Almost at once I realised I wasn’t going to sleep. I lay still. I assumed my customary sleeping position. No chance. I was in a state of such extreme physical and mental alertness. My skin seemed to sing and crawl with contradictions. There was just so much blood in me, unused, unfulfilled. I clenched my fists, my toes. I ground my teeth. For a while I surrendered to the most vivid erotic images, my tongue pressed against the blue cotton swell of a girl’s plump panties, for example, that sort of stuff. Then trying to force my mind elsewhere, I wondered about my mother’s life, its astonishing sexless serenity. How could people be so different from each other? What had happened to the straightforward sensible life I had planned?
Zombie-like, as if controlled from elsewhere, I sat up in the stale dark half light. I stood and went to the window, immensely tense, aware of sweat on my hands. Pushing back the curtain revealed the inevitable parallel lines of stationary cars, gleaming dully in rain and lamplight down to the dripping park. ‘My whole life,’ I thought, recalling Charles, while at the same time reflecting how unlike me this was, ‘has been nothing but a pathetic trundling along on the metalled rails of my early social and sexual conditioning.’ Confused, excited, I pulled some clothes on, found my shoes.
For more than an hour then, without an umbrella, wearing nothing more than Terylene trousers and a cotton shirt, I walked the respectable brick streets of Finchley. I sucked in the fresh damp air. I felt at once bursting, bursting with strenuous life, and at the same time paralysed, trapped, marching at a zombie-ish pace. But trapped by what? Was anything or anyone preventing me from doing as I chose?
I walked. The wild summer rain fell in dark gusts and clattered against sensible silent houses, the black gloss of blind suburban windows. And so I began to plan very definitely how I would invite Rosemary on holiday to Turkey in place of Shirley. Why should she say no? I would pay for everything. She had taken up agency nursing to be flexible, she said. She wasn’t married, she said.
I planned my approach in immense and teeth-gritting detail. I would have nerves of steel. I would say this, say that, smile that smile which Shirley had told me was sexy. And I fantasised what would follow, hot nights in Turkish hotels, Karma Sutra positions followed by good cheerful meals in spicy restaurants. Other people found relief in affairs, didn’t they? I had even heard a somewhat embarrassing and wimpy confession from Gregory recently.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. I sat in the living room reading through papers from work, and the following morning, bewilderingly early, a good half an hour before she was due to be substituted, I was pushing into Gorst Road from a breezy damp morning to put it to Rosemary. Turn of the key, customary tug and push, and the door was open.
‘Hello, love,’ Mother’s voice sang, ‘I’m back on my feet.’ Embracing me, she said, ‘It’s something of a miracle really. I felt so ill yesterday.’
Indeed she still looked frail as rice paper. Though she gave a little clap of her hands and beamed. Which is a way she has. Rather as if we were at Sunday school, singing choruses.
‘And the nurse?’
‘I sent her home, poor dear, she was so tired. I think I can cope myself now. To be honest she was being rather bossy with poor Dad. I’m just making tea for Peggy if you want a cup.’
Peggy was still in bed, despite the fact that her infant could be heard yelling in the kitchen.
I suppose it must be indicative of the state I had got myself into, or rather that Shirley, that life had got me into, that only two hours later, as soon, that is, as I had a moment alone in the office, I was actually on the phone to this girl I had merely eaten a frugal meal with, watching her slow white hands as she fed herself.
‘I got your number from the agency. I said you’d left your purse.’ ‘Oh did I? How silly of me. I’ll . . .’ ‘No, no you didn’t.’ ‘What?’ ‘You didn’t leave it. I got your number because I want to see you again. I enjoyed meeting you so much.’
After a short pause, she said: ‘You do realise you just woke me up. I’ve been on my feet all night.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I was ready to hang up the moment she said no. I truly did like her but I couldn’t see myself hanging on the phone and begging. My wife was a misery was the point. I wanted some fun.
She said: ‘Okay, how about next Friday?’
I put the phone down and stared around me: the desk, the Venetian blinds, the attractive HewPack hardware. Done it! Done it!
If you really want to do it, George. If you really want to be that person.
I stared, pushing the knuckles of both hands together, biting the inside of a cheek, concentrating. And realised I hadn’t really thought this through yet. I hadn’t decided. My heart wasn’t that hard. The truth being, I suppose, that for some people – Peggy springs to mind – new departures of this kind are just water off a duck’s back; experience doesn’t touch them deeply whatever they do, and so any course of action is more or less as good as the next. While for others of us, for me, it is a bath of acid. Did I really want to become an adulterer? There was a fear of changing, of losing myself somehow, a fear my mother had always exploited. I would far rather be good and stay put, if only one could have fun and pleasure with it.
Why couldn’t Shirley be pleasant?
By six o’clock that evening I had spent so much time blind in front of my screen agonising and wrangling with myself – Rosemary yes, Rosemary no (and how was I to explain my Friday evening outing?) – that I came to the conclusion that I must, must force the decision at once, tonight, or go mad and quite possibly lose my job into the bargain.
When I arrived home, Shirley had just come out of a long session with her mother who was now quite blatantly using her daughter as a recipient for all the bitter things she had to say ab
out her father. Not something likely to improve our own marriage. The moment Mrs Harcourt was out the door I told Shirley I wanted to have a serious talk with her. She said, with her usual blithe irony, to fire away. Coming straight to the point, since otherwise I felt I mightn’t manage, I said our marriage was going through a very bad patch, we both knew that, and I was frustrated. Well, we had always said we would be honest with each other, and so now I was telling her I was going to be unfaithful to her.
‘You what!’
The fact that she was so incredulous galvanised me. Hadn’t she seen it coming? Determinedly I began to explain. I had never had another girl apart from her, had I? We had been going out since we were seventeen, for God’s sake. And I had never had much fun in life with going straight from school to university to job, because so desperately in need of money. I felt I had missed out on something. Everybody had more than one lover these days. Most happy marriages were the result of both partners having already sown their wild oats as it were. Now I was going to be unfaithful. I had a girlfriend.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asked, almost gasped. It was as though she’d been living in a different world.
‘I’ve always believed in discussing everything,’ I said. ‘It’s you who always refuses to talk openly. I wanted you to see how dire things had got. I wanted you to understand.’
She shook her head fiercely from side to side, sat down, stood up, turned round, fidgeting her hands. She even laughed. And she began to tell me how weird I was, how I had simply sucked up my mother’s mad piety, my Grandfather’s coarseness, my sister’s naivety, my aunt’s dumbness too. I should listen to myself. Boy, oh boy, should I listen. I was a bundle of contradictions. I was crazy. How could I announce I was going to go and have it off with somebody else and then try and defend myself. She got angry. When I wouldn’t reply, she suddenly quietened down and said flatly:
‘So it’s the end.’
We were in the living room and I remember we both kept moving rather awkwardly about, not wanting to face each other. When she turned her back to look out of the window I saw her shoulders were trembling and this filled me with tenderness.
I said what did she expect me to do, the way she’d been treating me these past months? Really, what did she expect?
Shirley was silent.
‘I don’t love her,’ I said. ‘I just feel I have to have some fun. I’m living in a tomb here.’
She burst into tears. But this time my teeth were already gritted. I stood firm. She said if only I’d leave her and our bloody ‘relationship’ alone for five minutes, perhaps everything would buck up.
She stopped speaking and cried, still facing the big, rather clumsily double-glazed window where dusk was drawing the last colour from brown brick houses opposite. (Houses, houses and more houses. Everywhere people living together. How do they do it?) Then in a surprisingly sweet voice she said: ‘Anyway, if you think I’ve changed since we met, what about you?’
‘What about me? I haven’t changed at all.’
‘You were so fresh,’ she said. ‘You were so young. So urgent.’
‘No one wants our marriage to work more than me,’ I said.
‘So don’t go and sleep with this other woman. You said you didn’t love her. I could understand if you’d fallen in love with someone, but otherwise, what’s the point?’ Then trying to change the tone of the conversation, she said: ‘If it’s fun you want, we can go and play crazy golf, for heaven’s sake.’ Because we had done this recently and really enjoyed ourselves, an empty Saturday afternoon in Friern Park.
‘I’ve decided,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have told you. I wanted to be honest. I wanted to have this sorted out.’
Very quickly then, looking round her and picking up a few things, she went to the door and ran down the stairs. Her heels could be heard scratching like struck matches on the cement. From the window I watched her opening the garage door, her skirt lifting up the back of her slender calves as she stood on tip-toe a moment. She disappeared inside, then after a couple of false starts reversed out in her usual jerky way, clipping the kerb as she backed round. At the end of the close, indicating left, she turned right and was gone.
A Massive Change of Position and Principle
For the first time in some years, as the car accelerated away, I cried myself. Perhaps she was right. It was the end. Though I very much hoped not. Later I prepared myself a couple of scrambled eggs, reflecting that I’d have to set the alarm earlier than usual in case I had to go to work by bus. Shirley had presumably gone to her mother’s new and unnecessarily sumptuous flat in Ealing (the money that would have bought us our own place) and might well spend the night there, leaving me earless. I phoned a few times, but only got the engaged signal. Now I was getting used to it a little, I didn’t feel so unhappy with the new situation. At least there were signs of life, an explosion of drama after what had seemed a life sentence of static friction.
And the following evening, after bowling (yes, bowling!), then dinner, then Rosemary’s place, the advantages of my strategy became all too apparent. I had nothing to gain from not pursuing my goal to the limit now. So there was no hesitation. At my bright and chattering best – I felt seventeen again, but with the advantage of years of experience – around midnight I got Ros (as she asked me to call her) onto a rather Bohemian mattress on the floor (surrounded by mugs, wine-glasses and discarded clothes) and despite my delirious excitement at this new and so different body performed not at all badly I thought.
I returned on Sunday evening to find a note which read as follows:
George, please, this is a nightmare. George, we can’t let our marriage end this way. We can’t. I know it is partly my own fault, but I can’t help it if I’ve been feeling depressed. I didn’t tell you, but I have been to the doctor about it and to a psychoanalyst, you got me so worried that I might be mentally ill in some way, but both of them told me there was nothing wrong with me. There’s a point at which unhappiness is just unhappiness in the end, frustration just frustration. George, I know that when we were younger, at university, with Jill and Greg, when career and work and all the foreign trips we were going to make seemed so important, I said I didn’t want children. I said I was worried about nuclear war and so on and concerned about what sort of society our generation’s kids would grow up in. Silly things to say really. Now I just know that I want children, my own children. I know that that is the way for fulfilment for me; honestly, I’m just not interested in a career of any kind. I appreciate that you can’t possibly understand this physically, I mean the way I feel it in myself. How could you, being a man? But can’t you accept it as a lover and husband and friend? Okay, I take your point that I promised. But it was an ignorant promise, it was like promising not to eat before you know what hunger means. Can’t you see? You’ve become so hard, George. Why not soften up, please? Come on, be my bright handsome, hard-done-by, will-make-good little Methodist again, then let’s forget the whole thing and head off on that holiday together.
All my love. Still!!!!
SHIRLEY.
It was nine o’clock. I phoned at once. She arrived forty minutes later. From the tone of that letter and then her broken voice on the phone, I had imagined her bedraggled: jeans, a sweater, tennis shoes, tear-streaked cheeks, little-girlish. I had imagined we would cry together and both plead mea culpa, then laugh and think how crazy we’d been. That was what I expected, and at least partly very much wanted. Instead she was carefully made-up, her lips were glistening and she was wearing a new twenties-style cylinder dress that frocked out just above slim knees, her feet pointing carefully in sharp white high heels, likewise new. There was something glassy and brittle and untouchable about it all, but stylish too; it suited her shape, her thin face and round wide eyes. She embraced me.
‘Shirley!’ I sighed. I get these waves of emotion sometimes. I just want to be very sentimental and have everything settled and happy.
But the embrace was
brief. She sat down and crossed her legs, leaned forward, enunciating very correctly, as if at an interview or addressing a mixed race audience. She said: ‘I’ll stay, or rather you’ll stay as long as you give up the idea of other women. Otherwise you’ll have to go.’
Looking back, and considering my mood on seeing her walk into the flat at once so vulnerable and stylish, I’m sure this is a concession she could easily have wrung out of me, had she only had the sense to approach the matter differently, that is seductively, kindly, with comprehension. But the idea of going straight back into conflict and being simply bulldozered into concession was simply not on. It was thus with a wisdom that surprised me, worthy of my mother I thought, that I said: ‘Shirley, honestly, there are so many things wrong with our relationship, the only hope we’ve got is to live together happily for a while. Then maybe we can make concessions. I mean, it’s a long process. You have to work for it.’
‘Oh, so for now we just kiss and make up,’ she said. ‘Is that it?’
‘But isn’t that what you said in your letter?’
‘As long as you promise,’ she said. ‘But I’m not going to be treated like a doormat.’
I stood up. Somehow I felt as if I was acting, very aware of my position in the room, of what I was doing with my body, my hands. It all seemed very unreal. Not an unpleasant feeling, but a shade disturbing. I gave the wall a soft punch. I said look, look, if what she was really trying to tell me was that she wanted children and a happy traditional family, then simply to play it extremely slowly, extremely sweetly, and I might give in, probably would in fact, yes, most men did in the end, didn’t they, but for the moment I was afraid that a baby would simply bind us together all the more, precisely when there were very clear signs that perhaps we weren’t really suited to each other. Wait just a few months, I said. Hang on.
