The Spider-Orchid

by Celia Fremlin

  In happier circumstances—or perhaps one should say less dramatic ones—he and Derek could have been friends; but of course in their respective roles of importunate lover and outraged husband, this would never have done.

  The second time they’d met had been some months later, on a grey January afternoon just after Adrian’s own divorce had been successfully completed.

  “But she loves me! You can’t stand in the way of her happiness like this!” Adrian remembered declaiming; and, “Can’t I? Just you watch,” Derek had countered placidly, and had gone on sticking labels on to his colour slides, licking and placing each one in position with careful accuracy.

  “But that’s just possessiveness!” Adrian recalled himself protesting—he remembered that the winter afternoon light was already fading in Derek’s quiet, book-lined study. And Derek had nodded his head thoughtfully, agreeing that Yes, it probably was just possessiveness: he was rather a possessive sort of person, actually.

  *

  It had seemed like deadlock. Adrian had raged, Rita had sobbed, and Derek had gone on preparing his talk for the Annual General Meeting of the West Midlands Botanical Society; and it presently emerged—though when or how such a decision had been reached Adrian could never clearly recall—that Poor Derek mustn’t be upset; he would come round in his own time, but meantime Rita mustn’t do anything nasty to him, like leaving him for another man, or neglecting to be home in time to cook his supper.

  Naturally, Adrian had at the time fought this rather unadventurous programme with all the fervour that becomes an impassioned lover: but actually, in the end, it had all worked out rather well, with Rita arriving at two o’clock on Thursday afternoons to go to bed with him, and taking herself away promptly at four because of Poor Derek. Sometimes, she came on Tuesday evenings as well and cooked a meal for Adrian; or maybe they’d go to the theatre together, but she was always gone well before midnight because of Poor Derek, and so Adrian was able to get to bed at his usual time. He hated being kept up late; it triggered off in him a tiresome kind of insomnia that kept him half-awake, half-dreaming for the best part of the night, leaving him depressed and irritable, and quite unfit for the pressures and demands of his job the next day. Poor Derek, it seemed, suffered a similar problem, that’s why Rita had to be home so promptly by midnight. They made a singularly compatible triangle, Adrian sometimes reflected; they could hardly have been luckier in one another.

  How comfortable it had all been, he mused now, staring disconsolately into the golden depths of the whisky. How secure, and settled, and unbothersome! Even the yearnings and the frustrations, he realised now, had been an integral part of the happiness.

  “Oh, if only you didn’t have to go, darling,” he’d so often sighed, as the hands of the bedside clock crept onward, and Rita began to fidget, and look for her stockings, and think about trains to Wimbledon; “Oh, if only you could stay with me longer … all night….”

  Actually, it would have been most inconvenient if she’d stayed all night: not because anyone else in the house would have objected—least of all the landlady—but simply because staying all night necessarily involved still being there in the morning, and this Adrian would have found it hard to tolerate. At forty-seven, a divorced man, and already four years away from the turmoil of family life, Adrian had developed a number of small habits which he himself recognised as old-maidish, but nevertheless had no intention of relinquishing—and foremost among these was his rigid early-morning routine. Up at seven—long, leisurely bath, followed by yoghurt, cornflakes, egg boiled for an exact four minutes—and all the time a book propped in front of him—on the soapdish, alongside the bathroom mirror, or leaning against the coffee-pot while he ate. And there was the silence, too, the sense of unassailable solitude. Lovely, enveloping solitude, from which he could emerge unscathed into his busy day like a moth from its cocoon.

  *

  All of which was completely incompatible with Rita. Why he was so sure of this, Adrian would have found it hard to say, since he had never given her a trial; but he just knew.

  And now, through no fault of his own—unless letting things slide, taking each day as it came, were to be counted as faults—now, the whole thing was to be whipped from under his feet, without warning or apology. Whipped away not just for a single morning—and even that prospect had, in the past, been enough to put him on his guard—but for all his mornings, for the rest of the foreseeable future.

  Rita not wanting to be woken as early as seven … Rita in the bathroom … Rita saying why not shredded wheat? … Rita boiling his egg too soft, or, as the case might be, too hard….

  That Rita would take over these and similar housewifely concerns, despite any protests that Adrian might nerve himself to make, was a virtual certainty. She (like any other woman in her position) would know that she had just so long to make herself indispensable to him, and so she would set about it without delay, burrowing like a frantic woodworm into the structural framework of his life in order, with a touch here and a touch there, to make sure that the previously smooth-running machinery would no longer work without her. The organising of his breakfast would undoubtedly be one of her first projects; she would appropriate it to herself with all speed, and, simple though Adrian’s routine might sound, and carefully as he might explain it to her, she would inevitably get it subtly wrong.

  His fault this, of course, for being so pernickety; but nevertheless, she would.

  The reading, of course, would be the first thing to go: the delicious habit of reading non-stop while he ate, while he bathed, while he shaved. During the four years he had been on his own, he had solved one by one all the minor practical problems attendant upon such a habit, even the problem of his reading glasses steaming up in the bath. Now, just when there was no little annoyances left at all, this had to happen!

  *

  Of course, no woman could be expected to put up with this sort of thing, morning after morning; or, if she could, then the unremitting consciousness of her sitting there putting up with it would have been every bit as disturbing as outright nagging.

  So the reading would have to go. He would have to give it up, as people give up smoking, and with the same sense of outrage and disorientation. There was no way of conveying to any woman—least of all one who loved him—the intensity of his need for that lovely, self-absorbed interlude before he set out to face the day; an interlude of absolute peace in the company of non-judgemental, non-existent characters for whose problems he, Adrian, was in no way to blame.

  Oh, those blissfully undemanding murders! Those cosy scenes of blackmail and kidnapping, whose double-crossing implications were all going to be sorted out by rival spy-rings without the smallest reference to him! How soothing they were, to a busy man! He even read science fiction at times, and whole galaxies could blow up without him having to stir a finger…!

  *

  “Darling! You’re in a trance!”

  With a pink-varnished finger-nail—she must have done them specially before coming here, right in the middle of the final scene with Derek—Rita reached over and flicked him playfully under the chin. She laughed as she did it, a bit too merrily, showing all her little white teeth with practically no fillings, and asked him what his plans were for the evening?

  Plans? From now on, was he going to have to have plans?

  “We must celebrate, darling!” she explained gaily. “We must do something wonderful with our first—our very first—evening…!”

  *

  It wasn’t as wonderful as all that; but he hoped she hadn’t noticed; that for her, maybe, it had all been fine.

  As, indeed, he pretended it had been for him.

  Isn’t it marvellous not having to keep an eye on the time, they kept saying to each other, as they lay, afterwards, in the big bed. Not having to get dressed … go out … say good-bye to one another. Marvellous, they kept saying… Marvellous.

  *

  He could tell that Rita knew that something was w
rong; and that she knew that he knew. He knew, too, that she would never bring herself to ask him what it was; she was too afraid of the answer. And so was he.

  CHAPTER II

  OF COURSE, IF he had thought to look back at the long-drawn-out trauma of his own divorce, at the actual day-to-day mechanics of breaking a marriage of fairly long standing, Adrian would have realised that his panic over Rita’s sudden arrival had been premature. He would have recollected that someone rushing out of the house with a suitcase rarely heralds the end of the partnership. Within forty-eight hours, the runaway partner is usually slinking uneasily back again, feeding the cat, collecting laundry, leaning over the fence to put the neighbours right about the awful lies that Partner B has been feeding them these last two days.

  And then—since by this time it is gone seven, and Partner B has arrived home from work—a meal is guardedly improvised, and over the take-away curry and the tinned apricots, the battle-weary pair check through their new haul of grievances, measuring them against the old, blending and interweaving them so skilfully that within an hour or two this latest outrage has become virtually indistinguishable from all the rest. Forgotten wedding anniversaries … nights spent out on the landing in tears … the awful things he said … the horrible things she said…. Before either of them quite realise what’s happening, everything has slithered imperceptibly back to square one, and it is as if she (or he) had never slammed out of the house yesterday (or the day before) at all.

  *

  Rita’s experience, it seemed, was to be no exception. Far from worrying herself about Adrian’s boiled egg, or otherwise making herself indispensable, she was on the phone to her husband before eight in the morning; by quarter past, she was repacking her suitcase, albeit tearfully, and borrowing a pound for her taxi fare. Poor Derek, it seemed, had omitted to consult his diary and remind her, when she walked out on him, of all the various engagements which she must now either cancel or else turn round and walk back in again for: chief among which was the party they were supposed to be giving on the twenty-fifth for Rita’s mother’s seventieth birthday. It was unthinkable that Mummy, who had been so against the marriage in the first place, should be allowed now to guess that anything had gone wrong; and so they’d have to go through with the celebration, candles and all, seventy of them! The party wasn’t until Friday, but there was all the shopping to do, Rita explained, and the fillings for the fruit flans, and blanching the almonds … not to mention cleaning and polishing the whole house so that Mummy wouldn’t start about velveteen being a dust-trap before she’d even opened her presents….

  Yes, said Adrian, trying to keep the relief out of his voice. Yes, he quite understood, it was a shame, darling, but never mind, I’ll be all right, you concentrate on giving the old lady a good time…. Already, his eyes were straying hungrily to his book, he kept waiting for the taxi to arrive, for Rita to stop running from room to room, for her to be actually gone, so that he could settle down to his second cup of coffee in peace and solitude. It was amazing how many reasons she found for scuttling in and out, the door banging open and shut behind her, where’s my bag, have you seen my cigarettes, phone me well before six in case Poor Derek…

  But at last it was over.

  “Good-bye, darling!” she cried, for the third or fourth time, while the taxi, its engine switched on, muttered impatiently at the kerbside, nibbling away at Adrian’s pound. “Good-bye, it’s only for a few days, I’ll be back by Sunday….”

  “Sunday! Oh no….”

  With any luck, she hadn’t heard. The tactless words had burst from his lips quite uncontrollably, as if a rock had fallen on his toe. Sunday!

  *

  Of course, she would have to be told some time; but not just now, not like this. He should have broken it to her gently, tactfully, long before the issue became urgent. He should have raised the topic tenderly, understandingly, preferably when she was already lying limp and acquiescent in his arms. “Darling,” he should have said, kissing her face, her hair, while he spoke, “darling, it’s like this. Sunday is the only day in the whole week when … well, the thing is, it’s a rather special day for me and Amelia….”

  Or maybe he should approach it the other way round? Maybe he should try and explain to Amelia why it was that Rita would henceforth have to share their Sundays? “This friend of mine,” he’d say, as casually as he could, “I think I’ve mentioned her before—her name’s Rita, and I’m sure you and she are going to get on famously—well, from now on when you come on Sundays, Rita will be….”

  No!

  The violence of his rejection took even Adrian himself by surprise. He stood on the front steps actually trembling while the taxi disappeared round the end of the road; then he turned, and made his way back up the three flights of stairs, his mind boiling with a sort of directionless fury, raging against this predicament of his own making.

  *

  Rita mustn’t come here on Sunday, she mustn’t! Whatever the cost in tears, scenes and accusations, he must keep Rita away. Sunday was sacred to Amelia (yes, sacred; this is sometimes the only word that will do, even for a hard-bitten atheist like Adrian), and he wasn’t going to curtail or postpone or modify in the very smallest degree the routine of Amelia’s visits, not for anyone in the whole wide world.

  *

  Strange that it should have taken a divorce, and all the attendant rows and miseries, to teach him to know his own daughter. Amelia had been nine at the time, and as remote from him, at that age, as if she had been dropped from Mars. It wasn’t that she was a particularly difficult little girl, or naturally withdrawn: it was just that she never seemed to talk to him. Adrian quickly realised that this was his problem, not hers; she was talkative enough with everyone else, chattering away with her mother, and with her school-friends, too, when they came to tea. He would hear them shrieking and giggling, shrill as parrots, through a thickness of two doors, while he sat in his study, trying to work. In fact, the noise could be frightful, but he was afraid to yell at her, to let himself go, as many fathers would, because he didn’t understand her well enough, and knew he didn’t. It would have been like tinkering heavy-handedly with a machine of whose purpose and workings he knew nothing.

  So quite often, he would take it out on Peggy. What sort of a mother are you? Can’t you control that kid ever? It’s like living in a madhouse. Other mothers manage to …

  Other mothers, other mothers, what other mothers? I’m sick to death of hearing about all these Mrs-Bloody-Perfects, you should drop in at Jean’s some Saturday afternoon, or the Drapers come to that, then you can talk to me about a madhouse! I suppose you’d like your daughter never to speak at all, you’d like her to be autistic, you’d like to have her incapable of making relationships with her peers and trailing off to Child Guidance all the time, like Maureen’s wretched brat! That’s “Other mothers” for you, why didn’t you marry Maureen if that’s the sort of thing you want? And she has eczema, too, in case you’re interested….

  Peggy hadn’t always been like this; when he’d married her, she’d been equable and easy-going to a fault. But during that last year before they’d separated, she’d acquired the skills of a fishwife, and almost anything would set her off. Thus he only had to suggest that his daughter should be taught to lower her voice a bit, and there he’d be in the middle of a full-blown scene about Maureen Denvers, when already it wasn’t Maureen at all, never had been really, already it was Rita, or beginning to be. But since Peggy didn’t even know of Rita’s existence at that stage, she’d really had no excuse for staging such a scene; no excuse, certainly, for storming out of the room in a jealous huff and telling Amelia that Daddy was in an awful temper and so she’d have to stop the game and send her little friends home immediately. It was difficult enough being a Daddy, Adrian reflected wearily, without this sort of thing.

  Not that Amelia ever seemed to bear any grudges.

  “What, Daddy?” she’d say, detached and uncomprehending, when he tried, as h
e sometimes did, to clear up these misunderstandings; to explain that Mummy had over-stated his complaints, and that he’d never intended actually to stop them playing their game.

  Playing what game? Stopped who? Which tea-time? Who did? Amelia never seemed to remember a thing about the episode by the next morning, or even later the same evening, and so Adrian couldn’t even apologise and earn the child’s forgiveness. Apology and forgiveness are perhaps not the ideal foundation for a father-daughter relationship, but at least they are something. Without them, there was nothing.

  It wasn’t as if Adrian hadn’t tried. The idea of fatherhood, in the abstract, had thrilled him right from the beginning. He could think of no more fascinating hobby than the observing, at first-hand, of the miraculous unfolding of a young mind, the flowering under one’s very eyes of a new and unique personality.

  But it is only fascinating, of course, if the process does take place under one’s very eyes, and in the case of Adrian and his daughter, this was not so. From her earliest babyhood, all Amelia’s flowering, unfolding and the rest had taken place under the eyes of her mother, while Adrian, locked at a mysterious distance, had looked on, at first with painful jealousy, and then, later, with a growing irritation towards both of them. Sometimes—and no doubt this was an outcome of his scientific training—he would set himself to analyse the problem as he would have analysed a recalcitrant chemical in his laboratory, summarising the available data and making inferences from it. Listening, with a twist of pain in his heart, to the easy, intimate exchanges between Amelia and her mother, the relaxed laughter they shared, he would try to analyse, gesture by gesture, exactly what it was that Peggy was doing, and how it differed from what he himself intermittently tried to do.