Holiday

by Stanley Middleton

  It was impossible that she had spoken that so flatly. Immediately he’d said he’d drive down, but she’d prevented it. He must take his class, and then he could please himself.

  ‘Did they say . . . say . . .?’ He’d gabbled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Did they say when he’d die?’ The calm voice, clear as unruffled water, spoke his mind.

  ‘Yes. Any time. Any time?’

  ‘Shall I come, Meg? I can easily . . .’

  ‘No.’

  It was as if she must suffer this for herself. When a fortnight ago, Donald had first been ill, with a cold it seemed, she’d been angry, flustered, flying around, bullying, energetic. She’d reprimanded the doctor who’d left them until last on his round because he lived close; she’d cancelled a visit to the film-society saying she could not leave the child. Fisher had argued. Donny had caught another chill; that was all. Now, with hindsight, she’d acted correctly, set about this last fight early, judged its seriousness with exactitude. She’d rushed, hysterically about, cried easily, been red with temper, neglecting everything but the boy with his snuffling nose, bubbling lungs, rising six, ten, a dozen times in the night to peer anxiously into the cot. Eyes down, hair neglected, she’d rushed, routed, at a desperate double, cruel, quarrelsome, making the world ache for what she suffered. For a boy with a cold, she martyred herself.

  She had been right.

  The child grew worse, was rushed into hospital where antibiotics failed to save him. At first the doctors had been sanguine; boys were tough, could stand any amount of battering, but for the last three days, they spoke modestly as if they knew they’d lost that life. They did not give up; they hoped still, but they had failed. Later Fisher learnt that this was mere subjective impression; until the last day there had been slight improvements, minor gains so that the final relapse had come to the physicians with a shock of disappointment.

  Fisher drove to the hospital, found no difficulty in parking, but prevented himself from running down the street, with its eighteenth century, early Victorian houses, now the consulting rooms of physicians and surgeons. He signalled to the man on duty in the office, who raised a finger, allowing him through.

  As he pushed up the stairs his breath pumped short.

  The heat of the place, the bareness, the pipes about the walls oppressed him, suggesting a science which could offer only bogus hope to him.

  At the end of the ward where the child lay he saw Meg in the corridor, quite still, face firm, hand in hand with the sister. Then he knew Donald was dead. Meg nodded, nodded, nodded, answering his unspoken question, so that it was the nurse who spoke.

  ‘He’s gone, Mr Fisher.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Half-an-hour ago.’ She checked on a tiny wrist-watch, holding it higher between thumb and middle finger. ‘We came out to wait for you. Your wife said you’d be here any minute.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  Now she nodded, gravely, a plump young woman in this odd, hard uniform. She turned Meg, held her by the arm as they two led him into the first partitioned sector of the ward. The other beds stood empty; Donald’s was curtained, over by the window, large in light.

  The sister scraped the curtain along, ushered them forward, lined up with them in the part-darkened space. The child lay straight, in a white gown, his fair hair brushed neatly flat, his small lips pursed tight, taut as if he were about to resist some demand; death, perhaps. The little face had about it a kind of obstinancy, or purpose, that should have been accompanied by a puckering of the brows, but the forehead was clear, unmarked, perfect. One could see. Look there, look there.

  Fisher was most aware of the other two with him, their stiffness, their silence. In their ordeal, they did not want anything from him, nor observe him, only waited on the little face, the carefully combed and parted hair, knowing nothing but the small beauty, the delicacy of nostril. Then the father wished, suddenly, without reason, that he could see the hands. On the child’s first day of life Fisher had put his finger into that small palm and the answering fingers had closed, as if from choice. As he wished, his throat tightened, and tears scalding his eyes spattered. The women stock-still towered, supremely, superbly by him. Edging a step forward, he lifted the sheet, from the hands. Tears splashed the nightgown.

  He kissed his boy, the coldness of a nose by his upper lip, replaced the sheet and returned into line. At this the sister took his arm, while he dredged in his mac pocket for a handkerchief.

  Meg did not move.

  His lips trembled, shook in a painful spasm which thrilled in the stiff mask of his face.

  ‘He looks nice,’ the nurse said. It comforted, that silly unexpected sentence, delivered as if Donald lived, had prepared himself for the inspection. ‘Poor little man.’ She allowed them a minute or two longer, then led them outside, to a cup of tea and efficient sympathy. All the staff seemed to know as they looked in, stood a moment, until Fisher in his maze of grief imagined the whole hospital, surgeons, administrators, physicians, nurses, technicians, porters, cleaners, therapists, orderlies, cooks, queueing in their places to add weight of fellow-feeling.

  ‘I should go home, if I were you,’ Sister said, ‘and get something to eat.’

  ‘Where is . . . he, he, now?’ Meg asked. Fisher wanted the answer.

  ‘He’ll have gone over to the mortuary.’

  Over. So easy.

  Meg, stiff as a guardee, shook hands and muttered thanks. As Fisher copied her, his eyes gushed tears again, but his wife paid no attention. She allowed him to drive, ordered him to leave the car in the street. As soon as they were indoors, he put on the kettle, cut bread and butter while she ’phoned her parents. He listened to her sober announcement, learnt one or two of the day’s facts as Meg, voice clear, very steady, instructed her mother. Without panic she spoke or listened and once, when he moved near the hall door, he saw her right hand fiddling with, shifting the memo-pad about the polished surface of the table.

  He in the scullery was shaken with gusts of sorrow, physical heaving that doubled across his body. When he’d last used this teapot, Donald was alive, breathing; no fingers had touched these cups since that time when he had, if barely, a son, a boy. Now that child was dead, on a slab, a little area of corruption, though beautiful still.

  Meg returning announced that her father would make all arrangements for them. Fisher bit on bread that had been baked while Donald lived, choked, tears drowning the slaver from his sagging mouth. She sat, eating nothing, supping at the tea, staring above him. When he offered to refill her cup, she nodded, smiled briefly at him, locked her fingers together.

  In the next days he never saw her composure broken. Now and then, as she stood at the sink, or in the garden, or finally bowing in the crematorium chapel, a tear, a single drop hung silverly on her cheek, marking her, rain on marble. She did not forget her husband, but cared for him as one feeds caged animals in a zoo; by habit, by numbers. She read the many letters, replied; spoke to visiting neighbours; submitted to his gestures of love, but deadly, without spark, perfect and adequate and killing.

  Fisher wished her to go away, even if only to stay with her parents, but she refused, pressed on with her daily business until he was better, could see the child’s bedroom without pang, forget his grief for an hour’s length. At first he’d been stunned, but recovering found himself trying to understand her calm, wanted it otherwise. His Meg lived wild, in tempest, in flurries of tears, angry exchanges, china smashed; this woman bore the death with a stoicism that he feared because it presaged the end of their marriage. She had borne him as a son who had not survived. Her quiescence condemned him.

  When, in ordeal, he’d spoken about this to David Vernon, his father-in-law had shrugged away from him, with the same indifference Meg showed.

  ‘It’s no use,’ he said, ‘fretting. Affects one one way, another . . .’ Leaving the sentence unfinished, he’d appear to pass from Fisher’s life, discarding him,
erasing their relationship.

  In the cathedral, before little Sir Hugh, Fisher indulged in a pleasure of melancholy, under high arches, coloured space. No longing for the child cut him, no personal grief, but a sense of delectable sadness.

  Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

  Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

  Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed

  Or moved to ecstasy the living lyre.

  One could not claim that had nothing to do with death, but the rattle in the throat, the gnawing consumption, the blood clot, the cancer were moved aside for generality; death was embalmed, pickled, in sonorous beauty. These pillars, these arches that leapt and spread had done so when Bach grasped that Art of Fugue or Mozart thought K488 or 595. For all he knew Gray had visited this place, perhaps even Shakespeare. Certainly the young, spring-hungry Lawrence had come here with his mother. Another couple were down on their knees on a brass lathering into their paper. The crowds talked loudly, not dwarfed now, unawed, enjoying the large elbowroom, laughing, demanding the imp, congratulating themselves on their cultural initiative. Fisher walked round again, listening to conversation, astute and ready, a sonless man, warmed into content.

  He walked the perimeter, gave Tennyson short attention and then queued for apple-pie and cream. People crammed thick; in the castle-dungeons, coolly dark even now, children hallooed and scampered, scuttering in nuisance, earning clips in the ear, threats. In the prison wild voices echoed about the wooden pews so high that only the preacher could be seen. This house of God stood soulless, so that Fisher, on the hard wood of the back row where the condemned, brought in last, were preached at before they met their Maker at the rope’s end, shuddered, hurried from a world that seemed mechanical, drawn to a puritan scale, cruel even now when these children played their foot-thumping hide-and-seek. He escaped, admired the repaired stone-work, climbed the steps, stood, one among many, and returned to walk downhill towards the shops, the factories, the car-parks, and bingo-halls where men lived dirtily. He exchanged words with the attendant by the Brayford Pool and set off for the coast.

  He seemed, as he drove, to have learned something or become some other man. Now he expected nothing from Meg, and recognised the sense of that conclusion. He’d enjoy the dinner his landlady had prepared, plaice and chips, with lemon, for sure, and pay his bill and know the week, this silly dart-throw of a holiday, sand and cackling, pubs and ice-cream, was as good as over. His father would have drawn some conclusion: ‘We’re down in the mouth now, but in a fortnight we’ll feel the benefit, so let’s all go for a last evening’s leg along the prom.’ Everything was an investment to Arthur Fisher. Pity his dividends accured so tardily. Spinning along, Fisher did not award his father any palm; the old man was a hymn-singing till-opener, who’d worked hard, made a bit which he’d no idea how to spend and had died before he’d had chance to retire, dragging, it seemed, his wife with him. They’d produced and reared a university lecturer, a man of straw, and a doctor, a hard-headed woman who’d feel pride if she skilfully diagnosed a fatal disease in her husband. The world a better place? Unfair. Time worked efficiently and that brought its reward.

  ‘Ring Mr. Vernon, Frankland Towers.’

  He did so, was invited to dinner. Refusing, he explained his own meal was almost served. David had been twice on the ’phone to Meg, long talks, and though she had declined to come over, she wanted her husband to call in on her Saturday evening on his return. Vernon was dry, admonitory; his son-in-law must realise what had been achieved. This had been worked for.

  ‘How did Meg seem?’ Fisher asked.

  ‘Reluctant.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘She wasn’t keen to talk to me; she didn’t want to see you.’

  ‘Why should she, then?’ David had annoyed him.

  ‘We can’t let things go by default. This girl has to be told bluntly. You know that. If your marriage is worth saving, then an effort must be made. And if you won’t, I will.’

  ‘I see.’

  Fisher rang off, Vernon fuming.

  As he washed, stood, smart in a brand-new shirt, wide tie, he pondered his reminiscences. He and his wife had grown apart since Donald died; they had quarrelled with petty violence of late, but before that had stretched a period where they had nothing to say to each other, where every conversational urge had disappeared in boredom, where inertia had prevented all contact but the habitual. He had taken her a cup of tea in bed, but often without a word. If they rolled together in sex, it was joyless, masturbatory, a spurt of pleasure for him, a dull reminder of sense to her. So that their more recent quarrels had blown up like a civil war, against the flat place, the indifference, the despicable existence in the same house of himself and this young unknown woman, who had made no demands, or sacrifices, and to whom he owed, he considered, some debt of love she would, could not claim. Her flung plates, her moody outbursts relieved him, because now he knew what she felt, or imagined so, and could direct his behaviour accordingly. He would be polite; no result. Against his volition, he lost his temper, and she raged back. They did not make up. They shouted, fisted the table, kicked furniture in bitterness, frustration, mere tantrum, but they had no profit from it. Today’s quarrel done, where’s tomorrow’s gall?

  Meg must have been wearied into agreement; she could argue, but briefly, and without either belief in or desire for a conclusion. He’d see her; they’d look at each other, and he’d tell himself that he scrutinised his wife. Where her thoughts flew, or rising anger, or her boredom he would not fathom; she’d sit through the bit of desultory chat they managed, apparently as puzzled as he, and at the end they’d shake hands or take a drink together and part. He’d admire her, even if her eyes were dark and her hair unkempt, but he would not be shaken by either the fierceness of possession or the passion of belief in one marriage that could make him forsake all, cleave only to her at that minute. He cared for her, would do her good, wished to help if he knew how, but he was incapable of stretching his arms out, begging her to resume wifehood. It was not that he was frightened of a rebuff, or that he feared the cat and dog life they’d resume; the appeal was not worth, no, wrong. His present self had not the energy to make it.

  He looked well, in wide-striped shirt, light tweed, hair curling over his forehead, sideburns bushy.

  At the gong he took his place.

  This evening noise swelled; they bandied sentences, witticisms between the tables, because tomorrow they’d return sunbronzed, and after Sunday’s flatness they’d start work, while new guests blinked at the prospect of expensive idleness. Both Smith boys were in bed, dog-tired. Sandra wore a silver maxi-dress that made her taller, less sturdy. Terry had oiled his hair. Lena Hollies in lemon, had visited the hairdresser, so that her coiffure stood brilliantly from her head, but suiting her, marking the good cheekbones with a new air of subtle defiance. She’d shadowed her eyes in green, hung thick cubic beads and had heavily ringed both hands. Beside this mild brilliance, her husband wore sober blue, and had reshaved, so that he seemed substantial, a man of, not wealth, but integrity, community interest, widely respected. His shouted banalities belied the appearance, while his wife, for all her sartorial sparkle, said little, acted politely. Beyond them the other guests at the two tables by the bow-windows acted hilariously batting a balloon up, and donning, then passing on, a red paper helmet.

  The landlady, the girls splashed smiles as they served. One of them, Lisa, had a date with an Italian boy and received advice all through the meal from Hollies and paterfamilias by the radiator.

  ‘These Mediterranean types . . .’

  ‘They’re passionate . . . Ooough!’

  ‘You take my advice and stand by the fire extinguisher if you can; he’ll need it.’

  ‘So will she, as you ask me. Every time she puts a jelly on my plate, the steam comes out of her ears.’

  ‘Oh, our dad. Behave yourself.’

  ‘’s not me. ’s ’er. Look
at her now.’

  The girl juggled with dishes, red, but not put out. Tips would make up.

  ‘I’d give her a kiss myself if there was nobody else about.’

  ‘Go on, Mr Hollies.’

  ‘Would you kiss us, love? I’ve dabbled me after-shave behind my ears.’

  ‘She daren’t, you see. Give him one, Lisa. Get a bit of practice in.’

  In the end Hollies rose, took her into his arms, kissed her in cheers, as the landlady acted out suicide by carving knife.

  ‘How’s that?’ Hollies shouted. ‘How about you and me tonight, then?’

  ‘What about old Eyetie?’

  ‘What will Mrs Hollies say, ne’er mind him?’ the landlady asked. Mrs Hollies said nothing, but eyed Fisher under the confection of her hair.

  ‘How about this girl?’ the other men shouted. ‘Our Sally.’ She was sallow, perhaps fifteen, wearing glasses, daughter of the house. ‘She’ll be a one, won’t you, my lass?’

  The child smiled, only just, mouth thin.

  ‘Who’s she meeting tonight, then?’

  ‘The washing-up machine,’ Sally answered.

  ‘Ay,’ said father. ‘That’s what my wife calls me.’

  Noise swelled; grown men acted like children, and children watched, cautiously, the antics of those who tomorrow would be handing out smacks and threats. Fisher enjoyed himself, remembering, without embarrassment, his own father. There’d have been no sexual innuendo with Arthur, but he’d have matched these in coarse noise, in neighing laughter. And yet he’d not be jovial as a rule at his own table; his sociability he expended in public, at the shop, on passers-by, in holiday parlours. Fisher fingered the buff envelope containing his bill, and upstairs wrote the cheque immediately. Money well spent. Nobody to confide in. On the corridor downstairs he could hear continued merriment, the almost fierce chatter of voices, the roars, the explanatory material that always followed a well-received joke. At that he smiled; who was he to be anybody? What claims had he to put himself above these? He did not envy; he did nothing. The guests trooped upwards, breathless with laughing, paused on his landing to extend time of fellowship. In the clatter of talk, of voice-slinging, Fisher caught one sentence which seemed to come from the father of the family by the window, Hollies’s rival in bawdry. He must have been close by the door, and his words pitched through, deep, in clarity.