A Prodigal Child

by Storey, David;

  ‘I wondered whether, in the past,’ Mr Corrigan said, ‘you were ever aware of the amount of tolerance you have to show when dealing with other people.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Mrs Corrigan isn’t always aware of what she is doing, which comes as a shock, even to someone who has known her as long as I have.’

  ‘Mr Proctor told me how they went to gymkhanas together,’ Bryan said, anxious to introduce the name of the man with whom, at the moment, he was vengefully preoccupied, and to learn, also, what it was in Mrs Corrigan that Mr Corrigan had been attracted to, if not inspired by, in the past.

  ‘I suppose my experience of Mrs Corrigan is not all that different from Mr Proctor’s,’ Mr Corrigan said, glancing about the room. ‘She was eccentric, even in those days, though most people gave her the benefit of the doubt.’ He paused. ‘She was very high-spirited. I could never keep up. Nor could Mr Proctor. Though I shouldn’t doubt it didn’t stop him trying.’

  He fingered his glass; his gaze, too, had caught the reflection of their two faces in the darkened window: he glanced across and laughed.

  ‘It needs a lot of understanding. She’s something of a child.’ He paused again. ‘If you have to show discretion from time to time you’ll have to realize that, in the end, it’s to your benefit as well as hers. If you feel you’d like to help her,’ he gazed at a point above Bryan’s head, ‘I’d be very grateful. There’s a great deal to be said for her.’ He pressed his fingers together, the knuckles interlocked, and pushed them for a while beneath his chin. ‘She was a revelation when she was young. I’d never seen anyone like her. My father took to her straight away. He thought he could tame her before he died. He never succeeded.’ He tapped his chin again.

  They walked back through the darkened streets together; Mr Corrigan walked slowly: he called, ‘Good night,’ to a figure in the doorway of the club as they came out, but in such a spontaneous manner that the man, who had been about to enter, had not replied; and at the entrance to the hotel he called out again in a similar manner to the uniformed doorman who, showing something of the same reaction, saluted Mr Corrigan’s swaying figure and gazed across the foyer as they approached the lift to signal to the receptionist behind her counter.

  ‘She has a sense of style,’ Mr Corrigan said as they ascended to the first floor above. ‘A vision. Which is very rare in a place like this.’ He paused at the door of the suite to insert his key but, after several attempts to do so, allowed Bryan to do it for him. ‘Like your gift. Unusual. And expressed, in her case, amongst other things, by her choice of clothes.’

  He gazed into the lighted sitting-room at a figure who, wearing a dressing-gown, had just emerged from the bedroom.

  ‘Don’t tell her I told you,’ he concluded, blinking his eyes.

  ‘Don’t tell Bryan what?’ Mrs Corrigan said.

  ‘I thought you were out,’ Mr Corrigan said.

  ‘I was.’

  ‘We went to the club.’

  ‘What club?’

  ‘The Liberal.’

  ‘You haven’t been there for years.’

  ‘I used to go each weekend.’

  ‘And now you’re taking Bryan.’

  Mrs Corrigan had been crying.

  ‘Is there anything wrong with my taking Bryan?’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘We are left so often on our own that it’s surprising we aren’t there every night.’

  Having entered the room, stepping around Mrs Corrigan, he collapsed in a chair, his legs splayed out.

  ‘You’re drunk.’

  ‘Not much.’ Mr Corrigan glanced at Bryan.

  ‘Has he walked through the streets like that?’ Mrs Corrigan asked.

  ‘I haven’t flown through them,’ Mr Corrigan said.

  Mrs Corrigan sat down.

  ‘Is anything the matter?’ Mr Corrigan frowned.

  ‘I thought you might have been here,’ Mrs Corrigan said.

  ‘We were.’

  ‘You weren’t when I got back.’

  ‘We were before.’

  ‘How was I to know where Bryan was?’

  ‘You appeared indifferent until now,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘Out each evening. A new gown every night. Afternoons in the tea-room. Evenings in the cocktail lounge. Mornings in the coffee lounge. Nights,’ he extended his hand, ‘I know not where.’

  ‘Is anything the matter?’ Bryan asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You’ve come back early,’ Mr Corrigan said.

  ‘I came back when I wanted.’

  Mr Corrigan spread out his hands. ‘As for me, one evening off in twenty.’

  ‘I don’t feel well.’

  Mrs Corrigan bowed her head.

  ‘Proctor not arrive?’ Mr Corrigan asked.

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with Stan,’ she said.

  ‘Hasn’t it?’

  Mrs Corrigan had removed her make-up: her skin was greased, her cheeks puffy, her eyes red. Her feet, beneath the hem of her dressing-gown, were bare.

  ‘It’s something you’ve eaten.’ Mr Corrigan drew back his head, his chin thrust down against his collar.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘I don’t suppose you ever will. Not ever.’

  ‘I’ve given you Bryan,’ Mr Corrigan said.

  Mrs Corrigan flushed.

  ‘Even though you’ve had him with you, it hasn’t stopped you,’ he paused, ‘with other men.’

  ‘What other men?’

  ‘Do I have to itemize each one?’

  ‘It’s all been innocent,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘It’s innocent now. No one means anything to me as much as you.’

  Mr Corrigan glanced down at his jacket.

  ‘I’m more aware than anyone else of what I’ve done,’ Mrs Corrigan added.

  ‘You draw attention to it,’ Mr Corrigan said, ‘as if you wanted everyone to see it.’

  ‘I show restraint. I’ve always shown restraint. Don’t you think I’m not aware of what people think?’

  ‘Didn’t Proctor turn up tonight?’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘Is that why you’re unhappy?’

  ‘He means nothing to me,’ Mrs Corrigan said. ‘He meant nothing to me in the past. He means nothing to me now.’

  ‘If you can’t discuss it honestly then there’s no hope for any of us, Fay,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘Bryan should have been enough if you’d only controlled your appetite for creating a sensation with other men.’

  ‘How can Bryan satisfy everything, Harold?’

  ‘He satisfies enough.’

  Mr Corrigan counted the buttons on his jacket, confirmed that each one was there, then said, ‘You can send him back.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To Stainforth.’

  ‘I can’t send him back. He can’t go back,’ Mrs Corrigan added.

  ‘I’ve done all I can, in that case,’ Mr Corrigan said. He got up from his chair. ‘Are you going to bed?’ he added.

  ‘I shall be,’ Mrs Corrigan said.

  ‘Good night, Bryan,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘I’m sorry tonight has ended so badly,’ and adding, ‘If there’s anything else I can do, no doubt you’ll let me know,’ he closed his bedroom door.

  Later, Bryan heard them quarrelling from Mr Corrigan’s bedroom, but the following day Mr Corrigan himself came into his room, standing in the door, reassuring Bryan by his manner that everything was exactly as it was before, and announcing, ‘I enjoyed last night at the Liberal.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll go again.’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  And with the same inclination of his hand with which he had come into the room, he smiled at Bryan and left.

  TWENTY-ONE

  They returned to the house one Saturday morning to find the interior transformed: the rooms looked larger, the ceilings higher, the staircase broader, the windows brighter and, recalling that the choice of colours and wallpapers had been Mrs Corrigan’s alone, Bryan’s admiration for her increased by leaps and boun
ds. As he watched her move from room to room, appearing at one door and then another, passing across the hall, pausing on the stairs, he thought that, despite the ordeal of the past six weeks, he had never loved her more: their love had been transformed from the familiarity of the past into something more demanding.

  A few days later Mr Corrigan fell ill; he was brought home from work in the afternoon but, by the evening, unable to resist the need continually to ring the shop, he was taken away to hospital. The following morning, when Bryan and Mrs Corrigan visited him, he appeared to be asleep, murmuring slightly when Mrs Corrigan spoke to him and opening his eyes only when Mrs Corrigan took his hand.

  ‘I’ve told him repeatedly,’ she said in the taxi back. ‘He needs to relax. He takes the shop too seriously. The excitement of the past few weeks has been more that he could stand. Why,’ she continued, as they reached the house, ‘I tried to teach him the piano once, even to sing, but he had no voice. The hours I played accompaniment!’

  Bryan lay awake that night wondering what, in future, his life with Mrs Corrigan might be: perhaps Mr Corrigan would die; he imagined a life with Mrs Corrigan and himself living in the house together.

  The following evening, when he returned from school, he discovered she was out: his tea had been prepared. ‘Mrs Corrigan rang to say Mr Corrigan was feeling better,’ Mrs Meredith said, sitting in the kitchen to watch him eat.

  It was late in the evening by the time Mrs Corrigan returned.

  ‘Are we going to the hospital?’ Bryan asked.

  ‘I’ve been there already,’ she said.

  She might easily have come in from a game of tennis, relaxed, her make-up freshly done.

  ‘Are you going out again?’ he asked.

  ‘I might.’

  She sat across the room, her back straight; her hair, too, he observed, had been freshly done, giving her face a slimmer look, the hair piled up at the top of her head and secured by a black silk ribbon.

  ‘You didn’t tell Mrs Meredith.’

  ‘Why should I tell Mrs Meredith?’ she asked.

  ‘She stayed behind tonight because she doesn’t like me being in the house alone.’

  ‘You’re not frightened, are you?’

  ‘I resent you going out.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I go out? I can’t make Harold better. Nor,’ she concluded, ‘would he wish me to stay inside and mope.’

  ‘You don’t have to mope.’

  ‘What else can I do?’

  ‘We could listen to the wireless.’

  ‘I’m going out in order to distract myself,’ she said.

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From you.’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘I think I ought to.’

  ‘Why?’

  She picked at her skirt.

  ‘I have to think of the future. It’s my job to see more clearly than you.’

  She lowered her head.

  Foreshortened, he didn’t recognize her face at all: it might have been that of an older woman.

  ‘I’ve always,’ she added, ‘been attracted by other men. By what they are like with one another. I always played with boys when I was young. I always found men more interesting than any amount of women. I can’t help it. It’s the way I am. I like their company. Even when I know they’re being coarse. One thing you have to believe. I’ve always been true to you.’

  ‘Stay in tonight,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I said I’d go.’

  ‘Are you going to go out each night?’ he asked.

  There came a ring at the door; perhaps she’d heard the sounds preceding it, a car door, or the gate at the end of the drive.

  He had reached the landing when he heard her in the hall, the release of the front-door catch and sound of a voice, cheerful, followed by a vague inquiry.

  He closed his door.

  He heard her come upstairs and change, and heard the man humming to himself in the hall below.

  A man’s voice called; Mrs Corrigan’s voice replied; the man’s voice called again.

  His door was opened.

  ‘I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Depends what time you get back in.’

  ‘There’s supper in the kitchen.’

  She remained in the door, her face no longer young but bloated.

  ‘Leave the door unbolted,’ she added.

  ‘I shall.’

  ‘Good night.’

  The sound of her footsteps faded; after an interval came the sound of a car engine starting in the road outside the house.

  Some time later the door to his bedroom opened.

  ‘Are you awake?’ she asked.

  ‘I have been,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve bolted the front door.’

  ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘I didn’t feel like going out this evening.’

  ‘Your friend not with you?’

  ‘He went some time ago.’

  She turned along the landing.

  ‘Do you want me to come to your room?’ he asked.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘To say good night.’

  ‘No, thank you, Bryan,’ and, as she turned back along the landing, his door was closed with a bang.

  He visited Mr Corrigan each evening; sometimes Mrs Corrigan came with him or, if she had visited Mr Corrigan during the day, he went alone. For several days he got no better, the dark eyes inanimate, the cheeks sallow, the voice slurred; then, after a week, he began to recover: he sat up in bed and took an interest in what Bryan had to tell him. He got out of bed; he sat in a chair; he talked of coming home. His emaciated figure, shrouded in a check dressing-gown, showed signs of impatience. ‘You shall come home,’ Mrs Corrigan told him on one of her visits, ‘as soon as you’re well.’

  ‘I am well,’ the emaciated face announced.

  ‘As soon as the hospital gives permission.’

  ‘I’ll discharge myself,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘I can’t wait any longer.’

  Even while Bryan was sitting with Mr Corrigan, and taking note of his returning health, as well as the residual signs of his illness, he was observing Mrs Corrigan’s arm, the shape of her mouth, her nose, the colour of her make-up, the way she withdrew her hand from her glove: the suffusion on her cheek when, glancing up, she saw his look. At other moments, when they were in the street, and he glimpsed her reflection in the window of a shop, he thought that something in her life had now been broken. ‘She has no centre to her life, other than the clothes she wears, the perfume she puts on, the looks that follow her,’ he reflected, ‘wherever she goes.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked on one occasion as they waited outside the hospital for the bus to Chevet.

  ‘I’m wondering how long we’ll be together.’

  ‘You’re always telling me for ever.’ She laughed: the sound echoed in the street. Drawing him to her, she said, ‘There’s enough to keep us going for quite some time.’ A moment later, she added, ‘And all the while you’re getting older.’

  ‘So are you,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘but a time will soon be reached when, in a street like this, we might easily be mistaken for a man and wife.’

  He didn’t refer to it again. ‘Perhaps it’s her nervousness that makes her like this,’ he thought. ‘Or a deeper disturbance altogether, one I’ve scarcely glimpsed before.’

  ‘Do you want to take a taxi?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll wait for the bus,’ he said, not wishing to be indebted to her for more than his mood could stand.

  Other people came up and stood beside them; neither of them spoke. ‘Our relationship is odd, maybe even mad,’ he thought, and yet, in glancing up at her face, he saw no sign of apprehension.

  When the bus arrived, its interior crowded, they sat on separate seats; only as they approached Chevet did he take a place beside her. ‘I don’t think there’s any problem,’ she said.

&nbs
p; ‘What about?’ he asked her.

  ‘The future. It seems easier than the past. Much. Even,’ she took his hand, ‘more normal.’

  She had left a light on in the house and, once inside, having taken off her coat, she walked through the hall as if she expected Mr Corrigan to emerge from the sitting-room to greet them: it was long after Bryan had gone to bed that he heard her come upstairs, call good night and, he assumed, still in her abstract mood, close her bedroom door without waiting for an answer.

  ‘I’m sending Fay on holiday,’ Mr Corrigan said one morning before Bryan left for school. He had recently come home from hospital and the routine of their life at Chevet had resumed along the lines which had prevailed before his illness. ‘I shan’t go away myself. There’s too much to do. I thought,’ he concluded, ‘you ought to go with her.’

  ‘My parents will be expecting me to stay at home,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll talk to them,’ Mr Corrigan said. ‘I’ve spoken to them before. I’m sure they’ll understand.’ He added, ‘How do you think she’s been since I came back?’

  ‘Much the same as before you went away,’ Bryan said.

  ‘The change will do her good. You’re so much happier on your own than when there’s someone else around.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Bryan said.

  ‘Oh, I know so.’ Mr Corrigan laughed. ‘She depends far more on you than she does on me.’

  Later, that evening, when he got home from school and found Mrs Corrigan in the sitting-room, playing the piano, and told her about the holiday, she said, not glancing up, ‘It was my decision, Bryan, to go away, not his.’

  ‘You never told me,’ Bryan said.

  ‘I was waiting to see his reaction. He might have objected.’ She added, ‘I also have to wait for him to see your parents. We don’t want to provoke them by taking you away when they’re expecting you to spend the summer with them. I hope they’ll agree. I thought, to put a gloss on it, we ought to take Margaret.’

  ‘I’d prefer not to,’ Bryan said.

  ‘It’ll look very odd, the two of us together.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ve a friend from school,’ she said.