The Marriage Bed

by Constance Beresford-Howe

  “That’s what we think. It wouldn’t make sense.” Ross’s head hung low and his voice was almost inaudible.

  “That’s right. Well, the two of you have your heads on straight about that much, at least. Now you’d better have a drink, Ross. Give the kid a Scotch, Billie, he looks like he could use it.”

  He was almost friendly to Ross from then on, but it was months before Billie and I were able to get back on our old comradely footing. Both these reactions surprised me at the time, and in a way they still do.

  Upstairs the phone trilled, recalling me sharply to the here and now. “Answer it, Martha!” I called up the stairs, and waited till I heard her scampering feet.

  “Anne Graham here,” said her gruff voice, and with a basket of diapers cumbersomely in hand, I toiled up the stairs as quickly as I could. Last week, before I could intervene, she had said, “No, I’m too sodding busy now,” and hung up on some unknown caller. I took the receiver from her, proffering a cheese cracker in trade.

  “Sweetie? Are you there, Anne?” It was Billie’s lilting, little-girl voice. Before sinking into a chair to ease my back, I glanced around swiftly to make sure the box Hugh was playing with no longer contained steel wool. Martha climbed into the diaper basket to set up housekeeping with her cracker and a bunch of keys filched from my purse.

  “Hi, Billie,” I said loudly. She was getting just a little deaf, though she would never admit it.

  “Only me, sweetie,” she trilled. “How goes the battle?”

  “Oh, everything’s okay. I mean, there’s nothing new.” Of course, Billie had known from the start all about my separation from Ross. Such things never seemed to her to call for negative moral or ethical judgement of anyone concerned. So many lapses were far more damning in her eyes – wearing Crimplene dresses, for instance, or saying “anyways.” Yes, she was a supremely silly woman, my mother, and I loved her a lot.

  “Look, ducky, I want to see you. Got some rather nice news. Grab a sitter and meet me downtown somewhere nice for lunch.”

  “Oh, Bill, I’m afraid it can’t be done. Margaret’s in Boston with her girls, and there’s nobody else I really trust.”

  “But surely that other neighbour of yours – Joanie, or whatever her name is –”

  “Billie, they could die and she wouldn’t even notice it if The Edge of Night happened to be on.”

  “Oh, ducky, don’t be such a drag.”

  “I could bring them with me, but you wouldn’t like that, I’m sure.”

  “Out of the question, sweetie. Martha got mashed potato in my diamond earring last time.”

  “Yes, I remember. Well, then, if you want to see us, you’ll just have to come here. Why not do that?”

  She sighed. “It’s just that I frankly find little kids so horrible, even when they’re yours. That funny smell they have, you know, like damp biscuits, all of them. And their voices go right straight through your head like a drill.”

  I sighed, too, and with an effort made no comment. Billie had never allowed me to call her Mummy or even Mother – not so much because it dated her as because the relationship seemed to her irrelevant. As for being a grandmother, the very thought of it was in her view a feeble joke. She regarded Hugh and Martha (when she couldn’t avoid directly confronting them) with amusement, even a sort of remote affection; but their company bored her to desperation. Oddly enough, I resented this far less than Edwina’s dutiful parade of concern and attention. Which just shows how unjust one’s deepest feelings can be.

  “Max sent me a note this morning,” I said, in an effort to smooth her feathers. “Want to hear? He says, ‘Annie dear, I sat up late last night going through a poetry book you left behind. A little culture and I haven’t enjoyed my cigar since. How come these poets are so depressed all the time, even about sex? Here’s this guy Auden and all he can say is

  Plunge your hands in the basin,

  Plunge them in up to the wrist.

  Stare, stare in the mirror,

  And wonder what you’ve missed.

  I understand the guy was a fag, but that’s no excuse.’ How is my dear Max?”

  “Oh, he’s fine,” she said carelessly.

  “Look, Billie, I’d really love to see you –” and as I said this, the need to see her came over me with the physical urgency of a stitch in the side. It wasn’t enough to hear her tinkling voice – I wanted to see that little beaky nose with its twitch of amusement, that expensively tinted and coiffed hair, the pink small hands all atwinkle with Max’s diamonds.

  “Do come here,” I begged. “It’s your birthday tomorrow, isn’t it? I’ve bought you something pretty at the Craft Shop. I really want to see you.”

  “No more official birthdays. Too sordid, sweetie,” the little voice squeaked. “Change the subject.”

  “No, drop in just for an hour or so this afternoon. Ross often comes by around five to take the kids for a walk.” (Well, he used to. But there are times when a lie is justifiable. Even essential.)

  “Oh well, all right then. If he doesn’t come, you can just tie them to their beds or something. About the Happy Hour, then, doll. See you then.” And she rang off before I could get out of her what her good news was.

  Idly, as I folded laundry, I speculated what it might be. Probably only that Max was going to Korea or somewhere on one of his business trips. She loved it when he was away. Then she needn’t plan and eat sensibly balanced meals but could nibble bits and pieces at all hours as she chose. Instead of doing her exercises, she could spend all morning in bed with a thriller if she liked, or sit in front of TV all evening sipping stingers from the pitcher she kept on call in the freezer and visited only discreetly when he was home. Not that Max ever said a word about her large daily intake of alcohol, either because she never showed the slightest effect from it, or because he was much too wise. All the same, she drank considerably less when he was around. I sometimes suspected also (though this was pure speculation) that Billie, fond as she was of Max, preferred sleeping in their king-size bed alone. Of course, she adored all the stages of courtship – she had always been a superb flirt in the teasing manner of the forties. She even used to try a bit of the old fluttering allure from time to time on Ross, just to keep in practice. But basically I thought she could never much have liked the final act itself. She had too keen a sense of the ridiculous, and too little love of sports.

  As I lumbered upstairs with clean linen for the beds, the kids scrambled up after me, followed by Violet and the cat, in a ragged little procession. None of them liked being left alone downstairs.

  It was a pity, in a way, I thought, stepping over the dog to strip Hugh’s cot, that I’d never been able to model myself on Billie as some girls do on their mothers. Because in her feather-weight way she probably had some of her values a lot straighter than I did. In my place, for instance, she would have regarded going to bed with Ross for the first time as simply a lark, a fun thing, not for a moment to be taken seriously. Whereas I for days and days hesitated, agonized over the decision, and postponed it, until both of us were in the last stages of emotional hypertension. I’d begun to take the pill, but for some inexplicable reason couldn’t bring myself to take the plunge.

  Finally I said in desperation, “Look, this is crazy. Let me get up. I’ve got to get out of here. I’ll fail my exams. We’ll just have to keep away from each other, at least till they’re over.”

  “It would be perfectly simple if we just went properly to bed,” said Ross. “It’s all this messing around that’s bad for your nerves. Not to mention mine.”

  “No, no, I haven’t got time. I’ve got to get that medal.”

  He rolled away from me abruptly and sat up. “Right. You’re perfectly right. This is crazy. You go off and hit the books.”

  While he fished under the bed for his shoes, I buttoned my blouse, shivering though his tiny bedroom was at least eighty degrees in an unseasonable heat wave. At the spotty mirror over his chest of drawers, I rebraided my tangled h
air. Whistling under his breath, he pulled a clean T-shirt over his head.

  “Guess I’ll go over to the club and see if I can pick up a game of squash.”

  “Right.”

  “See you, maybe, after the exams.”

  “Sure.”

  “Take care.”

  “Right.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks. So long.”

  With extreme dignity I preceded him downstairs and out into the blaze of sunlight. At the corner we parted silently. Halfway between the student ghetto and the library I met Karen, who had not spoken to me for several weeks. I smiled. She ignored me. “Silly bitch,” I thought, “you’re way behind the times.”

  I crossed the road, entered the chill stuffiness of the library, sat down in my carrel, took out my books, and began to cry. Fifteen minutes later I was climbing the long walk-up to his apartment, only to find him just steps behind me.

  “Thought you might be here,” I said, as he pulled me in and locked the door.

  “I thought you might be, too.”

  “It’s too hot for studying anyway.”

  “Or for squash.”

  “Oh. Oh. Do that again.”

  We sank onto the bed and all clocks stopped. It became evident after a time that, for all his apparent sophistication, Ross had little more expertise than I. This in no way impeded our mutual pleasure, only prolonged it deliciously. But was it ignorance, or simply innocence, that made us unable to separate emotion from those acute bodily pleasures? Most of my friends and his had no trouble keeping the two apart – Billie had always been able to – but we didn’t know how. Freaks that we were, we lay in each other’s arms afterwards and mingled tears. For us it really had been nothing less than an act of love; a final and permanent commitment.

  Or so it seemed at the time. In retrospect, though, I had to admit it was inexcusable to be less with it than my own mother. Because what could be more ridiculous, after all that, than to find yourself three years later all alone, perpetually doing laundry, shedding tears into children’s socks, and making up this rotten, vacated double bed? Irritably I plucked Mao out from under the sheet, where he was catching an imaginary rat. And while we were asking silly questions, why did I need to see my mother so badly now, all of a sudden, when all our lives till recently I’d considered Billie the child and myself the adult? Oh well, what was the point of brooding over such things now. In a few hours she would be here, and that gave me something to look forward to.

  “Come on, you lot,” I said to the assembled kids and animals. “Let’s start getting ready for the Happy Hour.” Putting it this way made the snowsuit routine easier to face, likewise its grim sequel – shopping for gin at the Liquor Board outlet half a mile away. This meant wrestling the pram out of the front porch, always a test of muscle and character. However, the thought of a ride in their beloved pram spurred the kids into active co-operation, and, getting into the spirit of the thing, Mao shot up the curtains like a flying cat and made us all laugh.

  A few torn scraps of bright blue sky fluttered like flags overhead. The high-sprung pram lurched over the icy pavement in a slow progress that had a sedative effect on me as well as on the children. As we bumbled along I planned the day with some kind of confidence that I could control at least minor events. A macaroni-cheese casserole could be prepared in advance for supper, so I needn’t be in and out of the kitchen while Billie’s visit lasted. The TV could be pushed into the dining-room to occupy the kids there. Violet would have to be shut into a bedroom – Billie was afraid of dogs, even craven, dim-witted dogs like ours. And I’d buy mushrooms and make some of those nice little hot canapés she liked to nibble with her drinks. And somehow or other, at some point, I would have to scrounge time to brush my hair and change out of this grotty old smock, or she would say in her tinkly voice, “Sweetie, you mustn’t get drab.” Yes, this visit, like yesterday’s with Edwina, would have its strains; but at least I wouldn’t be bored. Billie might be trivial, but, after all, so is most good entertainment.

  The children lolled happily one at each end of the pram, gazing out with a sort of vacant approval at the skeleton trees, the shop fronts, the passing cars hissing over salted roads. They even sat contentedly outside while I rushed into the library to change my pile of books. One of my happiest recent discoveries was that Trollope wrote forty-seven novels, most of them good. In minutes I emerged with about five pounds of fiction, enough to see me through quite a few white nights to come. Hugh and Martha were still in a benign mood. Instead of being bored, which I well remembered as the chronic childhood disease, they seemed to be diverted by everything. Martha beamed broadly and called “Hi!” to a passing postman with bow legs, and Hugh raised a wondering face to the remote silver toy of a transatlantic plane and murmured “Bird.”

  “Plane,” I corrected him. One of the sharpest disillusions of my young life was discovering how unlike a bird a jumbo jet is. I thought before I tried it that air travel would truly be like flying, and when Billie and I boarded the plane for our first trip to Canada, I was all aflutter with anticipation and a little tremor of fear. For her part, Billie was so sharp and cross I knew she was simply frightened.

  “You sit by the window,” she said. “I have no intention of looking out at any time.”

  Throughout the take-off procedures she kept her eyes firmly on a copy of Vogue and didn’t look up till a stewardess pushing a drinks trolley bent over to ask what she’d like.

  “Oh but Bill,” I said, peering down as the horizon tilted under us and we began to climb. “Look at the little fields down there and the river – look, there’s the Thames, that sort of snake.” But she refused even a glance through the little porthole across which drops of moisture climbed upside-down but never fell. “A vodka martini,” she said to the stewardess. “A large one.”

  Seconds later we were enveloped in billows of cloud; then we emerged into a bright blue, limitless sky in which from then on we seemed to hang perfectly motionless. The only movement to be felt was a slight vibration. Billie’s drink on its little tray stood without a tremor. Occasionally there was a slight bump, but the muffled thunder of the engines never changed volume or pitch. Before we’d been airborne an hour, my legs felt restless and the seat too small. “What a swiz flying is, after all,” I thought, deflated. “It’s not half as exciting as riding a bike downhill.”

  “Great, isn’t it,” remarked the bald man in the aisle seat beside Billie. “Cruising at 32,000 feet. Gives me a thrill every time. This your first flight, young lady?”

  “Yes,” I said, politely concealing my boredom.

  “First trip to Canada too, maybe?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Got relatives there, I suppose. Everybody has.”

  “No, we’re – just visiting.” Remembering that Max would meet us at the airport, I tried to cheer up; but it was hard to imagine this ponderous robot was actually taking us anywhere. I pushed my lunch about fretfully in its divided plastic container and suppressed a sigh.

  “Well, you’re in for a great experience, then, I can tell you that, even if it does sound like bragging. Canada’s just plain the best damn place on earth anybody can be in A.D. ’70, and I’m not afraid to stand up and say it.”

  He didn’t look as if he knew how to be afraid of anything, this big man with his broad, fresh-coloured face and the easy, confident smile all North Americans seemed to have, as if they trusted everybody and liked everything. Billie was pretending to doze in order to avoid being drawn into the conversation, but I said. “Do you live in Toronto, sir? What’s it like?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you something, young lady. It’s a place we bought off the Indians in Mississauga a couple of hundred years ago. The price included a bunch of brass kettles and a few carrots. Now there’s upwards of three million people living there in one of the handsomest cities going. I mean it. The place is huge, booming, runs like some big, clean machine – but somehow it’s a town that’s managed
to stay human. You get trees growing downtown. Right in the middle of the city you can go fishing in High Park. You can take the subway even late at night without any real serious risk of getting mugged. In other words, Toronto’s still a neighbourhood. Sure, people out west and in Quebec like to make fun of good old TO, but I figure they’re just jealous. Or they haven’t looked lately. You just wait till you see it.”

  “It sounds marvellous,” I said, trying to sound convinced. Surely no city could be that impressive, or need that much salesmanship. Besides, it didn’t exist. Nothing did. We weren’t going to Toronto, or any other destination. The plane droned on like a mechanical bird caught forever in the monotony of space, while people tried to doze in their cramped chairs or pacify whining children.

  After a vacuum of time, some quite dreadful tea was served. I clambered over Billie’s magazine and the bald man’s knees to visit the tiny loo, all its conveniences trembling slightly as we hung there in limbo. But when I flopped back into my seat, the bald man leaned over to the window with a smile and said, “Look.”

  I looked down and at an acutely tilted angle saw, scattered in casual gaiety over the bright blue expanse of Lake Ontario, a sprinkle of tiny red and yellow sailboats, and several green islands. Then the horizon tipped and our porthole framed a vast sweep of level land bound by multiple threads of roads on which coloured beads of traffic hung. Under a blazing sun the flat factory roofs, the needle spires and silver pencils of skyscrapers, winked like mint coins. Excitement buzzed through me like an electric charge. Out of nowhere the phrase New World jumped into my head, as if I’d invented it. “You’ve got to look, Bill,” I said.

  Cautiously she leaned forward and took a quick glance. Then she said, “Oh. Good heavens.”

  A little later, after a bunch of pink roses flourished at the Customs window revealed Max, wearing a new suit and a nervous smile, Billie took his arm and chattered away about how marvellous flying was, and how gorgeous Toronto looked from the air. I said nothing, because no words seemed really adequate. I looked around for the bald man, to wave a special goodbye to him, but he had disappeared.