by Maeve Binchy
“Still,” said Lisa. “They did go to the trouble.”
She reached out for the card, and her heart became a big ball of putty and sank down in her body. It was addressed to “Mr. and Mrs.” and hoped that they would both enjoy their stay.
“Is it…is it to tell you that they know you’ve brought a woman with you?” she asked fearfully.
He looked unconcerned. Not at all, the secretary had probably found out from the hotel which delegates had checked in with their wives and put Mr. and Mrs. on those cards. Just administration. He was putting on the cuff links she had given him and he gave her a kiss on the nose.
She felt that the day was a bit less glorious and immediately felt very angry with herself for feeling that way. What had happened? Nothing. She was a cheat and a tramp, and a mistress, and illegally registered in the hotel as the “Mrs.” she wasn’t. But that was all rubbish. The first night she had gone to bed with him she had rid her mind of all those labels, they didn’t count in anybody’s mind except the fevered minds of a long-gone generation. Why was a silly card upsetting her?
The breakfast arrived and they sat by the window reading the two newspapers that had been sent up as well. She touched his hand when she poured him more coffee. He smiled, and she hoped in a beaten sort of way that it was going to be fairly glorious anyway.
“What shall we do?” he said.
“I’d like to look at the pictures and things they’re hanging up on the railings down there. Maybe I might buy a couple of things.”
“It’s bound to be rubbish,” he said, not disagreeably, but as one who knew about such things.
“All the same, it would be nice to stroll around and then maybe go for a walk in the park,” she said.
“Perhaps we should move farther away from the hotel,” he said. He was right, of course. It would have been idiocy to have hidden it for seventeen months back home, where such things were hard to hide, and then blow it in a city of ten million people, just by parading around in front of people who were bound to know him, and to know that she oughtn’t to be there. Lisa agreed quickly.
“We can go anywhere else,” he said helpfully.
“We could get the underground to St. Paul’s and have a look at that,” she said eagerly, to show that she didn’t mind being a second-best woman, a person who had to be hidden rather than paraded.
“Yes, we could do that,” he said.
“Or walk up to Oxford Street maybe, and look at the shops.”
“They’ll be a bit crowded, Saturday morning,” he said.
She felt the familiar terror, the well-known realization that she was losing his interest came flooding over her. You counter that with brilliant acting, she told herself smartly. You don’t give in, you don’t allow yourself to look beaten or sulky. You act.
“Listen, my love, I’m doing all the suggesting, I don’t mind what we do. It’s a glorious day, even the man on the wireless said so. I’ll do whatever you’d like, or anyway I’ll discuss it.”
She smiled the bright birdlike smile that she felt must look so phoney. She always thought she must look like a model in an advertisement on telly who has suddenly been told she must act.
But no, as always, he responded as he would have done to a normal remark.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’d like to do,” he said.
“Yes?” Mask set, eyebrows raised, mouth in inquiring smile.
“It sounds a bit odd but, well, I’ve arranged to have one of these executive health checkups. You know, we were talking about them. They have them on Saturday mornings. Do everything—heart, blood pressure, X rays, blood tests, the lot. It makes more sense than spending hours and days at home.
“They have them on Saturdays so that executives can go without telling anyone at work what they’re up to. When I thought I was going to be here by myself, I booked one for today, and sent a deposit. I could cancel it but you…you know, it seems a pity. It would set my mind at rest.”
The fluttering fear that was never too far from her heart came back and buzzed at her, it even got into her eyes.
“Stop looking worried, funny face,” he said, laughing. “Nothing happens to me, it’s because I do things like this that I’m so healthy. They won’t find anything wrong. It’s just wise to have it done at forty-five, that’s all.”
She was ten years younger and a hundred times slower in every way, in thinking, in walking, in making up her mind, in knowing what to say.
“Are you sure you don’t have any pains or anything?” she faltered.
He was sure, and he was quite willing to cancel it. It was just that they didn’t have anything like this at home, and you know that once you went for any kind of checkup back there, everyone knew about it, and they all had you buried before you came out of the doctor’s surgery. Still, it did seem a pity to waste the nice morning, and she had been saying only yesterday that they didn’t have much time together, just the two of them. Perhaps he would ring and cancel it.
She knew she was being manipulated when she insisted that he go. She knew he used the phrase “just the two of us” in heavy inverted commas. She knew that he had never intended to back out of it for a minute. Anyway she thought it was a good idea for him to have the checkup. So it was on with the act.
No, nonsense, she would be very happy to stroll around herself. She’d meet him afterwards. She’d go down and look at those pictures that he didn’t want to see. It was ideal really, they could each do what they wanted, and then meet for lunch.
He didn’t know whether it would be over by lunchtime. But she thought that this was the point, that the checkup took only a couple of hours. Yes, well he hoped so but maybe they had better not make a firm arrangement for lunch just in case.
Oh act, act. Fine, that suited her too. After she had looked at the paintings on the railings, she’d have a quick look at Oxford Street, and then take the tube to St. Paul’s. She hadn’t been there since she was a child, she’d love to see it again. Don’t cling, don’t cling, you mustn’t appear dependent. Choose some very late time and he’ll suggest earlier. He’ll like you for saying you can manage alone, you’ll like it if he says he wants you earlier. Don’t ruin it, don’t balls up the glorious day.
“Why don’t we say six o’clock here!” Bright, light tone, utterly nonclinging, utterly ridiculous as a suggestion. His examination couldn’t possibly take from eleven in the morning until six at night.
“That sounds about right,” he said, and the day went dark, but the voice stayed bright, and there were no giveaway signs as she bounced cheerfully out the door.
The lobby looked less glittering and glamorous and Londonish. It looked big and full of people who trusted other people or didn’t give a damn about other people. She looked at the house phones on the wall. Should she ring up and just say “Love you”? They did that to each other, or they used to a lot in the beginning. No, it was silly, there was nothing to be gained and it might irritate him. Why risk it?
She wound her way across the road, jumping this way and that to avoid the traffic, because it looked too far to walk to the pedestrian crossing, and anyway she was anxious to get to the other side. It reminded her of Paris, and all those thousands of water colours of Notre-Dame, all of them exactly the same and all of them different prices, or so it seemed.
There was a young man with very red hair and a very white face looking at her.
“Scarf, lady?” he asked hopefully.
“I want to look at everything before I buy,” she said happily.
“Surprising more of you Northerners aren’t killed if that’s the way you cross roads up there,” he said good-naturedly.
He meant it nicely. It was to keep her chatting, she knew that. She also thought that he fancied the look of her, which was nice. She felt it was so long now since anyone had fancied her that she wouldn’t know how to react. But somehow his marking her out as a Northerner annoyed her, she was irritated, even though she knew it was said in friendship. Di
d she sound provincial, did she look provincial, crossing the road like that?
Suddenly she thought with a violence that made her nearly keel over, that there was a great possibility that he thought she was provincial too. That could be the reason why he wasn’t prepared to make any public announcement of their being together. Not announcement, she didn’t really want as much as that, she wanted…a bit of openness. It was bloody obvious now that she thought of it. Living with someone, having it off with someone, having an affair, all this was accepted now…by everyone.
She stood there, not even seeing the blur of Towers of London, Trafalgar Squares, and Beefeaters that waved like flags from the scarf rack. She could only see herself years ago at suppertime, listening to her mother talking about people who gave themselves airs. Her mother had wanted Lisa always to remember that she came from good stock. They could hold their heads up with any of them, they were as good as anyone for miles around, they had nothing hidden away that could never be dragged out. Lisa and Bill never knew what brought on these kinds of statements, they had never even known what she was talking about. Suddenly Lisa knew. It was the reassurance game, it was trying to say “it’s all right.”
Lisa felt like shouting it out aloud this very moment. She had an urge to tell the boy with the red hair that her father had been a local government official, that her mother had been a nurse, that her mother’s father had owned a chemist’s shop. She wanted to say it in a voice so clear and loud that he would hear it, before he left for his checkup, so that he would realize how lucky he was to have gotten a girl from such good stock who was so willing to play along in a shabby game with him. That it was against her training, her background, her…well her kind of people. She wanted him to know, without having to spell it out, that she was better than he was, better in the way that older people valued things, that she had come from respectable people. His father had worked in the potteries, that much she knew and only that.
Of course he had married into money, and why shouldn’t he, a bright boy like him? Any family would have been delighted to have him as a son-in-law. Would her own family have liked him? Yes, her father would have admired him, her mother would have been a bit boringly embarrassing about stock, but she would have accepted him. However, she’d have liked him to know, if only there were some way of telling him indirectly, that her family wouldn’t have fallen over themselves in gratitude…that he’d have had to make an effort to be accepted.
Lisa’s head cleared and she looked at the boy again.
“I don’t feel very well,” she said, feeling she owed him some explanation of why she was standing there looking at him wildly.
“Do you want to sit down, darling?” he asked kindly, and pushed out a stool for her. He looked a bit worried and even embarrassed. His customer had turned out to be a nut case. That’s what he must be thinking, Lisa told herself miserably.
He gave her a cup of very sweet coffee from his little orange flask. Over the rim of the cup she looked up at the hotel. Was there any chance that he would be looking out the window and would see her sitting down, drinking coffee there? Would he be worried, would he rush down to know if she felt faint? What would she say if he did? But as the hot sweet coffee went down inside her chest, Lisa had another feeling too. No, he wouldn’t be looking out the window, straining for a view of her crossing the road. She did that kind of thing, he didn’t. She was the one who would look hopefully out the window of the flat at home to see him turning the corner in the evenings. If she was the late one home, he was always reading or looking at television. He never stood at windows. He wouldn’t be looking down.
“I feel much better, thank you ever so much,” she said to the red-haired boy.
“You still look a bit shaky, love,” he said.
“Could I sit here for a little bit?” asked Lisa, more to please him really than because she wanted to. She thought he would like to feel he was doing her a service. She was right, he was delighted. He moved the stool back against the railings and lit her a cigarette while he talked to two Americans and sold them a wall hanging with Big Ben on it.
“When they get home they’ll probably have forgotten what city Big Ben is in,” he said. He didn’t think much of Americans, he told her. Scandinavians were educated people, Americans weren’t. He asked her if she was going to be in London for long.
“My husband is going to Harley Street for a checkup today,” she said cosily. “It may depend on what he’s told. But I think we’ll be here a week.”
She wondered whether she was going mad, actually mad, at the age of thirty-five. It did happen to people, they started telling the most fantastic, unreal tales and nobody noticed for a while, then they had to go and have treatment.
“Harley Street today, a Saturday?” said the red-haired boy cheerfully. “Meeting some bird more likely. You won’t find any doctors in Harley Street today. You’d better keep an eye on your old man, my darling, he’s with some blonde.”
He smiled a big cockney grin, full of quickness and good humour. He liked most people he met, this boy did. He didn’t particularly fancy her probably, he was like this with old dears of a hundred and with fellows as well.
“It’s possible,” she said. “Quite possible.”
The red-haired boy looked alarmed. She must look as if she were going mad again; he must be regretting his little pleasantry.
“He’d be mad if he was,” he said. “Lovely woman like you, no blonde could be any better. No, he’d need his head examined he would, if he told you he was going to a doctor and went off to hold hands in a park with a blonde.”
His face had a kind of transparency about it. It was watery somehow, with pale eyes set far apart from each other. It was a very simple face. It wouldn’t disguise things, and look differently to the way it was feeling. It wasn’t the kind of face that could smile and tell you that its health needed a checkup if it wasn’t true. That face could never become troubled and talk about its marriage having been a sad sort of thing, better not spoken of, if in fact his wife was pregnant and he was planning to try and get the marriage revved up again.
“Are you married?” she asked him.
“No, darling, never met a lady that was worthy of me,” he said.
“Neither am I,” she said.
She didn’t care what he thought. She tried not to look at the flicker of puzzlement and irritation that came over his white, transparent face. It was because of his face that she had decided to tell him the truth, even though it would have been better in the short encounter between them if she hadn’t.
She got up, folded the stool together, and placed it very precisely beside the railings.
“I really do feel a lot better, thank you. I might come back and buy something from you later on,” she said.
“You do that, my darling,” he said, relieved that she was going. She felt that even here she had stayed too long, talked too much, revealed a dependence. Was she ever going to be able to stop?
There was an opening into the park and she walked in. The grass was yellowish, there hadn’t been any rain for a long time. A series of glorious days probably. She looked at the people. No delegates to the conference, nobody from back home had arrived yet; there was no danger of being seen by anyone. And even though he was careful about his health, it was funny that he hadn’t said anything about the checkup before. And why had they got a “Mr. and Mrs.” card with the fruit and flowers? He must have said all along that he was bringing his wife with him. And the room had already had a double bed in it, before he had planned for her to accompany him. And what kind of fool did he think she was to believe he was having an executive checkup all bloody day? Or did he care what she thought? Was it just a case of it being more comfortable to have an undemanding fool of a woman who paid her own way and wasn’t any extra trouble than not to have one, or to leave her at home sulking?
She strolled around idly, noticing that everyone in the park seemed to be with other people. There were groups of girls
, and there were families, and there were a lot of pregnant women walking with that proud waddle they develop, hands folded oddly over the bulk in front, managing to look frail as well as huge, so that husbands had protective arms around shoulders.
And she wondered, did he have his real wife in London for the week-end, and was he in fact going to go back to her, and was it she who was pregnant or someone else? Maggie would say anything to get her nice friend Lisa out of this thing. Or did he have some other girl, who also had to be fobbed off with lies and hurried telephone calls? She knew how real his excuses could sound. She wondered whether any other woman in the whole world would have gone to live with a man who was not divorced and who went home every six months to see his daughter, but apparently didn’t talk to his wife except about business matters.
She wondered if it was worth going back to the hotel to pick up the case. She thought not, really. It had cost £12 and that was a pity, but what was £12 compared to other things she had spent? She had her handbag with her and her money, there weren’t many clothes at the hotel. She hadn’t brought much with her in order not to appear too eager, not to look as if she was assuming that she was staying for the whole week.
She didn’t make any plans about what was his and what was hers in the flat. She’d sort that out tomorrow or the day after when she got back, and she’d take what she felt like taking. She wouldn’t take lots out of viciousness, or too little out of martyrdom.
She didn’t even start fussing and worrying about what stations the trains went from and how to get there, or what times they were at, and how much they cost. She didn’t even know whether she would go in to work on Monday and say her aunt hadn’t died in London after all. It was strange, but she didn’t even seem to be imagining how he would react when he came back at six o’clock and she didn’t turn up. Would he contact the police? Would it embarrass him with the hotel and with everybody? Would he think she was dead? It didn’t matter.
She always thought that things ended suddenly, that people had a big row, or they parted with clenched teeth and noble smiles like they did in old movies. And she stood still beside a seat which had a lot of old people sitting on it, and she took some deep breaths one after another as if she was testing to see how her heart was feeling, whether it was thudding, or if it was surrounded by that awful, horrible, empty feeling of fear like it so often was, when she thought he was angry or bored with her. And funnily it didn’t seem to be in a bad state at all.
