by Jane Rogers
Chapter 16
Alan’s unhappiness was erratic and Carolyn never really discovered what it was about. She thought that he probably didn’t know himself. He was simply moody, he went up and down more than she did. Over time, as that characterization formulated itself and stuck, Carolyn no longer wondered why. It was something to accept about Alan, like his height, his untidiness, his charm. He was moody.
It was irritating – sometimes infuriating. There were rows. Once when she had invited various friends (including two of Alan’s people from work) to Sunday dinner, he announced in the morning that he couldn’t stand it, and went off for a walk. He rang her at ten-thirty p.m., from a pub twelve miles away, asking for a lift home. Patsy from next door had to come in to babysit. Carolyn had coped with cooking and hostessing and children, and covered for Alan with hints of illness among relatives. She was exhausted, angry and suspicious. Alan, when she found him, was exceedingly drunk. His tale that he had been in the pub since it opened was clearly true.
Gradually she learned not to ask questions about these episodes, because it enraged him and made him turn his venom and misery against her. If she left him to himself he seemed to come round more quickly. She could not stand it when he was angry, and went to great lengths to avoid confrontations. Several times, she had been frightened that he would break something, or hurt somebody. Worse than that, she was frightened in a way she never spelt out to herself: for what might happen, in such a complete loss of control; for what irrevocable thing might be said, for what destruction of things more precious than merely physical might be unleashed.
Music was the clearest signal of his moods. Carolyn hardly ever used the stereo. It was Alan’s, as was the growing collection of classical records and tapes. At the beginning he had never listened to music, but since Cathy’s birth he had started buying it. When he was depressed he shut himself in the study and played the same things over and over again, until Carolyn was filled with the kind of anxiety that made her say “Yes” to the children without knowing what they’d asked. Brahms, Symphony No. 2, Bach, Cello Suite No. 2 in D minor. She hated the sound of them. And she knew he knew she didn’t understand them. It gave her the same unease she felt on the rare occasions when they visited Lucy and Trevor. But he had played the violin; his mother was a musician, she reminded herself. When he suggested buying a piano for the children, she was relieved. If the children could do it, they would bring it within her world.
It was a long time before she realized how much he was drinking. The Sunday dinner episode seemed a lone instance, and excusable (if it was at all excusable) in that he had been twelve miles from home; a pub was the obvious place to spend the evening. They kept assorted alcohol in the house, and Carolyn replenished stocks whenever guests were coming, but it did not disappear with undue speed. Carolyn knew of course that Alan’s job was not the nine-to-five sort. Obviously he spent a lot of evenings (most) working late, and sometimes went for a quick drink before coming home. But he never appeared drunk. Often she was glad he had been for a drink, because then he was more talkative and cheerful, and they were more likely to sit and have a pleasant half-hour over a nip of whisky or a mug of Horlicks, and go to bed and make love. And she was usually relieved when he was late home because she seemed to have things to do, things that just couldn’t be fitted into a day of getting breakfast, cleaning up, walking Chris and Annie to school, dawdling for half an hour before taking Cathy to Nursery, rushing home to use the precious hour and a half of Cathy’s absence to shop or clean or (delicious luxury) have a cup of coffee and a child-free talk with Patsy next door, collecting Cathy, collecting the others, giving them dinner, walking the older two back to school, preparing the evening meal, doing the washing, playing with Cathy, collecting the children from school again . . . and so on. Often there was ironing, or letting hems up or down, or messy things like making jam or decorating, to be done in the evenings when the children were in bed. If Alan had to work late it seemed fair enough for her to do the same. If he was home she felt that she should sit and relax with him, and he was restless and impatient – or else he watched television in a moronic stupor which she thought excluded her, but then asked in hurt tones why she wasn’t sitting with him, when she left the room to get something useful done.
Even after that weekend which she saw in retrospect as a milestone, and came to regard (when she knew the end) as the beginning of the end – even after that weekend, she did not think of him as an alcoholic, but rather as someone who was dangerously susceptible to alcohol. An alcoholic, she thought, woke up and reached for the sherry, and kept bottles hidden behind books on the shelves. Alan was simply moody, and liable to drink when he was down. She needed to keep a closer eye on him at such times – as she did with the children when they had colds (which made them more susceptible to nasty ear infections).
That weekend gave her a taste of a fear which she had not experienced before; a metallic, lingering taste which it was impossible to wash from the mouth. He had been moody for some time, and busy every single evening. Then he said he would have to work all the coming weekend, to finish some drawings. Carolyn decided to take the children to visit her parents, because it was something that Alan hated doing anyway. It was easier to go into the city and out again by train, than to drive on her own with all three children. They caught an early train on Saturday morning, and returned at four-thirty on Sunday.
Alan was not at the station to meet them, as he had promised to be. After waiting half an hour, with Cathy refusing to be carried and continually trying to run in front of the taxis, and Chris and Annie repeatedly shouting “He’s coming now” when he wasn’t, Carolyn telephoned the house. There was no reply. She took a taxi home. The curtains were drawn, although it was not dark. She was scared, and made the children wait in the car while she went and unlocked the house. Alan was asleep on the sofa. There were a lot of bottles on and under the coffee table. There were dozens of beer cans, and he had finished all the alcohol in the house, except for a half-bottle of liqueur. She shepherded the children into the kitchen and gave them their tea. She looked in on him once, but their noise was not having any effect on him. There was vomit in the sink.
“What’s wrong with Daddy?”
“He’s not very well. He’s been working hard, he needs a rest.” She was as calm as a sleepwalker. Had he been alone, or had someone else been here? She had to force herself to look in the bedroom, but the bed was neatly made as she had left it. She put the children to bed with automatic calm, and sat hugging her knees on the landing until she was sure they were all asleep.
He was snoring loudly, his mouth open. The room stank of alcohol.
“Alan, ALAN!” She shrank from touching him. There was a bluish stubble on his chin, his posture reminded her of old men on park benches. But she had to shake him to make him wake up. He sat up with a jerk, and stared at her for seconds before he showed any recognition.
“Carolyn – ? Lyn! What are you doing – how did you – ?”
“I got a taxi.”
“Are the kids – ?”
“In bed.”
“God – I should’ve – I’m sorry – I should’ve met you –”
“What have you done?” she asked quietly, her control wavering.
He stood up unsteadily and waved at the room around him.
“Mike came round and we had a few jars. . . . God . . . I feel as if I’ve been blackjacked.”
“Last night?”
“Mmmm.”
“Have you done your drawings?”
“No. Bloody hell, no. What time is it?”
“Quarter-past eight.”
“Shit. Let me get some coffee.”
She followed him into the kitchen. “Alan?”
“What?”
“Why – why did you drink so much?”
He looked at her and frowned.
“Why not? Mike brought some beer in – we got talking. Why not? I like Mike, he’s very funny.”
“How did he get home?”
Alan laughed. “He had to get Sarah to come and collect him. She was furious. Absolutely livid!”
He turned his attention to the coffee.
Carolyn watched him trying to get the spoonful of granules out of the coffee jar. It kept knocking against the sides of the jar, and the granules fell back off the spoon. “What time was that?”
“Christ knows.” He turned angrily, and threw down the spoon, spilling coffee over the work surface. She wished she had taken the spoon from him and made him the coffee. But that would have angered him too. “What is this – an inquisition? Do I have to ask your permission to have a few drinks with a mate, in my own house on a Saturday night?”
She went quietly upstairs, to digest the fact that he did not think he had done anything monstrous or strange.
Carolyn was pleased when Alan got a new job, with the Metropolitan Council that covered the depressed area of town to the east of the city – Millside. The money was significantly better, and it also removed him from the company of Mike, his most constant drinking companion. She hoped that it might revive some of his idealism and enthusiasm. He was utterly contemptuous of Lark and Clarkson, and often bitter about the way one of the partners would always step in, if he got something interesting to do.
“No matter how long I stay there I’ll never be more than office junior – until one of the bastards dies.”
When he was a student, Carolyn remembered, he had imagined designing houses and schools, buildings for ordinary people. From time to time he had taken her round newly built council estates and pointed out to her with indignation how shoddy they were, how poorly designed. Perhaps, she thought, he will be happier now he is working on more worthwhile things. When he was happy, they were both happy. There were still enough good days and nights for Carolyn to remain certain that it was the world outside which depressed Alan, and that if all other pressures were removed, they would be perfectly happy together – the children, Alan and herself.
Three months in the new job were enough to convince Alan that it was no better than private practice. Work was done more slowly; procedures were more bureaucratic – and the whole thing, frankly, was more boring. At least at Lark and Clarkson there had been some days that buzzed, when the phone rang all day, when he had meetings with clients, planners, the district surveyor, deadlines crowding in on him. Here he was on the same tedious project all day long. And there were always, always, wrangles over money. It became, if anything, more depressing than his former job – at least there had been a few clients who were interested in a classy finished product rather than the cheapest version possible.
Socially, the Architects’ Department was a dismal place. He accompanied them dutifully to the pub at lunch time, and regularly consumed steak sandwich, chips, and two pints of bitter – but he found their company stolid and boring. And the building he had to work in was hateful: a sixties-inspired civic centre, eighteen storeys high and shedding a shower of facing bricks every time the wind blew. They had never had the scaffolding down from it since it was completed. Inside it was cheaply futuristic, with inadequate sound-proofing, hideous pegboard ceilings, and open-plan offices littered with little barricades of filing cabinets, boxes, and plants, behind which people screened themselves in a primitive attempt to gain working privacy. He found it grimly amusing to regard the civic centre as the fruit of centuries of architectural learning and experience – combining as it did an unsafe exterior with maximum interior ugliness and discomfort to users. Those on the higher floors with insufficient kudos to obtain more than one filing cabinet as shelter became neurotically insecure, and the absentee rate on the top floor was a standing joke. The panoramic views of the town (it hardly deserved the name of town any more; it had had an identity a hundred years ago maybe, but now was simply absorbed into the uglier side of the city’s sprawl) were appalling. There were vacant vandalized industrial sites interspersed with mean little terraces and the scars left by demolition; flattened blighted acres of car park. On the skyline to the east, like a half-forgotten dream, the outline of the hills. To the west, the assorted and affluent skyscrapers of the city centre gleamed smugly. Millside’s ugly civic centre stood forlornly single, pinned to the sky with its scaffolding, in deformed imitation of its city centre cousins. Looking down from its windows Alan felt that its growth from the squalid devastated land around it was as fitting as a blackhead on dirty skin.
The floor containing self-service cafeteria and bar had never been opened, due to problems which had arisen in the construction of the kitchens. It was only by chance that Alan discovered the temporary canteen for council employees. No one from Architects’ ever descended to lunch there. It was a ramshackle wooden annexe, tacked on to the side of an old primary school which was now being used as a records store. It was a five-minute walk from the office, along dark terraced streets. Alan went in out of curiosity, and found himself enjoying the school-dinners atmosphere and the cheery buxom ladies who waved ladles and offered “A touch of carrots, love? A nice bit of stew?” and seemed to have running jokes going with (or know the favourite dinners of) everyone in the queue. It was good to feel wooden boards under the feet, and a cold draught down your neck.
He sat alone at first, sizing up the people around him. The square tables dotted round the room seated four, and most people came in with others whom they seemed to know. He sorted them into three categories: the longest serving council employees, who had got into the habit of eating here in their youth and never got out of it; the lower salaried ranks (you could get a three-course meal for under a pound); and those who ate here for convenience or from principles. Convenience because it was quick, principles because it wasn’t exclusive. There was a serious dearth of attractive young women, most of whom (he supposed) were on diets and didn’t bother with lunch, and of people (young men he meant) in his kind of position. Presumably they were all busy licking superiors’ arses and chewing leathery steak sandwiches in pubs. He enjoyed the half-hour or so that he spent there, anonymously eavesdropping and fantasizing, outside the earnest claustrophobia of Architects’. Soon the dinner ladies hailed him as a regular, and didn’t need to be told that he liked custard on apple but not on cherry pie. Alan had been, since his youth, a favourite with cleaners and dinner ladies, upon whom he exercised an almost nauseating degree of charm.
When he had become familiar with the regulars at the tables, and concocted backgrounds and occupations for most, a youngish and not unattractive woman started to frequent the canteen. She was often ridiculously dressed, with muddy wellingtons and baggy waterproof boilersuit, and several shapeless jumpers underneath. He watched with interest as she peeled them off. She was transparently thin. Her mouse-blonde hair was cut too short, in one of those butch feminist cuts. Alan took the trouble to imagine her with long silky strands framing her face and brushing her shoulders.
She attracted attention (not his alone) because there were so few women worth looking at in the place. Also, she always stripped off (though she didn’t put all the layers on again at the end, he noticed). And then she ate a remarkable quantity: soup and roll, meat and three veg, and apple pie and custard, at speed and without embarrassment. She usually sat alone. There was a washed-out looking woman in her forties (a terribly dependable personal secretary, Alan had decided) who came in a couple of times a week, and the girl sat with her on those days.
Gradually Alan got to know some people from other departments, and found himself on nodding terms with a few of the canteen regulars. There was an overfriendly man called Robinson, a planner, who started to eat there because, as he told Alan repeatedly, the old ulcer was playing him up. He was regretful about his inability to go to the pub and not drink; “I miss the company – but Christ, I couldn’t do it – any more than I could disappoint a lady, eh, eh?” He had an embarrassingly loud voice. He took to sitting at Alan’s table and complaining loudly about the food and the lack of personable women, and describing the reactions and dime
nsions of his ulcer. He was such obnoxious company that he drove Alan to lunching at erratic times, in attempts to avoid him. When Alan came in one day, he saw that Robinson was already there – not sitting predatorily alone, but astonishingly accompanied by the boilersuit blonde. Alan sat himself at a distance, where he could watch them and eat in peace. They were arguing. He had not known that Robinson knew her. He noticed that the woman was unusually smart in a silky white blouse and green waistcoat. He wondered again what she did. She was giving Robinson a rough time.
As Alan went across to get some coffee Robinson bellowed at him – “Two more, you anti-social bugger!”
Alan filled two extra cups and took the tray over to join them.
“I thought you were having a private conversation.”
“No,” no said Robinson hastily – “just work – it’s all work here, eh?”
The girl stirred her coffee and ignored him. Alan sat down and Robinson introduced them hurriedly. It was obvious that Alan had been summoned because Robinson was losing the argument. The girl’s name was Caro something, and she was in Landscape Design.
“Ah!” Alan smiled his direct and charming smile at her. “That explains it.”
She looked up at him coldly. “What?”
“The clothes – the Worzel Gummidge outfit. I thought you must be in Parks and Gardens, but then you looked too elegant today.”
She looked at him steadily for a moment, then flushed bright red.
“Wouldn’t you think – wouldn’t you think I was rather rude, if I suddenly started comm–commenting on your appearance?”
Robinson began to laugh.
“I didn’t mean to be rude –” said Alan.
“Yes you did,” she said quietly and fiercely. “You wouldn’t dream of speaking like that to a man, patronizing him about his appearance.”
“Have to watch your step here, old boy,” said Robinson joyfully. “You’re speaking to one of the original bra-burners. She won’t stand for any of your male chauvinist piggery. Isn’t that what it’s called?” He appealed to Caro. She looked at him with such contempt that Alan felt almost sorry for the man. But he was irritated by the way she classed him with Robinson.