The Life Situation

by Rosemary Friedman

  “I’ve brought my lists for France,” she said. “You have to take me to school at five on Monday.”

  “At least it’s a civilized hour,” Oscar said. “What time’s the plane?”

  “AM,” Rosy said.

  “Christ! You must be joking.”

  “And we’re not going by plane. We’re going by coach to Southampton, that takes three hours, boat to Cherboug, five hours, then another coach to Dinan, it’s about a hundred miles.”

  “Twelve hours to Brittany! Whose misconceived idea was that? You can be there in twenty minutes by plane without all the little buggers being sick.”

  “Not everyone can afford the plane!”

  “Who’s going to get up at five?”

  “Four. We have to be there at 4.30; the coach leaves at five. You or Mummy. You can fight it out.”

  “I’ll go,” Karen said.

  “No,” Oscar said. “I’ll go. You have to get up for work.”

  “Yes, let Daddy go,” Rosy said. “He just lies around all day anyway.”

  That was the trouble with writing especially at home. No one, in particular his daughters, considered it as anything but playing round a bit with the typewriter.

  “If you’re going to be rude you won’t even go to France…”

  “I didn’t mean to be rude, Daddy. What I meant was that you can go back to bed while Mummy…”

  “I know, I know…what time will you be coming back?”

  Rosy consulted her information. “One o’clock.”

  “In the morning?”

  “In the morning. Although Sir says we’re almost sure to be late. You can wait outside the school but if it’s raining they’re going to open the door and you can wait in the hall.”

  “Big deal. There should be a Society for the Protection of the Parents of Schoolchildren.”

  “I can always walk with my two heavy cases and my zip bag large enough to hold rolled mac, packed lunch, flask containing drink, camera, two purses (French and English money), fruit for journey, game for journey, book for journey…”

  “I get the message.”

  “…it shouldn’t be too heavy. I expect there’ll be a first aid station at the school for ill-treated childrean who arrive staggering.”

  “With two heavy cases plus zip bag…” Oscar said. “What other succulent morsels of information have you there?”

  She held up two sheets of paper. “Clothing list and Some Notes of Caution for the Journey to Brittany.”

  “Give Mummy the clothing list and me the ‘Notes of Caution’.”

  “Lucky you,” Karen said. “I’d rather have the cautions than one hundred and sixteen items of clothing all suitably marked, ‘otherwise we cannot hold ourselves responsible’…”

  “How did you know?” Rosy said incredulously.

  “I just guessed.” Karen dried her hands and held them out for the list.

  Rosy stood behind him putting an arm round his neck. She smelled of gardens and warm little girls.

  He read: “…‘do not ask your child to bring back cigarettes, wines or spirits. Customs officers will charge full duty to any child under 17!’ Pity! I was counting on you for a case of brandy not to mention a dozen cartons of cigarettes…”

  “I could always try…” Rosy said.

  Oscar kissed her tummy in the gap between her shirt and shorts.

  “Only kidding. Just remember to write to us. We’re going to miss you, you know.”

  He meant it; even bad fathers. He did not get up early on Saturdays to take them swimming, nor on Sundays for cultural tours of London or stately homes. He’d taken them to San Frediano’s, where Daisy adored the zabaglione, but not to the National Gallery. To the Bull and Bush (outside) on a summer Sunday lunchtime, but not as yet to the Proms. He intended to take them to concerts at the Festival Hall, operas which he knew and loved but the thought of all the booking up and finding a time when both of them were free from social engagements or homework or other school commitments…! He told himself that it was better for them to wait until they discovered these things for themselves, anyway, old enough to ‘Prom’, to sit up all night on the pavement for Nureyev, take their knapsacks to Stonehenge. When they were very small they had gone to Whipsnade. It had rained and they had been more interested in the machine which dispensed piping hot chips at sixpence a portion than in the animals.

  He had watched children being forcefed Hatfield House, the Crown Jewels and the Sistine Chapel. The questions they were stimulated to ask had generally to do with ice cream or the whereabouts of the toilets. They must make their own experiences he told his conscience when it pricked, discover for themselves.

  His feelings for his children were as ambivalent as for other things. Rosy and Daisy were at times a nuisance. Interrupters of mood and dialogue between himself and Karen; a ‘stop’ between and idea and the spontaneous carrying out of it; no, that weekend was Daisy’s sports, Rosy’s swimming, half-term tests; Chistmas term must be weathered to the end; both were in the carol concert. A new pair of speakers would be nice but Rosy needed a hundred pairs of shoes and had grown out of everything… When one of them went out it was like a holiday; no shouting, argument; one angel only remained. When both went out he was a free man until he stumbled over a roller skate, a lunch box with a mouldy, half-eaten sandwich, a ballet shoe with one ribbon; when suddenly the house would seem too quiet and he’d wonder what people with no children did, how they passed the time, where was the richness, the quality of life…

  The door burst open.

  “For Chrissake Daisy, can’t you ‘open’ a door!”

  “Sorry Daddy, my hand slipped.” Her hair was in plaits. It was one of her ‘looby-Lou’ days. She was carrying papers.

  “I brought my lists for Horsham. Have I got any wellingtons?”

  “Of course,” Karen said.

  “They’re too small.”

  “What about Rosy’s? She won’t need them in France.”

  “Too big.”

  “Wear extra socks.”

  He looked at Karen with admiration, able to conjure up wellington boots at will.

  Sixteen

  ‘And it’s a long time, from June till September…’ or was it May to December? He could remember the tune but not quite the words of the old song. June till September suited him anyway.

  He sat on the beach at Ste Maxime trying to write a letter with a biro gritty with sand and to keep an eye on Rosy and Daisy in the water at the same time. His top half, beneath the umbrella, was cold but his legs were burning, the shin bones rapidly becoming red. He pulled a beach towel from the striped bag to cover them and with it came two peaches and a banana (Rosy’s and Daisy’s elevenses), a snorkel and mask. He dusted them off and put them back in the bag. He hated beaches; hated the sand beneath his feet, in the sun-tan oil, in his eyes when the wind blew. He swore that as soon as the children were old enough, another year or so for Daisy, he would not go near another beach. He was writing to Marie-Céleste. The letter would be addressed c/o Mrs Wilson at the surgery.

  No matter what the exact words of the song said, the summer had been long; long and hot. Until now, caught up in the events, there had been no time to dream, to think on it. Never had he gone on holiday more reluctantly.

  The two major poles in his life had moved in opposite directions. As his father grew thinner, Marie-Céleste grew fatter. Both metamorphoses pulled at his entrails. Despite everything, he managed to finish his book. He knew it was good. Death in Heraklion was already taking shape in his mind.

  The quiet left by Rosy and Daisy, away with the school, had helped him on the last lap; it was interrupted only by letters. From Rosy, who had crossed the Channel in a force ten gale, the dramatic: ‘…sick, sick, nothing but spuw! One boy slipped on it and broke his arm and another boy nearly fell off. We are here now and it is quite nice but rather squashed…please write…’ From Daisy: ‘We have just arrived and the place has been painted. I did not feel sick on the co
ach…thanks for the chocs, Mum…’ From Rosy: ‘…the French children are great. Last night was terrible ’cause there was this insect in our room and Nichola, Adrienne and I could not get to sleep so Miss Lancaster said that Adrienne and Nichola could sleep in her bed but still they could not get to sleep so I slept with Nichola. What a racket everybody made snoring and talking in their sleep… I was so hot…yesterday we went on a beach and “Sir” took a film of us paddling the other day Rebecca and I were passing a car with a sheet over the windscreen. We peeped into the window and there we saw a little boy with his shirt off he was lying on the passenger seat. He had dried blood and cuts on his chest. Then a bit later an ambulance came and took him away. He might have been dead we had chicken in cream sauce for lunch yummy! Write soon…’ From Daisy: ‘… I’ve got a cold its lovely here and don’t forget to feed my rabbit Araminta said she would but you no Araminta and don’t forget the water today we are going to see the cows being milked…’ By the time they came back, tired and skinny with their bags full of dirty clothes and their small gifts (corkscrew Rosy, Devon toffees [from Sussex?] Daisy), Death on the Riviera was ready for typing and he was excited as a small child at seeing them again. They were always impossible for a bit when they’d been away but it was as if life once more had been breathed into a moribund house; the bricks and mortar became once more a home.

  In the week that both girls were away Karen went to Edinburgh with Dr Boyd for his lecture and he went with Marie-Céleste to the royal film première. He spent the night in Ernest’s bed and had his breakfast coffee from Ernest’s cup. When Karen came home and asked him what he’d done with himself he said oh nothing just watched the royal film première on television. For good measure he told her how lovely Her Majesty had looked in her lime green dress. He waited for the world to fall about his ears as he remembered with horror their TV was black and white. Karen was too preoccupied to notice.

  He went to Brighton as often as he could, or more precisely as often as he could bring himself to. His father, who had been a big man although not tall, weighed little more than seven stone and was in constant pain, scarcely able to move about his room. The flat in Hove was organized but the big house as yet unsold. Dr Macready, the young locum who was working for his membership, was looking after the patients while his father waited, in the big front bedroom with its bow window looking out on to the sea, to get better. He could hardly stumble from bed to chair and from chair to bed again. His limbs were stick-like, his skin yellow.

  Oscar sat with him trying to think of things to say. His father cursed the pain and his disability and the fact that he could not attend the public enquiry concerning the marina in order to preserve its original intention and not become an offshore property development. He planned a long convalescence (take your mother on a cruise perhaps) away from the ‘keen’ wind of Brighton. He spoke of Christmas and how if they were still in the house he and Karen and Rosy and Daisy must come and stay. Mother would cook an enormous turkey and afterwards he’d walk the girls to Rottingdean where at Christmas time the waves washed over the undercliff walk and it was a great game running as fast as you could and shrieking with the excitement of trying not to get caught and soaked and afterwards scolded by Grandma.

  Oscar said yes and yes when it was perfectly obvious he wasn’t going to make Christmas but humoured him as one did a child. Unwilling to surrender the role he had played all his life it made him feel angry, and afterwards guilty, to play along with this lying, cheating infant.

  The locum, an earnest young man with glasses that slipped down his nose, said that it was wrong to hazard guesses but it did look as if Dr John might have some metastases (secondary cancer deposits) in the spine although it was impossible to tell without seeing the X-rays and even then they didn’t always show up. In view of his emaciated condition, his pain and continuing weight loss, however, it seemed a distinct possibility… His mother played ‘games’ too. She had been with his father to the hospital and been assured that nothing abnormal had been found on investigation. Tom Patterson, their close friend and the medical consultant, had made her promise that if the sciatica became worse, she must bring him back for further tests. His father had refused to go. It would get better. He did not believe in doctors; not even Tom Patterson whom he refused to see other than socially when he called. He knew sciatica when he saw it. Of course he had no appetite; he wasn’t getting any fresh air, exercise…

  By the end of July he was giving himself morphia twice daily for the pain. Oscar offered not to go away to France but his mother said if he did that his father would think there was really something the matter with him… By the time the holiday was due he was too weak to hold the syringe and the locum was allowed to administer the morphia. It was a relief to Oscar to get away from the haunting sight of the shrunken form engulfed in the dressing gown that suddenly had become too large. His father made Oscar promise that when he came back he would drive him to the marina.

  In the weeks before they had left for France he had seen more of his parents than he had for many years. The children sent ‘get well’ cards to Grandpa and small things made at school which he treasured.

  He saw more, too, of Marie-Céleste. Having finished his book he had taken to meeting her as soon as she finished her morning visits. They could not go to the flat as Conchita did not leave until two. They had lunch at a pub or in the park. One day they drove to Windsor, another to Blenheim. Marie-Céleste had grown increasingly beautiful with the advancement of her pregnancy. He loved to lie with his head on her belly waiting for the baby to kick him; to bury his head between the heavy breasts.

  “Suppose you have the baby while I’m away?”

  “Not until September.”

  “Suppose you do?”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I don’t want to leave you.”

  “You can’t disappoint Rosy and Daisy.”

  “No.”

  “And Karen; she needs a holiday too.”

  “Yes.”

  “You too my Oscar.”

  “I need you more.”

  “What a beautiful sun tan you will have. You will be so handsome.”

  “Will you love me more?”

  “Impossible.”

  “Will you write every day?”

  She hesitated.

  “I shall get the post first.”

  “Is it wise…?”

  “If you don’t write every day I shan’t go…”

  “What shall I tell you?”

  “About the baby; how many times he has kicked. If you are well. I must know if you are well.”

  She laughed. “I have never felt better.”

  “But you will write?”

  “I will write.”

  He told the patron of the Chardon Bleu that he would collect the mail each day from his office; that he was on no account to send it to the bedroom. Marie-Céleste had written every day. He did not like to admit even to himself that her letters were something of a disappointment. They were pedestrian, factual. In his, he expressed his love, his yearning for her, his desolation at being so far removed. Neither sun nor sea nor food nor air of Provence made up for her presence. He was counting the days until he could go home.

  The journey down had not been uneventful. After the usual merry-go-round of packing, taking everything but the kitchen sink ‘just in case’, they set off with anticipation and relief. Rosy and Daisy sat in the back of the car with their books and games and sweets and drinks and fruit ‘for the journey’. They got no further than the end of the road when Daisy announced she had forgotten her snorkel. Oscar said he would buy her one in France but she said it was a special snorkel and cried, so they turned back which was just as well because the light was on in the hall and Daisy was exonerated. Karen, who hadn’t got out of the car, said she’d left the light on on purpose because of burglars but Oscar refused to go back again and Rosy supported him by saying that anyway any burglar worth his salt knew jolly well people didn
’t live in the hall for two weeks.

  They managed to get as far as Holloway Road when Oscar remembered he’d left the passports on the kitchen table and did a U-turn so fast that Rosy and Daisy screamed and cars screeched to a halt after which his passengers remained silent and petrified except for the odd ‘Daddy, look out!’ on the hair-raising ride he gave them back to Primrose Hill. They had booked the eleven o’clock Hovercraft and he was damned if he was going to miss it.

  The passports had been entirely his fault so there was no one he could even shout at, just give them hell with his driving, taking corners almost on two wheels and cutting in and out of traffic like a maniac. When they drew up for the second time outside the house Rosy said: “Thank you Daddy, for a lovely holiday.”

  Oscar was not amused. He scooped up the passports and hesitated at the lavatory door wondering whether to leave the light on; then remembering Rosy’s dictum he decided against it. They got as far as Holloway Road again when Daisy said she felt sick.

  “You can’t possibly,” Oscar said illogically. “We’re not even out of London.”

  “I’m going to be sick,” Daisy persisted.

  He glanced in the mirror. She looked green.

  “Hurry up and stop Daddy,” Rosy said nervously. “I don’t want it all over me.”

  He drew into the side of the road where Daisy vomited into the gutter. Karen produced the wet flannel and dry towel which were part of their long distance travelling equipment but which were not usually called into service so soon.

  Back in the car Oscar said: “Do you think we can really go now? We’re only an hour late!”

  “The last time wasn’t my fault,” Daisy said cuttingly. “Who forgot the passports? And it was only all that swerving around that made me feel sick in the first place.”

  They drove in silence and at speed to Ramsgate. There was a long queue of cars outside the Hoverport. Oscar asked an AA man if they were in time for the eleven o’clock ‘flight’.

  “You’re in time for the ten-thirty, sir,” the man said. “A party was taken bad on the ten o’clock; heart attack, passed away in fact, the ambulance is down there now so we have to ask you to be patient…get you away as quickly as possible…”