by Tim Jeal
Another jocular response was expected but Derek felt too weary and sickened to go on talking. After a brief silence Diana turned to Derek and said:
‘Don’t mind me asking but what’s that thing you’re clutching?’
Derek had forgotten the azalea, concealed under light wrapping paper.
‘A present for you.’ He handed it to her. She unwrapped it carefully and then got up and came over and kissed him lightly on the forehead. A delightful little joke for her to share with Charles; see how pleased the old fool is by a moist peck on the forehead; little things like that convince him that I’m a dutiful wife.
‘Of course you know that flowers are sexual organs on stalks,’ Charles said throatily, with an arch wink at Diana. ‘Saying it with flowers can be a pretty risqué business.’
Diana was examining the plant more closely. ‘It wasn’t like this when you bought it?’ Derek noticed that it was twisted over on one side. He had obviously managed to knock it against the wall in his dash up the stairs. ‘If it was,’ Diana went on, ‘you’d better take it back.’
‘It must have happened in the tube. I’ll buy another. I’m sorry.’
‘No need to be sorry; isn’t it the thought that counts? I expect it’ll recover.’
Derek found her tone patronizing and derisive. It was as if she had assumed all along that if ever he gave her anything he would have dropped, sat on or spoilt it in some other way before making a presentation. He realized just how much it had cost him to suppress his anger earlier on when he’d listened to their exhibition of accomplished lying. His voice shook as he said, ‘Of course it won’t recover. Half the stems are snapped off. What are you going to do? Put them in splints or phone a tree surgeon?’
‘It wouldn’t have been very tactful if I’d told you I intended throwing it out. Be reasonable.’
‘It would at least have been the truth. Did you think I couldn’t take it?’
Charles had started laughing again. Derek realized that he must have thought his show of anger an act specifically put on for his amusement. Why not give him his money’s worth? Derek took the plant from his wife and went back to his chair. For the next minute or so he snapped off all the stems and pulled off every leaf. He then gave it back again to Diana.
‘Highly symbolic,’ chortled Charles. ‘A brief play about man’s destruction of nature. You ought to submit it to a fringe theatre group.’
‘Utterly puerile,’ cut in Diana angrily.
‘What did you think?’ Derek asked Giles. ‘Did it look to you like a short piece of avant-garde theatre or a short piece of childish petulance?’
‘I couldn’t see what was wrong with it to begin with. It was a bit bent but it could have been tied to a stick.’
‘If you couldn’t see, you need another pair of glasses,’ snapped Diana.
Giles blushed deeply. ‘I got this pair last month. I may be blind but not that blind.’ For a moment Derek wondered whether the boy was going to cry, but instead he went on, ‘I thought it was ungrateful, if you want to know.’ Before anybody could say anything he had jumped up and left the room.
‘He’s a bit self-conscious about his glasses,’ Derek said for Charles’s benefit. ‘Hasn’t been wearing them for long.’ Derek smiled wanly at Diana, who scowled back at him.
‘You forced him to take sides, so don’t pretend I did the damage,’ she came back at him.
As soon as Derek could see that his wife was giving Charles such a fine exhibition of the worst side of her nature, he felt better and his own anger ebbed away. He decided to try and make her look still more unreasonable. He turned to Charles with a rueful smile.
‘Give your wife a plant and see what happens. It wasn’t even a very good plant either; just a cheap azalea.’ He paused. ‘Did you read about the children who swallowed laburnum seeds and had to have their stomachs pumped? The average English garden’s a death trap for the incautious.’
‘Belt up, can’t you?’ Diana exploded.
‘Then there’s giant hog-weed,’ Derek went on affably, ‘and stinking hellebores, deadly nightshade and numerous toadstools, not to mention a wide variety of poisonous fungi, roots and berries.’ Charles was studying his expensive, well-polished shoes, Diana was clutching the arms of her chair. Derek looked at them both with something approaching satisfaction. It came to him that Charles might like to hear about his anal affliction; people did not talk about things like that. Diseases and infections had definite categories of acceptability; some were even glamorous, but piles were undoubtedly unmentionable: a sign of senility, an affliction as graceless as bad breath. His tone was confidential and hushed as he continued, ‘I don’t know if Diana told you but most of my bad behaviour has a fundamental cause. My bowels hurt me. I’m suffering from piles; she’s absolutely right, I ought to belt up but my piles make me irrational.’
‘I’ve heard it can be bloody painful,’ Charles replied.
‘Bloody’s the word, not much more than a teaspoonful with each movement—lovely the way they talk about moving the bowels, like moving mountains or moving house. Evacuation’s not much better, although it does sound rather noble, a monumental movement or even movements.’
Diana got up and walked out of the room.
After a pause Charles said quietly, ‘Do you often annoy her like that?’
‘Hardly ever. I usually get down on my knees rather than irritate her. Didn’t she ever tell you, I’m a case of chronic acquiescence? It’s unconditional surrender every day of the week in Abercorn Mansions.’
‘What happened today?’
‘She hasn’t got a headache.’
‘She says she has,’ replied Charles, unable to hide his confusion, which increased when Derek started to laugh. ‘I’m sorry but I don’t get it.’ Charles’s mystification was giving way to irritation.
‘Maybe that’s just as well. Just a little joke of mine, something personal.’ Derek got up and held out a hand to Charles. ‘You mustn’t let me keep you. You’re a busy man and unless I go and take my beating soon, Diana may burst a blood vessel.’ He paused and stared hard at Charles, who was now looking at him with concern. ‘Charles, I’ve been thinking about Cornwall; to be precise I’m still thinking about Cornwall. I’ve come to no decision yet but I may do, if you get my drift.’
‘Well, give me a ring when you have.’ Charles walked to the door, the same look of concern on his face. ‘Are you all right? It sounds a bit funny asking but …’
‘Are you as mad as a hatter?’
‘I was going to say worried.’
‘Anything on the mind?’
‘Is there?’ put in Charles.
‘Nothing a lobotomy wouldn’t cure,’ he replied feeling a sudden surge of anger; wanting to take Charles by the throat and shake him. Instead he opened the door and said with forced calmness, ‘Let me know when you’re going to Burnt Oak again. Pure luck I came back early today. I wouldn’t want to miss you.’
As soon as Charles had gone, all Derek’s sense of mastery and control left him with the same speed that it took his nervous energy to drain away. He had intended to be charming, affectionate and guileless; the ideal husband whose simple goodness wins back an erring wife. Instead he had given way to obtuseness and a display of facetious malevolence that amazed him in retrospect. A few more efforts like it and she would leave him. He paused in the corridor outside the bedroom door.
Humility, diffidence, even self-contempt would all be needed, coupled with acceptance of each and every criticism she threw at him, however unreasonable. Derek tried to imagine that he had committed a terrible crime: something in the order of infanticide. How would he confront the parents? That was the required attitude. Forgive me, for I knew not what I did.
Diana was lying on the bed staring at the ceiling when Derek came in and closed the door behind him. Derek put down her refusal to notice his entrance to utter indifference, or possibly a feeling that he was too vile to look at. Fearing that she might walk out if he sat on the bed, he lowere
d himself onto the floor; on thy belly shalt thou go. Silence. Derek recalled Giles saying that even if Diana battered him with a frying-pan, he would still apologize. Would he, if quite suddenly she produced a pan from under the bedclothes and belted him? My head got in the way; I’m sorry if I dented it; I’ll buy another. Tremors of anger made him clench his fists. Charles had just dropped by and she’d been in bed with a headache; how lucky that some sixth sense had told her to put make-up on her face just in case.
‘I’m afraid I behaved very badly,’ he murmured.
To his amazement Diana leant over and kissed him. She drew back and looked at him with something approaching tenderness. Then she whispered, ‘You shouldn’t be apologizing at all.’
Was she going to confess it all? He must stop her at once. He blurted out, ‘I deliberately tried to annoy you.’
Diana laughed and ruffled his hair playfully.
‘I deserved it for being rude and childish.’ She got up and put her arms round him. Her dressing-gown had come open. She started to undo his shirt buttons. Derek shut his eyes. Was her appetite insatiable? She had started to stroke the hairs on his chest. A moment later she leant forward so that her breasts brushed his face. Derek got up and walked towards the window.
‘Didn’t you want me?’ she asked, with, what seemed to Derek, a horrifyingly convincing show of disappointment. He was now certain that she had thought his earlier aggression stemmed from suspicion about what she had been up to with Charles. But get him to bed and he’ll think himself a fool ever to have doubted her.
‘I’m afraid I can’t change my moods as quickly as you.’
Diana didn’t seem cross, as he had expected her to be; instead she laughed, threw off her dressing-gown and started to dress.
‘What about your headache?’ asked Derek.
‘Gone.’ She noticed his doubtful expression and smiled. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’ Derek made no reply, but she didn’t seem to notice. After slipping on an old pair of slacks and a loose sweater, she brushed her hair rapidly and turned to face him. ‘I’d better get some supper before the delicatessen shuts.’ Before he could ask her not to buy any salami, she had gone.
‘Won’t be long,’ she called from the hall. Her sudden energy left Derek feeling exhausted. He imagined her tripping gaily across the road, smiling at the man in the delicatessen, treading lightly as she walked and breathing in the cooler evening air appreciatively. Derek lay down on the bed. Possibly she was in love with the man; that would account for her light-hearted mood. He turned over and buried his head in the pillow. A few minutes later he thought of getting up and talking to Giles but his limbs felt too heavy. Why not just lie there for hours, days, years, surfacing only for food and trips to the lavatory? Or would it be better to go to the bathroom now and slit his wrists; die a Roman death? She would shout: ‘Supper’s ready!’ and he would hardly hear it as he watched the blood leaping from his wrists like little red dolphins. A closed account at the blood bank, no more to withdraw. A white corpse, only the slight drip of a tap, as the last corpuscles drained away. At first the final tranquillity of the image pleased him, but then, quite unexpectedly, he felt angry. Wasn’t the ‘wait and see’ policy he had proposed not much better than being a corpse? Diana had always wanted him to be assertive; perhaps she ought to have her way. Derek sat up abruptly. The discovery that he intended to fight to keep his wife came to him almost with the force and suddenness of a revelation. How he would set about it, or even when or where, he was uncertain; but set about it, he was sure he would.
Chapter 4
Once a month Derek visited his father at his Bayswater flat. Unlike many former colonial administrators, Gilbert Cushing had not brought back and cherished much local furniture and bric-à-brac; one small Malayan teak table, a solitary parang and a large bronze incense burner were the only major relics of his twenty years in the East. Apart from these there was a framed photograph in the lavatory of the Government Offices in Kuala Lumpur—the Saracenic style had always amused Gilbert—and, hanging in the hall, a portrait of himself, dressed in a fur-lined Chinese coat, painted in 1932, and exhibited the following year at the Academy entitled ‘The Sinologist’. At that time he had been Protector of Chinese, Malacca.
As Derek helped his father pour the tea and watched his fingers busy with cups and saucers, he wondered whether his own hands would one day be as skeletal. He would lose all his hair, as Gilbert had done, but would his bald skull be so peculiarly wrinkled and framed by such a pathetic little fringe of white hair? Only the old man’s eyes had retained their sparkle and alertness. Gilbert had been working at a cluttered desk by the window, and, having taken a few sips of tea, he went over to it and returned with a yellowing photograph of a cheerful-looking man wearing a bow-tie. He showed it to Derek.
‘Remember him?’
Somebody from Malaya. Derek pretended to be deep in thought before finally shaking his head.
‘I was seven when I came home,’ he muttered apologetically.
‘Some of us didn’t come home. We left it,’ replied Gilbert with the hint of a smile. He tapped the photograph with a mottled finger and said, ‘Bill used to take quite an interest in you.’
‘Bill Eggars?’
‘Poor Bill,’ sighed Gilbert, sitting down and spilling tea in his saucer. Derek had heard the story of Bill’s death many times. He’d done it in Room 37 of Raffles Hotel: trouble with his wife, no promotion in sight and none of his painstaking work acknowledged by the head of the Monopolies Department. A very methodical suicide; he had torn up a few private letters and had then carefully sorted his official papers. Having locked all the doors and fastened the blinds, he had stood in front of the mirror and shot himself in the left eye. The coroner had intelligently surmised that one shot had been insufficient because a second had been fired into the mouth. Before summoning the hotel management the room boy had taken the opportunity to steal all the dead man’s personal effects. A meditative look absorbed Gilbert’s face.
‘The Government analyst shot himself at the opium factory the following week.’ Derek watched his father take a bite from a stale biscuit. The old man turned to him and asked. ‘How many suicides have you known? In this country, I mean.’
‘Two or three.’
‘I knew almost twenty in Malaya; knew them well too. The heat, monotony, lack of seasons, drink, of course. There was a lot of drinking. Knew a Chief Justice and a Senior Inspector of Schools and they both became alcoholics.’
‘Those were the days,’ put in Derek with a smile.
‘We were happy enough in Malacca.’ Gilbert’s nostalgic expression faded. ‘For a while at any rate,’ he added quietly.
Since the death of his second wife at the end of the previous year, Derek’s father had been thinking far more about the distant rather than the immediate past.
On 14 February 1942 Derek’s mother and eleven other survivors were landed from their torpedoed ship on a deserted beach in Sumatra and shot by their Japanese captors. A week before, Derek, then a boy of seven, had sailed for India from a beleaguered Singapore and his ship had successfully evaded the Japanese navy. His mother had stayed on after her son’s departure solely to try to get her parents a passage to Java. She had left Malaya with them three days before Singapore fell. Now over thirty years later Gilbert was making a final effort to clear his conscience. For some months he had been working with letters, diaries and newspaper cuttings to put together a precise chronological account of the year leading up to February 1942. Derek considered his behaviour unbalanced and unnecessary. He was quite satisfied that his father had had every reason to suppose that Malaya in 1940 was a safer place than London in the ‘blitz’. Gilbert himself had been invalided out of the Malayan Civil Service and had returned to England the same year: 1938. When war was declared with Germany he had sent his wife and son back to Malaya for safety while he himself took a job in the Colonial Office. In September 1941 when events in the East had started to look menacing, Gilbert ha
d trusted the personal assurances of the Commander in Chief Far East that Japan was not preparing any immediate aggression. In any case he had been frightened at the thought of his wife and child making a seven-thousand-mile sea journey at the height of the U-boat onslaught.
‘Do you have to go through it all again?’ asked Derek, gesturing in the direction of his father’s writing-desk.
‘It’s got to be done, and when you’re my age it’s as well to finish things sooner rather than later.’ Gilbert noticed Derek’s look of weary and exasperated concern. ‘I think I may surprise you, Derek,’ he murmured and then smiled. ‘Anyway it keeps me off the streets, and stops me taking up painting on porcelain or wood engraving.’
A little later, when Derek was leaving, his father took him by the arm and said, ‘You won’t be offended by a bit of paternal advice?’ Derek smiled. ‘Your clothes—’ he paused and looked his son up and down—‘wouldn’t they look better on a younger man?’
Derek, who was wearing the striped jacket Diana had recently bought for him, nodded agreement and then burst out laughing. He liked the way his father always said what he thought and resented the fact that Diana disliked Gilbert to the extent of refusing to ask him round for a meal or even a drink. Perhaps the time had come to redress matters. So rare were Derek’s genuinely impulsive ideas that when they came he found them all but irresistible. With a sense of shock he heard himself saying, ‘Doing anything at the end of July?’
‘I’m rushed off my feet these days,’ Gilbert replied with heavy irony.
‘I’m thinking of going to Cornwall. Like to come?’ Derek’s tone was light.
‘If you want me to,’ his father returned gruffly.
‘Spoken like a Cushing,’ laughed Derek. ‘Right. I’ll ring you about the exact date.’
From the moment Derek had made up his mind to take active steps to keep Diana he had considered abandoning his research and going to Cornwall, but until he actually framed the invitation it had never occurred to him to take his father with him.