by Nina Bawden
‘I’ll go if you want me to,’ Martin said. ‘But I can’t take Wildfire to Grandad’s can I?’
‘No. You can’t take your pony there. But you can do some carpentry. You could make a rabbit hutch. Perhaps Grandad would let you keep a rabbit.’
‘I don’t like carpentry. I’m bad at it,’ he said simply.
For a moment she felt unreasonably angry with him, but only for a moment. He had accepted what she told him about Johnny, he wasn’t a suspicious child, but she thought he looked unnaturally pale and shut in. He had eaten very little lunch. Now, although they had been walking in the woods for about an hour, he had said very little and there was no colour in his cheeks. She wondered if anyone had said anything to him. She doubted it, she trusted Sandlewood, but it was always possible. She suggested that they should collect fir cones but he lost interest very quickly and walked along, hands in pockets, listlessly answering her questions but volunteering nothing.
They went back to the hotel for tea. She was beginning to be frightened. She asked him if anyone had upset him and he shook his head almost sullenly. The hotel was full of other parents and their boys, having tea in the big, open lounge. As they went in, she imagined a kind of hush running round the neatly spread tables, a pause in the consumption of toasted scones. She looked round nervously, fancying that one person had looked away too quickly, that another had watched them with too frank an interest. One man did look, she was sure, a bold, hard-eyed stare. She turned away and felt his eyes like a knife in her back. She said to Martin, ‘Do you like all the other boys?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They’re all right.’
‘You like them all, do you? Surely there must be some you don’t like? Boys say silly things sometimes.’
‘Oh, don’t keep on, Mummy,’ he said restlessly.
He sipped at a glass of milk and crumbled the paste sandwich on his plate. The familiar need for sleep crept over her. She peered covertly at her watch and saw with shamed relief that there was only half an hour before they would have to go back to the school.
As they left, he burst into tears and said he had a headache.
She only half believed him and made light of it. Martin had always been inclined to make a fuss when he was ill. He was afraid of pain, more fearful in anticipation than when he actually hurt himself, a form of physical cowardice Johnny had never been sympathetic to. While Johnny had been at home, she had distrusted his robust, Spartan attitudes; now she was on her own, she felt she should uphold them. ‘I expect you ate too much lunch,’ she said. ‘All that ice-cream.’
‘I didn’t eat it,’ he said truthfully. He made a face. ‘I feel sick.’
They were about to get into the car. He rushed suddenly into some laurel bushes at the side of the car park and vomited. She wiped his mouth and he said he felt better. She wasn’t particularly disturbed, her eyes were heavy with sleep, but she said, ‘You’d better tell Matron.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s silly to make a fuss.’ He crinkled up his eyes, looking suddenly like a small, amused adult. ‘She’s a great one for the castor oil.’ His spirits seemed to have risen though there was a strained look about his eyes. When they got to the school, he ran in quite cheerfully, turning at the door to wave his hand.
In the middle of the night she woke from a drowned sleep, the telephone bell sawing through her head. It was Sandlewood. It took some time before she understood what he said. She wondered, long afterwards, if he had thought she was drunk.
Martin was ill. He had vomited repeatedly; they had taken his temperature and found it soaring. The doctor had come and sent him to hospital with suspected meningitis.
Sandlewood was reassuring but he sounded worried. When she got to the hospital they said there was hope, but it was difficult to believe it. He was pure, chalk white and his eyes were closed. He moved his head fretfully from time to time and gave a harsh, sad cry like a sea bird’s. They had put him in a small room off the men’s ward. It was nearly dawn and the hospital echoed with the clatter of basins and trolleys and cups of tea. A patient, a thin cadaver in striped pyjamas and stained brown dressing-gown, brought her a cup, thrusting it uneasily through the door with a long, bony hand covered in brown patches. Mary put the tea down by the bed and drank it later when it was cold, with a sour, creamy scum on top. Martin had not opened his eyes. She sat, holding his hand which was hard and dry, calloused like a navvy’s. Her whole body ached with pain as if it were slowly coming back to life.
The doctor was enormous, a great bruiser of a man with a body like a tree trunk. He said, ‘He’s got a good chance. He’s a fine, healthy boy.’
She didn’t believe him. She distrusted them all, the treelike doctor, the kind, ignorant nurses, the trim little specialist who came and went away again. There was nothing she could do. She sat by his bed and prayed. She couldn’t think of a prayer. She said, ‘Little body, do not die’. It was a poem she had once thought sentimental. Please don’t let him die. If he lives, I’ll be a good girl for ever and ever amen. She was ashamed of herself for praying like that. She chewed at her handkerchief, pulling holes in it with her teeth.
He woke up once or twice and looked at her. There was no expression in his eyes, not even bewilderment or pain. During the afternoon of the first day—or it might have been the day after—he began to call for Johnny. ‘Daddy,’ he said, ‘Daddy,’ in a quiet, flat voice, not at all like a child crying out in a nightmare, but with the steady, determined hopefulness of a child who refuses to go to sleep.
Sandlewood came in. He tiptoed up to the bed like a nervous bear, hunched in a thick brown overcoat. Martin called for his father. Sandlewood put his hand on Mary’s shoulder and gripped it. ‘I’ll see the doctor,’ he said. ‘Perhaps something can be done.’
She never found out how it was arranged. When he came, she was asleep in the nurses’wing in the bed of a fat, Irish girl who had tucked her up with tea and toast and a blue sleeping pill. She never knew whether her absence was deliberate or not—perhaps they had feared an emotional scene at the bedside. Certainly, no one told her he was coming, no one told her he was there. She simply woke at five-ten by the Irish nurse’s wrist-watch that lay on the table among the lipsticks and the jars of Pond’s, dressed, and went back to the ward, unwarned, free as air.
He was sitting by Martin’s bed and for an instant it was the most natural thing in the world. Then he looked up and it wasn’t natural any longer. He looked at her, a straight look, but he blushed, slowly and painfully. She felt the colour come into her own face: they stood on either side of the child’s bed, crimson as peonies. Embarrassment was solid and blank as a brick wall between them. He got up and held out his hand to her as if they were strangers.
She said, ‘How are you?’
‘Not so bad. And you?’
She thought that he looked exactly the same, a little fatter, if anything. ‘You’ve got fatter,’ she said. They stared at each other; suddenly his eyes spurted tears. He turned away and she stood, sorry and revolted, looking at Martin. He was sleeping with his mouth slightly open. Johnny touched his arm. The specialist’s been. He says he’s much better.’
‘Thank God.’
‘It must have been a dreadful time for you. I’m sorry. Sorrier than I can say.’ He gave her a glistening look, the track of his tears still shining at the corners of his eyes. She tried desperately to think of something to say. ‘I’m still in the flat, everything’s all right, you mustn’t worry.’ Then the sister came to the door of the cubicle, starched apron crackling. ‘Mr. Prothero,’ she said. Her eyes rested on them both with guarded excitement.
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Yes.’
‘Love—don’t worry.’
She felt her mouth crack open in a smile. ‘No.…’
She didn’t look round. She listened to the polished creak of his footsteps receding.
In the sister’s room, off the ward, the doctor said, ‘He’ll be all right now. He’s a strong, healt
hy child. We’re all so pleased.’
‘You’re pleased,’ she said. She felt, irrationally, darkly and bitterly angry. That pompous, solemn voice would just as solemnly have pronounced Martin dead or done for. Or would it? Fear, more histrionic than real, tightened her throat.
His glance forgave her, understood. He raised himself on his toes, red hands clutching white lapels. ‘Believe me, Mrs. Prothero, it’s true. We are pleased. It’s so often we have to tell people the other thing.’
The royal ‘we’. Like kings, she thought, doling out a chance of life like a reward for good conduct. ‘How often do you tell people they’re going to die?’ she said. ‘Why should I trust you?’
His voice was cold, emphatic. ‘I’m not lying to you, Mrs. Prothero. As far as I can judge, barring the unforeseeable, your boy will get well.’
She believed him. She had believed him in the beginning. She said, ‘I’m sorry. I was thinking of something that happened a long time ago.’
‘Naturally, you’re over-wrought.’ He glanced at her over horn-rimmed spectacles. ‘It was fortunate your husband was able to come,’ he said, for all the world as if Johnny had managed to drag himself away from some important business conference. ‘One can never tell in these cases.…’ He hesitated. ‘He behaved very well. It can’t have been easy for him.’
His intention was purely kind. But there was a roaring in her ears and a painful swelling in her throat. She wanted to hurl something heavy and hard into that kind, smug, professional face. ‘What did you expect?’ she shouted, banging her fist on the desk, spoiling for a brawl as eagerly as a drunken Irishman. ‘What did you expect? Did you think he would steal your stethoscope?’
Chapter Sixteen
Clara was waiting in the lobby. She looked like a Vogue illustration, tall, rangy; hair, eyes and coat the colour of an autumn leaf. She took Mary’s hand. ‘I’m so very, very glad, dear.’
Mary’s eyes filled with tears.
Clara said, ‘I’ve telephoned Lester. He was almost demented.’
‘Thank you.’
She stood passive while Clara drew her hand through her arm. ‘You look tired to death.… I’ve ordered a taxi. We’ll go straight home … bed and a hot water bottle … you’re not to worry about one thing more.’
Her voice flowed on, gentle and understanding, and for a moment Mary drifted with it like an empty boat on a kind, indifferent sea. But her heart was racing like an engine when the accelerator cable snaps: you take your foot off the pedal and it goes on racing faster and faster, a whirl of undirected, uncontrolled energy. It wasn’t like anything that had ever happened to her before. She wanted to run, to shout; she felt she was on the verge of becoming a quite different person.
She shook her head. ‘If you don’t mind … I’d rather be on my own.’
‘Of course, dear.’ A slight, kind perplexity creased the autumn-tinted face but the understanding was unchanged. Clara was handling her with awe-struck care as if she were a piece of her mother’s Meissen china. ‘You take the taxi then.’
‘I don’t want the taxi. I think I want to walk. I can get a bus back to town.’
She felt guilty as she left, knowing that Clara was standing on the steps of the hospital, watching her with her long, kind, worried face, but she forgot her as soon as she turned the corner. It was soft, muggy weather, the rain blew into her face, warm as tears. Then she walked, not feeling tired at all, her veins swelling to bursting point, the way they do when you have dived too deep.
She found she was enormously hungry. She went into a café and ate bacon and eggs and drank three cups of sweet hot tea. There was a couple sitting opposite her at the same table, a small, wrinkled, simian man and his wife—a soft, round face like a lump of risen dough. She smiled at Mary as she polished off her plateful, a smile redolent of goodness and motherliness. Mary smiled back at her, suddenly and absolutely filled with rapture. It stopped her breath and brought tears into her eyes.
She left the Lyons and caught a Green Line bus. She got out at Leicester Square and walked slowly, watching the people queueing at the picture palaces, gawping in the shop windows and the glittering glass cages of the snack bars, perfectly happy to be alone.
She went into a pub and ordered a double brandy. She looked round the crowded bar and loved everyone, the blonde tart with the orange gash of a mouth and skin white as flour, the pimply student in his grubby duffle coat, the mousy couple sitting in glum, domestic silence, sipping their I.P.A. and watching television in a corner. The brandy went down like golden fire. She asked for another.
‘Are you ill?’ the barman said. His pale face, pitted with small, dark holes like grapeshot wounds, was narrow with suspicion.
She smiled copiously, ‘No. I just want a double brandy.’
She stood against the wall. There was a man and a girl standing at the bar in front of her. The man was fresh-faced and alert-looking, his navy suit was shiny at the seams. His girl had a tight new perm and a camel hair coat and mock pearl ear-rings; her mouth was soft and her skin was soft, she looked as if she might smell of baby powder. She was the kind of girl for whom everyone buys a Bravington Ring, whose husband saves for the future: the trim little house with a crazy-paving path, the set of door chimes and a washing machine on the never-never. Nothing much would ever happen to them, Mary thought, but they wouldn’t expect it to. She sipped her brandy and wished them happiness, sentimentally forseeing their long bus ride home, the lingering kiss in the shop doorway, their calm, uncomplicated rapture. They toasted each other, the man raising his glass of Mild and Bitter, the girl her Baby Cham. Mary watched them, happy for the moment just to be there. She didn’t want to get drunk, she didn’t want to talk to anyone, she didn’t want to smoke.
The man turned his head and whispered in his girl’s ear. She swayed a little towards him, her lips parted and she gave a low laugh. They looked at each other. Their bodies did not touch, there was nothing remotely indecent in their behaviour, but it stirred Mary’s senses; not sadly and furtively like pornography, but profoundly and painfully. She wasn’t directly envious, it was simply that happiness had suddenly curdled inside her. She turned away, put her drink down on a ledge behind her head and felt in her bag for cigarettes.
Someone snapped a lighter under her nose. She said, ‘Thank you,’ and he nodded at her empty glass. ‘Like another?’ He was middle-aged, good-looking, respectable, blue eyes nervous and intent above his stiff white collar.
‘That’s very kind of you.’
He brought the brandy and they talked. He usually went straight home after the office but today he had won something on the four-thirty. They had a little syndicate at the office. This was the first time they had been lucky and he had promised himself a little celebration. He asked Mary if she worked in an office, his glance slyly curious. She said yes, and looked at his hands. They were large and well kept, with thick, masculine fingers. He told a borderline joke, watching her to see how she took it. She smiled uncertainly, conversation petered out, the offer of another drink was faintly reluctant as if he saw he had made a mistake and couldn’t see how to get out of it.
She shook her head and suddenly saw herself; Mary Prothero, a pale, youngish woman in an expensive coat, her mother-in-law’s diamond ring on her finger. Mary Prothero who would like to get drunk but wouldn’t because women don’t get drunk. Mary Prothero, who would like to pick up a man but simply didn’t have the guts to do it. She didn’t much like Mary Prothero. The best thing she could do with her was to take her home and put her to bed with a hot water bottle. She said, ‘I’ll change my mind, if I may.’
‘Good,’ he said, falsely enthusiastic. She slipped out of the door as he was diffidently elbowing his way to the crowded bar. She caught a bus at random and got out three stops later. The bus was going to Barnes. She watched it lurch into the distance, lights gleaming on the black, wet road and thought of Charles. For a long time it had half-frightened her to think of him; the strength of her desire had
made her shocked and ashamed. Decent women did not feel like that. This was something her upbringing had taught her and her marriage had done nothing to change it. Now she gave way to the thought of Charles with the same feeling of guilty luxury she had had when she was a child, eating forbidden sweets on Sunday—dwelling on his dark, tangly hair, the touch of his hands, the feel of his skin. Like a bitch on heat, she thought bitterly, despising herself and then thought, more rationally, that it was no answer at all or, at any rate, no more of an answer than the half swallow of water left in the drinking flask in the desert; the moment’s relief that makes the next more brutal. She began to walk towards home. The rain had stopped now and the wind was sharp.
Someone called to her. She looked up and saw a man coming towards her. She recognized him after a moment of bleak disappointment, a friend of Clara’s, Sebastian something-or-other, a pushing, opinionated young man with red hair. Clara said he had great talent.
‘Hallo,’ he said, ‘what a surprise,’ tucking his hand in the crook of her elbow and marching along beside her. He looked down from his bony height with a consciously ironic smile. ‘I thought you always spent Saturdays with your father.’
She didn’t understand, but then she hardly expected anything he said to make sense. He might have been a gaunt, gabbling visitor from another world altogether. Then she remembered. Clara had given her the invitation weeks ago and she had automatically refused it.
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Your party. I’m sorry.…’
He said broodingly, ‘You didn’t want to come. You might at least have been honest about it.’
‘But I was.’ He lifted his eyebrows with affected, amused incredulity and she knew he would not believe her unless she told him the truth, and she did not want to talk about Martin to him. It would take too long, she would have to linger and be swamped by his sympathy and almost certainly—she remembered suddenly an appalling evening spent in his company in Clara’s flat—an account of a similar crisis in his own childhood. Any excuse would serve to set him off on a spate of dull reminiscences of his own. She said, ‘Is the party over already? Was it fun?’