Cuckoo

by Anne Piper

  She sent us into Geneva one evening. We were supposed to be going to the flicks, but it was the first time we had been really alone away from the house. Tom held my hand in the tram, but we didn’t talk. We got out at the Jardin des Eaux Vives and walked past all the wilting roses up the lake to the Potinière. Tom found a table near the bandstand. He took my hands openly across the top of the table, saying, “And we don’t know a soul in the whole town, darling.”

  “Oh, Tom.”

  “What’s the matter, little one?”

  “Nothing. I’m so happy, that’s all.”

  “Your eyes are diamonds and velvet together.”

  “It’s because I can’t see, I expect.”

  “Can’t you see any of this garden?”

  “A little, but it’s a shining blur with no edges, like a vision of Paradise — those ribbons of coloured light in the water and the strangely illuminated trees.”

  “By street lamps, my sweet, each one swarming with a cloud of insects.”

  “Don’t. How dull life is for you people who see it all clearly. Thurber and I have much more fun, Tom —”

  “Yes?”

  “Hease tell me now what you meant about not understanding you and Mary.”

  “It seems a shame to spoil this beautiful evening.”

  “But I must know. It’s all so confusing for me. Nothing like this ever happened to me before.”

  “Poor little Prue. All right, I’ll try and explain. Mary and I haven’t been getting on well for over a year now, before that it was never ideal, but we made it work. Mary’s very inhibited, she never did enjoy the physical side of marriage. Do you follow, or do you want this all in more scientific language?”

  “No — no — I mean, yes I do follow.”

  “Well, this year, ever since Nicholas was born she hasn’t wanted me as a husband at all, which has created the most insupportable situation between us. It can’t go on like this, the only hope now for saving our marriage is for me to love someone else, and to stay with Mary just for the sake of the children.”

  “Oh.”

  “You do see, my darling, don’t you?”

  “I think so.”

  “I’ve got nothing to offer you — I only know I’m more deeply in love with you than I’ve ever been with anyone.”

  “But what’s going to happen, Tom?”

  “I don’t know, darling. I just don’t know.”

  He looked so unhappy I didn’t ask him again, and the orchestra began to play Haydn. Later we wandered up into the old town, and into another world. There was no one about and all the high dark houses looked blank and empty, our footsteps clanged on the pavements. We went through an open square, past a fountain with geraniums flowering under the arc of the water, into another side street. Tom drew me to him in the doorway of a courtyard and kissed me. Behind his head I could see lamp shadows slanting up the precipice of a house.

  Tom rocked me fiercely, saying, “What are we going to do — what are we going to do?”

  “Don’t, Tom, don’t.” I touched his forehead, trying to calm him.

  “But, Prue, you can’t possibly know how I feel about you.”

  “I can guess a little.”

  “I wonder, you’re too young really, I ought to leave you alone.”

  “I’m not, Tom, I’m practically nineteen now. I’m quite old enough to love somebody.”

  “We’ll have to stop making love like this, I can’t stand it.”

  “Why not? It seems wonderful to me.”

  “I know it does, that’s what I meant about being young. You see for me it’s not enough, it can’t be. I want you altogether, not a few smuggled embraces in doorways as if you were a shop-girl. So this must be the last time, this evening, and tomorrow I shan’t touch you at all.”

  “That should be easy as you’ll be out all day in the mountains with Mary.”

  “Oh Lord, is that tomorrow? I’d forgotten. Well, that will help us over the worst day. Perhaps you’d better go back to England, I don’t trust myself if you stay, darling.”

  “I don’t trust myself much either, Tom.”

  “Oh sweetheart — then of course you must go. I love you too much to make you unhappy, and you’d have nothing but unhappiness from loving me.”

  “But I’d rather have unhappiness than the sort of nothing my life has been till now. Don’t you realise that you are the first person ever to love me since my grandmother died? That means more even than trusting you.”

  “God, what a responsibility.”

  “No it isn’t, darling, really. I can look after myself, but I shall always be grateful to you for that, whatever happens — and for making me feel pretty.”

  “You aren’t pretty — you’re beautiful. Those great dark eyes with lashes as long as dundrearies and this mass of shining hair. Let it down for me now, for goodness’ sake, so that I can run my fingers through it.”

  “Oh Tom — it takes such ages to put it up again.”

  “Never mind, you can go home with it floating.”

  I cried in the tram. I tried very hard not to but great hot tears kept rolling down my cheeks, Tom put my head down on his shoulder. Everything seemed so awful, not only for me, but for everybody — I cried for Mary and for Tom and for the whole world, but very silently as I learnt to cry long ago as a child, so I don’t think Tom was too ashamed of me.

  He kept whispering hopeful things into my ear, that I’d meet a delightful young man my own age soon, and that things always seemed worse at night, and that he and Mary were happier than most married couples anyway, but once I’d begun to cry great sweeps of sorrow surged over me, and I drowned in despair.

  Tom almost carried me out of the tram and propped me up against a tree, saying, “Now, darling, you must pull yourself together. Jean-Pierre’s car is there outside the front door and he’s presumably inside as well as Mary.”

  So with a simply terrific effort I managed to stop after a few minutes. Tom mopped my face with his hankie and lent me a comb to smooth back my hair.

  Jean-Pierre was just going when we reached the hall, so I shook hands and rushed upstairs as quick as I could to a sponge and cold water. I heard Tom and Mary talking next door and then I saw Tom going downstairs carrying his bed-clothes, so I went to ask Mary what was the matter, and found her with Caro ill in her room. And she wanted me to go with Tom to the mountains in the morning as she couldn’t leave Caro.

  At first I thought I hadn’t heard right, and then I thought I must refuse somehow, and then suddenly, while I was opening and shutting my mouth and producing a few feeble remarks, I decided it must be Fate. I turned round and went to bed and fell asleep in a delirium of exhaustion.

  My first thought when I woke was that Caro would be better. But it was all right, Mary ran in to tell me to dress for a picnic, even before I got up.

  I dared not breathe properly till Tom raced Jean-Pierre’s car much too fast towards Geneva, but then I began to sing like a maniac. I stood up holding on to the windscreen and shouting into the wind. Tom pulled me back, “Sit down, child, for goodness’ sake. You’ll have us arrested.”

  “Why? Is it illegal to be wild with joy in Switzerland?”

  “I wouldn’t know. But I do know that if your dress whips across my face I’ll have us both in the ditch. Try to be joyful sitting down.”

  “But I want to move all over, I want to dance, sing and wave my arms about.”

  “There’ll be time enough for dancing when we get there.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “What about Annecy? I believe it’s a good place.”

  “Is it good for your flowers?”

  “To hell with my flowers, this is your day, young Prue, a day you are going to remember all your life.”

  “Of course I am — every second of it.”

  Up and up into Haute Savoie, pale green and blue washed walls, red pinks falling over two stories of window boxes on a faded lilac house — a funeral cortège very b
lack and stiff walking off down a milk-white street in the sun, straight out of a French film. Then down again to another soft blue lake with blue mountains right into the water.

  We bought bread and cakes in Annecy before the shops closed for midday, and walked through the old town past women washing clothes in the river, crouched in boxes lined with straw. Children too, washing their doll’s clothes. We sat in the sun for a drink and Tom made me have a horrid cough mixture, Pernod. It tasted vile, but when I stood up again my feet were floating like my hair.

  Tom took my hand and guided me giggling back to the car. I saw a swan trying to swim through a narrow iron grating. “Poor silly silver swan,” I kept saying.

  “Poor silly Prue,” Tom said. “We must get some food into you quick.”

  It seemed to me that he drove even faster than before, out beside the lake to the far end, and then he swerved off the road over a railway and up a narrow farm track towards the mountains. The track got rougher and rougher, turning into an old quarry road thick with stones, we passed ruined cottages furnished with nettles, and an abandoned lorry and finally, high above the lake and a mile beyond the last village, Tom drew into a field and switched off the engine. I could hear my heart beating in the sudden silence.

  “Hop out,” Tom said holding open the door, and I stepped into flowers up to my knees.

  He refused to let me carry anything, and I followed him meekly and still a little unsteadily, wading through the flowers to the top of the field. We walked into the shade of a little fir-wood and sat down on the soft, dry needles beside a stream. It would have been a good stream to dam, plenty of flat movable stones, for a moment I almost regretted Tom’s company, and I measured up in my mind’s eye the best way to do it if I’d been with Liz or Brian. Then I turned my back on childish temptation and gazed instead at the view.

  We could see the lake far below, and above us nothing but woods and inaccessible Elysian fields shining yellow in the sun, bounded by dark precipices.

  It was the best meal I’ve ever eaten. Ham and crunchy new bread, and an inch of butter, and melting flaky cakes and peaches and wine.

  Then I fell asleep with my head on Tom’s coat. When I awoke about an hour later he was lying beside me and drew me into his arms.

  “Are you sober now, darling?” he asked.

  “Quite sober, but still too happy to be true.” I moved drowsily against him.

  “Because I wouldn’t want to take advantage of you.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Darling, for goodness’ sake don’t look at me like that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you know what’s going to happen if you do?”

  “Yes, Tom, and if I’m above the age of consent, I give it.”

  “Oh sweetheart.”

  I’d read Ordinary Families, so I knew it would hurt, but I hadn’t thought it could be dull as well. Afterwards, as Tom lay half asleep with his head on my shoulder, I looked past his ear to see my Elysian fields had tarnished, the sun was behind a cloud and I shivered with a cold loneliness. Now I’m ruined, I thought to myself, and it wasn’t even worth it. I began to write a sad poem in my head, wishing I had a pencil. It had two splendid first lines.

  “Let us put sex to sleep and see it lie,

  A silly, harmless, innocent, whom we

  Had taken for a giant …”

  But there I stuck. I stirred restlessly and let Tom’s head bump to the ground.

  “Hey —” he sat up indignantly rubbing himself, yawned, and looked at his watch.

  “Getting on for six and coming on to rain. We’d better go back to Annecy.” He pulled me to my feet. I clung to him for a minute in a desperate attempt to recapture my morning mood, but the gunpowder had run out of the soles of my sandals. He patted my head soothingly.

  “There, there, Prue, don’t be too disappointed.”

  “How did you guess?”

  “My darling, your face is one long disgruntled droop. You don’t learn to make love in a day you know.”

  “Don’t you? I thought you either were good at it or not, and I must be inhibited too.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll be fine — oh Lord, here comes the rain.”

  We stumbled down the hill to the car, soaked long before we got there. My hair stung my face as a sudden wind flicked across us. Then we couldn’t get the roof of the car up, the gadgets were all too complicated, so we made another dash for the crumbling wall of a deserted cottage and crouched against it in the nettles.

  “This is an uncomfortable end to a romantic afternoon,” remarked Tom.

  “Atleast you’ve got your trousers on,” I complained, trying to beat the nettles away from my bare legs.

  CHAPTER III

  Tom stayed on in the boat-house. It was Mary’s idea. Night after night, I padded down the path to the lake in my bedroom slippers, the hem of my nightdress wet with dew flapping against my ankles. Tom could hear me coming and waited for me in the doorway. The water ran right in under the room sucking against the walls. Sometimes I imagined we were at sea, on a pleasure cruise round the Greek islands perhaps, away from everybody.

  It wasn’t dull any more.

  I knew being loved had made me pretty, because Jean-Pierre began to pay a lot of attention to me, he even wanted to paint me. The funny thing was that Tom got furiously jealous.

  “But, darling,” I said, “you know I only like him as a friend.”

  “Why the hell do you have to see so much of him?”

  “I don’t. Only in the mornings when he’s doing the picture.”

  “I hear you laughing as if you thought him funny enough.”

  “Well, so he is. But that doesn’t make me love him. Don’t be so silly, Tom.”

  “I’m sorry. But I can’t claim you openly, so it makes it all the worse for me.”

  The night before my birthday, Mary sent me out with Jean-Pierre. He gave me an enormous dinner and took me dancing for a while at the Kursaal, but I didn’t really enjoy it because I knew Tom would be cross when I got back. But I hadn’t guessed how cross. No sooner had Jean-Pierre dropped me at the gate and driven off then Tom stepped out melodramatically from behind a tree and seized my arm.

  “Come on,” he hissed and almost pushed me down the path to the boat-house.

  I was quite out of breath when we got there, and stood drooping against the door while he fell around the bed in the dark, drawing the curtains before he switched on the light;.

  “Now,” he said, whirling round on me with a white face and a tight mouth. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Mean by what?”

  “Going out with that man.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? We had a very nice time. We went dancing, besides Mary arranged it, I hadn’t any reason to refuse.”

  “You could have said you had a headache.”

  “But why? I like dancing. He never even kissed me.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. I haven’t been kissed so often that I don’t notice when it happens. I told you, you were the first person.”

  “I want to be not just the first person, but the only person.”

  “But Tom, you are. Darling, please don’t be like this. You must know how I love you, I’ve told you often enough.” I held out my hand to him but he wouldn’t take it, and turned away from me to stare at the bed.

  “Prue,” he said, “this can’t go on. I can’t bear it.” He sat down on the bed with his head in his hands. I knelt beside him and put my arm round him.

  “Oh darling, don’t be so unhappy. What can’t you bear?”

  “I can’t bear not having a right to you. I’ve never been jealous before, it’s a most terrible feeling, Prue. I even grudge your kindness to the children. I don’t want you to be kind to anyone except me.”

  “Please let me be kind to you now while I have the chance.”

  So he took me in his arms then, and we forgot about Jean-Pierre.

  B
ut only until the next evening. Mary called me into her bedroom after my birthday party, and suddenly I thought she had found out about Tom and me, she looked so worried. But she was only worrying about me and what Jean-Pierre might be up to. I nearly burst out with the whole terrible story then, but instead I burst into tears and escaped to my room. Tom took me to Geneva for supper, and I told him as soon as we left the tram that he would have to speak to Mary.

  “I can’t go on like this either,” I said. “She’s so good to me, it’s awful. That beautiful birthday cake —”

  “What do you want us to do then?”

  “What do you, Tom? I’ll go away tomorrow, I think.”

  “I can’t let you go. At least not alone, if you go I shall come with you.”

  “You mustn’t — you must stay with Mary.”

  “I can’t possibly — not now. But perhaps it might be simpler not to tell Mary why I’m going.”

  “You know her best, Tom, but I think we ought to tell her.”

  “I suppose so. Not that she will really mind much in the long run, but she’s bound to be upset at first.”

  “I wish I could be sure we were doing the right thing.” We waited to cross the road while a long three-carriage tram clanked past us with a shoal of attendant bicycles, like a whale.

  “There isn’t any right thing in this kind of situation,” Tom waved an arm irritably. “How could there be? It’s inevitable, that’s all, we are dragged one way or the other by forces stronger than ourselves. We started this off, and we’ve got to finish it somehow, or rather it’ll finish us. Whatever the beginning, the end will be undignified and unhappy for somebody, possibly everybody.”

  “Oh dear. Well, perhaps if I went home alone tomorrow it might just be me, not everybody.”

  “You’re not going alone, Prue, that’s out of the question.” By this time we were walking round and round the top of the lake, over the Rhône, past the Eau, Electricité, and Gas, then back the other way towards the flickering lights of Biscuits Dorin, Longines and Air France, with Accidents and Assurance jumping on and off next door. All the lights and the distant music from the Jardin Anglais made the whole situation more fantastic and difficult to discuss every minute. I began to have a blister on my heel before Tom at last remembered supper. We ate in a quiet restaurant up in the old town, steaks in silence as there seemed no more to say, but with the fruit Tom suddenly asked me where we were going anyway.