New World in the Morning

by Stephen Benatar

  “I’m going to phone her!” declared Moira.

  But luckily I had foreseen that. “She’s a little hard of hearing. She’d much prefer a letter.”

  “It looks like a picture out of Good Housekeeping.”

  “And as though it were meant to keep us going for a lifetime!” I realized that my gaze was full of pride; my voice, as well.

  There was more. When I’d torn at the carton sides—I’d had to, because the cake board fitted so well it would have been virtually impossible to prise out—we found wedged beneath it a container of (formerly) frozen pea soup, two jars of homemade jam, and a meat pie wrapped in foil; all very neatly and even prettily labelled. Thank God, while Moira was exclaiming over and examining the first of these finds, I spied a dove-grey envelope which I rapidly palmed, crumpled and pushed up my sleeve: the scratchiest handkerchief ever. With this done, I flushed cold at the narrowness of my escape.

  But my relief did nothing to neutralize the prickings of guilt which had followed my pride. (And why should it have?) I now had to remind myself, repeatedly, that the Caterham children were not motherless, not even temporarily, and were no doubt regularly nourished on home cooking.

  It didn’t help a lot.

  Yet my own conscience, it seemed, wasn’t the only one creating trouble.

  “All these things,” said Moira, “and I hadn’t even planned to be feeding you at home! Apart from breakfast, that is, when I might have stirred myself sufficiently to rustle up some warm croissants and coffee…”

  I had to make an effort. I peered into the broken box still lying on the table. “Wot! No cornflakes?”

  “You see, I thought it might be more fun to eat out. Though I hope it doesn’t need to be said we’d be going Dutch.”

  “Fine. Except rid yourself of that second bit.”

  “No,” she said. “When times are good I think I probably earn more than you do. Or is that tactless?”

  “Yes, it’s tactless. You are invariably tactless.”

  “And times are good.”

  “Well, there at least I’m in complete agreement. Times were never better.”

  “Then let’s have a glass of something. Times were never better! We’ll drink to that. Before leaving.”

  “Where are we off to? Paris?”

  “There’s a place by the Heath. I’ve reserved a table. Hoped you wouldn’t think that was a liberty.”

  “Well, I don’t know. It all depends. Shall I be allowed to foot the bill?”

  “I really can’t see why you should.”

  “Because I’d like to, Miss Scrumpenhouser—isn’t that good enough? Besides. You’re giving me a roof over my head; not to mention the use of a magnificent car…the fulfilment of a dream! And live each day as though your last, I always say. I came prepared to splurge.”

  “The roof and the car,” she persisted, “are just thrown in. I used the word ‘liberty’. I also believe in equality and fraternity.”

  “I don’t.”

  She laughed. “You’re so bull-headed, aren’t you?” (I nodded; Junie often said the same.) “All right, I may give in tonight but only on condition you won’t be living tomorrow as though your last. Nor Sunday, come to that. Nor Monday.”

  “It’s difficult.”

  “Why?”

  “Live each bank holiday as though your last. That’s something else I always say. You can’t demolish all my sayings at one go.”

  “Good grief,” she exclaimed.

  “Meaning?”

  “Perhaps only now am I beginning to realize what I’ve taken on.”

  I didn’t tell her but I liked the sound of that. I rather cared for the idea of being taken on.

  “And by the way,” I suggested, “let’s put off the glad rags till tomorrow. You see, I don’t like everything to come at once. And anyhow I have a grey suit in my holdall. Such a waste of effort not to wear it!”

  “You mean, all that effort of having spirited it over mountaintops, then lugged it down through vale and valley?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But what occurs to me now—shouldn’t the lugging have been up, not down?”

  I briefly considered this. “Are you implying that I get things muddled? Back-to-front? Askew?”

  She laughed. “No, I’m merely implying you ought to unpack your grey suit…and anything else that might be getting creased.”

  “Including my cricket whites?”

  “Oh, most definitely including your cricket whites! Furthermore, I suggest you might want to give it a quick press. I’ve got a steam iron.”

  I hoped my expression didn’t register my slight degree of shock. Junie would never have suggested that. She would simply have gone for the ironing board and asked me to bring her the suit. At home we had a steam iron too; I wasn’t even certain how the damn thing worked.

  “No,” I said. “Just point me in the direction of a clothes hanger—before you point me in the direction of that drink.”

  While I hung up the dinner jacket, as well as the lounge suit, I experienced, first, a surely-to-be-expected interest in Moira’s bed but then—less foreseeably—something that took me out of the bedroom altogether: an almost nostalgic wave of warmth, of gratitude, even of…well, yes, homesickness. Five-past-eight. I wondered if they’d finished supper yet. I thought that in all probability they had. Right now I saw her standing at the kitchen sink, listening to Friday Night Is Music Night while she did the washing up.

  The telephone rang. It made me start.

  Thank heaven. That was what I needed; I was being ridiculous. There may well have been occasions when Monsieur Gauguin had thought extremely fondly of Madame Gauguin after he’d upped and flitted to the South Seas, in quest of freedom and fulfilment. But that was an escapade which had lasted him a lifetime, not merely one weekend.

  On the other hand, of course, I hoped mine was going to last a lifetime too—even if only a lifetime of Mondays to Fridays. So in someone taking his first steps into totally uncharted territory, aiming to set free, as he did so, both himself and those he was pledged always to look after, a qualm or two was not perhaps unnatural. Even Theseus had shed a manly tear on first being parted from his mother.

  I heard Moira’s laughter in the sitting room.

  I hadn’t been intending to open Junie’s letter. Correspondence meant for someone else—even a picture postcard—ought to be inviolable.

  But there were mitigating factors. If I’d been present at the time of writing I’d not only have been shown the letter, I’d have been requested to correct it. Or, at any rate, to pass it as okay.

  Also, she might have been asking questions of John Caterham to which she really wanted answers; have made little jokes she might expect our friend to comment on; everybody’s interests demanded I should know.

  I took it to the bathroom when I went to change.

  Dear John,

  What ages since we met, isn’t life full of surprises! Sam says that’s what makes it worth living but I’m not always so sure. But this one is so nice!

  Now you must come and stay with us, now you’re back in touch! We have plenty of room. It will be good to meet your wife and little ones. I’m sorry, I must have forgotten her name, I’m sorry that her mother isn’t well!

  Thought these few things might come in handy. The pie and the soup have already been frozen so you oughtn’t to refreeze them. Whatever you do make sure the pie is well and truly heated before you eat it, never take chances, I say! Not with food! Maybe living is different. (Sam will explain!)

  I wasn’t sure if you’d prefer a chocolate or a fruit cake but my lot like this recipe best and I thought it would go further. Ella is 15 and Matt will be 13 next week, a man now, says Sam!

  We also have a dog—poor Susie—she’s just had a very nasty accident! It would finish Sam off if she was put to sleep, we shall have to keep our fingers crossed.

  We shall keep our fingers crossed about your mother-in-law too!

  And with
the builders in! My goodness, have you got your hands full, I hope it’s going to lead to something nice!

  Well, that’s all for now then, just wanted to say a very quick hello. I’m sure you and Sam will have a real old ‘get-together’, I look forward to hearing all about it when Sam comes home! Hope yours will be the winning team, and hope we will all have a real old ‘get-together’ soon, before too many blue moons have past!

  Must close now. Much love to you and your wife and three children—three, gracious, however do you cope?

  From your very old friend,

  Junie.

  P.S. Even if Sam remembers to take his camera he always forgets to use it, and I’d love to have a photograph of your family! It’s the same wherever we go, Jalna the Dovecot or Kew Gardens or anywhere! It’s Matt whose our budding photographer!

  P.P.S. ‘They used to tell us we’re too young, too young to really be in love!!!’ I’m sure you must remember.

  In fact it was a typical Junie letter. Somehow on paper she always sounded a bit less sure of herself. At school she’d generally viewed her literary shortcomings with something of a shrug; it was only now that she tended to worry, even to agonize. (Particularly when needing to send a note to one of the teachers!) I addressed her fondly whilst sitting on the edge of the bath and restoring her smoothed-over letter to its smoothed-over envelope:

  “Whatever happened to Baby June?”

  And I got back the smiling, time-honoured response.

  “Oh, something rather horrible!”

  “Ah…you poor crazy mixed-up kid!”

  I put the folded envelope into a back pocket of my jeans and wondered how to dispose of it. Not so much of a problem, clearly, but there was certainly going to be another, far more pressing, to do with names and ages, comestibles, photographs. What in the world was I ever going to do about that? I sat down again on the edge of the bath and told myself firmly that to every quandary there had to be an answer.

  And then, just as if a severe reminder was the sole requirement, I received my answer.

  I might not have to do anything!

  For if John Caterham hadn’t returned to Deal, so far as we knew, in over ten years (because his parents had moved away not long after he had) wasn’t there now a good chance he wouldn’t return at all? I could tell Junie there’d be a letter in the post as soon as his wife came back.

  But letters occasionally got lost, didn’t they? Or the best of intentions didn’t get acted upon. (Please see above!) And after a fortnight or so Junie might think it strange we hadn’t heard, might periodically refer to it over the next couple of months, might even try to have me telephone, but gradually the Caterhams would be forgotten.

  And although there was obviously some risk involved, it really wasn’t a great one. If it ever happened they did revisit Deal they surely wouldn’t call on us without warning? Whereupon I’d have the opportunity to prime them; to feed them a suitably amusing story as to why I had once required an alibi.

  There wasn’t any need to fret. On Monday night I could improvise every last detail Junie would doubtless be eager to hear.

  Moira had finished on the telephone.

  I passed on the directions concerning soup and pie as though I’d only just remembered them. In fact I’d considered them expendable but this again might have seemed like a betrayal. “No, you certainly are not fussing!” refuted Moira, on my dear dead granny’s behalf. Dear? I suppose so; but in truth a bit repressive; I wouldn’t feel sorry when the time came for her ashes to be scattered afresh. But in any case I apologized for being a forgetful dunce. Moira answered, with a nod towards my pinstriped suit, blue shirt, silk chequered tie, “Oh, I forgive you. One can’t be beautiful and brainy.”

  “You seem to manage it.”

  “Thank you.”

  She looked gorgeous in her dark green: more soignée than ever with her hair up. I had forgotten (no, to be honest, I’d never known) the thrill of being the escort of a strikingly attractive woman. They say that in appearance a potential lover will nearly always gravitate towards his equal. I considered that this evening I had more than found my equal. And although the ability to turn heads might not be your partner’s most impressive feature it still felt agreeable to discover it was there.

  Oh, my God, yes. It felt wonderful.

  17

  We returned to the flat around twelve-thirty. It still hadn’t rained; we hadn’t been prevented from driving with the roof down. “The luck of the Irish,” she’d remarked.

  “No. Nothing to do with the Irish. Sod the Irish. I make my own luck.”

  Despite this I was feeling nervous as we got out of the car; I imagine we both were. But the whole evening, of course, had been shot through with apprehension. Pleasurable apprehension. Which happened to be the name of a horse I’d once backed during my short-lived gambling career: Pleasurable Apprehension. Short-lived because I’d seldom won anything worth having and had had the sense, finally, to see the pursuit for what it was: a mug’s game. Indeed, only a few weeks ago I’d had to deliver a homily to Matt on the follies of hoping to get rich quick and of relying on luck to pull you through. It had been necessary to play the heavy father, extolling the virtues of diligence in work and duty, of diligence and a down-to-earth outlook. We had just received his school report.

  “In a moment,” Ella had said to Matt sympathetically, very much copying his own way of putting things but probably not aware of it, “in a moment, I’ll bet, he’s going to throw in that bit about searching for the bluebird of happiness.” We’d been sitting over supper at the time. Our only real communication, during any normal week, took place at the supper table.

  “He’s going to do no such thing,” I retorted, in some anger. “Mind your own business, Ella. At this point the bluebird of happiness is completely irrelevant.”

  “Isn’t it true, then?” she muttered sulkily. “Does that mean I can stop having to keep my eyes skinned every time I set foot outside our crappy old back door?”

  “Don’t you know yet what ‘at this point’ means?”

  “Ella—kindly watch your language,” Junie ordered. She gave a sigh. “And I do wish, Sam, you wouldn’t always pick on mealtimes to start this sort of conversation. It takes me hours to prepare something which I hope we’ll all enjoy and then I find I end with indigestion.”

  “You?” I said. “You never suffered from indigestion in your life!”

  “Well, I must say! You’ve a short memory. Perhaps you’re forgetting that I’ve twice been pregnant?”

  “Apart from then.”

  She made a vaguely conciliatory gesture. “All right. That may have been true once. It certainly isn’t now.”

  “Change of life?” asked Ella, dispassionately curious.

  “At thirty-five?”

  “Thirty-five and ten months?” offered Matt, slyly, understandably in favour of prolonging this or any other distraction.

  “No, it is not the change of life!” said Junie. “The change of something, maybe, but not of that. And, anyway, it isn’t ten! It’s only nine-and-a-half.”

  She turned towards me in the same half-humorous manner: “And, Sam, I know you have this enviable talent for blocking out whatever you don’t want to hear but you do always pick on mealtimes and I only wish—I really do wish—”

  I shouted. I felt the rush of blood. My complexion may have gone purple.

  “Have you all quite finished? Well, have you? I thought I was trying to make a serious point. Perhaps no one noticed. Does no one but me think Matt’s future is important? Think it shouldn’t be brushed aside with talk of people being born lucky even if they haven’t got degrees? Well, I’m sick and tired of everyone ganging up on me. You can all do what you like, see if I care, I wash my hands of it! I’m off! Good riddance! Good riddance to the lot of you!”

  And throwing down my napkin I’d walked out; leaving a trio of extremely startled faces. I too had felt pretty startled: once I was up and running I’d found it imposs
ible to stop. All of it so unexpected. I’d had a pleasant day at work; been feeling quite relaxed on my return. Even when Junie had shown me the report I’d had no premonition things were going to take the course they did. None whatsoever. I later made a secret vow. Never again should I fail to see the danger signals, never again should I fail to heed their warning. Never. Never.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Moira.

  “Remembering a racehorse out of my guilt-ridden past.”

  And wondering—by no means for the first time—what Junie could have meant when she’d said, “The change of something, maybe, but not of that.” And why had I never liked to ask?—telling myself that, anyhow, she’d surely have forgotten by now, even if she had actually meant anything.

  Moira laughed. “A racehorse? Well, naturally! I’m such an idiot!”

  “Its name,” I said, “Pleasurable Anticipation.”

  Then suddenly I realized. I was the idiot! King of the idiots! Not Apprehension at all! Anticipation! Talk about getting things muddled…

  We walked upstairs. I unlocked the second door, handed back the keys. She went ahead of me into the sitting room, switching on lamps.

  “Nightcap?” she inquired.

  “Please. Another whisky.”

  “Just help yourself.” She said this over her shoulder as she made to draw the curtains. I felt surprise: had failed to notice they hadn’t been drawn earlier—so much for my awareness! They were floor-length, of dark blue velvet, almost black. She paused before pulling them across. “The other night there was a glorious moon. I wish there’d been a glorious moon tonight.”

  I knew it was corny but forgetting about my whisky I went and stood behind her and put my arms around her waist. Then counselled her in a supposedly Austrian accent. “Oh, don’t let’s ask for the moon! We have the stars!”

  In fact, the moment had arrived. No more procrastination. No more apprehension. Apprehension was not, nor ever could be, pleasurable.

  And Moira leant against me with a sigh. Gave a soft laugh. “Her line,” she said, “not his.”