New World in the Morning

by Stephen Benatar

  “Oh, yes? Let him but try!” Rose, who’d objected to my using my shirt as a towel, was now shaking it out forgivingly, about to bear it off to a clotheshorse or to an ironing board, despite Junie’s halfhearted remonstrances that I shouldn’t be so pandered to. Or mothered. (In a way, surprisingly, I liked the notion of being mothered.) But Rose had become my champion; roused, she twirled my shirt about her husband’s head as a baton of subdual. She was like the Devil Girl from Mars; Drum Majorette from Hell. I timidly expressed the hope this mightn’t be allowed to interfere with the placing of those nominations.

  Soon, though, it was teatime. My dieting plans had gone awry—not so badly during lunch but I needed now to preserve my energy. “Today I want the biggest piece of everything to go to Sam,” proclaimed Myrtle Fletcher, raising plump and dimpled forearms. “And the smallest piece of everything to go to Robert. I heard what he said about creosoting fences, etc. So did Pim. He won’t get much of a glass of sherry, either.”

  “You on the other hand, Sam,” said my father-in-law, “will have a tumbler if that’s what you’d like.” He was a small man, rosy-cheeked, bald-pated, amiable. Always synchronized his viewpoint with his wife’s—at any rate, in public; “I need to,” he would say, “the old girl’s got a longer reach than mine!” He’d been kind to me and I was fond of him, wasn’t proud of the fact that I had grown increasingly to feel contempt: subservience in a husband troubled me. Either I couldn’t have been so fully aware of such meekness at the start or it had become more pronounced over time.

  “Oh, Lordy, Lordy,” said Robert. “Even the walls have ears.”

  “And the kitchen has open windows, too, where Pim and I discovered, to our disappointment, that it was for ingrates we were making tea! I’m sorry to have to inform you of something else. Your own two daughters were amongst those of us who heard.”

  We stayed in the garden. The children, whose ages ranged from seven to sixteen, either sat on the grass, on rugs or cushions, or roamed at will, eating their scone, sandwich or piece of carrot cake. My own deckchair was positioned next to Jake’s. “The Brain and the Brawn,” he suggested. I slightly resented this—well, as much as I could have resented anything in my current frame of mind and on such a sunny afternoon. Or as much as I could have resented anything that part of me found flattering.

  He was certainly the scrawniest of the sons-in-law; sharp-nosed, long-chinned, rope-veined. But he always seemed straightforward. Receptive to new ideas. Was likely to be popular, I thought, amongst his pupils.

  He had been preparing a lesson for the following day.

  I protested.

  “Just because you have the Oxford Book of Something-or-Other to use as a tea tray! That doesn’t mean you’re the only one around here who likes poetry!”

  “Oh, sure,” he remarked. “‘If you can keep your head, when all about you…are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for their doubting too…’”

  During even so brief a recitation, I had been thinking about Moira. As though I had ever—quite—not been thinking about Moira.

  “Here,” I said, “you mustn’t knock Kipling!”

  “I don’t,” he replied. “But I bet you couldn’t recite me four lines of anything a little more weighty. Excluding Shakespeare.”

  “Is that so? How about Dryden?”

  “Four lines of Dryden?”

  “Would that impress you?”

  “Well could.”

  “All right, then. Listen to this…

  ‘I strongly wish for what I faintly hope:

  Like the daydreams of melancholy men,

  I think and think on things impossible,

  Yet love to wander in that golden maze…’

  Word perfect, I assure you.”

  “Yes,” he said, slowly. “I can believe it. I’m not actually familiar with that passage—”

  “Rival Ladies,” I told him. “But my point is: not all of us are total dunderheads.”

  “After nearly twenty years, Sam, do you imagine I don’t know that? And, after nearly twenty years, can’t you imagine I might ever so slightly be pulling your leg?”

  But my education had always been a touchy subject. I’d never been to university, had nothing in the way of what I considered a genuine qualification: some tangible proof in writing. One of these days I hoped to set this right. Go up to Oxbridge preferably—get to be a rowing blue.

  Well, anyway. You gotta have a dream.

  “How much more of it can you recite?” He laughed. “Old Memorybags!”

  “Of the Dryden? None. But you asked for only four lines. What about two from Alexander Pope? Also impressive?”

  “Possibly.”

  “‘Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man.’”

  “Oh, anyone can recite that! With the exception, I mean, of anyone in this garden.”

  “And lastly I can offer you the whole of The Whiffenpoof Song. But, sadly, not its etymology.”

  I sighed. Stood up and went to pass a plate of macaroons. Also one of flapjacks.

  As it happened, a few hours later I did in fact give voice to those little black sheep who had lost their way—baa, baa, baa! (And wouldn’t get home till the Judgment Day—baa, baa, baa!) But not as a solo. We’d built a bonfire and after a light supper we ate buns and drank hot chocolate around it; some of the children would later place foil-wrapped potatoes in the embers. Ted told a ghost story; not a very scary one, although most of the adults simulated terror. Then we had a spelling bee and played ‘I Spy’. Everyone seemed smiley and relaxed…increasingly so as the night grew darker. Cosy, too—we all had woollen jumpers. Beside me lay Susie, well-fed and content and interested: eyes constantly on the move, snout resting on her paws. (How could all those other households honestly prefer cats?) Young Gary sat with thumb in mouth and head against his mother’s breast, and Rose absently stroked the hair back from his brow. I wondered if Jake ever suffered from claustrophobia. He or any of the others. Impossible to tell. I seldom did while I was actually there. I smiled at Junie and my daughter, both sitting straight across from me. People said there was no such thing as a perfect day, and of course there probably wasn’t—I supposed—yet I really didn’t see how this one could have been improved on. Our initially lusty singsong was now petering out but as I looked at all those friendly faces in the firelight, faces so familiar I usually didn’t think much about my fondness for the people attached to them, I suddenly felt regretful that next Sunday mine wouldn’t be among them. Although I knew this was merely sentimental and would certainly be fleeting it wasn’t easy to shake off. What’s more, it happened even before somebody, I believe it was Octavia, led the rest into something I hadn’t heard for ages: “Here’s a happy tune, you’ll love to croon, they call it…Sam’s song.” Lots of nods and smiles in my direction and cries from some of the children—“This one’s about Uncle Sam! This is about Uncle Sam!”

  What was ironic was that it was immediately followed by another that could easily have provoked a few nods in my direction…although, obviously, not with the smiles.

  Don’t Fence Me In.

  9

  We returned home at roughly ten. At roughly eleven I took Susie on her evening walk. “Is it necessary?” asked Junie. “She’s been charging around so much I would have thought she was exhausted.”

  “But, darling, she was shut up for over an hour this afternoon, and, hearing all the screams and laughter, must have thought, What on earth have I done? And, anyway, just look at her!”

  Susie had gone to the front door and was gazing back with soulful trustingness in the integrity of man—and with a tail that wagged in tentative anticipation.

  Added to which, I myself was fancying a stroll: a short time in which to ponder without interruption, to plan, to dream, take stock…or simply be. I often meant to do all this in bed but either fell asleep or was distracted by Junie’s frequent re
settlings or—sometimes—gentle snoring.

  “Ah, Suze,” I said. “I know your evening walk is one of the few simple pleasures you can really count on. How could your mistress be so rotten as to want to deprive you of it?”

  “Oh, Susie. Is that what I was wanting? To deprive you of one of the few simple pleasures you can really count on? Then isn’t it a good thing somebody here has a heart?” To me she said: “But you won’t be going far?”

  “No, only round the block. Won’t even take the lead.”

  In fact I’d been considering returning to the beach, to sanctify my day with a tranquil half-hour listening to the ebb and flow of the ocean. But the beach was too far. So now I chose to wander through the back streets. At this time on a Sunday these were wholly deserted, their houses all in darkness. But at least I could smell the sea. And I loved that smell. I’d always been a son of Neptune, even before I’d been a son of Richard Widmark. The sea had made the setting for some of my greatest exploits, both actual and imaginary, but sometimes I’d felt I should simply like to swim out as far as I could, mile after mile after mile—sun-dappled and serene—until either my strength gave out or else I finally walked ashore, all glorious and shining, with muscles now pleasantly tired, onto some lush tropical island with silvery sands, exotic fruits and Gauguin’s available maidens. The sea was purifying; it was a transmuter of base metals. It seemed eminently right that beside the sea, and underneath the stars, I should have been brought face-to-face again with love.

  The car came quickly and it didn’t stop.

  For a second I couldn’t adjust. One moment I was attending some glamorous cocktail function with Moira, being introduced to many of her sophisticated friends, arousing wonderment and envy. The next, I was staring down at Susie’s bloody and broken body. Separating the two had been the heart-stopping thud of impact…and then the bastard’s tail lights were already burning into the distance.

  Yet she was still alive. The whimpering and the slavering and the frenzied breathing, the bared teeth and the smell of panic, all testified to that. I knelt beside her and laid my hand on her head and spoke her name softly and repeatedly, whilst trying to work out what I should do. And she gradually gave over snarling and attempting to struggle up.

  I knew that the vet lived on the seafront, in a flat over his surgery. We were halfway there and I thought it would be better to carry Susie straight to Mr Dodd than carry her back to the house—also quicker and less frustrating than my trying to get a lift. No lights had been switched on; no windows had been thrown open. Everything remained as silent as before…almost …the only difference being a crying baby and a whimpering dog. Nobody had come to his front door.

  I would have come to my front door.

  So would Junie, Ella, Matt and nearly everyone I knew. They would all have come to their front door.

  I felt an urge to stand there and throw back my head and howl. Howl until the incident was marked, its inhumanity acknowledged, in some way shared in.

  But that wasn’t going to happen.

  “Okay, Suze. Easy does it, you mustn’t be afraid! You’re going to be all right.”

  Okay, Suze, easy does it, you’re going to be all right. For the next ten minutes this was the refrain running through everything I said. I felt it mattered she should hear my voice. “You’re going to be all right, Suze. Mr Dodd will take away your pain. You’re going to be all right. As good as new! Oh, dear God! Dear God!”

  Yet that was dishonest. I had nothing but scorn for anyone who, at moments of stress, turned to a god he otherwise disregarded. God played no part in my own world. I didn’t need him. I wasn’t the type to lean; I was the type to be leant upon. “You—are—going—to—be—all—right—Susie. Do you hear me?”

  She was still conscious but a dead weight and my arms were aching long before we reached the vet’s. She smelled dreadful. She was dribbling copiously onto one of my cable-stitch sleeves and there was blood and heaven knew what else across my chest and stomach. I saw scarcely anyone. I passed the ice-cream parlour we had passed the night before but now it gave the impression of still being shut for winter. It was odd to think that only a little over twenty-four hours ago we’d all been drinking inside The Lord Nelson—Susie making up to Moira and Liz, rather than bothering with myself.

  To my relief there was a light in one of the windows above the surgery; it showed pinkly through thin curtains. Not that it would have made any difference if there hadn’t been.

  Mr Dodd looked like a young man out of an American soap. He had striking if somewhat vacuous good looks and thick blond hair combed back into a peak. But then you noticed the skin at his throat: not baggy so much as crumpled and crisscrossed and crêpey: and later on you learned he was a grandfather and you set him down as one of the creepiest people you had ever met.

  (Superman, I can assure you, Matt, could never hold a candle to Mr Dodd!)

  But when he came to the door he instantly took in the situation and opened up without the least sign of reluctance. While I held Susie down and did my best to look away from everything the harsh surgery light was so cruelly exposing he conducted a lengthy examination, having first administered a pain-dulling injection.

  In an attempt to distract myself, I wondered why Mr Dodd, if you saw him about during the milder months, invariably wore an open-neck shirt, with nothing visible beneath, when possibly—with a skilfully arranged cravat or some high rolled-over collar—he could have gone on looking thirty-five forever. It was perplexing. Did he suffer, then, from a blind spot…or was it more from that self-destructive urge we’re all supposed to have, but which, speaking for myself, I could never properly recognize? ‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae mony a blunder free us, And foolish notion.’ (Another four lines I could have quoted happily to Jake, and might well have done, had Mr Dodd been present.)

  Yet the poor man was always thoroughly agreeable; besides being a first-class vet. And at present my mind couldn’t dwell for long on quirks of personality or appearance.

  “I’m afraid she’s very badly hurt,” he announced at last.

  “Well, I can see that!” I said. “But she’ll be all right, won’t she? She is going to pull through?”

  “It’s not these gashes on the body we need worry about. It’s the damage to her head.”

  “Concussion—right? But concussion heals with time.”

  “Unfortunately, it’s more than that, Mr Groves. I’m sad to have to say it—”

  “No,” I cut in.

  “But I truly feel—”

  “No,” I repeated, “I am not going to have my dog put down!”

  “But I don’t believe she can make a full recovery. I am sorry. I appreciate what you’re going through—”

  “No!” I said.

  The sound of my tone. The set of my features. Obdurate like Matt.

  “Very well, then.” Without a shrug he still conveyed the impression of one. “In that case, I’ll now give her something to help her sleep until morning.”

  “Don’t you see? We love her. My wife…my children… It wouldn’t be like home without her.”

  “Of course. I understand that. Yet I still think that when you’ve had a chance to reconsider… I know none of you would wish to condemn her to a life of—a life of—”

  “But how can you be sure? Can you be so sure…?”

  “Short of a miracle,” he answered. “Yes.”

  I paused.

  “All right, if that’s the way it is,” I told him, heavily, “then there’s nothing else for it, is there? We’ll just have to hope for a miracle.”

  He drove us home; assured me with an air of concern that he would come to look at Susie in the morning.

  Burrowed in the pocket of my jeans, opened the front door for me. Then departed.

  “Samuel—is that you? Do you realize you’ve been gone an hour? Over an hour? I’ve been getting so worried. So cross. You said ten minutes! I’m almost
coming to believe I can’t trust you any longer.”

  I called back up the stairs. In other circumstances I’d have found it satisfying, my being able to vindicate myself so fully. Even now there was a sneaking sense of righteousness. Junie was still pulling on her dressing gown as she came running after me into the kitchen. Her hand was on my shoulder, squeezing in mute apology, while I settled Susie into her basket. At the same time I added all the salient details. “I think I may sit up with her,” I said.

  “But, darling, there’s no point. Not if Mr Dodd’s sedated her and told you it’ll last all night.”

  I allowed her finally to lead me up to bed.

  “We mustn’t let her die,” I said, in a voice that seemed treacherously to quaver. “It wouldn’t be right, she’s had barely half her life…” I was aware how inadequate this sounded but I was now having actually to hold back tears and I had a strong feeling that if after so many years of hard-won self-respect I were suddenly to start blubbering I might not find it easy to stop. That would scarcely be helpful right now; and, more to the point, could insidiously spoil something we had all come to value. Once there had been a first time of showing weakness, who could say there wouldn’t be a second?

  “I promise you,” answered Junie, “we’ll do our very best to save her. But, love, do try to keep your voice down! It’s far better the children shouldn’t hear us.” She smiled ruefully. “I suppose it’s a minor miracle that I didn’t wake them!”

  There! That word again! It struck me as auspicious. And at the top of the stairs there was a horseshoe hanging on the wall. I brushed my hand against it as we passed.

  Come on, I thought. Be positive! Broad-shouldered! Unbeatable! This was the sort of thing I always said to myself when going through a depression; or, anyhow, beginning to come out of one. And there were plenty of other situations in which it was equally apposite. Of course there were. I turned and gave her a ferocious hug.