Not Playing the Game

by Jennifer Chapman

He sat very still. Mickey took the only chair on her side which left no more than two or three feet between them. The room was heavily institutional, even its odour, sourly disinfected, which was how Arthur looked in his grey prison clothes, not a hint of colour about him, the little hair he had, cut close to his head, his skin already gone to prison pallor.

  ‘How are you?’ she heard herself ask him.

  He didn’t answer, just sat there, disquietingly still, his face with the heavy glasses, pointing in her direction. Then a strange little smile spread across his narrow lips.

  The silence was impossible and although she knew she sounded nervous Mickey started to fill it with words about going to America and the work she would be doing there. She’d plucked at it as the safest subject but soon it seemed to her she’d chosen it as a means of conveying to him that she was putting herself as far out of his reach as was possible and suddenly it was as if this was her only reason for going; and all the time the smile remained.

  The five minutes she’d been allowed were mercilessly long and it seemed an eternity before anyone came to end it. In a sense she felt quite alone in the horrid room: but Arthur’s lack of response, apart from the awful, indicting smile, was, she thought, so unlike him – the person she thought she remembered that it might have been someone else sitting there, not even a proper person, but a sort of mummified creature brought out as a substitute. Then, just before she got up to leave he inclined his head slightly forward and she saw his eyes.

  ‘I knew you’d come,’ he said.

  That was all.

  Outside Mickey shuddered in the warm air. She had the sense of having been manipulated, even now, by the odd little man with the gentle but terrifying eyes. Still, she’d never have to see him again, at least, it was unlikely.

  She left the prison building but had to walk along a wired-in, raised corridor to reach the outer gates. Below and to her right there was a football match in progress, prisoners against prisoners. As she neared the gates she paused, far enough away not to be conspicuous to the players. The game was ragged but absorbing, the men wholly taken up in the activity, released from their fate for the brief length of the match. Someone scored a goal and even Mickey, from her distant vantage point, felt the euphoria: it wasn’t so difficult to understand.

  She turned away and proceeded to the gates and beyond.

  What had it all been for, she wondered. For her to gain an appreciation of games?

  That evening she had dinner with Dan whom she had not seen since leaving his bed. She was relieved to find nothing had changed between them in the sense that they were still fond friends with the possibility of something else developing, but hadn’t that always been there? Its likelihood seemed no greater and no less than it had before. It was at a comfortable level of middle distance.

  She told him where she had been that day and said it without any thought of his being jealous or disapproving. David she would not have told, but this essential difference eluded her this evening. And Dan, possessive by nature, but who by necessity, had long fought to subdue this aspect of himself, showed no indication of not liking this final gesture of involvement; and perhaps that would always be his particular weakness, the failure to convey a strongly felt, unreasonable emotion.

  They didn’t pursue the subject. Mickey was not forthcoming, largely because she was uncertain as to how she really felt about seeing Arthur in prison. Dan was more concerned that discussion of Arthur would lead to his own position. He had, that morning, told the constituency party that he would not be seeking re-election. The move was a compromise. It provided those out for blood with a degree of satisfaction and gave Dan and the party, a decent period of time for the immediate news value of the story to lose its edge. Scandal was what had to be avoided, and at all costs, though it might have seemed to some that the only real scandal was in there being one at all.

  Dan could not deny to himself a sense of defeat, but there was also disillusionment, and he wasn’t sure he could have overcome this sufficiently to carry on serving his electorate with the degree of commitment he’d felt in the past. As to the firm, he had not fully considered his position there. The more immediate and pressing issues had needed all his attention until today. He would, perhaps, speak to Victor Marriott again, though he realized now that he no longer especially cared, none of it seemed to matter in part, it was the whole that had formed his life, retaining an interest in the firm and being a Member of Parliament. He couldn’t imagine returning to the day to day existence of a provincial solicitor, and it hardly mattered to him in the way it did to Victor that his name remain in the firm. He was after all, no longer a family man.

  Even so, over the past week his thoughts had turned increasingly to the prospect of spending a few weeks seeing America during the summer recess and being with his daughter again, and perhaps Mickey. It was something he could look forward to but was wise enough to put it no higher than that.

  Mickey had assumed from his saying no more that his life would now carry on as before with no lasting damage to his career. It was a great relief to her that Arthur had changed his plea and she wondered now whether she shouldn’t have thanked him. With hindsight she felt she could have coped with a trial as far as it might have affected her, but the thought that it could so unfairly have sealed Dan’s future would have been too much to take.

  They ate their dinner and talked of America and things unrelated to events of the recent past. Somehow it seemed self-indulgent, even bad form to dwell any longer on what had happened.

  They parted early. Mickey had so little time left and she wanted to see Laura before leaving. She drove to the council flat where her sister was now well entrenched with her overfed lover. It seemed to Mickey that Laura’s situation was a depressing one but she appeared content, her earlier aspirations to an exciting, unplanned life completely vanquished. She was still lovely in an unkempt way. In the kitchen, galley-like and cramped, with buckets of soaking nappies cluttering the floor, she told Mickey that she wanted another baby.

  ‘I don’t want Lucy to be an only child,’ she said. ‘It would be nice for him to have someone to play with. The other children round here are so awful I don’t want him mixing with them.’

  Mickey felt unable to protest and was heartened a little by her sister’s latent snobbery.

  ‘Have you seen anything of David?’ Laura asked with her old directness. ‘You know, I felt sure you two would get back together.’

  ‘He’s going to marry Josephine,’ Mickey said, a wave of nausea rising in her. ‘She’s just had a baby.’

  ‘Oh really, was it a boy or girl?’ Laura enquired, innocently.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mickey said, stiffly.

  ‘You shouldn’t have let him get away, you know. You two seemed right together,’ Laura continued.

  ‘Maybe,’ Mickey managed to say. ‘Can we talk about something else.’ She didn’t want to cry in front of Laura and her lover who was watching television in the other room. Her crying with Dan had been bad enough. Laura, who had never seen her weep, would get upset, even disillusioned.

  ‘Perhaps you and Lucy could come out and visit me in America,’ she said hurriedly.

  ‘Really?’ Laura responded, sounding excited, then her face clouded a little. ‘I don’t know whether he’d let me,’ she said, indicating with a small movement of her head towards the room with the television.

  ‘I don’t see that he could stop you,’ Mickey protested.

  ‘He’s funny like that, possessive you know,’ Laura explained, weakly, and Mickey realized that this was how her sister liked it to be: she craved the status of victim largely because in just about every relationship she’d ever had the role of aggressor had come so easily.

  Mickey pictured the heavy man in the other room but even at so short a distance it was hard to remember his features. She wouldn’t say any more now but in a month or so she’d write to Laura and send her enough money for the air tickets.

  The next day p
assed quickly and she spent the evening at home with her parents, inevitably, looking through old photograph albums, the pages turned by Molly’s trembling hand. It was a bit of an ordeal, especially when her father, increasing his bad temper to camouflage his own emotion at her imminent departure, used the episode of nostalgia to further vilify Gordon.

  She was leaving on a Saturday and in the morning Dan came to collect her. She was thankful that her parents weren’t coming and knew it was because Molly had hopes of there being something with Dan, an ‘understanding’.

  They waved her off, standing at the front door, arm in arm and suddenly looking smaller than she’d always thought of them. The journey to the airport she and Dan used to go over once more the line she would be taking with regard to the work in New York.

  The traffic was fairly heavy and they reached Heathrow just as the flight was being called, leaving no time for the other words they might have thought to say. Mickey had little baggage apart from legal papers: she would buy new clothes in America, ones that fitted her very slim figure though maybe she’d stop losing weight in a new environment so far removed from the old.

  ‘I’ll let you know when I’m coming over,’ Dan said as she went through to passport control. They kissed one another as friends and parted with smiles, neither certain what each other held for the future, which way it might go. Dan was hopeful, more in that moment than at any other time. He made his way through the terminal building to the area where he’d be able to watch the plane take off.

  He stood alone at the wide expanse of glass and wished, briefly, as did many observers of departing planes, that he’d been a little more peremptory in his plans. His thoughts ran on, to America and three or four months’ time when he would be there. The breathing space was sensible, he felt sure. Mickey needed time to recover, from the horror of the rape and from David.

  His meanderings had travelled fatefully back to the present. Standing by his side, almost panting, was Mickey’s husband.

  ‘David!’ he exclaimed, the warmth of a few moments ago leaving him to be replaced by the coldness of defeat. ‘The plane’s just taken off,’ he added.

  ‘Traffic. The traffic was so bloody bad,’ David said between breaths, staring out at the sky.

  This is not what I want, Dan thought, God, I wish he hadn’t come.

  ‘Come on, let me buy you a drink,’ he said, stepping back from the glass.

  Reluctantly David turned away from his sky-gazing and followed Dan to the bar.

  ‘What can I get you?’ Dan asked. ‘A scotch?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll have a Coke,’ David said.

  Dan bought him the drink without question but David added: ‘I’ve been close to becoming an alcoholic over the past few months.’

  ‘I had no idea,’ Dan said.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t like you to think it was due only to Mickey going – it started before that. I think the seeds were sown years ago.’

  They leaned against the bar, which had few customers. It was past two o’clock and the airport was always quietest at weekends.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’m embarrassing you,’ David said. ‘God knows why I’m being so frank, perhaps it’s the strangeness of this situation – a bit dramatic really, rushing to the airport. Somebody told me last night that she was leaving today. I didn’t know what to do. I went to the club this morning. It was cricket nets, I thought I’d try and get started again – get fit for the season.’ He paused and looked across at Dan. ‘I wanted Mickey. All the time. I didn’t know what time the plane was due to leave but I had to get in the car and drive here. I think I’d have flipped if I hadn’t.’

  ‘It’s none of my business of course,’ Dan said, immediately thinking how stupid this sounded. ‘But I’d heard that you and Josephine . . .’ he trailed off. ‘I understand she’s just had a child,’ he completed the line of thought, hoping it didn’t sound too rebuking and pompous.

  The conversation worried him, he was concerned that he might be unable to prevent himself from intimating that his own understanding with Mickey was less tenuous than he knew it to be.

  ‘Yes. She had a son,’ David had answered.

  ‘Congratulations,’ Dan uttered. Did he sound bitter? If so, David hadn’t noticed, didn’t even appear to have heard.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to sort things out with Mickey,’ he said with preoccupation. ‘As soon as I can get a visa fixed up I’ll fly to the States.’ He paused, returning to the present, as if suddenly remembering Dan was there.

  ‘You don’t think it would be a wasted trip, do you?’ he asked, earnestly.

  Dan glanced past him, summoning the last of his reserves.

  ‘No,’ he answered slowly. ‘No, I don’t think it would be a wasted trip.’

  Relief spread into David’s expression.

  Dan knew he had lost and that the inevitability of it had been there from the beginning, but the situation descended upon him now with something more than disappointment.

  ‘I feel I ought to thank you.’ David said, ‘For looking after her when it should have been my job.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that either of us did a very good job there,’ Dan replied, without rancour, though he felt a small degree of resentment that apparently it had not occurred to David there might have been more to his ‘looking after’ Mickey.

  ‘Anyway, I’m grateful to you,’ David added, the proprietorial husband. ‘And if you don’t mind I’d better be getting back – there’s the chance of a game of squash at six and I might as well make an effort to get in shape again.’ He smiled engagingly. ‘Goodbye then, and thanks again,’ he said getting up.

  Dan watched him go. He wondered about that poor unfortunate woman Josephine and her baby, but it really was none of his business. He thought David a bounder and yet he couldn’t help rather liking him which was perhaps the danger of such people, charmingly and obliviously wrecking the lives of others.

  *

  David’s visa application took rather longer than usual. It fell into the hands of an official at the American Embassy who was particularly ill-disposed towards those who’d had sporting links with South Africa. The cricket season got under way and David found himself back in the team and back on form. The few weeks’ delay with the visa stretched into a couple of months. He wrote to Mickey, though he found it difficult to express emotion on paper, and gradually the impetus was lost, though he looked forward to her coming home and the comfortably distant prospect of resuming their marriage.

  One Friday evening in June, Dan arrived home from London and as usual settled down with a dry sherry and the local weekly newspaper before planning how he would fill the empty hours until Monday morning.

  The evening was warm and still light so he’d chosen to sit in the garden for half an hour

  He’d spoken to Mickey earlier in the day as he had three or four times since she’d been in New York, although their conversations were limited to the assignment, and what else could they talk about: it was difficult over the transatlantic line. It was strange though that she hadn’t even mentioned David’s being there.

  He unfolded the newspaper and was about to turn it over to the front page when a photograph in the sports news caught his eye. It was David. ‘Man of the Match’ was the heading. ‘A splendid season so far for Evans . . .’ it read on. Dan studied the charming, smiling face for a few more moments then went indoors and started to pack. The weekend was planned.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Several hours later, in the plane halfway across the Atlantic, Dan shuddered at the recklessness of what he was doing. Never, in his adult life had he acted so impulsively. He was on his way to New York and Mickey didn’t even know.

  Had he been more fatalistic it might have seemed that so far everything had gone in his favour and therefore the omens were good: getting a seat on the plane because someone else had cancelled at the last minute, arriving at Heathrow with only ten minutes to spare. Perhaps he should have phoned her from the airpo
rt, but supposing she’d told him not to come. He’d behaved like an idiot. It would be much, much worse to arrive and find her unprepared and uncertain. He’d be searching for the slightest sign of dismay in her expression and manner. He was more nervous than he’d ever been.

  By the time the plane landed he’d concocted a pose for himself, made up an excuse for this sudden, unannounced arrival in New York. He’d even thought about finding a hotel and waiting a day before contacting her, but it was very late by the time his visa had been checked and he’d collected his case from the baggage carousel.

  The airport had a depressing, night-time inertia about it. People looked tired and bored and uncharacteristically unfriendly. The thought of finding a hotel, an impersonal room to sleep in alone, added to the sense of bleakness. He went to a phone booth and dialled Mickey’s number. After all, they were friends, the very best of friends.

  When he heard her voice the knowledge of how small a distance now divided them created an awkward hesitancy, then a complete abandonment of the caution he’d planned, the ridiculous excuse about sudden business in New York – it was not in him even to attempt such pretence.

  ‘Mickey, I’m here. In New York,’ he said, his voice sounding revealingly agitated, or so it seemed to him.

  ‘Dan, where are you?’

  ‘At the airport. Mickey, I’ll be with you as soon as I can. I’ll get a cab.’ He swallowed, allowing the most almost unbearable moment of pause for her to put him off, express reserve, but she answered immediately.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes.’

  The pause was now with him.

  ‘Mickey?’

  ‘Yes. I’m here.’

  How did she sound? Bewildered? Pleased?’

  ‘Mickey, I had to come,’ he said. ‘I’ll explain when I see you.’

  He changed the cash he had into dollars before leaving the air terminal then found a cab and gave the driver the address of Mickey’s apartment. He’d left the situation wide open and during the ride through the darkened New York suburbs he tried to think just what he was going to explain and how he would greet her; how it would be face to face again, after the weeks and months since they’d last seen one another, with only brief, fairly business-like telephone conversations in between. Then it became clear to him that what he dreaded most of all was the possibility of it being the same, that they would immediately and irrevocably fall into the pattern of the past, the easy fond friendship they’d had but which seemed far removed from the feelings that had cost him an air fare and quite possibly his dignity.