But even so. I wasn’t dead yet. I could forestall this tragedy. All I needed was the willpower.
All I needed was to put the enemy to rout. My greatest enemy …inertia. I said to myself through every stage of my ablutions: Be positive! Broad-shouldered! Unbeatable! At one point I was actually shouting it, in competition with a forceful jet of water. My resolve—so fragile when I’d left the bed—began to grow. My hangover began to ease.
And by the time I came out of the bathroom I felt so much better I was actually thinking I could drink a cup of tea and manage a piece of toast. Balance and sanity and hope were now starting to return in more than just a dribble.
Wearing a set of completely clean clothes—apart from my jeans and they were still in a pretty good state—I felt not merely freshened up but smart. Though that was only physical. For my spiritual cleansing I had urgent need of Moira.
Where was she?
I stood at the window in the sitting room and craned in both directions. The Morgan wasn’t there. I could be sure of this—even if, last night, she hadn’t been able to park it immediately below. But hardly had I turned away before there came a patter on the glass.
Well, good, I thought. At least the rain might hasten her return.
Back in the kitchen, though, I came across her note. A sheet of blue stationery beside the breadboard. On the worktop. I was surprised to think I’d overlooked it.
It read:
“Sam —have gone out for the day. Paracetemol in bathroom. Suit sponged but in need of dry-clean. Doorkey on table in hall. Please drop it through letterbox. (For downstairs door, no key required.) Thank you. Moira.”
I turned it over in case there was a message on the back: “PS I love you. Everything will work out.” I had even sat down before I’d turned it over; briefly speculating on what little variations might await me there.
It was the coldest note imaginable, between friends. Junie would never have written me a note like that. Forget the punctuation.
I began to analyse it. The word ‘Paracetemol’ leapt out at me. Her ballpoint had evidently run dry and after taking a new one she’d had to retrace the first three letters.
What also leapt out at me, associatively, were thoughts of suicide.
I put down the note and contemplated suicide.
Did so practically as a distraction.
I imagined trying actually to kill myself. Imagined giving the appearance of trying actually to kill myself. How many tablets would they find convincing? And, then again, was four o’clock or nine o’clock more likely to be the hour of her homecoming?
Yet I had heard that you should never use Paracetemol. You might initially recover but just as you were getting accustomed to being alive again—and maybe even feeling fairly thankful for it—you inescapably succumbed to liver failure; I hoped you could appreciate the irony. Aspirin, it seemed, were a whole lot kinder to the struggling liver.
But aspirin. My father had done it with aspirin. For twenty years or more I’d seen my father as a wimp: despite those rules which he’d laid down for my own manly education and presumably tried to live by himself. (Live by himself? He hadn’t managed that for very long, had he? All of two days! And ‘by himself’…so where had that left me?) “Sorry, Dad. Like father like son. When it came down to it, I couldn’t climb to any greater heights than you!” Cruel, my lack of empathy—and cruel also, his delayed-action revenge: the influential part he’d played in making me the person I now was. (You see! Added to everything else, I’m even trying to shift the blame for that—for being the person I now am. Oh, my God, yes. How thoroughly you turned your son into a man!)
In any case, the concept of suicide, even of no more than the cry-for-help variety, was obviously untenable. Tomorrow, Junie would be expecting me home for supper—quite probably cooking something special. If I travelled the aspirin route, I could still be in some hospital at suppertime tomorrow. In no fit state even to telephone.
And from now on Junie had to be my priority. Come what may. Had to be protected. Constantly.
Unflaggingly.
But she always had been, of course. In the whole of our seventeen years this was the only time I had ever left my post. I had needed a holiday. That holiday was over.
However, the idea of suicide itself—the real thing, not merely a pitiful gesture—could suddenly sound like a holiday: some layout in a brochure showing leafy trees and sparkling water and a deckchair set in dappled shade. And simply the notion of this, coming as it did with a promise that things need never get too bad again, whether in thirty years’ time with cancer, or whether just tomorrow with heartbreak, conveyed such an impression of tranquillity you were immediately tempted to get off your butt, run to the telephone and ask for details.
Oh, get thee behind me, Satan.
I did get off my butt, though, if only to put water in the kettle and to take a glance into Moira’s washing machine. I suppose I must have been alerted by the small red light, which hadn’t turned itself out, despite the cycle being completed.
Yes, and there it was, that honey-coloured rug, not yet dried, therefore much duller, but even so…wrenchingly familiar.
I switched on the radio. It was probably still tuned to Radio 4: at present a church service or some recording of a hymn: “Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways…” I rapidly switched off.
Went back to my chair at the table and to yet a further perusal of that graceless note.
So overwhelmingly devoid of charity. So overwhelmingly—
But then, of course, it hit me.
Hit me with the same sharpness I had just applied to switching off the radio.
I must have been blind. So blind, so insensitive. I’d missed such very obvious pointers. As soon as I saw one I saw a dozen.
Well, anyway, five! And, Christ, they could scarcely have been more glaring had they been handed to me in person. On Mount Sinai.
(i) The use of my name. Well, that was friendly enough. ‘Dear’ would have turned it into a formality and ‘Dearest’ or ‘Darling’ was currently more than I deserved—while, self-evidently, ‘Sammy’ carried undertones of childishness; conferred on me, almost, the status of a pupil.
(ii) She had anticipated my hangover and hinted at a remedy; not merely hinted at but told me where to find it; could anyone deny this was considerate? In fact I didn’t see what more she could have done.
(iii) And she had actually sponged my dinner suit. Frankly, up till now, I hadn’t given that sufficient weight, had even taken it a bit for granted. However, by this time being a little clearer-headed and better able to read between the lines, I could begin to appreciate the meaning behind the gesture, its symbolism, its standing as an act of love. She hadn’t been able to write ‘with love’ at the end of the letter but—if only subconsciously—she had incorporated that very message in her text.
And (iv) in the light of all of this, those two words above her signature acquired of course a new significance. Like I say, she hadn’t managed to write ‘with love’ or ‘my darling’—that would have been giving me back too much, too quickly—and after all, being only human and very much a woman, she had naturally wanted to make me sweat somewhat. But she had been able to write ‘Thank you’. It was incredible I should have missed the softening of that phrase. Thank you. The comprehensiveness of it. Effusion. Profligacy.
And furthermore (v) she had used a sheet of top quality writing paper. If she simply hadn’t cared, I now realized, she would have done what I did all the time: used either a Post-it or whatever lay at hand…there would always be something. So was that, or was it not, indicative? Was that—or was it not—a clincher?
Weren’t they all clinchers?
These discoveries, all my detective work, had proved efficacious. I suddenly felt hungry; not just for a slice of dry toast but for several slices, spread with butter and marmalade. The kettle had switched itself off, yet as it returned to the boil I realized I was whistling. Already on my way bac
k. No, in fact—already a fair distance along it, my way back. “‘When you’re up to your neck in hot water, be like a kettle and sing…’” Good old Vera Lynn! What on earth had I been getting so het up about? Nothing so terrible had taken place. Nothing irreversible. I’d got a little drunk and I’d been a little sick. That probably happened to thousands, every single day on which the sun rose.
Oh, and I had told her about Junie.
But the incidence of husbands falling for the charms of an outsider—or, in my own case, for the charms of an angel—was practically as high, in this modern age, as that of drunkenness. And if nobody was actually harmed thereby—the one indispensable yardstick, naturally—what was this but a means of liberating your true self, loosening the constrictions, looking deep into your psyche? Thus it became an experience which could open up a great expansive web of gleaming opportunity. For now we see through a glass, brightly. Strap on your winged sandals. Take up your mighty sword. On such a full sea are we now afloat.
Also, I’d told her I could be regarded as a free agent. During four whole days each week.
And during four whole nights each week. I hoped I had sufficiently emphasized that. Not that I believed it stood in much need of emphasis.
So we could now make a new beginning; as from this very night; a new beginning even better than the old, because it would now be completely honest—freed of all necessity to watch one’s words and to keep peering carefully around corners.
I always drew as much strength from the thought of new beginnings as I did from the contemplation of old successes.
Tomorrow would be the first day of the rest of my life.
(Tomorrow, in this instance, because today was almost half gone by now and—besides—I had the feeling that perhaps I did need a bit of breathing space. I knew there was never any point in rushing things.)
And tomorrow, too, I’d really make a start on my diary: not be merely collating and editing inside my head. Anyway, thank God I hadn’t yet made a start, not physically! In that case, I’d have had to supply details which were no longer germane, but which—once written—would have had to be granted permanency.
On top of that, tomorrow was the first bank holiday in May—and therefore the one true time to celebrate the coming of the spring. (In March, for heaven’s sake, one could still get winter temperatures and snow!) So what better day on which to make a new beginning? Of all the three-hundred-and-sixty-five in our current year, what better day than the one immediately ahead?
And—strictly in parenthesis—this was hardly conducive, was it, to any firm belief in the randomness of things? Could the proper day for the proper start have come about purely by accident?
No. I was well aware that only published diaries carried titles but… The Long and Happy Life of Samson Groves? One up on The Diary of a Nobody, maybe!
He saw! And he appreciated!
And he flew!
(Like a rock?)
Tombstone inscription?
23
I decided to go home. This time, so far as Moira was concerned, I’d really play it cool. The iceman cometh. I would take her at her word—ostensible word—and by doing so cause her to sweat a little. There would be irony in that. She was undoubtedly an angel but even angels, potentially, could profit from periods of uncertainty.
I would telephone tomorrow.
The journey wasn’t perfect. Despite my renewed optimism, it was sad to return to Victoria and remember how happy I had been there. It didn’t help that the station was so much quieter than before, exhibiting a degree of Sunday-afternoon lassitude which was perhaps deepened by the long weekend, but not, I now discovered, by any means endemic just to small provincial towns. Something livelier might have supported me. Nor did it help that I’d got quite soaked whilst standing at bus stops along the Finchley Road, or constantly looking back whilst hightailing between them, and now felt chilly and bedraggled. Nor, again, that I’d found myself with nearly two hours to wait before my train left—and knew that even this would be a slow one, stopping at nearly every station. I bought a paper which I couldn’t work up any interest in and sat over a cup of coffee so noxious I couldn’t take more than a sip for fear of reinvigorating my queasiness… And this time, although in one sense I was travelling lighter than before, since I had neither cardboard box nor carrier bags (my bundled evening clothes, wrapped around the patent leather pumps, were stuffed on top of my white trousers), this time, although less encumbered, I truly couldn’t believe I might be travelling towards the sunrise. And I began to wonder whether I, too, shouldn’t have left some note; began to wonder whether strong manly silences could ever be worth more than correct social behaviour: a debate which was very soon obtruding between me and whatever page in the paper I had then turned to. I hated to appear ungrateful. Or as though—small-mindedly—I nursed a grievance.
It grew less obtrusive while I was reading something I’d forgotten I would find: the review of Half a Farthing, Sam Sparrow? In other circumstances the tenor of it might have aroused some indignation but now I didn’t care that much; could even derive mild satisfaction out of the complaints of the reviewer. Along with other things, he’d panned a number of the lyrics. Called them claptrap—facile and pretentious. This struck me as mildly tautologous but I told him, and not completely beneath my breath either, that he had done sufficient carping for the two of us.
My dilemma over the note was vying with another doubt. The soup and the meat pie; we’d eaten no more than a sixth of each. So what would Moira do with the remainder? Suddenly I realized I didn’t know her well enough to feel even remotely sure. I only knew I utterly loathed the thought of any insult to Junie or her cooking; and also utterly loathed the thought of any waste…which was attributable, I suppose, to my upbringing, with its constant reminders to remember all the starving little children in India. (And the most appalling waste of anything I could imagine was to throw down the drain, almost literally, that chestful of exquisite treasures from the Ritz. How could I have? And Moira’s gift to me! How must she have felt? That dinner had cost her—well, it really made me cringe to think how much that dinner must have cost her. I wished I could have been the one to pay…even despite the looming presence of Hal Smart. Talk about pearls before swine! Talk about manna turned to mush!) Well, Moira might get rid of the pie and the pea soup. Yet at least I felt certain she wouldn’t throw away the cake. I mean, she couldn’t, simply couldn’t. All the consideration, kindness, care which had gone into the manufacture of that cake! To bin it would have been like burying a friend, like burying him alive, still wearing his smile and his pompommed hat. In fact, I felt certain that before long we’d again be eating it together. Or I tried to feel certain. This entailed a frequent repetition of the statement—both in the station and aboard the train—and on a couple of occasions, as with my mantra in the shower, I even repeated it out loud—at a volume, of course, totally unmatched by my response to the theatre critic. Thankfully the carriage was empty.
At Dover Priory there was a further long delay. But count your blessings, I told myself. At least this afternoon there’s no one working on the line. At least this afternoon these other passengers and I aren’t waiting for some wet and trundling godforsaken bus.
There were six of us in all.
But it was easier counting my fellow passengers than counting my blessings, which were right now as mist-hidden as those bluebirds above the cliffs: those bluebirds promised to us by Vera Lynn, whose name, coincidentally, had briefly occurred to me some five hours earlier. (Now, you see, I had no problem about believing in coincidence.) Promised to us, with such patriotic fervor, about eighteen years before my birth.
The depressing thing was…although I still felt reluctant to readmit that word into my vocabulary…the depressing thing was I knew there’d been a glut in the vicinity even as recently as last Friday. Forty-eight hours ago! The sky had been awash.
I tried to convince myself that they’d be back. Already were back. It was onl
y because I was so very tired all of a sudden. I couldn’t see them through the gloom.
The five others on the platform were all young and laughing and together. College students? I felt that I’d have given a lot to be one of them. Out with my friends; going off somewhere nice. All bouncy and naïve and pleased to play the fool.
I finally got home at around seven. The house was dark; car not there. I’d forgotten. Junie and the children would still be at Jalna (the Dovecote). Still be celebrating Ted and Yvonne’s anniversary.
But this Sunday they wouldn’t have been sitting in the garden. I felt sorry about that.
Without fully understanding my intention, and without even taking off my mack, I went into the larder and started to eat. I wasn’t particularly hungry but—I wanted food. I ate handfuls of Harvest Crunch and tore open a packet of biscuits. I moved to the fridge and found cooked drumsticks; devoured all four. There were three pineapple rings on a saucer and a triangle of blue cheese. I followed these with a flavourless tomato.
At last, returning to the hall, I threw my raincoat on a chair, picked up my holdall from the mat. I was walking heavily up the stairs, meaning to lie down, when something occurred to me. I was at once deflected from the thought of sleep.
I ran back to the kitchen.
Susie’s basket wasn’t there. It wasn’t there in any part of it.
Bewilderedly, I made headlong for the dining room, stood in the centre and scrutinized the base of every wall—as though the business of locating a dog’s basket, even with the light on, would require swivelling feet, untypically sharp eyesight, an attention to detail.
Nor was it beneath the table.
I half-ran, half-strode, into the sitting room…the TV room…conservatory. Kitchen again. Larder and the outside loo. Went back into the hall. Whirled round and must have caught the brolly stand. It clattered onto varnished floorboards, cannoned into Junie’s piano. I raced upstairs and into every bedroom, even the couple seldom used, one smelling now of paint and boobytrapped with decorating clutter. I fell on my knees and looked beneath the beds. Looked inside the bathroom. The lavatory. Stood on a ladder and shone our torch—kept handy for emergencies—into every corner of the loft.
New World in the Morning Page 17
