Holiday (6 page)

Here he’d walked as a boy, escaping from the everlasting banalities of his father, and his mother’s watchfulness; here, legging it, he’d hoped to meet those admired girls from the beach, those brown, bleached, long-legged young women who’d toppled his heart without ever noticing him. Now, today, without benefit of wife, he filled in his time walking the same roads, stopping at the same dusty clumps of hedge, the same sour stretch of dyke, thinking of something to do. His play, when he wrote it, would feature a man, half-way to age, sitting on a sand-dune calling out, like the young Tennysons at Mablethorpe, swooping lines of verse to the sea whose choppy wind would bundle the syllables back shattered and shredded. O, Beckett, Beckett.

The dullness of the walk, the final street lengths amongst Rose Garth, San Remo, Mon Abri, Seldumin, Sea Holly tired him so that he was glad to pull his shoes off, lie on the bed for half and hour before dinner.

That had been a good day.

He’d tried the sun, taken exercise, spoken to strangers and risked his privacy when he handed the address to his mother-in-law. He had satisfied himself in his own circumscribed way.

He debated casually what the Vernons would do. David would certainly act; no doubt about that, but how? At first they had no time for him as a son-in-law; however presentable he was a schoolmaster without great projects, because at best he’d end as a headmaster, or inspector, or in a chair of education, none of which was lucrative in Vernon’s eyes. Of course, he’d private investments from his father, which improved matters, but not much. Moreover, they had just, after miracles of self-deception, accustomed themselves to this bearded, mincing, velvet-jacketed Malcolm from the training college, when Meg had ditched him and presented his successor, the slow-spoken, handsome usher from the high school.

He remembered Malcolm’s dismissal.

On a Saturday afternoon, he’d turned down a game of cricket, he and Meg were sitting on a rustic seat in front of ribbon-built commuter houses outside a village. Lawn-mowers whined, and gloved ladies forked weeds before returning to coloured garden-chairs. The pair had walked since eleven, lunched in a pub, and Fisher still dizzy with beer needed to empty his bladder.

‘Are you comfortable?’ he asked. She did not reply.

‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

Meg’s face was turned towards a roof of emerald slates, staring wooden-jawed.

‘I don’t want to say anything,’ she said, childishly.

‘Let’s walk, then.’

She stood, sluggishly and they moved beyond the houses, past a corn field, by a copse where he slipped away. When he returned she’d not waited as he’d expected, a few yards on but a hundred yards along the road seemed to be marching hard. Taken aback, he began to run, calling her name. She turned, and then herself ran, comically, knees together, but determined to make ground. Uncertain, he did not catch her up quickly, but trailed deliberately ten yards behind her. A short way up a hill, she stopped, swung round to face him.

‘Caught you.’ He put his hands to her shoulders.

Though her hair held tidy, he would have described her face as dishevelled. It was as if each small part had shifted out of place, lost its order, the sense of wholeness. Perhaps the defect was in his sight, his own shock. Her eyes had lengthened, cat-wise, and her mouth trembled after words.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

He put his arm through hers, she allowed it, and led her to a gate at the side of the road. Throwing his plastic mac on the grass verge, he made her sit down. She complied, again, wordlessly. He gawked over the gate, the field, to a line of trees, a house with breeze-block outbuildings, a distant hedged lane. When he turned to her, she sat quite composed, legs together, head on one side, twirling a large daisy between thumb and forefinger.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ Her voice crackled on the syllable, but she fished a mirror from her handbag.

‘What’s the trouble, Meg?’

‘Oh, shut up.’

Now she spoke steadily enough, but more quietly than was sensible, as though to herself. He leaned back, his elbows on the top bar of the gate, not taking his eyes from her, observing her back to sanity. They remained thus for five minutes. It seemed desperately longer, sheltered in the high hawthorn, interrupted by the frequent rush of cars both ways along the road.

When finally she looked at him, he smiled, put his arms round her and lifted her so that they stood now precariously, his face against the coolness of hers, his hands gently on her back. She hung heavy on him.

They set off again, shambling, she brushing with closed fingers at the hair above her right eye. He neglected her for a little before he asked,

‘What’s wrong, Meg?’

Not a word.

‘What is it?’ A hand to her back. She began to cry, so that he took her arm as they stood under an oak tree in the hedge. ‘Tell uncle about it.’

She gulped, like an inept child at a swimming bath.

‘I’ve broken it off with Malcolm.’

‘I see. Isn’t that what you wanted?’

‘It’s not fair to him.’ Indignation consorted curiously with tears.

‘You don’t want to talk about it?’ he ventured.

‘I don’t mind.’ Voice unblurred. He pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket. Thank God it was clean, unfolded from the ironing. She mopped her face. ‘I told you. I wrote him a letter. And I saw him last night.’

‘You agreed to meet him?’

‘He asked me. And he came to the flat. The others were out. It wasn’t too bad. I told him I wanted to break it off.’ She bent to pick up a twig, which she snapped without theatrical effect. ‘He asked me why and I said I’d met somebody else. He wanted to know who it was, and I told him. He seemed to have forgotten about you at the Playhouse, or so he claimed. I don’t believe that. Do you?’

Fisher shook his head. Eyes dry, much at ease, she spoke as if she were recalling something from long enough back.

‘Then he asked, “How do you know this time it’s for good and all?” and I told him I didn’t. “You’ll be throwing him over in six months?” I said it was possible. And he just sat down, as if he was taking a tutorial or something, rubbing his face. And then he pointed to me and said, “Well if you’re sure.” I said, “Sure of what, Malcolm?” and he shrugged. “Sure you love this Edwin or whatever his name is.”’

‘What did you . . .?’

‘I just told him that I was certain I didn’t love him.’

‘How did he take that, then?’ Fisher felt that, somehow, she insulted him, and if not deliberately, then deeply, meaningfully.

‘He was funny, really. He said in a dry sort of way, “Let’s hear the advantages of Fisher over me, then.” I told him straight off I wasn’t there to discuss you and he said, “There are no obvious advantages, I see, or you wouldn’t be making such a song and dance out of your excuses. It’s just that he’s new.” We argued like this for a long time, and didn’t get anywhere. He didn’t shout, or threaten. He might have been handing me an essay back, because he said things like, “Rationality’s not your strong point, but this time you’re less reasonable than usual.” And he wanted to leave it at that.’

‘Leave it?’

‘Not break the engagement. Not irrevocably, he said. See how things work out. I was to go with you as much as I liked.’

‘Until you got tired of me?’ Fisher asked.

‘I should think that was his idea.’

‘And you said?’

‘I gave him his ring. I told him it was over, that I was sorry it had ended like this, and that it was my fault. I took the blame, but I couldn’t help my feelings changing. I liked him and admired him. I still do. It’s true. He’s full of ideas. And talented. He’s a very good musician, for one thing. A pianist. But I didn’t want him any more. That was the long and short of it.’

For the next hour they walked, or sat for short breaks, while she mulled over the subject, becoming gloomier from sentence to sentence. In the end she was openly crying, dabbing her face with his flying handkerchief.

‘You think I’m a fool,’ she said.

‘Oh, I don’t know. It’s a shock. To a conservative like you. Or me. You change and you fear the dangers, or foresee them. I don’t know. You’re making a meal of it, I must say.’

That was the boldest statement he’d ever made; she might have thrown him over. His nature was compliant, longed for agreement, but he’d spoken out, against himself, as if to assent to some ancient manly prerogative, the right perhaps to superior knowledge.

‘I could kill you,’ she said.

‘Carry on.’

‘You superior bastard.’

‘I know all that.’

‘You know nothing. In your Sunday suit on a Saturday afternoon. Why didn’t you bring a cane to cut a dash with?’

‘I might have used it on you.’

That stopped her. It could not be that she was afraid, or shocked. In retrospect he believed simply that she enjoyed the direct bullying, which no one but her father employed against her.

They moved on in silence for so long that he began to be afraid, so that when they reached the covered bus-shelter with a seat he pushed her aside, sat down himself. For the moment he thought she’d storm out. After some hesitation, she mopped her face, rather roughly, screwed the handkerchief into a ball, and plumped down at his side.

‘Welcome home,’ he said.

When they set out again, she was taciturn but cheerful, answering questions if initiating nothing. They found a cottage where they ate eggs, new bread and pippy raspberry jam while the lady of the place patted her silver hair under a poker-work board which read, ‘Christ is the unseen guest, the unseen listener to every conversation.’ When the proprietress went out, Meg said,

‘That frightens me.’

‘About Christ listening?’

‘Yes. As if He judged every word. Weighed it.’

‘And found it wanting,’ he said. ‘It seemed a shame to waste His time.’

‘I don’t think,’ she urged, ‘they ought to hang things like that. If they thought about it, really imagined what it meant, they daren’t.’

‘If I were God,’ Fisher said, ‘I’d take a great deal of pleasure in hearing somebody say, “This egg’s done just right”.’

‘It’s not often you say anything as innocent as that.’

‘Come off it, now.’ But he laughed. ‘I love you. How about that? How’s the Unseen Guest like that one, eh?’

She shuddered enormously, but answered immediately, in face of dread.

‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Now he’s heard both sides.’

They kissed, rapidly, but the landlady entered coughing, with hot water and a homily on tea-drinking. They acted politeness, began to feel as if the woman were part of love.

‘Who did that?’ Meg asked, indicating the board.

‘Oh, a soldier who was here in the war.’

‘A religious soldier?’ Meg giggled.

‘Not that I noticed. He copied it off a bit of a card. Couldn’t get it all on. I think I shall take it down. The letters aren’t very good, are they?’

‘It’s made me think,’ Meg said.

‘I’ve had quite enough thinking to last me a year or two,’ the woman said, huffily, as though they’d offended her. ‘Since my husband died, I’ve had plenty of time for that. Too much.’

They left in a hurry, in the end, sniggering, like schoolchildren from a crabby teacher. On their way to the bus stop, Meg had arranged for him to visit her parents, claiming with force, even with enjoyment, that it was useless becoming formally engaged until the elder Vernons had approved.

‘They may not take to me.’

‘They will,’ she said. She seemed delighted, scoring off him, quite unlike the girl who cried for Malcolm’s unhappiness. The Vernon family united to scoff at the pretensions of prospective suitors. He neither relished it, nor understood.

Now as he waited for the dinner-gong he wondered whether he should have read these early signs. Meg’s behaviour was dependably unexpected. Now he saw her as a theatrical performer, acting against her father’s reputation, ensuring that he did not outshine her.

She loved her father.

On the stairs Fisher met the young couple accompanied by one child only, on their way down to dinner. Unlike him, all wore different clothes from those of breakfast or the beach.

‘Had a good day?’ he enquired.

They answered enthusiastically convincing themselves.

‘Where’s Number Two?’ he asked, pointing at the boy.

‘Tucked away in bed, fast asleep.’ The mother smiled. ‘I don’t know if Colin’ll keep awake through the meal.’

‘I shall,’ the boy said, shouting, but shy.

‘Colin.’ His mother shook his arm, vigorously.

‘Well, I shall.’

‘We shall see,’ his father said.

The child screwed up his face into a scowl of hatred, so that Fisher remembered his own holidays here as will-combats between his father and himself. The old man loved punctuality, was always ten minutes early for an engagement. One could find no quicker way of driving him to fury than by dawdling when he needed to catch a bus or train.

On a late afternoon in this town Edwin Fisher, aged fourteen, had arrived, grubby, five minutes before the family procession towards high tea was due to start. The reception committee waited in the parents’ bedroom; Mrs Fisher at the dressing-table fluttering at her face, Tina on a chair, with a book open but unread, wide-eyed for the explosion, Arthur by the window, white-faced with anger.

‘Is that you, Edwin?’ Mrs Fisher had called.

‘Yes.’

‘Come in here. Your father wants you.’

‘We shall be late.’

‘You’ll come in when you’re bid,’ his father grated from the door. Edwin obeyed. The door was closed, and Arthur, hands behind back, stalked again to the window.

‘What time is this?’ he asked. Fisher consulted his watch.

‘Three minutes to six.’

The impertinence was ignored.

‘And where do you think you’ve been?’

‘Out for a walk.’

‘You’re late.’

‘I know. I ought to go and get washed.’ He could not help pushing his father, though he saw the face mottle with anger.

‘We’ve been home since five. I told you no later than half-past.’

‘Where’ve you been, Eddie?’ his mother interrupted.

‘Just for a walk. I watched the afternoon pierrots, and then went along the beach.’