“Of course I worry. You call me intelligent and sophisticated, yet speak to me as though I were stupid and naive. How like a man! How like a certain type of man!”
“I’m sorry. You’re offended?”
“Well, if so, there’s only myself to blame, very clearly. But there’s usually supposed to be a certain measure of relief, isn’t there, in talking out your problems with a stranger?”
“A stranger? Is that the way you think of me?”
She returned surprised look for surprised look. “Well, isn’t that the way you think of me? We met for the first time less than five hours ago.”
“Two lost souls on the highway of life? Friends?”
She smiled—a little crossly—but didn’t answer.
“Shall I tell you something? I don’t know about this procrastinating boyfriend of yours. I would start divorce proceedings first thing in the morning if I thought there was a chance of having someone like you. I said there’s nothing better than a good marriage. There’s also nothing worse than a bad one. Take it from me. I know. Even if your boyfriend doesn’t.”
She hesitated. She attempted another smile. She said, “I’m not sure whether to be flattered or appalled.”
“Does honesty appal you?”
“Yes. In certain situations. Most definitely, a man who wouldn’t pause to consider the plight of two very pleasant teenage children might…worry me a little.”
“And how do you know, then, that I haven’t paused to consider it? And paused and paused and paused again? Let me explain. I’ve dreamed of nothing else for years but of being able someday to break free.”
She stared at him.
“And, in any case, if you think that I’m being hard,” he went on, bathetically, “I very well remember the way you talked about your parents…about your dead parents.”
She said rather quietly, after a few seconds: “You noticed that, did you?”
“Dumb or drunk! It wasn’t very nice.”
“Yes. As soon as I’d said it I felt ashamed.” She paused. “But sometimes when you’re trying to amuse or impress or simply to avoid the sentimental, you come out with things which…oh, I don’t know…which…” She shrugged and looked at him appealingly; and if at that moment he had responded with the sympathy which actually he was well capable of, and which, too, she strongly sensed he had within him, she would have been very open to receiving comfort.
There were several strands he could have picked on.
“Are you saying, then,” he asked, slowly, “that you were trying to impress me? Me?”
At any other time she might have been touched by this essential lack of confidence, in contrast to his habitual mockery, his attempts at the bold front, the peacock strut. She was reminded of his nervousness on the phone.
“Yes,” she said, dully, “I suppose I was.” It was true. She couldn’t take it from him.
He grinned. “That means you find me attractive?” It was a bad time for the grin. It was a worse time for the question.
“Found,” she said. “That was before I discovered you were someone who believes in spelling things out, someone who’s merely waiting for the first bandwagon to roll into town on which to make his getaway. It was before I discovered other things as well: amongst them, the truthfulness of first impressions. “
“You think I regard you as a bandwagon?”
She said: “After only five hours I don’t know what else you could regard me as.”
“You clearly don’t believe, then, in love at first sight?”
“Not since adolescence. Only in lust at first sight. Or opportunity.”
“But don’t you see? I could really give you such a lot. What with my book—and all this money from the Chronicle—and all the publicity. And now, not in any mythical three years! I’m a fellow who’s going places. Don’t you see?”
“If it’s of any possible consequence…yes, I think I do see.”
“Also,” he said, trying to sound matter-of-fact but acquiring only a faintly pleading quality, “I can honestly tell you this. That I’m very good in bed.”
“Oh, terrific!” she answered. “Should I offer my congratulations to you, then, or to Dawn? I’m sure she must really appreciate her luck!”
She thought that before he looked away she saw the beginning of tears—and only just stopped herself in time.
She’d been about to say: “There, there!”
25
The first time after marriage that she had period pain and had to return to bed with it, Simon said, “Darling, we can’t have this! Where does it hurt, exactly?”
“How do you mean: where does it hurt exactly? It hurts all over! Here, and here, and here! Just go away and let me die in peace. Mummy was right. Men never understand these things.” But by the time she had got to the last two sentences, she was smiling a little, despite everything. She took his hand. “I’m sorry, Sim. This always makes me feel so very rotten. When you said we can’t have this it sounded as if I might be throwing a tantrum to win attention and all I needed was a little self-control.”
“But where did you say it hurt, again?”
“Oh, Simon, it isn’t the sort of thing you can pin down. I told you. All over.” She released his hand.
“Around here, would you say, mainly?”
“What are you doing? Massage won’t help.” Her testiness intensified. “Nor, funnily enough, will tickling.”
“Be quiet a moment. I’m neither massaging nor tickling.”
“What is it, then: Teach Yourself Obstetrics?”
“Gynaecology. Not quite. But I suddenly remembered something. When I was a child I used to have warts on my fingers. I had them for a long time. Then at bedtime one evening, while I was saying my prayers, my mother suggested I should ask God to heal them for me. And after a week or two they’d gone.”
“How sweet!”
“And once—only a short time later—I was staying with an aunt who developed a migraine. ‘Poor Aunty Madge,’ I said and put my hand on her forehead. ‘Jesus will take it from you.’ And not only did that one clear up remarkably fast but ever since, apparently, her headaches have just been ordinary headaches. No migraines.”
“You must really have been rather a sweet child,” she said, distracted. But it wasn’t long before the irony came back. “What’s the success rate nowadays, doctor?”
“Not very high, I’m afraid. I found it didn’t work too noticeably on colds or toothache or—or on coronaries, either.” He bit his lip and took his hand from under the coverings. “Oh, I don’t know why I bother. You’re right. It’s just a farce.”
“Oh, Simmy, don’t! I honestly think it helped a bit, having your hand there. It felt comforting.”
“Well, at least that’s something.”
“Who knows? You might truly have a gift.”
“You go to sleep.”
“Enjoy your walk across the Heath, my Simeon. Next Sunday I’ll come with you.”
But she didn’t go to sleep, prescribed tablets being patently as ineffectual as faith healing. She turned from side to side, clammy and nauseous; with Simon gone, she groaned. At length she opened her eyes and lay on her back and listened to the bells. She wished that she could find it hypnotic: the counterpoint of church bells. But it was only soothing from a distance and in her present state she was soon impatient for its end; her stomach grew more jangled every minute, until she actually cried out in her frustration, hysterically demanding obedience. (She hadn’t known she was going to do that; as well as being surprised she felt immensely foolish. She wondered what Mr Kurosawa might have made of it, or Mrs Gupta, had either of them been passing on the stairs; and the speculation made her smile, however bleakly.) She turned on her side again and gazed wearily around their home; Simon had left the curtains drawn but they were thin and offered only dimness, not obscurity. They had pinned up travel posters; put roses in a jar; been given gaily-coloured ornaments (what fun that day had been, eating bagels and ice crea
ms as they went from stall to stall, returning with their garish gifts and useful bargains—this time a week ago they had been there!); but what was really needed was overall replastering and fresh paint and wallpaper, and to such extremities they were not prepared to go. Even if they had been, the divan on which she now lay would have dominated and destroyed; like the tatty armchairs and the chest whose bottom drawer stuck and the wardrobe whose door you had to wedge—to say nothing of the shiny blue lino, cracked and cigarette-ringed, the furry matted rug, the gas fire with its broken mantle and black meter, the obtrusive ugly sink, the grease-encrusted cooker. She glanced from one pitiful object to the next, wondering with what affection she would look back upon them in the future…and then a solacing reflection came to her. She thought that despite the way she felt now, despite the bells, despite what her parents would have said about this room and about this house, with its unwashed walls, its unswept floors, its babel of strange voices, its spicy cooking smells and unappealing lavatory and bathroom—what they would have said, too, about their registry office wedding, streamlined, utilitarian, sparse not only in ceremony and frills but in family attendance (only Simon’s aunt and mother there, who, bless her, had taken both them and their handful of guests straight on to a Lyons Corner House celebration); she thought that, despite all this, despite her temper and his temper and their tiffs and their frequently boring jobs (him at John Barnes, herself at Woolworth’s), she was, against all the odds, indescribably happy. Radiantly happy, gloriously happy, spectacularly happy; enjoying her new life, when it was enjoyable, with an intensity, a clarity of sensation, an almost frenetic awareness which she had seldom experienced, certainly not in any reasonably sustained manner over a period of three weeks. She had never laughed so much, never found so many small things to take pleasure in, never been so interested, so uninhibited, so confident, so loving. Loving towards everyone, not simply towards him. Doting towards him. Yes, she doted on him, on every word he said (apart from the times when she didn’t dote on him nor on any word he said), on every smile, on every frown, on every movement, on every line and muscle of his body, whether it was clothed or unclothed. Indeed, it wasn’t healthy, the way she doted on him, not for either of them, but since this doting phase was bound to pass—so books and plays and life informed her, not to mention, of course, mothers—why not simply give in to it, make the delicious and ecstatic most of it while she was lucky enough to have it, this new and ephemeral experience? Therefore she doted. Shamelessly. “See Naples and die,” she told herself.
She shifted, realized something, frowned. A little strange, wasn’t it? The power of mind over matter? The distraction of thought?
She moved back the bedclothes, put her feet to the floor, testingly. Stood up, walked over to the fireplace, walked over to the cooker. Filled the kettle, lit the gas, bent down, got out the coffee jar. Returned and kneeled upon the bed, drew back the curtains, pushed up the window. Leant there with elbows on the sill; listening to the continuing and infinitely more musical peal of the bells; conscious of a motorcyclist revving up and of the cries of children who were on the Heath.
She got down off the bed. She raised both arms in line with her shoulders and twisted her trunk as far as it would go, both ways, a fine waist-trimming exercise. She touched her toes six times.
Steam was issuing from the kettle but suddenly she decided she didn’t want any coffee nor breakfast. Well, anyway not here. If she got dressed very quickly, if she hardly bothered about washing or makeup or brushing her hair, then she wondered if she could guess the path he would have taken: Siamese twin calling out to Siamese twin, Heloise calling out to Abelard: and so, by running, soon catch him up. She was almost certain she could track him just by love.
“Simeon,” she would say. “Most lovely man that ever was. Why didn’t you wait for me?”
26
Somehow Jericho, having fought the battle of Joshua, managed to get rid of him. She felt shaken by the episode. She had written out his cheque. It was for three thousand pounds and Josh’s face, albeit briefly, had leapt back into liveliness at the sight of it. But then, again pathetically, he’d asked whether it might have been for more if he hadn’t made a nuisance of himself, got on the wrong side of her, miscalculated the gamble.
She tried to reassure him, shook his hand, said she would see him before she left. She went with him to the entrance and watched him start on his walk home, the earlier spring now missing from his step, the legend on the back of his sweatshirt a pointedly cruel joke: Keep your pecker up.
On the front it said: Think big.
It was then nearly half-past-eight. Because she felt unsettled and not in the right mood to be alone, she didn’t want merely to go to her room with the intention of staying there. She hadn’t meant to return to the vicarage tonight, yet now it seemed the most sensible thing to do. She decided not even to telephone first. If the vicar wasn’t there, or if he was there but engaged with something lengthy, she would at least have had the walk.
She thought she remembered the way but in fact got lost and on the first occasion she asked for help was wholly misdirected. The roads were very quiet. Not nervous about such things generally she now began to wonder whether she were being foolhardy. Several times, on hearing footsteps coming up behind her, she held on tightly to her shoulder bag. At one point, five or six youths who were going in the opposite direction—and, thankfully, on the other side of the road—plied her with laughter and ribaldry and several shouted invitations; she estimated the distance to the nearest house showing a sliver of light. Yet, anyway, the danger passed. Nevertheless she hurried; rued the impracticability of high heels, the price of vanity. She glanced back over her shoulder, was startled by the soft approach of a beer-bellied fellow in a checked shirt and a Stetson who seemed to be regarding her with furtive interest. She knew she was overreacting but actually started to run…with even the wretched tap-tap of her shoes appearing to call attention to her, here I am, absurd and alarmed, a natural victim, come and get me! She passed a cemetery—ideal, she thought, ideal, what more is lacking?—but then saw cars going by at right angles and realized she had almost reached a busier road. On the further side of it, outside park gates, there was a man pacing backwards and forwards. Illogically, she supposed—yet only afterwards did it strike her as being that—she hastened towards him as if towards her saviour. “Excuse me but do you know St Matthew’s Vicarage? I hope to God you do.”
“I ought to,” he smiled. “I live there.”
This took her back so completely it was a second or two before she could adjust.
“Have you been having trouble?” he asked.
“I’m afraid it was my own fault. I was so sure I knew the way. You’re Mr Madison?” She had meant but forgotten to glance at the photographs which Graeme had obtained.
He nodded. She would plainly have to discard at least some of her preconceived notions concerning vicars—and automatically wondered about her own appearance. She knew it had been all right prior to leaving the hotel but had her apprehensions made her shiny-nosed, dishevelled? A minute or two before, she had worried about being raped; now she worried about the condition of her makeup.
“Geraldine Coe,” she said. They shook hands.
“We’re only a few yards from the vicarage, Miss Coe. Or is it Mrs?”
As they began to walk in the direction he’d indicated, he moved round behind her, to be on the outside.
“But weren’t you waiting for someone?”
“No,” he said, “I had a headache. I was hoping a breath of fresh air might clear it.”
“I always carry aspirin in my bag.”
“I’ve already taken some. But thanks.” (Even as she’d made it, she had known the gesture was without point.) “Are you a local woman, Miss Coe?”
“No, I’m staying at the Royal. Shall probably be returning to London tomorrow. I’m from the Chronicle.”
“The Chronicle!”
“I hoped for a short interview
.”
“Good heavens. With me? Are you doing a feature on the town?”
“It isn’t that.” Something in his manner made her hesitate.
“What could I have done, then?” But she heard the anxiety that underlay his laugh.
“It’s about the two Heath boys. Their claim to have seen an angel.”
They had reached the driveway to the vicarage. He stopped abruptly and stared down at her in anger—she could have sworn that it was anger. “Who in God’s name told you that?”
“The boys’ father. He phoned our Fleet Street office.”
“When?”
“This morning. Why are you so…so surprised?”
He didn’t answer but started striding up the gravel drive, apparently unbothered whether or not she could keep up.
Yet at the front door he waited for her. In the hallway a woman of about fifty-five gave her an inquiring look.
“I was just coming out to get you,” she said to her son—the resemblance was unmistakable.
“Why?”
“I didn’t want you catching cold. Besides, I’m making you a milky drink. It ought to help your head.”
“Mother, this is Miss Coe. A reporter from the Chronicle. She wants to talk to us about the Heaths, et cetera.”
“How nice.”
“No, it is not nice in the slightest. With all due respect to Miss Coe I could kick the bloody Chronicle from here to perdition and the bloody Mr Josh Heath along with it.”
“Simon! Simon, dear.”
“Why on earth did he do it? They all knew it was absolutely essential to stay quiet.”
“Miss Coe, would you like a cup of Horlicks?”
“Miss Coe would probably like a glass of whisky. I know I damned well would.”
“Darling, what has happened to your vocabulary? I haven’t heard you swear so much since—”
“I feel I have a reasonable excuse. Here, let me take your coat.”
“Thank you. If you don’t mind, Mrs Madison, I think I’d much prefer that cup of Horlicks.”
Such Men Are Dangerous Page 14
