Goodness (7 page)

This is What I Should Have Gone For

Grandfather had become entirely incontinent. I had my suspicions frankly that the old NHS had rather cocked up the prostectomy, maybe whipped out something they shouldn’t have, bit of sphincter or something, but as Shirley said, you’d never get to the bottom of it. Nor was Grandfather likely to generate much sympathy in tabloid newspapers or even a court of law were one to try for some compensation. Instinctively people would see he deserved it. So I spent a little time every morning checking out the geriatric home situation. I gave exactly fifteen minutes, ten thirty to ten forty-five, to phoning up all the various bodies concerned. I felt in this way I’d be informed and prepared when the crunch came and wouldn’t have to lose a whole week finding out the score right at some critical moment when I had a new project on my hands or something.

The problem, my enquiries revealed, was that the old man wasn’t suffering from senile dementia. Had he been suffering from senile dementia and hence truly in danger of doing damage to himself, accidentally putting the electric kettle on the gas, or setting his jacket on fire when lighting his pipe, then they would have taken him in (though with something like that on the cards one couldn’t help feeling it might have been worth hanging on to him for a while). Otherwise, they encouraged home care, and given that the social worker had reported my mother as being ‘valiant and willing, if a little overprotective’, they were of the opinion he should remain in Gorst Road.

Well, with property prices rising sharply again, I felt on reflection that this solution suited me for the moment too.
Hang on a few years, then get a whole bundle of money for the house, enough not just to pay for Grandfather’s home but to leave something to spare for setting up Mother in a small place of her own as well. That way we wouldn’t be forced to take her in ourselves.

Until two things happened in the same week. Grandfather fell down the stairs and bust his hip, and Mother, who now had to wash him and change him like a baby at all hours of the day and night, came down with some sort of virus that completely floored her. She phoned me feebly at 7 a.m., having waited of course until the third day of this illness before ‘bothering me’.

I drove over in excruciating traffic to the banana republic of Hackney, aiming to winkle out the ever phoneless Peggy and take her over to Park Royal to help out. In the event, however, the gipsy painted third-floor door of her bedsit was answered, not by my sister, but by a rather stout Indian woman, the kind with a beachball of brown belly showing through gaudy drapes and a neat red bullet-hole in her forehead. She was holding the lardy and wriggling young Frederick, while her own (presumably) two small girls peeped duskily from behind her sari – beyond which, a backdrop of carelessness and charity-shop makeshift. I noticed a saucepan on the carpet, for example, a newspaper torn to shreds.

Peggy had a job, the woman said. Where, doing what, how could I get there? She didn’t know. Which again is typical of Peggy. She gets a babysitter and then doesn’t bother to explain how she can be contacted. What was the woman supposed to do if the child fell ill, if there was an emergency? But Peggy always imagines all will go well. This was what she had taken over from our childhood religion I suppose: faith. Well may it serve her. Still it was good to think there was another income in the family.

I drove over to Gorst Road, another hour simply tossed into the maw of the capital’s time-gobbling traffic system, and had to wait a further five minutes for Mother to drag herself down to the front door, since I’d forgotten my own
keys. She was quite ashen and complaining, very unusually for her, of crippling stomach pains. Had she seen a doctor? No she hadn’t and didn’t want to. It was just a bug. But she must go and see her doctor. For heaven’s sake! She wouldn’t. But . . . She wouldn’t. She hated doctors. God would take her in his own good time. My mother actually said that. I hugged her all the same and half carried her in her nightie to the sofa; then went up to see Grandfather; the stink on the landing, however, told me more than I needed to know and I went back downstairs.

Mother had now stretched out on the couch. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘And the social services, for Grandfather, have you been in touch?’ Apparently a social worker would come in the next couple of days. ‘So we should take him to hospital. Immediately. Where they can look after him.’ But he didn’t want to go to hospital, she said. He refused. He’d shout and scream if you tried. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. She closed her eyes and sighed, holding her stomach. I thought: ‘Incredibly, these two people are my responsibility. This is my family. And I’m supposed to be meeting my contact from Tektronics for an early lunch.’ I asked: ‘Isn’t there anybody from the church could help?’ She shook her head. There was, but they were on holiday.

For a moment I stood helpless in the dark cave of my childhood sitting room, trapped again: the photographs, the Wedgewood, the dusty naïveté of the Hummels, the sullen rhododendrons outside the window, and, blending it all together, an all-pervading sense, which was also a smell, of brown. Somehow the place stank of brown. There I stood. Until the obvious occurred. There is nothing you can’t pay your way out of. And even though it was going to be expensive, I moved to the phone.

That evening I finished work as early as I could and drove to Gorst Road for about seven to check that all was well and we were getting our money’s worth. The nurse was tall and pleasantly bulky, her hair done up in a bun on a long thick neck, one of those women who carry weight well, moving about with a crisp rustle of uniform and tights faintly chafing
together between strong legs. In her early thirties, I guessed, efficient, assured, getting through. ‘Will do, Mr Crawley,’ she said in response to some request or other, and I told her to call me George.

Upstairs I found Mother asleep in her green nylon sheets (Shirley would wince just at the thought) and the passageway beyond now smelling almost sweetly. I looked in on Grandfather to find him sitting up with the Express. Every piece of clothing, towel, dressing-gown, string vest, was neatly, femininely folded. Even the old man’s still black, rather fierce hair was combed flat, his cheeks shaved. He looked surprisingly virile, as if he might spring up into action at any moment. I smiled. ‘Had to get a nurse in,’ I said. ‘Bit expensivo, but there you go.’ He looked at me quizzically. ‘Good day at the office?’

I thought of the nurse talcing his loose old balls and bum. I thought, if only one could afford the service on a regular basis, family life could be made quite pleasant. In our own case, as long as it wasn’t for more than two or three nights, it would be worth every penny. And on the way downstairs, noting how the threadbare patches were bigger now, the bannister rail looser, it occurred to me that I might have sex with this nurse. Why not? I could tell Shirley I had to stay the night with Mother and I could perhaps get a leg over in mine and Peggy’s old room. That should exorcise a few ghosts.

Her name was Rosemary. I went out and bought stuff for her to prepare herself some dinner (thanks to Shirley I am actually quite an astute shopper) and we ate together over fantasy Formica in the kitchen and talked. It was really most pleasant, Rosemary’s company, a quite unexpected treat. I felt so easy, so relaxed, I amazed myself. Especially since I had been wondering recently whether I didn’t need tranquillisers. She explained, when I marvelled at all the little extras she’d done, that nursing wasn’t her vocation at all, she had wanted to be a pianist. She had trained and trained and very nearly made it, but not quite. Then not having quite got married either, she had decided she must have a safe source of income.
She had taken up nursing, but signed on with an agency, rather than staying with the NHS, ‘to be flexible’, she said. Now she quite liked the job in a curious sort of way. My grandfather, for example, had been terribly sweet, had told her all kinds of interesting stories.

I didn’t object. I listened, and listening, supping whatever cans I’d found in the local subcontinent emporium, I remember being delighted by the straightforwardness of all this, another life unfolding so sensibly, so poignantly; and as so often when I meet a new woman, regardless of looks, I realised that this was the woman I should have married: cheerful, practical, generous, talented, not overly bitter about her disappointments, getting on. She had large white sensible teeth, long pale fleshy hands that seemed to have a quick active almost animal life of their own. There was something nervously vibrant about them as they lay still on the tablecloth, like starfish almost, damp, soft, alive. No nail varnish. No frills. This is what I should have gone for.

After eating, she asked permission, lit up a cigarette and then, for no reason I could see, simply smiled directly at me. Her lips, which weren’t well defined, had a rather sad wise twist, blowing out smoke. Her cheeks were full. And I recalled something I’d been thinking lately, on a bus somewhere, watching somebody kiss somebody: that all young women, however apparently plain or even ugly at first glance, all have their little attractions, their charms, their lures, not one without some way of catching your eye: a ready smile of complicity, a way of cocking the head so that hair falls to one side (why does this attract me so much?), a way of lightly touching your wrist perhaps, or of taking a knuckle in the mouth to laugh. One way or another, and consciously really I often think, they compensate for what they may not have, that archetypal body. So with Rosemary, her frank friendliness, utterly without flirtation, her acceptance of you, without any of the barriers of male-female social manoeuvring (
viz
Joyce, the more unnattainable the gigglier and flirtier she became), all this seemed to draw
attention to the large fleshy presence of her body as something straightforward, animal, loveable, that might well embrace you, without difficulty, without anxiety, if only it could be unlocked from that angular uniform.

Her breasts were inescapably large, even extravagant.

And I was just getting definite ideas into my head, toying with breathtaking strategies, thinking it would be wise to drink a bit more for courage, when Peggy arrived, complete with baby Frederick and, after rushing up to see Mother, announced (she had cropped her hair since last I saw her) that she would be staying the night in her own room. So that in the event I was left with the rather less voluptuous, though not entirely unsatisfactory curves of the North Circular.

Wild Summer Rain

I don’t know what took hold of me that night. I went to bed, as usual, an hour or so after Shirley, having read, perfectly calmly, through a couple of hardware reviews I like to keep up with. I undressed and slipped under the quilt. It was July, but raining hard outside. In just two weeks we were supposed to be going to Turkey, except that all was up in the air with Shirley’s saying she didn’t want to come. Would I go on my own? Hardly. But the place on the ferry was booked. Why couldn’t Shirley be more reasonable?

Almost at once I realised I wasn’t going to sleep. I lay still. I assumed my customary sleeping position. No chance. I was in a state of such extreme physical and mental alertness. My skin seemed to sing and crawl with contradictions. There was just so much blood in me, unused, unfulfilled. I clenched my fists, my toes. I ground my teeth. For a while I surrendered to the most vivid erotic images, my tongue pressed against the blue cotton swell of a girl’s plump panties, for example, that sort of stuff. Then trying to force my mind elsewhere, I wondered about my mother’s life, its astonishing sexless serenity. How could people be so different from each other? What had happened to the straightforward sensible life I had planned?

Zombie-like, as if controlled from elsewhere, I sat up in the stale dark half light. I stood and went to the window, immensely tense, aware of sweat on my hands. Pushing back the curtain revealed the inevitable parallel lines of stationary cars, gleaming dully in rain and lamplight down to the dripping park. ‘My whole life,’ I thought, recalling Charles, while at the same time reflecting how unlike me this was, ‘has
been nothing but a pathetic trundling along on the metalled rails of my early social and sexual conditioning.’ Confused, excited, I pulled some clothes on, found my shoes.

For more than an hour then, without an umbrella, wearing nothing more than Terylene trousers and a cotton shirt, I walked the respectable brick streets of Finchley. I sucked in the fresh damp air. I felt at once bursting, bursting with strenuous life, and at the same time paralysed, trapped, marching at a zombie-ish pace. But trapped by what? Was anything or anyone preventing me from doing as I chose?

I walked. The wild summer rain fell in dark gusts and clattered against sensible silent houses, the black gloss of blind suburban windows. And so I began to plan very definitely how I would invite Rosemary on holiday to Turkey in place of Shirley. Why should she say no? I would pay for everything. She had taken up agency nursing to be flexible, she said. She wasn’t married, she said.

I planned my approach in immense and teeth-gritting detail. I would have nerves of steel. I would say this, say that, smile that smile which Shirley had told me was sexy. And I fantasised what would follow, hot nights in Turkish hotels, Karma Sutra positions followed by good cheerful meals in spicy restaurants. Other people found relief in affairs, didn’t they? I had even heard a somewhat embarrassing and wimpy confession from Gregory recently.

I didn’t sleep at all that night. I sat in the living room reading through papers from work, and the following morning, bewilderingly early, a good half an hour before she was due to be substituted, I was pushing into Gorst Road from a breezy damp morning to put it to Rosemary. Turn of the key, customary tug and push, and the door was open.

‘Hello, love,’ Mother’s voice sang, ‘I’m back on my feet.’ Embracing me, she said, ‘It’s something of a miracle really. I felt so ill yesterday.’

Indeed she still looked frail as rice paper. Though she gave a little clap of her hands and beamed. Which is a way she has. Rather as if we were at Sunday school, singing choruses.

‘And the nurse?’

‘I sent her home, poor dear, she was so tired. I think I can cope myself now. To be honest she was being rather bossy with poor Dad. I’m just making tea for Peggy if you want a cup.’

Peggy was still in bed, despite the fact that her infant could be heard yelling in the kitchen.

I suppose it must be indicative of the state I had got myself into, or rather that Shirley, that life had got me into, that only two hours later, as soon, that is, as I had a moment alone in the office, I was actually on the phone to this girl I had merely eaten a frugal meal with, watching her slow white hands as she fed herself.

‘I got your number from the agency. I said you’d left your purse.’ ‘Oh did I? How silly of me. I’ll . . .’ ‘No, no you didn’t.’ ‘What?’ ‘You didn’t leave it. I got your number because I want to see you again. I enjoyed meeting you so much.’

After a short pause, she said: ‘You do realise you just woke me up. I’ve been on my feet all night.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I was ready to hang up the moment she said no. I truly did like her but I couldn’t see myself hanging on the phone and begging. My wife was a misery was the point. I wanted some fun.

She said: ‘Okay, how about next Friday?’

I put the phone down and stared around me: the desk, the Venetian blinds, the attractive HewPack hardware. Done it! Done it!

If you really want to do it, George. If you really want to be that person.

I stared, pushing the knuckles of both hands together, biting the inside of a cheek, concentrating. And realised I hadn’t really thought this through yet. I hadn’t decided. My heart wasn’t that hard. The truth being, I suppose, that for some people – Peggy springs to mind – new departures of this kind are just water off a duck’s back; experience doesn’t touch them deeply whatever they do, and so any course of action is more or less as good as the next. While for others of us, for me, it is a bath of acid. Did I really want to become
an adulterer? There was a fear of changing, of losing myself somehow, a fear my mother had always exploited. I would far rather be good and stay put, if only one could have fun and pleasure with it.

Why couldn’t Shirley be pleasant?

By six o’clock that evening I had spent so much time blind in front of my screen agonising and wrangling with myself – Rosemary yes, Rosemary no (and how was I to explain my Friday evening outing?) – that I came to the conclusion that I must, must force the decision at once, tonight, or go mad and quite possibly lose my job into the bargain.

When I arrived home, Shirley had just come out of a long session with her mother who was now quite blatantly using her daughter as a recipient for all the bitter things she had to say about her father. Not something likely to improve our own marriage. The moment Mrs Harcourt was out the door I told Shirley I wanted to have a serious talk with her. She said, with her usual blithe irony, to fire away. Coming straight to the point, since otherwise I felt I mightn’t manage, I said our marriage was going through a very bad patch, we both knew that, and I was frustrated. Well, we had always said we would be honest with each other, and so now I was telling her I was going to be unfaithful to her.

‘You what!’

The fact that she was so incredulous galvanised me. Hadn’t she seen it coming? Determinedly I began to explain. I had never had another girl apart from her, had I? We had been going out since we were seventeen, for God’s sake. And I had never had much fun in life with going straight from school to university to job, because so desperately in need of money. I felt I had missed out on something. Everybody had more than one lover these days. Most happy marriages were the result of both partners having already sown their wild oats as it were. Now I was going to be unfaithful. I had a girlfriend.

‘Why are you telling me this?’ she asked, almost gasped. It was as though she’d been living in a different world.

‘I’ve always believed in discussing everything,’ I said. ‘It’s
you who always refuses to talk openly. I wanted you to see how dire things had got. I wanted you to understand.’

She shook her head fiercely from side to side, sat down, stood up, turned round, fidgeting her hands. She even laughed. And she began to tell me how weird I was, how I had simply sucked up my mother’s mad piety, my Grandfather’s coarseness, my sister’s naivety, my aunt’s dumbness too. I should listen to myself. Boy, oh boy, should I listen. I was a bundle of contradictions. I was crazy. How could I announce I was going to go and have it off with somebody else and then try and defend myself. She got angry. When I wouldn’t reply, she suddenly quietened down and said flatly:

‘So it’s the end.’

We were in the living room and I remember we both kept moving rather awkwardly about, not wanting to face each other. When she turned her back to look out of the window I saw her shoulders were trembling and this filled me with tenderness.

I said what did she expect me to do, the way she’d been treating me these past months? Really, what did she expect?

Shirley was silent.

‘I don’t love her,’ I said. ‘I just feel I have to have some fun. I’m living in a tomb here.’

She burst into tears. But this time my teeth were already gritted. I stood firm. She said if only I’d leave her and our bloody ‘relationship’ alone for five minutes, perhaps everything would buck up.

She stopped speaking and cried, still facing the big, rather clumsily double-glazed window where dusk was drawing the last colour from brown brick houses opposite. (Houses, houses and more houses. Everywhere people living together. How do they do it?) Then in a surprisingly sweet voice she said: ‘Anyway, if you think I’ve changed since we met, what about you?’

‘What about me? I haven’t changed at all.’

‘You were so fresh,’ she said. ‘You were so young. So urgent.’

‘No one wants our marriage to work more than me,’ I said.

‘So don’t go and sleep with this other woman. You said you didn’t love her. I could understand if you’d fallen in love with someone, but otherwise, what’s the point?’ Then trying to change the tone of the conversation, she said: ‘If it’s fun you want, we can go and play crazy golf, for heaven’s sake.’ Because we had done this recently and really enjoyed ourselves, an empty Saturday afternoon in Friern Park.

‘I’ve decided,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have told you. I wanted to be honest. I wanted to have this sorted out.’

Very quickly then, looking round her and picking up a few things, she went to the door and ran down the stairs. Her heels could be heard scratching like struck matches on the cement. From the window I watched her opening the garage door, her skirt lifting up the back of her slender calves as she stood on tip-toe a moment. She disappeared inside, then after a couple of false starts reversed out in her usual jerky way, clipping the kerb as she backed round. At the end of the close, indicating left, she turned right and was gone.