Holiday (20 page)

‘They were great times,’ he said. She screwed up her eyes, as in pain, nodded, nodded.

He dawdled so long on his return journey, stopping twice without consulting his watch just to sit in the idleness of late afternoon, that when he returned the other guests were already in the dining room and the clash of china, pot, spoons told they had begun. As angry as his father at himself, he rinsed hands, raced downstairs and sat downcast over his soup-plate. The rest seemed excessively noisy, boasting of silly exploits. He could not understand this rage, which almost prevented his chewing, cut short his smile at the verse Terry Smith sang for them all in tune, each word clear, between main course and pudding.

At the end of the meal, Hollies leaned across.

‘Shall we have the pleasure of your company this evening, Mr Fisher?’

He waited so long in reply that the answer appeared an insult.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Well, squire?’ Hollies bawled across at Terry Smith. ‘What’s the venue?’

‘I don’t know.’ Smith blushed, looked for help to his wife.

‘He asks, you see,’ Lena Hollies said. ‘He consults Sandra first.’

Now Sandra blushed; it embarrassed Fisher to see the fair skins flush as the children smiled and wriggled good naturedly.

‘Tell you later,’ Smith mutterd.

Fisher completed his meal, rushed upstairs, threw off his jacket and lay on the bed. Outside in the street, the noisy family next door performed antics round their car. Though they talked nineteen to the dozen, Fisher could not make out what their evening’s destination was. It seemed to matter.

A tap on his door interrupted the exercise. Fisher stood, straightened the coverlet, resumed his jacket. Sandra. He invited her in.

‘What a lovely room,’ she said.

He pointed her to a chair, where she sat, knees together, hands clasped, evening sun from behind throwing up a halo of light round her fair head.

‘Are you going with them, tonight?’ she asked.

‘The Hollies?’

‘Yes. He drinks such a lot. Terry’s been off all day today, running to the lavatory. He doesn’t usually have . . . Well, you know.’ She smiled up, in innocence.

‘What do you suggest?’ he asked.

‘I wouldn’t mind going for a drink, but we’ll have to come out early, I mean.’

‘We did so. Last night.’

Again the fair skin reddened, deeply; her eyes watered.

‘Terry, I mean.’

‘You can always say that an hour’s long enough, that you’ve got to get back to the children.’

‘Yes. That’s what I told him.’ Grateful. He would have liked to have walked across, touched her, stroked, say, along her collar-bone easily, without guilt.

‘He thinks that’s not manly?’ he said.

‘You know what men are.’

‘I know what I am.’ She flushed again. ‘When I’ve had enough, I come out.’ She nodded, miserably. ‘I’ll leave with you. I’ve got letters to write.’

‘Will you?’

She stood so that her hands seemed to flutter towards him. He took one and it struck chill, while the hard nails dug into his palm. They stood thus for a time, as it were, in secret with the door closed between them and the rest of the world. She made no move towards him, did not lean on him, merely kept her place with her hands coldly in his and an expression of frozen pleasure on her face.

‘I like this,’ he said, nodding towards her hand. She did not answer. ‘Very beautiful.’

Still she did not speak. Two people, intent on the sound of breathing. From the street outside a clatter, then a shriek. ‘They’re enjoying themselves. Let’s look.’

Still holding her, he moved to the window.

A young man and his wife laughed as an old lady edged herself heavily into the back seat of the car.

‘Grandma’s in,’ Fisher said.

‘They’re funny. They’ve three cars, but they all go off together in one of them every day.’

‘How many are there?’

‘The old lady, the married couple, another young man, and a girl, and then a child.’

‘All related?’

‘I don’t know.’ They stood, hand in hand, behind the lace curtains. On the other side of the road he noticed the fair girls Carol and Tricia strolling, rather heavy in frocks, thumping the pavements. He’d not seen them before in the vicinity.

‘All the world’s out for a constitutional.’ He let go of her, saddened and sat down. She edged the lace curtain into neatness before she arranged a time of meeting, left to help Terry get the boys to sleep.

They spent an hour and a quarter noisily at the pub and when the Smiths rose with Fisher, Mrs Hollies joined them.

‘I’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘Jack can look after himself.’

‘I can,’ Hollies shouted ‘Why it’s not dark-hour yet.’

The Smiths went to their room, Lena Hollies to the television lounge, and Fisher to his letters. He slipped on a light mac, set out to post them. Immediately after he’d closed the front door, it was opened, and Mrs Hollies asked if she could join him.

‘Only going to the end of the road.’

‘I’ll get my coat.’

She came out in a short, smart coat of red wool, and a tam o’-shanter. He posted his letters, asked,

‘Do you want to go any further?’

‘I like a walk.’

‘Which way, then?’

‘Not down to the sea. I’ve had enough.’

‘I’m not ambitious’ he said. ‘No initiative. Never tried the other way.’

They walked the length of three streets, crossed a main road, and branched off past a children’s play park, locked now, through a hedge and into flat sandy fields. The place lay uninviting, with the sprawl of the town behind and the useless, scrubby grass in front.

‘Not very attractive,’ he said.

‘Somewhere to walk. That’s the idea, isn’t it?’

They paced half a mile, chanced a sandy footpath which led them back within a hundred yards of their digs.

‘That was luck,’ Lena enthused.

‘One could hardly go wrong.’

‘Yes, but not so near. Might have been made for us.’

When they entered, they could hear television from the lounge. Fisher said he’d turn in. Lena, quiet fiddling with the scarlet coat followed him upstairs.

‘You’ve got a nice, flat little bottom,’ she said.

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ve too much round there.’ She smoothed her frock tight round her buttocks. ‘Too much beer and bacon.’ She laughed, unattractively. ‘Is it ten o’clock yet?’

‘Quarter to.’

‘He won’t be back for an hour. I hope he’s quiet, for the sake of those children.’

‘I didn’t hear a sound last night.’

‘Good job.’ She stood looking at him, red coat swinging on her arm, eyes black in the corridor’s half darkness. ‘You don’t like me, do you?’

Fisher considered.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I do, as a matter of fact.’

She screwed her mouth into a sour grimace so that he suspected she was about to parody his voice, but when she spoke again, she’d recovered.

‘Are you enjoying your holiday?’ she asked.

‘I think so. Aren’t you?’

Now she scratched her belly loudly through her frock, unaware of the action, caught up in some spasm, convulsion of thought which demanded her whole attention, rounded her mouth to a whistle.

‘It’ll soon be over,’ she said. ‘Either way.’

She folded her coat more neatly over her arm, moved towards her bedroom door, and wished him goodnight, near tears, he guessed. If he could have touched her without committing himself he would have pulled her into his arms, but again she was unattractive. Advantage rarely comes of it.

He took a book downstairs to the television set.

On Friday, the last full day, Fisher decided to go inland to Lincoln.

The weather was slightly less settled, with cloud about and the glass dropping. He did not hurry himself, started late, and made for the south side of town, where he parked by the Brayford Pool, and standing on a railway bridge tried to recall pictures of the Cathedral he’d seen, sketched from here when the town was rural, reedy and the swans white. De Wint had lived here, he thought, had doubtless painted that massive confection of a cathedral on its hill, in its sky, over the flat town when the flatness was pretty and white and noiseless. He watched a dredger clearing the pool, its grab leaping from the water with a few rusty lengths of dripping iron. A group of three children dodged back each time from the heavy sprinkle of filthy water as the crane swung towards its accompanying, flat-bottomed barge. They squealed at the driver in his cabin, but he took no notice, could not hear them perhaps.

Past traffic lights, a chapel, shops with television sets or castles of cornflake packets he moved to Steep Hill, the Norman house, climbing steadily in shafts of sunlight. He smelt the second-hand books in the windows and eyed copper kettles and an early Victorian desk. Other tourists moved round him, mostly young people with enough wind to laugh or chide as they mounted the slope. An elderly couple stood to catch their breath, the man wiping his brow with a large handkerchief, his wife perfectly composed, her arm through his. He smiled at Fisher, blew a comical sigh, said,

Fisher knew joy then, a minute prod of delight so that he strode vigorously away from the pair, not to spoil the pleasure. Ramming his feet down he made forty or fifty yards in a burst, and when he turned the old people had still not moved, stood there like rocks as a tide of children, in cheerful chaos, swilled round them. Fisher waved, but they took no notice. That was right.

At the hill-top he watched a small procession of slow cars before moving through the gate into the grounds. The pottering vehicles, with anxious drivers, passengers’ eyes glazing for space to park, seemed medieval to him, reduced to handcart speed but full of dirty energy, ill-temper, rough words. He dismissed the conceit, turned his back on what seemed now an unbroken line at a standstill. Ulcers and vacuum flasks, know-all wives, bored children; he turned his back on them all, faced God’s house.

Here all teemed lively with visitors.

Bright frocks and voices in the sunshine under the heaviness of the building which from below seemed to float but now oppressed the hill with its weight. The stone was yellow, a clay-daub colour, where it was not black, unpalatable. He stepped round, among the crowd, and through the door, from gothic to classical in a step as the thick wood swung balanced shut. Into the nave, and there he stopped, neck bent, under the height which dwarfed the clacking figures below. He nodded to himself, satisfied, in an aisle, and eyed the colours of stained-glass splashed onto stonework, dark reds, Victorian purples, pompous and self-admiringly religious. But the pillars stood deeply coloured, not with a thickness of enamel but as if the darkened sunlight had penetrated them to the heart.

Fisher admired two boys and their mother on their knees at brass-rubbing, the whole attention engaged as they fitted one square to the next, unspeaking, workmanlike. He indulged in his usual brief fantasy; he and a pseudo-Donald at such a job, replacing a pane, clearing the garden of rubbish, painting the garage. Together. Father and son. It meant nothing now, was a mere habit of thought, did not even smart. The poor little devil lived a miserable two years, three times in hospital; these lads here were sturdy, could throw off a buffet or two. But Donny sometimes opened his eyes, green as Meg’s, wide with intelligence, to look you over, you thought, get you taped. Fisher wished he knew what prayer was, so that he could shove a word or two up towards God in this huge place. What would he pray for? Another son? Donald’s immortal safety? Meg back? His own concerns? God knows, that is, doesn’t know. The great bands of vulgar colour, cream-thick, lavish purple, washed the nave, humanised the godly height, the austere majesty of wall and pillar. ‘God bless Meg.’ Fisher said, aloud, in a small voice. Nobody noticed; children looked up and tripped round as parents nosed the guide-book. St. Hugh. Bishop Grosseteste. Solemn men in black kept an eye as Fisher purchased a guide book in the Great Transept. God bless Meg, whoever she is. He looked at a bishop’s statue, a learned, holy man, in a fantasy of clothes and vows and postures. Thou also art that. Margaret Adeline Savile Vernon, now Fisher, soon, soon like the glass, without pattern, flung into a glory of haphazard light. Slowly he worked round towards the choir, his eye narrowing at the little tablet to Lincoln’s most gifted son, William Byrd. He rated a few square inches of space and a bloody marvel he got that. Jesus wept.

A young woman rattled a push-chair and baby the step or two down from the choir, at home in her anorak, frowning, worried, un-impressed. Now Fisher stood back to the high altar, facing the organ, among the seats of darkwood. Suddenly he knew depression at his own inadequacy; this forest of carving, of man’s inventive craft should have lifted him, inspirited his morning, but instead he felt like a dog in an auctioneers’ store-room. Piles of furniture, black ugly wood, towering above him, black as burnt toast, crowded him, lost its delicate outline, its balance, its subtlety of work. He, myopic, dyspeptic, stared down the building, turned, escaped, glad to get back to light, to the width of the altar, the bright morning. Church dignitaries would flaunt themselves on those chairs, prelates, voting to award Byrd’s genius its tiny lozenge of commemoration. He shied away now from some wooden sculptures.

Meg had never had time for places like this.

Her eye remarked neither the beauty nor the power.

In Winchester she’d stood, whispered mulishly, goading him,

‘This is built to God who doesn’t exist.’

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘It’s a foolish waste.’

‘But would men have planned it and built it without the idea of God?’

‘More fools they.’

She’d flounced off, in a velvet, wine-red cloak, he remembered, and taunting, denying Jehovah in His tabernacle. He’d loved her for that, even though he suspected that her objections sprang from temporary discomfort or disappointment rather than deeply-held principle. He’d followed her, as she brandished her guide-book in scorn.

‘It’s a pleasure to get back into the open air,’ she’d announced.