An Impossible Marriage

by Pamela Hansford Johnson

  ‘Oh, her! She lasted longest. I suppose he doesn’t still see her? He never could get off with the old before he got on with the new. That’s what led to some of the complications.’

  I could not believe this was happening: that I was sitting with forthright, ugly Nelly Ormerod in a teashop in Oxford Street and that she (not a tactless woman—like Ned, she was only ‘tactless on purpose’) was trying to torment me. I realised that the expression in her eyes was one that I had seen before in the eyes of people frustrated, luckless, who, normally kind, will suddenly seek relief from their own dissatisfactions through outbursts of motiveless malice. This impulse to upset me was obscurely connected, I believed, with Miss Fisher and the brooch Nelly would not let her buy: I had simply appeared at the wrong time, though I did not know why it should be wrong, nor what silent pool I had muddied by my stumble.

  I said, ‘I do know Ned. That’s why I can’t think of him as a Grand Turk.’

  ‘That may be putting it strong. But, my dear girl, the debts he ran up on account of them!’ She paused. ‘You didn’t think it was gambling, did you?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ Nelly murmured, her face softening into the disguise of innocence, ‘don’t tell me I’ve bothered you! What I was saying was, you’ve got him over all that, and more power to your elbow. You’ll be the making of him yet.’ She looked sated now, as if she had eaten richly and desired only to doze away the afternoon.

  We talked of other things; she kept looking at the clock. I told her I could not wait for Miss Fisher to return, but that I must go home to relieve Emilie.

  ‘Good luck,’ said Nelly, ‘and we’ll see if we can’t help about the baby.’

  All the way back in the bus I repeated to myself the hints she had given me, repeated them till it was a hideous luxury to do so, till I was trembling with something between anger and love reawakened.

  I waited for Ned to come in. I could not sit still. I walked about the flat, the muscles of my legs quivering beneath me. He was rather early. He came cheerfully into the room, bringing with him a Penguin detective story and a bowl containing two goldfish.

  ‘Here you are, silly. They may draw the line at pets here, but I thought these two would lie doggo enough. A chap was selling them on the Rise.’

  ‘I know where you went that night,’ I said. My mouth felt dry and evil-tasting, as if I had been sick.

  Ned put the bowl down. He looked at me, gaining time.

  ‘What night?’

  ‘The night you didn’t come back. I know where you were.’

  ‘Tell me, ‘said Ned, fire away.’

  He sat down.

  I said, ‘You were with Wanda.’

  I could not mistake his expression; it was one of pure, open surprise.

  The hell I was!’

  I told him not to lie: though I knew he was not lying.

  ‘Of course I wasn’t with Wanda! I haven’t seen her for nearly three years.’

  It seemed to me now that if I refused to believe him he would be obliged to tell me the truth. ‘That’s a lie,’ I said.

  He caught my knees, pulled me towards him. Gripping me tightly, he put his head to my waist and closed his eyes. ‘I was not with Wanda.’

  ‘Who were you with, then?’

  He said, in a kind of rage that was not for me, It makes me look a fool. And if you don’t believe it, it makes me look worse.’

  Who was it?’ I said.

  I was not prepared for the answer. ‘I went out with that girl of Dicky’s.’

  I cried out.

  ‘I rang her up. I’d thought about it once or twice before. I knew the kind she was when she came here; I spotted it at once.’ I asked him, as if hoping to prove his own story was untrue, how he had known her number.

  ‘She told us she had a flat of her own. I looked her up in the book, and there she was.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  Still gripping me at the knees, so that I stood over him, he told me he had arranged to take her for a drink. He had met her in Hatchett’s, had gone home with her afterwards, had failed to ask her what he had half intended and what she had thoroughly expected. ‘I couldn’t do it to you. And, what’s more, it all seemed silly. I bade her a tepid good night and went off. I got back on the last tube to Piccadilly but couldn’t get home from there without walking. So I stayed the night at Maddox Street. You can check that, if you want to.’ He paused. ‘And all that is footling and dismal and true. Of course, I should have telephoned you, but I was angry.’

  I heard myself asking why he had done this.

  He raised his head. The light fell on his eyes, making them beautiful in colour and very clear. His hands moved over me. ‘Because you don’t care. I thought I’d like an hour with somebody who did.’

  I believed his story. It was unquestionably true; it had the ring of truth, which is often a dull one. In his face I saw a strange hope that with this confession our troubles might melt like sugar in a teacup; that by some miracle we should be together as we had been for that short period after our marriage.

  I thought: After this we shan’t be able to go on together. Whether sooner or later, it will all be the same. I cannot bear it.

  For I had realised that the last jealousy had left me. I should have been angry and jealous; it was degrading to be neither, and it destroyed the last shred of hope. So long as I could feel with any glimmer of intensity about Ned, whether with desire or bitterness, hope had remained alive.

  I wanted even now to be kind, to be gentle, not to dishonour him; but I heard myself saying very clearly, ‘No, I don’t care. I can’t help it, dear. I don’t. I wish I could.’

  He let me go. Rising to his feet, he shook his head violently. He seemed quite lost, not knowing what to do next. He looked at the bowl. One fish, carrot-red, was lying half way up, mouth opened and white upon the glass. The other, pale yellow, was motionless at the bottom. Ned stirred the water with his finger and they both swam around. He felt in his pockets, brought out a paper bag and put it down beside the bowl. ‘You feed them with this. The man told me how to clean them out.’

  He tipped a little of the food into the water; it puffed into a dust, resettled and sank. ‘Hungry as hunters,’ he said.

  He put his arm round me, drawing me to stand by him, so that we could look at the fish together.

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ he said. Of course you don’t mean it. I know.’

  PART FOUR

  Chapter One

  Mark was a beautiful child, a firm, square baby, sweet as a beanfield to smell. He had Ned’s blue eyes, but they were happy ones. The soft hair over the fontanelle, the colour of a new penny, changed colour like wheat with a wind in it; it was strange and rather frightening to me to behold this beating life in the crown of a head. He was a ‘good’ baby—which means, one that gives little trouble; he ate well, slept well, and in his waking hours lay contentedly under a tree in the front garden, watching the branches move, the birds fly, or playing with a silver bell that Emilie had given him for a christening present and which had once belonged to my mother.

  He was, as I say, ‘good’; yet for the first eight months or so of any baby’s life the mother’s sleep is broken. Although I would put him back in his cot at half-past ten, after his feed, and he usually slept through the night to six or half-past, I seldom slept soundly. I was afraid of not hearing him; or, if I had lain awake long, became obsessed by the idea that it was scarcely worth going to sleep at all since he would rouse me again so soon. And the routine of caring for a baby, day in and day out, is very tiring. Emilie came sometimes to help me, but she did all things these days in so faraway a fashion, her eyes as vague, hopeful and innocent as if she perpetually beheld a formal grouping of angels harping by a glassy sea, that I never cared to trust Mark long in her
care.

  Ned had decided to ignore my confession of lovelessness as if it had never been. Not at all a histrionic man by nature, he now seemed to be acting the part of a cheerful, ordinary, humdrum husband in an ordinary, cheerful, humdrum marriage. He went about the flat whistling to himself with a bright, uplifted look; the strain lay far back in his eyes. Each morning and night he came to look at the baby, put out a finger to him, paraded all the clichés of fatherhood. A baby, he said, was ‘woman’s work’; he could not understand chaps who consented to push the perambulator. It was only under protest that he would hold Mark for a moment while I went to fetch rusks or orange juice— ‘I shall only drop him.’ It was as if he saw himself standing apart from us both, admiring, mildly amused, but insisting that his part in the affair had been over long ago.

  I was tired these days, locked in discouragement. When the baby smiled at me or held my fingers I felt he was the agent of some supernatural comforter; I began to feel supported by, dependent upon, this child still too young to sit or speak. When I was with him I was happy, for his radiance and beauty absorbed me. I could have worshipped him, as if he were God. But in long evenings, when Ned was either out or sitting about the flat re-reading his books —he seemed to have come to an end of all literary adventuring—I found myself falling sharply into self-pity.

  I never know why self-pity is considered especially disgraceful. It seems to me neither a virtue nor a vice, but simply an inevitable emotion. The sympathy of others is an uncertain thing at best. A friend may be genuinely sorry for us for an hour, but forget his sorrow the moment affairs of his own divert him—which is perfectly natural and right, but no consolation to us, in whom unhappiness may endure day in and day out. We have to be sorry for ourselves: nobody else can sympathise with us as steadily, as loyally as we, and it is from such sympathy that we draw strength to put a decent public face upon our misfortunes. ‘There’s a brave girl,’ says the mother to the child in the dentist’s chair who has just let out a roar of terror at the mere sight of mirror and pick; whereupon the child, proud of the accolade bestowed, will probably exhibit some genuine if minor bravery during the next ten minutes.

  I was sorry for myself because I was getting shabby, because I had no one to talk to, because I could never go dancing or to the theatre. I was still, of course, not twenty-one. My self-pity was at that time valuable, for it kept hope alive. Had I sturdily said to myself, ‘You have made your bed and you must lie on it, serve you right’, I should have accepted this as the last word on the subject and have sunk into despair. As it was, I could feel, now and then, the tingle of some irradiating hope, of some sudden joy in the dazzle of a spring morning, the all-immersing light of a full moon, the trembling glimmer of a cyclist’s lamp rimming the edge of the common. In one of these hopeful moods I sent the poem I had written on my night of worry to an editor whom I had not been ambitious enough to approach before. Once again I began to wonder whether I might not, after all, have some sort of a ‘career’.

  Ned was gentle with me, and once a week took me to the cinema. As Mr. Carker the Junior he had received no increase of salary this year (though Finnegan and the typists had); he did not seem bitter about it. He had fallen, so far as I could see, into a state of general acceptance that might last for ever. The newness had faded and shredded away from our home. There was no money for flowers. Mark seemed to me an astonishingly expensive baby.

  One Sunday in May, when Emilie was in the flat for tea and Ned was lying on the sofa re-reading Nostromo, Mrs. Skelton rang up. ‘As it’s such a nice day, may we pay you a state visit? We don’t want anything to eat. Just tea, or a drink.’

  ‘Who was that?’ said Ned.

  I told him.

  ‘What the devil do they want? There isn’t any drink, so Harriet can go without.’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better leave you,’ Emilie suggested.

  ‘No you don’t,’ Ned said quickly. ‘You stay here.’ He hoped we could induce her to miss church and sit with Mark while we went to the pictures—very occasionally, upon a Sunday, she would give us this liberty. ‘Now what are they up to?’ he repeated.

  They arrived in the car we were no longer permitted to use, and I watched them coming up the path; Mr. Skelton with his bantam strut, his social beam which, like a torch with a fading battery, he could not long maintain; his wife with her graceful, weary, lagging step, the lids half down over her full eyes.

  Mr. Skelton hailed me loudly. ‘Well? And how’s the baby’s baby? I must say you look blooming.’

  ‘We saw the baby,’ Mrs. Skelton said, in her slow, edged way; ‘you know we saw him, Harold. We looked at him in the garden. He looks very fit. So he should with all Chris’s care.’ She spoke to Aunt Emilie with poorly acted enthusiasm and stretched herself in an armchair.

  ‘No gin,’ said Ned. ‘We’re out of liquor and it’s Sunday.’ He glared at his mother, who looked scornfully back at him.

  ‘Such a charming greeting,’ she said to me. ‘Can’t you civilise Ned a little?’

  ‘The baby’s baby,’ said Mr. Skelton, ‘that’s the idea. Ought to be in rompers yourself, Christine. Isn’t that so?’ he demanded of Emilie. ‘Aren’t I right?’—of Ned. The battery failed. The torch went out. He sat down on the sofa and picked up Ned’s book.

  I could not help feeling myself on Ned’s side. The unity of marriage, even an unhappy one, is rooted in a kind of pride, and I could not bear that his parents should humble him, since in doing so they humbled me also. So I told myself that I was not going to be cordial at all. They had made him despondent, me shabby; they knew how I felt. I should not pretend to feel otherwise.

  ‘My dear Chris,’ Mrs. Skelton said, ‘haven’t you any felting under this carpet? It’s beginning to wear shockingly. You ought to have it repaired at once before you’re entirely threadbare in that patch.’

  ‘Repairing carpets costs a lot of money.’

  She looked at me. ‘Letting things go costs more in the long run. But I’m not interfering. This is your home.’ She peered at the bad patch again. ‘I’m afraid they sold you a pup with this.’

  Emilie, who had had the kettle on the boil, brought in the tea. I thanked her.

  ‘You must be a great help to Christine,’ Mrs. Skelton murmured. ‘I’m sure she wouldn’t know what to do without you.’

  ‘We must all do what we can, however little it is,’ Emilie replied breathlessly, as she watched the musical angels. Sugar?’

  ‘No milk, no sugar.’ Mrs. Skelton raised her voice to a languid, commanding tone. ‘Ned.’ No answer. ‘Ned, I am speaking to you!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Would you have a lemon?’

  ‘I’ll get one,’ I said. There’s one in the kitchen.’

  ‘My son will get the lemon,’ Mrs. Skelton announced. ‘Sit down, Mrs. Jackson!’—for Emilie had wavered in the direction of the door.

  Ned said to me furiously, ‘Where’s it kept! I don’t know where you keep the things.’

  I went to fetch it myself before there could be more discussion. Mrs. Skelton squeezed the juice into her cup. Thank you, Christine. But you mustn’t wait on Ned. It’s all wrong. It’s bad training.’

  I was furious with her; I felt she was belittling my husband in the same fashion (though less bizarrely) as Leslie’s mother had belittled her son. ‘Ned waits on me,’ I said, ‘but he knows I like the kitchen to myself. He always helps me.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she replied.

  ‘So am I,’ echoed Mr. Skelton, far off.

  When Mrs. Skelton had finished her tea and had lit her first cigarette she broke into the rather turgid flow of general conversation. It was pleasant to chat, she said, but they had come for a purpose. I might have thought that she was interfering about the carpet, but it was not so at all. It had simply reminded her of what she had come to say: that she and
her husband realised money must be short with us, and that though they had done their utmost for Ned and could do no more . . .

  ‘I’d touch my cap if I had one,’ Ned interrupted, with a curious lively smile at her, almost a friendly one.

  . . . there was one thing they were prepared to do. They were prepared to pay the entire expenses of my confinement, to pay for the perambulator, for the cot, for the cost of the first month’s nursing. Furthermore, they would make us an allowance of one pound a week to cover the baby’s food and clothes. ‘This,’ said Mrs. Skelton, ‘is our grandchild, and we have a right to help.’

  I was surprised by my own immediate reaction; it was one of relief. The gracelessness of being hard-up had, in itself, depressed me; a little extra money would make a great difference to us. If the Skeltons reimbursed us for what we had already spent there might be a new dress for me, a new suit for Ned, a new coat of paint in the living-room, and sometimes, perhaps, a few flowers in the vases.

  My second reaction, coming rapidly upon the first, was one of anger that their largesse should be thrown at us in this manner. I realised many years afterwards that the Skeltons could never have been as well-off as I had supposed and that indeed during the slump they must have been hard put to it to keep their business going at all. (Even the unnecessary job they had made for Ned must have been a drain on the falling profits.) But at the time their offer seemed to me not only insulting but parsimonious. I said nothing at all. I looked at my mother-in-law, who had folded her hands and closed her eyes. The smoke rose straight up from her cigarette to swivel grey and violet on the still air. Mr. Skelton was staring at his feet.

  ‘No, thanks,’ said Ned. ‘Very nice of you both, but, as you say, you’ve done your utmost for me. Chris and I can manage on the utmost very nicely.’

  His mother shrugged. ‘What does your wife have to say?’

  ‘I agree with Ned. We do thank you, of course.’

  ‘All right.’ Her eyes snapped open. Taking out powder puff and lipstick, she busily set to work with them. ‘All right. But the offer’s there. Whether you take it or not is up to you. What do you think, Mrs. Jackson?’