“Under all this stress?”
“Under all this stress,” he affirmed, solemnly.
“Under all this stress you could turn just as batty as any of them,” she prophesied.
“More than likely,” he agreed. “But in the meantime, Ginny, I’d like to put to you a question. Would you ever consider, do you suppose…?”
“What?”
“Well. Would you marry me?” he asked.
19
That same evening her mother was making matzo. Her father was tending a sick sheep. Mary said suddenly:
“When we go to Jerusalem next week shall we see Elizabeth?”
“Don’t we always?” Her mother didn’t even look up.
“She’s pregnant,” said Mary.
A short silence. Then:
“Don’t talk so daft!” Her father wasn’t angry; he seemed to consider it some kind of joke. “Your cousin’s sixty-five if she’s a day.”
“In the scriptures Sarah was over ninety.”
But by now her mother had certainly looked up. She didn’t treat the matter as a joke.
“Has the girl taken leave of her senses?” She addressed the house at large: husband, daughter, animals and all. “I never heard such disrespect!”
“But it’s the truth, Mum. It’s the truth.”
“Oh, stop it! Not another word! And how do you mean, the truth? Something so downright ungodly. Yes, my girl, ungodly! Who ever put it in your head?”
“God did.”
She didn’t want it to sound flippant. That was the last thing she’d have wanted. Yet she could see it had its funny side.
“God did,” she repeated.
Her parents looked at one another in horrified dismay. Now her father no longer seemed amused.
“I think he felt the message would bring me comfort. He told me through an angel.” But he must have seen what would happen, she reflected.
“An angel?” exclaimed her father. He might have been saying a dragon, or a flying horse.
“His name is Gabriel. He’s the one who spoke to Daniel.”
Her mother started to cry. She ran across to kneel at the stool where Mary sat, to cradle her determinedly, press her head against her bosom and rock her gently to and fro. “Oh, my lass, my lass, my poor demented lass, is it a fever you’ve caught? Have you had a fall? Quickly!” she urged her husband. “For Pete’s sake run for the doctor!” Her husband appeared incapable of stirring, let alone running.
“No, Mum, I don’t need a doctor.” The words came out muffled yet intelligible.
“There, there, love, of course you don’t! Now you just rest a little and don’t you fret about a thing!” She gave a series of mute and frenzied jerks designed to move her husband faster through the door—and this time, indeed, he did take a step towards it. The abandoned sheep bleated forlornly.
Mary continued mentally to pray. “There’s perhaps one other thing you ought to know.”
“Hush, hush, my precious.”
Her father was more curious.
“Well, lass?”
“I’m pregnant, too.”
The sheep bleated again; as if in fellow feeling.
This time it came more easily. He had finished in an hour. He began to feel it was something he was being inspired to go on with; more than that, something he had a duty to go on with. It would have been too great a coincidence, he thought: the eruption of Gabriel into the lives of the two Heath boys—and indirectly, of course, into his own—and then, last night, Mr Benson reminding him of Paula’s six-month-old suggestion: one which had assumed implicitly, as its starting point, the eruption of Gabriel into Mary’s life.
Simon couldn’t believe it was coincidence.
Also, he had once written a short story he now saw he could incorporate quite seamlessly. It had to do with the return of the apostles, after Jesus had sent them out on a journey to win converts and supporters and to spread the word.
That was only a small thing, obviously, but he asked himself whether it would be wrong to regard this, too, as a sign; and to wonder whether a mass of loose threads was now being pulled cohesively tighter.
To wonder if he were being allowed a few piecemeal glimpses.
Of the pattern in the carpet.
20
The next day’s lunch didn’t get scraped into the pedal bin but in its own way it proved more traumatic.
Janice, he thought, looked prettier than ever, with her bright blue eyes and silky honey-coloured hair; yet this time he could only partly ascribe it to the fact he hadn’t seen her for several weeks. (Indeed, often it worked the other way: she was at first less pretty than he remembered her.) Usually vivacious, her vivacity today was so much more pronounced that it was almost a little…well, yucky? Her solicitude for everybody’s comfort and enjoyment might be sincere but it was overdone. The flat seemed smaller on account of it, smaller and drabber.
The fact that the walls had drawn in, the ceiling had come down, was also due to the presence of this hulk she had brought with her. The incredible hulk. He wasn’t a doctor. He was a swimming instructor. They had met at the Sheffield baths.
Don. He was six-foot-three, she had informed her family proudly; the two of them were scarcely through the door. “And a half,” he had added, with a deep, self-disregarding laugh. He weighed fourteen stone and five pounds, she told them. “Stripped,” he made it clear, with an extension of that rich, embarrassed chuckle; and even Dawn, Josh coldly saw, seemed to signify amazed approval. “And not one ounce of…But, Billy!” Janice said. “What ever’s happened to your spots?”
“Oh, we’ve got so much to tell you!” exclaimed her mother. “But first we must hear all your news.”
“We must?” said Josh. There was only the merest suggestion of a question mark but he shouldn’t have introduced even that. He started things and then—with everyone looking at him—he had to do his utmost to pretend he hadn’t. “That would be really nice,” he said, grateful that at least he had resisted that other small piece of sabotage: the strong temptation to give a heartfelt sigh.
“Yes,” said Dawn, and he sensed the air of a woman who wanted to leave the best till last; for which, in fact, he was not altogether unthankful, even if it did mean that they were then back with Janice’s promotion of Don, and Don’s promotion of himself. Don laughed about everything, expressing manliness, simplicity, good nature at each new boring detail Janice trotted out, details to do with their meeting, their initial thoughts on one another, the things they’d both said, Janice’s frequent returns to the pool, their first date, everything they’d eaten upon it, even the piece of Turkish Delight served up with their coffee. (“What colour was it?” asked Josh.) But worse than that—far worse than that—as well as being the strong, silent, amiably indulgent male, Don was also sickeningly proprietorial, with an easy, familiar bossiness that extended from Janice even to her mother and brothers; and with a way of touching Janice, repeatedly touching her, on the shoulders, on the arms, on the back of her neck, of brushing his hairy knuckles up and down her cheeks, that increasingly pulled tighter, with each slow turn of the rollers, the already lacerating thread of tension in Josh’s stomach, chest and genitals and finally brought him to the point of feeling that if it happened again—no, when it happened again—he would actually have to leave the room and relieve himself by doing violent exercise or causing violent damage or committing violent self-abuse.
It came as no surprise, of course, to learn they were engaged. Josh would have preferred to hear they were already living together; that at least the consummation had been got out of the way, beyond all doubt; and that one no longer had to think, therefore, that on such-and-such a date and at such-and-such a time…
The only surprise, in fact, was that Dawn should feel the way she did. (It couldn’t be merely those two bottles of champagne they’d brought with them.) Dawn didn’t approve of macho men. Josh didn’t regard himself as macho but still these days she nagged at him because she said hi
s T-shirts and jumpers and jeans were too tight; because, when his shirts were open-necked, he left too many of their buttons undone; because he wouldn’t wear pyjamas. (He resisted her, categorically. She was never going to change him into her own brand of nonentity!) But now the thought of this smirky, sweaty-palmed Lothario, with dark hair fringing the base of his throat above the top of the crewneck sweater (he probably spent hours in training it to do that), the thought of him smugly soiling their daughter’s cool and virginal young body with that clammy, tacky, suppurating contagion of his own: apparently this did nothing to disgust her, despite her saintly views. Yes, he himself wanted to be sick, whilst she talked of wedding plans and trousseaux and of meeting his family and of where they were going to live and seemed nothing but delighted to think that within six weeks, six weeks, they would all be standing on the pavement outside St Matthew’s throwing handfuls of confetti over the happy pair.
“Oh, praise the Lord!” she said. “Praise the Lord! Another lovely thing to be able to tell Simon! And the church hall, too, will be the perfect place for the reception, that part of the hall named after Mr Apsbury, because we’ll be able to think of him standing there in spirit, feeling so very pleased to see the young girl he prepared for confirmation returning four years later as a bride.” She went on like this, thought Josh, for roughly a further four years herself.
The reception was going to be paid for by Don’s parents. “So now you mustn’t worry about that, either of you,” declared their future son-in-law. “And I don’t want to hear one single word of gratitude. We all know how it is, you see. And, as I told you, my father’s doing all right and always likes to share with others far less fortunate.” His father was one of the head buyers in a large department store.
Josh felt momentarily obliging. He didn’t let Don hear one single word of gratitude.
Not so Dawn.
“Well, I don’t mind saying,” she didn’t mind saying (at some length), “that that would be a great anxiety taken off our shoulders, even though we’ve found, time after time after time, that the Lord unfailingly provides.”
“Though why must he always shop at Woolworth’s?” wondered Josh, aloud. “Doesn’t it give forebodings of a very cut-price kind of heaven? But talking of money, what sort of dazzling future does the career of a baths attendant in Sheffield offer these days?”
Don laughed his good rich laugh.
“Swimming instructor,” he said.
“Forgive me.”
“Naturally it’s only a stopgap. I’m always on the lookout. But in this day and age I feel you’re lucky to have anything at all that keeps you from spinelessly relying on the dole queue. Heck, sir, that wasn’t meant to sound offensive. I wasn’t meaning—”
“Of course you weren’t,” said Dawn. “And, good gracious, this isn’t the kind of household where everybody has to mind their p’s and q’s”—she smiled at her husband—“well, is it, dear? Besides, Josh, I think you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young. When you’re young and just getting married you live on love. It’s the happiest diet in the world. The happiest and the healthiest.”
“Yes,” said Don. He nodded and grinned and stroked one of his massive forearms. “Haven’t I mentioned? I intend to live entirely off my wife!”
Janice said, “Anyway, Mum, that’s enough about us now!” Though she didn’t look as if she actually believed that. “What’s this good news you said you’ve got? You mustn’t keep it from us a second longer!”
Dawn wet her lips. Her own eyes shone almost as much as her daughter’s. “Well, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone. Not for the time being, anyhow.”
“Ooh, Mum! Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Me, too,” appended Don, pushing back his chair and crossing his long, large and no doubt coarsely hairy legs in comfortable anticipation; a willing and absorbed conspirator.
“You see, it all started last Wednesday afternoon, when these two monsters were coming home from school…”
No, Josh didn’t enjoy his lunch. He didn’t enjoy the hour or so preceding it, nor the four or five hours that followed it. There had been only two mildly pleasurable parts of the day: the first, when he himself had been preparing the meal (for Dawn, of course, had gone to church, taking the boys with her) and the cooking had turned out well—though not so well, he thought, as if he’d had the courage to put apple in the pie instead of rhubarb; and the second, when after the visit was over and his daughter had driven away with her chosen ravisher he’d taken three-pounds-seventy-five out of his wife’s housekeeping tin and had strode off to get as drunk as three-pounds-seventy-five would allow. Then, incredibly, somewhere between his third and fourth pint, the thickly encompassing fog of misery began to lift and through the rapidly disbanding eddies a sudden glimmer of light, both shocking and supportive, started tremulously to focus his attention—as, indeed, he told the little Indian fellow with the serious eyes and the sparse goatee who sat about a yard away from him along the plastic-covered bench.
“The thing is,” he said, “I’ve got to get away within the next six weeks! Imperative, my friend, imperative! Within the next six days, if possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It could be possible.”
The little Indian nodded—and glanced towards the door. But he quickly looked back again, and with the same expression of polite interest.
“I mean, consider it like this. Billy goes off to school tomorrow, as per usual. Well, people are bound to notice, aren’t they? It is quite noticeable. And what does the boy say then? Are you going to encourage him to lie? Is that what his mother would want? Is that what the holy vicar would want? After all, a lie is a lie is a lie, wouldn’t you agree, even if you use no words to speak it.”
He paused and looked expectant. “Yes, sir,” said the Indian, gravely.
“You wouldn’t encourage him to lie?”
“No, sir.”
“So the news is going to break, anyway. Surely you can see that? With me or without me. Even by tomorrow night the air could be thick with speculation; speculation leads to rumour—‘Rumour is a pipe blown by surmises, jealousies, conjectures’—one can’t approve of that. It’s dirty. It’s debasing. It hasn’t got the drama of a cleancut scoop. Nor the honesty. Nor the money. Pounds, shillings, pence, my friend. (I don’t mean to confuse you.) My escape fund; that’s what I’ll call it. Escape to happiness. To a new life. To love. Comprenez-vous?”
“Excuse me, sir, I’m very sorry but—”
“Oh, by the way, King Henry IV, I believe. Yet maybe you knew that already? In which case I apologize, how patronizing, now he’s got me doing it too! Just don’t ask who says it, though, or quite where it comes in.”
“Excuse me, sir, I’m very sorry but I have to go. My wife is, most happily, expecting our first baby.”
“Of course. I understand. That’s very good. But tell me just one thing.” Josh held on for a moment to the fellow’s dark and scrawny wrist, beneath the clean white cuff. “The News of the World, would you say? No. The name appeals but then we’d have to wait another week. Daily Express? Daily Mail? Which of these would you consider the most suitable? The Mirror, maybe?”
The man murmured something unintelligible. Josh asked him to repeat it. He did so, sorrowfully.
“Oh? The Evening Telegraph? Good God! No, no! Nothing local. Not if you mean to make a splash, my friend…Why, next you’ll even be suggesting the parish magazine!”
He let the Indian go. His fingers had left small livid marks on the brown skin.
“My congratulations to you and your wife. Be happy with your first baby. I hope that it’s a boy.”
(But was that really any better? Boys grew up and brought home nubile and attractive girls and that was another thing which would be coming his way before too long. Twice over. Or…correction: would have been, if he’d been wimp enough merely to sit around and wait for it. But no, sir! That is not my baby! He would hear about these branchings-out
and blossomings from afar; care of a rich and fully satisfying life of his own, thank you very much.)
He’d fulfilled his aim: he was at least a little drunk. He must go home now, he decided; home to his very boring wife, home to his very pious wife. (He giggled a bit. How many of them were there? It was a harem, a harem full of extremely dull women. But it was just a little sad, too, because once, twenty years ago, one of those wives had used to giggle a bit herself; enjoy a silly joke; even—whisper it, whisper it—one about vicars, or God, or the Church, or other crazy things like that. “It’s the happiest diet in the world,” she had said, “the happiest and the healthiest.” Unbelievable, not that she’d once thought that, but that she should now remember having done so and, remembering, admit it!) Well, he must now go home, he decided, and try to sleep on it. In the morning, after he had signed on at the jolly old employment exchange, with all its books and pictures and dance music and TV and its warmhearted air of welcome that invariably made you feel like somebody, somebody who mattered…after he had stepped in for a cosy little chat and a cup of coffee and a selection of chocolate biscuits, he would then go along to that big post office on the corner and ring—eenie, meenie, minie, mo—he didn’t yet know whom. But somebody somewhere would be made happy. He would reverse the charges.
Part Two
21
“Newsdesk.”
Afterwards, the thought that it could so easily have been someone else who answered…even on the warmest of nights that thought could still induce a shiver. (Paradoxically, there were times when her anguish made her cry out through her tears. “Why did it have to be me? Why me?”)
“I have a call from Scunthorpe, in South Humberside, Miss Coe. It’s reversed charges.” The new girl on the switchboard was endearingly punctilious about such things. Geraldine believed it worried her that the Chronicle should have to incur these costs, that people might be cynically exploiting its trusting good nature.
Such Men Are Dangerous Page 11
