by Nina Bawden
He said evasively: “Just knowledge of human nature, Tom. Expensively acquired.”
Then he grinned in his normal, malicious fashion and said: “Anyhow, I can appreciate your feelings. Don’t be deceived by them, that’s all. She’s a honey, she’s lovely, she has magnificent legs. She’s an excellent upper-class tart.”
His voice was suddenly venomous and his eyes were blank and angry. If I had not been sure, at that moment, that Emily loved me and if she had not told me about David in the bar of the Woolpack, I would have knocked his crooked teeth down his throat. As it was the anger was softened by a kind of pity for him.
I said: “Must you behave like a bastard? It must have given you quite enough vicarious pleasure to tell Geoffrey about Emily and me. A kind of adultery by proxy.”
His face was a dark and sallow red. I had never seen David so completely off his guard.
He said: “I didn’t tell Hunter anything of the sort. For God’s sake, man, what do you take me for?”
He sounded quite bewildered and entirely genuine.
I said: “You were too drunk to remember.”
He shook his head. “Not that drunk.” He shook his head clumsily as if he were feeling muzzy. The flush grew deeper. “I swear I didn’t say anything of the sort, Tom. Why the hell should I? Why should I want to do you that kind of harm?”
“Not me, perhaps. But Emily. You did see him, didn’t you, last night? You had a row with him?”
“Oh, we had a row all right. But not about that.”
“Did you say anything about Emily?”
He looked confused but only momentarily. Then he said, in his usual defensively cocky manner: “We may have done. I think; it is quite likely that we did.”
He looked like a schoolboy with a secret and as if he were enjoying himself.
We had reached the bus stop and I joined the queue.
I said: “I shouldn’t try too hard to get your own back on Geoffrey. You might bruise your knuckles.”
He chuckled suddenly. “Don’t bother about me, Tom,” he said. “David’s safe on Tom Tiddler’s ground.”
The bus came and I fought my way on to the upper deck with the school children and the shopping housewives. I found a window-seat and looked out at David. He was standing where I had left him, his legs splayed out and his stomach and bulky chest thrust forward so that he looked truculent and top-heavy. A young man in a college blazer came up and spoke to him; he was a nice-looking boy with flaxen hair and a long-boned, untidy body. David smiled at him and from his eager gestures and moving mouth was clearly trying to impress. He looked short beside the boy, fat and rather old, and suddenly his anxiety to please seemed pathetically childish and a little sad. I remember that I craned my neck forward as the traffic jam eased and the bus moved jerkily away and for some absurd and inexplicable reason tried to keep him in sight for as long as I could.
As I got off the bus the big grey ear came out of the turning and swung into the traffic on the main street. It was a shabby pre-war Bentley with a drop head, a nice car, the kind of car I would have liked to own if it had been possible for me to buy a car at all. Then I remembered that the Hunters had a 1936 Bentley, and I stood at the corner and tried to make out the number-plate but the bus moved off too quickly and the car was gone.
By the time I reached the gate of the house I had forgotten about the Bentley. I was tired and hungry, and I hoped that lunch was ready. It was natural and normal to be coming home and at that moment, as happened frequently, everything that there was between myself and Emily seemed as small and far away as an image seen through the wrong end of the telescope. The little, ugly house looked amicable and pleasant in the sunlight, the dahlias splashed their bright colour in the narrow garden and I had a sudden, happy feeling of security. I was glad to be home.
I suppose I should have known that something was wrong as soon as I went into the kitchen, by the way in which they turned towards me, by the look on their silent, waiting faces. But I was still warmed by contentment; I said, with what must have seemed to them, appalling incongruity:
“Isn’t it a lovely day?”
Neither of them answered me and then I saw Nora’s face. She was standing by the glass door that led from the kitchen into the garden. She was very white, but as she looked at me she flushed painfully and hotly and put her hand to her mouth.
She said: “Oh, Tom,” and her voice was uncertain, almost frightened.
Mrs. Parry was sitting at the table, knitting. The needles clicked monotonously together as if they had a separate and malevolent life of their own. Her grey hair was cut in the clinging bob of the 1920’s which made her heavy face look wide and flat.
She spoke with an ominous air of pleased satisfaction.
She said: “We’ve had a visitor.”
Nora caught her breath and began to cry gently, her eyes fixed on my face. I put out a band towards her and she turned away, rejecting me, and leaned her forehead against the glass of the door.
Mrs. Parry said: “Crying’s not going to do you any good, my girl.” She sounded contemptuous. She looked at me and her eyes were opaque, like brown stones.
“You thought you’d keep it dark, didn’t you, Mr. Clever? Carrying on behind our backs, deceiving your wife and having your fun? You never thought you’d be caught out, did you? Oh, no, you were too clever for us. But you weren’t quite clever enough!”
My limbs were icy cold and trembly. I said: “Who was your visitor?”
She had a small, shiny mouth with tight-drawn lips. She said: “Mr. Hunter came to see us. He’s a very nice gentleman. You could see he didn’t like what he was doing, but he felt it was his duty to tell us. He was ever so upset, but he said it was better that we should know about it so that we could put a stop to it. He’s too good for that woman he’s married to—that sticks out a mile. He tried to stick up for you. More fool he! He tried to make out that it was nothing very much and that it wasn’t your fault that it had gone as far as this. We know different, of course, and I told him so.”
She snapped her mouth shut and began to cast off the stitches on her needle.
I had a cramp in my stomach. The room seemed very quiet and still. I went over to Nora and touched her arm gently. She jerked away from my hand and looked at me. Her eyes were wet and swollen and her whole face was dirty with tears.
She said, in bewilderment: “Tom, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.”
Her face puckered and she began to cry again in a noisy, overwrought fashion. I stood helplessly beside her, wanting to take her in my arms and not daring to do so.
Mrs. Parry put down her knitting and stood up. She was a big, short woman with the same build as her son, stumpy legs and a heavily square body.
She said: “Of course it’s true. Just look at him. It’s written all over his face. He doesn’t like being caught out, does he? Oh, he’s a fine one. It’s all right for him—he’s got you to work and slave for him, keeping his house nice, and he’s got that woman too. She’s got plenty of clothes, she can afford to go and have her hair done nicely, she can buy his drinks for him—oh, he’s sitting pretty. She doesn’t have to worry where her next penny’s coming from. That’s fine for her, and for Mr. Clever Harrington. You picked yourself a fine one, my girl. I told you you should have found yourself a decent working man instead of getting too big for your boots and wanting someone educated.’”
Her voice was false with hideous mimicry. She came up to us, where we stood by the door, and faced Nora with her hands on her hips and a look of ugly, bitter anger.
“It’s all my own fault,” she said. “I shouldn’t have listened to your fine ideas about going to a university. Oh, yes, it sounded all right at the time. You were going to get educated, weren’t you, and get yourself a good teaching job with a pension at the end of it? It was going to be well worth not earning for a few years so that you could get better pay when you came out of college? You could have got a decent, honest job like all the ot
her girls, but you were too high and mighty for that. Too good for your own brother, weren’t you? Your own brother who had to go out to work at fourteen just so you could stay at school like a little lady—and then you were ashamed of him because he didn’t talk the way you thought he ought to and you didn’t want him to meet all your la-di-da friends from college. Everyone had to give way to you—I had to work and slave when other mothers took their daughter’s earnings and had it a bit easy. Not that I complained about it—I didn’t. Then nothing came of the grand job, did it? You got married instead, didn’t you? Thought you were doing well for yourself. ‘My husband works at the university,’ and no one else was good enough to lick your boots. I hope you’re pleased now. It’s done you a lot of good, hasn’t it?”
There was a small trickle of spit running from the corner of her mouth. She struck Nora hard across the face with her open palm.
She wasn’t really striking at Nora. She was striking at herself, at her own life, at the empty, mocking years and it was painful to look at her. Her thin mouth was quivering horribly and her eyes were vicious. She stared at Nora and then she turned and lumbered blindly out of the room. Her footsteps went heavily up the shoddy stairs and a door slammed on the landing.
Nora’s face was full of astonishment and shame. She was very pale except for the wide, scarlet mark across her cheek and mouth.
She said: “Oh, God,” and hid her face on my shoulder. I held her tightly and stroked her hair and let her cry. I felt very tender towards her and infinitely sorry.
When, finally, she was able to talk, it was worse than I had expected it would be. I had expected anger and hysterical reproaches and been prepared for them. But they didn’t come. Instead, she said that it was all her own fault, that she’d been a bad wife, that she hadn’t been able to help me in my work and that she was desperately sorry. I told myself that the anger and hysteria would come later, but it didn’t help. I felt a swine.
She sat on the edge of the kitchen table, her legs dangling, and wiped her eyes with my handkerchief. She said:
“Tom, do you really love her?”
I nodded. “I think so.”
Her hair was soft and untidy, her face was pitiful. “Tom, you won’t leave me, will you?” she said. “I don’t care if you love her. Only please never leave me.”
She sounded like a child afraid of the dark.
I said: “Dear Nora, of course I’ll never leave you. Why the hell did Hunter have to come?”
She said: “Tom, don’t be cross with him, please. He meant to be kind—he was very sweet and gentle—and it was only right, wasn’t it? I mean, it was only fair that I should know. It would have been so dishonest for him not to tell me.”
“Dishonest” was one of her words; now, in this context, it sounded pathetic and adolescent.
I hoped that the anger didn’t show in my face. I didn’t want to hurt her any more.
I said: “It doesn’t matter now. Only it seemed cruel.”
She said gently: “But it was true, Tom. Won’t you tell me about Emily? I’d rather know.”
I tried to explain. It came out haltingly and it sounded petty and shameful. There is nothing that sounds so faked as a remembered emotion. She did her best to be understanding and kind, and I despised myself.
In the end, because it was getting late, we made lunch together. We were clumsy; we burned the sausages and forgot to cook the potatoes so that the meal became a joke, and we laughed at ourselves excitedly as if it were an unexpected picnic. We talked nervously and wildly as if we were both afraid that a silence would mean that words best left unsaid would be spoken. The whole thing became oddly unreal like a bad play in which the scenes are not working out to a conventional pattern and the plot is not convincing enough to make them seem real.
I had forgotten that Sandy would come home for lunch, and I think that Nora had forgotten too, so that his appearance in the doorway shocked us into silence. His fair hair was endearingly long and hung in his eyes, his blazer was torn and his shoelaces untied. He stared at us both through his fringe of hair and flung his satchel untidily on to the table. He frowned at the blackened sausages on his plate and ate them rapidly, with an air of insult. Nora and I avoided each other’s eyes; we talked separately to the child in a bright, consciously interested manner that made him look from one to the other with puzzled eyes. He swallowed his stewed apple, and said:
“Stewart’s got a bike for his birthday. He’s seven. I’ll be seven, too. Can I have one?”
I said: “Perhaps. We’ll see.”
He said: “I’d like a bike. Stewart’s Mummy lets him ride in the road. Can I get down now?”
He got down from his chair, hitching his grey trousers round his small hips, and buckled on his cowboy holster. Nora began a protest, doomed from the beginning, about his taking a gun to school to which he listened with silent scorn.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll put it in my desk. No one will see.”
He picked up his satchel, Nora combed his hair away from his forehead and scrubbed at the dirty mark round his mouth. He shifted restlessly under her hands, and said:
“That’s enough, Mummy. I’ll be late.” And he left the house chanting loudly.
When he had gone we cleared the table and began to wash up in silence. We did not look at each other.
In the end I cleared my throat with a noisy effort, and said: “Nora, dear, I’m not busy this afternoon. Would you like to come for a walk?”
It sounded like a bit of bad dialogue written by an amateur.
She looked at me suspiciously. Then she said: “If you like.” Her voice was reluctant.
She went upstairs and I finished the wash-up and put the plates away. When she came back she was wearing the green suit that she had bought in the spring and kept for special occasions. She stood in the doorway looking shy. I told her that she looked very pretty and she blushed self-consciously.
The afternoon was still warmly sunny. By the river the trees were changing colour and the early fallen leaves floated on the stippled surface of the water. We walked a yard apart and talked in short artificial sentences.
Nora was in one of her rare moments of beauty; her features were small and pointed and too pale so that she seldom appeared more than pleasantly pretty and when she looked lovely, as she did now, it was a surprise and a delight. Her skin was soft and clear and flushed and her eyes were bright. I remember that I looked at her with a kind of distant pleasure as I would have looked at any pretty woman, and I felt no more than that. It seemed, then, monstrous that this should be so. From some obscure motive of self-torture or perhaps to startle myself into emotion, I began consciously to evoke a series of sentimental pictures from the early days of our life together. It was entirely an academic exercise, and worthless. It seemed, suddenly, that I did not know her at all, that she was not even a familiar reflection in the mirror of habit, but a total stranger to me.
She said: “Tom, you won’t see Emily again? Will you promise me that?”
The face she turned towards me was shut and unsmiling and waiting for an answer. I felt very tired.
She said: “It can’t go on, can it?”
I said: “Nora, I can’t make that kind of promise. Not now, not this minute. How can I? I shall have to see her again. I owe her something. You can’t cut off this sort of thing as if you were amputating a limb.”
It was a defence and a kind of appeal. It arose, and this shamed me inwardly, less from my love for Emily than from a sharp fear of making any irrevocable decision. It was not the situation that provoked the fear, it was a long habit and a half-admitted weakness.
She looked at me with a cold, remote bitterness. She said with contempt: “You were never much good at making up your mind, were you? Do you think you can get away with it?”
For a moment she stared at me with a white, controlled anger. Then the lines of her face shattered into misery and she began to cry.
She said: “Tom, how
could you do this to me when I loved you so? How could you do it?”
She said it over and over again like an anguished child. And then she said all the things I had expected her to say in the beginning, in a spate of pitiful, stereotyped phrases. She said that I had ruined her life, that I had destroyed her trust in me. That she loved me desperately and that she never wanted to see me again. That she wanted a divorce and then that all she wanted was for us to stay together. It all came out between bursts of weeping; she was walking fast along the river, on the soft, green grass, her shoes dusty among the leaves. Then she stopped and faced me.
She said: “Tom, how can you be so stupid? She isn’t worth it. Don’t you know that? Don’t you know that she’s a bitch, that she’s done this sort of thing hundreds of times before?” Then the despair went from her face; she looked old and curiously evil. She produced a stream of filthy epithets that I should not have thought she knew.
In the end she said: “It isn’t only Geoffrey who knows all about her. Everyone does. You ask David. He knows what she is.”
She caught her breath and began to cry again, turning her sad, blotched face away from me. I tried to put my arms around her but she wrenched herself away and ran, stumbling among the fallen leaves. I let her go because there was nothing else I could do.
I watched her, and as I stood there, a memory came unbidden from a forgotten occasion of Nora running through the rain to meet me, her wet hair blowing and her face full of love. I felt nothing, only numbness and cold and an aching kind of regret.
Chapter Four
I went back to college and sat at my desk by the window pretending to work on my lecture notes, watching the sky above the quadrangle darken abruptly and fill with sudden rain. I felt immensely tired; my bones were stiff and wearily aching as though I had just climbed a mountain. I gave up the pretence of working quite early; by the time my scout brought me my tea and switched on the lights, it had been, for almost an hour, too dark to see.
