Life Goes On (33 page)

Unsatisfied by her position, she woke up, and pouted at the racket of a screaming kid. It began to get dark, settling into a twilight that lasted most of the way over. I offered my hip flask: ‘Travelling's not what it was.'

She had a few swigs, and I could see it going down, by the movement of her lovely throat. ‘What a wonderful idea, to travel with one of these.'

‘I always have.' I felt her body touch mine as she settled back into her seat. ‘If I go by train I have a tea-making set. When I'm in the car I have a hamper from Selfridge's as well as a tent and sleeping bag. I like to get my priorities right.'

‘You must do a lot of travelling.'

I nodded. ‘If I'm not on the move, I'm not living. I can't stand not getting out of England every month or two. When I'm feeling ready to do myself in I go through what I call lifeboat drill – that is to say, escaping from the country at sensing that people are about to go around hanging such as me from lamp posts. Once, I cycled in a panic to the coast and got on a boat for France. Another time I hitch-hiked to Scotland. Sometimes I drive. Or I may go by air. Or I just pick up a rucksack and walk. Are you on holiday?'

‘It's a long story.'

‘It's a long journey.' I passed the flask again – after I'd drunk some. ‘I know how you feel. When I can't write another word of the book I'm doing I go to the Heathcliffe Hotel in Yorkshire for a week. Or to Moonshine Manor in Cornwall. Either place will unwind me. At the moment I'm off to Toronto for a couple of days. I came on impulse to the airport this morning because I had to get away. I thought I might go to Rome, or Israel. But before I knew what I'd done I'd bought a ticket for Canada. I'll go to Israel later. How about you?'

‘That was lovely whisky.'

A single drop stained my trousers when I held the flask upside down. ‘Glad you honoured me by enjoying it.'

‘I'll get some more when the trolley comes.'

‘I didn't mean that,' I said earnestly. ‘I do too much drinking alone, and I don't like it. Night after night I sit with a bottle of the best hooch, staring at my typewriter, the blinds drawn, all lights on, and hearing nothing but the odd car go by. I keep the blinds drawn and lights on during the day as well, I get so glued up and depressed. The only thing I've got for company is a dog. I turned him loose this morning, to live on sheep till I get back. Being alone isn't good for me.'

She smiled. ‘It's generous of you to share your whisky, all the same.'

‘The most natural thing in the world.' I touched her warm wrist, though only for a second. ‘I live in Cambridgeshire most of the time. I bought an old railway station ten years ago, and use it as a gentleman's cottage. It's very nice in spring.'

‘What do you do?'

I was waiting for that. ‘Do?'

‘For a living.'

I leaned back in my seat, and let ten seconds go by. ‘I'm a writer.' What else could I say? ‘In other words, a conman of the worst type. I tell stories by lying, and make a living out of it.'

‘That's a lovely way of putting it. Can I ask you your name?'

‘Michael Cullen.' I was unable to lie about that one. ‘But I write under several pseudonyms, such as Gilbert Blaskin and Sidney Blood.' I added the names of a couple of novelists from the north, but she said she hadn't heard of them, either.

‘It sounds an interesting life. I'm going to Toronto because I've just got a divorce, and I've got to go somewhere. I have a sister there, so at least there's somebody.'

The plane grumbled and bumped, and a notice implored us to
fasten seatbelts
. I stood up to get mine disentangled. ‘It's always better to move in a crisis.'

‘My crisis is over,' she said, ‘and I can never have another as bad as that.'

Oh, can't you? I thought, though I wasn't ill-mannered enough to say so.

‘It started the day I was married, fifteen years ago. My husband had qualified as an accountant and we were set for a long and happy life. I admit I was uneasy about it, having just left university. But I don't think I showed it. I was in love, after all. And we know what that means.'

At a particularly big bump, she held my arm. The fact that she was terrified brought out different aspects of my concern. I was happy she was in such a state, yet sad to acknowledge that there was little I could do for her. A baby had been screaming for ten minutes and they could hardly tell the mother to take it outside. Earphones were issued as a last resort and the film began. ‘Do you want to look?'

She shook her head. ‘The trouble was that almost from the day we were married he wanted to leave me, I don't know why. He didn't tell me, but I felt it, and I knew I had been right when he eventually did tell me. We were driving around in the New Forest and he lost his way so we had our first big quarrel. Then he came out with it. He said he couldn't stand me. He wanted to leave me. By now I wasn't sure I wanted to stay with him, but I hadn't mentioned it. I told him that if he wanted to leave me he could. If he was unhappy (and he was – I'd never seen anyone so unhappy as he sat numbly over the steering wheel), then he ought to go, as long as he knew that he wanted to. He burst into tears and said that he couldn't.

‘It was obvious the marriage was a disaster. I didn't even know whether I loved him anymore, and I had to assume I didn't, otherwise I would have left him there and then so that he would at least have been happy at not wanting to leave
me
anymore. You can imagine – you being a writer – what a mess it was. I asked him if he had met anyone else. “No,” he said, “but have you met another man?” “Yes,” I told him, “I have met another man to the one I married, and he's sitting right by me.”

‘He called me a whore and said how could I be so disloyal to
him
? I didn't know which one he meant, and neither did he. He was so shaken that I had to drive home. When he was with me he was never less than insane, but I know for a fact that during this time he worked hard in his profession, and got on in the firm. He also made a lot of money freelancing other people's accounts. I supposed for a while it was a pity we didn't have a child, but as things went on without improvement I felt it was for the best. All this time I didn't have a lover, mostly I suppose because he kept me in that state of hypertension and misery that paralysed me, and which put off any man who came near me. It was the same with him, I'm fairly sure, unless he had a quick screw at one of the office parties at Christmas.'

‘Why didn't you throw him out?'

‘I should have, I know that now. When I thought about it, things hadn't been right from the start. He had a sister who hated me, though I think I know why. I went to his house once to call on him before we were married, and he wasn't in. His sister was upstairs when the bell rang, getting ready to go on holiday to Venice, and because she was neurotic the bell startled her so much that she tripped as she came down the stairs, and broke her ankle. From then on she hated me even more, as you can imagine. I should have taken it as a sign and called the whole thing off but, as I said, I was in love with him.'

‘He sounds like a real vampire.' Sidney Blood would have been proud of him, I thought. ‘Or maybe he was just waiting for you to throw him out.'

She spoke calmly, as if there was ice in her belly. ‘That's what I should have done. But I couldn't. He wanted to go, but couldn't. Perhaps we were in love with one another. It was hopeless. Maybe love is only complete when it becomes your enemy.'

‘Excuse me,' I said, ‘while I write that down. I may use it for one of my books. You don't mind?'

A faint colour came into her cheeks. ‘Why should I?'

I went to the bar and returned with two half bottles of champagne. Rule number one, as stated in Moggerhanger's Handbook of Regulations, said that no heavy drinking was to take place, but I decided to ignore it. We chinked plastic glasses.

‘But he did leave,' she said. ‘Neither of us could stand it any longer. We talked it over for days. It was as if we were both getting ready to go away together. It was crazy. What had driven him mad I still don't know, but I know that by now I had begun to go the same way. I helped him to pack his suitcases, which he appreciated very much. There was more friendship in the air than I'd ever known. If only we could live like this every day, him always packed and thinking about leaving, maybe life would have been tolerable. We even made love better than for years, on the settee. I couldn't believe it. Neither could he. But he couldn't change his mind. As a silly man who had given his word he couldn't climb out of the ditch he had dug for himself without a nervous breakdown. By now I didn't want him to change his mind, either. I could take only so much. Maybe he really wanted to stay, but wouldn't do so unless I crawled and grovelled. There may have been a chance, but I wasn't strong enough. I was too worn out to take it.

‘Everything's got to end some time, I thought. During the few years we were together you can imagine how often I was in a bad mood. That meant that we didn't make love much, because he found it impossible to make love to me when I was in a bad mood. That of course was exactly the time when I wanted him to do it. I would have come out of my bad mood then. But when I was in a bad mood he went into a worse mood, so it was even less possible for him to make love. The only time he could make love was when I was in a good mood, which under the circumstances wasn't very often since I couldn't be in a good mood because he was always in a bad mood. And when I did happen to be in a good mood, in spite of everything, I didn't always want him to make love. Neither did he, as often as not, but when he did I had to let him. Sometimes it worked, but often it didn't. There was endless friction on that front alone.'

I wondered if this long yarn wasn't her technique of putting off men who were about to make a play for her. If so, I would have taken my hat off to her, if I had been wearing one. ‘You make me sweat.'

‘Do I? Anyway, when the great day came I helped him into a taxi and kissed him goodbye. The only condition was that I wouldn't ask where he was going. That was easy. I didn't want to. When the door closed and he was driven away I was desolate for a couple of hours, but then I began to mend. I was happy. I wanted money to live on, so two days later I got a job as a typist and general office dogsbody. My wages were low, but I managed. It was no real problem. In fact everything was wonderful. No one could understand why I was so happy and calm. I made friends, with a woman or two, and a married couple in the same street. I invited them over for drinks. There was even a man I thought I might fancy.

‘Well, you've guessed it. He came back. I found him on the doorstep one day, when I got home from work. My heart sank. I wanted to kill him. Just as I had got back on my own two feet this had to happen. My impulse was to turn round and walk off, never to see him or the house again. If only I had. But I couldn't. I swear it had nothing to do with him. It was just that I lived there. Whatever I thought, he was back. He had become more and more unhappy the longer he was away. It was only three months. We had grown to be so much like Siamese twins, spiritually, that maybe his continuous misery was only at the thought that I was getting happier and happier.

‘We had a real quarrel then, such as we'd never had before. It didn't clear the air and end our troubles, either. Things aren't that simple. It made them worse. There was no solution. I went for him with a hammer. No, I didn't murder him. Even that would have been an advance on our situation. I caught him at the temple, and I never knew he had so much blood. Perhaps that was his trouble. Anyway, two weeks later I left
him
, and I didn't go back. He was still at his work, the life and soul of the firm, I suppose. I packed up and got a room. I had arranged a transfer to another office of the same firm, in St Albans. In a couple of years, by which time he'd got himself another woman – thank God, I was quite happy about that – the divorce came through. I'm the manageress of the office now, and they've given me extended leave, because I had to get away. I've been very calm, and maybe the reaction was delayed, but the hard fact of the divorce hit me like a bomb, not because of anything to do with him but due to something in myself. I'm absolutely free now, and at last know who I am. Only I can tell me who and what I am, not any man. I live very well on my own. I've even managed to save money without skimping myself. I have friends, though no man friend who I would let be my lover.'

‘If you dislike men so much,' I said, ‘why are you telling me all this?'

She held my hand for a moment, and finished her beaker of champagne. ‘I'm not one of those who hate men. It's just that nothing good's happened with men, that's all. In any case, you're a writer and I can talk to you. My name's Agnes, by the way.'

‘Glad to know you.' I opened the second bottle. ‘I'm writing a novel called
The Way We Live Now
, but I'm stuck halfway through. That's why I had to get away for a few days.'

The plane droned on. Now and again I got a glimpse of the film, which seemed to be about an endless car chase, the occasional vehicle erupting into a fireball. ‘They gave me a bonus for the trip,' she said, ‘and I went to Knightsbridge and spent some of it on underwear.'

The seatbelt lights scintillated, and air pockets scared her. They scared me, too. The stratosphere shook the Boeing as the proverbial terrier is said to shake a rat. Then it went as if on velvet. I didn't mind the plane falling apart, but I would have appreciated having the fuselage lit as we went down. ‘Underwear's a good thing to spend money on,' I said. ‘Keeps up the old morale.' I put my hand on her thigh, quite unobtrusively I thought, but she tapped it away: ‘It's not for you.'