“I know when this whole thing started.”
“. . . Go on . . .”
“Well . . . with Colin . . .”
She touched that nerve again with the mention of my brother’s name.
“I’m sure that was it,” she said. “He writes that he’s getting married and you go straight into a decline.”
Yes, that was true . . . At almost exactly that time, I saw, my uneasiness had begun to grow. I hadn’t been aware of it before—the precise time of its beginning, but now I was, now that Shelagh pointed it out. And looking back over the past year I could see how increasingly nervous I had become; unable to settle to anything—in the classroom or at home; all the time growing more short-tempered and irritable. Yes, that’s when it had begun—a year ago when Colin had married Helen and moved in with her.
But why should it be? What connection could there be? Nevertheless, that’s when my headaches had started, my growing feelings of anxiety . . .
In the bedroom I got out some of the letters Colin had sent. The last one was dated March 2nd. Weeks ago. It was quite brief—just telling me that he and Helen were well, and asking when Shelagh and I planned to visit them. His earlier letters had been more frequent, and much longer.
There were photographs too. Snapshots of himself and Helen; pictures taken after the marriage ceremony; pictures of them standing in front of the cottage. There at the gate they stood, arms entwined, smiling at some anonymous camera-holder. So many pictures had arrived during the first few weeks of their marriage; all those views of the cottage; the shots of the Berkshire village, Hillingham; images of Colin: Colin reading, Colin lounging in the garden, Colin sitting at the wheel of his gleaming red MG, and, in every one of them, Colin looking happy.
More numerous, though, were the photographs of Helen. I looked at them again, wondering what she was like beyond her physical appearance. She looked tall and slim, her hair a rich dark brown, falling past her shoulders. Her eyes looked almost black against the fairness of her skin, and in their expression there was something not to be fathomed by the searching camera’s lens. Her mouth was wide, the lips full and hinting at a gentle humour . . . Was it humour? The clothes she wore looked rather modish. Her dresses were long—when she wasn’t wearing blue jeans—and her neck and wrists were hung with beads and heavy-looking bangles. She looked very much what Colin said she was—an artist . . . And that, I realised, was about all I knew of her. By all accounts she had appeared in his life quite suddenly, and they had married less than two months after their meeting . . .
Shelagh had followed me into the bedroom and now stood looking at one of the snapshots of the old cottage.
“It really is a lovely house,” she said, then, smiling, added: “But if you want a cottage in the country you’re going to have to save your pennies and buy it yourself. Then you can have that bit of—peace you’re looking for. I can see you, teaching at some village school and spending your time hovering over tomato plants and building rustic walls . . .” She hesitated a moment, and then went on:
“You are . . . glad for him, aren’t you?”
“For Colin?” I nodded. “Of course I am.” I was. “He’s happy. He’s got what he wanted. Of course I’m glad for him.” He had married Helen, and if Helen was also the owner of a beautiful country cottage then more power to him.
I picked up the snapshot of that beautiful country cottage and straightaway I could feel that sensation again—that near-physical force pulling at me, pulling me towards him—Colin.
Colin . . .
I have never understood why. Or how. How could there be such a bond between us? I’ll never understand it. I only know that it was always so.
It’s even more strange, I suppose, when considered in the light of our upbringing, and in the fact—as Shelagh had said—that really I’d hardly known him. But it was always there. Always like that between us. Colin and me. There has always been, no matter how far apart we might be, a bond between us—some invisible string that draws us together. Well, twins, people say—as if that accounted for it. And they relate stories to illustrate those strange ties. But they don’t explain anything, anything at all . . .
Shelagh, knowing me better than she thought, said, “Dave, you mustn’t worry because he hasn’t written lately. His whole life has changed. He’s got new things to think about. You wait—he’ll start writing again soon.”
But he didn’t write, and my inner disturbance increased with every day. I tried telephoning, but that didn’t get me anywhere, and after being told for the sixth successive time over several days that the telephone was out of order I gave up trying. There was nothing I could do but wait. And in the meantime I’d make a concentrated effort not to dwell on it. Perhaps then that nagging nervousness I felt would fade . . .
Well into May I looked forward impatiently to my birthday. The 15th. Colin and I would be thirty-two years old—he the elder by some hours. Monday, the 15th. Surely then I must hear from him.
Monday’s mail brought a bill and four birthday cards. One card was from Shelagh, one from the school principal, Jefferies (well, wasn’t the faculty One Big Happy Family?), one from the students in my eighth grade English class, and one from my father. This last was like those other cards that had arrived from him over the years, each one appearing as regular as clockwork, and bearing the single word, “Father”. No message.
There was no word at all from Colin.
“Maybe you’ll hear tomorrow,” Shelagh said. “How can you guarantee a letter’s arrival time after a three thousand mile journey . . . ?”
That evening, by way of celebrating my birthday (I never felt less like it), we went out to eat at a small, favourite restaurant on the Lower East Side. And I was miserable. I sat across the table from Shelagh, toying with the fish on my plate, forcing down the occasional mouthful and trying to wrestle with a strange pounding that had started up in my head. At the same time, in front of me, all around me, was a descending cloud, thick as a curtain.
“Aren’t you going to eat more than that?” Shelagh’s smile was touched with frost, and her voice had a slightly brittle edge to it.
“I’m sorry . . .” I raised a hand to my temple. “I’m just not very good company.”
“That’s the truest thing you’ve said all day.”
We sat in silence. I could think of nothing to say and I had no wish to make conversation. I could feel her eyes on me when the waiter came and took away my half-eaten, picked-over food. Avoiding her glance, I sat concentrating on my cup while the coffee was poured. A strange sensation was coming over me; a feeling of warmth, while the ends of my fingers had begun to tingle. The pounding in my head was growing stronger and I could sense an enormous pressure building up behind my eyes. I seemed to be cocooned in haze, a fog that was enveloping me, seeping into my pores. I watched, as if in a slow-motion film, the movement of my hand as I slowly ground out my cigarette. I could see my fingers trembling . . .
And then the density was lifting again and I became aware of Shelagh’s voice coming to me through the fringe of the haze. I looked at her blankly.
“. . . I’m sorry . . . ?”
She was reaching for her bag, her mouth tight.
“I was saying I’m going home.” She had already paid the bill (it was her treat) and now she counted out the tip, snapping coins onto the plate. “I asked you a question three times, and you can’t even be bothered to listen to me.”
“I’m sorry. What did you want to know?”
“It’s not important any more.” She clicked her purse shut and stood up. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “I’ve had it with you tonight. And now I’m going home. I can get better reactions from the Late Show.”
“How are you feeling now?” She murmured the words to me, her mouth close to my ear on the pillow.
“Okay. How about you?”
“Okay.”
After a moment she added:
“I’m sorry. I was a bitc
h.”
“I’m sorry, too. Really. If only I could explain what I was feeling . . .”
“You don’t have to try.”
I turned to face her, and held her. After a time my hands moved up and touched her breasts, and she pressed herself against me. My fingers moved lower, brushed aside the silk and touched her bare skin, gentle, caressing . . .
I hadn’t had much in the way of sexual experience before I met Shelagh. I seem to have missed out somewhere. I’d had less than my share of furtive fumblings in back rows, and very little success when I was presented with any golden opportunity. My leg—and Aunt Marianne’s influence, probably. I had never been at ease, really at ease, in any sexual situation, that’s for sure. I remember once watching a blue movie; it left me feeling, in a way—as well as strangely, almost mind-blowingly excited—almost totally confused. Surely all that thrusting and sliding was done only to give value for money. Those people up there on the screen couldn’t have any connection with ordinary people—with me.
With Shelagh, though, I felt no such confusion. I suppose that what I knew I had learned from her, and I made love to her in a pattern that we, ourselves, had established. And within the limits of that pattern I felt safe, secure. Her demands matched my own, mostly, and she never made me feel threatened by any sense of inadequacy.
The more cliché-ridden love stories speak of unbridled passion. I wasn’t sure that I had ever experienced such a thing; not where Shelagh and I were concerned, anyway—and I had never known anything better than that which I experienced with her. But still, if our passion was bridled, even so it was good. Very good. And while we weren’t about to set the place on fire, it was enough. It was enough for her, and it was enough for me, and we were happy . . .
We lay there side by side. Long since spent. Shelagh was sound asleep, while I felt that pounding in my head starting up again and getting louder and louder. I had already taken two sleeping-pills, but obviously they weren’t going to do anything for me. I felt hot and feverish. Feverish, yes; it was as if some strange malady I was suffering from was swiftly coming to a head . . .
In the end I got up, went to the bathroom and shoved my head under the cold tap. It didn’t help. I still couldn’t rest. When the dawn came up I was still awake, and I watched it lighten the window, saw Shelagh’s soft features taking shape in the receding gloom.
After coffee I just sat there while she got her things together ready for school. Seeing me hunched over the table, not moving, she said: “Are you taking the day off?”
“No.” I shook my head. “I’ll be in later. Make some excuse for me, will you?”
She came to me, put her hand on my hair.
“Dave, what’s up . . . ?”
“Nothing. I just want to wait for the mail . . .”
I did wait for the mail. When it came it was just one single item. But that one item was a card from Colin.
“I told you so,” Shelagh said when, later on, in school, I showed her the card. The picture on it was a reproduction of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch, and there inside, beneath the little printed message of greeting Colin had scrawled his name, and added: Will write soon.
“Well,” Shelagh said, watching my face, “are you happy now?”
“Yes, I am.”
But it was a lie. Colin’s card had brought me a sense of relief. But it was an intellectual thing; it didn’t do anything for the way I really felt. And as the morning wore on, endlessly, I felt inside me a tightness that grew and grew, as if my whole body were being constricted by some invisible bands—and the greatest tightness was in my head. I had an insane urge to just leave my desk and walk out of the building. But that wouldn’t have helped; the panic was a part of me, in me; I couldn’t leave it behind.
The afternoon was even worse. I saw myself irritable and snappy with my students, so that they approached me warily, conscious of my tenseness and not eager to push their luck. And all the time that black cloud was descending, growing closer and more stifling, till I thought I would do anything to escape its numbing, saturating presence.
But at long last the final session of the day came and went; all I had to do then was get through the weekly faculty meeting.
Once begun, I thought the meeting would never come to an end. Jefferies started it off in his usual flowery, adjective-ridden manner, leaning back in his chair at the head of the refectory table, fingers steepled, holding forth on the most trivial matters as if he really had something to say. I wasn’t touched by any of it. Sitting beside Shelagh I looked at the bright smiles, the bright eyes and the agreeing, sycophantic nods of the other faculty members and couldn’t even summon up my usual feelings of contempt.
And the minutes ticked by. Slowly, so slowly. Eventually, glancing at the clock, I saw that it had turned half-past five. Varley, the gym instructor, all brawn and no brains, was adding his two cents’ worth to the problem of Sinclair—one of the students where there was “a little behavioural problem that needed attention”. I tried to listen as questions were put to him, but my mind wouldn’t settle. I just sat there, staring down at my briefcase before me on the table and feeling as if the top of my skull was about to open. Somewhere, as if from far off, I heard my name mentioned, and dimly realised I was being asked a question. I tried to collect myself, took a breath and opened my dry mouth to speak. And that was it.
Suddenly, after all the months of increasing tension I felt, inside my head, a tingling, searing sensation. The fuse had finally ignited. As if I could physically run from it I staggered to my feet. Behind me my chair was sent clattering to the floor. And it was then that the blow hit me.
When the explosion came it was like a kick, aimed deep inside my brain, so powerful that I felt my head jerk on my neck. For a split second everything was a shower of scarlet sparks and splashes against the blackness. I heard a roaring in my ears, like a rushing of wind. And then there was a pressure against my body, so strong, so agonising that I felt as if my ribs must give way beneath it. And the pain continued, changing, as if some hand was at my chest, reaching inside me, grasping my heart and squeezing . . . squeezing . . .
It was the terrible pain in my chest that pushed the sound out of me, forcing it up through my throat so that it echoed in the room and rang in my ears.
“Don’t . . . ! No-o-o-o-o!”
I saw, dimly, through flickering eyelids, Varley’s face before me; saw his porcine features take on an expression of wonder and consternation.
Then everything stopped.
2
I came to with Shelagh’s face bending over mine. There was a pillow under my cheek. I put up a hand and gingerly touched the side of my skull where I could already feel a bruise coming out.
“Somebody’s gone to get some ice,” a voice said, and then Shelagh, as she pressed my hand:
“You’ll be all right, darling. Don’t worry.”
I looked up into her eyes. She was crying.
“I’ve got to get away,” I said. “To England.”
“Hush,” she whispered. “Hush. Don’t talk now . . .”
The next day all I had to show for those months of tension was the bruise on my head. Apart from that I felt as well as I ever had. I couldn’t understand it. I went back into school the day after and got down to my work with renewed energy and an unusual feeling of mental and emotional freedom. That tightness had gone—and along with it all the feelings of irritableness, the poundings in my head. Shelagh saw the change in me and relaxed. For her it was all over.
I took her completely by surprise when I told her, the following week:
“I meant what I said.”
She was sewing a button on the sleeve of her coat. She looked at me, frowning, puzzled, needle poised.
“. . . About what?”
“When term’s over at the end of this week, that’s it—I’m going.”
“I thought all that was finished with.” She paused. “So what do you want me to
say . . . ?”
“Tell me you’ll come with me. Jefferies can run his summer-school without us if he has to.”
“It’s too late to change it all now.”
“I’ve done it. I told him yesterday. I told him I’ve got to get away, to rest. He understood.”
“We can’t both go. We can’t both just—leave them in the lurch.”
“So you won’t come with me . . .”
“That, I gather, means you intend to go anyway.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
She looked at me for a moment, then: “This past week you’ve been perfectly okay. Like your old self. And now you’re harping back on this again.” She shook her head. “I don’t get you at all.”
Late Friday evening I lingered in the hall with my suitcases, packed, beside me. I could hear Shelagh in the kitchen as she went about her work. Then, as I waited there with my hand on the door-catch she came out, wiping her hands with a cloth.
“. . . I’m off then,” I said awkwardly.
“So I see.”
“. . . I’ll call you when I get there.”
“Okay.”
I opened the front door, picked up my cases and started off towards the lift. As I pressed the button I heard the sound of her feet as she came after me. I opened my arms and she threw herself into them. I held her tight against me, kissed her.
“Oh, Dave . . . why are you doing this?”
I shrugged, mouth set. “I don’t know. I only know I have to. I feel okay, but nothing’s changed. I still have to go.”
She nodded, leaned her head against my shoulder. “I don’t understand it. But if you have to, then I guess you must.” She smiled as she looked up at me, smiled as if I were a hopeless case. “I’ll miss you.”
We stood looking at each other. “Here’s the lift,” I said, and she grinned, clicked her tongue.
“Eight years in the New World and you still haven’t learned to say elevator. And your accent’s just as English as ever.”
Behind me the doors slid back. She stretched up, kissed me lightly, quickly, one last time.
Sweetheart, Sweetheart Page 2
