Not Playing the Game

by Jennifer Chapman

  Standing in her kitchen, largely because activity with tap and kettle always seemed to ease the strain, she listened to him as he snatched at inadequate adjectives in these painful attempts at unburdening the sense of injustice, his despair in so hopeless and helpless a situation.

  ‘It’s so fuckin’ unfair. Lucien’s mine as well as her’s. Surely I got rights, ain’t I, Mick? You should know, you’re a lawyer.’ This put her in a most invidious position as Lawrence did have certain rights, but of the sort that could make life disruptive and difficult for Laura.

  ‘Please Mick, please,’ he implored her woefully. ‘I’ll go off me ’ead if some’t don’t get sorted.’ He was a most pathetic sight, slumped against the refrigerator, in his strange trousers, effeminate mauve mohair jumper. His face was pale with suffering, and his too short haircut added to the impression of vulnerability in exposing that area of his neck just behind the ear as he stared down at his feet.

  ‘I’ll speak to Laura,’ was the most Mickey could offer, though she knew it would be wasted breath and, sorry as she felt for Lawrence, she couldn’t help a sense of relief that her sister had recognized his limitations as insurmountable in the long term.

  The cricketers were going in for their tea, and undaunted by Emily’s ‘players only’ pronouncement, Samantha skipped along behind them.

  ‘They won’t let her have anything,’ Emily declared, knowingly, extracting a flask and foil-wrapped package from her capacious bag.

  ‘They will!’ Laura said, getting up and following.

  Mickey and Emily were left alone with the sleeping baby.

  ‘Haven’t seen you much lately,’ Emily said.

  ‘No, I’ve been busy,’ Mickey told her.

  ‘I envy you, you know,’ Emily continued, disconcertingly. ‘Your job, your home, being married. I don’t think Simon will ever ask me. I think he’s always hoping something better will turn up.’

  ‘Oh, Emily, I don’t think so! He seems so fond of you and you’ve been together – how long?’

  ‘Thirteen-and-a-half years.’

  ‘You must have been very young,’ Mickey murmured, there wasn’t a lot more you could say in response to such an accumulation of time.

  ‘It’s seeing babies that makes me, well, envious. I expect you and David will be having one soon.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Mickey said, but the notion gave her pause. Supposing David suggested they have a child? The David whom she had shared a bath with and who’d brought her cups of tea in the morning when she was still in bed and who, even now, when he was there, really there and not in an alcoholic stupor, could say things that made her heart seem to swell, the dry yet affectionate observations and unself-conscious intimacy that sprang from the assumption of indefatigable permanence.

  The taste of that intimacy was still there, just. Permanence was an issue she had fought shy of, wanting too much in too many ways; wanting more of David than the meagre bit she received; wanting companionship, understanding, intellect, but finding these things on offer with Arthur.

  The essential difference in the two relationships was the ways in which she felt she was known in each. David seemed to know her in a way that was elevating but Arthur knew the lot, more than she did herself. He accepted the mean bits, even pointed them out to her when she’d thought them well disguised. She couldn’t hide anything from him. He cut through pretence and posturing, exposing the base motivation and selfishness and got away with it because she couldn’t resist his cleverness.

  ‘I can’t think why you want me to come here,’ she said to him in the rather arch, defensive tone she used in that place but nowhere else.

  ‘Neither can I when you make stupid compliment-seeking remarks like that,’ he had answered her the previous weekend, and for an instant she’d thought, ‘This is ridiculous and I don’t need it.’ But then he had made her sit down and knelt in front of her and rested his head in her lap and said that he loved her. And she knew that she had the upper hand even though she did not particularly want it, and that she was caught by her inability to cause deliberate pain. Arthur, for all his sagacity, had ensnared her with his peculiar vulnerability.

  That evening they went to London, to the Royal Opera House. It was an outing he had suggested weeks before and which she had agreed to in the belief it would never take place. Each time she went to him there had to be a corner of her thinking that denied what was happening, that pretended it was all just an episode, soon to be finished even if the ending had still to be worked out. But Arthur was so agile in extracting commitment from her. He had a way of assuming her complicity that was almost childlike in its insistence.

  He’d ordered a taxi for five o’clock and a few minutes before it arrived he brought out a long velvet cloak, with a heavy braid fastening at the neck.

  ‘It belonged to my mother,’ he told her. ‘Please wear it. It would please me so much.’

  ‘Do people still dress up like this for the opera?’ she asked, allowing him to slip the thing round her shoulders.

  ‘I wouldn’t know, but does it matter what other people will be wearing?’ he answered tetchily.

  To Mickey it did. She hated to be conspicuous, the more so on such an occasion as this.

  ‘It suits you. In fact you look quite beautiful this evening, that extra edge of trepidation, it makes your eyes sparkle,’ he observed, inspecting her as if she was his creation. She’d seen this proprietorial expression once or twice recently. It was a little disquieting as if, having found out everything about her and stripped away her defences, he’d now started work on an empty canvas from which would emerge a new picture, recognizable only to him.

  In the taxi the velvet cloak made her feel hot and uncomfortable but she kept it on, unwilling to spoil the seeming completeness of his pleasure or perhaps not wanting to precipitate in the presence of a third person, the sudden tetchiness he had begun to exhibit if she showed less than wholehearted participation in the little set pieces he arranged for them.

  It was her first visit to the Royal Opera House and something she could not have envisaged happening with David, which perhaps made it easier. Their seats were good, in the Stalls Circle and the elegant beauty of the place filled her with a sense of gratitude towards Arthur for thinking to bring her here. The opera was La Traviata and done so well Mickey became quite affected by the inevitable tragedy of the story.

  Arthur had allowed her to remove the cloak so that in the first interval, when they went out to the bar, she felt less immediately noticeable; but during the second she asked to remain in the auditorium. Suddenly it seemed that at any moment someone would recognize her. The backs of heads looked familiar. People making their way along the aisles glanced in her direction. It had been a mistake to come to a public place. Unwisely she conveyed her misgivings to Arthur.

  ‘You know a lot of opera-going people, do you?’ he remarked, sarcastically.

  ‘No, of course not,’ she murmured.

  ‘Perhaps it upsets your delicate sensibilities to be with so unprepossessing a companion,’ he continued.

  ‘Please Arthur!’ she whispered, trying to stop him.

  ‘I don’t see why you should worry. Do I look like your lover?’

  ‘Please don’t spoil this evening,’ she begged him in her muffled tone.

  Mercifully the bell had gone, signalling the end of the interval and in a moment the lights dimmed.

  Throughout the final act she was aware of Arthur sitting stiffly in the adjoining seat and her thoughts dwelt more on her own situation than that of Violetta as she sang her dying scene. In removing her affair with Arthur from the insularity of his room over the shop she had allowed it recognition and this was what disturbed her.

  When they left the Opera House, Arthur wanted to extend the outing by going for a meal. It was as if he’d sensed her doubt and wanted to put it further to the test. Reluctantly, Mickey agreed to the idea and they found a small Italian place off Long Acre.

  Inside the restau
rant, seated at a dimly lit corner table, she again made the mistake of attempting to explain how she felt, that it seemed wrong, their being together like this. Her voice had a detectable quaver as she tried to find adequate expression for this sense of wrongness and as Arthur watched her from across the small table, she realized, for the first time, that she was afraid of him, and that he probably knew it.

  He let her finish without interruption. What she said sounded confused and unconvincing so that she realized all he was doing was allowing her to defeat her own argument.

  ‘What you mean,’ he said, when she’d finished, ‘is that you don’t know what you want.’ He said it like a statement of fact, an objective assessment of a muddled monologue. His magnified eyes gazed at her, his mouth thin and unrelenting.

  I do, she thought, but I can’t tell you. I want the life I thought I was going to have when I married David, that’s all.

  ‘You want an ideal,’ he said, as if reading what had become clear in her mind. ‘You want openness and self-respect but you’re tempted by intrigue. This illicit little arrangement of ours doesn’t quite fit in with Mickey’s image of herself, does it?’

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you,’ she said.

  ‘You haven’t,’ he countered. ‘Only yourself.’

  ‘What’s your part in it, then?’ she asked, her chest tight with this strange and sudden fear of him.

  ‘Interested observer,’ he answered and allowed a small, pained smile to cross his face. ‘I’d no idea it would be fascinating to watch you grapple with your entirely misplaced sense of loyalty, or perhaps you’ve misled me. Perhaps you are married to a wonderfully decent, accommodating chap, who totally understands your need to experiment elsewhere. Yes, surely that must be the case. How foolish and naïve of me to have accepted what you said, that he doesn’t know or question where you spend your weekends. No husband could be that careless.’

  An ebullient waiter arrived with their food. Mickey felt sick. She knew that Arthur’s sarcastic spite was his particular form of defence. Again he was implying that she’d used him, and shamefully, but it didn’t feel like that. She now knew she was more his victim than he hers. She’d been sorry for him initially, largely because of his physical shortcomings, then he’d made her feel sorry for herself and in this weakened state he’d got to her. She didn’t even like him now, but there was this sense of irrevocable involvement, a sort of compulsion to do as he wanted.

  When she was with him everything was intense and vivid, but not in the same way it had been with David at the beginning: with Arthur it was more like an unwholesome and ghoulish attraction towards disaster.

  For the rest of the evening he was pettish, finding fault with everything she said, a layer of sarcasm in each remark. Mickey felt miserable and peccant and when they got back to the shop and his room over it she resolved to tell him she wouldn’t go there any more.

  ‘What a rotten evening,’ she said as a preamble, her heart beginning to pound. ‘Arthur.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Arthur, I . . .’

  He was standing by the window, its curtains undrawn, his finger tracing a pattern in the condensation. Then he moved away and she saw he had written ‘A loves M’. He turned to face her, then rushed forward and threw himself on his knees in front of her, putting his arms tight round her waist and his head against her stomach.

  ‘Don’t say it!’ he begged. ‘Don’t say it.’

  Poor, ugly little man, she thought, with a twinge of revulsion, but the contrast between the person whom she had discovered to be a tyrant and the one who now knelt at her feet was too much for her. She lifted her hand and for a moment it hovered above his head, then she touched his hair and gently began to stroke its thinness.

  *

  ‘A bit stewed, I’m afraid.’ David handed her a cup of tea and crumbly wedge of the ‘bought’ cake.

  Surely he must suspect. And is that what I want? Mickey thought. Is this stewed cup of tea the twig of an olive branch? Not the tea itself but his apologizing for it being stewed.

  He was still standing in front of her, holding out the cup and saucer and the plate and it seemed he was looking at her in a particular way, really looking as opposed to seeing but not noticing.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, taking what he had brought her. ‘Is Samantha alright? Has she had something?’

  ‘Oh, we scraped together a few crumbs for her,’ he replied.

  ‘It’s a pity she didn’t come a weekend the team’s playing at home,’ remarked Emily, who had fetched out the everlasting Arran sweater she was knitting for Simon.

  ‘D’you think you’ll ever finish that thing?’ Mickey asked, remembering it from the beginning of another season, using it as a distraction.

  ‘Simon will need it for the South African tour,’ Emily said, ramming on with the fat needles, piston-like.

  Mickey looked up at David whose face had acquired an unconvincing smile.

  ‘I was going to tell you this evening,’ he said, and she realized she had mistaken the flavour of the tea.

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,’ David said.

  ‘But it’s wrong. It’s immoral,’ Mickey commented.

  ‘What does immoral mean?’ interrupted Samantha, who had not, apparently, gone to sleep.

  ‘Lots of things,’ Mickey answered in a hasty aside, but feeling her face colour. ‘I thought you were in bed.’

  ‘I came down for a drink of water,’ Samantha justified, sidling round the back of the sofa.

  David, who was paging through Ceefax on the television, searching for the Test Match report, said: ‘Immoral, Samantha, is breaking the rules, stealing and not telling the truth, doing bad things behind other people’s backs. It’s nothing to do with playing cricket.’

  ‘It’s got everything to do with playing cricket if the people you’re playing against are breaking the rules,’ Mickey said angrily, but horribly aware of her own rule-breaking and that her aggression was accentuated by guilt.

  ‘Give it a rest,’ David said, wearily. ‘Come on Samantha, up to bed. I’ll get you a glass of water.’

  ‘But I’m not sleepy,’ Samantha whined.

  ‘Yes you are,’ David said firmly, and putting his arm round her shoulders, gently propelled her from the room.

  Alone, Mickey asked herself whether she really cared about the oppression of black South Africans or only wanted a sin to place against David; doubtless, Arthur would say the latter.

  David remained upstairs some while and when he came down it was evident he had been getting ready to go out.

  ‘I’m sorry but I said I’d go to the club tonight. There’s a lot to be organized,’ he said, jangling his car keys in his pocket.

  ‘For this tour, you mean,’ Mickey said heavily.

  ‘We’ll be playing black teams as well as white,’ he proffered.

  ‘And that makes it alright, does it?’

  ‘Yes, I think it does,’ he said defensively. ‘Mickey, I’d no idea you felt so strongly, and I have the feeling you’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘Convince me! Oh please stay and convince me,’ she said with sudden urgency.

  David looked a little surprised by this outburst, and temporarily torn.

  ‘Look, I’ll be late,’ he pleaded. ‘We’ll talk about it later.’

  ‘You haven’t even said when you’re going,’ Mickey said as he turned from her.

  ‘The week after next. We’re replacing another team. It’s all rather short notice. That’s why I must go to the club this evening. Mickey, I’m sorry. I only knew about it myself a couple of days ago.’

  It was on her lips to say ‘Can’t I come with you?’ but she’d already burnt her boats.

  An hour or so later the doorbell rang and it was Josephine, looking dramatically depressed.

  ‘For once you’re here,’ she exclaimed. ‘If you were anyone else and not married to the beautiful David, I’d accuse you of havin
g a secret lover. Oh, don’t look so pofaced. I didn’t mean it. Mickey, I’ve missed you, where have you been?’ she said, with sighing breaths and distraught expression. But Josephine’s demeanour was as predictably changeable as always, and a moment later, her question unanswered, she had begun the telling of her night with Dan Lovell

  ‘On a scale of one to ten I’d say seven, which isn’t bad and might have been eight if he hadn’t called me the wrong name in the morning,’ she said, settling into a corner of the sofa. ‘He’s nice though. I like him. And he’s got stamina.’

  Dan was suddenly to be viewed in a different light. Mickey had never thought of him sexually and found it uncomfortable to do so now. She hoped, fervently, that Josephine was not going to force detail upon her.

  ‘I wanted to ask you something.’ Josephine’s voice had lowered to a level of deadly earnest. ‘Do you happen to know whether he might have had a vasectomy. I mean, he was married, wasn’t he?’

  Mickey had a suspicion of what lay behind the question.

  ‘Oh dear, are you worried?’ she said. I’m sorry but I don’t know. It’s not the sort of thing I’ve ever talked about with him.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose it is,’ Josephine sighed, resignedly. ‘Oh Mickey, you’re so pure!’

  ‘No I’m not,’ she said uncomfortably. ‘We are rarely as we seem.’

  ‘Oh you are, darling Mickey. You’re positively driven snow whatever you might think.’

  ‘You are worried, aren’t you?’ Mickey said.

  ‘Not really. I merely wondered for future reference. I’ve always been a duffer with contraception and I thought there was a chance Dan Lovell might be a safe option. Men who have vasectomies often boast about it. It’s sort of inverted sexual snobbery.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I say, you couldn’t ask him, could you?’

  Mickey gave her a pleading look.

  ‘I thought not,’ Josephine conceded.

  ‘Look, I didn’t come round here only to ask you that,’ she continued. ‘Mickey is everything alright between you and David. I only ask because you’re my best friend and I worry about you.’