Mavis Belfrage

by Alasdair Gray

  “I am NOT upper class!” said Mavis furiously stubbing out her cigarette.

  “You’ve all the traits, Mavis.”

  “What traits?” she asked, glaring at him.

  “Well the first that springs to mind is the way you smoke. You smoke all the time but never take more than a few puffs from each fag. If you’d known real poverty you’d smoke them to the tip like most folk do.”

  “What’s the next trait that springs to mind?”

  “Dad,” said Colin quietly, “Bill is right. You’re making too much noise.”

  “What’s the next that springs to mind?” said Mavis as if Colin had not spoken.

  “Nothing Mavis. I’m sorry,” said Gordon in a low voice. He went on reading. So apparently did Mavis for a moment

  then suddenly fired at Gordon with, “Do you know how much money Britain has invested overseas?”

  “Sorry! Cannae help you there Mavis,” he murmured, amused.

  “Over a thousand million sterling: money bringing us wealth and goods without us giving back a thing to the third-world countries where it’s invested. These investments don’t just benefit the rich. Our tight little island floats nicely and evenly on a sea of dark-skinned poverty. And when some of the exploited climb aboard we scream that they’re swamping us.”

  “You a Communist?”

  “No.”

  “For someone who isnae a Communist you know a hell of a lot about British foreign investments,” said Gordon with a hint of passion.

  “Dad,” said Colin. Gordon subsided

  and two minutes later said cajolingly, “Mavis.”

  She did not look at him until he said, “Shall I tell you why I admire you? I admire you because you’ve opinions – strong ones – so you and I can have good brisk arguments with no holds barred. See my Colin? You couldnae start an argument with him if your life depended on it. He won’t pass an opinion on a single thing.”

  Both Gordon and Mavis looked at Colin who carried the tray of turrets to his model city and began clipping them onto the walls. Bill sprang up and knelt on the sofa, watching.

  “He used to have opinions,” said Gordon. “He defended pacifism in his school debating society. When he was fourteen he marched to Aldermaston. He was the youngest member of a committee – what was it called? – The Committee of a Hundred. Him and me had some fine old argy-bargies in those days, because though I’m for the Labour Party I’m definitely moderate. Do you remember the arguments we had about that Colin?”

  “Yes,” said Colin drily.

  “Then he went to university – Cambridge, no less. What did Cambridge do to you, Colin?

  “Educated me.”

  “Look at him now! He won’t voice an opinion. Doesn’t argue. Refuses to vote. And spends his spare time playing with toy bricks.”

  “I don’t understand why people in this country think their opinions matter,” murmured Colin, working on his city walls. “The Labour Party refuse to fight the stock exchange. The Tories refuse to fight the unions. The radical demonstrators link arms with the police and sing Auld Lang Syne. I refuse to feel angry about this. Like most of us I would hate a civil war with starvation, looting and machine-guns fired out of bedroom windows. Our political system is a means of using up energy which might change things. Political opinions are hobbies, like mine –” (he glanced with satisfaction at the towers of Glonda) “– exactly like mine.”

  “O!” cried Mavis flinging her book down, “I wish I could shake and shake you till you came alive!”

  Colin looked at her with an obstinate little smile. Bill said plaintively, “Don’t talk like that Mavis, it hurts my head. Colin, precisely when can I attack Glonda?”

  “When it’s complete.”

  “But you keep changing bits! I don’t mind preparing an attack if I’ve a date to work toward but you won’t give me one.”

  “Right. The fifth of November. Our war will start on the fifth of November. That gives us plenty of time.”

  “Don’t depend on it Bill,” said Mavis, “we may not be here by then. And now it’s your bedtime.”

  She went on reading. The three males stared at her, Bill sullen, Gordon quizzical, Colin horrified. Gordon stood up saying, “How about hot chocolate and toast before you go Bill? I’m having some.”

  “All right,” said Bill in a subdued voice. He gathered his book and tracings, put them on the tea table and asked if he could leave them there till tomorrow. Neither Mavis nor Colin answered so he followed Gordon to the kitchen.

  Colin sat on the sofa facing Mavis who looked brightly back. He said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m leaving, Colin. I came to live in your house – not your father’s.”

  “Two thirds of it is mine!”

  “Only legally.”

  “We … must talk about this later.”

  “Talk all you like. It won’t change me.”

  9

  At seven o’clock next morning Gordon, dressed for work, was boiling an egg in the kitchen when Colin, unshaven and morose, entered wearing dressing-gown and slippers. Gordon said, “Get yourself a mug – there’s tea in the pot,” and put another egg into simmering water.

  “I’m tired,” said Colin, yawning and pouring.

  “I’m not surprised. The noise kept me awake till two thirty.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Nothing distinct – just a man and woman arguing.”

  “We’ll have to leave, Dad,” said Colin, sighing.

  “Who’s we?”

  “Mavis, me and Bill. You see –”

  “Don’t explain!” said Gordon quickly. “Nothing needs explaining. But you’re not leaving. I can’t pay for this house on my own you know.”

  “I’d still pay my share of it –”

  “What! And the rent for somewhere else? And support a woman like Mavis?”

  “I’ll manage it,” said Colin with obstinate calm. “Mavis has her Social Security allowance.”

  “She won’t have it if the pair of you share the same lodgings. And how will I feel living alone in a house this size? All I need is a room and kitchen near the shop, Colin, somewhere with a decent pub round the corner. I’ve missed the pubs since we came out here.” Gordon performed deft movements which ended with him seated facing his son, a soft-boiled egg in a cup before each of them. Colin was watching him with a mournfulness Gordon seemed to find amusing.

  “Stop looking tragic!” he cried. “You arenae driving a poor lonely old soul from hearth and home! I’m not fifty yet. I’ve more friends than you have. Anyway, I’ll be here at weekends if only to weed the garden. I doubt if you or Mavis will do it.”

  “You’re … a very … decent man,” said Colin, smiling at him lovingly. Gordon grinned with pleasure then frowned and said, “Since I’m leaving I’ll be so bold as to ask a question I couldnae have asked otherwise. Mavis. Why don’t you boss her a bit? I think she’d be happier if you did.”

  “Boss her,” said Colin, staring at his egg. “Taking orders is the thing she most hates. If I bossed her she would leave me.”

  “And you’re afraid of that?”

  “Terrified.”

  “Can’t help you there son.”

  Gordon finished his breakfast and went to work. Colin returned to the curtained bedroom. Without switching on the light he sat on the bed beside Mavis and stroked her hair until she opened her eyes and said, “Mm?”

  “I spoke to him.”

  “Well?”

  “He’s leaving.”

  She thought for a moment then said, “Won’t that be very sad for him?”

  “I think so. But he makes light of it.”

  “Well,” said Mavis, yawning, “if you can accept it so can I. He isn’t my father.”

  10

  One Saturday Mavis returned to the house in Saint Leonard’s Bank and found a cluster of toy balloons against the living-room ceiling. Strings hung from them. Colin and Bill were tying the ends to the turrets of Glonda
.

  “Hullo!” said Mavis dropping her shopping bag on a chair. “Have you noticed how late I am?”

  Both had noticed. Colin had been worried but the sight of her made that irrelevant. He had never seen her so cheerful. He sat down to enjoy the sight, stretching his arms and saying, “It doesn’t matter. I gave Bill his tea.”

  “I knew you would.”

  With dance-like movements she went to the window and rearranged flowers in a vase saying, “I met Clive Evans in the supermarket. It was nice meeting an old friend. He took me for a meal.”

  “Evans the Welshman?” asked Colin, still contemplating her with pleasure.

  “Yes. It was fun meeting him by accident like that. He’s teaching now. Do I seem drunk?”

  “You seem cheerful. He bought you a drink?”

  “No, he admired me. I made a tremendous impression on him. Don’t you feel intoxicated when someone admires you?”

  “People don’t admire me,” said Colin smiling ruefully.

  “Make them! It should be easy. You’re full of good qualities. Bill you scruffy little tyke, let me have a look at you.”

  Bill was still tying balloon strings to spools on the sides of turrets. She pressed his head forward, peered at the nape of his neck and said, “A bath is what you need, my lad. Upstairs, undress and get into one. Scoot!”

  “I had a bath last night, Mavis.”

  “You need another. Scoot!”

  Bill pulled a face and left. Colin said thoughtfully, “I never liked Evans. Did you?”

  “In college? O no. He was pompous and smug. Do you remember how he said ‘I think that sums it up?’ whenever he thought he’d been smart? But outside college he’s different, very witty and funny. Almost as big a surprise as you.”

  “In what way?”

  “In college you were suave, aloof, dominating. Outside you were mothered by your daddy and play with toys on the living-room table.”

  Colin brooded on this until she sat by him and leant against his side, then he relaxed, sighed and murmured, “Well, you’re happy Mavis. That’s good.”

  In a childish, confiding voice she said, “I want to ask you a favour.”

  “Mm?”

  “But first you must promise not to be angry.”

  “Why should I be angry?”

  “I can’t possibly tell you until you promise not to be.”

  “All right. I promise.”

  She held his hand palm upward and stroked the lines on it with her forefinger saying slowly, “Colin, Clive – Clive Evans I mean – would like an affair with me and I would love one with him –”

  He pulled his hand away; she cried, “You promised not to be angry!”

  He stood, stepped away, turned and saw her lying back in the sofa watching him alertly. He said, “You want to leave me?”

  “No, I … I think I love you Colin. You’re the decentest man I know, besides being my only friend. But I’ll leave if you like.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with us?”

  “Frankly the sex thing isn’t the fun it used to be, is it?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “You know it’s not. You’re still very sweet and tender of course but you leave all the work to me.”

  “You said you dislike assertive men.”

  “I do but there should be a middle way … Don’t look so miserable Colin!”

  She rose and came to him saying, “Listen, order me not to do it. Tell me not to see him and maybe I won’t.”

  “I can’t order you to do anything,” he told her grimly. “We aren’t married. We’ve made no promises. You can leave me when you like. I can ask you to leave when I like.”

  “Are you asking me to leave?”

  “No,” he said and turned away feeling cold, hard and defeated. “I need you.”

  “And you’re not angry?”

  “Do you care how I feel?”

  “You haven’t scrubbed my back for years Mavis,” said Bill querulously. He stood in the doorway, barefoot and in his dressing-gown. Mavis said, “Get into the bath, I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Bill left and Colin said firmly, “Bill must not know about this. If he finds out you must both leave here at once. I mean that, Mavis.”

  “Of course Bill won’t find out. I’ll tell him I’m going to evening classes and I’ll always be home long before breakfast. O don’t look sad! I feel so happy and hopeful. I wish I could put half my good feelings into you, Colin.” He could think of nothing to say. From sounding wistful and cajoling she became brisk and sensible.

  “I suppose you’ve a hot meal in the oven?”

  “Casserole for two,” he said bitterly.

  “I bought us a bottle of wine. I’ll see to Bill and be down in half an hour. I’m not as hungry as you of course, but we’ll still have a nice meal and a quiet evening together and you’ll soon see everything in its proper perspective. Don’t worry. Nothing dreadful is happening to us.”

  But Colin thought it was.

  When she returned from upstairs she served the meal, poured wine and played Scrabble afterward, treating him with gentle, unfamiliar tact which made him want to cling to her whenever he forgot the horrid reason for it. He won the game by over two hundred points. She chuckled and said, “That’s a healthy sign.”

  “What’s a healthy sign?”

  “You usually make me win by deliberately playing badly in the last fifteen minutes.”

  He smiled slightly and said, “I thought you hadn’t noticed.”

  “I enjoy winning but I’m not stupid. Come to bed, Colin.”

  She got up and kissed the top of his head.

  “In a while.”

  He sat by the living-room fire wondering how to share the bed with her and respect himself. He also wondered what would happen if he ordered her not to see Evans as she had suggested, but the result seemed obvious: she would pretend to submit and deceive him.

  “Don’t make a liar of her,” he told himself. “That would be even worse.”

  When he went to the bedroom at half past two she was sound asleep. He undressed quietly in the dark, slid between the sheets and lay apart from her. A little later she rolled without waking into the gap between them, pressed her length against him and embraced him with an inarticulate murmur like the purr of a cat. He had no will to pull away from his only source of comfort. He hoped the instinctive acts of a sleeping woman meant more than the conscious acts of a waking one. He hoped so for a long time before falling asleep.

  11

  He passed the next day in a numbness which she treated with the quiet efficiency of a good mother attending a convalescent child. She gave him breakfast and the Sunday papers in bed and later ran water for his bath. The weather was pleasantly mild so she suggested a visit to the seaside. He did not reject the idea. She made a picnic lunch and drove them to a long lonely beach approached by a farm track. They found a sheltered hollow and sat reading the Sunday papers while Bill floated driftwood in pools, combed the beach for shells and flotsam, used a stick to engrave huge aeroplanes and airships on smooth sand. When they returned home Mavis made an evening meal with deft rapidity, put Bill to bed at his usual hour, read him a story (which was usually Colin’s job) then drove off in the car.

  Colin heard it return as he lay on his back staring at darkness. He had lain like that since going to bed and intended to act as if sleeping when she entered the room. Misery made him less stoical. She entered softly and switched on a bedside lamp. He did not move but stared at the yellow circle cast by the lamp on the ceiling. He heard her undress and say gently, “Hullo Colin. You should be asleep. It’s nearly four.”

  He did not move. He felt the mattress dip as she sat on the edge and asked sympathetically, “Are you very miserable?”

  He did not move.

  “Am I hurting you a lot? Am I being wicked?”

  There was fear in her voice. She fumbled under the bedclothes for his hand and grasped it pleading, “Colin please tell me
I’m not wicked!”

  He said wearily, “It’s all right Mavis.”

  She caressed his face crying, “Yes it is all right isn’t it Colin? Make me believe it’s all right, make me believe it.”

  Roused by her greater need he sat up and cuddled her saying, “Don’t worry Mavis, you’re beautiful, you’re a queen. Queens don’t need to care. Queens can do what they like.”

  Panic-stricken she commanded, “Say that again Colin! Make me believe it! Make me believe it!”

  She grabbed him, clawing so desperately that pain made him grip her wrists and use the weight of his body to control her. Their fucking became mutual rape. After it they lay back to back and again he felt cold, hard and defeated. He wondered bitterly, “Is that what she enjoys doing with Clive Evans? Will she give him up now she can do it with me?”

  But two nights later she visited Evans again.

  12

  Colin Kerr usually found his college work a dull business but now it started giving him moments of peaceful happiness, moments when he forgot Mavis Belfrage. He could not forget her at home. On nights when she was away the pain of remembering made sleep impossible. On the third such night he got up two hours after going to bed. In dressing-gown and slippers he filled a Thermos jug with hot milky tea, carried it with a mug to the living-room, put them on the mantelshelf and strolled morosely round the city of Glonda. It was dusty from neglect. Balloons, wrinkled from loss of gas, lolled between towers or dangled by their strings from the edge. Stretching across to the central tower he detached the upper half and placed it on the fireside table. For a few minutes he sipped a mug of tea while contemplating it, then sat down and made changes which would crown it with a revolving gun platform.

  A while later someone said, “Do you think that’s an improvement?”

  Bill, also in dressing-gown and slippers, stood nearby watching. Colin frowned at his handiwork then muttered, “Yes I do. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “Nobody can sleep every night of the year.”