Holiday

by Stanley Middleton

  Naked he considered himself in the glass, was not displeased.

  By three-thirty he parked on the arm of a chair, and toed the carpet. His colleague’s note informed him that the flat was his alone until Wednesday. Fisher enjoyed the shabby symmetry of the place. Price-Jones hated mess, was a bit of an old woman, but decent, had brought food in for his friend, even a small joint for Sunday. Reader in physics, a dusty man, a widower without children, who’d let his house to the professor of surgery, and who moved in here, entirely happy, as far as he could judge, filling note-books with rows of mathematical symbols, and preparing, now, in these last three weeks, gastromomic treats for his refugee. He talked little, played the viola in the college orchestra, and was said to be up again for election by the Royal Society. Oddly, he’d no friend.

  Fisher wondered why he wasted thought on Price-Jones instead of Meg, decided that he merely remapped known ground, reassured himself. He remembered the grandfather who’d come from Wales and made a pretty penny as a grocer in London, then the schoolmaster who’d added Price, his mother’s maiden name, to Jones and had begotten this one boy. Next year, Washbrook would retire and Bill P.-J. would succeed to the chair of physics, vice-chancellors, colleagues and the like keeping their heads. And if he did not?

  ‘My best work’s done Edwin. At thirty I was worth talking to.’ The thin home-counties whine. ‘Now I’m putting the frame round the picture.’ The last sentence rang typical; odd in so dry a man, but indicative of his cleverness, his touch of the creative.

  Fisher cleaned his teeth again.

  He stood ready, wound his wristwatch, combed his hair for the third time.

  Arriving at his old home, he parked in the street, though he knew there would be room in the drive. The afternoon sky was dabbed with small clouds, and the privet hedge, well-trimmed, seemed dull with dust. Between stone-capped brick pillars the iron gates were shut and the one window he could see downstairs had its cream blind drawn. The Laurels. Stout, late Victorian, vicarage-style villa, doubled fronted with bow windows either side. Paintwork gleamed as if it had been washed that day, and the pointing between the handmade bricks was immaculate. In the middle of the arch of the front-door a head of a moustachioed gentleman, Kitchener or Stalin, craned forward under its cream paint.

  Kathleen Twining, Meg’s friend, invited him into his own house, placed him in the drawing room, where all was cool, half-shadowed, protected by blinds. He sat, inspected nervously.

  ‘Meg will be in in a moment. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  He said that he would. She closed the door without noise. Nothing had been changed; the same bibelots, including his grey Wembley Exhibition penknife, on the mantelpiece. On the walls, their reproductions of Vermeer, Chagall, Graham Sutherland, that Modigliani woman they’d argued about, Picasso doves, John Smith’s honesty. Yet the room smelt feminine, as though they’d soaked, no, touched the solid furniture with scent, with tiny grains of sweet powder.

  Was that bloody Kathleen to be a witness, then? Why was she so friendly?

  He heard nothing from outside, in a room still as a dentist’s, frightening. Shoes polished free of dust on trouser legs, shirt cuffs pulled to prominence. The top of a bookcase was crowded with Meg’s glass paper-weights, huge gay marbles, cocky as clown’s eyes, ridiculous but delightful. And her pot hen on the far table by the walnut fruitbowl she’d made on a lathe at night-class. In the corner behind him stood, he could not see, the tall bookcase with its Dickens, Scott, Hardy and George Eliot, bought in a sale, and on top of that, the slender vase in dark blue glass, white dotted, within a yard of the high ceiling. A huge bunch of lime-leaves filled the fire-place and a red biro lay on the hearth by the polished brass shell-case which held the irons. He peered over the arm of his chair to check that the small copper kettle was on its stand beneath him.

  He trembled, cold across the shoulders.

  Steps clipped on the terazzo of the hall-floor, voices hummed, faded, and the door handle turned.

  He stood as his wife came in.

  The entry was not impressive, for Meg stared, tripped the three or four steps then sat down fast, awkwardly on the far end of the settee, offering no hand. She wore a white blouse, and a maxi skirt, wide at the hem, in dark green, lightly lined in squares. An Edwardian governess on her first day. With a pang of pleaure he noticed that she wore both engagement and wedding rings, but her hair disappointed, swept up into neat dullness, false and prim.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said.

  He almost expexted her to burst into laughter, but she linked her fingers round her knees, not looking at him.

  ‘Kathy will bring us a cup of tea in a moment.’

  His thanks sounded thick.

  ‘Did you have a good time at Bealthorpe? I was surprised when Daddy said he’d met you there.’

  More easily than he thought possible, he strung sentences together about the weather, the digs, his fellow-lodgers. She turned her head as he spoke, smiled at him, as if genuinely savouring his clichés.

  ‘Why did you go, Edwin?’ Sometimes, usually on the telephone, her voice, cleared, freed itself from harmonics; so now.

  ‘I don’t know. I was at a loose end.’

  ‘But Bealthorpe?’

  ‘Your father went.’

  ‘He says the service and meals at the Frankland are the best in England.’ She giggles. ‘I think he holds shares in it.’

  The passage was unmalicious, and he unwound. He told her about his holiday as a child, while they conducted together a neat inquiry into the economics of so grand a hotel in so flat a resort.

  Kathleen Twining knocked, laid down the copper-cornered tray, with crockery and cake, backed out to return with the large tea-pot.

  ‘That’s all,’ she said.

  Only two cups, the best china, from his mother’s cabinet. Meg poured and as she moved after pot or kettle her skirt swung darkly about. The blouse seemed cheap, as if to disguise the full breasts, or crumple round them, clapped into lumpy elastic; the material faded, rummage-sale, handled.

  The two stirred, clinked, sipped, knifed thin, buttered slices of currant bread. Fisher, not hungry, chewed smally, concentrated on the navy and gold ornamentation on the plate. When he refused more food, Meg described, in some detail, the diet that Kathleen had been following, and her success. She spoke as if that were important.

  They’d gathered at this table after Donald’s funeral, and laughed, in the early afternoon, over the fruit-cakes and sandwiches, people who would not have attended his birthday party. Meg had been attentive to them all, fussing over her mother, exchanging small grim jokes with Tina, Edwin’s sister. The sun shone and the blinds had never been down. There all stood, in the dark best, civilised people ready to resume important concerns when this ceremony, this teasing end to God’s act of treachery was over. And Donald, with his ailments, was a small urnful of mortality. Today the Roman and his trouble / Are ashes under Uricon.

  ‘I expect Daddy’s been getting on to you,’ she began.

  ‘Yes. In his way.’ Fisher determined to be serious.

  ‘He’s been on my back for a fortnight now, and when he found you at Bealthorpe, he took that as a portent. He’s very superstitious.’ She examined the palm of her right hand. ‘A Methodist Druid.’

  He acknowledged the remark, but refused to add to triviality.

  ‘David thinks perhaps,’ she did not hurry, concentrating on the finger-stretched hand, ‘that I’ve been unfaithful.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘No.’ She did not stress the word.

  ‘Nor I. He pressed me about it.’

  ‘We’re very good, very well behaved, then, aren’t we?’

  Now she looked at him, expecting anger, perhaps dislike. He did not answer; her blouse, buttoned high was secured at neck and wrists with black ribbon laces.

  ‘Did he tell you what to say?’ she asked.

  ‘He said you were,’ Fisher fumbled, ‘damaged. Hurt.’

  �
�He told me that I had to keep talking, that I musn’t sit here. I promised that I would.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Did you promise?’ Fisher cleared an obstruction in his throat.

  ‘It seemed sensible. We don’t just meet to look at one another. Or do we?’

  ‘I find it not unpleasant.’ He yielded to levity, at last, thus early.

  ‘That’s nice.’

  She squared matters with these words and standing poured tea without more inquiry. When both had settled again, they took their time, she asked muddily,

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘About us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She tapped the arm of the settee with long fingernails, as if vexed.

  ‘That’s how I feel,’ she said, in the end. ‘I think it’s bloody silly, but I just don’t know. Did you have any reaction coming into this house again?’

  ‘Of course. I remembered things.’

  ‘Was it, were they, important?’

  ‘Some.’

  ‘Donald? You remembered Donald?’

  It was as if she’d clubbed him. That smashed the rules. The child should have been named as a last resort, in an extremity, not handed out with the currant-bread. He sat unnerved, a skin short, wounds oozing.

  ‘The funeral. I thought of that. In here.’ Strangulated, he gobbled, ashamed.

  She wept.

  Noiseless, tears grey on her blouse, she cried, small handkerchief clutched in her fist.

  As he struggled up towards her, she signalled him away with her paws. Obediently he waited, as she dabbed, sobbed.

  The door clicked open, and Miss Twining stood over her friend, tall and stooping.

  ‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear.’ she repeated. ‘This won’t do.’

  She poured out a further inch of tea into a cup, and rumaging in Meg’s handbag for a tablet. Without show, Meg swallowed, continued her crying.

  ‘Put your legs up,’ Twining ordered. She swung Meg to position on the settee, arranging pillows, spreading a tartan blanket. Had she brought that in? ‘That’s better. You look like a real invalid now.’

  ‘I’d better go.’ Fisher, now the fussing was done.

  ‘You stop there. She’ll be right enough. Just give her a minute. We shall be fine, shan’t we, love?’

  That sounded so condenscending, directed at a childish fractiousness, that Fisher reddened, angry and disturbed.

  ‘Perhaps I’ve upset her,’ he said.

  ‘Not at all. Not at all. Don’t rush things. We’re all right.’

  The Twining had listened at the door, then. He did not mind because it meant there could be nothing final here today, or nothing with the appearance of finality. Miss Twining, with her Scottish voice and sharp nose, would preserve decorum, prevent blows, get the one used to the other, reinstate the habit of marriage. He straightened the flaps of his pockets, while Kathleen, very leisurely, apparently talking to herself, though he’d no idea what she murmured, collected the cups and plates, stacked them.

  ‘At a time like this’ she faced Fisher squarely, and her small eyes were green, ‘I’d recommend a cup of tea all round, but as you’ve just partaken it wouldn’t be of much use.’

  ‘No,’ he said

  Both smiled; they could have shaken hands. Meg hand recovered her composure, stared at the lampshade.

  ‘Will you be all right, darling?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I think so, too. So I’ll leave you to your husband,’ that stressed, rolled ‘r’ and sibilant prominent. ‘To talk on. She’s easily upset, as you’ll imagine, Edwin.’

  Christian name now; surprised she knew it. ‘But she wants to speak to you.’ Again, she deliberately reorganised the china, picked up the tray, and went, leaving the door ajar. Neither man nor wife moved. A minute or so later Twining closed the door, calling, ‘I’m on the patio if you want me.’

  ‘What was the tablet?’ he asked

  ‘I don’t know.’ That sounded true.

  ‘Librium? Valium? Something of the sort?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Meg was pale, but calm, with one white hand outside the blanket. Her eyes were shadowed with a pale violet.

  ‘I think I ought to go,’ he said.

  ‘No. Please. They’ll think we haven’t tried.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Daddy. Mummy. Kathleen.’

  ‘Have we?’ It seemed cruel, unneccessarily so. He began to qualify. ‘I mean. We’ve not said anything, have we? Important?’

  ‘Would you come back if I asked you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He did not know why he answered so eagerly. Politeness, a gesture towards her status as a patient. For the life of him, he did not seem able to feel. As a boy he’d once chewed a dog biscuit. tasteless and unappetising. He’d spat the mush into his hand.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Meg said. ‘Even if you don’t mean it.’

  She delivered without energy, as if the intelligence were there, but not the drive, the fire. It sounded more like a schoolgirl than his wife.

  ‘It’s the truth. Or the best I can do.’ Why he made that graceless modification he did not know. ‘Why did you cry just now? Because I mentioned Donald? Or you did?’

  ‘Yes. In a way. I felt I owed something to you on Donald’s account.’

  ‘No, Meg. You don’t.’ Stern. ‘You can put that right out of your head.’

  ‘He was such a weakling, though.’

  ‘That wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘It wasn’t yours, was it?’ She sounded petulant. ‘He made such a poor start he never recovered. That’s what they said at the hospital.’

  ‘Nobody could have been a better mother.’ Doggedly, like a man asserting what he barely believed. ‘You did all possible.’

  Without turning to him, in the same pinched voice, she asked,

  ‘Do you ever look at photographs of him?’

  ‘I’ve only the one in my wallet. Yes. I sometimes look at it.’

  ‘What do you think . . . of? Then? When you . . .? Her voice tailed off, not because she could not go further, but because her question was perfectly posed.

  ‘Hard to say. I look. I remember him. I have a sort of pang. It’s going. I wonder if it happened to me. He looks so healthy.’

  ‘Which picture is it?’

  He fetched out his wallet, opened it so that the photograph was revealed in its oval leather frame. The child sat in the push-chair, grinning, face chubby, arms up. She took the wallet, glanced down, away, down again thrusting her head back as if she had difficulty in focusing.

  ‘Oh, yes. The one in the bobble-hat. You took it out here. He was so cross, strapped in. It was very cold.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘It snowed that evening. Not much. A few flakes.’

  That scatter of snow he did not recall seemed as important to him now as the dead child. That lived in her mind. She closed the wallet and returned it, and as she did so, her face looked drained, bruised, deprived. They said no more for a few minutes, but sat in the warmth, not uncomfortably, but unrelaxed.

  ‘Has what’s-her-name been here long?’

  He could not bring himself to name her.

  ‘Kathleen? About a week after you left.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so friendly.’

  ‘We weren’t.’

  They’d worked together at the same school. Indeed, Twining was still there as deputy head. Meg played with her wedding ring.

  ‘I rang her up one evening. I wanted to talk to somebody who’d not bully me. Daddy, oh, you know what he’s like. Kathleen’s nice, and full of ideas. If you’re down in the mouth, she gets you on to making a complicated gâteau, that sort of thing.’

  ‘It wouldn’t suit me.’

  ‘I would have said that. She comes Thursday morning and goes back to her flat just Tuesday and Wednesday.’

  ‘Why?’

  �
��To live her own life.’

  He smiled, nearly laughed, thought better of it.

  ‘I’m glad you’ve come to some sort of arrangement.’

  ‘Are you all right with Dr. Price-Jones?’

  He put up a few interesting sentences, describing his host whom she did not know well. It seemed important that he should do his best, provide her with neat cameos for her entertainment, make her see that he was an interesting man exerting himself on her behalf. In return, she smiled at one or two of Bill’s eccentricities and her husband’s turns of phrase so that he found himself rewarded, enjoying his moment, putting himself out further. While embroidering Price-Jones’s idiocies in his Rover, Edwin realised, with a cold start that she was not listening. He paused.

  ‘You’ve not heard a word I’ve said.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’ Startled by the new tone, she turned.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’

  ‘I was listening, Edwin.’

  It sounded so pathetic that he thought of moving towards her, touching her, but she bunched herself in the corner of the settee as if shrinking from the liberty. Outside a car cruched gravel, the doorbell blasted; Twining tripped and there was subdued talk in the hall.

  ‘You’ve got visitors,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better go.’

  ‘You don’t know who it is?’ Her voice conveyed no liveliness. He waited, concentrating on the corner of a low cupboard, and beyond that to a corn-dolly, pert and straw-pale on the polished oak. ‘Don’t you recognise voices?’

  ‘Usually.’

  ‘My father and mother.’

  Again, he decided on silence, squeezing her speech, but this time she clasped her hands, rather malely, between her knees and sat forward, back bowed, ugly, awkward. A door was closed elsewhere, while these two protracted the pause, both edgy, half intent on advantage.

  ‘Did you know they were coming?’ At long last; generous.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘They’ll . . . What do they expect?’

  She puckered her forehead, pushed at her bright hair, as if she needed to concentrate on this, but smiled, gratefully, broadly.

  ‘You know David,’ she said. He’s worked it out. First we’re given the chance to straighten our affairs, but in the middle of it, he appears. A sort of spur. He’s a very good opinion of himself. The voice of reason.’