The Happy Prisoner

by Monica Dickens

  “We were just talking about playing backgammon,” he told her.

  “Not now, dear,” she said. “Tomorrow it would be nice.”

  The next day, Anne dutifully got out the backgammon board and had just found the dice when the telephone rang for her.

  She came back looking rather sheepish. “That was Toby. He’s going over to Bridgenorth to see some hunters and he wanted me to go with him.”

  “Well, you’re going, aren’t you? You’ll love it; you might get a ride. Borrow a pair of Vi’s trousers.” He looked at her shape from the waist downwards. “No, perhaps not.”

  “I’m not going, anyway, darling. I wouldn’t dream of it. I told him I was spending the morning with you.”

  “Don’t be a chump. Ring him up again and tell him I say you’re to go.”

  “He’s hanging on, as a matter of fact.”

  .…

  Gradually, Oliver saw less and less of Anne. She stayed on at Hinkley, using it as a base for outings with Toby. On Thursday morning she asked Oliver: “Would you mind awfully, darling, if I went back to town today instead of tomorrow? Toby’s going down this afternoon and it seems silly to go in that fearful train when I might go by car.’

  They parted affectionately, each pleased to think how satisfactorily they had got the other off their hands.

  Chapter 6

  Can you believe it?” Mrs. Ogilvie asked Oliver piercingly. “Can you believe it?” Oliver waited patiently to hear what was to test his credulity this time. Mrs. Ogilvie, who dropped in now and again to keep him au fait with local gossip, had already asked him this question about the pepper shortage, a strike of bus conductresses, the engagement of two of the dullest people in Shropshire and the colour of Francis’s new bathroom curtains.

  “Of course, I don’t want you to think I’m criticising your sister, but really, Oliver. Heather is queer in some ways. She’s not a bit like she used to be. Oh, I know she’s tired and all that what she’d do if she had six children like I had, I can’t imagine. But can you believe that she’s written to that poor John asking him to bring back butter and chocolate and rubber hot-water bottles from Australia?” She strode up and down in a blue gabardine mackintosh and her son’s Commando beret, filling the room.

  “I mean, when the poor man’s been literally starving for nearly a year, it seems so heartless to think of that when all she should be thinking of is getting him home and getting him well.”

  She paused just long enough for Oliver to say: “I don’t see why. He’s not starving now. He’s living off the fat of Australia probably doing much better than we are.”

  “No, but it’s what I call the idea of it, the—” She snapped her lingers for a word, “the indelicacy, don’t you see?” Unable to make him agree with her, she said: “Well, in any case, it’s high time he did come home. Heather is getting so irritable and nervy, she’s spoiling herself completely. If she goes on like this, he won’t like her when he does get here.”

  “Perhaps she won’t like him,” suggested Oliver.

  “Nonsense, my dear boy, of course she will. What she wants is a man.” Mrs. Ogilvie prided herself on not caring what she said. “What do you suppose is the reason for this Papist craze? It’s a well-known thing, my dear—look at any adolescent girl. She doesn’t seem to be getting much out of it, though, does she? What a rash step to take. If she wanted to go to church, why couldn’t she have gone to Hinkley? Poor old Mr. Norris would have been delighted; he gets such tiny congregations. Why drag the Pope into it? And all these vows and things they have to take. Why not be a nun and have done with it? “Her questions were all rhetorical and her conversation ran itself. All you had to do was to lie back and be sapped by her vitality. If you volunteered any remark, however insignificant, she seized on it with such a strenuous “Really?”, and so much more excitement than it warranted, that you wished you had not spoken.

  Violet barged in to get her cigarette lighter. “Oh—hullo,” she grunted and went out.

  “First time I’ve seen that girl in a skirt for ages,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. “And indoors at this time of the morning too. What’s wrong with her?”

  “Perhaps her trousers have gone to the cleaners,” Oliver suggested.

  “Oh, do you think so? Is that it? Yes, that might be it, mightn’t it?” The Commando beret nodded vigorously. “Or do you think she’s becoming a bit feminine at last? No, I don’t think so,” she answered herself. “Not at her age. She’s been like that for too long now. Can you believe that any girl could take so little trouble with herself? Tell me if I’m tiring you, won’t you, dear boy?”

  “Not a bit,” said Oliver faintly.

  If Mrs. Ogilvie could have seen what Heather saw that evening, she would have found it even more incredible. Heather burst into Oliver’s room, giving a fair imitation of his morning visitor.

  “Can you believe it?” she cried. “Can you believe it? I’ve just caught Vi in front of the long glass in my room—with the light on, of course, waking up the children—and would you believe it—she was putting on lipstick!”

  “Nonsense,” said Oliver.

  “I swear it. True, she was wiping off as much as she put on—with one of my precious face tissues—but the fact remains she was trying.”

  “By the way,” he asked. “Did she send her pants to the cleaners?”

  “Not she. She likes them encrusted. Why?”

  “She was wearing a skirt this morning. Mrs. O. saw her and nearly burst a blood-vessel. You know how she goes on.”

  “Oh Lord, has that woman been here today? I suppose she came to let off steam to you about what I’d written to John. I met her in the village when I was posting the letter. I wish I hadn’t told her about it. I thought it was a good idea, but she was horrified. Told me that it was things like that ruined a marriage.”

  “You know what she is,” Oliver said. “Just because her own husband walked out on her, or, rather, had himself wheeled out in his bathchair, she can’t bear anybody else’s marriage to be a success.”

  “Mm—yes,” said Heather thoughtfully, frowning under her fringe that was like a little straight-clipped hedge. Then she took a deep breath and said in a rush: “Ollie, I’m rather dreading John’s coming home.”

  “Why? D’you think he’ll have changed so much?”

  “It isn’t that. After all, he’s been a prisoner less than a year, and he’s not the sort of man to be changed.”

  “I know what you mean. He’s stable. Outside things don’t alter his character.”

  “No,” she said. “Other people come back bitter, or irritable, or broody; but you’ll see, Johnny’ll come back with just as nice a nature as he went out.”

  “It must take some living up to.” Oliver had spoken idly and was surprised to see by the quick turn of Heather’s head that he had hit the mark.

  “And you know,” she said, “you just can’t quarrel with him. He won’t. That’s what makes it all so difficult. It’s maddening when you feel like having a row and someone just sits there making bubbly noises with his pipe and saying: ‘Steady, old girl.’” She looked at Oliver propitiatingly, wanting him to condone. He said nothing and waited to see how much she would tell him.

  “When I said I was dreading John’s coming home,” she went on, sitting down and carefully pressing in the front pleats of her skirt so that she could talk without looking at him, “I meant that I didn’t know what it was going to be like to be married to him again. It’s all very well for people who are madly in love. Everyone pities them when their husbands go off to fight, but really they feel quite smug because they’re sure of what it’s going to be like when they come back. But if you’re not sure—”

  “For heaven’s sake, Heather,” interrupted Oliver, “don’t try to tell me that you and John aren’t madly in love. The whole of Shropshire knows you are. It’s a kind of creed.”

  “Oh, we are, of course—as much as two people can be when they started discovering things about each ot
her. I’m not sure it’s a good thing to be in love before you marry; it gives you the wrong ideas.”

  “Such as?”

  “Oh, you know. You’ve been in love with people. You know how they give out a kind of glow for you, which makes them more exciting than other people. You can spot them coming a mile off, and if you see the back of a head rather like theirs in the street, that glows too, a bit, until you see the face.”

  “I know what you mean,” Oliver said. “It’s a sort of enchantment they have for you. It colours everything they say and do and wear. It even comes through on the telephone, I used to find.”

  “Yes, that’s what it is. That’s what being in love is, isn’t it? But listen—Ollie,”—Heather began to wail a little—“how can someone go on being enchanted when you live with them day by day and hour by hour? It’s when you start letting yourself notice things that you were too dazzled to see before, that’s when it starts to go.”

  Oliver was surprised by the sadness in her tone. “You shouldn’t talk like this, darling,” he said. “It doesn’t get you anywhere. You’re probably exaggerating, anyway. You’re tired, you’ve got the responsibility of the kids all on your own, you’ve had five years of war, and the worry about John.” All the old facile arguments.

  She brushed them aside. “It’s nothing to do with that. It’s something that happens to every marriage. I know that now. I’ve watched other people. No one’s given a perfect marriage; you have to make it for yourselves out of some very unpromising situations. The point is not what you’ve got, but what you make of what you’ve got. Lord, I sound like someone preaching, don’t I? I’m the last one to preach, because John and I just haven’t been able to make it. That’s what’s been so disillusioning, to find out how inadequate we are. Are you bored, Ollie?”

  “Of course not, go on.”

  .…

  “I’ve never talked to anyone like this,” said Heather nervously. “Least of all John. That’s been one of our big mistakes: we don’t admit things. I’ve never been able to make him have anything out, even that silly business about Hugh Aitcheson—remember?—when we were engaged. John was so damnably tolerant. I was just spoiling for a colossal row, but John simply refused to talk about Hugh, and then when Hugh had drifted out of the picture, John and I just drifted back together again with everything unsaid and me feeling rather a fool.

  I was a fool too. Lord, what a fool I was to think that all you had to do was to marry someone you loved and you could sit back and be happy ever after, amen. I was quite nice in those days too; at least, I felt nicer than I do now. But as John started to get on my nerves, I started to get irritable, and then, of course, he wasn’t liking me any better than I was liking him. He never showed it, but I could feel him getting disappointed in me. He can’t have loved me for my brain; I believe—but that was one of the things he never talked about—I believe he loved me for my sunny little nature and the air of artless youth which I detect in photographs of myself before marriage. But when the sunniness went, what was there behind it? He’d married a wife with no depth. I suppose I haven’t got any, though God knows I try. I’m not quite sure what depth is.

  Oh, the first year wasn’t too bad really. A lot of it was lovely, as a matter of fact, with everything new and exciting. John was in Dorset, and I used to dash down there when he wasn’t dashing up to London. We really were happy in that ridiculous little flat up there, which used to sway if anything dropped too close. I remember the warden used to batter on our door to try and make us go down to the shelter at night, but we wouldn’t, until there was that terrific blast and the flat sucked in its teeth. I was expecting David then, you see.

  They say children bind a marriage together, like glue, or the egg you put in rissoles, don’t they? They’re dead wrong. I can date the beginning of our discord from the beginning of David—at least from the time when he began to affect me. I used to get tired and cross and hot and sick of myself, and I was getting pig-faced, but John would insist on treating me as a sort of Madonna. I used to stick my feet up on a sofa and wail at him to fetch me things, and, silly ass, he used to fetch them instead of tipping up the sofa and telling me what the doctor said about exercise. But he’s so good, you see, John is, so much too good for me, besides being cleverer, and all the time I was getting to feel inferior.

  Where were you when David was born? Of course, you were in Scotland, weren’t you? I don’t suppose I’ve ever told you anything about it. It was just another instance of the very thing that should have brought us together sending us farther apart. I don’t mean the actual having David, but the adversity we both went through. You’re supposed to come together in adversity, aren’t you?

  I don’t know whether you know anything about that nursing-home, Burley House. I expect some of your friends’ wives have been there. A lot of Service people do; they get reduced rates—and, my God, reduced amenities. I’ll never forget arriving there. John took me. He was at home at the time, taking a course. Things started to happen about two o’clock in the morning. He was marvellous then, of course, just what I wanted, rushing about with rugs and a wrinkled face and conjuring a taxi out of somewhere—I didn’t care where. When we got to this place, just outside London, he wanted to come and see me safely into bed. They laughed at that, of course, but I remember, while I was almost passing out in the hall, I remember being disappointed to see how meekly he obeyed them. He’s always had a holy fear of rules of any kind, no matter who makes them. He’s the sort of man who always walks on the right in the Underground, so, of course, when the nurse said: ‘We never allow anything like that,’ he just blew me a despairing kiss over her head and faded away.

  Oh, Ollie, I did have an awful time. It’s all right, don’t get nervous. I’m not going to give you any grisly details. I just want to tell you about the night sister they had there. She was the same shape in front as behind, with yellow hornrimmed spectacles and a nose like a boathook. Before I’d even opened my mouth, she said: ‘Now we don’t allow any fuss. People have babies every minute of the day and night, so you needn’t think you’re anything extraordinary. I don’t want any fuss.’ I wasn’t going to fuss. I had thought of asking her to get my night things out of my case, but I changed my mind. I was practically collapsing, but she just stood over me and watched me undress, looking at my underclothes in a sneering sort of way, though I’m sure they were better than hers. When I’d turned down the bed and got in, I discovered I hadn’t got a hankie, so I had to crawl out again and get one. D’you know, that bloody woman watched me drag myself all the way to the dressing-table and back. God, if she ever has a baby, I wish they’d do to her what the Germans did to pregnant women; but she won’t, of course, until they come in test-tubes.

  Need I say that she didn’t send for the doctor in time? That’s a favourite trick of theirs. They love to be able to greet him with the baby already arrived when he turns up. Not that the nurses didn’t manage me and David all right on their own, but I was paying for that doctor, and he might have stopped the night sister slapping my face at one crucial moment.

  They wouldn’t let me see John the next day. I heard him whistling outside the window until they chased him away. I whistled back, but of course he couldn’t hear me, and I didn’t dare get out of bed even if I could have. When they did let him come, I was having my tea. He’d had quite a day, and no lunch, so I rang the bell and asked humbly if I could have another cup. The nurse wasn’t exactly rude, but she didn’t bring the cup, and when I was going to ring the bell again, John wouldn’t let me. Rules again, you see. However, when she came to tell him he must go, he was rash enough to ask if she could bring in his son into the room? She was appalled. He could go with her and look at David through glass if he liked. He told me next time he came that they had brought a baby to the other side of a hatch and shaken it at him for about half a minute, and from his description of it I’m sure it wasn’t David.

  Those were just a few of the things wrong with that place, but
the most wrong of all was that John sat down under it. I kept on at him to make a row, and really it was pathetic to see the struggle between his two very decent emotions—chivalry towards me and the hatred of giving any trouble. A lesser man would have raised hell. John just did his Blessed-are-the-Meek act. That was when I started to realise his inadequacy, and he realised mine when I came home and he saw what an inefficient mother I was. I’m pretty good now. I know you think I make a fetish of it, but honestly, Ollie, don’t listen to anyone who tells you you can look after children and do anything else besides, and that’s one of the reasons I’m worried about John coming home. I made a pretty good hash of being a wife as well as a mother when I only had one baby. What’ll it be like with two? He was always wanting me to go out, you know, and as soon as I’d got my figure back I wanted to as well, but I wouldn’t pay anyone to come and sit with David, even if we could have found somebody. At least I said it was the money, rather righteously, but really I wouldn’t have trusted anyone alone with David. I would hardly trust John. If I left them together while I went shopping, and David was crying when I got back, I’d make out it was John’s fault, which wasn’t fair, because he was better with the baby than I was. He was silly with him, though; he used to put on an inane face when he talked to him and waste his energy playing all sorts of games that the wretched child was far too young to understand. That was why I was so annoyed when Fred tried to make Susan listen to his watch—I don’t know if you noticed—because that was what John used to do to David when he was only about a month old.

  Well, there you have us. John at the War Office, upset because he hadn’t been sent abroad yet, but determined to do his duty where it lay, coming home every night to an unenthusiastic wife and strings of wet nappies hanging in front of the sitting-room fire. Our life was drab. That was what made us decide to go on that holiday to Doraig, when John got his embarkation leave at last. Although we never admitted it to each other, I know we were both thinking that if we could get away on our own, we might get back some happiness.