by Alice Jolly
‘Couldn’t we wait until tomorrow? I’ll go and buy those traps that don’t kill them. Then we can just put them out in the garden.’
‘Max, we’ve tried that before. It doesn’t work.’
She stretches each finger of her rubber gloves, until she can pull them off. Then she picks up an evil pile of wood and metal braces and hands them to me. Mr Nipper. That’s what the traps are called. I look at the liver on the chopping board. The smell is metallic and bloody. I lay the traps down on the dresser. ‘Just let me get myself sorted, then I’ll get on with it.’
One in three marriages ends in divorce. Terrible, isn’t it? Frankly I find it extraordinary that two thirds last. Domestic routine. That’s what holds them together. And the tyranny of possessions. People need possessions so they can feel significant in the world. But men have no talent for possessions, unless they’re homosexual. A single man lives in a smelly, cheerless flat with suitcases open on the floor. So finally he has to find a wife. Then every weekend the poor sod’s buying a new fan belt for the washing machine. Unblocking the drains. Clearing out the cupboard under the stairs.
Of course, marriage for love is different. Like my first marriage. I was young then and we were at each other all the time. We even argued about how to crack an egg. It mattered desperately that she should crack an egg the same way as me. Wonderful, of course. But normal life becomes impossible. No time for friends, jobs, interests. Finally you pray to be released from it. Funny how I’ve started to think about that again.
For Fiona and me, marriage is something different. It’s not that I don’t love her, because I do. But our marriage is the sum of our limitations, we both know that. A marriage of grown-ups. Neither of us is complete. She provides the foundation on which I can build the rest of my life and I do the same for her. She doesn’t interfere in what I do. I don’t interfere in what she does. But we’ve been happy enough, or at least we were. That’s the funny thing about happiness. Usually you don’t know you’ve had it, until you haven’t got it any more.
For both of us marriage was a way out. When we met we were both at a pretty low ebb. Wine, women and song had left me jaded and I’d had an operation on my foot which made it worse instead of better. As an aspiring politician I needed a wife. And her father was an influential man in the Party. As for Fiona – what can one say? She was thirty-seven and broody. A classic panic buyer. A series of disastrous men, culminating in some toad who’d dumped her at the altar. Inevitable really. She’s both intelligent and pretty. In a woman it’s a fatal combination.
*
Supper. Usually Fiona is a very good cook. Except just before I was arrested she put the reduction from the lamb gravy into the chocolate sauce and burst into tears. So one does have to be a bit careful. Tonight she’s opened a bottle of my favourite Côtes du Rhône, put a cloth on the kitchen table, and warmed some bread.
‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble,’ I say.
I’m always longing for her to behave really badly, let me off the hook.
She lights a candle, pours some wine for me. ‘It isn’t a trouble.’
As she stands at the cooker, her hand is propped above her hipbone, her brown fingers spread across the tweed of her skirt. I can see the waistband, a patch of brown skin. A white garment which is probably some kind of thermal vest. I put out my hand to her. She slides away from me, gives me a weak smile.
I tell her about the job. She’s full of sympathy but she can’t really understand.
‘Problem is,’ I say, ‘I feel rather far from the field of action. I need to be in London more. Keep in touch. You know, without the flat, it is a bit difficult.’
‘Really?’ she says. ‘Really?’ She busies herself with plates and a serving dish. ‘Perhaps. But I really don’t think there would be any point in you getting another flat in London now.’
Which means she’s not prepared to give me any money. Even though it’s my money. We’ve had this out before. I get nowhere. There’s nothing I can say. I don’t have a single card to play.
‘Why don’t you just stay here for a while? You don’t need another job. We don’t need the money,’ she says.
‘But I’ve no talent for domesticity.’
We both laugh. It’s too obvious to be worth saying.
‘Domesticity just creates clutter,’ I tell her. ‘I want there to be room for bigger things.’
‘Such as?’
I’ve no answer to that. Except politics, I suppose. The grand plan, the opportunity to change the world, or the country at least. But it didn’t work out like that. Any ideals I might have had were quickly shattered. After a while politics, even at a high level, is just the Women’s Institute with ties on.
‘The problem is that you always want something more,’ Fiona says. ‘And I understand that but I find it better to try to make whatever I’m doing at the time interesting because even if you’re only buying tomatoes you can still enjoy it.’
‘Can you?’
‘Yes. It’s a question of finding the epic in the everyday. Because life is about buying tomatoes and small things like that.’
‘I take your point,’ I say. ‘But some people have to expect something more or nothing would change. If a person achieves something extraordinary then usually it’s because they believed in the impossible.’
‘Yes, but only a few people achieve something extraordinary. Many more just waste their lives in the pursuit of a dream.’
I don’t know how we started this conversation. It’s a long time since we talked like this. And it’s strange because just recently Rosa said the same thing, in another way. That happens often. I find myself saving up something that Rosa has said to tell Fiona, and the other way around. I finish the wine. And the liver and bacon. It’s a shame Fiona’s not interested in me any more. The wine has made me rather perky.
‘But do you actually like doing things like buying tomatoes?’ I ask.
‘Well, I don’t mind. It’s part of the agreement, isn’t it? I mean, in a marriage it usually isn’t possible for two people to be doing something extraordinary. Someone has to keep the home fires burning.’
‘But do you regret now that it was you?’
‘No, not really. Children and houses make me happy. But I did make a sacrifice and I did it partly for your happiness, so I’m sorry that it never made you happy. Or at least it’s not so much that you’re unhappy. You’re just not quite here.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, I don’t really mind. It just seems a waste. Paying rent for a house you’re not living in.’
We clear up the dishes, switch out the light. I follow her to the stairs. Her hand rests on the polished curl at the bottom of the stair rail. I stop her, put my hand over hers. The stair rail divides us. Her head is higher than mine. A shaft of light from the landing window touches her hair. Blonde, grey.
She tilts her head to one side and watches me. Her eyes in the shadows. Then she leans over and kisses my forehead, before her weary tread ascends the stairs. I follow her. When she reaches the landing, I catch hold of her again. She removes my hand, goes to the door of the spare room.
Maggie
Adam Ferrall telephoned me and I didn’t return his call. Then he telephoned again and I was impressed because no one calls twice for me. He asked what I was doing this week. I said I was busy and shuffled papers near the telephone to create diary-consulting effects. Finally I agreed that I’d meet him at the Natural History Museum on Friday. He’s got to go there for some fundraising thing. That was the only possibility because it’s less than a week now until I’m going away.
On the steps of the museum he leans forward as though to kiss me but it goes all wrong because, as I reach towards him, he moves and I find my face pressed against the collar of his jacket and I wonder if he intended to kiss me at all. We both smile and bluster and he steers me back to the entrance hall, which echoes with drum rolls of laughter and the electric chink of glasses. The space above u
s is cavernous, with a zigzag of red and yellow bricks, and all around there are media types with rectangular glasses and thick-soled shoes, standing around the big dinosaur, under its snaking tail. This place is different now, all flashing lights and buttons, and low signs in clear writing. Nanda used to bring me when we came to London, when I was a child – that was her idea of a treat.
I’m wearing a new dress, or one that’s new to me anyway. I didn’t buy it for meeting Adam, of course, but just as a going-away present and I need a new dress anyway. It was in a vintage clothes shop and the skirt is floating grey chiffon, like the wings of moths, and the top of it laces up the back like a Victorian corset, squeezing me together. I did plan to wear some elegant, flimsy little shoes, but then at the last minute I put on my clumpy lace-ups and thick socks. I wouldn’t want him to think I’ve made an effort.
‘Let me take your coat,’ he says. I’m wrapped up in as many layers as an Egyptian mummy and, after I’ve taken off my coat, he reaches out to take my scarf and cardigan as well. I feel his hand near me and the cold air on my neck and decide to keep them on for now. He finds me a glass of champagne and straight away he talks about his book and about meeting Dad. I look up at the tail of the dinosaur, swinging overhead.
He envies Dad, he says, because Dad is a man who has had a real opportunity to change things, he’s not just looking and analysing, he’s actually doing things. And he’s a man of principle, because he’s stood up for things he really believes in, and not just followed the party line. And on and on like that. Rather too late I start to wonder what I’m doing here. Really I should keep out of the way of Adam Ferrall. But it’s like when somebody says – careful that’s hot, and then you still touch it. Or it’s like when you stand on the edge of a cliff and you want to throw yourself off.
A man comes over and Adam introduces me. He’s bearded and bald so he looks as though his head is on upside down. Adam knows this man through work, and after I’ve been introduced, the man hardly looks at me but talks to Adam about some article Adam is writing. I stand beside Adam, listening, as other people come and go. My legs start to ache and I long for tea rather than champagne. I sit down on a spare chair on my own. It’s only recently I realised you can come to parties and not talk to anyone.
Perhaps this is what it’s like for wives and girlfriends, their lives bent into the shape of someone else’s life. I don’t really know about that because I’ve always been single, although I don’t think of it like that. An Unemployed Girlfriend – that sounds better. Recently there was Ned the Nerd, but he didn’t amount to much. He lived at Moulding Mansions before Druggy Dougie, and that’s really all it was – a houseshare arrangement enlivened by occasional fumblings under the bedclothes. Location, location, location. Six months ago he moved out and I’ve stopped expecting him to call, nearly. And who needs a man anyway, and my life is complete as it is, of course. Except, except … Recently I decided – it’s compromise time. But even the compromise men haven’t worked out.
*
Adam comes to look for me. I’m so sorry, he says, sorry, but I have to do a certain amount of that, for work. Then he suggests that we go and look at the dinosaurs. We walk through an arch into an enclave, where it’s quieter, and peer into a glass case full of dinosaurs’ teeth, with brown lines down the side of them, like Freddy’s dentures, in the sink at Thwaite Cottages. Our reflections are smudged on the glass – my hair in a cloud around my face, and his head bent down towards me. The babble and splutter of the party echoes through to us, where we stand in a corridor of stone arches. The leg bones of dinosaurs float on glass shelves, and above us a model of a dinosaur is suspended on hidden strings.
‘I don’t think I really believe in Darwin,’ I say.
‘Darwin? He’s a fact, isn’t he?’ Adam’s hand grips a glass of wine. The same hand that squeezed the bones of my fingers together, the same clean nails, smooth and polished. Reflected in the glass, the profile of his face has a geometrical regularity to it, and I follow the plains and curves of it, mapping them in my head. The top button of his shirt is undone, showing a triangle of white T-shirt. If I touched that sparse hair, would it be bristly – or perhaps soft? A sudden top-shelf-of-the-newsagents feeling flushes through me.
‘Well, if evolution exists, then why doesn’t it work properly?’ I ask. ‘Why can’t human beings fly? Shouldn’t the evolutionary process organise that?’
The shiny tips of Adam’s shoes rise up and down as he wiggles his toes. ‘It’s just that evolution is a slow and imperfect process. And perhaps there’s a time lag so we are supplied with abilities after the time when we actually needed them.’
‘I’m not sure I agree.’
Suddenly he changes the subject.
‘You know there’s one thing that puzzles me about your father?’
I shrug.
‘He never says anything about his mother and everyone tells me something different. I’ve been told she was a teacher and an academic and a journalist and a peace campaigner. Then I was told she worked in Africa. Then I was told she used to live with two women and they were all communists.’
‘Well, most of those things are true.’
‘But where is she now?’
‘God knows. Lost in the spiritual supermarket somewhere.’
‘Dead?’
‘Oh no. Alive. Very much so. In fact, I am going to see her at the weekend, before I leave for Brussels.’
‘And is your dad fond of her?’
‘Oh yes … Well, I don’t know. I mean, they go at each other like vipers, and always have done. But that counts as fond in our family.’
Silence. A distant bubbling of voices.
‘So what’s she like?’
‘That’s a big question. When she was seventeen she ran away from school to fight in the Spanish Civil War and the police had to prise her, raging and screaming, from a gangplank at Dover. And it’s been uphill, or downhill, all the way from there, depending on how you look at it.’
‘And the women she lives with?’
‘Freddy and Theodora. They’re friends.’
‘In the sexual sense?’
I purse my lip and give him a don’t-be-so-stupid look.
‘I’d hardly think so now, since they’re all in their eighties. And as for the past, I don’t know. They were part of a more private age. People didn’t ask.’
‘And you’ve never asked?’
He’s beginning to annoy me.
‘No, I never asked. Because there isn’t an answer, or not in the sense that you want one. Friend, lover, wife, colleague, companion. The choice of words is too limited, isn’t it? Not all relationships can be fitted into tidy boxes.’
I want to go home now because this evening hasn’t worked out as I planned. I was stupid enough to think that perhaps this was about me but instead it’s about Dad. Here I am again, playing the part that he wrote for me. If I don’t go home now Adam Ferrall will probably start telling me about his problems.
‘What you said about evolution, it isn’t right. To me we just seem so badly adapted to the world that there can’t possibly be a plan.’ My voice sounds as though it has come unstitched. My eyes follow the wide staircase up to the galleries above. We decide to go back to the main hall but it isn’t immediately clear how to get there. A corridor twists and turns. Navigation is difficult because we mustn’t touch, we must not bump against each other, he mustn’t lay his hand on my arm to steer me. The dinosaur bones just look like the litter of so many failed experiments, the wrong shape, put together in the wrong order, abandoned in despair.
At the entrance Adam rummages in his pockets and stares at his fingernails. ‘So what are you doing now?’ he asks.
‘Going home, I suppose. Back to Stockwell.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Oh.’
‘Well anyway, it’s been good to see you.’
‘Yes, yes. Very good. So how will you get to Stockwell?’
‘Walk, I think. Or at least I’ll walk
some of the way.’
‘What about your shoes?’ We both look down at my black lace-ups and I laugh, so he knows it’s all right for him to laugh as well.
‘Perhaps I could walk with you? Just some of the way?’
Time goes slow and the space around us shrinks. My lips and fingertips are swollen. ‘Yes. Of course. If you want.’
We head out into the darkness. ‘You know, I’m quite certain there is a plan.’
‘Really?’ I say.
‘Yes, I’m sure. And one day we will be able to fly.’
Our feet keep time along the pavement. I lengthen my stride to fit with his. Navigation remains complicated. There is a moment when he tries to turn one way and, turning the other way, I cut across his path. We come face to face, too close, and flinch back, out of range. Blue neon light from a shop window flashes over us. He tries to take my bag from me but I don’t let him. When we reach a crossing he puts out his hand, as though to hold me back, but then stops before he touches me. It’s been raining and the gutters are full and gulp twists of grey water. Showers squirt up from underneath uneven paving stones.
As we wait at a junction near Victoria a lorry goes by and splashes us. Adam gets out his handkerchief, shakes out the folds and passes it to me. I don’t want it but he wipes the bottom of his trousers and my shoes. I’m laughing at him because the handkerchief is so small and there’s water everywhere but I like it that he tries. When he’s finished and folded the handkerchief, we wait for a green man.
‘So was there something else you wanted to ask about Dad?’
‘No.’
‘Oh.’
The brakes of a lorry are released with a hiss. The light has gone green and people are pushing past us. ‘It wasn’t about your father,’ he says. ‘I just thought I’d like to walk home with you.’ I feel suddenly sick and, when I look down at the pavement, my shoes are covered in water again. We look at each other in the half-darkness. I like the sadness of his face. The lights have changed to red again, so we have to wait. He takes my bag from me and when we walk on neither of us can think of anything to say.