The Ice Age

by Margaret Drabble

  So Alison had had no friends. Nevertheless, she got on well with those who would accept her for what she was, who were sufficiently removed by time or class to accept her without a threatened rivalry: with Kitty Friedmann, whose own lack of vanity and self-interest was so astonishing that Alison did not even feel the need to envy it, for Kitty was the real thing, Kitty was an innocent, a saint; with Maureen Kirby, the opposite of innocent—knowing, realistic, amiable. With Maureen, and with Maureen only, Alison had been able to play the game of being girls together, while the men talked, and the two of them had had many an interesting discussion, in powder rooms, in hotel bedrooms, left together over coffee in dining rooms while the men talked of other things. Maureen was a confidential talker, hard to resist. Her accounts of what went on in the business world were fascinating. And Maureen did not resent Alison, for she had no standards whereby to judge Alison’s superiority; so unself-conscious was she that she would even compliment Alison upon her appearance, and comment approvingly on her clothes. Maureen was young, confident, shrewd, unthreatening and unthreatened. And during Len’s downfall, Alison had come to admire her for other reasons: principally, for her loyalty. She was sure that she had seen in Maureen’s face, in those dark months, the shadow of suspicion, an awareness, a wariness about Len; Anthony had found Len so plausible that he had accepted his arguments about his own actions, but Maureen had known more, suspected more. But had not let on. Perhaps she had thought that she could rescue Len, by love and faith. As Alison now might rescue Anthony?

  Maureen was at home, in her little Sheffield flat. She already knew the news about the Riverside deal, for she had read it in the papers, but wanted to know more: was it as good as it looked, what were the catches, how was Anthony feeling? “Anthony’s started to drink like a fish,” said Alison, using a figure of speech she would certainly not have used to others. “You’d think he’d lost a fortune, or been given a prison sentence, the way he’s carrying on. I just don’t understand it,” said Alison, who did, but who wanted to have an outside opinion on the matter.

  “It’s the relief,” said Maureen, “after all that strain. Perhaps he’ll calm down, in a week or two. After all, he’s had a terrible lot of strain this past year.”

  “So have you, but it hasn’t driven you to drink.”

  Maureen agreed that she hadn’t been driven to drink, but that she had broken out in spots, and been driven into sleeping with her boss; also, she pointed out that for her the strain wasn’t exactly over, so she would hardly tell how she’d respond when relieved from it. “The test will be,” she said, “when Len gets out. I’d take a bet that he’ll drink himself into a blind fit for a month, then sober up and get back to work. That’s my bet, but I don’t know if I’ll be around to watch it. No yellow ribbons for Len, I’m afraid.”

  They discussed the behavior under stress of Len and Anthony, its differences and similarities, and agreed that both had expressed it, bizarrely, by a search for fiercer and fiercer condiments. “You should have seen the amount of mustard he used to shove on his steak by the end, and whenever it was curry, it had to be Vindaloo,” said Maureen. Alison revealed that Giles, like Maureen, had suffered from spots. They both laughed a good deal over these eccentricities of the body’s reactions and requirements.

  “Actually,” said Maureen after a while, “I think perhaps I am relieved. And that’s why I’m sleeping with Derek. I was thinking about Len, the other day, and Anthony, and the horrible responsibility of having all that unsold, unlet property weighing on one like a load of bricks—well, damn it, it is a load of bricks, a load of concrete anyway—and I thought how glad I was I’d never let Len make me a director, and how glad I was it wasn’t my responsibility any more, and how could I ever think it had been fun—and how could I ever think it was funny when Len used to go on with all that big talk about how he didn’t give a fuck about the shareholders—I suppose he was being honest, but honesty isn’t everything, is it? and I thought how glad I was that there was only me, on my own, just me in this flat that I pay for myself, out of my own earnings, and I don’t own a thing, not even a Mini any more, and I don’t have to worry about the interest rate and the flaming Land Act, and if I want a new pair of shoes I can go and buy one and if I want to complain about the price of spuds I can, and how simple it is, just being me, and when Derek offers me money or presents I can say, ‘No thanks, keep your money, I do it for fun.’ I know now how much I hated all that weight of everything lying on me. Len liked it, and I thought it was fun to begin with, but by the end I hated it. You know what I mean? Of course you know what I mean. You know, Alison, I used to think when they were preparing the case that if I loved Len enough, if I willed enough for it to be all right, then it would be, but even at the time I knew that wasn’t true—but I went on willing, because I had to, for Len’s sake—but I didn’t believe it. It is a relief, not to have to pretend any more.

  “But it’s different, with you and Anthony. It’ll be all right for you, because Anthony isn’t as hard a case as Len, he isn’t as hooked, and he’d never have done what Len did, he’d have had more sense. Len’s a bit mad, you know. He let it get out of hand. He really did commit massive fraud, you know, however honorable his intentions may have been. Anthony’s affairs are different. He hasn’t got any shareholders to worry about, for a start. I can’t tell you how sick I got of hearing Len yelling about shareholders sitting on their backsides.”

  Alison, curled up in a chair in the drafty hall, listening to the distant sounds of Anthony watching an American thriller on television, said, “But I think Anthony may be a bit mad too.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Maureen. “Well, a bit mad, perhaps, or he wouldn’t have got mixed up in this property business in the first place. Particularly at a time like that. But he’s not very mad. And anyway, he’s an educated man. There are all kinds of other things he could do.”

  “Such as what?”

  Maureen considered.

  “I don’t know. But you must get him out of this business. You’ll have to think of something else to keep him busy, or he’ll be lured back. They’re like addicts, you know, some of them.”

  “There isn’t any work. There’s large-scale unemployment. Redundancies everywhere.”

  “Yes, I know. Still, a man with Anthony’s background and qualifications . . . ”

  They both paused, contemplating the fact that a man like Anthony might, precisely, find himself deeply unemployable.

  “I could always go back to work myself, and keep him,” said Alison, as a joke. “But I don’t suppose he’d like to be kept.”

  “No, you’ve got to keep him occupied,” said Maureen, and they both laughed again, amused by having slipped into the female attitude that men are children who need to be kept busy, to keep them out of mischief.

  After Alison had rung off, comforted by a sharing of views, though disturbed by Maureen’s perhaps inevitable desertion of the impotent Len, Maureen sat down to a supper of cheese on toast with egg in it, and thought about Len. Perhaps, she felt, if she had willed enough, she would have got him off. Love is a force that will move mountains, and a good woman can even get a man out of jail, if she protests enough. And to love on, despite the evidence, despite common sense, is as stubborn as to pile debt on debt, fraud on fraud, hoping to be saved by a miracle. Obstinacy is no virtue. A wise person knows when to quit.

  Yet there remained a nagging doubt: had she quit too early? Why had Len not confided in her, during those last months, when he had made all the mistakes? Had he sensed that she was withdrawing support, and was that perhaps the reason why he had behaved so foolishly?

  She would never know. She cut neatly into the slice of toast. Cheese on toast was her favorite supper, but Len had not been fond of it, he said it gave him indigestion and kept him awake at night. Cheese was a shocking price these days, but it was still cheaper than most things. She’d heard a dispute on the radio that very morning between a Milk Marketing Board man and a d
octor: the doctor said cheese was very, very bad for you, the milk spokesman said it was very, very good for you. One had to admit that the doctor’s views were probably more disinterested. Still, who cared? It wasn’t so bad, sitting alone in one’s flat, having one’s favorite supper, in fact it was quite good fun. It was, as she had told Alison, a relief. Most people eat too much, particularly businessmen on expense accounts. The only way one can have cheese on toast in a posh restaurant is to eat it as a savory, after a whole meal. Maureen remembered with amusement her shock at some of her discoveries about the expense-account life, the life of good living. How her mum had laughed, at the story of the seven-course dinner with a whole separate fish course. She’d often wondered how it was that people managed to stay roughly the same size—well, the same size within ten stones or so—when some of them eat four or five times as much as others.

  Her mum had always been partial to cheese on toast too, but she liked it different. She liked it done under the grill, in hard slabs, browned on top and hardly melted underneath. Maureen thought that was the lazy way. She liked hers grated in milk. Sloppy.

  Maureen thought about money, and what Len had wanted all that money for, when people’s real needs don’t really differ all that much. It wasn’t so much what you got for your money that appealed to him (and that appealed, she admitted it, to her), it was the idea of it. Like traveling first-class on a boat and hearing the loud-speaker tell second-class passengers to get out of the first-class accommodation. When the difference between the two was hardly worth paying for anyway. Like saying to your mum or Auntie Evie or Marlene or even old Stan, oh, we’re staying in the Dorchester, of course. Like getting into that Rolls and being stared at, when the Mini had been just as good really, and a damn sight easier to park. She sighed, picked up her fork, picked at the tablecloth. Oh well, it had been fun while it lasted. Seeing how the other half lives. She’d got ideas above her station, as her mum told her at Christmas, laughing raucously at Maureen’s pernickety emptying of ash trays. The idea of having a station was a laugh in itself. But she’d certainly ended up in a station further along the line than poor old Auntie Evie, and poor Marlene with all those kids. At least I can pay my own rent, and buy my own piece of cheese, and shut my own door on myself, thought Maureen Kirby.

  PART THREE

  It ought now to be necessary to imagine a future for Anthony Keating. There is no need to worry about the other characters, for the present. Len Wincobank is safe in prison: when he emerges, he will assess the situation, which will by then have changed, and he will begin again. He will make no more such mistakes. He will take risks, but he will not make mistakes. As he will say to the prison governor on the day of his release, I have learned my lesson. Max Friedmann has been, throughout, dead; Kitty Friedmann will not alter where she finds alteration, but will continue as before, so determined is she to ignore the implications of reality, so adept is she at translating into her own terms the messages she receives from the outside world. Like Tom Callander, she is protected, but by a wiser angel.

  Len has lost Maureen Kirby. She is happy with Derek Ashby, who has persuaded her that she is wasting her talents working for him: she is doing a course in business management, and in 1980, somewhat unpredictably, she will marry Derek. A sociologist will write a report upon their successful combination of careers, and she will have to give many interviews, in her little spare time, as a representative of the new world of businesswomen. She will think of Len, and at times regret the wild good times, and the children she never had, but she will know she has been a lucky woman. Evelyn Ashby, who has not been allowed to appear, will not remarry; she will grow eccentric and solitary, and refuse to see her own children: I prefer to be alone, she will say. And she will mean it.

  But what of Anthony Keating and Alison Murray? What will they do? Return to London and the vicissitudes of the market? Farm trout or watercress? Donate High Rook House to the Youth Hostel Association, or transform it into a home for the handicapped? Will Alison resume her long abandoned career, will Anthony drink himself to death?

  They thought of all these things, but did not have time to choose between them.

  After two months of heavy drinking, Anthony sobered up, and rang Giles and Rory, and told them that he wanted to release himself from their partnership. They had been expecting this, and agreed, gladly, for they had for some time viewed Anthony as a liability. They themselves had all sorts of plans afoot, and when Anthony departed, they merged with another group of enterprising and not wholly honest real estate agents, and made some clever purchases. There was still money to be made, even in those dark days; the Pension Funds, the new rich, swollen with capital, were buying property and Picassos like cakes.

  Spring came, and Anthony and Alison walked, across the hills, by the river, up the valley; they took with them books to identify flowers, trees, fungi, birds. They took possession. It was a good time: it was, almost, what they had planned.

  Anthony wrote some songs, and sold one to Mike Morgan, another to a record company. Alison took up poultry and embroidery, and in the evenings poured over the small stitches in her well-illustrated embroidery book. They talked and speculated. They would be all right, they said to themselves. They toyed with notions of trout and watercress. They even thought of running a pub together. They had time to think, as the snowdrops gave way to primroses, violets, daffodils, butter burr, as the rooks built noisily in the remaining elms, as the lambs scattered across the hillsides.

  Babs had a girl, safely, despite the high blood pressure. Anthony was pleased, and sent flowers, telegrams, gifts. At Easter, the three younger of his own children came to stay, to give Babs a rest. It was as they had planned. The children liked the house, seemed to like Alison, were helpful and polite. There appeared to be no enmity among them. We have not done so badly, thought Anthony, watching them on their last evening as they mopped up their chicken stew with hunks of bread and talked about potholes and limestone scenery: the clints and grykes on the hilltop had actually interested their urban spirits, though perhaps only because one of them was doing geography O Level. Their faces were healthy and open, their teeth were good, they munched and smiled, the next generation. Would they survive? How could one tell? He wondered whether they would be capable of earning the enormous incomes that they would doubtless find necessary to support themselves if capitalism and inflation continued to govern the land; whether they would have the wits and resources to survive in a totalitarian state, should things turn that way. There was no point in worrying too much about them. Theirs was the future, not his. Babs had been a good mother to them. He had not been too bad a father. One can do no better than hope.

  In the morning, he and Alison drove them off to Leeds station, settled them on the train, saw them off, waved them good-bye. Come again soon, they cried, and all three cried that they would love to, it had been great, could Babs and Stuart and the new baby come too next time? I don’t see why not, said Anthony, as the train drew out.

  They went shopping in Leeds that afternoon, and bought various dull household objects, then went back to the house and went to bed for half an hour, before supper. They talked about whether or not to buy a dog for Molly, who was with Donnell; they had decided not to risk having the two families together, just yet. There would be plenty of time, plenty of other holidays, so they thought. Molly was returning the next day: Alison was going to fetch her. It would be a nice surprise for her, said Anthony. We’d have to train it not to chase the lambs and not to eat the chickens, said Alison. But yes, they agreed, a puppy would be fun. Contentment filled them, in their safe and private place, and both were old enough to feel its rarity. Perhaps this is the only way, thought Anthony, that a man can remove himself from destruction. By removing himself. But peace is so expensive, love so fitful, destruction so relentless. A thrush sang in the apple tree in the garden, despite this.

  When they got up, they walked down to the village, in the early evening. It was clear, soft and bright, and t
he evening star hung luminous, dilating, in the water-color sky, large like a promise. They passed a newborn lamb in a ditch: it was struggling to its feet, the mother was standing already, the afterbirth at her feet.

  They went down and stood on the bridge over the river: boys were fishing, with a saucepan, and small birds with dipping tails skimmed the surface of the water. The boys had caught two minnows and a bullhead: they showed Anthony. The fish swam around the shiny confines of the pan. “What will you do with them?” asked Alison. “Put them back,” said the boys.

  They held hands, and gazed at the fast clear flowing brown water. Their hands rested on the old packhorse bridge, on the gray lichen-encrusted stone. If one could so stand forever, they thought. A lamb bleated, nearby. If they were careful, if they avoided every risk, was there a chance that they might stand there on other evenings, for years of evenings? It seemed possible, but not, they thought, probable. They were not a confident couple: they had had no cause to be so. And as they started back up the hill to the house, Anthony thought he could feel, for the first time for months, an ominous sensation in chest and heart. It reminded him that he had decided to remake his will: he had made one many years earlier, leaving all he had or had not to Babs and the children, but did not now see why they should inherit everything. He would leave the house to Alison, and make some provision for his children. Babs’s husband could look after Babs. He was, after all, earning a safe £12,000 a year, although he did not look a man of such mettle.