by Nina Bawden
‘Oh, well. No use crying over spilt milk.’ She grinned at her motherly wisdom. ‘I had a terrible time explaining to Reggie. He’s at home now, seeing to supper. We – we had rather a row.’
‘You did? With Reggie?’
She laughed. ‘It’s all right now. He won’t start it up with you. He’s quite humbled.’ Her eyes danced, her whole face seemed to glow both with the cold and a strange, inner excitement. ‘Though I must tell you – among other things he said you must be a homosexual. To have dropped everything and rushed.…’
‘I get the point. I hope you put him right. Though you’d hardly know, would you?’
I don’t know why I said that. However badly I may have treated Louise, I’d never before taunted her with frigidity – if it was frigidity and not boredom. It was something that made me ashamed and angry and bitter and though I may have blamed her in the moments when she rebuffed me – she made me feel like some brutal rapist – I had never consciously blamed her at other times. I can only think I was still wallowing in the character I’d been creating for myself all afternoon, like a small boy putting on belligerence with his cowboy suit.
I said at once, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said quickly, stepping back from the car door. ‘Don’t wait supper for me, you know what Mother is when she’s ill.’
‘All right.’ I watched her go into the Tube entrance, walking briskly, her head held high.
I drove home and found Reggie, wearing one of Louise’s aprons and straining potatoes into the sink. His domestic appearance was startling as was the solicitous haste with which he offered me a glass of my own gin.
‘You look a bit washed out,’ he said.
He had already been drinking quite heavily. I noticed this with some surprise because Reggie, though a steady, routine drinker was seldom an immoderate one. His speech was slightly slurred and as we sat by the fire he told me three rather tedious dirty jokes, produced one after the other with the inconsequential haste of a nervous after dinner speaker. He was nervous, I realized. Perhaps the row with Louise had shaken him – of course it must have done, as much as if one of the comfortable arm-chairs he was used to sitting on had suddenly jumped up and bitten him. But whatever she had said to him it had been remarkably effective, I thought with an inward chuckle. The malevolent phantom of my imagination was treating me with exaggerated caution, as a consciously clumsy porter might handle a fragile package. When, finally, he cleared his throat loudly and said, ‘I’m sorry about the job, old man. Rotten luck. Really rotten luck,’ I could have laughed aloud.
We ate supper, stew and potatoes, and Reggie offered to wash up but this seemed to be carrying his reformation too far: I insisted we stack the dishes in the sink. I made coffee, very strong and black, and got out the brandy. Reggie might have had enough to drink, but I hadn’t. I hoped brandy might cure this curious sensation of being enclosed inside a bubble – one of those soap bubbles children blow in the bath, watery and slightly wrinkled. I floated inside it, detached, and extremely observant of small particulars. Reggie’s left hand had a small brown mole I had not noticed before and his fingers, tenderly encircling the balloon of his glass, had spiky brown hairs growing along them. His waistcoat was made of some kind of woollen material that was hairy too; it had fine, silvery, silken hairs that quivered as his stomach rose and fell.
He shifted a little uneasily in his chair – perhaps I was staring at him – and said, ‘Louise is late.’
‘I expect Julia’s keeping her. If she’s feeling really wretched.…’
‘I hope that’s where she is,’ he said, oddly, and then looked at me. His expression was sly, or shy, I couldn’t determine which and this bothered me. If I answered him, I can’t remember what I said.
The next thing I do remember is that he suddenly pronounced in a thoughtful voice, ‘Women are funny.…’
From inside the bubble, this remark seemed extremely humorous. ‘Kittle-kattle?’ I suggested.
He nodded, not smiling. ‘I suppose only another woman can really understand them. It’s a pity Louise hasn’t any really close women friends. Someone she could talk to.’
‘She has. But they’re busy with their children,’ I said shortly.
‘She must know a few who aren’t. There are other women without children.’
‘Yes. But they’re not usually Louise’s type. She’s not a committee girl.’
‘Perhaps not. Though it’s a pity.…’ He sipped at his brandy and sighed. ‘Of course, she’s naturally maternal. Always was. Not all girls are – Veronica, you know, was a regular tomboy, never played with dolls. But Lou was mad about’em. I remember Mother getting the carpenter in to put up extra shelves in her room so she could have them all sitting up and looking at her. It was like a ruddy shop. And every single one had to be dressed and undressed every blessed day.…’
And you used to poke their eyes in, I thought.…
Maybe he remembered this too. He gave an uneasy, whistling grunt and moved cumbersomely in his chair as if to divert his own attention from an unfortunate memory.
‘I know it’s been a great disappointment to you both.’ He spoke with charitable reflectiveness but his small eyes shot me a sly glance. ‘But I wonder – I wonder if you and I can really understand what it means to a woman who wants children to be deprived of them. That sort of thing goes deep. Very deep.’ He wagged his head slowly. ‘I daresay that where Louise is concerned it explains a lot.’ Again, that nervous, darting glance. ‘Of course,’ he went on hastily, ‘one can’t excuse her behaviour, but one must try to make allowances.’
I was puzzled. This was a new version of the ‘poor Louise’saga. And one, apparently, in which I was not to be cast in my usual role of villian. Then I realized that for some queer reason Reggie was apologizing for her. Why? Of course – the solution seemed brilliantly funny – he was ‘making allowances’for her because she had dared to quarrel with him.
But it wasn’t that. He said, in a courteous, melancholy voice, ‘Though for God’s sake – I don’t know why I should say any of this to you. You’ve been understanding enough in all conscience.’
I had the feeling that I had stayed too long in the theatre bar and missed some crucial part of the action. I said, ‘Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be?’
‘Oh – come now. There’s no need to be as understanding as that.’ I was aware of a certain confused irritation which he was manfully trying to control. He succeeded, temporarily anyway. His voice remained low and solemnly reasonable. ‘I know you profess to be very modern in your outlook and all that, but I think I can guess what you must be feeling. After all, it came as a terrible shock to me. I appreciate that you don’t want to discuss it. I admire you for that. I just want you to know that I think it’s damn decent of you to have taken it like this. And I told Louise so. A lot of men would have kicked her out. Not that they would have been right, mind you, no one’s perfect and quite decent people do kick over the traces from time to time. Though on the other hand, there’s such a thing as being too understanding. I mean to say, if my wife had played Fast and Loose under my own roof.…’
This thought was too much for him. Through a fog of bewilderment I saw the colour rise heatedly into his already colourful face. ‘At least I know damn well I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to keep her lover out of prison.’
I held my breath. He didn’t know what he was telling me; he wasn’t drunk, but drink had diminished his perception. (Mine too, as it turned out.) Did he believe what he was saying? I couldn’t believe it but I couldn’t not believe it either. It was like the moment in a nightmare when you know you are dreaming but cannot escape from the horrid reality of it.
I said, with an absurd, hiccoughing laugh, ‘I’d have thought that was just what you would have expected of me. Knowing my tendencies.…’
His face seemed to drain of blood in patches, leaving his skin mottled red and a curiously livid yellow. ‘God,’ he moaned, ‘I on
ly—’
‘Never mind that. Did Louise tell you that she and Jay were lovers?’
‘Do you mean to say you didn’t know that?’ he said, with ludicrous, jaw-dropping astonishment.
‘Did you believe it?’ I asked. ‘Louise will say almost anything to gain a point.’ And I to gain time, I thought.
He looked momentarily hopeful, then he shook his head. ‘Not this. I don’t think she – oh, damn it, I don’t know.’ His face was screwed up in an expression of acute discomfort. ‘Oh, God; oh, God,’ he said, as though keening to himself.
‘What exactly did she say?’
‘We were – arguing. I can’t remember.’ He glanced at me furtively and I almost laughed in his face. Did I expect him to admit that he had called me a pervert? He said, ‘I suppose I goaded her. Oh – I’m damn sure I did. I wish to God I’d kept my fat mouth shut.’ He fumbled for his handkerchief and mopped at his forehead. ‘Believe me, Tom, I’d never have said a word if I hadn’t believed it.’
‘You’d have connived at her deception?’ I said, rather pleased with the clever phrasing of this question. My mouth felt clotted and dry, but inside the bubble nothing real was happening.
He answered with ponderous dignity. ‘Naturally, if my sister had told me something in confidence, I would never have repeated it.’
This minor pinprick went home. My sister. ‘Damn you,’ I said. ‘Even if I’d known this – I don’t say I believe it, mind you – but even if I had known it, what conceivable business is it of yours? What right have you to prattle on at me like some – some aunty in an advice column?’
‘I didn’t mean to interfere,’ he said, quite humbly. ‘I only wanted to – to apologize. On behalf of her family. And put in a word for her, I suppose.’
‘And get in a dig or two at me along the way?’
‘That’s not fair,’ he said.
There was a long silence. Finally, he said nervously, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Do?’
The question honestly surprised me. Since I felt nothing, I could hardly be expected to act: action has to have some spring of emotion. I supposed I believed what Reggie had told me but only in the way a cybernetic machine registers a cold fact: in human terms it meant nothing. Once, just after the war, a colleague of mine had had both legs amputated above the knee. I visited him in hospital and he said he couldn’t believe it yet. He still lay in bed and wriggled his toes. What had happened to me felt as unreal as that. Louise was still my wife, Jay was still my friend. I thought of them with love, without anger: my non-existent wife, my non-existent friend.
‘What would you do, chum?’ I said. I looked at Reggie and suddenly I did feel something. Hate. I hated him. It was a pleasantly simple emotion. ‘I know what you’d do,’ I said, and told him, in a series of neat, well-turned phrases exactly what he would do, in my place, both to Louise and to Jay. Or what he would like to do. ‘You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘You’re the pervert, my friend.…’
His face was now a uniform, dull red. His hands were clenched on his fat knees. He said slowly, ‘I’m ignoring every word of that, Tom. You’ve had a terrible shock. I understand that. I shall forget everything you’ve said.’
‘Why? I’d rather you didn’t forget it. I’d like you to remember it, in fact, because I’ve told you exactly the sort of man I think you are. A pimp. A voyeur. This whole evening has given you a dirty little thrill, hasn’t it? You’ve enjoyed thinking about what you would do if you were me. And for all your unctuous talk about admiring me for my forbearance, underneath you despise me because you know I’m not likely to beat Louise up. Or kick Jay in the balls. Don’t you? You’ve always despised me. Why can’t we both be honest for once?’
He sighed deeply. It seemed to shake his whole body. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Since the gloves are off – I’ll tell you something. You won’t do anything about this situation because in the first place you haven’t the guts to do anything and in the second place because you’re a masochist. You like being hurt and humiliated. It gives you no end of a kick, knowing your wife has gone to bed with someone else. It gives you a chance to be a creeping Jesus. Particularly since she’s gone to bed with a black man. You’d like to crawl to him and say thank you – thank you for not despising my wife’s white skin. You make me sick. You always have made me sick.’
I finished my brandy and stood up. My head seemed suddenly marvellously clear. I felt as if I were walking on air.
‘Where are you going?’ he said.
‘Never you mind.’ I stopped at the door. ‘I’d like you to answer one question, though. Honestly, if you can. Do you draw a moral distinction between a woman who is unfaithful to her husband with a European, and one who is unfaithful with a black man?’
There was a silence. Reggie’s eyes bulged at me.
‘Tell me, Reggie,’ I said. ‘I’d really like to know.’
‘You must be absolutely mad,’ he muttered.
Chapter Fourteen
The man in the pub said, ‘I have learned to live with pain.’
He was small, white-faced, with a thin, nervous smile. I had no idea what he was talking about, nor how our conversation had started. It didn’t matter. He was only a figure in the dream, as I was; the dream that was not even happening tome.
‘They taught me that during the war, the bastards,’ he said with a venomous, challenging intensity as though I had openly disbelieved him and I was surprised – as surprised as you can be in a dream – because he seemed too young for that. Though, looking at him closely, he might have been any age: the hair that I had thought was ash blond, could as easily be grey. But you wouldn’t normally look at him closely. His town pallor, his dun-coloured clothes, cheap shirt and thin, string tie, made him anonymous, a bleached and lonely creature, the sort to seek out strangers in a bar and be forgotten instantly. Unless you noticed his eyes.
They were a pale sherry brown, without depth – or, rather, the depth was hidden by a kind of film like the opaque skin of ice on a puddle. Those eyes had a cold, snake-life of their own. They darted with hate. Whatever he said, whatever gesture he might make to assert a gentler emotion, they would deny it. His lips smiled as he sidled along the bar to offer me a cigarette out of a tin case, but the glacial look remained in his eyes, locked and permanent.
I could recognize hate. Ever since I had marched out of the house tricked by Reggie’s last words into a ridiculously blown up anger, I had been caught up in it; trapped in a raging, sick hatred, a feeling so hard and powerful that it seemed to have its own life, frightening and obdurate. It frightened me. Though I had driven to Brixton with the conscious intention of confronting Jay and demanding the truth, unconsciously, I suppose, I was trying to escape from this hatred, from this hideous, live thing within me over which I had no control and in which I was lost, helpless as a speck of dust in a whirlwind. It was the worst kind of nightmare – far, far worse than the nothingness of Moon Country; a nightmare of cruelty and violence, of righteous, bloody flame scouring the whole, dirty earth. I wanted to wound, to kill, to cancel my own pain.
When I saw Jay, through the window of the café, the unreality moved aside for a moment. I woke from my hateful dream to see him sitting at a table and placidly eating, his book propped up on a bottle of sauce. I stood there for a minute or two, shivering and sweating but feeling nothing at all except a curious shyness, and then I crossed the road and went into the pub and found I hadn’t escaped the nightmare after all. It was here, waiting for me in the eyes of this man. What did he hate, and why? My hate made flesh, I thought, and then: you fool, you’re drunk.
The man said, ‘You don’t believe me, do you? I tell you I can stand pain. I’ve trained myself. I watched my father die of cancer. He used to scream when the drugs gave out. I could stand even that. I’ve trained myself.’
A knot of men at the far end of the bar had stopped talking and were watching us. I recognized Edward Jones, his face wine-red beneath the
dirty bandages. He looked at me steadily for a moment before he turned his back on me. His cronies continued to eye us with an odd, malicious expectancy.
I said, ‘I’m sure it’s possible. Men can learn to stand anything. Or almost anything. Though whether—’
The man smiled at me. ‘I’ll prove it to you,’ he said in an easy, conversational voice.
He laid his hand flat on the bar counter, took the lighted cigarette out of his mouth and ground it, slowly and deliberately, into his open palm. His eyes were fixed on me, hard and glittering, but his face was expressionless. For a second I thought it must be some kind of trick but then he brushed the black ash away and exposed the raw wound.
I said helplessly, ‘For God’s sake—’
He lit another cigarette and puffed at it, blowing the smoke out through his nose. His eyes – those dreadful eyes – never left my face. He knew that I knew what he was going to do and it amused him. He also knew that although I was horrified and sickened, I wanted him to do it, that I couldn’t move or take my eyes away. I stood there, trembling with shocked excitement, while he stubbed out the second cigarette, rubbing it round and round on his bleeding palm. He doubled his fist momentarily, then he opened it and held it out to me, smiling. Then he picked up his beer with his uninjured hand and walked back to the group at the other end of the bar. He said something and one of them laughed.
The landlord said, ‘He’s a nut case, that one. Makes you sick, don’t it?’ He spoke out of the side of his mouth like a gangster in an old movie. He had a rough, corrugated face, irregularly covered with lines and creases like the contours of a hilly country.
‘A bit,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll have another brandy.’
His grin wrinkled his face, closing the map-contours until the hills must have been almost perpendicular. ‘Well, he’s good for business, anyway.’ He checked himself and added, primly as any maiden aunt, ‘Though it’s not very nice, is it? I mean, it puts you off, the first time.’ He looked at me. ‘I know you. You were in last night with that nig who started the trouble.’
