‘I like his eyes,’ said Susie. ‘One’s higher than another.’
‘It couldn’t be.’
‘It is.’
‘He couldn’t see, Susie, if his eyes were like that. Everyone’s eyes are –’
‘He isn’t always drunk like the man in the park.’
‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Richard,’ they said together, and Susie added: ‘Irishmen are always drunk.’
‘Daddy’s an Irishman and Daddy’s not always –’
‘Who’s Richard?’
‘He’s Susie’s boyfriend.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Susie. ‘I like him.’
‘If he’s there tonight, Susie, you’re not to climb all over him.’
He left the kitchen and in the sitting-room he poured himself some whisky. He sat with the glass cold between his hands, staring at the grey television screen. ‘Sure, maybe some day I’ll go back to Ireland,’ Deirdre sang in the kitchen, and Susie laughed shrilly.
He imagined a dark-haired man, a cheerful man, intelligent and subtle, a man who came often to the flat, whom his children knew well and were already fond of. He imagined him as he had imagined himself ten minutes before, sitting with Elizabeth, drinking Gimlets from the green Italian glasses. ‘Say good-night to Richard,’ Elizabeth would say, and the girls would go to him and kiss him good-night.
‘Who’s Richard?’ he asked, standing in the kitchen doorway.
‘A friend,’ said Deirdre, ‘of Mummy’s.’
‘A nice friend?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘I love him,’ said Susie.
He returned to the sitting-room and quickly poured himself more whisky. Both of his hands were shaking. He drank quickly, and then poured and drank some more. On the pale carpet, close to the television set, there was a stain where Diana had spilt a cup of coffee. He hated now this memory of her, he hated her voice when it came back to him, and the memory of her body and her mind. And yet once he had been rendered lunatic with the passion of his love for her. He had loved her more than Elizabeth, and in his madness he had spoilt everything.
‘Wash your hands,’ said Susie, close to him. He hadn’t heard them come into the room. He asked them, mechanically, if they’d had enough to eat. ‘She hasn’t washed her hands,’ Susie said. ‘I washed mine in the sink.’
He turned the television on. It was the girl ventriloquist Shari Lewis, with Lamb Chop and Charley Horse.
Well, he thought under the influence of the whisky, he had had his fling. He had played the pins with a flat-chested American nymphomaniac and predator, and he had lost all there was to lose. Now it was Elizabeth’s turn: why shouldn’t she have, for a time, the dark-haired Richard who took another man’s children on to his knee and kissed them good-night? Wasn’t it better that the score should be even before they all came together again?
He sat on the floor with his daughters on either side of him, his arms about them. In front of him was his glass of whisky. They laughed at Lamb Chop and Charley Horse, and when the programme came to an end and the news came on he didn’t want to let his daughters go. An electric fire glowed cosily. Wind blew the rain against the windows, the autumn evening was dark already.
He turned the television off. He finished the whisky in his glass and poured some more. ‘Shall I tell you,’ he said, ‘about when Mummy and I were married?’
They listened while he did so. He told them about meeting Elizabeth in the first place, at somebody else’s wedding, and of the days they had spent walking about together, and about the wet, cold afternoon on which they’d been married.
‘February the 24th,’ Deirdre said.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to be married in summer-time,’ Susie said, ‘when the roses are out.’
His birthday and Elizabeth’s were on the same day, April 21st. He reminded the girls of that; he told them of the time he and Elizabeth had discovered they shared the date, a date shared also with Hitler and the Queen. They listened quite politely, but somehow didn’t seem much interested.
They watched What’s in a Game? He drank a little more. He wouldn’t be able to drive them back. He’d pretend he couldn’t start the Volvo and then he’d telephone for a taxi. It had happened once before that in a depression he’d begun to drink when they were with him on a Sunday afternoon. They’d been to Madame Tussaud’s and the Planetarium, which Susie had said frightened her. In the flat, just as this time, while they were eating their sandwiches, he’d been overcome with the longing that they should all be together again. He’d begun to drink and in the end, while they watched television, he’d drunk quite a lot. When the time came to go he’d said that he couldn’t find the keys of the Volvo and that they’d have to have a taxi. He’d spent five minutes brushing his teeth so that Elizabeth wouldn’t smell the alcohol when she opened the door. He’d smiled at her with his well-brushed teeth but she, not then being over her bitterness, hadn’t smiled back.
The girls put their coats on. Deirdre drank some Ribena; he had another small tot of whisky. And then, as they were leaving the flat, he suddenly felt he couldn’t go through the farce of walking to the Volvo, putting the girls into it and then pretending he couldn’t start it. ‘I’m tired,’ he said instead. ‘Let’s have a taxi.’
They watched the Penrhyn Male Voice Choir in Songs of Praise while they waited for it to arrive. He poured himself another drink, drank it slowly, and then went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He remembered the time Deirdre had been born, in a maternity home in the country because they’d lived in the country then. Elizabeth had been concerned because she’d thought one of Deirdre’s fingers was bent and had kept showing it to nurses who said they couldn’t see anything the matter. He hadn’t been able to see anything the matter either, nor had the doctor. ‘She’ll never be as beautiful as you,’ he’d said and quite soon after that she’d stopped talking about the finger and had said he was nice to her. Susie had been born at home, very quickly, very easily.
The taxi arrived. ‘Soon be Christmas,’ said the taxi man. ‘You chaps looking forward to Santa Claus?’ They giggled because he had called them chaps. ‘Fifty-six more days,’ said Susie.
He imagined them on Christmas Day, with the dark-haired Richard explaining the rules of a game he’d bought them. He imagined all four of them sitting down at Christmas dinner, and Richard asking the girls which they liked, the white or the brown of the turkey, and then cutting them small slices. He’d have brought, perhaps, champagne, because he was that kind of person. Deirdre would sip from his glass, not liking the taste. Susie would love it.
He counted in his mind: if Richard had been visiting the flat for, say, six weeks already and assuming that his love affair with Elizabeth had begun two weeks before his first visit, that left another four months to go, allowing the affair ran an average course of six months. It would therefore come to an end at the beginning of March. His own affair with Diana had lasted from April until September. ‘Oh darling,’ said Diana, suddenly in his mind, and his own voice replied to her, caressing her with words. He remembered the first time they had made love and the guilt that had hammered at him and the passion there had been between them. He imagined Elizabeth naked in Richard’s naked arms, her eyes open, looking at him, her fingers touching the side of his face, her lips slightly smiling. He reached forward and pulled down the glass shutter. ‘I need cigarettes,’ he said. There’s a pub in Shepherd’s Bush Road, the Laurie Arms.’
He drank two large measures of whisky. He bought cigarettes and lit one, rolling the smoke around in his mouth to disguise the smell of the alcohol. As he returned to the taxi, he slipped on the wet pavement and almost lost his balance. He felt very drunk all of a sudden. Deirdre and Susie were telling the taxi man about the man in Hyde Park.
He was aware that he walked unsteadily when they left the taxi and moved across the forecourt of the block of flats. In the hall, before they got into the lift, he lit another cigarette, rolling the smo
ke about his mouth. ‘That poor Japanese man,’ said Deirdre.
He rang the bell, and when Elizabeth opened the door the girls turned to him and thanked him. He took the cigarette from his mouth and kissed them. Elizabeth was smiling: if only she’d ask him in and give him a drink he wouldn’t have to worry about the alcohol on his breath. He swore to himself that she was smiling as she’d smiled three weeks ago. ‘Can I come in?’ he asked, unable to keep the words back.
‘In?’ The smile was still there. She was looking at him quite closely. He released the smoke from his mouth. He tried to remember what it was he’d planned to say, and then it came to him.
‘I’m worried about Susie,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘She talked about death all the time.’
‘Death?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s someone here actually,’ she said, stepping back into the hall. ‘But come in, certainly.’
In the sitting-room she introduced him to Richard who was, as he’d imagined, a dark-haired man. The sitting-room was much the same as it always had been. ‘Have a drink,’ Richard offered.
‘D’you mind if we talk about Susie?’ Elizabeth asked Richard. He said he’d put them to bed if she liked. She nodded. Richard went away.
‘Well?’
He stood with the familiar green glass in his hand, gazing at her. He said:
‘I haven’t had gin and lime-juice since –’
‘Yes. Look, I shouldn’t worry about Susie. Children of that age often say odd things, you know –’
‘I don’t mind about Richard, Elizabeth, I think it’s your due. I worked it out in the taxi. It’s the end of October now –’
‘My due?’
‘Assuming your affair has been going on already for six weeks –’
‘You’re drunk.’
He closed one eye, focusing. He felt his body swaying and he said to himself that he must not fall now, that no matter what his body did his feet must remain firm on the carpet. He sipped from the green glass. She wasn’t, he noticed, smiling any more.
‘I’m actually not drunk,’ he said. ‘I’m actually sober. By the time our birthday comes round, Elizabeth, it’ll all be over. On April the 21st we could have family tea.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘The future, Elizabeth. Of you and me and our children.’
‘How much have you had to drink?’
‘We tried to go to A Hundred and One Dalmatians, but it wasn’t on anywhere.’
‘So you drank instead. While the children –’
‘We came here in a taxi-cab. They’ve had their usual tea, they’ve watched a bit of The Last of the Mohicans and a bit of Going for a Song and all of The Golden Shot and The Shari Lewis Show and –’
‘You see them for a few hours and you have to go and get drunk –’
‘I am not drunk, Elizabeth.’
He crossed the room as steadily as he could. He looked aggressively at her. He poured gin and lime-juice. He said:
‘You have a right to your affair with Richard, I recognize that.’
‘A right?’
‘I love you, Elizabeth.’
‘You loved Diana.’
‘I have never not loved you. Diana was nothing – nothing, nothing at all.’
‘She broke our marriage up.’
‘No.’
‘We’re divorced.’
‘I love you, Elizabeth.’
‘Now listen to me –’
‘I live from Sunday to Sunday. We’re a family, Elizabeth; you and me and them. It’s ridiculous, all this. It’s ridiculous making Marmite sandwiches with brown bread and tomato sandwiches with white. It’s ridiculous buying meringues and going five times to A Hundred and One Dalmatians and going up the Post Office Tower until we’re sick of the sight of it, and watching drunks in Hyde Park and poking about at the Zoo –’
‘You have reasonable access –’
‘Reasonable access, my God!’ His voice rose. He felt sweat on his forehead. Reasonable access, he shouted, was utterly no good to him; reasonable access was meaningless and stupid; a day would come when they wouldn’t want to go with him on Sunday afternoons, when there was nowhere left in London that wasn’t an unholy bore. What about reasonable access then?
‘Please be quiet.’
He sat down in the armchair that he had always sat in. She said:
‘You might marry again. And have other children.’
‘I don’t want other children. I have children already. I want us all to live together as we used to –’
‘Please listen to me –’
‘I get a pain in my stomach in the middle of the night. Then I wake up and can’t go back to sleep. The children will grow up and I’ll grow old. I couldn’t begin a whole new thing all over again: I haven’t the courage. Not after Diana. A mistake like that alters everything.’
‘I’m going to marry Richard.’
‘Three weeks ago,’ he said, as though he hadn’t heard her, ‘you smiled at me.’
‘Smiled?’
‘Like you used to, Elizabeth. Before –’
‘You made a mistake,’ she said, softly. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’m not saying don’t go on with your affair with this man. I’m not saying that, because I think in the circumstances it’d be a cheek. D’you understand me, Elizabeth?’
‘Yes, I do. And I think you and I can be perfectly good friends. I don’t feel sour about it any more: perhaps that’s what you saw in my smile.’
‘Have a six-month affair –’
‘I’m in love with Richard.’
‘That’ll all pass into the atmosphere. It’ll be nothing at all in a year’s time –’
‘No.’
‘I love you, Elizabeth.’
They stood facing one another, not close. His body was still swaying. The liquid in his glass moved gently, slopping to the rim and then settling back again. Her eyes were on his face: it was thinner, she was thinking. Her fingers played with the edge of a cushion on the back of the sofa.
‘On Saturdays,’ he said, ‘I buy the meringues and the brandy-snaps in Frith’s Patisserie. On Sunday morning I make the sandwiches. Then I cook sausages and potatoes for my lunch, and after that I come over here.’
‘Yes, yes –’
‘I look forward all week to Sunday.’
‘The children enjoy their outings, too.’
‘Will you think about it?’
‘About what?’
‘About all being together again.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ She turned away from him. ‘I wish you’d go now,’ she said.
‘Will you come out with me on our birthday?’
‘I’ve told you.’ Her voice was loud and angry, her cheeks were flushed. ‘Can’t you understand? I’m going to marry Richard. We’ll be married within a month, when the girls have had time to get to know him a little better. By Christmas we’ll be married.’
He shook his head in a way that annoyed her, seeming in his drunkenness to deny the truth of what she was saying. He tried to light a cigarette; matches dropped to the floor at his feet. He left them there.
It enraged her that he was sitting in an armchair in her flat with his eyelids drooping through drink and an unlighted cigarette in his hand and his matches spilt all over the floor. They were his children, but she wasn’t his wife: he’d destroyed her as a wife, he’d insulted her, he’d left her to bleed and she had called him a murderer.
‘Our birthday,’ he said, smiling at her as though already she had agreed to join him on that day. ‘And Hitler’s and the Queen’s.’
‘On our birthday if I go out with anyone it’ll be Richard.’
‘Our birthday is beyond the time –’
‘For God’s sake, there is no beyond the time. I’m in love with another man –’
‘No.’
‘On our birthday,’ she shouted at him, ‘On the night of our birthday Richard will make love to me
in the bed you slept in for nine years. You have access to the children. You can demand no more.’
He bent down and picked up a match. He struck it on the side of the empty box. The cigarette was bent. He lit it with a wobbling flame and dropped the used match on to the carpet. The dark-haired man, he saw, was in the room again. He’d come in, hearing her shouting like that. He was asking her if she was all right. She told him to go away. Her face was hard; bitterness was there again. She said, not looking at him:
‘Everything was so happy. We had a happy marriage. For nine years we had a perfectly happy marriage.’
‘We could –’
‘Not ever.’
Again he shook his head in disagreement. Cigarette ash fell on to the green tweed of his suit. His eyes were narrowed, watching her, seemingly suspicious.
‘We had a happy marriage,’ she repeated, whispering the words, speaking to herself, still not looking at him. ‘You met a woman on a train and that was that: you murdered our marriage. You left me to plead, as I am leaving you to now. You have your Sunday access. There is that legality between us. Nothing more.’
‘Please, Elizabeth –’
‘Oh for God’s sake, stop.’ Her rage was all in her face now. Her lips quivered as though in an effort to hold back words that would not be denied. They came from her, more quietly but with greater bitterness. Her eyes roved over the green tweed suit of the man who once had been her husband, over his thin face and his hair that seemed, that day, not to have been brushed.
‘You’ve gone to seed,’ she said, hating herself for saying that, unable to prevent herself. ‘You’ve gone to seed because you’ve lost your self-respect. I’ve watched you, week by week. The woman you met on a train took her toll of you and now in your seediness you want to creep back. Don’t you know you’re not the man I married?’
The Collected Stories Page 4