Holiday (9 page)

Several passers-by wished him good evening. The world was full of people at leisure, doing him good. He replied in a loud voice.

‘You sound so hearty,’ Meg used to tell him. ‘Like a milkman.’

‘Shopkeeping’s in my blood.’

‘You’re more like a back-door hawker.’

She meant nothing by it. Often he guessed she criticised him because it was her place to do so, had married him to purchase the privilege. He made himself stop by a high, straight-trimmed privet hedge to ask himself if he wanted Meg back, or with him for an hour, this evening. On the verge of pity, he remembered these last weeks when she’d set out to annoy, to interrupt, crucify his work. These were not minor persecutions; her whole self concentrated, every minute of the day and night, to molest him. She was not sane as she smashed glass to the floor, or woke him three, four times in the night, threw herself screaming fully clothed into the bath, burned the examination papers he was marking, announced to their neighbours, a well-to-do architect and his wife, that her husband had tried the evening before to murder her.

Nothing of game there. He had not laid a finger on her, though he could have killed her. And his love dropped away, dry as dust. Sexually she was as attractive to him as a pig or a skeleton. He wanted, against his desperate reason, to murder, but not with his hands. There would be something sensual, about fingers sweatily round her throat, squeezing away the rich life. He needed some science-fiction gadget to transmute that hated flesh into ashes, a half biscuit-box of dust. If he’d been stronger morally, he’d have struck her, slapped his conviction of guilt with his knuckles across her face, but he’d cringed, and put up, put off, so that he became an embodiment of frightened hate, sick to the soul with himself.

Now after a month’s absence from her, he relented.

It could not be as he remembered. The struggle suppurated in his mind at the end of a tiring term and a wrangle with his professor. Walking past a field, littered with broken mole-hills, marked for building, he stopped himself, hand plucking at the wire strands of the new fence. One could not imagine the malicious lunacy of his wife; it existed, had forced him to newer, bitter knowledge. Meg hated him with her being; twisted every sinew to further that loathing.

One evening, less than six weeks ago, after a day’s silence she had deliberately picked up a magazine and knocked his cup into his lap. She’d refused to speak, asked nothing, done nothing, sat at the tea-table clattering her cup, shifting her plate, tearing the thin bread and butter he’d prepared for her. Her face stretched out pale with her eyes washed out, almost blue, tear-flushed, unintelligent. The day before she’d been to the hairdresser’s so that her hair rose elaborately beautiful and she had, apparently, dressed with care.

Fisher had intended to stay at home, but her refusal to speak drove him out of his room at the university where he’d wasted time with books. He had announced his going, his absence for lunch, his expected return by four, but she, in dressing-gown paid no attention until he’d shouted, when she’d picked up the letters with which she was toying and went upstairs. On his homecoming he found the breakfast dishes still on the table and his ‘Times’ still where he’d dropped it. Mrs Roberts the cleaning-woman had not been in, or had been sent packing.

Quietly he cleared away, washed the pots, and prepared the tea. When all was ready, he marched upstairs, knocked sharply at his wife’s door, announced the meal as she sat at the dressing-table. He poured out two cups and eating, began to read the evening paper. The dining room was large and polished, south facing, with heavy furniture on the light parquet floor where one white rug was laid in front of the dark marble of the fireplace. After ten minutes he walked out again into the hall, called upstairs, and receiving no answer knocked again on her door to make his announcements. She followed him.

‘Your tea will be cold,’ he said. ‘I’ll pour you another.’

This time, certainly, her eyes dropped towards the offending liquid. She screwed a small handkerchief in her fingers, stretched it. He took the cup to the kitchen, swilled it clean, dried it and returned to refill it. Then she looked up at him, briefly, noncommittally.

He returned to his newspaper but his appetite had deserted him. He chewed drily. When he glanced across, he saw her fiddle with her bread, pulling it apart. The eyes were hooded, pathetically; demure, she sat as if waiting for orders. Determined not to be angry, he said,

‘Drink your tea, Meg, please.’

Perhaps she shuffled slightly. Outside the brightness of roses splodged. He returned to the print. ‘Newthorpe man’s pool win. Official drought in Notts. M.P. warns miners.’ By his plate he had laid a periodical still unopened from its folder. Meg shoved her chair back, half-stood, grabbed the journal and, flailing, back-handed his cup on to his ‘Post’ and his knee. Alarmed he jumped, feeling, not uncomfortably, the warmth on his thighs. Tea dripped from the sodden paper, so that he screwed it angrily into a bundle which he rushed out to the kitchen. When he came back, she had seated herself again to watch him, only half, a quarter, anxiously.

Shaking with rage, he failed to reach the table, but stood, incoherent, making sounds, a gibberish, before he turned upstairs. There he ripped his trousers off and flinging himself across the bed he pummelled it as breath failed. Then he lay, in a curse of fury, eyes closed, on fire, red: until he recovered sufficiently to walk to the basin and swill his face in cold water. Again, he sat, unbecoming. He forced himself to the bowl for a second wash, donned new trousers and combed his wet hair. He went downstairs where his slice, one mouthful taken, slopped in a plate brown with spilt tea. The table-cloth, stained, clung blackish to the wood. The carpet seemed barely marked, with a few dark spots. On the other side Meg sat, straight, her face harsh, hard, a parody of itself, hacked into a roughness of stupidity. It could not be her.

At this moment, he knew exactly what he should do: fetch a tray, begin to clear the mess. But before that idol of a face, he was incapable of sense. It had no humanity in it and therefore no appeal for pity, help. It was botcher’s work, sincere clumsy bungling. He had seen crude children’s daubs, button eyes, streaks of nose and mouth which were livelier.

‘I’d better clear up,’ he said. His legs trembled; his voice staggered to a whimper. Meg did not open her mouth.

He moved from the room, began to work. The exercise did him good so that at the end of ten minutes he felt calmer, relieved, with the table dry and unharmed. During the operation she’d not shifted to help him, not backed an inch out of his way.

‘That’s that, then.’ He rubbed his hands. She did not bother with him, not even pretending to ignore him. ‘I’ll wash up.’

He did not expect an answer, but her lack of any response suddenly riled him, rapped his body into anger.

His jaw worked in involutary life, against all reason.

‘You go upstairs, Meg.’ There was no call for that, but he spoke it out of a desire to dominate, to impress that welled in nerves and skin, not in mind. She sat, hands locked now. ‘D’you hear me?’ he asked. ‘I should go upstairs for a bit, if I were you. Have a lie-down on the bed.’

Nothing, nothing.

Now unreason flashed; he could not hold himself longer.

‘Get out, and upstairs,’ he shouted. ‘Before I give you a bloody good hiding.’

The loudness took effect so that she swivelled her eyes at him and stared like an insipid doll. There seemed no intelligence, no attempt to understand, merely a limited response to the increase in power of a voice.

‘Get out,’ he shouted, now, thumping the table between them with both fists, ‘get out when you’re told. Get out. Get out.’

His anger shrivelled, in its own heat.

Fisher saw both, a wild man whacking the table, a zombie watching him. His hurt swelled in his throat while he leaned forward mopping himself, groaning, defeated. When, moments later, he quitted the room, the thought presented itself that she could not have cared, or shifted, it amounted to the same, if he had axed her head from her trunk.

He did not return to the dining room for an hour, and by that time she’d gone to report, he learnt later, to her parents, that he’d become violent. That was wrong. Not her misrepresentation, but the fact that she could put it, or anything else into words.

When Fisher woke next morning, the weather was fair, as if the brightness of the sea reflected from the mirrors to the far wall. He disregarded a slight headache, crediting it not to the pint or two of ale, but to his puritanical conscience. He enjoyed his early walk in the deserted streets, and had managed to insert ten or so answers into ‘The Times’ crossword before breakfast. Sandra Smith, a different, light-blue outfit, smiled at him, managed her family quickly, won approval from the whole room.

Fisher sipped milky coffee, cup after cup, cautiously optimistic. The landlord made an unusual appearance; a dishevelled joviality signalled a secret.

‘Gentleman to see you, Mr Fisher. Just arrived. In a very large Mercedes.’ He gave that time to penetrate.

‘A Mr Vernon?’ Fisher said.

‘Yes, sir. Do you want to see him?’ Wheatley spoke truculence; new Merc or not, my guests are not troubled, unless. English independence.

‘Yes. My father-in-law.’

‘I see, sir.’ Smiling now that the Mercedes man could be treated with unction. ‘Beautiful car, really beautiful.’

‘Is it?’ Fisher drained his cup, followed ungratefully into the lounge, where Vernon set his face to melancholy amongst the bric-a-brac.

‘Guilty conscience. Can’t sleep.’ Vernon arose, face beaming. ‘I’m interfering, Edwin, as usual.’

‘At a quarter past nine.’

‘Yes. My grapefruit doesn’t occupy me long.’ He slapped his midriff, blowing. ‘I wanted to catch you before you went out.’

‘And look at the . . .’ Fisher indicated the furniture, the bunches of plastic flowers, the flounced dolls lining the television-top, the white mantlepiece with mother-of-pearl ashtrays, useless glass spheres, paper-knives in tartan sheaths.

‘Yes. That.’ Vernon’s words sketched contempt. ‘I’ve asked Meg to come across.’

‘I see.’

‘Would you be prepared to meet her if she came?’

Fisher thought, allowed the words into his head, did not find an answer, and sat scratching his knee. The elder Smith boy suddenly burst into the room, flinging the door back before pulling up silenced in front of the two seated, unspeaking men. His mother followed at once, like a torch of blue and white light, grabbed his arm and apologising ushered him willingly from the place. Her smile, her crisp dress made the interruption theatrical, or perhaps real compared with the sober silence of the two.

‘No good would come of it.’

‘I understand you. But it’s been a month now. Both of you have had the chance to reconsider matters. In my experience it doesn’t do to leave things too long.’

‘I don’t think . . .’

‘Just see her, Edwin,’ The second use of his Christian name irrationally annoyed Fisher. Vernon never used the word any more than he addressed his daughter as Margaret; he acted here as a solicitor, soliciting.

‘I don’t want to be awkward. But in my view she doesn’t need me; she needs medical attention.’

‘Would it surprise you if I said she was of the same opinion about you?’

‘No. They’re all mad but me. Common symptom.’

Vernon stroked his chin, because this was the kind of situation in which he excelled. For the next ten minutes he and Fisher would argue, he suavely, the younger as he liked, and at the end agreement would be reached when his son-in-law capitulated. This morning, perhaps because of the early hour, the process took a little longer, so that it was nearly ten and the other guests had been heard to leave before they’d finished.

‘Tomorrow, then. At lunch with us.’

‘Will she be there?’

‘That I don’t know. I’m not making Meg out as a paragon of reason. You know that.’

‘I’m sorry this has happened.’

Vernon blew his lips out.

‘Phoh. Happening all the time, man. I get three a day.’ A sly hand met Fisher’s arm. ‘And I’ve not got used to it yet.’ Wry.

Vernon had gone, leaving Fisher vaguely distressed, uncertain. He had been driven by his wife to a state where he felt unlike himself, capable of criminal foolishness without compunction, and this had frightened him. Loss of temper or nerve merely bothered him, as annoying, lacking adventure, stranding one in an appearance of foolishness, but the conviction that he might knock his wife down, nail her dead, before the normal function of reason could operate, terrified in its novelty. Now he acted, or could do so, like a child, on impulse, without forethought or sight. His hand could murder before his senses could collect themselves to check the blow. Once he accepted this, had had it dinned into him, then he shrank, begged to retire, get out of life like a hermit for time to come to terms with his new self, this madman.

For the past month, he’d lived in a maze, careless, thankful to be rid of murderous fear. He had not considered going back to Meg, but the thought of a total break troubled him. It was an advantage to have a personable wife, and he had chosen exactly what he wanted. Meg, so handsome and yet wayward, dragooned his colleagues into admiration so that at departmental functions she’d be surrounded by men stretching their wits to win a glance or word of praise out of her. The prof’s wife, a busy humdrum woman who should have been bustling behind a shop-counter, disliked it, said as much sourly.

‘You’ll have to watch that wife of yours, Mr Fisher.’

‘I do nothing else.’

‘She’s fond of herself.’

‘We’re all that, aren’t we?’

The old bitch is jealous because Meg snatches the men away from her, he thought, but there was something homely about Helen Walker, a likeable common sense, that made him careful about his judgement. He reported her remarks to Meg, who acted neither angrily nor distantly, but gave the appearance of thought, screwing her mouth, even sucking her finger, before she answered.

‘I don’t think I do anything out of the ordinary. Most of those men I don’t like.’ She laughed. ‘No, not old Bogus.’ The senior lecturer in child psychology. ‘He doesn’t know anything, you say, and he splutters, but he’d lend you up to fifty pence if you were pushed.’