“Please?” I added.
“No.”
“Take some Cheerios to Violet,” he suggested craftily. Her face broke into a seraphic smile and she trotted off.
We talked a little faster now, in lower voices.
“Jeff, it was just one of those things that happen sometimes – you mustn’t take it seriously. You wouldn’t if we’d actually … you’d never give it a second thought if you and Lynne were –”
“No, look; are you really trying to tell me it meant nothing when you –”
In trotted Martha again, the box still clutched to her belly. “Violet didn’t want any. She ate the butter instead.”
“Oh Christ.”
“Then go and give the cat some,” said Jeff.
“No.”
“Please.”
“No.”
“Martha, go downstairs,” said Jeff. A vein in his neck was swelling dangerously. “I want to talk to Mummy.”
“Okay, talk.” With a heave she lobbed the box of cereal onto the bed and clambered up after it, with a generous display of bare pink bum.
He shot me a look in which there was no remaining trace of tenderness, and I was once more seized by a wild urge to laugh. Silently blessing Martha, I pretended helplessness and sighed. At the same instant a powerful contraction made me wince for real.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Sure. Just a cramp. They come and go, these days. Anyhow, you’d better get going on your rounds. There’s nothing more to say, except I’m sorry. Truly.”
He began to speak, but Martha cut him off. “My mother’s got a baby inside her. I’d rather have a hamster. We’d call it June or Albert, and it would eat up all the Cheerios.”
“No kidding,” Jeff said bleakly. “Well, it’s after nine. I’ve got to go. But Anne, I’ll call you tonight. We’ve got to talk.”
“Talking won’t make one bit of difference. Dr. Reilly dear, please know that.”
He looked at me hungrily, but Martha’s unblinking gaze was fastened on him. He drew back. Setting his lips in a tight line, he walked out of the room and went downstairs, one at a time. Violet greeted his departure as she had his arrival, with an outburst of witless barking, and we both distinctly heard him say “Fucking dog” before banging the front door behind him.
A piece of torn newspaper, several Cheerios, and a doll littered the stairs, and I paused on my way down to retrieve them all laboriously, though it was much too late for neatness to help me at all. En route to the kitchen I read the scrap of newsprint. “Martinique. A prisoner locked in his cell was the sole survivor of an earthquake in the village of –” The rest was missing. But what a neat little paradox. It suggested something profoundly true about both liberty and bondage, and I greatly wished I had the wisdom to see what it was. Because for a long time now the concept of prison had come to seem central to my whole life. That was why, the day Ross left, I helped him pack.
“Why not? I’m not your jailer.”
He looked at me with bitter annoyance. “You’re supposed to be crying. As usual. Or yelling and cursing. Not folding my goddam shirts. Or is this just another way of cutting me up?”
“Don’t. I’m trying to get it across that I know I have no right to try hanging onto you by force. Do you want this old brown sweater?”
“Well, I have no right to walk out on you, but I’m doing it.”
“Will you get it through your head I’m not blaming you.”
“I’ll send you money at the end of the week. And regularly after that. Forward all the bills to me at the office. If Mother calls, tell her anything you like.”
“That will be the day.”
“Why not. Here’s the chance you’ve been waiting for all these years.”
Suddenly I yawned. This new pregnancy caused spells of acute sleepiness that overtook me at the most unlikely moments. He immediately yawned too. Then he said, “Sorry. I know damn well I’m the one that’s failed here. You’re no more to blame than the cat is for being a cat. Better say nothing yet to Mother. God, I’m so tired. I feel as if I hadn’t slept for years.”
“Well, you haven’t, much.”
“You despise me. That’s why I have to get out.”
“Don’t forget your antacid pills.”
“I won’t.”
“Where will you stay – with Randy and Jill?”
“No.” He cleared his throat. “One of the girls in the office – she shares a house with some people on Prince John Street. It’s right near work. I can have a room there for practically nothing.”
“Which girl?”
“Larine.”
“Oh. I see.” What I saw, with painful clarity, was that our love might survive in some form for a long time yet, but our friendship had taken a damaging blow.
The kitchen window framed a frowning grey sky. I crumpled up the torn bit of newspaper and shot it into the garbage tin. Was that prisoner’s survival a victory or a defeat? Was freedom actually a kind of prison, and vice versa? But questions like these could easily drive someone in my position completely around the twist, and what good would that do me or anyone else?
I began to stack the dishwasher, sternly forbidding myself to cry. Outside a pallid gleam of sun was now trying to melt honeycomb holes in yesterday’s snow. The skinny black squirrel that lived in our back-yard maple left deep pits as he hopped across to June’s patio for the crusts her kids threw out. He scampered up the tree, whisking his tail jauntily. I stared at him so intently I could almost count his fleas.
Ah, Christ, that my love were in my arms, I thought. If only there were some way back for Ross and me to those sunny, blissful afternoons in his narrow student bed. O western wind, when wilt thou blow? Never, kid. Never again.
The phone trilled and I snatched it up on the first ring. It had to be Ross.
“Hello?”
The words at the other end of the line were so coldly and deliberately obscene that at first I couldn’t take in their meaning at all. Only after the caller hung up did I recognize the voice. It was Lynne Reilly, the conservationist. She mentioned her husband. She also advised me to get stuffed, among other fanciful variations. Suddenly I burst out laughing as if a joke of cosmic dimensions had been revealed, beautifully timed, and gloriously, tragically funny.
With the kids glued to Sesame Street, I went down to the basement for the daily diaper-folding and set about it, trying to ignore the pain like a stab wound in my lower back. It nagged until I dragged over a chair to finish the job sitting down. But nothing would help me much, I realized grimly, until I came to grips with June’s question – “What are you going to do about that guy?” – instead of moaning over the snows of yesteryear, or shaking with insane laughter because life was a joke. After five months of passive waiting, it was high time I came up with some kind of action. Unfortunately, the things I wanted to do were all illegal, or immoral, or both. That left only the things I didn’t want to do, like marrying Jeff. No need to waste time analysing that decision; it was final. But how could I reach Ross? Between us, like some bloody human traffic-jam, stood not only his mother and our kids, born and unborn, but Larine. It was hard to say which was the most threatening of them, except that her Monday visit had left me inclined to take away Edwina’s prize for first place.
No, on points, of course, the real opponent had to be Larine, and not just because he was sleeping with her instead of with me. That pale face materialized in my mind’s eye: receding chin, small, fishlike mouth, nose sharp as if whittled with a Scout knife. She was far from beautiful, but that was precisely the threat. She was pathetic with her thin little arms, her pale hair, and her tiny breasts. She made Ross feel strong. Ripe, rosy, big, masterful, I made him feel weak. That was a huge tactical disadvantage, and I knew it. But how could I overcome? Obscene phone calls? Blackmailing letters? A punch in the mouth? None of these had much real appeal, except maybe the last. Anyhow, I had little confidence in planned campaigns. The last time I tried to use strategy to lure Ross
back home, the attempt could not be called a success.
Of course, seduction was perhaps a bit obvious as tactics go; but it seemed to me worth a try. At that point I wasn’t breastfeeding anybody, and hadn’t yet reached anything like my present massive size. Consequently I felt quite capable of seducing pretty well anyone, given a reasonable chance. So one evening when I knew he was coming over, I put the kids to bed early, bribed with bottles of sweetened juice, and took a long, leisurely bath before putting on the long blue gown he liked. My newly washed hair smelled of sandalwood. I put a bottle of his favourite hock in the fridge, and a stack of Nana Mouskouri ballads on the stereo. He was late, so I had time for a refreshing little catnap before his key rattled in the door.
Two months and half a mile of space away from all the rashes, teething, and diarrhoea of his married life had smoothed out Ross’s face and removed some of its greyish look. He even smiled occasionally.
“Have a glass of wine, why don’t you,” I said, lifting the dewy bottle invitingly.
“Well, maybe just one. Kids asleep yet? They all right? I’ll go on up and have a look at them.”
“Don’t wake them up.”
I arranged myself as attractively as possible in a corner of the sofa, and when he came back downstairs, he sat down in the other corner after only a second’s hesitation. We sipped our wine. Nana did her thing. The house was quiet and peaceful.
“Things going all right at the office? What happened about the Bailey case?”
“We won it.”
“Oh, good.”
“The guy was guilty as hell, too. So Tim was really pleased. So was I, actually. I like winning the Legal Aid ones.”
“You hungry, by any chance? There’s some of that moussaka you like left over.”
“No … no thanks.” But he made no protest when I refilled his glass. Nor did he withdraw when I slipped my hand into his.
“Been in touch with your mother lately?” I asked him.
“Yes, she’s enjoying Florida.”
“You haven’t actually told her about us yet, have you. I wonder why.”
“No, it’s just … I thought I’d wait till she gets home. No point in spoiling her holiday.”
With care I let that pass without comment. Then I put down my glass, moved closer to him, and gave him a kiss intended to speak louder than words. He accepted it with mild surprise, but no unfriendliness. It was a minute before he drew away.
“Hold on, you are fogging my glasses. What is all this?”
“What does it feel like?”
“Well, but –”
“Why shouldn’t we? After all, we’re still married.”
“Yes, but –”
“Then come on. What’s wrong with here and now.”
He was already in no condition to put up much resistance, as both of us were well aware; but he did mutter, “Okay, but no strings attached, right? No complications – no regrets after I’ve gone?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, let’s go up, then. This sofa’s too small. And I’m too old to use the floor any more.”
We stopped several times along the way, and by the time we reached the bed in our room, his resistance, such as it was, had completely vanished. Our familiar bed was warm, deliciously warm. The wine had turned my head into a helium balloon, floating somewhere above my drowsy, happy body, tickled by his lips and hands. Strange how very sleepy I felt, in spite of that catnap. Terribly sleepy …
My eyes blinked open to find him knotting his tie at the mirror. The face reflected there looked austere.
“There you are,” I mumbled. “What are you doing?”
“Go back to sleep,” he said.
“Oh. Was I asleep? You mean I –”
“Right in the very middle of it, to be exact.”
“It’s this crazy pregnancy. I do it all the time.” Something warned me this was no time to laugh, but how I wished one or both of us could. Instead I said, “I am sorry. You wouldn’t care to have another shot at it, I suppose?”
“No thanks,” he said with dignity.
So that was that. The ploy that failed, I thought, lumbering up the basement steps with the laundry basket. Just as I reached the top, the phone shrilled. I lunged for the receiver before Martha could grab it. This time it had to be Ross.
“Anne? I saw the doctor at your place this morning. Everything all right?” It was Junie’s flat voice. The jabbing pain in my back returned with vehemence.
“Yes, I … had the pediatrician, as my mother-in-law would put it.”
“Oh, him.” June’s voice was already fading into boredom.
“Hugh had croup in the night. It’s lucky for us that Reilly lives so near. He just dropped in to check on Hugh before going to work. He’s terrific like that.”
“Yeah. Gee, I don’t know, such a lot seems to happen to you.”
“None of it’s good, though kid.”
“Yeah, but at least you’re –” A note crept into her voice that I’d never heard there so clearly before – a sort of flat despair. “You know, sometimes I wake up mornings, here’s another day, and I just think, is this all? You know?”
“Poor bitch,” I thought. But all I could think of to say was “Cheer up. At least your mother didn’t come to see you yesterday.”
“Yeah. I saw your mum. Ever a lovely pair of boots she has.”
“Aren’t they.”
Mail thumped through the letter-box and both children ran to get it. In the race, Hugh fell, or more likely was pushed, and lay in the hall howling, and in the fracas somebody must have stepped on Violet, who added to the din by a frenzied yelping. How glorious it would be to wake up one morning stone deaf, I thought, as I clamped the receiver in position with one shoulder and fanned through the mail. It was all bills.
“There’s a sale of boots today at Simpson’s,” June was saying. “I sure wouldn’t mind going down there for a look. Would you mind a whole lot taking my two just for an hour or so this aft? I better not leave them alone. Last time Darryl built a fire on the kitchen floor. Nothing, really, but Clive got sore. At me, not Darryl. Typical.”
“Sure, I don’t mind. What’s another couple of kids? Send ’em along. The more the merrier. Happy shopping.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said almost warmly. “Do the same for you next time, Anne. They’ll be over right after lunch. See you.”
“ ’Bye, Junie.”
In the middle of making my bed, I had to sit down on it suddenly, hit by depression that reached right out of that brief conversation and caught me behind the knees. The kids played serenely around my legs with some Matchbox cars. Mao scrambled onto my shoulder, purring. A copy of Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her? was pushed half under the pillow, and I pulled it out for comfort. His heroine was just as big a problem to everybody as I was; but any number of good people rallied round energetically to make her happy in the end, in spite of herself. The perfect plot. The book opened at my favourite sentence: “There are things which happen in a day which it would take a lifetime to explain.”
“How true,” I thought. Take my today, for instance. Every single nasty thing in it had its roots back there somewhere in that shifting childhood of mine. Explaining is easy. Understanding is something else again. Take Gary, the milkman, for instance, who let me ride with him on his rounds.…
Moving around as we constantly did often meant I had no friends, so I spent a lot of time on my own in public places, shops, hotel lounges, cinemas, rather like a stray dog. Sometimes casually encountered grown-ups were kind and spoiled my appetite with sweets; but some were threatening and mean as you might be to a stray, because it’s already in trouble. I knew by the time I was eight which ones you could trust, and Gary was one of them. He had grey hair, but his face was pink and young, he could whistle with trills, and I loved him.
We had a lot of good conversations as the bottles jingled behind us. “There’s an old lady in our hotel with whiskers, and she says God sees ev
ery single thing you do. Especially the bad things. I took an apple off the fruit dish before lunch yesterday, and she said God was watching. And he has a place full of fire that melts people’s bones if they steal.”
“Mean-minded old trout,” said Gary. “If there is a place like that – which I doubt – she’ll go there, not you.”
It was a considerable relief to me to hear this. Gary knew pretty well everything, and he always told the truth, unlike a lot of old people who told lies. They said, for instance, that carrots would make your hair curl, and doctors brought babies in their black bags. I never touched carrots and my thick hair was wildly curly. As for babies, everybody knew that mothers vomited them up.
Gary was a great talker, always about interesting things, too, instead of the dull stuff schools were always on about. He liked to talk about pigeons, betting on the greyhound races, how to tell the weather from clouds, and why the price of milk kept going up. He told me a lot about his life: he’d been a Barnardo’s orphan, put out to work at fourteen. He’d had lots of interesting jobs in ice-cream factories and stables and places like that; and he said it had been a great life, really – couldn’t ask for a better. The one thing he regretted was that he’d married, he said, too young. It was a pity, really, he said, because him and the old woman didn’t get on; not at all. What he often dreamed of was having some rich, beautiful woman fall in love with him, a real high-class woman, like Greer Garson used to be on the flicks.
Then one day an old woman suddenly appeared at the side of the float. She had a straw hat skewered to her grey hair, and a large, cracked handbag; and she seemed inexplicably furious with Gary.
“Wot’s the matter, then, old lady?” he asked, setting down his basket of pints.
“You know wot’s the matter, all right, you dirty animal! Get out, you dirty thing! I wonder you’re not afraid of the police, I do. Think I don’t know you. Picking up little kids. Always girls. Think I don’t know you?” She hissed all this at him with such force that her spit made a little spray in the bright morning air.
“No, Rita,” he said. “That’s enough.” But his face had gone red in strange patches. “Better hop off now,” he said to me. “Run on home, then.”
The Marriage Bed Page 16