Towards the End of the Morning

by Michael Frayn

  ‘Who’s this?’ he said.

  ‘It’s me, Bob,’ said Tessa in a small voice.

  ‘Oh God,’ said Bob. ‘Tessa! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘Didn’t you get my letter, Bob?’

  ‘Your letter? Oh, yes. Yes, yes, I did.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Mrs Mounce. ‘He’d clean forgotten about it.’

  ‘No, I got held up at the office.’

  ‘You are a stinker, sweetie,’ said Mrs Mounce. ‘You really are. If I hadn’t let her in she’d have had to sit on her suitcase in the hall for three hours.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I got held up at the office.’

  He went over and kissed Tessa, who was half sitting up, not knowing quite what to do with herself.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘it’s marvellous to see you.’

  She hugged him roughly.

  ‘You’ve been boozing,’ she said.

  ‘Of course he’s been boozing,’ said Mrs Mounce.

  ‘I had to stop for a quick drink on the way home with John Dyson,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t really get out of it.’

  He straightened up. Tessa would have liked to hide her face in the covers and cry.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Bob. ‘Where are you staying, Tessa?’

  ‘Bob!’ cried Mrs Mounce. ‘You absolute skunk!’

  ‘No, it’s just slipped my mind for a moment . . .’ said Bob.

  ‘She’s staying here, for heaven’s sake. Where do you think she’s staying?’

  ‘Well, don’t get excited – that’s all I wanted to know.’

  ‘I’m going to find a hotel,’ said Tessa.

  ‘You really are a stinker, you know, sweetie!’

  ‘Look, she’s perfectly welcome to stay here – I just didn’t know exactly what her plans were.’

  Mrs Mounce jumped out of the armchair and twinkled away to the door.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll leave you to it. There’s din-dins for two in the uvvy. Tessa sweetie, be firm with him. And if you get depressed at all, come downstairs and have a chat.’

  Tessa couldn’t think of anything to say after Mrs Mounce had gone. She sat on the edge of the bed, looked down into her lap, and felt great tears run out of her eyes. They ran down her red cheeks, and splashed like huge summer raindrops on to her hands.

  ‘Oh, Tess!’ said Bob, sitting down on the bed and putting his arm round her shoulders. ‘Don’t cry, Tess. I’m terribly sorry every­thing got so buggered up. I must have misread your letter somehow.’

  ‘I don’t think you read it at all.’

  ‘Yes, I did, Tess. Honestly I did. Only everything’s been so buggered up today in general . . .’

  ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m sorry to cry like this. It’s just that everything’s so different from how I imagined it. I kept imagining coming up to London to see you. And now I’ve come . . .’

  She sobbed.

  ‘And everything’s just not quite how I expected it. I mean, arriv­ing here and finding Mrs Mounce . . .’

  ‘I’m terribly sorry you got stuck with her,’ said Bob. ‘She’s a dreadful woman.’

  ‘No, she was very sweet to me. I thought she was dreadful at first. I suppose she is rather dreadful. But, Bob, she’s had such a sad life!’

  She wept again.

  ‘I just suddenly thought,’ she said, ‘everyone’s life is very sad really.’

  Bob got up and began to put the things on the table for dinner. Tessa stopped crying, and sighed a deep, uncontrollable sigh like a yawn. She got up, and seized Bob as he moved between table and oven, putting her face down on his shoulder and hugging him fiercely. She would have liked to dissolve into him and become part of him, so that she could never be subject to his indifference, or even be looked at by him in any objective way.

  ‘Sometimes you’re not at all good to me, Bob,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tess,’ said Bob. He kissed the top of her head, and moved on to get a saucepan out of the oven. She caught him again on the way back between oven and table, and sank herself into him once more, but after a moment became conscious that he was having to make a considerable effort to hold the hot saucepan away from her at arm’s length.

  When they sat down at table she couldn’t manage to eat anything. She held Bob’s left hand in both of hers under the corner of the table and gazed at him.

  ‘Oh, Bob!’ she said.

  ‘Oh, Tessa!’ said Bob, taking a forkful of stew with his disengaged hand.

  The doorbell rang. It was Mrs Mounce.

  ‘Sorry to disturb, darling,’ she said to Bob, ‘but I’ve brought you a bottle of Sauterne to wash the stew down with, so you can celebrate. I don’t suppose you thought of bringing any booze home yourself.’

  After Bob had closed the door he poured out two tumblers of the wine.

  ‘To us, Tess,’ he said. She took his hand again.

  ‘To you, Bob. Whatever happens to us, I hope things always go right for you.’

  Bob put his glass down.

  ‘Tess,’ he said, ‘I’m honestly not worthy of you.’

  ‘That’s a silly thing to say, Bob.’

  ‘It’s true, Tess. You’re generous and selfless in a way I could never be.’

  He picked up his fork, prodded ineffectually at his stew for some minutes, and then withdrew his left hand from hers.

  ‘I just want to cut up this piece of meat, Tess,’ he said.

  ‘I love you, Bob. I’ve never really loved anyone before.’

  The doorbell rang again.

  ‘Bob, sweetie,’ said Mrs Mounce, ‘I’ve just remembered you haven’t got any salt. I thought I’d pop up with some. Don’t worry, I’ll leave you in peace after this. How’s the stew?’

  ‘Oh, Bob!’ said Tessa, as Bob sat down again.

  ‘Oh, Tess!’ said Bob.

  Bob lay in bed gazing vaguely up at the ceiling, which was glowing red in the light from the gas-fire, not entirely sure whether he was awake or asleep. There was a dull pain in his left bicep – Tessa’s head was pillowed on it. He cautiously pulled his arm free. He couldn’t think whether they had been in bed for an hour, or four hours.

  ‘Poor Mrs Mounce,’ said Tessa.

  ‘Mm,’ said Bob.

  ‘I’m glad she’s not your mistress, Bob.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t really think she was, of course. I thought she was the cleaning woman first of all.’

  ‘I don’t know what she is.’

  ‘I think I’d understand if you wanted to sleep with other women, Bob. I know it’s different for men. All the same, I suppose I’m glad it’s not Mrs Mounce. She’s so tied up with unhappiness. She’d pull you down into it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor Mrs Mounce.’

  Bob dozed.

  ‘. . . into Taunton yesterday,’ he became conscious of Tessa saying some time later, ‘to get some special new antibiotic for Jester. Did I write to tell you about Jester falling?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Poor old Jester . . .’

  Bob felt himself swooping down again into the great soft darkness of sleep. Somewhere down there he stubbed himself against an ill-defined but hard mass of fact, and brought it up to the surface to examine it.

  ‘John Dyson was on television last night,’ he said. ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Is that the Giant Dyson?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Who subdued the Tyrant Cox?’

  ‘Search me,’ said Bob, sinking slowly away into the depths again.

  ‘. . . frightened when I arrived in London today,’ he heard Tessa saying at some stage. Time was no longer sequential; it was mere isolated incidents unrelated by before and after. ‘. . . a stupid thing to feel, I know . . . on the train . . . cars in the streets . . . like a child . . .’

  Tessa turned over, unwinding the bedclothes off him as she went. He turned over himself, to wind them back on. There was scarcely room enough to turn; it wa
s surprising how obstinately single a single bed was.

  ‘I’m right on the edge,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you couldn’t move over an inch or two?’

  There was no reply; now that he was fully awake, she was fully asleep. He tried cautiously to shove her over by main force, but she was too heavy. He lay on his side, holding the covers over him by their edges, gazing at some of his copies of Vogue, which Tessa had been looking through and left lying on the carpet in front of the fire, where they glowed pink and red. He thought about models’ bottoms, feeling Tessa’s bulking large against the small of his back. Funny how he never seemed to meet girls . . . Just not attractive to women in some way . . . The copies of Vogue slipped slowly sideways and upwards, and disappeared into darkness . . .

  ‘. . . told me,’ said Tessa’s voice hours or minutes later, ‘that they’ve borrowed a lot of money from the bank to do some conversion work in their flat.’

  ‘Um?’ mumbled Bob. ‘Whosiss?’

  ‘Mrs Mounce and her husband. Her husband’s impotent. Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But terribly jealous. She has affairs with other men and he finds out and flicks her.’

  ‘Does what?’

  ‘Flicks her. With the back of his fingers somehow. She says it hurts terribly.’

  Bob felt suddenly wide awake. For some reason he had just remembered poor old Eddy Moulton.

  ‘A man in the office died this afternoon,’ he said, then immediately doubted his own words. Had it really been that afternoon? ‘A man’ – ‘died’ – could poor old Eddy, leaning drunkenly across the desk with his hand shading his eyes, really be fitted into those abstract, impersonal formulae? It seemed like some event described in a legend, remote and formal.

  ‘Someone you knew well?’ asked Tessa.

  ‘He was a very old man who worked in the same room as John Dyson and myself.’

  ‘Is that why you were late back this evening?’

  Bob considered.

  ‘I suppose it was,’ he said.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Bob tried to remember why he hadn’t told her. It was probably because the blue fug of cigarette smoke in the flat when he had come in, and the light, and the voices, and the terrible feeling of guilt, and Mrs Mounce shouting, and Tessa weeping, had all swept poor old Eddy’s death right out of his mind. But he couldn’t really remember the reason. It was already lost – part of the jetsam of discarded immemorabilia which disappeared astern all the time. From hour to hour one’s life slipped away from one into the haze, before one had really looked at any of it properly.

  ‘I suppose I didn’t think of it,’ he said.

  ‘You are a gink, Bob.’

  Bob said nothing. The word gink seemed a good ten years too young to bear thinking about.

  Tessa turned carefully over towards him, rolling the undersheet away from beneath his legs.

  ‘I can stay for three weeks, if you’d like me to,’ she said. ‘Oh, Bob! Three weeks together – on our own!’

  ‘Marvellous,’ said Bob.

  ‘Everything’s always so much more complicated and awkward than one bargains for,’ she said. She settled her head on his left biceps again and closed her eyes. ‘I shall always love you, Bob, whatever happens to us.’

  ‘I love you, too, Tessa.’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘God in heaven!’ said Bob, wide-awake, and casting about for his dressing-gown. ‘God in holy heaven! Still at it, at this hour! This is the fifth time she’s been up! I swear I’m going to throw her downstairs and break her neck!’

  It was indeed Mrs Mounce yet again, and in her frilly nightwear, but Bob did not throw her downstairs and break her neck.

  ‘Hello,’ he said politely.

  ‘Oh, you’ve gone to bed already,’ she said, trying to peer past Bob into the room to see.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry! I just thought – Reg is away tonight, so why don’t you and Tessa sleep in our double bed downstairs? There’s a single bed in one of the upstairs flats I could sleep in. You’d be much more comfy – you don’t have to tell me what it’s like sleeping two in a single bed, darling.’

  ‘We’re very comfortable here, thanks.’

  ‘Well, it was just a thought.’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’

  Bob shut the door.

  ‘Poor old Mrs Mounce,’ said Tessa.

  ‘But at four o’clock in the morning!’ said Bob.

  He looked at his watch in the firelight. It was quarter to twelve. Well, it felt like four. And four and a quarter hours later, when it actually was four, and the bedclothes both above and below were a mere conglomerate heap, and Tessa’s strapping behind had pushed right the way across the bed, and Bob was cold and stiff from head to foot, and had been neither asleep nor awake for a moment, it felt as though the solar system had finally run down and stopped, and closed off the ever-­renewing spring of pure, fresh time for good and all.

  Eight

  God knows I’m a failure, an insignificant speck of human nothingness trampled on indifferently by every casual passer-by, thought Dyson as he followed his wife out of the kitchen into the living-room, with his fists clenched in his trouser pockets, and his face set in an unyielding frown, but there is one thing in this world that I’m not going to stand for, and that’s being nagged by my wife. I’m not reduced to that.

  God knows, he thought, I shouldn’t say anything about it if she nagged me in any halfway reasonable manner. I’m used to being treated like dirt – I’m not proud. It’s this nagging by saying nothing that I can’t stand. It’s this terrible pseudo-­rational nagging by just carrying on normally, as if she wasn’t nagging me at all. It’s this stupid leaving me to guess what I’m being nagged about. Well, I’m honestly not going to spend the whole of Saturday morning putting up with this sort of thing. I’ll just go out of the house without a word, and stay at my club for a few days. Or I would if I had a club.

  ‘Look, Jannie,’ he said reasonably, following her back to the kitchen, ‘just tell me what it is you’re going on about. That’s all I ask.’

  ‘I’m not going on about anything, John,’ said Jannie.

  ‘Yes, you are, Jannie.’

  ‘No, I’m not, John.’

  ‘Look, we both know we’re having an argument! Let’s not have another argument about whether we’re having an argument or not!’

  Jannie gazed into the food cupboard, picking up cereal packets and shaking them to see if they needed replacing.

  ‘There’s some coffee in the pot, if you’d like to light the gas,’ she said.

  Dyson lit the gas absently. It was self-defeating, this sort of nagging, he thought. That’s what I really object to. If I haven’t the slightest idea what the hell I’m being nagged about, how the hell can I possibly do anything about it?

  ‘Put some milk on, too, will you, John?’

  He put some milk on, sighing. I mean, he thought, I know what’s she’s up to, all right. I’m not a complete fool. This was the classic method of brainwashing, after all, used by interrogators, priests, and psycho-analysts alike. ‘I think you have something you want to tell me’ – that’s what their technique was. Then they simply waited for you to accuse yourself.

  Jannie sat down at one corner of the great kitchen table and began to write a shopping list. Dyson stood by the stove, gazing down at her with serious ferocity.

  ‘Jannie . . .’ he began.

  ‘Yes, John?’

  Dyson stopped, frowning harder.

  ‘Why do you call me John in that tone of voice?’ he demanded.

  ‘Don’t you like me calling you John?’ asked Jannie, not looking up from her shopping list.

  ‘You don’t normally go round calling me John all the time.’

  She didn’t answer. Good God, he thought, I should like to do something that would really make her jump out of her skin for once. He pictured himself smashing both fists down in th
e middle of the kitchen table, or taking a china jug off the shelf and hurling it across the room. It was absurd that Norman Ward Westerman and Lord Boddy should listen with real deference to his views on Halifax, while at home he couldn’t even get a hearing from his own wife. Scribble, scribble, scribble, she went. Eggs, butter, tea, coffee – oh God, the smallness of things! The endless petty demands of life! They rained down like small coal from a sack, filling the air with choking dust which settled grimily over everything, and made the whole world smell grey.

  ‘It’s that patch of mould on the ceiling in the boys’ room, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘That’s what you’re going on about, isn’t it, Jannie?’

  Rice Krispies, navy thread, tuna fish, wrote Jannie.

  ‘Well, I can’t do anything about it today,’ he said. ‘And that’s final.’

  One bottle Thawpit, wrote Jannie, cigs, birthday present for John’s sister-in-law.

  ‘Look, be reasonable, Jannie,’ said Dyson. ‘I’m going to be absolutely up to my eyebrows in work this weekend. I’ve got a piece to write for the Overseas Service. I’ve got an obit of poor old Eddy Moulton to do for The Journalist. How can I possibly make a career for myself when you keep on, nag, nag, nag, about patches of mould on the ceiling?’

  Jannie looked out of the window, chewing the end of her pencil thoughtfully.

  ‘The milk’s boiled over,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, God!’ cried Dyson, springing away from the stove, then springing back to turn the gas out. ‘This is exclusively your responsibility! You realize that, don’t you, Jannie?’

  ‘The cloth’s in the sink, John.’

  ‘I don’t see any reason on earth why I should clear this up. Where’s the cloth? Why the hell is there never a cloth to hand when it’s wanted?’

  Oven-cleaner, wrote Jannie on her list.

  ‘The phone’s ringing,’ she said.

  Let it ring – what do I care? thought Dyson, as he hurled himself out into the hall to catch it before it stopped ringing. God really was seeping in this morning from every direction, and chiefly through the condition of marriage itself. That was what was holy about holy matrimony, he realized suddenly; it was just another divine instrument for increasing entropy, like damp and coronary thrombosis and woodworm.