by Roy Lewis
‘It’s about the best you’ll ever be able to do!’ she flashed.
‘The marriage service says for better or worse.’
‘And worse it is!’
‘As you like, Sara. But keep your voice down. And let’s drop this futile argument.’
‘It’s all very well for you. You get off the site during the day. You haven’t been stuck here the way I’ve been stuck here for two years, hardly anyone to talk to. And you can get out nights—’
‘I never do!’
‘But you can, if you want to, and I can’t! I’m stuck here, fat, pregnant—’
Words rose inside him like worms, harsh words with knife edges, words that could peel back skin and expose nerve ends, rip open old wounds and create new ones, let in the cancer of the truth until the agony could spread from body to mind and destroy a whole world. They were there inside him, urgent to come out, defeat her, silence this woman who was his wife and who had become a stranger. But he held them back because essentially Andrew Keene was a loyal person. He had got to know himself over these last two years, the years of his marriage, as he had never known himself before. And he could remember when Sara had been eighteen, when they had first met. He could understand how she had changed, how the loneliness of a life that should have been a loving state had changed her. He could understand the traumatic effect of losing both her parents at once — even though he could not even remember his parents. And he could understand how the claustrophobia of the camp site, the same few people, the same few faces, could make her draw into herself until her husband’s face became unfamiliar and even hateful to her. There would still be warm nights when they lay in each other’s arms as they had done on their honeymoon; there would still be times when passion would be unleashed in her body and he would find her desire almost uncontrollable. But he could understand too how it was that that side of her had cooled, how the urgency had died, how they rarely even touched. The pregnancy had horrified her, shattered her. Perhaps she would never be the same person again. Perhaps he would never be the same again.
But he could understand. So he kept back the words even though they knotted sourly inside him, wriggling unsatisfied.
Perhaps his thoughts showed in his face for she was silent for a little while. He tried to read, in the faint hiss of the gas mantles. He was not successful; he could not concentrate. Sara sat down and attempted some sewing. It could have been a cosy domestic scene but there was a wall of resentment between them. Neither was aware or prepared to admit its cause but it lay between them.
‘We have to move from here,’ Sara said quietly.
‘I know it.’
‘I don’t want to return here from the hospital.’
‘That’s something I can’t guarantee, Sara. You surely don’t expect me to find a house that quickly? You know what prices are like around here — people coming in, buying up cottages for weekend homes, it’s just not possible to raise the sort of mortgage we’d need for something near Stowford.’
‘There’s Oxford, or Reading.’
‘Are things better there?’ he demanded. Her resentment grew.
‘You can use that sort of come-back on anything I say. And that’s about all you’re good for, Andrew — talking, carping, disagreeing with me.’
‘Is that how you see me?’
‘That’s how you are! I don’t want to keep on at you, I don’t want to quarrel all the time, particularly with the baby coming. But you’re so . . . so hopeless. You don’t seem to he able to do anything right for us.’
‘I do my best,’ he replied quietly.
‘That’s just it — you don’t do your best. You do nothing, or take the easy way out. Ever since we came here, ever since we got married, I’m the one who’s had to do the fighting. Everything that goes wrong, I have to sort it out. You’re supposed to be the one who wears the trousers, Andrew, but you don’t.’
‘That’s why you assume them — or try to?’
‘What am I supposed to do? If I don’t act, things just don’t get done!’ Sara laid aside her sewing and eased her back against the side of the van. Her face twinged with pain, but her determination was in no sense undermined. He knew she meant to have her say. ‘When we came to this site everything was going to be great, wasn’t it? Well, I can tell you, I had my doubts from the start. What Lindop told us, it seemed to be too good to be true—’
‘You seemed as impressed as I was.’
‘But you’re three years older than me, and you’re the man! You should know about these things — or at least, find out! But I think we were conned. If we buy a van, he said, it would be a good investment. And now what does Ruby tell us?’
Andrew shook his head. ‘She’s not necessarily got the thing straight.’
‘But don’t you think you’d better find out? Now?’
‘We’ll find out when we come to sell the van. There’s no point in creating a fuss before that time.’
‘And that’s always your answer.’ Sara’s face was reddening with anger again and she leant forward to emphasize her point. ‘You always put these things off — until it’s too late in the end to get them sorted out.’
‘Sara—’
‘No, I’m going to have my say,’ she interrupted him fiercely. ‘It’s time you were really told, Andrew. We came on this site and Lindop told us this van was a good investment. And he told us what he was going to do with the site. There was going to be that clubhouse, remember? Six months’ time he said. Concrete base already laid. And that’s the way it still is — just a concrete base. And then there was the swimming-pool. A place for families to live, he said, fun for the kids. Well, there aren’t any real families on the site at all — just a few retired couples, and odd people like Ruby and that man Samson — no kids at all, and for sure there’s no swimming-pool, just a damned hole that someone’s going to fall into one night and break their neck!’
‘You know Lindop explained it was a longterm prospect. All right, it’s two years, but the fact is he and Forsyth can’t make these alterations to the site unless and until more people are attracted to the site. You can’t say it’s been a popular site exactly.’
‘No, we’re the only suckers who seem to have bought here!’
‘Now that’s not true—’
She brushed his argument aside. ‘What is t rue is the fact that this is no place for us to bring our child up in. And you don’t show the right sort of guts that a father should.’
Andrew was silent. He experienced more difficulty now in holding back the angry words, but she was distraught and he had no desire to prolong the quarrel. But Sara was launched into a bitter tirade, as detailed and consequential as it was angry.
‘I’ve had to do all the work in this marriage! Comfort you when you came home tired, and then fight your battles for you on the site! Remember when Lindop was so insistent that you helped level the top end of the entrance — it was I who had to go up there and argue with him, tell him it was his problem and Forsyth’s problem not ours and you weren’t cheap labour for him!’
Andrew remembered. It had been early on Saturday morning. Chuck Lindop had asked him if he would give a hand with the levelling; he had started, and then Sara had come storming up the site. He could remember her so clearly, standing there, telling Chuck Lindop that they paid to live on the site not work on it. Lindop had pointed out that the work improved the site and they would benefit but she refused to give way. Andrew had stood back feeling rather foolish as Sara argued, but he had seen the way Lindop had looked at her. He had been grinning, not in the least upset, staring boldly at her with an open admiration in his glance. Sara had got even more furious as it was obvious Lindop was hardly listening to her, just staring, and Andrew thought how magnificent she looked — tall, her eyes flashing, alive.
Her voice now had a more querulous ring. ‘He would have had you cleaning out the lavatories too, if I hadn’t put my foot down.’
‘It wasn’t like that, Sara—’
‘It bloody well was! Chuck Lindop tried to make out it was necessary for each of us on the site to spend some time on the cleaning and he suggested we did it by rota. But when I cross-examined him about it, what did he say? The Sharkeys were excused, the Williams family was excused — just about everyone was excused but poor old Andrew Keene. I soon put a stop to that!’
Andrew was silent. He tried to read on, but Sara seemed infuriated by his refusal to argue and her voice rose higher.
‘And when there really was something you should have done, something a man had to do, what happened? Nothing, precisely nothing. You’ll recall what I’m referring to. The shower-room. I told you for weeks I was worried that there was something odd about the room. And you paid no attention. And then I found it. The hole drilled in the concrete blocks of the wall — a peephole. What did you do? You laughed!’
‘Well, it was a bit ridiculous,’ Andrew said irritably. ‘I mean, it was impossible for anyone to actually see anything from that peephole. It gave no real view inside — I suppose a vague view of someone’s back, but there’s not much to be gained from that.’
‘You still miss the point, Andrew! I knew who had drilled that hole — that dirty old man Carter. It wasn’t the fact that he could — or could not — see anything. It was the fact that the hole had been drilled there, and that you wouldn’t complain to Chuck Lindop about it anymore than you’d have it out with Carter!’
Andrew shook his head and laid aside his book.
‘For God’s sake, Sara, what difference does it make? We couldn’t have proved Carter did it, and he left the site shortly afterwards anyway. What was the point of making a fuss? It would get us nowhere and simply cause unpleasantness on the site. It was far easier for me just to cement the hole, and I did that, so what harm was done?’
Sara threw down her sewing with an angry, frustrated gesture. She took a deep breath.
‘You simply refuse to face facts. If you don’t make a fuss about things that matter—’
‘An old man blindly peeping through a hole and seeing nothing of consequence?’
‘-things that matter,’ Sara repeated firmly, ‘things of principle, if you don’t make a stand about them, where do you end up? You’ve got to see it from my point of view, Andrew. Even if Carter couldn’t see me in the shower, he tried to. As my husband, you should have done something about that. All right, so you won’t fight your own battles and I fought some for you — I can even accept that. But when you won’t even sort out that sort of problem, I despair. I was humiliated, the thought of that old man’s cold eyes peering in at me, it gave me the shudders. But you didn’t seem to care.’
‘Sara—’
‘No, let me finish. You’ve changed, Andrew, you don’t seem to care about me and about us any more. You seem to want to opt out all the time. Losing your job, that was bad enough, on top of all these other things, but now over this receipt, you just don’t seem to care. In your place, with a wife to support and a child on the way, I’d be frantic. Mr Forsyth is up to something, maybe he’s going to say we don’t really own this van because we can’t find the receipt to prove we paid for it, but you seem completely unconcerned. You just want to be left alone, just want to sit there and read your book, in the hope that if you ignore those problems they’ll simply go away. But life isn’t like that, Andrew. You can’t just ignore facts, can’t shut your eyes to truth, can’t wait and hope and trust that the realities of life will fade away and not bother you. You’ve just got to face up to things—’
The knot of worms inside him was twisting and wriggling again. He felt anger heat his blood and tried to control it but it was impossible. He stared fiercely at Sara and she stopped speaking. Her mouth remained open, silent, and there was a brief shadow of anxiety in her eyes as she saw the fury that tightened his lips, brought a hardness to his jaw that she had not seen before. The words came thrusting up into his throat so that he grunted, making a physical effort to hold them back as in a wild, tormented fashion justification and pride and despair forced them to his lips. There were so many angry things he wanted to say to her, so many furious, desperate, lashing things he wanted to say, about their life together, about their slide to unhappiness, about the deep, dragging morass into which they were falling. He grunted again, the words there almost like a physical lump in his throat.
‘Andrew—’ Sara put out a hand, uncertainly, frightened suddenly in a way she had never been before. She half understood, half feared what was happening.
‘What . . .’ he gasped. ‘What the hell do you want from me?’
‘Andrew, there’s no need to get so . . . so upset. You know the way I am, I go on, it’s just that I’m pregnant, and things get on top of me—’
‘The hell with that! What do you want from me, other than silence? Tell me and I’ll damn well do it!’
She was frightened now. She had never seen him in this condition before, his eyes bright, his mouth twisted, his voice harsh and urgent. She saw his hands gripping the edge of the table and she shook her head.
‘When you’re calmer, Andrew—’
‘No, now!’ His eyes glittered as though he were feverish. ‘I’m sick and tired of your telling me I’m half a man or no man at all, that I lack the guts to have an argument, that I do nothing, that I’m lazy, that I don’t look after you properly, that I’m good for nothing, in bed or out of it. You want me to have it out with Chuck Lindop, is that it? You want me to go up there to his van and face him, have an argument with him, clear the air and say the things you want me to say. Not necessarily what I want to say to him, but what you want me to say. All right, I’ll do it, because I’m sick of the whole thing, fed up, and mad as hell!’
‘He’s only just got back to his van,’ she said hurriedly, ‘you can leave it for a while. Wait until the morning when you’re calmer.’
He caught the hint of panic in her voice. It sent the worms wriggling more furiously than ever. ‘To hell with that,’ he said, almost snarling the words at her. He stood up abruptly, threw his book across the caravan. ‘You want me to have it out with Lindop, and I’m going to do just that. And not tomorrow. Now.’
He banged the caravan door furiously behind him as he stepped down to the dark, wet grass.
CHAPTER 2
A light breeze rustled through the trees to his right, leaving a faint sibilant sound on the dark air, like the whispers of long forgotten lovers. At the far end of the field near the entrance from the lane and the roadway, the main lights above the gate, fed from the generator under the hedge, cast bright pools of lights on the gravel track. The dark shapes of the caravans cast long shadows against the light but at the far end of the site, behind him, there was only darkness.
It was down there the clubhouse was supposed to be built, with the swimming-pool at the top end of the slope so that good drainage could be obtained towards the shower rooms and lavatories in the corner. There were three caravans near the site — Ruby’s was one of them — but they were all in darkness. Nor were there any lights glowing in the windows of the vans nearer to him, or up towards the gates. It was as though he, Sara, and Chuck Lindop were the only people on the site. Surrounded by silent caravans, with only the distant hum of a car speeding past on the long straight road some sixty yards beyond the trees, it was like a silent unreal world — just the lights from his own van and those from Lindop’s assuring him that life existed here in the field.
His fury and anger were cooling. He did not want to be angry, and yet paradoxically he struggled to feed his annoyance, keep it high, for if he was to face Chuck Lindop without the strength of his anger behind him it would be like all the other times. The fact was, Lindop was a man who could charm the birds off the trees. He had a wicked sense of humour, a capacity to look sideways at things and see fun in them, which was contagious. Andrew could not remember having seen him uncontrolled: even when he had lost his temper there had yet been something at the back of his eyes that suggested his temper was not lost, but
merely released temporarily. He was a rogue, a man not to be trusted, his one aim in life was to make as much of himself in as short a time as possible — but there were occasions when he could persuade everyone he was one hell of a fine man.
Andrew did not hate him, though he might have cause to. He disliked him, feared him even, but in spite of everything he did not hate him.
Keeping to one side of the gravel track Andrew walked towards Lindop’s van, trying to stoke up the fires that were now dying inside him.
‘Andrew? Come on in.’
The words were tinged with a certain relief, as though Lindop had been expecting some other, unwelcome visitor. He had answered the door and his face was dark, suffused with the stain of slowly dissipated anger, but as he called Andrew in it faded. A radio played an Irish air, a greasy pile of paper in the waste bin gave off a fishy smell, and a saucepan of dark brown liquid with the odour of coffee bubbled on the stove.
‘Grab yourself a seat,’ Chuck Lindop said, ‘and join me in a cup of coffee. Couldn’t be bothered to make myself a meal tonight, just brought back some fish and chips. The coffee’s Turkish though, and if you do get grains behind your teeth, what the hell, it’s times like these you family men learn to appreciate what a rough life we bachelors have.’ He had so managed to overcome the remnants of his anger that he leered now, and winked at Andrew. ‘Well, bachelors in name, anyway. Milk? Sugar?’
Andrew accepted the first, refused the second, and received his Turkish coffee in a chipped mug, a present from British Rail. Chuck Lindop held his mug in his hand and took in a deep breath, as though the intake of oxygen would wash out of his system any last traces of whatever it was that had been angering him, and then he sighed. He sat down with a sidelong glance at his visitor; the glance was speculative, as though he was trying to sum up the reason why Andrew might have come here to the van. Andrew’s glance slipped away, and Chuck Lindop cleared his throat. He sipped his coffee, pulled a face, reached into the cupboard beside his head and pulled out a flask of whisky. He poured a generous nip into his mug and before Andrew could protest he added some to the second mug also.