Holiday (2 page)

Through the open window at his back he heard the shouting of children, the sharply raised voice of an adult. Curious, he decided in the end not to stand to find out the cause. Make your mind up when it’s too late; that was his line. He sipped his beer, exchanged three more words with the barman who returned flourishing a torch, examined the polish on his shoes and made for the door. He’d do without lunch, buy a pound of apples, walk. On Sunday? Anything could be bought at the seaside in summer. He pushed towards the beach in the day’s brightness.

As soon as he’d left the pavements for the soft, paper-littered sand he knew he was where he did not want to be. Nothing for him here but this wide stretch of fine dust, this shallow sea ten minutes’ march away and people in deck chairs, on rugs, behind gaudy wind-breaks, lying stripped and red, oiled in the sunshine. He’d take his shoes off, roll his trousers and paddle ludicrously as his father had done twenty years ago. Even when the old man had dabbled in the edge he’d kept his trilby hat on, preserved his respectability by attracting ridicule. That wasn’t true. Arthur Fisher had noticed nothing untoward in his behaviour, because there was nothing except in the mind of his jumping-jack of a son.

Edwin sat, emptied his shoes, fingered them on again. Here sprawled a man who’d left his wife, if that was the word, who had thus entitled himself to histrionics, to an emotional extravaganza, but whose person had decided to perform it again through his father’s antics. He stood, pulled at his jacket, slapped the pockets, told himself he’d forgotten the apples and made for the promenade.

The sun struck warm through his jacket in spite of the wind. Suddenly he walked livelier, stretched taller, recognized optimism. He’d like to speak to somebody, exchange afternoon banalities. The road leading to the beach, sprinkled with blowing sand, had become crowded, bright with swirling frocks, puffed-out chests, families with objectives. Nobody had a word for Fisher. No dirty old man, chuntering into his moustache, dragged his raincoat about him to beg for a match, a fag, the price of a drink. The people exchanged no confidences amongst themselves; a woman screeching about her sunburn was the exception.

Catching sight of himself in a shop-window he paused to admire the upright carriage, the thatch of hair, the distinction of nose, delicate hands. He did not posture long, but the moment did him good. For a dozen steps along the road he felt himself somebody, a noteworthy, though the scores passing paid him no attention.

He’d walk along the promenade; he’d take a bus; he’d buy a paperback and read it in a shelter along the front. On holiday. A free man. Without burden of wife, without children, a child. Now he swore, angrily, sourly, out loud, he thought, but no-one heard, turned a head, registered disapproval as he moved on.

‘Piss off.’

The sentence stopped him. A red-faced man had spoken to another who’d shrugged. Both wore raincoats. Both seemed sober, with hands in pockets, middle-aged artisans without axes to grind. Ten seconds before Fisher six yards away had noticed neither, but now there seemed a stoppage in the movement of the crowd, because of the fierceness of the delivery.

‘You heard what I said.’

The expression on the face of the second man did not change. He might have been mildly interested, but unembarrassed, not cowed. He nodded, sucked his thumbnail briefly, replied,

‘Please yourself.’

‘I shall.’

Neither moved; the few near them stood frozen; beyond that the frocks and slacks flapped forward to the sea. The first man swung away in a clumsiness of anger so that he cannoned into Fisher, mumbled an imprecation or apology, pushed away muttering. The second took his hands from his pocket, turned townwards, but without hurry. Fisher followed him for want of occupation. A hundred yards on, the man posted a letter, stooping to read the time of collection. The humdrum action surprised Fisher, who expected nothing ordinary of somebody who’d drawn attention to himself in the open street. Had he made some obscene suggestion? Or begged humbly? Did the two men know each other so that their exchange stemmed from earlier quarrels?

Fisher drew alongside.

In this street, Carlin Avenue, hardly a soul moved. Curtains were drawn on one side against the sun; lime trees flourished. Silence with vigour.

‘Lovely day, now,’ Fisher said.

‘Uh.’ A not dissatisfied grunt.

‘Wind’s a bit on the cold side.’

‘Um.’

Both syllables sounded friendly enough, belied truculence. Fisher, past now, could only press on. When he next looked back the man was lighting a cigarette; a minute later he’d disappeared, into one of the houses. Face wry, kidding, codding himself Fisher found his way diagonally to the main shopping street and thence to the promenade. Here he walked more briskly and considered the morning’s visit to the chapel. He’d no religious belief, no nostalgia, he told himself. A monkey’s mischievous curiosity had pointed him there and disappointed him at his lack of response. What he’d expected, what anybody expected, was now beyond him. A verse demanded attention, annoyingly.

He repeated the lines aloud; called them out again, modifying his stride to their rhythm. People passed, brightly, whipped by the wind, eyeing him, ignoring. George Herbert, he thought, as he wished for equivalent faith. In the seventeenth century Edwin Fisher would have believed, but grudgingly, in tatters, a sullen assenter, up with no angels. So Herbert.

Suddenly, as a gust lashed, half pivoting him, and tippling the hat from the head of a paterfamilias, Fisher laughed, out loud, without reserve, as if the wind had thumped the sound from him. Then he ran, caught the spinning rim as it came up to him, and returning it, walked off cheered.

In his digs Fisher occupied Sunday evening at the bedroom window.

He’d half considered the furniture; polished veneer with curling scrolls at bed end and wardrobe door. The place was clean, and he’d plenty of room. Outside, he saw similar houses, red roofs with chimney-pots and disfiguring aerials, white windows where other visiters stood at washbasins, rubbed calomine lotion into their cheeks, slipped into finery. Dressing for dinner, one week of the year, they prepared for chips and chops, salmon salad, brown windsor, ice-cream.

He could hear footsteps, the occasional shout of reprimand that denoted children. Who came to these places, now that the package deals to Ibiza or Tangiers were so cheap? The conservative? The family man and dependants? The almost poor? He stopped the questions, began to lecture himself. He’d no right to this superiority. Let them crook fingers at coffee cups and boast of their cars, or be uncertain whether to laugh at or slap their boisterous kids they’d be better than he. Better? Humans? Even if they’d robbed the gas-meter to give themselves inclement indigestion at six-thirty in the evening.

He stood at the window, eyes above the lace curtain.

Outside it was bright still, and calmer. On the dressing table he’d put his writing case, which lay open. Perhaps, not this day, he’d write to his wife, a mild letter of description, with no mention of himself, no recriminating, merely a message so that she knew where he was, and in her anger at him could learn what this house, this street, this seaside was like. He’d not apologize or sulk or shout, but put down physical facts about rooms and holidays artisans and lilos until she screamed.

Downstairs a gong rumbled; footsteps drubbed the stairs.

He sat at a small table on his own, in the corner furthest from the window, under a tall hat-stand. His courses were brought by a smiling fourteen-year-old in a blue overall matching a headband. The meal was hot if tasteless, and undisturbed by the other guests who, brick red, seemed too tired for badinage. Even the children ate soberly, though one was whipped away to bed by a harassed mother before the main dish had been served.

One couple said ‘Good evening,’ but there conversation stopped. Over coffee two tablesful demonstrated that they came from the same town, the same street but as soon as they became hilarious Fisher drained his cup and went upstairs.

He cleaned his teeth and read for twenty-minutes E. T.’s memoir of D. H. Lawrence, sitting comfortably in a cane-chair, feet up on the end of the bed. Then he pulled his raincoat from the wardrobe, went down where in the small front garden the middle-aged couple from the next table stood hatless to inform him it was a fine evening, and to inquire if he was walking far. He did not commit himself, since he did not know, but the three sociably grouped themselves for a few minutes round a rose-bush, admiring the dark-red flowers, guessing, not hopefully, the name.

Not displeased with the encounter, Fisher spent the length of the street trying to place the man’s occupation. Then he made swiftly for the promenade, the beach, which, littered-thick, stretched deserted. He walked unsteadily in the sand because there was no purpose in this, nothing to see; already one or two men with pointed sticks speared crisp-bags and ice-cream cartons which they crammed into sacks.

The sun behind the promenade hotels threw long shadows, as an evening wind smartened the cheeks. Down by the sea’s edge, which he shared with a dog and a courting-couple, Fisher pampered himself, enjoying his hesitancy, unsure of what he wanted. He set off to walk northernwards along the coast, but half an hour of this convinced him he wished to do something else, so that he turned inland, past a caravan park and on to a flat road between bungalows and shacks. As soon as he found himself near the town’s centre, he turned into a back street pub, and ordered beer.

Here the walls were hung with bedroom mirrors and strings of fairy-lights; each table was glass-topped in green. With displeasure he realised from behind his jar that he recognised the man entering opposite, parking himself with back to the cushioned settle. David Vernon, his father-in-law.

Preparing to speak, Fisher eyed the other, who stared back without interest, as if he’d no idea whom he watched. Round marble-green eyes in a red face, Vernon looked like a cornet player at rest after an athletic solo, excited still, but recovering. Nothing in that, Fisher knew; Vernon played the violin with style, and his bucolic expression denoted no yokel’s simplicity. In the end, the older man nodded, but briefly, suggesting nothing, giving nothing away.

Fisher felt he should move; the place was not yet crowded, but in the end it was his father-in-law who stood, shuffled across. Smart golf-cap, white military-style mackintosh, checked tweeds, polished brogues, but no walking stick. The man made a performance of sitting down, pushing his stool, puffing and blowing, raising the tails of his coat.

‘You’re the last man I expected to see,’ Vernon said. Fisher returned no answer to that. ‘Not a bad little pub this. The landlord knows how to look after his beer.’

‘This is quite good.’

Both lifted, and sampled. Both replaced glasses on mats together. Vernon jerked on his belt, dug chin into collar, said,

‘I was sorry to hear about your business.’

‘Yes.’

‘Not my affair, mind you.’ The slight Welshness of his accent clashed with the bucolic English face. ‘If you and Meg can’t get on . . .’ He shrugged, pouted, saddened his expression. ‘Is it final?’

‘I should think so.’

‘Pity. I’m not claiming it’s your fault. She’s got something to answer for. One thing puzzled me, though.’ Did it, Taff?

‘Uh?’

‘Why didn’t you come to see me?’ Now Vernon sat upright, shoulders back, officer on parade. ‘I’m not saying I could have sorted this out for you, but I’ve a wide experience of matrimonial cases. As you know.’

‘Seemed no point.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I’ve heard you say that once you became involved, yourself, with your client, you were lost, couldn’t stand it, couldn’t live with it.’

‘I see.’ Vernon bit his lip so that for a moment Fisher saw the young, thinly handsome solicitor of thirty years ago, the smartly intelligent scowl, the impression of undivided alertness.

‘It’s your own daughter.’

‘So I’m emotionally in . . .’ he changed the word, ‘entangled,’ liked it, repeated it vibrato ‘entangled.’ Jaggers’ bite at thumb now. ‘Yes. Yes.’ He picked up his pot, but did not drink. ‘Where’s Meg?’ he asked.

‘At home, for all I know,’ Fisher answered.

‘And you?’

‘I’ve gone to live with a colleague, share a flat.’

‘Does he know why? I take it the colleague is a man.’

‘Yes. A man. He knows I’ve left my wife. I told him.’

‘You sit and talk about it?’ Vernon insisted.

‘No.’

‘People do, you know. Intelligent people. University teachers.’ Jibing now. Uncertain, getting his own back.

‘They do.’

‘Just as some well-to-do solicitors spend their Sunday evenings in back-street pubs in sea-side towns.’

Vernon, not nettled, tapped his paunch.

‘I was tired. So we decided on a fortnight here. In the Frankland Towers.’ Most expensive. ‘Irene went to church, but I didn’t feel like turning out. I didn’t fancy swigging with the plutocracy. So I settle on the first little workmen’s pub I see. And whom do I meet there? My lapsed son-in-law, Edwin Arthur Fisher, Master of Arts, Master of Education.’

He drank, apparently pleased with himself for levelling the game. Fisher looked on him with something like affection, knowing this chitter-chatter was typical of the man and a camouflage for his intelligence. When he’d courted Meg, the father had invited him to play chess, and then, welcoming had fought hard, hating setbacks. That a grown man, stolid as a farmer, could so drive himself to win an unimportant contest, had amused and then frightened Fisher. Vernon had to establish superiority over his new rival, if only at chess. He could have squashed his opponent at bank-balances but that would have been nothing; intellectual victory, with best ivory men, alone had validity with this young academic dumped on him by his daughter.

‘Haven’t you been round to see Meg then?’ Fisher asked.