You laughed a little at the trunk in the back seat.
‘It is rather excessive,’ you said, and then, ‘Please, darling, don’t frighten me.’
‘For heaven’s sake—’
‘But tell me, honestly. Then I’ll understand.’
‘You sound so bloody cheerful.’
You answered meekly, ‘I’m not, if that’s a help.’
‘Please tell me, darling, try and tell me. I’m sure I’d understand.’
Again and again, your voice: ‘Darling, I’m sure I’d understand.’
Oh, but I gave myself a score of reasons. I flattered myself at one moment on the theme of the Byronic marriage. Flattered myself that by reasons of birth, of the long line of Protestants and angels, I alone was complicated and made of many men. That now I was forced (I thought of it as ‘forced’) to live with you I would give away too much of myself and you, dim one, would not understand. I turned it round so that I was the otter and you the spade. That was merely the first vanity.
The other self-flattery, you will remember. I must have shouted it at you a hundred, hundred times. I explained to you, talking almost as fast as yourself, in bed, in cars, in the flat, in night-clubs – God knows where – and grew blind with rage at you, cousin, for your dishonesties, saying, ‘You do not know the meaning of love.’ You came back like a child asking the same questions again. Exactly like a child, because, rightly, my reasons for bullying you, as I then explained them, did not satisfy you.
All I did was to shout the same lies again. At the time, I had convinced myself. After all, the explanation absolved me of blame. It explained too, why I spent so much of the time in Classroom IV and in all the other hundred places, getting to the bottom of your sinless lies. I saw you, I said, so amazed, so confused and frightened of life that you would not accept it at all and therefore were incapable of love. There were a hundred examples all like those odd, frightening stories you told about your mother and Arbuthnot – why choose such an extraordinary name? And so I accused. Your hysteria, your skating on the surface, your very imagination was an insult to my love … Do you remember? (And I know the answer to that. You can remember, but you do not.)
I almost beat my chest. My love was something very different. I had lived and come through the turmoils, the girl friends, the harlots, the queers, the wife; my love was real and left unsatisfied. I treated you in bed, when I think of it now, like a clockwork mouse that would not go fast enough.
Oh, cousin, I remember your eyelashes, I don’t know why.
And out of bed, I treated you worse. But the explanation, please note, absolved me. I even persuaded some of my more intelligent friends who objected to my treatment of you, that I was the injured party. I did not accuse you precisely of coldness. That would have been too glaringly untrue. Nor precisely of stupidity; for the same reason. I used to say of you, with smiling condescension, ‘Poor darling one; she’s too frightened to love. It’s my mistake. I thought I could help her out of that.’
FOURTEEN
ON THE FERRY over the Forth, as the sky clouded over, I joined the queue at the ticket office, and picking your way through twenty cars packed closely together, you went aft to the windswept passengers’ deck. Half-way across the river, when the ferry passed almost underneath the span of that huge red bridge I rejoined you – remember? You greeted me with such fear in your eyes that it seemed you expected to be murdered, there and then. You held on to the rail and turned to the sea again.
Ignoring the spray that splashed your face, almost enjoying its sting, so it seemed, I remember your nodding towards the Fife coast. Swallowing then speaking even more quickly than you had done in Classroom IV. I can still play it back.
‘I never told you, but I went to school down there. I really enjoyed it too. They say those that are happy at school are happy at home, so there you are – that must mean something. Though I don’t suppose they approved of me very much. I wasn’t actually voted pupil most likely to succeed, I …’
I did not help you.
You went on, ‘They’d all sorts of silly rules and made an awful fuss when I carved somebody else’s name on a desk. Even the other girls thought that was rather off. They all nudged, you know, and looked. I used to lose my temper rather a lot. There wasn’t Pink to cool me down. Actually the girl whose name I did carve couldn’t have been more pleased. She’d obviously got a crush on me or something. I suppose that’s why I carved her name. Lord, there was such a fuss – and about other things. But Daddy was marvellous. He used to come down and look so wonderful that the houselady or whatever she was called couldn’t keep it up at all. Awful, really, I think it was the title as much as the looks. Once he quite turned things round. He came down supposedly to discuss taking me away, which would have been a pity, really, and ended by taking me and two of my chums out for a strawberry tea. A great coup. Not this other girl, mind. Two of my healthy hockey-playing friends. I was good at games. You’d never have guessed that, would you? That’s one of the reasons they kept me, I suppose. Fanny Blankers Whatsit. I could always run as fast as Pink. I played on the wing at hockey on all sorts of gloomy days like this, then all the same girls that had done the nudging and the looking and the baiting would sidle up after a match and say I was a good sport. Can you imagine? I think they must have got the phrase from their mothers, old frumps that most of them were.’
More slowly you said, ‘Oh goodness, I didn’t say good-bye to Macdonald.’ Frowned, then went on, ‘She used to come to chapel sometimes. I once wept when she went away. I was terribly angry about doing that …’
Paused, cousin, then managed to say, ‘She used to go and see Pink too, at his ghastly private school. Chuff-chuff, he was then. He went everywhere like a train.’
Paused again, like a diver hanging in mid-air. Then came the fall. Head dropped down to your hands on the rail. Husky and sore-throated:
‘Oh God, darling, I hate it, I hate it. Please take me back. I promise it’s a mistake. You don’t love me and I don’t even love you. I don’t know why I came. I don’t know why I went with you this morning. It’s a mistake. We can still go back.’
Other travellers on the ferry, shunning embarrassment of any sort, moved away. Sobbing quite hopelessly now, you leant a little over the rail and let the wind blow your tears into the sea.
‘You really do enjoy making an exhibition of yourself.’ That is my voice, Oxford cold, that day.
From you, a whispered, ‘Go away.’
‘Surely,’ I replied. ‘You’ll find me in the car.’
Five minutes later, as the ferry bumped against the quay, I watched you dry your eyes and push your hair off your forehead. You climbed into the car, looked straight ahead, and, bitterly, said something worse than:
‘You can bloody well give me a cigarette.’
‘Of course. If the cabaret’s over.’
We drove on to the border and a T-bone, Scampi-frite type country house hotel. We both got pretty drunk.
Remember the following morning. I always thought of it as one of the happiest times, even if you seemed thoughtful and disturbed. I surprised you when you were still clench-fisted and asleep. I woke without the murderer. For half an hour I forgot the spade.
You woke when I was sitting astride you. You looked so serious. I drew circles round your tummy, playing one of your games, ‘Round and round the garden’. You did not trust me, but you were kind.
I remember that as I went and ran the bath I was singing, and I can still see you frown. Disturbed by otter-instinct, you lay with the sheet wound tightly round you, sucking your thumb.
I was pleased with myself. For months, even years, I carried that about as a happy memory. Then one day I saw it in its true light, and it horrified me. The workman was playing at otters. It’s, somehow, obscene.
Cousin, forgive.
BOOK THREE
The Big City
FIFTEEN
BUT THE WORST of it came at the end of it, and David, with the
expertise of the professional torturer, worked it obliquely. The really nasty stuff was presented to her from the mouth of the one person she certainly loved.
It happened six months later, at about ten o’clock on a summer’s night. Pink, Mary and David sat amongst the dirty glasses and ashtrays in the flat in that tatty, curved and concrete block off the Gray’s Inn Road. David had shown the last of the guests out not half an hour before and she had spent most of the intervening period abusing his friends rather wildly, calling them hypocrites, parasites, narcissusites, sodomites and Gaitskellites.
It was Pink’s first visit. He had come to the party softly, in suède shoes and his best pin-stripe suit, remembering Mary’s birthday and bearing a gift of Edinburgh Rock.
David merely prompted. He sat on a cushion by the fireplace and said, all Oxford, ‘No, do tell her, Pink. Do. It was really very interesting. I thought you coped admirably.’
It was the third time David had encouraged him and it was obvious that Pink wanted to get it off his chest.
‘Actually, they seemed rather interested in the guv’nor.’ Pink was considerably fatter.
‘How?’ Mary asked, and she was correspondingly thinner.
‘Well, about the cards and that. This politician chap, David’s chum, knew a bit about it. I don’t know. Perhaps his old man was involved too.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Oh, nothing much. Just another card-scandal theory.’
Mary was sharp; a great deal sharper than when she had left home.
‘Don’t avoid it, Pink. I know they said something foul.’
‘Actually, old thing, they seemed very sympathetic towards the guv’nor. Truly. I was impressed.’
‘Tell her,’ David said. ‘If only for a lesson.’ Then he turned to her. He always smiled at her now. ‘God knows it would help if you had some of Pink’s forbearance.’
She said, swiftly, ‘I had. And what did you call me then? An unthinking, self-pitying little yes-girl … I believe it was better than that.’
‘I hope it was,’ David said, again with a false smile, playing the patient, injured party.
She turned back to Pink. David watched.
‘What was this theory?’
‘Perfectly straightforward, really. I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, really.’ Swiftly again, almost with a swoop, she replied loudly:
‘I’m certain there isn’t. I’ll bet they never even heard about the guv’nor until I came along. Someone’ll have made up some nasty story. Probably David planted it.’
‘It might be right,’ Pink warned.
‘Then tell me.’
Suddenly Pink threw the story off as if it were of little importance.
‘Suggestion was that there were probably quite a lot of card games in that club, late at night, you know.’
‘And Daddy always cheated?’
‘No. That’s not actually what was suggested. But, you know, those same chaps, more or less the same – one, particularly the same, but I can’t remember the fellow’s name—’
The more Pink tried to dismiss the story, the more obvious did it become that it had shattered him, only because it had struck him so clearly as true. Mary began to look a little scared. Pink resumed.
‘Anyway the same chaps met, most nights. All very influential and rich and so on except for the guv’nor, who they’d kind of taken up, you know – the way these things happen—’ he said vaguely and David got up and refilled his glass. ‘Well actually, the suggestion is that perhaps they took the guv’nor up for something other than a fourth hand at bridge or whatever it was they played.’
Mary said ‘Huh!’ almost brassily, a noise she had never made before. Pink looked at her slantwise, wondering if she had already understood the homosexual implication. But she had not quite.
She went on, ‘As a kind of innocent. To lend respectability – the fool, I suppose, while the others really gambled illegally?’
‘Not actually that,’ Pink said, leading her gently, with a kind of low, inadmissible thrill.
‘Well, what?’
‘Suggestion was that the guv’nor was really rather nice-looking in those days.’
‘Go on, Pink.’ She was refusing to think.
‘One of these chaps had taken a bit of a fancy to him. Not exactly for his card-playing, if you see what I mean.’
Mary grew pale as he went on:
‘Well, anyway, after a bit of this the guv’nor either fell to it what was happening, maybe even got a little involved, then got pretty worried. Bit of a flutter. Panicky, as one might say. So he turns round and marries the girl from Dundee. She’s pretty. Plenty of jute money—. He’s a handsome young soldier. Very pleasant. A softness in the voice. That accent, you know. Perfectly right sort of match both sides.’
Mary’s voice was much more controlled when she interrupted again. It was as if she spoke along a ruled line.
‘That’s obviously nonsense. We know perfectly well that they were married when it happened – whatever did happen. You were nearly born. I should think that’s the real truth of it even if it would disappoint them. Lots of girls behave in a mad sort of way when they’re pregnant. You can imagine Mummy.’
‘I should think you’re right,’ Pink said, unconvinced.
‘Of course I am.’
‘Mark you, it doesn’t mean there weren’t those card parties before. Perhaps he got a little involved again. Actually this politician fellow, David’s chum, very bright he seemed, discussing this – he had a little theory.’
‘I’ll bet he did.’
‘It could be true,’ Pink said. ‘Could be. His suggestion was that the guv’nor went back into the lion’s den, you see, just to kind of prove something. Either that or to say there were no hard feelings. But if that’s true it wasn’t the wisest move. I shouldn’t think Mumbo understood – she would never have twigged that sort of thing, poor pigeon. Those Dundee blindnesses, and that. Suggestion was that somebody might have said something in her ear. Probably very vague – “Bad influence” or something like that. But they evidently said something that upset her pretty badly. She was tearful for quite a while … And these other chaps couldn’t help smiling, you know. You can see they would. So this night they do play cards and the guv’nor goes a bit far just to win.’
‘They wouldn’t dare sue him,’ Mary said.
‘Not quite the point, old love.’
But before he could go on, as if she, too, scented truth, she asked suddenly, coldly, as she got up for a cigarette:
‘D’you mean to say you just stood and listened while they said these horrid things?’
‘It was a friendly sort of talk. They weren’t just being vicious, you know,’ Pink said. ‘Cocktail party stuff.’
‘Of course they were,’ she snapped. ‘Can’t you see that? They can’t stand the idea that somebody else might be normal. Didn’t you even tell them to shut up?’
Pink looked, for a second, as if he were talking to his father, not Mary. His impediment reappeared. After a little circle of the head he said:
‘N-no, old bean. Not much point.’
‘Oh God,’ she said, dropping her head – a head which she was beginning to learn to use. ‘I see. And now David makes you tell me this so’s I’ll start hating you too … You don’t know, Pink darling. You don’t begin to understand the way their minds work …. Never mind, never mind.’
Pink checked his fly buttons, shifted in his seat, and sighed. ‘Frankly,’ he said, ‘hitting about didn’t really occur to me. I was a bit – what shall we say – a bit put out? You see, old cocky, I couldn’t help feeling that maybe they’d got a point. I mean the thing’s never been quite explained.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she replied. ‘How could they possibly know? They weren’t there.’
‘One of their uncles evidently—’
‘I don’t believe that,’ she said at once.
‘No, no, he wasn’t there, but he was in the club. Not in th
is particular room, you follow. He was sitting upstairs a bit later on. Also a soldier, so I’m told.’ Pink suddenly seemed to want to leave the story there. He drained his glass. ‘Well, anyway, that was it.’
‘What about this man upstairs?’ David asked, breaking the silence that fell.
‘Well, evidently he was sitting upstairs. Your chumbo told me this, you follow, saying what a terrible thing it was—’
‘You bet—’ Mary said disbelievingly.
‘While he sat there, this old gent,’ Pink went on guiltily with pleasure, again, ‘– he became aware of a rather unnerving noise and at last he traced it to the writing-room. It was late, I gather. He was the last in the club, or thought he was. Well, to cut out the painful details, it was the guv’nor in there, poor old chap. Crying his heart out.’
Mary sat very still, but tears rolled down her cheeks. It was as if the full meaning of the story had only just begun to dawn on her.
‘How dare they say that,’ she said in a very low whisper.
Pink now seemed strangely disconnected from the story. He did not look at Mary although David watched her tears. He went on, ‘There was another odd little point.’ David smiled.
Louder, this time, Mary said with pride, ‘How dare they say that.’
Pink said, with definition now; with effective, destroying proof positive: ‘This chappie in the club. He’s the same man who sold us our farm. Oliphant. So there it is.’
And then she broke. She broke in a way that made Pink stand up and then stand back, and very shakily light a cigarette, not looking at what she did, and for a moment afterwards not daring to glance at her face. As a child, both at school and in Pink’s presence, she had several times completely lost control of her temper, perhaps as badly as this, but somehow in a child, it is never so frightening. Her voice rose beyond ‘How dare!’, beyond all words to a single scream as she attacked David, kicking and scratching. When Pink, at last, very gingerly tried to interfere she also kicked at him and called him a coward.
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