Holiday

by Stanley Middleton

  ‘Seaside,’ Meg decided. ‘Out of season. East coast. Bealthorpe. The Frankland Towers.’ She rolled the words round her palate, father’s daughter. He was surprised at her choice, expecting her to plump for London, the theatres, concerts. Curiously he did not remember the Frankland from his holidays, though he’d stared often enough into the long lighted windows of the big hotels. This must have been built in the last year or two; who’d patronise it he did not know and said as much.

  ‘You’ll see,’ she said, ‘when you get amongst the chinless wonders.’

  The service there matched the steep prices, and on both Friday and Saturday nights they went to bed in liquor. This surprised him, now, but he remembered that at the time it seemed sensible. To stagger along to the distant sea under the clusters of cloud-smudged stars or to sit comfortably in an armchair swigging whisky and water as he whispered verse to his wife:

  Perchaunce the lye wethered and old

  The Wynter nyghtes that are so cold,

  Playnyng in vain vnto the mone;

  Thy wisshes then dare not be told;

  Care then who lyst, for I have done,

  seemed a perfection, as if he’d mastered life, or ambition, even death. He did not drink over wildly, since he was less used to it than she, but he smiled and quoted in a fine dizziness. Perhaps this was the end of his youth; from this time he began to be himself. He doubted that. He’d achieved something, though his wife was not impressed, and in this state of half inebriation could imagine that she celebrated with him. They made love languidly last thing at night, but she lay relaxed, pleased with him, delighted to be his love, his wife.

  In the morning both were edgy with headache, fearing the size of the bill, but by lunch-time they’d walked, skimmed stones and were ready to make fun of the residents. Meg mimicked their voices, or rather fluffed them up out of her imagination. She growled comically military for a moustachioed man with oiled hair.

  ‘Two yahs in the Grenadahs for you.’ She pointed at her husband, who’d failed because of acne to do national service. ‘Set you up, young fellah, sloppin’ about like a stretch of four-by-two in a watah-closet.’ Where she’d learnt that expression he’d no idea. One black-beaded old lady with round glasses and a pinched mouth she specially watched, and then, in the bedroom suddenly squeaked, so that Fisher knew immediately whom she mocked, head nodding, ‘I would never allow my late husband, the bishop, to enjoy his conjugal rights unless there were an ‘o’ in the month.’

  ‘Why, madam?’ Fisher said, catching the spirit.

  Meg pursed her lips.

  ‘It is not for you, young man, to know the times and seasons.’

  The old voice crackled, but he reflected uncomfortably that he seemed to be only a casually admitted spectator to her satirical self-entertainment. In her head he’d be bleating some banality, or worse some magnificence of poetry that would ring ridiculously pretentious as she imitated his voice or her walk.

  Not that she gibed all day. She could laugh so that her beauty, which was statuesque, transformed itself into an adolescent helplessness. The green eyes flashed as she giggled; shoulders shook and she clutched him for support. He loved her, then.

  This sense of unease, of peril about his marriage did not deeply disturb him. His life had been a series of obstacles, O and A, Scholarship, Schools, and though he shaped excellently as an examination candidate, he’d always been nervous, grew to live with it, be glad of it, use it to advantage. Thus he did not expect his new life to be anything but dangerous. As his first at Oxford proved its worth in jobs and attention, so the beauty of his wife. But neither was gained without sacrifice. One got nothing for tramtickets as his father told him. And yet he felt immature, unready for marriage, only satisfied when the pair of them managed to share something, a game, a drinking-bout, sex, mindlessly, never in the abstract. Perhaps that was usual.

  He eyed his married friends, and made nothing of them. They behaved with such variety that he could draw no conclusion. He observed only their public life. One husband did the washing; another bathed the children; one plangently described his sexual performances; another claimed drily to envy adulterers.

  Of course he was verbally adroit enough to give himself satisfactory answers. This lack of equilibrium, this uncertainty would disappear, so that he and Meg would settle to a workaday routine of children, promotion, househunting, retirement with honour. He neither wanted nor believed that. The snag could be bluntly put: though he desperately loved his wife, he was not convinced that she returned his love. She said so, often enough; muffled his fear with kisses, dragged him into bed, shrilled fiercely for him, even lay tenderly by him when she was satisfied, but then he remembered when he’d not done so well and she’d cried for what he could not give, and beaten him, in a curse of tears. On no more than chance, then, than chance, success depended.

  Marriage, that oath, that sanctified state seemed nothing to her.

  She’d talk about Malcolm, or her other boy-friends, until he flushed, jealous, near mad with anxiety. If she’d seen them, and they could serve her, then that service could be taken at her pleasure, without reference to vows and solemn declarations. She had, she lived with, her husband, expressed her pleasure at the condition, but declined to make it a matter of eternity. He’d no proof of her infidelity, did not believe that she’d been unfaithful, but was driven by her to understand she was undeterred, immorally irresponsible.

  The small boy on the next table had finished dinner and had been whisked away to bed by his father. Residents whispered congratulations to the wife, who queened it with her coffee, smiling openly at Fisher. Again he’d no idea why this was: perhaps she set her cap at him or perhaps her pleasure at being allowed ten minutes to herself in a beautiful dress with no dishes to wash left her so content that she demonstrated her pleasure to the nearest presentable male. Fisher returned the smile, but was surprised when she picked up her cup and came the three or four feet to sit at his table. The rest did not know how to take this, minded their own business openly.

  Her conversation meant little.

  She talked about a motor-boat trip they’d decided against, the number of ice-creams a child should be allowed, and finally she described her husband’s behaviour in an amusement arcade. Now she pitched her voice low, not publicly, as she sketched the feverish thrusting of coins into the one-armed bandits, his bad temper when she’d remonstrated with him, his childishness. ‘You allow him in there, and he goes beserk,’ she whispered. ‘Mad for money. He isn’t at home. He’s ever so generous. But there he’ll change a pound note and glue himself to the machine until it’s gone.’ She questioned him, keeping her voice small, in intimacy. Under the light dress her skin burnt in hot gold, matching the heat of words.

  Fisher answered stiffly.

  To tell the truth he was frightened. Viewed from a yard or two’s distance on the beach or in the house she was attractive, the belle. Now she approached, she changed, coarsened into the typist-suburban housewife who talked inanities or ironed in semi-detached houses the country over. This tested him. Why should she malign her husband, invite him to join in?

  Her husband returned, showed mild amusement at her change of position, but not at the lack of coffee. The girl, clearing away from other tables, rushed to supply him.

  ‘Are they in bed?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ A slow monosyllable.

  ‘Tony asleep?’

  ‘Well away. Colin wants you to go up.’

  She nodded, picked up her cup to drain the dregs, crooking her finger. She disassociated herself by that movement from demanding children, kitchen chores, but she soon left. The husband began to talk. A quantity surveyor he did not like holidays away from home, where he would have preferred straightening the garden, or working the lathe in his toolshed, but claimed he had to come away for his family’s sake.

  ‘Hard on a woman, y’know,’ he said. ‘This is the only relief she gets. A fortnight off once a year.’

  Fish
er sat impressed; the man observed, slaved for his wife, lived for his kids. Now, at this table, he apologised because he came home from work late, had to travel away, couldn’t romp daily with the children. Fisher drew him out; he’d made built-in cupboards, done the brick-laying for the garage, added a conservatory, all inside four years, and yet felt guilty. Was he lying? Did he drudge at his property to dodge or exclude his wife so that now she complained of him. Here was no compulsive gambler, this honest man.

  The wife returned, blonde hair brushed again.

  Fisher, back straight in his chair, asked them out for a drink. They ought not to leave the children who might wake. Fisher, superior, did not press, allowed them to decide on the pub at the street-corner once they were certain the youngsters were away.

  While they waited this certainty, Fisher was summoned to the phone to speak to his father-in-law. Vernon invited him over. He refused at once, but gave his reason. Even as he explained, the whole thing sounded bogus and he imagined the exaggerated expression on his listener’s face.

  ‘Is there anything particular why you want me over?’ he asked.

  ‘Friendliness.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Oh, ye of little faith.’ Vernon parroted a Welsh pulpit. ‘No, we’ve not given you up. You’re here. We know you; we’d like your company.’

  ‘Thanks. I’m sorry, but I’ve promised.’

  ‘That’s all right Edwin. We thought you might be on your own.’

  David Vernon threatened in this oblique manner. When one crossed him, he hung his head, murmured something polite and marked the incident indelibly down to be paid for at his leisure. He’d no time for sentimentalities.

  In the pub the young wife, Sandra, chose cherry brandy while her husband and Fisher drank half-pints.

  ‘We never go into a pub at home,’ she said. ‘Do we, Terry?’

  ‘We don’t often go out together.’

  ‘I like this,’ she said, flourishing the drink. ‘I feel excited.’ She did not sound so. Fisher disliked her common-place features, her redness of skin, the gentility of voice, of gesture. ‘There’s something about this.’ It was, in fact, hot, noisy and crowded. ‘Don’t you think some pubs have atmosphere?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Fisher.

  ‘The landlord’s a character. Or the clientele. We ought to go out more, Terry. Your mother would sit-in. But he’s too tired. Do you like classical music, Mr Fisher?’ They’d exchanged names.

  Fisher now reeled off favourite orchestras, pianists, described his record collection, while Sandra, Mrs Smith, gushed and simpered as if she were tight already. Her husband manifested no offence, but smiled as if this animated silliness of his wife were commendable. She confessed she’d sung in the Harmonic Choral Society before she’d had the boys and was now considering rejoining them, claiming her voice had deepened, enriched itself. A contralto. He’d never have guessed that from her speaking voice. No, she’d not enjoyed Belshazzar’s Feast, nor the War Requiem, but A Child of our Time wasn’t too bad and the Berlioz Te Deum staggering. Fisher grinned; his highbrow colleagues might take exactly the same line without loss of face.

  They drank again.

  After her third cherry brandy, when he had told her that he lectured at the University on the philosophy of education, she screeched admiration, clutching his arm.

  ‘I know you’ll think me a fool,’ another cackle, both hands on the crook of his elbow, ‘but I’ve not the remotest idea what that is.’

  The piano struck up. Middle-aged faces brightened.

  He tried to tell her, but diffidently. David Vernon, that bright day’s adder, had poisoned him too often there.

  ‘I can just see, Edwin, what the philosophy of education is. Only just.’

  ‘Isn’t there a formulation of principles behind law?’ His father-in-law encouraged such circumlocutions.

  ‘I’m sure of it. There must be books on it. Mind you, I’ve not read them.’

  ‘Didn’t they lecture on it at university?’

  ‘I went only,’ the sly voice whined, ‘to a Welsh university, not to Oxford. And though they occupied us with branches of learning I now consider useless, I don’t recollect any specific course on the philosophy of the subject. One or two, as I recall, tried perhaps to take us beyond the detailed instance, but I’d hardly have seen it as philosophy. History, perhaps, archaeology, sociology, economics, guesswork. Yes.’

  ‘The concept of justice,’ Fisher had snapped.

  ‘The concept, yes. The concept.’ Vernon smiled. ‘I don’t understand that. I steal your purse. At one time I am hanged for it; at another my hand is cut off; elsewhere you forgive me; nowadays I’m examined by a psychiatrist and put on probation. These are the forms of justice, are they? I don’t know.’

  ‘But as soon as you tackle that question you embark,’ his jargon deteriorated, ‘on philosophy. That’s what it is; an enquiry to see what these actions have in common.’

  ‘A desire to stop theft.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fisher said. ‘The religious men who . . .’ Vernon waved delicate hands at him.

  ‘If it is not, I’ve no further interest. If to wish to protect private property is philosophy then I philosophise.’

  ‘It’s the formulation in words that is philosophy.’

  ‘Yes. I fear so.’ Vernon gesticulated with a cigar. ‘And a useless activity it is.’

  ‘Oh, I’d agree if that were the only form of action. But for every single philosopher there are a hundred lawyers and a thousand teachers.’

  ‘Who pay no attention to the one.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. A purely utilitarian approach.’

  And so they’d argue, Vernon murmuring, ‘purely, purely,’ and tracing, spoiling the cigar smoke with an ironical finger.

  ‘How many philosophers of education, Edwin,’ he’d ask, ‘at present at work in this country have made any impact on the day schools? Or at long second hand on me, the interested general reader, so that I shall recall their names when you mention them?’

  Fisher tried to argue pragmatically, to convince the other that it did prospective teachers good to struggle temporarily with these ideas, however dry or useless, or better, that his own approach, a close examination of the language in which these principles were couched was a preparation for life where words figured so largely. But Vernon had none of it. He voiced a low opinion of schoolmasters who were only that because they were incapable of anything else, lacking any special expertise, who preferred the privileged position in a school, dominating the young rather than competing with men in an adult world.

  ‘It’s obvious you’ve never been in front of a class.’

  ‘It’s obvious,’ Vernon answered, ‘Edwin, from your frowning and red face and threatening voice that you’ve barely been anywhere else.’

  In fact Fisher rarely lost his temper in argument. He knew that Vernon’s philosophy was materialistic; solicitors made money because they harboured no egalitarian heresies about themselves and because they worked as well as protected themselves.

  ‘Go and ask your students,’ Vernon pressed. ‘I do. They’ll condemn you out of their own mouths. Your course is a pleasant year’s rest after finals. The Law Society’s no such holiday home. Our exams may be boring rote-work so that one needs no brains to pass, but candidates fail in droves.’

  ‘Because they get no proper tuition.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps. But mainly because we have a philosophy of law. At least for these candidates. And it is that the lay-about and the half-prepared and the gas-bag will be found wanting and marked down. Unless an aspirant solicitor can write and figure, can give and take account of the laws of the land, he will not pass. Your students, and it was so even in my day at my nonconformist, puritan college, will be given a diploma whatever they know or don’t know. And you cannot deny it.’

  The voice splayed Welsh.

  Fisher even as he returned to the argument suspected that his father-in-law envied him
his niche. ‘A doctor’s cap presses my brow, and I walked gown’d.’

  Even as he grappled with his father-in-law, Fisher wryly considered life which had presented him first with his own dad, an ignorant shopkeeper, and now this proxy, a graduate member of a learned profession, who both had envied him his status, his scholarship and poked round in reference books or flashy argument to prove themselves somewhere near equality with a son who’d make little claim himself to learning.

  He explained, then, to Sandra Smith what he did, and she cooed softly as her husband smiled vaguely. They were acquiring experience which they’d retail to neighbours. ‘Do you remember that university lecturer, Terry, in our digs? Talked about philosphy. Explained beautifully, didn’t he?’ ‘Couldn’t make a word out, myself.’ ‘Ooh, Terry.’ And the neighbours’ eyes would brighten at this high life as they countered with the man who offered them a ride in his Daimler.

  Now the piano hammered ‘Roses of Picardy’ which the pierrots sang so that Fisher, head dizzy, hummed as voices joined in. He felt ashamed to do so, and when they left not long afterwards with Sandra between them, arm-in-arm with both, he embarrassed himself by breaking out again almost fervently into the song, as if it mattered.

  ‘Are you a singer?’ Sandra asked, hugging his arm tight.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What song is it?’