by Maggie Ford
Though his parents didn’t know it, he spent Christmas at the sanatorium at his own request. He felt in no hurry to celebrate it at home with them carping at him to do something about his marriage. But yesterday he’d been obliged to concede. He was due to leave anyway, now or in a week’s time. Two days before New Year’s Eve, with the sanatorium nursing staff stretched because of leave through the festive season, his parents thought it only right that he make it now and welcome in 1947 with them as a family.
‘Start the New Year afresh. Let’s hope that will be the last time you have to go into hospital. They said you’re clear, at last, and so long as you look after yourself and don’t fret, you can only look forward.’
His first night home had to have been the worst he had ever spent under this roof, lying awake in his room while his parents slept, their sleep sound and contented in the assumption that with their anxieties for him a little easier for the present, he must be at ease too. How could he be?
Letters were lying on the doormat as they’d come in from collecting him. His father had picked them up, sorted them out, selecting one above the rest to hand to him.
‘Looks like it’s from your wife’s solicitors.’
Taking it, he’d put it in his jacket pocket, and saw his father’s face draw together with concern.
‘Aren’t you going to open it? It could be important.’
‘It can wait,’ he’d told him and, parrying his mother’s arguments that followed, refused to open it for them to see what Susan was asking. He already knew what she asked, the same request kept being trotted out – for him to divorce her, she would give him grounds enough, she was in love with … He couldn’t even read the name without a burning rage compelling his fingers to screw each letter into a ball. He would give no answer to any of these letters until he saw her face to face. This statement he’d written repeatedly, but she (or her solicitor on her behalf) had not once acknowledged them. He might as well be crying into the wind.
But whatever it contained wasn’t for others to cluck over, full of their damned advice. ‘Divorce her, Matthew, and get it over with. She’s no good to you. You wouldn’t take her back after all she’s done.’ No, he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of raising his voice against their demands.
The letter had stayed firmly in his pocket. Finally he opened it in the privacy of his room, hating the task and what would be written there. As he had suspected it had been the usual cry. But this time a small sealed envelope had been enclosed, the flap signed across with her small uneven signature – no, not signature, just the Christian name, Susan. She didn’t even deign to include her married name, which in itself provoked anger and remorse from him.
What she’d written had taken his breath away. ‘I’m tired of asking. If you can’t grant me a divorse, it’s no skin of my nose. I’ll carry on living with Geoffrey until I die wether you like it or not. What I really want to tell you once and for all is I don’t ever want to set eyes on you. It would make me sick. I wasnt never cut out to be a nurse for anyone and I’m not ready to start with you. I’m sorry if I hurt you but I don’t no how plane I can make it.’
Hurt him? With a seething mind he’d risen, dressed himself, fumbling in his fury and pain at her words that seemed to so encase his brain in iron that no thought could get through but the one intent of getting to her, half killing Crawley and taking whatever came from that. He’d had sense enough to creep from his room without making any noise and waking his parents up, downstairs to where his father’s car keys lay on the kitchen sideboard. The car had once been given to him as a twenty-first birthday present in the happy certainty that he would have years of pleasure from it, not knowing what had awaited him. They’d kept the car, during the war years of petrol rationing, on the gravel driveway under a tarpaulin, his father cleaning and servicing it with loving regularity. This ritual silently declared the certainty that Matthew would indeed return. ‘It’s yours again, Matthew,’ Dad had said, but until he came home and felt well enough to drive, Dad continued to use it to keep it in running order. A way of encouraging him to get fit, Matthew supposed. Well, tonight he’d be fit, if necessary.
Muffled in an overcoat, he’d driven off almost blindly in the rage that still consumed him. It was ten thirty and people were still about. Only turning into the Mile End Road from Cambridge Heath Road was his brain cooled by force as a man coming out of one of the pubs made straight across his path. The car’s tyres screeched to a skidding halt, in front of the man swaying and glaring at him. ‘Gerrout, y’silly sod! Watch where yer goin’. Nearly knocked me darn.’
The man had staggered on across the road, as Matthew leaned his head on the steering wheel for a moment to clear his thoughts.
Geoffrey Crawley had no notion what was in store for him. Opening the door to the frantic yelling and thumping, uttering, ‘What the hell …’ he was taken totally by surprise when a hand thrust itself against his chest with such force he was thrown back against the wall, his head connecting with solid brick with a whack that for a second sent him dizzy. He had the presence of mind at least to lunge back, enough to deny the intruder entry for a brief moment during which his attacker shouted again, ‘Where is she?’
Crawley, indignant now at his home being invaded, held the man with both hands on the shoulders, countering inanely, ‘Who are you? What d’you want? You can’t come barging in here like this!’ All of it ran together like a single sentence. The man was leaning against his efforts to hold him off.
‘I said where is she?’ he repeated.
‘Get out of here!’ Frightened, Crawley felt thin fingers begin to force him from the hold he was vainly trying to retain on the man. ‘Go away! Who the bloody hell are you?’
For an answer, Matthew let go of the hands trying to prevent his entrance, reached back with his right and took a swing at his wife’s lover. It grazed past the man’s cheekbone, making his head connect again with the passage wall though less violently than the first time. The man let go of him to clap a palm to his abused cheek.
‘Godawlmighty!’ he screeched. ‘I’m calling the police. Sue! Sue! Get out at the back, quick, get Mr Adams next door.’
Matthew heard her voice come plaintively, quavering with fear and perturbation, from a room down the passage. ‘I can’t. I’m not dressed.’
Not dressed? Visions of her and this bastard naked together a moment ago assailed him. He lunged, grabbing the coward by the throat, bearing him down the passageway with the force of the rush, taking him to the floor as Susan tried to run out from the room, screaming, finding her way blocked by two grappling men at her feet.
‘Matthew! Oh, God, leave him alone. You’ll kill him. Leave him alone!’
Crawley was making strange choking, rasping sounds as his hands flapped about, in turn trying to break the hold on his throat or scratch his assailant’s face. The choking and rasping were becoming more pronounced, the defending hands weaker, now flopping to the floor between attempts to release the grip. The face had turned puce, the eyes were beginning to stare, bulge. At first deaf and blind to all else but wreaking revenge, Matthew became aware of that dreadful colour. Sights and sounds came leaping back into his brain, as Susan screamed and beat on his shoulders, plucking at them in an effort to tear him away. Yet he couldn’t let go. His fingers seemed to have locked about that neck. Meantime, the face below him was darkening rapidly. Geoffrey’s eyes were closing; his mouth was falling open but no sound came from it now except for a faint and fading hiss. The hands, which had ceased to flap, lay quite still against the floor, flung out as in a posture of crucifixion. It didn’t need Susan’s cry, ‘You’ve killed him!’ for his own brain to cry out, ‘God, I have. I’ve killed him.’
Standing there, knowing he must go, yet feeling utterly incapable of moving himself, Matthew heard a small sound like a tiny rasping intake of breath. He saw one of the dead man’s hands stir ever so slightly, turning over until the palm lay downward instead of limply on its back. Susan h
eard and saw it too.
‘Geoffrey!’ Her scream rang through the house. At the same time a small fretful cry came from upstairs. A child had awakened. Susan’s child. Hers and this man’s: the man who lay in her arms, miraculously stirring.
‘Geoffrey, Geoffrey,’ Susan continued to shriek. She was trying to shake him awake. He had begun breathing again in pain-racked, difficult gasps. It would take a stronger grip than that of a man still weak from his years of captivity and illness to kill a man in his prime, well fed, well paid, and at ease with his world.
Matthew moved forward instinctively. ‘Susan?’
She turned on him like a tiger, blue eyes blazing. ‘Get out! Get out! I never want to see you again. I hate you! I hate everything to do with you.’
‘Susan.’
But she was crying, her head bent over the stirring, gasping Geoffrey. Her muffled words sounded full of unhappiness now. ‘I did love you, Matthew. I did love you. But you weren’t here.’
‘That wasn’t my fault.’ It was a silly thing to say but all he could find.
Crawley was trying to sit up, his hands carefully feeling his throat. Susan held him to her, her glare moderating.
‘It don’t matter now, Matthew. It just happened. A long time ago.’
She was trying to help Crawley to his feet. Matthew watched the manoeuvres dispassionately as though this was all happening on a screen and he, the watcher, stood apart from it all, unable now to feel any emotion as to whether the man lived, died, took his wife from him, or even sprang up to murder him on the spot. Nothing inside him seemed to care any more. Nothing mattered. What was it someone once said in the prison camp – a long-faced, miserable Aussie – does it matter if yuh die now or when yuh ninety; hundred years from now, no one’ll remember yuh or care and yuh certainly won’t care when it was yuh died? Nothing mattered.
So why not make it now rather than lingering on with memories of a love that had vanished? Quick. Easy. No time to think. A tall building, a few tablets sending one into endless sleep, a gas-filled room, a passing train. So many ways. And yet he knew he’d do none of those things. Like the coward he was, the coward he’d been in the prison camps, dreaming of going out in a blaze of glory taking half a dozen Japs with him but too weak-willed to do anything about it, he was weak-willed now; would live out his natural lifespan and take his memories with him to the grave. He wanted to weep. But he wouldn’t let her see him weep.
He left the house, left Susan still cuddling her Geoffrey to her. In a daze he got back into the car and headed east towards his home, his parents and – an odd thought filtered into his head – Jenny Ross.
Chapter 28
‘Look, you’re going to have to make a decision very soon, Matthew.’
He heard her well enough but chose not to heed her. It would mean committing himself and he wasn’t ready, couldn’t see a time when he ever would be. Far preferable to keep his eyes closed, think instead of the sun bathing him with its heat, of sitting here enjoying his surroundings; anything but the making of decisions about signing those divorce papers.
High summer. The winter had been fierce and hard. The Big Freeze they’d called it, with everything, transport, power, everyday life, paralysed by deep snow drifts right into March, then devastating floods. Now summer was making up for it.
Jenny had become his constant companion since his return from the sanatorium; the night he’d thought he had killed that bastard Crawley seemed years ago instead of just a few months as he lolled now on a bench in Victoria Park. During that dragging eternity of waiting he met each day with hope of a letter from Susan that might contain a change of mind. Such a bloody forlorn hope. All that ever arrived was legal, concerning the divorce. He had finally capitulated, the decree nisi having been granted with what had struck him as indelicate haste. Now screeds of legal correspondence followed, designed to drag as big a fee from both parties as possible. Everyone was looking to the main chance. What did they care how he spent days, weeks, months, sick with desolation while it was all going on? Now the decree absolute loomed.
Jenny was waiting for him to answer her, but he didn’t want to. She too was looking to the main chance. Why else devote her time to him? He felt no swollen pride in the fact. What the hell did she see in him? He had become a man ravaged by circumstances, churlish, his thoughts invariably centred on the past, on memories best forgotten but which still persisted, emotions that tore him still with guilt and remorse. Bob Howlett dying alone still haunted him; and the sweet face that had lived in his head all through the terrible years haunted him too. The once-loving face that had hovered had grown twisted with loathing.
‘Matthew, did you hear me?’
Yes, he had heard. He kept his eyes closed, pushed away a moment of irritation at her persistence. He needed her support more than he cared to admit; at times he wasn’t sure what he’d do without her. With her he felt safe. When she wasn’t with him, he felt lost. She remained patient and understanding when he used her as his sounding board to beat out his bad moments on, even when he sometimes went too far. He would apologise and she would accept his apologies, kiss his cheek lightly and say it didn’t matter.
But it did matter. He wasn’t worthy of her love. She had told him she loved him though had never said so again after that one time. He wished he could return her love, for her sake, but that would mean rejecting the feelings he had for Susan, and lying to Jenny, who didn’t deserve to be lied to. Susan had become an obsession, a part of him he could not ignore.
‘Matthew.’
He opened his eyes. ‘I heard you.’
‘Then you can’t keep putting it off. You’ve got to start getting on with your life. I know all about getting on with one’s life, Matthew. I’ve done it.’
The statement sounded vehement. Was it a hint that he might one day take up his life with her? He wished she wouldn’t make those sort of comments. He loved Susan. But what was love? A bonding of two like souls, each helping the other without thought of self? Or was it this overwhelming, mindless desire for someone who selfishly destroyed? One endured of course, yet the other was all-consuming. What if he were to take Jenny on and Susan came crying back? Would he have strength enough to reject the one who’d torn him apart and cling to the one who’d been steadfast all these years without hope of gain? The thought frightened him, but he wasn’t contemplating proposing marriage to Jenny, was he?
‘Let’s leave it,’ he told her almost savagely. ‘Just enjoy the afternoon, shall we?’
She was equally sharp. ‘Yes. Shall we? If that’s what you want.’
‘That’s what I want,’ he snapped back, faintly surprised at her tone. It wasn’t like her. She was usually so mild-mannered.
He lifted his face to the sun and tried to forget it as she went quiet. Not moody, Jenny was never moody, but he could sense anger simmering inside her. This was a side of her he’d not seen before. An odd tingle of new respect for her went through him, warm as the sun on his face. He let the warmth soak in and tried not to think of Jenny or Susan or anything.
It was a sweltering summer. Temperatures had been soaring into the eighties; newspapers announced it as sizzling, with photos of eggs frying on pavements, toddlers naked by the sea, tarmac bubbling. Only the holiday-makers revelled in the heat. For himself, having known the humid sweat-bath of a Burmese jungle, this English summer could be comfortably endured lounging on a bench beside a shingle path. Victoria Park again looked beautiful, its railings restored, its lawns, where he’d been told ack-ack guns had once run up and down ploughing up the grass, once more verdant and immaculate. What had been allotments were now replanted with shrubbery and bright flowers.
It was peaceful sitting here, far from the problems the country faced. Food rationing was still going on, the government was still trying to repay America’s Marshall Aid loan. Attlee talked of the country as being engaged in another Battle of Britain and the cost of cigarettes had risen to three shillings and fourpence. India, Ceylon, Pak
istan and Burma all wanted to break away from British rule with resultant massacres; at home the rising cost of living plagued everyone.
It all came a poor second to his own problems, with this damned divorce business. For all his efforts trying not to think about it, he was. He felt so powerless even though he could stop it at any point. But soon it would be too late. It was as if he was being driven towards a cliff edge, unable to cry out, but he could watch the precipice drawing nearer, his life ceasing to exist. Why didn’t he call a halt? He could still grab the wheel of his own fate and turn it from what they were all telling him was inevitable. Why didn’t he? Because breaking this marriage was inevitable, if not now, then at some time. He couldn’t make Susan love him, could never reawaken those feelings she had once had for him. But, dear God …
‘I still love her, Jenny,’ he said, and his voice broke.
Sitting beside him, Jenny knew he hadn’t heeded a word she’d said. He remained lost in his own world, hoping all would come out the way he wanted it to come out. But it couldn’t. Others were making sure this broken marriage did not mend, his parents, his solicitors, his wife.
Then there was herself – she too exerted an influence on him. She knew it from the way his face brightened when he saw her, though since that day in October he seemed to be holding her at bay. Before then their friendship had been easy. Now, when she came to his home, he would get up and go out into the garden or somewhere upstairs, anything to avoid being with her in the presence of his family. Yet he readily accepted the opportunity to be with her alone, as he was now.
‘I expect you’ll always feel that way about her,’ she returned, studying a squirrel that had scurried down from a tree to investigate a bit of dry bread dropped by children going to feed the ducks. As it nibbled it kept one eye on the couple on the bench for a more likely morsel.
