by Nina Bawden
She was talking to David for a long time. I saw them from different points of the room while I talked inanities to a lot of people who were drinking more than was good for their stomachs or their souls. Emily was not smiling; she was listening to David with her head a little on one side and an intent, unhappy look on her face. There was an odd air of intimacy about them as they talked together which made me angry and hurt and jealous. Then she left him and the next time I saw her she was standing beside her husband. He was talking to the Vice-Chancellor and she stood with them for a while, smiling when she was spoken to, with a white, uncertain look. I had never seen her like that, without the life and the sparkle, and it made her look ten years older. After a short time she and Geoffrey went out of the room together.
I found David in the corner where Emily had left him. He was a little drunk and he grinned cheerfully at me. He was a fat, sweaty man who looked as if he never washed. He had the chest and shoulders of a heavyweight boxer and the remains of dashing good looks in his dark-eyed Welsh face. He had a thin, bitter mouth and there was something wrong with his teeth. At some point in his childhood he must have had two of his front side-teeth removed, bringing the sharp canines nearer to the front and giving him a vicious look. He was a provincial journalist and would never be anything else. He ran a gossip column and was excellently suited to the occupation; like his mother he delighted in malicious scandals and other people’s failures. He was an infallible peddler of small nastiness.
He said: “Well, if it isn’t Mr. High and Mighty Harrington. We’re out of our class to-night, Tom, you and I.”
I said: “You’re having a good time, aren’t you?”
He waved his drink at me. “Bloody capitalist’s bloody booze,” he said loudly and distinctly so that several people in our neighbourhood turned to look and smile. It was unexpected to find him drunk, he had a nonconformist attitude to drink which was odd in a journalist.
I said: “David, this is a polite party. Hadn’t you better go home?”
He leered at me with his repulsive teeth like an evil pixie, and said: “You put on airs, Tom, with your dinner-jacket. Or are you sharing the social duties with our host? You have so much else in common.”
The grin grew wider. His lips were damp and shining. I stood quite still, the sweat cold under my collar. He had seen us. At the time we hadn’t been sure. We had come out of my room in college, careless with happiness; it must have been written on our faces. David, who occasionally ran an article on university doings, had been in the quadrangle talking to an undergraduate. I had seen him and pulled Emily back into the archway. It had been a silly thing, a guilty thing to do, and almost at once we had walked straight out into the quadrangle and smiled at him in greeting. I had hoped that he had not seen my instinctive, revealing movement and afterwards I had forgotten about the whole thing. But of course he had noticed, of course he knew.
I said: “You’re a swine, aren’t you?” trying to sound confident and angry. He went on grinning at me in a sly and stupid way so that I wanted to hit him.
He was too drunk to be careful. He said: “You mustn’t think you are specially honoured, Tom. The lady isn’t particular.”
That went too near the bone. I didn’t care who heard me. I said: “Get out, you bastard, or I’ll throw you out.”
He laughed, throwing back his big head, the oiled hair shedding white scurf on to his collar. A number of people near us stopped talking and stared openly. Then Geoffrey joined us. He was taller than most of the men in the room; his pale face was politely smiling. The fair hair on his cheekbones glinted in the light.
He said: “Mr. Parry, I’ve been looking for you. Would you come and have a drink with me in the library?”
It was the voice of confident authority; it sank through the layers of resentment and inverted snobbery. David looked defiant, but he said, quite submissively: “Yes, I don’t mind if I do, Mr. Hunter.”
They went off together. Geoffrey, for his height and sex, extraordinarily graceful and the little fat horror waddling beside him like a goose. Geoffrey held the door open for him and he ducked through it awkwardly and without dignity, his tight jacket rucked up over his fat behind.
Emily was beside me. She looked quiet and pale, and the mascara was smudged at the corners of her eyes as though she had been crying. She said: “Thank God for that.”
I felt churlish. “He’s got the lordly manner all right, hasn’t he?”
She gave me a quick, wan smile. “Tom, don’t be bitter. You don’t have to be jealous of Geoffrey.”
I wondered suddenly how many men she had said that to. I said: “All right. But the lord of the manor act makes me feel plebeian. Besides, he’s at least four inches taller than I am. What were you talking to Parry about?”
She said, and she was always a bad liar: “Nothing, Tom. Local scandal. He is really rather amusing when he chooses to be.”
“He knows about us. Was that what he was telling you?”
“No, Tom. I’ve told you what we talked about. And I don’t expect he knows about us either. No more than a lucky guess, anyway. He’s too wily to act on guesswork.”
I was at first surprised that she could be so confident and appear to mind so little, and then I felt the familiar bitterness of wondering how often this had happened to her before that she could treat it so lightly. She out her hand on my arm, and said:
“Quite a lot of people have gone. Do you think the others would like to dance?”
The polished floor was bare and we had nothing to do except choose the records for the radiogram. I suppose, looking back, that we behaved foolishly and conspicuously, but I was more than a little drunk and Emily seemed to want me to be with her. We put on a record that we both knew and liked and started the dancing. Emily danced beautifully; she was tall for a woman and I was short for a man so that our steps fitted comfortably together. I liked dancing with her and after a little she leaned against me as if she were tired. She didn’t talk very much, and I suppose I should have known then that something was troubling her, but I was still thinking about David and hoping Nora had not seen what had happened.
After we had danced for about half an hour, I saw Nora. She was with the senior lecturer in music and his dull wife. She was leaning against the wall with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I smiled at her over Emily’s shoulder, and she grinned bravely. I felt worried about her and when the record ended and we walked over to the gramophone to choose another I said that I thought I ought to go and dance with her.
Emily said: “Oh, Tom, must you?” And, for a moment, because she looked tired and not well I had the same grinding feeling of responsibility for her that I always had for Nora. But she said, before I could answer: “How silly of me. Of course you must go and dance with her, Tom.” She turned away, dismissing me, and walked over to the buffet tables.
I rescued Nora from the music lecturer. We danced a slow waltz rather badly and out of step with each other. She was a little drunk and fondled my neck with one hand.
I said: “Are you enjoying the party?” and she shook her head.
“Not much. It’s too noisy and all the people are dull.” I must have sighed because she immediately looked anxious and said brightly: “I suppose I’m just out of the social habit. I haven’t read the new books, or seen the new plays.”
It was the usual, indirect complaint, and I said defensively: “This isn’t a literary society, you know.” After that we didn’t talk at all and when the waltz ended I took her along to the bank manager and his wife. He was a purple-faced, merry man and could be relied upon to be nice to everyone, including Nora.
After that the evening became a little blurred. I danced with Emily almost continuously. The crowd had thinned and I knew, distantly, that we would be discussed over coffee in the morning. Emily was usually clever about that sort of thing, but to-night she didn’t seem to care. She didn’t talk much and she didn’t always answer when I spoke to her. Her silence didn’t worry me. I wa
s happy to be with her; we had been lovers for almost a year and I found her, still, a constant and surprising joy.
At about eleven o’clock Nora came up to us as we sat at a table, eating sandwiches. She said:
“Tom, I’m sorry. It’s a headache.”
She looked nervous and contrite. Her mouth was screwed up and her face was white with pain. She often had a headache when she was not enjoying herself. The pain was quite real and sometimes almost blinded her, but it didn’t always help to know that.
Emily said: “I’m so sorry. Would an aspirin do any good? We were thinking of going to the golf club when the party ended and we had hoped you would be able to come.”
Nora said: “No. Tom, take me home.” She sounded like a rude child and her eyes filled with tears so that for a moment I was almost angry with Emily for being unpercipient, forgetting that I had told her about Nora’s headaches and their usual cause. Nora turned her back on us and went to the door.
I said: “Emily, I’m sorry.” And she smiled at me with her wide mouth and lovely eyes, and said:
“It’s a shame. Poor Tom.”
Her sympathy and the feeling of conspiracy between us made me feel a traitor. I thought of Nora with uneasy guilt; the knowledge that I didn’t love her made me see her as perhaps more pathetic than she really was. I said good-bye to Emily and followed Nora to the door.
She had gone upstairs to get her coat and I waited in the empty hall with the noise of the gramophone coming through the open door. It was cold in the hall and I wished that I had brought my coat with me.
The library door opened and David came out. He stood in the doorway, and said over his shoulder:
“Mr. Hunter, has nothing ever come between you and the sun?”
It was a consciously dramatic exit line and, as such, coming from the drunken Welshman, should have sounded absurd, but for some reason it did not. There was so much resentment in his voice and bitter anger that the effect of his words was chilling.
Geoffrey Hunter said something from inside the room, but I could not hear what it was. David shrugged his heavy shoulders and turned away, walking through the hall with the cautious solemnity of the drunk. Geoffrey followed him. He didn’t see me and his face was drawn with temper.
He said: “You’ll keep your mouth shut, you little runt, d’you hear?”
Then he saw me and his face composed miraculously into civilised restraint. At least the features were composed, the eyes were cold as charity. David passed me, staring straight ahead, and went into the street through the open door.
Geoffrey looked at me. His back was to the light and I couldn’t see his face very clearly. He said:
“He’s a bore, that man. I didn’t think he’d come.” His voice was deliberately light, rather strained. I wondered whether David had told him about Emily and me, but it was impossible to tell.
Nora and I went home in the back of the bank manager’s car. She lay with her head on my shoulder and moaned gently every now and again. By the time they brought us to our gate she was almost asleep. I helped her out of the car and she stood beside me, swaying a little, while I said good night and thanked them for the ride.
When we got indoors she went straight upstairs and I made her a warm drink and took it up to her. She was sitting in bed; she had washed the make-up from her face, leaving traces of lipstick in small gobs at the corner of her mouth.
She said: “Tom, why do you leave me alone so much?”
I put the tray carefully on the bedside table.
I said slowly: “My dear, I thought you liked to go out to meet other people, not to be with me.”
She said accusingly: “You know that isn’t true. You know that I love you and like you to be with me.”
She started to cry helplessly and drunkenly, the tears rolled out of the corners of her eyes and splashed on to the sheets. She looked sweet and plain and rather young. We were off again and there wasn’t anything that I could do to stop it. The old angers and resentments came out with hideous inevitability. I said nothing and I looked at her—at the small, pale face and the cloud of dark hair and the mouth spoiled with temper. It was my face. I had lived with it and made it and I couldn’t escape the responsibility.
She had thought I was someone quite different when she had married me. I don’t think I had been; if I had encouraged her to think I was a different sort of person it was only because I had tried to tell her about the sort of person that I had wanted to be. Her accusations weren’t really levelled at me, but at the man I had hoped, in my early twenties, to become. I had never really been in love with her although I had persuaded myself that I was. She had been someone I had thought I could mould into my idea of what my wife should be. I knew now that it was a wrong thing to have done and a cruel thing, and I was bitterly ashamed.
In the end she said: “Tom, you do love me, don’t you?”
I said: “Of course, silly goose. It’s too late to quarrel. Be a good girl now, and go to sleep.”
I opened the curtains and turned out the lights and got into bed.
She said, in the dark: “Tom, I was so ashamed about David.”
Her voice was muffled and far more intensely miserable than when she had been quarrelling with me. Shame was always, for her, a more potent cause of unhappiness than anger.
I lied. “I don’t think many people noticed him. And, anyway, it doesn’t reflect on you.”
She didn’t answer and the bed shook a little as if she were crying to herself. We lay with our backs to each other in the awful intimacy of the double bed, not touching each other until sleep was too imminent to prevent it and then we lay closer, warmly curled and in some measure comforted.
Chapter Two
The telephone woke me. The room was washed with the dead, grey light of an early morning without sun. I got out of bed, yawning and muzzy with sleep, and brushed my hair before the looking-glass. I always brushed my hair as soon as I got up, even if I was in a hurry, and it was something that never failed to irritate Nora so that now I glanced instinctively at her sleeping, tumbled body to see if she were awake and watching me.
The telephone was in the sitting-room by the window. The curtains were open and outside it was a wet, muggy morning. The drab line of houses opposite looked as unreal as houses in a stage set, their windows empty and dead and cold. The mist steamed in the street.
Emily said: “Tom, is that you? Darling, there’s been some trouble. Can I see you?”
The carpet was rough under my bare feet. There was a badly frayed patch by the telephone table, and I could feel the wooden floor beneath. I was very cold.
I said: “What’s the matter?” It was a foolish thing to say because I knew what was the matter. Emily had never rung me up at home before.
She said: “Geoffrey knows about us. I think you were right about your brother-in-law. I think he must have said something to Geoffrey. He asked me and I told him.”
I said: “Oh, God!” And then: “How frightful for you. What’s happened?”
She sounded very dead. “I’m not sure. Geoffrey’s being very civilised.”
I said: “Do you want me to see him?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. But I’d like you to come. Would you mind?”
Her voice sounded unsure and a little scared as if she didn’t know how I was going to take it. Almost as though she were afraid of me.
I said: “Darling, of course I’ll come. Straight away.” And I added, stupidly: “Try not to worry.”
“No,” she said. “Bless you.” And the line went dead.
In moments of utter disaster you don’t really think or feel anything exceptional or unexpected. Your actions are not so much your own as the automatic responses learned from stage and screen as being the inevitable expression of catastrophe. You light a cigarette from the packet on the mantelpiece and stub it out again almost immediately. You look round for a drink, not because you want one, but because it seems the conventional thing to do. Then t
he sensation of theatre fades the sweat dries on your forehead and the quick pulse slows down. The individual questions stick out like thumb marks on a clean wall. Why in God’s name did it have to happen? Did the telephone wake Nora? What am I to say to her? Is there a puncture in my bicycle tyre? What am I going to do?
I pulled my pyjama jacket tighter round my chest and tucked it into my trousers. I went slowly upstairs, carefully avoiding the stair that creaked when you trod on it.
Nora was still asleep. She turned over and sighed as I went into the room, but her eyes were closed. I remember that I felt an absurd sense of relief because I would not have to explain why I was dressing myself at this early hour. I collected my clothes and took them to the bathroom. I washed and dressed as quickly as I could and wondered if I ought to shave and decided against it. I went down the stairs, my shoes in my hand. I was sitting on the bottom stair and putting them on when Nora said:
“Tom, what on earth are you doing? Has the clock stopped?”
She was standing on the landing, leaning over the banisters. Her dark hair fell about her face and her shoulders were white above her nightdress. She always looked very pretty in the mornings before the day began to cloud her face with worry. Her smile was puzzled and sweet.
I said: “I didn’t mean to wake you up. I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d go out for a bit.”
I was always surprised how easy it was to lie. The thing that hurt was the trustful acceptance and belief.
She said: “But, Tom, it’s so early and so cold. Must you?”
I said: “Dear, go back to bed. I’ll come home soon and make breakfast.”
She said reluctantly: “All right,” and I went upstairs and tucked her up in bed. The pulse in my throat was beating so hard I was afraid she would notice it. But she didn’t. She smiled at me sleepily and I kissed her because she seemed to expect it. I felt like Judas.
The tyres of my bicycle were flat and I pumped them up angrily. I cycled as fast as I could; the raw, damp mist was unpleasant to breathe and made me cough. My hands were sticky on the handlebars and I thought that it was a long time since I had sweated with fear.
