Amour, amour, amour. Not for nothing was it called the language of romance. Mon amour fou! He wondered what fou actually meant.
He could even ask Marsha; because, after all, hadn’t she been to that finishing school in Switzerland; a ridiculous waste of money but one which might as well see some return on its investment. At last.
A parasite, indeed! A parasite! The utter gall!
He glanced at his watch—was gladdened by the contour of his strong, fine wrist. What a wonderful world it was; how many wonderful things it gave you to enjoy! Laughingly, he had to look again to ascertain the time.
Not even nine o’clock. He felt amazed that so much could have happened so extraordinarily fast. He had left the office a mere two hours ago; but how his life had changed in just two hours!
His heart was full of love. Not just for Daisy but for everyone. He could even forgive the Italians.
He could even forgive the Germans.
With the tip of his umbrella he tried to spear an empty crisp bag that had blown into his front garden—felt like a failed park attendant when he finally had to stoop to pick it up. (Well, perhaps you couldn’t expect success in literally every department!) He opened the front door and called out, “Marsha!”
It would be a nice surprise for her that he was early. Good old Marsha. In fact she had a lot of remarkably fine qualities, did Marsha; he mustn’t grow blind to them just because she also had a few madly irritating ones. He resolved to be far more tolerant in future. Both at home and at work. This was something else he must turn into a priority.
Yes, indeed. He felt full of smiling magnanimity. For everyone.
36
There was a silence inside the house which, perhaps only because he hadn’t been expecting it, gave off a strained and unconvincing air…though what had put that into his head and what on earth did it mean anyway? Could Marsha still be at her mother’s—and the baby with her, of course—because he had just remembered that this was Mary’s day off? Or most probably it was. And yet the hall light was on. To discourage burglars, possibly? Marsha was always absurdly nervous, quite pathetically so, and never spared so much as a passing thought for the consumption of electricity.
But somehow it didn’t feel like an empty house.
“Marsha!” he called again and went straight to the base of the staircase because he could see at once that the drawing room, whose door stood open, was unoccupied and dark.
And then: “Yes, Andrew. Here I am! I’m on my way.”
For heaven’s sake! It scarcely even sounded like his wife’s voice.
So what was the matter? Had she been lying down with a headache and been awoken from a doze?
Yet if so why hadn’t she simply called out, “I’m up here! I had to lie down for a moment!”?
On the other hand he suddenly remembered something. She knew he got impatient with her headaches; had used to get impatient with her headaches. He felt instantly repentant.
Daisy unwell? Marsha unwell? My God, it was a good job that out of the three of them one at least should be fit and able to shoulder the exigencies of life! Shoulder them, what’s more, with pride and buoyancy and a total lack of self-pity.
But there was undoubtedly an odd atmosphere. His senses felt alert—receptive. He started up the narrow staircase, two stairs at a time. Peripherally he noticed how athletic he was; he could almost have taken three.
He was nearly at the top, therefore, when Marsha came out of the bedroom in her negligee, holding it around her to cover up her nakedness. She brought him to a halt.
“Gracious, Andy! I’ve just been in the bath! How early you are! Sorry if I look a mess; I haven’t done my hair.”
And it seemed that, having reached him now, she was attempting to turn him round.
“But this is so nice, darling! I’ll pour you a drink. Have you had your supper?”
By this point the voice may have sounded more like hers even if she was still talking too fast and appeared to be slightly out of breath. Yet there wasn’t the flush on her skin that she normally had following a bath (he hadn’t realized he was so observant) and her face was still made up—though not, he thought, quite freshly: her lipstick looked a little smeared. Besides, in place of the usual smell of talcum powder… He continued briskly up the staircase and pushed past her without ceremony. His umbrella briefly caught at, snagged, her negligee.
“Andrew!” But now it was hardly any louder than a whisper. “No!”
In less than three seconds he had got to the bedroom door. The man was just pulling on his jacket and one of his shirt-ends still hung over his trouser-top. Simultaneously, he’d been cramming both his feet into shoes. At the moment of confrontation, however, like the freezing of a piece of film, all such activity stopped.
There was a silence as total as the one Andrew had encountered upon opening the front door. As total—and as thoroughly unnatural.
He noticed that the man had hair on the backs of his hands. Dark hair.
He also had lipstick on his face.
“Well?” Andrew said. “I’m waiting!”
“I’m awfully sorry,” said the man. It might have been merely, “I’m awfully sorry that you’re waiting.”
If he hit him, Andrew thought, he would probably fall against the dressing table; there’d be broken glass and powder and unguents all over the place; the carpet would be ruined. He didn’t know whether to hit him or not. The man was smaller than he was and older—thirty-five?—forty?—but neither so much smaller nor so much older there would be any disgrace in doing so. And wasn’t it the accepted code to hit a man who had just been making love to your wife? But now that such an unexpected event had occurred he felt almost as awkward as he did angry. Inadequate.
And he suddenly became aware of his umbrella. He threw it threateiningly on to the rumpled bed—his bed. An instant later he realized that in his other hand he was still holding the empty crisp bag. What on earth did you do with an empty crisp bag?
“Well?” he demanded again.
“Peter was just going,” said Marsha shakily, from her position by the door. “Weren’t you, Peter? Oh—” She added without much expression: “Peter Makins; Andrew Poynton.” Her mother would have been so proud of her. Miss Myers, too. Even Mrs Troop.
“No. Peter was not just going,” corrected Andrew. “Or, rather, he has now decided that he can stay a minute longer. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes—indeed,” said the man. He then finished pulling on his jacket, as though abruptly reanimated by the continuance of the reel.
“I really think he ought to go,” said Marsha. “We may as well try to be civilized about this.” Her manner was gaining in confidence.
The man indicated that he would like to sit down on the edge of the bed, the more easily to tie up his laces. “May I?” he asked.
“Good God!” said Andrew. “You lie in it and on it and all over it, with my wife, and now you ask permission just to sit on it without her!”
It wasn’t clear, from this, whether permission had or had not been granted. After a second or two the man assumed it had. They watched him rearrange one of his socks.
Andrew, while not really taking his eyes from him, then moved across and dropped the crisp bag into the padded pink wastepaper basket.
But although he’d been faintly pleased with his last retort he now began to feel still more at a disadvantage. The word ‘cuckold’ came into his mind and the memory of a Ben Travers farce which he had recently taken Marsha to see. And this feeling of inadequacy—of the sheer injustice of it all—was unhappily compounded when he happened to glance up and catch sight of himself in the wardrobe mirror, unobstructed now by the hangdog hovering of his wife’s lover. He saw his own hunched and menacing attitude; he saw the unrelenting scowl upon his face; he saw the bowler hat upon his head.
He twitched it off in disgust and flung it down by the umbrella. The whole scene suddenly appeared to acquire a distancing, a muzzily unreal kind of quality. He
felt he wasn’t quite a part of it.
“Would either of you like a cup of tea?” asked Marsha.
Instantly, and unexpectedly, he was aware that he’d have loved a cup of tea. Hot and sweet and strong. Further, he became aware that he was hungry; he had eaten hardly anything since lunch.
He would have liked his nice large plate of cannelloni.
But he was damned if he was going to admit to any of this; damned if he was going to allow her ten minutes of respite in the kitchen (how would he and Makins fill even five?); damned if the three of them were then going to sit around sipping tea and making conversation. If there was one thing he knew it was this: that because he himself was about to suffer he would make sure they suffered too. He wasn’t the guilty one. He wasn’t the fornicator.
“May I ask just how long this has been going on?” he enquired coldly. He knew it sounded like a cliché but at least it had some dignity and that was the chief thing to aim for at the moment. While he held on to his dignity he was still in control of the scene. (He was in control of it, wasn’t he?)
“Since about half past seven,” said Marsha.
“This is only the third time,” the man said.
“Only!”
“And, of course, it won’t ever happen again. It was my fault by the way. Your wife wasn’t to blame.”
“Oh, quite the little gentleman!” he sneered.
“I wasn’t trying to be a gentleman.”
“No, you can say that again!” The shout was more effective than the sneer—well, certainly it gave more satisfaction. “And, my God, you’re right! It won’t ever happen again! Or if it does…!”
“Andrew!” cautioned Marsha, nervously. But he shook off her restraining hand with impatience.
“Do you suppose that after what you’ve done I haven’t even got the right to raise my voice? Because let me tell you, woman: I don’t care what the neighbours are going to think, they can think what they damned well like, and in all probability it won’t be half as bad as you deserve!”
And when I was pregnant, she thought bitterly, he didn’t even want them to think he had been to bed with me—let alone anybody else.
But at this point their child began to cry.
“There!” said Marsha. “I tried to stop you. And now see what you’ve done!”
It wasn’t just reproach; it was anger. Good God! Didn’t she have the nous to realize the last thing she had any right to feel was anger?
“Stay where you are!” he commanded.
“No, I must go to him! He must be frightened.”
And she went—she snatched her arm away and went. Enraged, he was going to follow and enforce obedience; but suddenly, albeit in the midst of such a fury, he understood the foolishness of attempting it; the utter pointlessness.
At once he felt deprived of impetus. Defeated. Depression began to seep in.
He recognized the signs and did his utmost to push it away.
“Get out!” he shouted at the man—who’d now stood up again and was quietly putting on his tie. “Get out of here, before I throw you down the stairs!”
As he came past him Makins paused and said once more: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about all this.” He shrugged, helplessly.
But Andrew made a fist and the man flinched. On the landing Makins hesitated, glanced towards the room where the young boy’s cries were coming from, decided to say nothing, and walked quickly on down the stairs. At the bottom he looked up briefly; met Andrew’s implacable gaze; and left the house without a single further word. Andrew remained motionless for maybe as long as a minute, staring at the closed front door. Then reluctantly he roused himself.
He headed for the nursery.
37
The room was very small. Marsha sat on the only chair, between the window and the little bed, her son’s face turned against her breast, his cries now sounding weaker. She was rhythmically patting his back and making soft shushing sounds of comfort, interspersed with scraps of murmured dialogue, while her own tears provided a mute accompaniment to his. Andrew leant against the doorjamb and watched them.
“If you mean to say anything,” warned Marsha, “please remember to keep your voice down.”
He continued silent.
“It probably doesn’t matter,” she said listlessly, after a long pause, “but just once in a while it’s nice to get the feeling that…”
“What?”
“That somebody really cares.”
“I didn’t hear you.” And genuinely he hadn’t.
This time she spoke more clearly. “I said it’s nice when somebody really cares about you.” She added after a further pause: “And I think that Peter did. I truly think he did.”
“That poor apology for a man? That filthy whiner?”
“He isn’t a whiner. He’s gentle; he’s kind. And I don’t believe any longer that you are. You haven’t cared about me for ages.”
“Oh, honestly, Marsha! I can’t even start to understand your reasons for saying that!”
“I say it because it’s true. I think you’ve got a girlfriend that you see. I don’t believe in all those evenings at the office.”
He was flabbergasted; self-righteous; nearly spluttering. “How dare you?” he said. “How dare you make such an accusation?”
She gave no answer; simply continued to rock the small boy on her lap; intermittently trying to bribe him with offers of milk or a biscuit.
“Oh, just a frenzied attempt, I suppose, to snatch at straws and deflect the heat from your own situation! Well, how devious! How sleazy! How utterly like a woman!”
“Anyway,” she said, “in truth I don’t much mind any more. Just don’t shout, that’s all.”
“You can check with the office, why don’t you? Phone Miss Eggling and find out! In fact—I shall insist that you do!”
Another few seconds went by.
“Was that the man who picked you up in Cullens?”
“What?”
“Or the man, perhaps, that you picked up in Cullen’s.” But she couldn’t remember what he was referring to. Peter was somebody she had sat next to at the cinema one time. Afterwards they had recognized one another in Lyons; Eunice had had to dash off and Marsha had been buying rollmops. Marsha had smiled; Peter had asked if she’d enjoyed the film. They had gone upstairs to share a pot of tea and a plate of buttered toast. Andrew believed her—but what difference did that make? The Coventry Street Corner House over the toast or Cullen’s over the biscuit tins? There had probably been a succession of such philanderers. All with black hair on the backs of their hands.
“Have there been others?”
“No, of course not!”
One of her tears must suddenly have dropped onto her son’s head because he instantly stopped his own crying and gazed up at her, showing vast surprise and patent interest.
“You’re practically naked,” said Andrew at last, in a tone of deep distaste.
She didn’t answer. She tried to pull her negligee closer about her.
“And do you realize that you haven’t even washed your hands?” The violent shudder he gave was no mere piece of theatre. “You slut! Why, just looking at you makes me feel I just can’t wait to wash my own!”
And then, quite abruptly, he left…but not for his ablutions. He walked straight down the stairs and—though now without his hat or his umbrella—straight out of the front door. Whose slam provided yet another point of interest for his young son.
And some forty-one-and-a-half years later, when his Aunt Daisy had communicated to him (and to the world in general) her complete lack of surprise at his father having left his mother, he could have replied—had he remembered this fact—that he’d been present at the dress rehearsal.
38
He strode blindly forward: with resolution, yes, but almost without thought: couldn’t have cared less what time it was when he arrived back on the road where Daisy lived.
In fact it was about eleven-thirty; he had stopped briefly
at a pub to down two double whiskies and to eat a pork pie.
He pressed his thumb against her bell and kept it there.
Five seconds. Ten seconds. Twenty.
He then stepped back to the front gate and waited for a light to show. He had forgotten that behind drawn curtains a light quite often didn’t.
“Come on, come on, come on!” he cried impatiently. He had forgotten, too, that Daisy was unwell.
But one thing he had not forgotten.
The landlord.
However, let Mr Queechy give him one hint of trouble—just one hint of trouble, mind—and Andrew would knock him down without a moment’s hesitation; would undoubtedly derive great pleasure from doing so. Indeed, with the Bell’s now coursing through his veins he very much regretted not having struck Peter Makins: Makins, who had deserved to be castrated, let alone struck, but who had been allowed to slink away without the slightest touch of physical chastisement. Andrew had meant to have revenge; had been deflected, or deflated. Now he needed to wreak revenge on someone—it hardly mattered whom. He needed to use his fists.
At last a window was thrown up.
“Who is it? What do you want?”
“Daisy, it’s me. It’s me! I love you!”
“What?”
He repeated it—but this time with opening wide his arms. “Daisy,” he said. “I love you!”
He felt like Romeo. He had never seen the play—although Marsha had half wanted him to take her to the film: she’d had a crush on Leslie Howard. But he still knew about that balcony scene. It was amazing all the bits of rubbish you picked up over the course of the years.
Or he felt like some hot-blooded South American suitor serenading his sweetheart with a guitar. He thought that Daisy ought to have a rose between her teeth, or else behind her ear. She ought to be shaking a pair of castanets or clapping her hands or stamping her feet while swaying to the rhythm of a—what was it now?—flamingo. She had such pretty little feet.
When I Was Otherwise Page 20
