There was something about the latent aggression in his voice that intimidated her. She recoiled against such a feeling and pouted at him to cover it. “I want to talk.”
“I talk all fucking day. I need some peace and quiet in the mornings.” The way he said the word ‘fucking’ was most unpleasant. Madelyn got up in a huff, determined to maintain a wounded silence for the rest of the day, or maybe the entire week. She went to scrape her egg shells into the garbage bag and found it overflowing, Jimmy’s cigarette butts spilling out onto the floor. This was disgusting, even for Madelyn’s relaxed housekeeping standards, and she distastefully picked the cigarettes up and began to close the mouth of the plastic bag.
“Don’t touch that!” barked Sam.
“I’m taking it outside. It’s foul,” she retorted in a self-righteous tone.
He leapt up and wrested the garbage from her hand. “There’s a gun in it.”
She stepped back in horror, clamping her hand over her mouth.
“Oh, don’t be so melodramatic, it’s just a gun. Jimmy’s, as it happens.”
This was the man who had dared to talk to Sam about principles. Madelyn did not often see her way clear to the truth, but this seemed pretty black and white.
“Sometimes you’re so gullible and innocent. Jimmy can do his shady business elsewhere, I refuse to have him in our house.”
“It’s my house,” Sam replied, but the sheepish quality of his look encouraged her.
“While I’m living here it’s my house too, and I object to his presence. Now go and get ready, you’ll be late for work. If Jimmy shows up during the day I’ll tell him to clean up his garbage and get out. You will do the same if he shows up tonight while I’m at work.”
Sam went meekly to don his tie and shirt, and Madelyn forced the muscles in her neck to relax. She knew she had disposed of Jimmy, but toughness wasn’t always so successful. Often it incensed him.
The young woman started to strain, the tendons in her neck bulging. Madelyn supported her in a sitting position and murmured encouragement. As the baby’s head began to crown, she kneeled at the side of the bed, placing one of the woman’s legs over her shoulder and massaging oil into the perineum, which stretched to ripping point every time the baby’s head bulged out.
“Oh, oh, oh,” groaned the old woman, drunkenly rocking back and forth in sympathy.
Then it came sliding out, head first, followed by the shoulders and body in one huge push. A fine baby boy weighing seven pounds, three ounces.
When Madelyn had finished cleaning up, she picked her way down the rickety steps to the pub, where the publican husband was splashing gin into glasses in an ecstasy of joy.
“You must have one!” he smiled at Madelyn, and she accepted a large gin and tonic.
“Is he one of the finest boys you’ve ever seen?” he shouted at her, gesturing to others in the pub to listen to her answer.
“The very finest. A strong, handsome fellow.”
Then later, leaning close to her and pouring more gin, “Honestly now. Is he not very fine?”
“He is. He was regarding his new world with alert intelligence, within minutes of his birth.”
The publican’s eyes filled with tears, and he nodded vigourously. “Good lass. Thank you. Good lass.”
It all seemed so beautiful, Madelyn’s own eyes filled with tears.
Madelyn never saw Jimmy again, though at a party with some mutual friends she overheard that he’d shot a police dog (considered to be a very serious offence). The police began to trail him relentlessly, in the end tracking him down when he pawned his gun.
Sam declined to join the heated discussion about how important a police dog’s life should be. However, a few months later Madelyn found a present under her pillow — a small silver box. She remembered seeing it in Jimmy’s possession, which meant it was probably stolen, though Sam had no doubt paid through the nose for it.
Inside he had written, “Can all my love be contained in this small box?”
She tried to feel magnanimous.
Inevitably, Madelyn became pregnant again. She went out for a drink alone, to calm her nerves and gather the requisite energies to impart the news to Sam. She allowed herself to be cautiously jubilant on two counts.
First, her reproductive organs were still functioning. She had not realized the extent of her fears about possible damage until she got pregnant again. The relief in discovering there would be no physical punishment for the termination of life. Second, she rationalized, ‘if we belong together, and it is the honourable thing, as Sam said, then soon I will be married.’ The excitement of such a prospect quite overwhelmed the difficulties of living together, revealed in drips and drabs on a daily basis. Sam was difficult, often controlling and unpleasant. He advised her on what her behaviour should be, the ideals she should strive towards. This could be agreeable, when they were lying peaceably together in bed and discussing what books she might read to broaden her mind. However, in the aftermath of a fight (when Madelyn never seemed to get a chance to voice her own perspective), it was less acceptable. ‘You shouldn’t have said this and you shouldn’t have done that, you were childish/spiteful/stupid. Try not to be like that in the future.’ Adapting herself to his needs and modelling her behaviour on his vision was portrayed as the best way to a successful cohabitation. Any criticism of Sam went down badly. “You are always attacking me and putting me down,” he would shout, a tic beating in his temple. This was so outrageous it silenced her.
Yet, he had a brilliant mind. His university marks were high, his professors commended him and his bosses at the law firm wooed him like a lover. “Golden will do great things,” they had predicted one day when she was meeting Sam for lunch. Geniuses were susceptible to sensitivities; maybe it was more incumbent on her to cater to his needs and strive to behave the way he wanted than to demand understanding from him. And who said that living with somebody else would be any better? ‘I am a silly little thing,’ Madelyn reflected, ‘and maybe I have the choice between marrying a simple man who accepts me as I am, or a brilliant man who needs extra care and devotion.’ Yet Madelyn did not think she was a silly little thing inside. Often, she was convinced that she was the ‘sensitive soul’ in need of special care and attention and knew that she would never receive it at the hands of Sam.
Still, to be married!
She told Sam casually, choosing an appropriate moment when they were ensconced on the sofa in the evening, after a few nice, relaxing drinks.
“Well then, we will have to get married as soon as possible.”
She felt instant relief, despite her genuine trust in Sam’s principles and honour. She put her head on his shoulder and hugged him.
“Of course I can’t tell my family. It might kill my mother. I think we should have a quiet wedding, maybe a friend or two.”
“What about my family?”
“I don’t think it’s fair that your family should be present when mine can’t be, do you?”
Madelyn just wanted to be happy right now, and she knew that any disagreement, any at all, could lead to unpleasantness in ways that were inexplicable to her. So she said nothing, even though she knew her family would be hurt by a hole-and-corner wedding, especially since the baby would arrive before a decent nine months had passed. How could she explain it? Sorry, his family won’t come because they don’t think that I’m good enough… no. Sorry, his family is barmy so you can’t come to my wedding either?
Sam continued without waiting for an answer, as though assuming his decision would not be challenged. “I have some news for you too. I’m leaving the law, but I’ve already got another job! It is in Scotland, but just for a few months. I didn’t know you were pregnant.”
He sounded defensive already.
“You have a few months left before becoming a qualified barrister. It’s ridiculous to leave now.”
>
“I have told you many times that I’m not comfortable in this profession. I have no vocation for the work of assisting rich people to become richer.”
“You might change your mind in a few years. It’s just a few more months…”
“I shall never change to such an extent that I will regret this decision. And if I am to evolve into such a lamentable personality, I am glad to thwart the future me by forcing him to start at the beginning if he wants to article as a barrister.”
Madelyn tried to breathe deeply and quenched the desire to remove her head from his shoulder. “What is your new job?”
“Forestry. I’ll be planting little trees, hobnobbing with the salt of the earth instead of these money-grubbing lawyer people.”
“Forestry!” Madelyn spat the word out in utter contempt, jerking herself to an upright position to face him. “How are you going to support a wife and child on that?”
“Many people manage it. You might love a simple life, generous neighbours. Unless, of course, you wanted to nab a rich lawyer.”
“You don’t know anything about the lower classes. You’re so innocent and stupid to think you’ll fit in. They’ll see you as … as a Jew!”
“And most Jews, of course, are rich lawyers. Is that the package you thought you were getting? Are you angry because a miserable Jew shouldn’t have such high-falutin’ principles?”
“I’m angry because you’re a fool, without the slightest understanding of the life you are starting, chucking away the type of life you know.”
She watched the tic beginning on his forehead, the way his eyes protruded when he was angry. Yet he spoke calmly enough.
“And you are the martyr shackled to this fool. Not irretrievably shackled, you know. We’ve been in this predicament before.”
Madelyn marched out of the room and buried herself in the bedclothes. How dare he refer to a tragedy of his doing, which in the event was so unnecessary?
His bags were stacked by the door the next morning. Madelyn wondered if he were going to leave without saying goodbye. She felt a sudden fear that he would disappear and she would be left alone with her burden. Should she go and give him a hug? At least ask him how long he’d be gone, so she would know? It was imperative to get married as soon as possible, before it began to show.
She hovered by the door, reluctant to make the first move towards reconciliation when she felt justified in her anger, yet painfully aware of her greater need for reconciliation. The ringing phone filled her with vague annoyance. Sam never answered phones and had convinced her that they were annoying instruments. From a person who once loved chatting on the phone, she soon began to feel irritated, glancing at her watch and reflecting on the impossibility of anyone phoning at a convenient time. To her surprise, she heard Sam pick up the receiver. Within minutes she caught the anger in his tone and sidled closer to hear the words.
“The decision has nothing to do with you, Mother. I’m sorry you’re so angry about it, but I cannot spend my days doing something I hate just to please you.”
Oh, thought Madelyn, we are on the same side at last, dear mother-in-law.
‘Dear mother-in-law’ must have had more to say on the subject than Madelyn, because there was silence for some time. Then, “That’s not true, Mother. However, if you don’t want to hear or see me until I’ve ‘seen reason,’ then I assume we won’t be in contact for quite a while. Give my love to Dad.”
Sam slammed the phone down, and Madelyn scuttled away from the door just as he emerged. She looked at him, waiting for him to say something, but he shouldered his bags in silence.
“You do remember that I’m pregnant,” she said in desperation as he opened the door and walked out into the street.
He paused without looking around. “Yes?”
“We need to get married as soon as possible.”
“I will be back in a month or two. Meanwhile, I expect you to be much better when I return. A bigger person.”
She watched him march down the road, top-heavy like some grotesque animal. ‘I hope I will be bigger,’ she thought. ‘I hope I will grow like a vine so you can’t uproot me, you sadistic bastard, playing with me like a cat with a mouse.’
SIXTEEN
It was a small wedding since Sam insisted that her family could not come because his family would not. In the end Madelyn cabled:
Sam and I eloping! Prefer mystery and intrigue! Will visit soon. Lots of love and kisses.
Standing to one side of the grilled window in the post office so people could pass her, she read the cable again and again. It was a lie and therefore seemed to scream deceit. She did not prefer bloody mystery and intrigue, and even if she did there was nothing mysterious about Sam’s black and white plans for a registry marriage. She felt cheated of her day. Still, there was joy and pride in cabling of her marriage and a silent rebuke to her parents for their previous opinion of Sam. He had not been exploiting her without intending to marry her. He was as honourable as any English gentleman, and a Cambridge graduate with an assuredly successful future to boot (barring his current aberration with the forestry profession).
Hoping the exclamation marks would convey sufficient enthusiasm, she stepped up to the grilled window and sent the cable, repressing an unbidden vision of its reception — Mary and Eddie sitting side by side in front of the fire with the cable dangling from their hands, gloomily wondering why she had married ‘that bloody Jew.’
Then Sam decided that no friends should attend the wedding either, except the requisite two witnesses — the photographer and one other. Madelyn wanted to invite Louise, but Sam said a man was required to fulfill the role of best man. He suggested Philip, but Madelyn resisted that idea so adamantly that he did not know whether to be pleased or suspicious. In the end, he invited another mutual acquaintance, called Troy, whom neither of them knew well, but such detachment seemed appropriate to the general atmosphere of the ceremony.
Sam was in a state of intense excitement during the few days preceding the wedding, which did much to allay Madelyn’s annoyance with his muted treatment of the details. The week before she had almost erupted when he had handed her a pound and advised her to buy a utility gold ring for the marriage ceremony. Her look of outrage was interpreted by him as a request to participate in the purchase, so together they marched to various shops, with Sam evincing such amazement at the quantity of ‘spiffing gold rings’ that one could buy for a pound (to the amusement of the shopkeepers) that Madelyn was caught up in the pleasure of the thing and forgot her dreams of diamonds.
The night before the wedding, Sam’s excitement reached a peak. He kept grabbing Madelyn and kissing her, in between a flow of excited talk about the beauties of the little cottage they would soon be living in (which he hadn’t yet seen) near his new forestry job. The delights of the country (compared to the crowded pollution of the city) and her happiness (once the benefits of the fresh air waxed effective) were described evocatively. Madelyn bravely smiled and nodded, wishing the forestry lark was over already. She suspected there had been problems in Scotland, though she did not reveal her suspicions to Sam for fear they would infuriate him. His foreman at work had phoned one evening in order to ask if Sam was a Jew. He asked as though it was a straight-forward question, and she was seized with a sudden tremor of fear, wishing she could be in Scotland to protect him. How he would have hated that!
When he came home he did not mention anything about anti-Semitism. He simply reminded her that the job had only been offered to him for a few months, and then launched into a description of the physical difficulties of the work and how strong and in shape he felt. However, he no longer rhapsodized quite so much about salt-of-the-earth and the superiority of the common man. Madelyn guessed that at best he had had nothing in common with his colleagues, at worst they had shunned him. She hoped the latter was not the case, and that the foreman’s phone call was a matter o
f ignorant curiosity, unrevealed to Sam himself in his innocence. At other times she wished that at least a vague sense of his ostracism had penetrated — not enough to hurt him (the very thought created an ache in her chest) — but enough to bring him to earth and a return to law.
But this longed-for event was obviously not yet imminent, and she was to be banished to the country in distant Evercreech while he launched himself into a new forestry job. Despite herself, Madelyn began to feel optimistic as she listened to Sam’s buoyant predictions of their future country life.
Sam leapt to his feet as the doorbell sounded and rushed precipitately to the door, Madelyn close on his heels.
“Daniel! Bernhard and Rachel! How nice of you to come!”
“You won’t be so pleased when you know why we’ve come,” Daniel answered.
Sam turned to Madelyn, “Bernhard is my cousin, Rachel his lovely wife. Come in for a celebratory drink.” His face changed imperceptibly as he ushered them through the door and took their coats. It always took him a second or two to register meanings when they contradicted his assumptions.
“Not come to wish me well on my wedding eve, then? How typical.”
Daniel gave Madelyn a cold nod and directed his words at Sam, “It would be much better if she could pop out for a bit.”
“Oh for God’s sake. Sorry about this, Madelyn.”
Again, she was baffled by the strange influence Sam’s family had over him. How could he allow Daniel to march in their house and ‘order’ her out on their wedding eve? It was incomprehensible.
Instead of going to the pub and solacing herself with a nice drink, she strode up and down the street, freezing to death and filled with bitterness at this manner of spending her wedding eve. The rain drove in her face, soaking her within minutes. She hoped she would be sick, so Sam would be filled with contrition.
After an hour of martyrish musings she couldn’t bear the cold any longer and stomped defiantly back to the apartment. As she turned her key in the lock she heard Sam say, “Madelyn is back. That’s your cue to get out.”
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