“You come and visit me soon. And I’ll come back often. I miss you!’ she called as the train started to pull out of the platform, “I love you!”
She arrived in Bath at around nine o’clock, but Sam was not waiting for her. The porter helped to drag her luggage into the waiting room, and she sat down in one of the hard little seats, with Gabriel sleeping at her feet.
She tried to read snatches of a book, but her anxiety was too acute. Every now and then she popped out to walk back and forth along the platform, leaving Gabriel in the relative warmth of the waiting room. Obviously Sam would look everywhere as soon as he arrived, including the waiting room, but the activity relieved her incredulity at his absence.
“You haven’t seen a tall man with a curly red beard?” she asked the porter. “My husband was supposed to meet the nine o’clock train.”
“If I see any male person at all, I will tell them about the pretty young lass waiting in the lounge,” the porter said with a wink that irritated her. “Do you have a place to stay in Bath?”
“No, we were supposed to catch the next train to Evercreech. It’s gone now.” Madelyn felt absurd tears pricking the back of her eyes.
“There’s another one at twelve-thirty. I could carry your luggage on if he doesn’t show up.”
“Thank you, but I’m sure he’ll be here by then, unless something has happened.”
Madelyn returned to the waiting room and sat engulfed in tension, tapping her foot on the ground. Maybe something had happened. Maybe a tree had fallen on him.
Her eyes filled with tears at the thought. Everybody would be sorry for her, a widow so young. She would accept their condolences with grave dignity.
‘If he’s dead, I can go home and live with my parents, who will be kind and sympathetic. But will anybody marry me, now I have a young child? Maybe this time around I won’t hanker so much after the married state.’
Eventually she dozed, jerking her head back every time it hit her chest, opening an eye to ensure Gabriel was still sleeping.
A hand on her shoulder brought her to her feet, grinning like an idiot until she realized it was the porter.
“It’s twelve-twenty lass. You should be getting on that train, unless you want to stay here all night.”
Madelyn grabbed the sleeping Gabriel while the porter took the case. He put her in a nice corner carriage, without any other occupants, and tipped his hat to her in farewell. She thought she saw a look of pity cross his face, and she responded with haughty thanks.
Nobody was waiting in Evercreech either, not that Madelyn expected it. Still she couldn’t help looking about as though there might be. ‘Thank God I had the sense to put a bit of money in my pocket,’ she thought, and hailed a taxi.
Sam was sitting at the table eating his breakfast when she walked in. For a minute she stood, staring at his back and wondering what excuse he could give her, since he wasn’t maimed or dying. ‘Shall I be graciously forgiving, or exact my pound of flesh in fury?’ she thought.
Sam got up and stood in front of her, looking at her steadily. “That’ll teach you,” he said. Then he walked out the door to go to work.
That bastard. That fool. There are so many ways I could revenge myself on him, if I chose. His happiness depends on me. He worries all the time about whether I still love him, although he pretends he doesn’t care anymore. He’s always following me with his little eyes, like a dog wanting love. A dog who wants to be master.
So what should I do? Should I ignore him, plopping his burnt dinner down without looking at him?
Or should I scream and shout. No, not that. He will scream and shout back and will get the upper hand, having much more experience in the screaming/shouting department.
So, I’ll ignore him.
That’ll show him.
Show him what? I can imagine him sitting here, desperate for me to come home, lonely and depressed. He has no idea what it’s like to travel with a child. As far as he is concerned, he simply didn’t come to meet me.
I should talk to him, let him know how it really was. Why is communication so difficult?
That night they went to the pub as usual, sitting with the nice neighbours who welcomed Madelyn back with affection.
‘Lucky that they’re here,’ she thought, ‘or I don’t know how I could have spent the evening with him.’
She drank as much as she could, setting the pace by finishing her drink before anybody else, chatting to the neighbours while Sam watched in silence.
At first she allowed her eyes to flow over him as if he didn’t exist as an entity, but as the drink took over Sam as a whole receded. She focused on parts of him, his generous hands clasped around his drink, his full lips which travelled her body with such reverence. She remembered how much he loved her, much more than she’d ever loved him. ‘He is unhappy,’ she thought, ‘and I can end it. All I have to do is smile at him, stroke his hand, and he will burst forth in joy. After all, what is more important, to maintain a rigid silence until he breaks down and asks forgiveness for his behaviour (which might take months of unhappiness for us both) or end it now? Do I want to promote unhappiness, or peace and joy?’
Madelyn looked around the table at the faces turned towards her and was filled with benevolence.
“We are all beautiful people,” she said.
“Don’t talk such rot,” Sam snapped in an unpleasant voice.
Madelyn was silent, shocked by the disparity between their innermost thoughts. They didn’t exchange another word, and that night he did not turn towards her or curl himself around her back in the fetus position like he usually did. She felt miserable, then angry, and spent the next few days slamming doors and venting her rage in other childish ways. Fearing that the negative feelings swirling in the air might affect Gabriel, she handled him with extreme gentleness. After a vicious slam which managed to break one of the door hinges, she whispered in his ear, “Isn’t that a funny noise? It’s fun to make loud noises sometimes, isn’t it?”
‘I will phone Louise,’ she thought. ‘I will take all the money out of the kitty and talk for as long as I damn well please. Therapy.’
Louise’s sympathy and wisdom seemed to reverberate down the receiver.
“It’s like he’s teaching a child how to behave when they take liberties — ‘That’ll teach you’ — for Christ’s sakes! Like he’s a righteous judge doling out punishment! There was always that side to him, even in Cambridge when he was trying to get you into bed.”
“I feel a subtle change now, as though it’s even more important to keep me in order. Maybe he thinks you have to keep women down and show them who’s boss right from the beginning, because of his mother. Maybe he feels trapped because he’s no longer a young man looking after himself. Maybe he just doesn’t love me anymore.”
“I can’t believe that. He loved you so much.”
“Well then, maybe he’s paranoid and has convinced himself that I don’t love or respect him. So he takes offence at any silly little thing that I say. It’s such a mistake to try and control me. I’m not that young, flitty thing anymore.”
“You were always more than just a flitty young thing, Anne.”
“I could have had anyone,” Madelyn said. “I could have done anything.” She thought of her neglected diaries, which had once seemed to hold the seeds of great literature.
“Oh don’t be so maudlin,” Louise retorted sharply. “Why do you think marriage to anybody else would be any different? It’s always difficult. People just don’t talk about it.”
Madelyn thought of her parents. She thought of all the married people she knew. Were any of them happy? “I always thought it would be different for me. Maybe every young person thinks it’s going to be different for them.”
Again, Louise’s voice sounded a note of impatience. “Your life isn’t over yet. You are a beautiful woman, a
compassionate soul. I think you will give great joy to many people.”
A few days later Sam received a telegram.
Father dead. Come to London straight away.
Sam left immediately, and Madelyn travelled to Newcastle to stay with her parents. She didn’t hear anything for several days. Then an aunt descended for a surprise visit with a newspaper in her hand, which claimed that Frank Golden had committed suicide. While the aunt waited for enlightenment, Madelyn thought of the gentle man with the sad face. Why would he do such a thing?
Dear Madelyn,
When I first heard that my father was dead, I thought he had died of a heart attack or something. I was shocked, but if you remember I didn’t react very much. I suppose I was occupied with the practical side of packing and getting the train.
I assumed the whole family would be assembled at our house in Golders Green, but when I got there the only person to greet me was the caretaker. Our conversation still seems surreal to me.
He told me, “Nobody is here, son. They are all at Aunt Dotty’s house.”
I asked him, “Why did they go there?”
And he answered, “Your mother is distraught.”
“I would have thought she’d have found the strength to stay in her own home, like most people do when there’s a death in the family,” I said with some bitterness.
“Did you not know, son? Your father committed suicide.”
Madelyn, I started to sob. I sobbed all the way to my aunt’s house, where I found my mother sedated in bed. I was reluctant to enter the room with her. My whole being was filled with the most debilitating hatred. I knew that both blaming and feeling guilty are common with normal deaths, let alone suicides, but the way she had poisoned his life seemed exceptional to me. Bitter memories and incidents crowded into my mind.
Once he brought her some flowers and she asked him how much they had cost. When he told her, she said ‘you could have got them cheaper at the flower shop down the road.’ He never bought her flowers again. And yet that is trivial compared to the contempt she sowed in her sons for this large, gentle man. It’s true. I always thought he was just the breadwinner, a little less clever, a little inferior, spending his life doing something slightly shameful, making money. A big, slow businessman dominated by his wife. But we didn’t complain when he kept us in the pink, did we? His brothers didn’t complain when they came back from the war without anything and he set them up in business.
I had to steel myself to enter the room where she was lying (as I knew she’d be) in a state of excessive mourning. Pressing handkerchiefs to her eyes, moaning and groaning. She looked up at me, but she didn’t speak. Daniel said, “Hold her hand,” but I could barely bring myself to touch her, because I blamed her. Just as she blamed me. Within minutes she had started, “Your circumstances...”
I glanced at all the people in the room, my relatives who had not been allowed to mention my name for the past year or so. I allowed her to rant about how I had left the law and was living in poverty, how I had married out of the faith, but I knew she was blowing off her own steam and none of this had anything to do with my father. She had little effect on me. I would not hold her hand. As soon as she had done I turned on my heel and left the room. Daniel, of course, followed me and remonstrated.
“Could you not show a little more love than that? To a bereaved widow who also happens to be your mother?”
“Since I hold her responsible for this suicide, I am showing considerable restraint.”
“Rubbish. His business failed. Nobody can afford fancy hats anymore since the war ended. He gambled on the dogs. He augmented his income for years that way you know. He had a complicated system worked out. But in the end you always lose. He became bankrupt, and he couldn’t face telling the world.”
“She limited him to the role of breadwinner. If he failed at that, he was nothing. She despised him and made us despise him.”
Daniel leaned on a chair and smiled indulgently. That look of his drives me mad.
“I think it was as important for his ego to be wealthy as it was for hers. They were still living as wealthy people. He pretended he was rich.”
I couldn’t pursue this track. My mind leapt from image to image without control. “Madelyn said he seemed sad when he visited us in Evercreech. I expect he wanted to help us and couldn’t, and this depressed him.”
“Oh, so now you’re feeling guilty? I wouldn’t, these things are so complicated. Personally, I think if he’d fought in the First World War instead of hiding to avoid the draft, he would never have committed suicide.”
So you see Madelyn, everybody has their theories, according to what they want to believe. At least I wonder if I had some part of the blame, unlike dear mother, who apparently went into hysterics when they told her. Even if she denies her culpability in the attitude of her sons — two bright boys putting their father down — some part of her must be aware that she has spent the past years groaning about reductions to her extravagant way of life. She knows she might have helped him. Maybe if she’d tried, things would have been different. Whereas for me, I must live my life the way I am destined to — I was meant to marry you, and I was not born or raised to be happy in an occupation like the law. Ironic, really. They were so ambitious for their children. They envisioned a new world for them. My mother says that Father told her it was the happiest day in his life when I got my degree at Cambridge.
I will join you in Newcastle after the funeral. What do you say to moving to London?
Love Sam
P.S. My darling, I fear that the wound has been patched, even though it hemorrhages ever more heavily within. I’m afraid we will have to see my mother from time to time, now.
For the first few days Sam seemed to need to talk about his father all the time, while the whole family listened with sympathy. Not the dark stuff hinted at in the letter but pleasanter memories. He told them how skilled his father was at games and how they would have enjoyed playing bridge with him. He described their long Sunday walks, just the father and his sons, and the pleasure Frank got from exploring twisty country roads. His shyness. He launched into anecdotes out of the blue, in the middle of a bridge game or after a question about an entirely different subject.
“My father, Daniel and I used to take the train to different rural destinations for our Sunday outings. I used to set off with father, who got up at least an hour earlier than Daniel, prepared a nice breakfast and walked leisurely to the train. He would get there ten minutes early, buy a newspaper and find himself a corner seat facing the direction the train was travelling in. Putting his coat on the seat beside him to reserve it for Daniel, he’d look at his watch.
“‘Just right,’ he would say to me.
“Just as the train began to chug out of the station, Daniel would come flying through the barrier with his coat half-buttoned and his cap askew, leaping towards a door and clinging like a monkey. A few minutes later he’d plop into the seat Dad had saved for him, sweating and gasping for air.
“Then he’d turn to father and say, ‘Just right.’”
Madelyn was dying to know the details of the suicide. Although she recognized that this was macabre curiosity, she felt it was natural. So after several days of endless tea and sympathetic expressions, she raised the subject.
“Don’t talk about this if you don’t want to, Sam, but I was just wondering about … the day it happened. Who found him and how were they sure it was suicide and everything.”
“What, do you think it was murder? An anti-Semitic killing, maybe?”
“No, of course not.” Madelyn could not credit that he was serious. Everything seemed to lead back to that bloody Jewish stuff, even subjects that couldn’t possibly have a connection. Would this be so throughout their marriage? “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just base curiosity, never mind. ”
Sam reacted with generous expansiv
eness, as he always did whenever she admitted to a weakness. “At the end of his workday he walked to the train station with one of his employees. Then he told him he’d forgotten something and had to go back to the factory. The next day they found him. He had shot himself, and he had a letter to his wife clasped in his hand, thanking her for thirty wonderful years.”
Madelyn went over and knelt in front of her husband, looking up into his face earnestly.
“When he saw us together he knew we possessed the potential to be happy. That made him feel better, Sam. He could feel our love.”
Sam stroked her face tenderly, “Do you know how many people have told me that we have one of the best marriages they’ve ever seen?”
“Who told you that?”
“People at Cambridge, Philip. Our neighbours in Evercreech.”
“We do have something. Love. That’s what your father saw.”
After the first few days of outpouring, Sam never mentioned his father again.
TWENTY
My mouth and throat are so dry from reading out loud that frequent sips of beer are no longer helping. My own discomfort forces me to stop for a minute, and I look over at my father. He is fast asleep. Next I glance at my watch, which informs me that it’s two in the morning. I have been reading for hours. Instant transfusion of guilt. What type of selfishness allows a son to get so involved in mere words that he forgets the needs of his dying flesh and blood father?
A dose of anxiety closely follows guilt transfusion. Am I supposed to carry him to bed? I don’t think I can, nor, God help me, do I want to. The act of hoisting him in my arms would wake him up anyway, so why not just wake him up and escort him to bed? Or just wake him up and assume he can get himself there by himself, as he has every evening of his life? Or just go to bed myself and assume that he’s comfortable enough where he is?
Either the cessation of my drone or the onslaught of my worries pierces my father’s consciousness. He gives a snort and opens his eyes. I don a facetious smile.
“I’m afraid it’s late. I lost track of time.”
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