New World in the Morning

by Stephen Benatar

  Giddiness shook hands with paranoia.

  I headed for the telephone.

  Picked up, at the other end, by Pim.

  “Get Junie,” I commanded. Neither greeted him nor told him who I was.

  He started to mumble something but I cut across him with a question.

  “Listen—is Susie there? I can’t find her basket anywhere! I’ve searched through every room and can’t find her basket anywhere! Is Susie with you? Is she there?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I was going to say, “don’t you understand plain English?”

  But then I heard the receiver being thrown down and instead I broke wind. That wasn’t very pleasant, either, but I realized I was past minding.

  After what seemed like a long time I finally heard Junie’s voice in the background—along with other voices, or maybe only one other, I wasn’t sure. A man’s. Jake’s? Oh, probably the whole family was now filing into the hallway, taking seats. But I couldn’t catch the words.

  “Hello!” I said. “Hello! Hello! Hello! What the hell is going on over there? Will somebody pick up the phone!”

  And somebody did. Somebody female.

  “And where have you been since last Friday?”

  But it certainly wasn’t Junie.

  “What?”

  “This is Mrs Fletcher speaking. You’ve been off somewhere with a woman—haven’t you, Groves? And I mean to tell you how I feel about it. I’m afraid there aren’t words strong enough to tell you how I feel about it. There! Did you hear me? You were never one of us. I’ve always known you were a mealy-mouthed hypocrite, thinking all the time you were taking everybody in, pretending to be so much better than the rest of us, pretending even butter wouldn’t melt—”

  “Fuck off,” I said. “I want to hear about my dog.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? Well, your dog is dead. Your dog has been put down. Dead,” she repeated.

  Then she severed the connection.

  24

  I immediately rang back.

  The line was engaged.

  If they’d left the receiver off I should have to charge right over—now, while my adrenalin was still racing, the small supply of it I had. At least the dizziness had gone but I would need to husband that adrenalin. I was fighting for my life and I wanted all the energy there was.

  Almost at our gate, I remembered that I didn’t have a car. Damn it, then—a bike. But on my way to the back porch, two things happened. First, it occurred to me it might be wiser to wait until Junie and the kids came home; my own territory—no heckling from the grandstand; and second… the telephone rang. That might be Junie now.

  It wasn’t.

  “Hello, Sam. This is Jake. I’ve been deputized.”

  “Deputized?”

  “Yes. To let you know the lie of the land. In fact, I volunteered. I thought you’d rather have me do it than…well, any of the girls, let’s say. You know what all these Fletchers can be like. I gather you said something slightly naughty to Mama.”

  “How the hell did it happen, Jake?”

  “Apparently Junie tried to reach you in Lincoln. Spoke to some woman whom she didn’t know and who didn’t appear to know her. Or anything about her. Or anything about you, either.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Sammy,” he said, “in some ways you’re an astute and erudite fellow. Yet if only you could have been a fraction more astute over the plotting of all this…! You idiot. You might always have come to me if you’d wanted some sound, practical advice. Either to me or—I suspect—to Robert. But as it is, old lad, you’ve landed in the shit. And it’s going to be a long time, too, before you manage to climb out of it in this neck of the woods. If indeed you ever do.”

  “I couldn’t care less about that. It’s only Junie that matters. Junie and the children. And as soon as… Do the children know what’s happened?”

  “Do the children know what’s happened? Whose children are we talking of? Some that live outside the county? Sam, you really are the weirdest mix!”

  “Then how do they both seem?”

  “It’s hard to say. Matt’s been mainly very quiet. Ella…well, Ella’s been fairly brassy. Getting it out of her system, I think is what it’s called. They’ll be okay. I’ve been trying to make them see—the family at large, I mean, not simply Ella and Matt—that this sort of thing isn’t really such a big deal. And just so long as you’re not aiming to go skipping off again (because if you are, old chum, your days are numbered and the end is nigh) and just so long as you’re willing to dance attendance for a year or six I reckon they’ll all come round in the end. All of them. Even Myrtle. Even Junie.”

  “Even Junie?”

  There was a slight pause. “That’s unexpected?”

  I gave a non-committal grunt; contented myself with informing him tersely of the one requirement: to prise my wife loose from the five thousand tentacles of my wife’s interfering mother.

  “No, but it isn’t that straightforward. I don’t think you realize how hard she’s taken this. A girl of hidden depths, is Junie.”

  He added: “Not that, of course, I need tell you that.”

  “If you want to do me a favour, Jake, you’ll just get her to come home as quickly as you can.”

  “But that’s why I rang. To say that neither she nor the children will be coming home tonight. They slept here last night, too. She’s even spoken about… To be honest, you’ve both taken me a little by surprise.”

  “Spoken about what?”

  “About not coming home at all. I mean—not while you’re there.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “Only give me ten minutes alone with her. That’s all it needs.”

  “Well, I certainly hope so, Sam.”

  We went on talking but not to much purpose. Tiredness redescended. I picked up the umbrella stand and went wearily to bed. Let tomorrow take care of itself, let tomorrow play any little joke that it felt like. But why had she had to take it out on Susie? Why? What harm had poor old Susie ever done her?

  Already down to my underpants I ran downstairs again. Discovered that besides the basket, with its blanket and cushions, Junie appeared to have disposed of Susie’s collar and lead; of her much-chewed rubber ball and bone; even of the packet of Bob Martins. The insecticidal shampoo. The brush. Large bag of biscuits. Junie had seldom fed her out of tins.

  I felt inclined to search the dustbin for a souvenir. But what was the point? At least we had the snapshots. I decided I must look for snapshots—if only to keep me from further depredations on the larder. Tomorrow my thinking would need to be unclogged.

  Amongst the quantities of snapshots we hadn’t yet got round to sorting, I found two: two of Susie on her own. Probably taken by myself. One showed the splayed paws, the dipped trunk, the pricked-up ears…all eager for the pitched ball. The other, the characteristic tilt of the head: someone out of camera had been telling her to stay and, almost certainly, speaking of engrossing possibilities. Both pictures smacked of melty-eyed devotion.

  I studied them. I tore them savagely across.

  Four pieces. Eight. I hurled them at the ceiling. Let them lie where they had fallen: carpet, coffee table, shelves.

  Then I whipped off my underpants…but after half a minute’s frenzied abuse…well, anyway, who was I trying to punish?

  I left them where they were. Along with the remains of Susie. Trailed back up to bed.

  The house felt cold, unwelcoming. This was only the second time I’d slept in it alone. That other occasion, more than fifteen years ago: Junie giving birth to Ella. (When we had both been twenty-one! Dear God. The blessing of being twenty-one!) My grandmother hadn’t as yet sold up or moved in with us.

  Slept in it? I may have done, that first time. But now? Despite my father I had turned into a crybaby. (To spite my father I had turned into a crybaby?) At first I brushed away the tears but then permitted them to fall unimpeded.

  Those tears weren’t just f
or me. Partly I cried for Junie, who had picked up a telephone in a fault-free world and then had it torn away from her in an earthquake. Partly I cried for Ella and Matt, who—whether loud and cynical or chiefly silent—were now having to negotiate a quicksand which the best damned dad on record had unthinkingly led them to. Partly I cried for Moira, who had booked tickets for the Palladium and a table at the Ritz, given me the keys to her Morgan and travelled with me all the way to Samarkand and back. And partly for Susie, whom also I had failed—as badly as any living creature could be failed.

  I even cried for my parents: for the cancer in the body and the cancer in the soul and for the legacy of weakness which had disguised itself as strength. And this time I really did cry for my father. I could imagine how he must have suffered—suffered not merely during those two days prior to his suicide but during all the long, anxious months when he must have known my mother was about to die.

  But in the end, of course, it was mainly for myself I cried. Cried because I no longer seemed to understand so many of the things which had once appeared so simple. Because I’d started out with such an abundance of blessings and finished up with… What had I finished up with? And because I didn’t know how I was going to restore stability and trust…when trust was virtually synonymous with respect.

  Or how I was going to restore even the will to try. Even the will to carry on.

  25

  Early next day I walked to Jalna. All my adrenalin had drained away. Also, my stomach was troubling me…no great surprise. In truth—through the exercise of much precarious self-control—I’d even had to stop myself from entering the kitchen. That put the kibosh on a cup of tea.

  The journey took an hour and twenty minutes. It wasn’t right without a dog; without the feel of all that keen companionship at the end of a leash. I arrived there shortly after ten. I had chosen not to cycle, supposing a walk might better clarify my thoughts, expel my sluggishness, provide me with some plan of argument.

  Give me more time.

  In all but the last I’d been mistaken.

  It was Pim who came to the door. I was grateful for that; intended to apologize for my appalling brusqueness on the phone. Indeed, I experienced an uncustomary rush of warm affection—a sort of fellow feeling perhaps, as though I had never been quite fair to him; had underrated, patronized him. Had neither understood his problems nor made any attempt to.

  Suffering produces strange bedfellows.

  I don’t think he realized he was suffering. Or cared much whether I was.

  “Oh,” he said, after a pause. “It’s you! We didn’t think you’d have the nerve to show your face.”

  That rush of affection dried. Wasn’t there some quotation about the weak feeling they had come into their own when they chanced on anybody weaker than themselves? “Wrong, then, weren’t you? I want to see Junie,” I announced.

  In a way it wasn’t a bad beginning.

  “Junie’s still in bed.”

  “And the children, please? I’d like to see my children.”

  “Gone to Folkestone. With April and Robert and some of the others. To help take their mind off matters.”

  “In this weather?”

  “There are worse things than a bit of rain.”

  He was starting to win points: two to my one: we weren’t even level pegging.

  I brushed past him. I knew which bedroom she’d be in. We had several times stayed overnight.

  On the staircase I met Junie’s mother. Also known as Mrs Fletcher. She drew in close to the banister and looked the other way. But my back felt her watching me intently as—with a wholly spurious reassumption of authority and decisiveness—I pushed open the door to the blue room.

  And found Ted and Yvonne in there, naked, making love.

  Ted jerked his head round, justifiably startled. But minimized all our blushes with aplomb. “Junie’s down the landing, Sam. They’ve put her in the pink room.”

  “Thank you,” I mumbled. “Sorry.”

  My mother-in-law was still standing halfway down the stairs. Before she turned I thought I saw the traces of a smile.

  “Bitch,” I told her quietly. I don’t suppose she heard.

  I passed three other bedrooms on that floor. It struck me as ironic that Junie should now be in the pink. Blue was evidently more suited to a man and wife together.

  She was sitting up in bed, with an untouched breakfast tray in front of her—or seemingly untouched.

  “Hello,” I said.

  She appeared to be studying a pair of kipper fillets; her expression as wooden as the tray.

  “How are you, Junie?”

  “I didn’t hear you knock.”

  “No,” I answered humbly—and attempted a smile. “But you should have done. I just caught Ted and Yvonne making the most of the twins being taken off their hands.”

  Yet it didn’t cause amusement. “And ye gods! Even then you don’t learn!”

  “But I forgot to wish them happy anniversary. Ought I to return?”

  I paused.

  “Junie, I’ve come to take you home.”

  “Have you? What a pity! Such a waste of time! Because I’m not going home.”

  “But why? This is silly, darling. This is all so silly.”

  “Well, maybe it is. Maybe you should have thought of that before.”

  “I know I should. So what can I do to show you that I’m sorry?”

  “Oh? Sorry? Sorry, are you?”

  “You’ll never know how much, Junie. Never. But actions speak louder than words. What can I do?”

  “Suffer,” she said.

  I still couldn’t believe it. Not quite. Naturally, over the period of the twenty-odd years during which we’d been boy- and girlfriend, as well as husband and wife, we had many times quarrelled; but Junie had always appeared so…well, temperate…and her anger had chiefly revealed itself through cool detachment. Any shouting or acrimony had come almost exclusively from me. She’d been sulky, hurt, bewildered. She had never been vindictive.

  I’d been standing by the closed door. Now I took a few steps forward and slumped onto an upright chair with seat upholstered in pink velvet. The chair looked fragile but I didn’t care. (I hadn’t very far to fall.) The room being smallish I hadn’t wanted to intimidate her by getting up too close.

  I suppose there were other forms of intimidation. “Why did you phone John Caterham?” I said. “Were you spying on me?”

  I really hadn’t meant to add that last bit, or make either sentence sound accusing.

  In any case she wasn’t cowed.

  “All this time,” she said disdainfully. “And you still don’t know me, do you?”

  “No, I’m sorry, it didn’t come out the way I meant it.” As though there were actually some way it might have come out as merely pleasant conversation. “Why, then?”

  “Just because we hadn’t said goodbye.” She gave a hollow laugh. “And, believe it or not, I felt unhappy about that.”

  “Yes, so did I. But then you phoned me at John Caterham’s simply to say goodbye?”

  “And to wish you luck.”

  She spoke those last few words as though she found them incredible. That didn’t matter. At least she was talking.

  At least we both were.

  “And you didn’t feel Mavis could be trusted to pass on your message?”

  “When were we last apart?” she said. “To me it seemed important.”

  “To me, too. So why couldn’t you have waited in the shop? You knew I wasn’t likely to be long.”

  “I felt silly.”

  We were extraordinarily alike. I remembered thinking there might have been a strain of superstition in my wish to phone her at the house.

  “I tried to phone you at the house,” I said.

  “I know you did. I rang 1471. Missed you by about an hour.” For a moment we appeared—very nearly—to be back in harmony: discussing interests that we shared. “I’d wondered what you wanted. In fact, that was a big par
t of it, my deciding to phone you later. That was the instant when it first occurred to me. Otherwise I mightn’t have thought of it.”

  Dear God. Dear God.

  “You could have rung back Mavis.”

  Anyhow, all this was way beside the point. Although being way beside the point was undoubtedly the lesser of two evils.

  “And, besides,” she added, “after I’d mentioned it, it wasn’t only me. Was it?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Matt hadn’t said goodbye, either.”

  “Matt?”

  “When he left for school. And then it was him who spurred me on. Wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace. Straight after supper—oh, for the umpteenth time!”

  Her tone had gradually become more animated.

  “I told him, ‘They might still be eating, darling, I expect Daddy will only just have got there,’ but he wouldn’t have any of it. ‘Oh, come on, Mum, you said eight, it’s after eight, nobody’s going to mind.’ He wanted to tell you something about his latest project—wanted to tell you before he told me, because he said you’d appreciate the humour more and anyway he needed your advice. And he was standing right there by the telephone, all ready to grab it, when that woman answered…”

  Matt—Mattie—my young Matthias. Oh, thanks, Pop. You’re a good bloke. His kiss on the back of my neck.

  “And I felt such a fool,” she said. “She thought I had the wrong number, thought I must be talking about completely different Caterhams. Sounded as if she thought I were being all quaint and muddleheaded.”

  “So what happened?” I asked.

  She stared at me.

  “What happened? What do you think happened? I told her I wanted the John Caterham who used to live in Deal, in Kent—because naturally it hadn’t got me very far mentioning your name—and then of course she had to go and get him. ‘My goodness, if it isn’t little Junie Fletcher!’ he said. ‘I mean, Groves! How are you? Don’t tell me you’re still living in sun-kissed Deal, the pair of you! And how’s good old Sam?’ But even then I couldn’t take it in; I was so slow, so trusting; still believed there had to be some very simple explanation. Yet then I remembered how you’d forgotten to leave me the number—and you aren’t the kind who normally forgets things like that—even though the Caterhams’ address wasn’t transferred into our last couple of address books. And I remembered how we’d only managed to get through because Matt had soft-soaped Directory Inquiries. And then, at practically the same moment, the question came back to me, ‘But how could he have known the name of Treasure Island?’… And I couldn’t talk and I was crying and Matt had to take the receiver and he just blurted out, ‘Sorry, goodbye, yes sorry, wrong number!’, and they must have thought I was so strange—and rude—and must’ve sat there talking about it all through the rest of the evening…”