A Spy in the Family

by Alec Waugh

  What had she been, after all, when she had met him in the very first weeks of her first season, at the Queen Charlotte Ball, which now that débutantes no longer ‘made their bob’ at court was the equivalent of a presentation. She had been one of a hundred other girls, no one in particular, the daughter of solid parents, living in Wessex, well enough known in their own part of the country; her father, a solicitor, had as a Rugby footballer been capped for Somerset, but he was unheard of outside his own area of school and county. It was through Victor that she had come to take her place in the big world of London; through him she had become a wife, a hostess, and a mother. What in return had she done for him? Was she anything but an appendage, a flower to be worn in his buttonhole? If she had married someone else, she would have led a completely different life, while he would have led precisely the same life no matter whom he had married; anyone adequate would have done for him. He paid her compliments about the way that she made his parties go, but nothing surely could be easier than to make oneself gracious to one’s husband’s friends at a meal for the preparation of which one had no personal responsibility. She could not picture her life without him; through him she had everything that she had imagined for herself when she left that finishing school in Switzerland. What had she done for him? Had she completed his life? Was there something lacking in it? Was that the explanation of those visits to the Brompton Road?

  Looking at their reflection in the glass, he caught her eye, He smiled. It was a fond and reassuring smile. It must be all right. Of course it must. If their marriage was so right for her, surely it must be right for him.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I was only just remembering as I came home this evening. Your birthday’s on Wednesday week. How would you like to celebrate?’

  Her birthday. She had forgotten too. Her birthday … a rescuing wave of hope lifted her from the rocks. Might he not have gone to the Brompton Road to find a present for her, in one of those small boutiques off Montpelier Square? Someone might have recommended one. Or Harrods. That was the kind of store to which Victor went. A birthday present. What a fool she had been. What a ridiculous, suspicious fool.

  They decided to go to a cinema for her birthday, to a six o’clock performance. Then they would have dinner afterwards. ‘It’s much more fun that way,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to hurry over your dinner, and there’s not the same temptation to fall asleep during the film; besides, the cinemas are less crowded then.’ They also decided to go on the night before so that he could wish her a happy birthday when the clock chimed twelve.

  They got back to Hampstead soon after eleven. ‘I’ve a small bottle of champagne on ice,’ he said.

  Her heart was warm, aglow with expectation as she waited in the drawing room while he busied himself with the glasses and the wine. It had been a happy evening. They had seen The Graduate, and that somehow had provided the right stimulus for their mood. It was a wanton film and a romantic film, the kind of film that put you in the right mood for love-making. They had dined in Soho, at the Jardin des Gourmets. He had held her hand as they sat together on the banquette seat. What was I worrying about, she thought. How one imagines things.

  He brought up the champagne and glasses. He eased the cork out slowly, gently, millimetre by millimetre. It exploded with a lively ‘pop’. ‘That’s a good augury for the year,’ he said. ‘The last year was a good one, I can’t think of a year being better. May the next one be as good.’ He raised his glass, clinked it against hers, then sipped. It was clean and fragrant, with a fresh sparkle on the palate. He put his glass back upon the table. He moved beside her. He took her face between his hands; he lifted it to his. It was a long slow kiss, his lips lingering upon hers. She closed her eyes. Her toes curled inside her shoes. As he moved back to his chair, she picked up her glass and drained it quickly. She looked at the clock. It was barely half past the hour. ‘Would you like your presents now?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I like having them all together on the breakfast table. I’ve been holding all my letters back for the last three days.’ She did not want to dawdle over the half bottle. The message of The Graduate was thudding through her veins. Quickly, quickly. She was impatient, restless, eager to have her doubts set at rest.

  Victor had a small bed in his dressing room. She slept in a wide double bed with a high canopy above it. She put on a nightgown that had a Third Empire look. It was very long and creamy pink, with a ribbon that tied across it, high, just below her breasts. The neck was cut low, and the silk was pleated. It had very short frilled sleeves. She poured a drop of scent into the palms of her hands and rubbed it behind her ears and over her breasts. She sat up among the pillows, waiting.

  There was a tap on the door. ‘Come in,’ she called. The minute hand of her bedside clock had just that second passed the twelve.

  ‘Happy birthday,’ he said. He crossed the room, bent over her, and kissed her forehead. ‘May I tuck you up?’ he asked.

  ‘I think you should, shouldn’t you, on my birthday?’

  He slipped off his dressing gown. He switched off the light. On her dressing table was a candle and he lit it. He had left the light on in his room, and though the door was closed, a line of light above the carpet added to the candle’s glow. He slipped in beside her, on her right-hand side. He took her in his arms; gently, gently, he began to caress her shoulders. They had acquired over the years a routine of courtship; turning onto his left side, he slid his right ankle over hers, drawing it towards him, opening her thighs. She laughed, a low, light laugh. ‘Oh, that professional gesture.’ It had become, after their honeymoon, one of their secret jokes. ‘That’s how you used to seduce all those poor college girls,’ she said. His right hand moved along her shin, slowly, caressingly, over her knees, upwards, upwards. ‘Darling, I can’t wait,’ she said.

  Myra and Victor breakfasted apart. He had a continental meal—orange juice, corn flakes, toast, and coffee. He made it for himself. He liked to read his letters and his newspapers alone. Myra had her breakfast in the nursery. She made a meal of it. She did not usually go up till the front door had closed on Victor. She enjoyed dawdling in bed. On her birthday morning, he let her sleep on late—as an additional birthday present, he proposed to tell her when he came back that evening. He had left his present for her on the library table.

  Her eyes grew eager at the sight of it. She had never looked forward to a birthday present more. In the memory of a night of love, that package would be a doorway opening on to an unclouded year. She picked it up. It was soft, some sort of material. She turned it over, her fingers itched to open it. But she wanted to savour the pleasure of delay, in the way that a child leaves the best cake till last. In the drawer of her desk she had kept the letters and presents that she had received during the last few days; there were three birthday cards and two packets. She knew that Jerry would have something for her. She collected her spoils and went upstairs.

  As she had known there would be, a warm welcome awaited her. The Swedes made a big thing of birthdays. Jerry had been well briefed. She clapped her hands; she sang, ‘Happy Birthday to You.’ A small sugared cake had been adorned with a coloured candle. There was also on her plate, beside a very small present, a picture drawn by Jerry.

  ‘Oh, how spoiled I am,’ cried Myra. The package was from Anna and Lena. It contained a painted china egg-cup. ‘That’s dear of you, that really is,’ she said. She spread out her other presents.

  ‘Let’s see what you’ve got,’ said Jerry. ‘Let’s see what Dadsey’s given you.’

  ‘No, breakfast first,’ said Myra.

  ‘No, no, presents first.’

  Jerry was as excited about the presents as though they were her own. ‘Now which is Dadsey’s? Let’s have it first.’

  ‘No, no, let’s have it last. It’s bound to be the best; always keep the best till last.’

  Lingering over each one, Myra opened them slowly, painstakingly; knotting a scarf round her neck, examining herself in
a mirror to see how it suited her. At last there was only the one big packet left. Jerry pounced on it. ‘That’s Dadsey’s. I’m going to open it myself.’

  ‘No, no,’ Anna expostulated. ‘Your mother must open that herself. It’s her very special one.’

  ‘All right. Let her do it. I’ll enjoy seeing the wrappings go.’

  It had been skilfully gift-wrapped and the wrappings were highly decorative. Jerry could not resist examining them. It all took quite a while. But at last Myra reached the tissue paper; it tore easily.

  ‘It’s lovely. Oh, isn’t it?’ Jerry exclaimed.

  Yes, it was lovely—a twin-set in primrose-coloured cashmere. It was something that she had hankered for. But her heart was cold. It had been wrapped by Simpson’s, Piccadilly.

  3

  The Trails’ family doctor was a man of fifty-five named Forest Clarke. Victor had been his patient for twenty years. Dr. Clarke’s father had looked after Victor’s father. Dr. Clarke had brought both Myra’s children into the world. When Myra telephoned for an appointment, he assumed that his father’s old friend was to be blessed with another grandchild. But Myra shook her head. ‘Nothing as dramatic as that, alas. I want some sleeping pills.’

  ‘There shouldn’t be any trouble about that.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. This was for him a case full of potentialities. Many men assert that they were unlucky in their birthday. That is their favourite alibi. They were born at the wrong time, they argue. They were too young for the first war, too old or too young for the second. Their education was interrupted, cut across. In one way or another, they were sidetracked. Dr. Clarke, on the other hand, asserted that he had been born in exactly the right year, 1913. He had practically no memories of the first war. His father, a respected Hampstead doctor with a large private practice, had been excused military service, but for services gratuitously rendered in military hospitals had been accorded, at the end of the war, the bonus of an O.B.E. His son had not therefore been deprived of his father’s care during his early childhood.

  From the beginning, Forest Clarke had followed his father’s footsteps. He had taken his degree from Guy’s in 1938. That meant that there was no break in his career on the outbreak of war. He applied for and received at once a commission in the R.A.M.C. For six years he served as a doctor on several of the various fronts on which British infantry were in action. ‘That was,’ he would maintain, ‘my greatest piece of luck. I might, had there been no war and being something of a highbrow, have decided to go into psychiatry, which was the fashion then, to cure illness through the mind; but after the years of dealing with wounds and the kinds of malady that troops acquire, I felt that there was a great need for the man who can alleviate specific and immediate physical distress; for that you need the man who can cauterise a septic sore. I decided to remain a general practitioner.’ Yet since he had grown up in the hour when the world was beginning to recognise how much the mind was responsible for physical distress, Myra Trail could have very easily found a worse consultant.

  He drew a pad towards him. He scribbled a prescription on it.

  ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I would be grateful if you could explain to me why you need these pills. You are young. You are healthy. As far as I know you have no problems. How long have you not been sleeping?’

  ‘For about a month.’

  ‘When you say that you don’t sleep, what exactly do you mean by that? Do you find it difficult to fall asleep?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘When you wake up in the night, do you have difficulty in getting off to sleep again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you sleep in the same bed as your husband?’

  She flushed.

  ‘I have a double bed; Victor has a small bed in his dressing room.’

  ‘Does he often spend the whole night with you?’

  ‘What do you call often?’

  ‘More often than not?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘What I was getting at is this: are you disturbed by having Victor in the same bed as you?’

  ‘Oh no; no. I can’t say that.’

  ‘Because, you know, it does often happen that a husband interferes with a wife’s sleep and vice versa. The one goes off to sleep right away and the other doesn’t. There are many who like to read themselves to sleep, and they can’t because they’ll disturb their partner. Then again there are those who when they wake up in the night like to read themselves back to sleep; they can’t switch on the light because it would disturb the other. But that isn’t your problem, is it? It’s not that you want to read and can’t because Victor’s there.’

  ‘No, it isn’t that.’

  ‘You haven’t, in the past, made a practice of reading yourself back to sleep?’

  ‘In the past I’ve never been troubled by not sleeping. No, I’ve never had to read myself back to sleep.’

  ‘It’s one of the best ways. It’s what I always do myself. I can strongly recommend it.’

  ‘I suppose I could try that.’ But she sounded unconvinced.

  He asked her if she had headaches.

  ’Only if I’ve been awake for a long time and then … but no, I don’t really think I know what a headache is.’

  ‘You don’t have any pains, no aches, so that if you stay in one position for more than a few minutes you feel uncomfortable?’

  ‘No, it’s not that.’

  ‘You do see, don’t you, what I’m getting at? There may be some physical condition that is at the root of this trouble. If that’s the case, sleeping pills won’t do you any good. They alleviate the results of trouble, but they don’t take away the cause. I’m wondering if you shouldn’t have a general checkup.’

  She shook her head. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m very sure of that. I’ve never been ill. You gave me a checkup before my children were born; sound as a bell, you said.’

  He looked at her thoughtfully. She looked well enough, a thoroughly healthy creature; perhaps because he had been consulted about these sleepless nights he could detect a look of tiredness around the eyes. But would he have noticed that unless he had been consulted? Anyone meeting her casually at a party would have thought, There’s someone thoroughly wholesome and attractive. She must have something on her mind.

  ‘You don’t feel any discomfort, any pain then, as you lie awake?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have difficulty in getting off to sleep or do you wake up after you’ve been asleep a little?’

  ‘It’s both.’

  ‘And then you lie there brooding.’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Brooding about what?’

  ‘About everything.’

  ‘About cheerful things?’

  ‘Not always.’

  ‘What have you got to brood about that isn’t cheerful?’

  ‘Oh, this and that.’

  ‘Such as?’

  She shrugged. ‘We all have our problems, don’t we?’

  ‘Not all of us. Or only a few problems. You in particular I would have thought didn’t have too many. Money isn’t one of them.’

  ‘No, I’m lucky that way.’

  ‘And there’s nothing the matter with your children.’

  ‘I’m lucky that way too.’

  ‘Most of my patients have servant worries, or lack of servant worries. But you’ve got those two excellent Swedish girls.’

  Myra laughed. ‘I’m lucky every way, it seems.’

  ‘And I expect that most of your friends envy you your husband.’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  ‘Then really I don’t know what these grey thoughts are that keep you brooding when you ought to be asleep.’

  ‘That’s what I tell myself. I’m an idiot. I imagine things.’

  ‘What kind of things?’

  ‘Oh, you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s quite ridiculous. I know it is. I get th
ese fancies, and once I’ve got them, I can’t get rid of them.’

  ‘Yes, but what fancies? You haven’t told me what.’

  ‘It’s nothing. It’s just foolishness.’

  She has something on her mind. Something that she couldn’t bring herself to reveal. Should he, he wondered, continue to indulge her, to pry and needle, till at last her reluctance to confess gave way? That was one method. But there was another. He had been told as a medical student that a patient on the verge of hysteria could be brought to her senses by a sudden shock, a slap maybe or a glassful of cold water flung in her face. There were mental equivalents for that slap. It was worth trying, once at least.

  He rose to his feet. He picked up the prescription and gave it to her. ‘Perhaps it’s only foolishness. If it is, then maybe you are right; this is the cure. If you remove the result, then the cause, the root of the trouble will disappear. We doctors talk a lot, but we’ve no real knowledge yet of the causes of mental worry. Try these, and if they don’t work, come again.’

  His voice was brusque. There was a note of dismissal in it. He took a step towards the door. She looked up startled. She had expected the interrogation to continue for a little longer. She had been enjoying it. It was agreeable and refreshing to talk about oneself. Roman Catholics had realised that several centuries ago, and psychoanalysts were now cashing in on the contemporary world’s lack of faith. Myra looked aggrieved. He was delighted. He had guessed right. His abrupt leave-taking was the equivalent of a slap across the face. It had brought her to her senses. He held out his hand. But she did not take it.