Is There Anything You Want?

by Margaret Forster

  9

  On the Bench

  EVERY MORNING, AS he descended the stairs, Martin Yates drank a glass of cold water which he’d just taken from the bathroom. Down he went, slowly, not holding on to the banister, sipping the water. He could feel it doing him good. The furred feeling in his mouth cleared, and as the icy liquid trickled down his throat he felt his entire body brace itself for the day ahead. Ida shuddered at the idea of cold water first thing. What she needed was hot, sweet, strong tea, and plenty of it. He made it for her, every morning, always had done. A large pot of tea (loose-leaf, Ida didn’t like tea-bags) and with it on the tray a small jug of milk and a bowl of sugar lumps. The tray was a souvenir of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, now much battered, and Her Majesty’s image greatly faded, especially her crown. Martin added a plate with two digestive biscuits on it and then he carried it up to their bedroom. He called it ‘their’ bedroom, but he hadn’t himself slept in it for a full night for three years. It was Ida’s bedroom now.

  Ida slept with the door wedged open with an old slipper so that he could hear her if she cried out. She might not want him in bed with her, but she needed him if she had a bad dream, as she often did. The room was dark, even though the morning was bright. The curtains were thick and lined, and pulled tightly together, though they didn’t quite meet, and Martin’s first job, once he had deposited the tray on the bedside table, was to part them slightly, though only enough to let a little light in. Then he switched the radio on. Ida groaned. He didn’t know which station she had it set on but it always had music coming out of it, music of a sort. She liked to waken to it, she said it made waking easier, something he had never been able to understand. It made his head ache, the jingly-jangly nature of whatever it was. She liked to listen to it if she woke up in the middle of the night, too, she said it took her mind off things. It had maddened him, but he had had to put up with it, bowing to her greater need. Ida, he knew, was as afraid of silence as he was fond of it. All day she had either the radio or the television on, sometimes both, each in a different room, or else she listened to her CDs, mostly the sound-tracks of film musicals. He didn’t much care for these either but Ida sang along to them and he loved her to sing, it made her happy. He just wished she would sing on her own, without any background accompaniment.

  He opened the curtains a little wider. ‘Beautiful morning,’ he said, ‘beautiful.’ He stood for a moment, looking down on the box hedges lining the garden path, draped in cobwebs, swirling delicate webs of white mist laced through the dark green leaves, and at the lawn which paled into silver after the heavy dew. ‘Beautiful,’ he repeated. ‘It’ll be a good day. I’ll get Mrs Hibbert’s hedges cut.’ Ida groaned again. He turned to look at her. She had hauled herself up out of the bedclothes and was groping for the teapot, her eyes still shut. A dangerous procedure, but he knew better than to rush over and pour her tea for her. Somehow, she managed to do this without mishap, and took a great gulp. She sighed, and took another, her eyes opening slightly. ‘Better?’ he asked. She nodded. ‘Good,’ he said, ‘take it easy, no hurry,’ and he left the room. She would stay in bed another hour at least. Even as a young woman she had found getting up a daily ordeal. When he’d been working at Cowan’s and had had to clock on at 7.30 a.m., it had been hellish getting off on time with Ida comatose and both children bawling for milk or food and needing to be dressed. He’d often left the house without any breakfast, only a bit of dry bread in his hand, worrying all the way to work about Jimmy and Steve and whether they would do themselves some damage before Ida had roused herself. Nothing awful had ever happened, but he’d begun this ritual of taking her tea to wake her up, to try to make sure that it never did, and he’d continued it ever since. She depended on it and he knew it.

  Standing in the kitchen, cooking his bacon, Martin gazed out of the window, still mesmerised by the dazzling light of the September morning. He could see shafts of sun already cutting through the mist and turning the dew on the grass into thousands of glittering points. Best time of the day, early morning. He was always telling Ida this, urging her to admire it with him, but she never had done. It was still cold, the sun might dazzle but as yet it had no warmth in it, but he loved the sharpness of the air and longed to be out running in it, breathing in great gulps of air, schooling his lungs to accept it and expand. Once, he’d gone off for five-mile runs at the weekend but he’d had to give them up when he turned fifty, and his right knee, where he’d had a cartilage removed, began to trouble him. He got his exercise gardening, and that had to be enough. Sometimes, even that could prove a struggle – it was heavy work he was called upon (by people like Mrs Hibbert) to do, the cutting of tall hedges, the trimming of trees and suchlike. His strength was his best asset and he had to keep it up.

  But he still was strong. At sixty-four, he was still physically powerful, in spite of his knee problem. He never mentioned that to Ida, and if she had noticed his occasional limp she never commented on it, nor would he have wanted her to. It comforted him, when he worried about his knee, to be aware of how muscular he still was, not an ounce of fat on his stocky body, his belly still firm and flat, his chest broad and well developed. Ida had gone to seed. She’d had a gorgeous body when she was young. It had attracted him mightily, just the sight of it before he came to know it intimately. There wasn’t a part of it not perfect, in his opinion – she was a stunner, with her lovely full breasts and her long shapely legs. He’d been a lucky man. Not that he’d married Ida for her looks, he hadn’t been that carried away, but the prospect of enjoying them had certainly come into his reckoning. She wasn’t beautiful so far as her face went – it was rather a bland face, the eyes a little too close together and the nose a little too large – but he’d looked beyond that and seen where her real loveliness lay. She’d felt the same about him, he knew that. He wasn’t a good-looking young man but he had a splendid body and, stripped off to the waist, working as a labourer (which was how Ida first caught sight of him) he’d known how impressive his muscles looked to girls. The difference was, he’d always taken care of his body and Ida had not. She’d eaten all the wrong things – cream cakes, crisps, two sugars in her many cups of tea, the list was endless – and never taken any exercise whatsoever. She blamed her excess girth, when finally she noticed it, on having had children (but only two), on operations (various) and on The Change. She couldn’t, she said, help being fat.

  Mornings like this one, he felt especially sorry for Ida. He was going to be in the open air, working up a healthy sweat, and she was going to be lolling in the house, stuffing herself with rubbish, which would make her feel even more terrible than she already did. She was fond of saying that she got all the exercise she needed from doing the housework and helping to clean the church, but Martin had seen how she tackled both and doubted if she was vigorous enough to burn up a couple of calories never mind scores. He urged her at least to walk more, but she said her legs hurt if she went more than a hundred yards. She had varicose veins, the lovely legs ruined by them, and had resisted the necessary operation to have them stripped out – she said she’d had enough of operations. There was nothing Martin could say to that. The last one had been cruel. They had taken away a good quarter of her left breast and though she was told that this surgery had almost certainly saved her life she had never forgiven them. She hated the scar; Martin hated it too. He’d only seen it once. Once was enough. He was at fault, he knew he was, but the sight of it, soon after Ida came home, had made him feel sick. It wasn’t the scar itself, raw and red and jagged though it was, but the idea of what had been taken out behind it, the thought of the flesh, bleeding and blubbery, scraped out, thrown away – he couldn’t bear it. And Ida had seen this in his face, though he had said nothing, and he had seen in hers that dreadful mixture of distress and contempt before she pushed him away.

  He got his bike out of the shed and checked the tyres. It was only a couple of miles to Mrs Hibbert’s, a nice little ride, especially on such a morning. He’d take
n his power saw and his strimmer by car to her house the day before, on the way back from another job, leaving him able to cycle today. He looked forward to working in Mrs Hibbert’s garden – of all the people who employed him, she had the best garden – but Ida didn’t like him to say so. She had never liked Mrs Hibbert, declaring that the woman was a snob, and bossy, and an interfering bitch who thought herself a great deal better than she was with her voluntary work – ‘She’s too good to be true,’ Ida said. The first time they’d gone to the clinic, Mrs Hibbert had been on duty as a Friend, standing right in the middle of the entrance hall, and Ida had insisted on turning round and going out again and finding another way in. It had been excruciatingly embarrassing to realise Mrs Hibbert had seen them and watched them flee in such an undignified manner back out the way they had come. They had then trailed round to the side of the hospital and gone in through the A & E department, which had meant walking along miles of corridors and using two lifts before at last finding their way to the clinic. Ida had been in a rage, saying she wasn’t going to set foot in St Mary’s again, which was a ridiculous thing to say when she knew perfectly well there was no other hospital for miles around. Martin’s own worry had been what Mrs Hibbert would say to him when next he saw her. But she had been tactful, discreet, never mentioning having seen him and Ida. He had reported this to Ida, asking her to give credit where credit was due, but none had been forthcoming.

  He thought about Ida’s intense dislike of Mrs Hibbert as he cycled along, wondering as ever what on earth had caused it. What, he’d asked his wife, had the woman done to deserve such implacable hostility? Nothing, so far as he knew. In reply, Ida had told him he must have his eyes shut and be deaf if he couldn’t see and hear what Mrs Hibbert was like. Hadn’t he seen how snooty she was, looking down on folk as though they had a bad smell? Hadn’t he heard her being sharp and sarcastic, cutting people down to the size she thought they should be? Martin said no, he hadn’t, and asked for examples of such behaviour. Ida gave them to him but Martin had failed to see their significance. He couldn’t agree that Mrs Hibbert was anything but a sensible, intelligent, highly organised woman for whom it was always a pleasure to work. Ida snorted, and said she could tell him a thing or two which might change his mind. Invited by Martin to do so, what she did tell him didn’t seem adequately to account for her hatred of Mrs Hibbert. It was a tale about Ida’s grandmother having been a charwoman for Mary’s mother. Something had been stolen and Ida, who as a child accompanied her Nan when she cleaned, had been accused. Nothing had been proved, but her Nan had been dismissed. Ida had gone up to the Lawson place and made a scene. She was only about 8, but she had screamed abuse at Mrs Lawson, and when Mary had appeared and tried to close the door, Ida had hit her. There’d been a fight between the two children and Mary had been badly scratched. There’d been talk of Ida being taken from her Nan and put into a foster home, but Mr Lawson had sorted things out and everything had quietened down. Ida had hated Mary ever since. There was still some other mystery, Martin sensed that. He sensed that not only did his wife resent Mrs Hibbert but that she was in some way jealous of her. Once, when he first started helping her in her garden, and they had chatted to each other while at work, he had told Ida what an interesting conversation he’d had about global warming, but Ida hadn’t wanted to hear. It had been as though he’d implied he never had interesting conversations with her – which was true. It had been true for years. They hardly talked to each other at all, and when they did it certainly was not about global warming. Ida, if she did talk, gossiped about the church, about the vicar and what was happening at the Women’s Institute and at Fellowship meetings.

  Last week, he and Mrs Hibbert had talked about the so-called war on terrorism and what had happened in Iraq. They’d sat outside her house drinking tea, after he’d toiled for three hours trimming all the beech hedges, including the long back one which needed a stepladder to do it properly. She’d insisted he sit down, in comfort, though he was very conscious of his filthy hands – he hadn’t worn gloves to gather up the cuttings – and of the leaves and bits of twig caught in the hairs on his chest. She’d stated her own views first (strong ones, as usual) and then invited him to share his with her. This was what she always did and, though at first he had been bashful and hesitant, she had encouraged him and gradually he had grown more confident, and these days positively eager to express himself on any number of issues. Unlike Mrs Hibbert, he didn’t read a daily or Sunday newspaper – he took his news from the television and sometimes the radio – but often she would save pieces she’d read in the Daily Telegraph and give them to him so that they could discuss them. He felt flattered that she bothered.

  Ida, of course, said that he was just being flattered. Perhaps it was true. Mrs Hibbert did make him feel clever, though he knew he was not. He had no qualifications, had never even sat a single exam. He didn’t read books, it just never occurred to him to want to. But he wasn’t stupid, he’d never thought of himself as stupid. But Ida never listened to him. Instead, she would interrupt – ‘Stop spouting, for heaven’s sake,’ she’d say – and if he tried to discuss something serious she walked away. They had never talked properly about her illness. She told everyone about it outside the house, but she wouldn’t discuss it with him. She wouldn’t even have it mentioned at home, and this bewildered him. He’d told Mrs Hibbert about Ida’s operation and the radiotherapy sessions and she’d been reassuring. She was tactful and also sympathetic, a cheering combination in his opinion. Cancer, she’d told him, was not the automatic death sentence it used to be, and was thought by some still to be. She reeled off statistics to prove that Ida had every chance of surviving many years. But even if Ida had not forbidden him to discuss her with Mrs Hibbert, he would have found it hard to confide to anyone what was really bothering him. It was too delicate, too embarrassing. Ida wouldn’t let him touch her. Ever since the operation and then the six weeks’ radiotherapy she hadn’t wanted to be touched. She wouldn’t let him hold her or kiss her, never mind anything else. He could understand this at first, it even seemed natural, but as time went on and she was recovered, well, it became bewildering. His attempts to caress her were met with a sharp ‘Don’t!’, as though he were going to attack her. He stopped at once and said he was sorry. He would have to be patient, and he was. He was a very patient man anyway. He could see how unhappy Ida was, but there seemed nothing he could do to help. Going to their doctor wouldn’t help – he could just imagine old Dr Marr’s face if he appeared before him saying Ida wouldn’t let him touch her. But it had occurred to him that Mrs Hibbert might have had some good advice. There’d been an inkling that she understood such mysteries during the time she’d employed that girl Emma.

  She’d liked talking to him about Emma. ‘You’ll never guess what that silly girl’s done now, Martin,’ she would begin, and then describe the girl’s behaviour in detail, commenting that Emma’s relationship with her boyfriend was all about sexual infatuation and nothing more. ‘God knows why she’s attracted to him,’ Mrs Hibbert had said, ‘considering he is so ill-kempt, but she is. It’s pure lust. She thinks it’s love, but it isn’t.’ Martin had shifted a little uncomfortably on the bench where he was sitting with Mrs Hibbert and had said nothing. He just filled his pipe and puffed on it for a bit, until Mrs Hibbert pressed him – ‘Don’t you agree, Martin? You’ve seen the two of them, don’t you agree?’ Weakly, he’d said he didn’t know, and mumbled something about one man’s meat being another’s poison, and young folk these days being hard to fathom. Mrs Hibbert had been exasperated – ‘Oh, come on, Martin, you’re not thinking, you’re not remembering what it was like at that age – all lust, nothing else.’ More shifting on the bench, more puffing on his pipe, and then Martin had been overcome with a flood of memories – Ida looking like an angel in the choir, Ida in a white blouse and summer skirt sitting by the river, Ida at the works’ Christmas party in a shimmering red dress. He’d cleared his throat and said, ‘You’re probably ri
ght, but it might mean something all the same, it might go deeper. You can’t tell at first, now, can you? It has to start with the attraction, and then time will tell.’ Mrs Hibbert had said, very firmly, that because young folk today leapt into bed when they’d known each other a mere five minutes, there was no time to tell anything. They began with sex, they didn’t work up to it. ‘Not like our generation, Martin,’ she ended.

  Martin couldn’t speak. This was different from discussing capital punishment or the horror of metric measurements. He didn’t know which was more excruciating to think about, himself and Ida ‘working up to it’, or Mrs Hibbert. He couldn’t associate sex with her at all, even though she’d been married. Nobody here had known her husband Francis, and there were those (Ida among them) who sometimes doubted he ever existed. Mary Lawson had gone south and come back years later widowed (or, as Ida put it, ‘saying’ she was widowed). Nobody knew much about Francis Hibbert at all. There were no children, which fuelled the gossip. As far as Martin was considered, Mrs Hibbert was a childless widow and that was that. But there she was, presenting herself as a woman who might apparently have worked up to sex, and expecting him to know what she meant. Well, he did. Two years he’d courted Ida and it had been hell. They’d kissed and cuddled and fondled, and she’d loved it as much as he’d done, but there’d been nothing else till they had married. A white wedding, four bridesmaids, himself in a hired suit. And then the honeymoon, and at last what had been worked up to actually took place. Jim born nine months and one week later, Steve a year exactly after that. A lot had been worked up to. He felt he was letting Mrs Hibbert down by not being open and honest and saying what he thought about young Emma. ‘It seems to me, Mrs Hibbert,’ he said ponderously, ‘that contraception being what it now is, the pill and that, it’s changed everything. No sense in working up to things, is there? Might as well get cracking and enjoy it.’ ‘Martin!’ she said. ‘You don’t really think that, do you? Surely you don’t think sex should start things off?’ ‘Well, Mrs Hibbert,’ he said, ‘it shouldn’t be the carrot for the donkey either.’