No More Meadows (45 page)

It was all just the same. It went on day after day for the comfort of hardworked housewives all over the United States. It was a harmless vice, a drug to stop women thinking too much about their lot.

Vinson, although he had once remarked wistfully that theirs was the only house in the road without a television aerial, had not wanted a set either, perhaps because it would cost too much, perhaps because anything that Mrs Meenehan recommended he automatically rejected.

On Christine's birthday he unaccountably bought her a television set, a mammoth thing of varnished wood with almost as many knobs as a cinema organ. The installation men brought it one afternoon while Vinson was at work, hooked it up, fixed up the aerial and went away, leaving Christine moving the set about the room on its castors, trying to find a place where it would not be in the way.

When Vinson came home she did not know what to say. ‘You shouldn't have,' she said. ‘It's much too big a present.'

‘Well,' he mumbled, embarrassed, ‘I thought it would be nice for you. Your life is kind of dull now.'

‘Oh no it isn't, Vin.' They never admitted that anything was wrong.

‘Yes it is. I know it is!' he burst out, and suddenly he held her very tightly. ‘Darling, darling, what's wrong with us? I want us to be happy.'

Now was the time. They could have been close now and drawn some help from each other to get over this bad time together, but Christine, cursing herself as she heard her voice say it, answered: ‘Nothing's wrong. We're perfectly happy', and the chance was lost.

Although Vinson had bought the set for her, he was the one who looked at it most. When she discovered that there were other programmes besides the ones the Meenehans liked, Christine began to overcome her prejudice, but she did not
want to have the set playing all the time, night after night like an unwelcome lodger.

Vinson, however, took to it like a duck to water. As soon as he had taken off his uniform cap and jacket at night, he would turn on the television and squat in front of it, fiddling with the knobs and making the pictures jitter or chase each other up the screen like slowly wound film. The set would be on while they had their cocktails, and after Christine had wrenched him away to eat his dinner Vinson would go back and spend the rest of the evening in front of the screen, his naval manuals forgotten.

Christine was glad that he bad found something to keep him happy, but she hoped that he would get over his enthusiasm when the novelty wore off. Some of the television programmes were very good, with all the top talent that beer or soap or floor wax could buy, but some of the programmes were very bad, and the lengthy commercials that were forced on you in the middle did not make them any better.

All the oldest films in the world seemed to have been gathered together in the studios for the entertainment of an unprotesting public. On the television screen Jackie Coogan was still a small child, and Bebe Daniels was a mere slip of a girl with a sideways ogle and hair pulled low on the forehead. Waists were low and hats were cloche and the worn-out soundtracks grated like an early phonograph. Cowboy films of all vintages filled the screen in the early evening, for the children of America had long since given up going out to play when they could be crouched indoors watching the pintos gallop and the guns snap from the hip and the good cowboy get the sweet young girl from the bad cattle rustler.

The television commercials were far longer than the ones on the radio, and far more irksome, because you could see the eulogizers as well as hear them. On the screen, husbands in tweed jackets came home from work as cleanly shaved as when they had set out in the morning, were greeted with a glass of beer by arch little women in frilly house dresses, and downed the foaming nectar with genteel smacking of lips and knowing winks at the camera. White-capped butchers lectured you about cuts of meat, aproned grocers held up cans of peas and packets
of margarine, blonde studio models who looked as if they had never been in a kitchen in their lives took cakes and biscuits out of the oven wearing a delighted air of astonishment, as well they might, seeing that someone else had made them.

When the product advertised was toothpaste or deodorant or headache pills, someone inevitably came on the screen wearing the Cossack-necked white coat peculiar to American medicine, and terrorized you about what would befall you if you did not use the sponsor's product. Cigarettes were also advertised by men dressed up as doctors or pharmacists. The tobacco business seemed to have outgrown the selling point of which cigarette would give you most pleasure. Now it was only which one would do you the least harm. One firm went so far as to claim that their cigarette must be the best, because if you pulled a strip of paper off the side the tobacco would not fall out, which was all right if that was what you wanted cigarettes for.

Christine soon got to know all the television commercial slogans by heart, just as she had learned the ones on the radio, but she did not sing the irritating catchy tunes as she cleaned about the house or worked with her sewing-machine. Nowadays she hardly ever bothered to use the machine on which she had made so many baby clothes. In the evenings Vinson always had the television on, and she would usually sit beside him and watch the wrestling or the quiz programmes or the musical farragos, to save herself having to think of anything else to do.

On the evening before she left for England they were watching a television play, just as if it were an ordinary evening and they were not parting tomorrow. At a dramatic moment the picture went off, the voices stopped, and the announcement of a breakdown appeared on the screen.

Nothing happened for quite a long time. ‘Let's try the radio,' Vinson said. ‘We haven't had that on for quite a time. Turn it on, there's a good girl.'

‘Turn it on yourself,' Christine said, ‘if you want it.' She was still a little cross with him for what he had said at supper. They had been talking about her trip to England and Vinson had started to grumble, not about her leaving him – that would have been all right – but about the expense of the fare.

‘It was you who suggested I should go,' she had said. ‘It's a bit late to think of the expense now.'

‘I have to think of these things,' he said. ‘It's a good thing someone in this family does.'

‘You talk as if I was madly extravagant. I seem to be wasting my efforts trying to be so careful in the shops. Oh Lord, how I wish I had some money of my own! I tell you what, Vin; when I get back I shall have my permanent visa, and I really am going to get a job then.'

‘I told you,' he said, putting down his fork, ‘a commander's wife doesn't go out to work. And soon I hope you'll be a captain's wife. That will make it even more impossible.'

‘I don't
want
to be a captain's wife,' she said sulkily. ‘I think it will be hell.'

‘Christine,' he said, calmly finishing his food, ‘you talk like a child. Compared to American women of your age you're really very immature.'

How could he talk to her like that when she was going away tomorrow? The thought that perhaps he did not mind rankled with her all evening. She would not get up and turn on the radio for him.

When he turned it on it was the ‘Stop the Music' programme, on which they played or sang a tune and rang people up anywhere in the United States to ask them what it was. If you could name the tune, you won a first prize and were given a chance to guess the ‘Mystery Melody', and if you got that right yours was the earth and everything that's in it. The compère was announcing the prizes: ‘Sixteen hundred dollars in cash, an electric clothes drier that leaves your clothesline for the birds, an unbreakable, washable plastic rocking-chair, a super-magnificent broilomatic, boilomatic, bakeomatic kitchen range with a left-off – excuse me, friends – ha, ha! – lift-off oven door, a holiday for two in Nassau….' The list went staggeringly on.

How wonderful to be someone who won a prize like that! Even if you had to pay income tax on it all you would still have a lot to play with. People were telephoned in Alaska, in Montana, in Big Spring, Texas – all sorts of out-of-the-way places – but never in Washington, D.C. It was never you. It was always someone else.

The telephone rang, and Christine went to it. It would be Lianne, calling to say good-bye.

‘Is that the residence of Commander Vinson Gaegler, U.S. Navy?' said a professional operator's voice, refining a Brooklyn accent. ‘Is Mrs Gaegler home? May I speak with her, please? Oh, hullo, Mrs Gaegler. This is your “Stop the Music” operator in New York calling.'

‘Vinson!' Christine hissed. ‘It's us!'

‘Hallo, hallo! Are you still on the line? Your name has been picked to be a contestant tonight in the “Stop the Music” radio programme. Do you care to participate?'

Did she care! Christine stammered into the telephone. She could hardly hold the receiver.

Non-committally, as if she were used – which, of course, she was – to offering someone the chance of winning sixteen hundred dollars in cash, an electric clothes drier, a plastic rockingchair, a stove with a lift-off oven door, a holiday for two in Nassau, the operator explained the rules of the contest, asked Christine if she was listening to the programme, and told her to continue to listen to the telephone.

‘If you hang up or leave the phone,' she said in her ritual voice, ‘you cannot be telephoned again.'

Christine glued one ear to the telephone and the other to the radio. Vinson was leaning forward watching the radio as if it were the television. His face was flushed with excitement, and Christine's was on fire. Sixteen hundred dollars in cash! Now he need not grumble about her fare to England. They were finishing with another competitor – Mr Duane P. Bamburger of Boise, Idaho, who had failed to guess an obvious tune and would only get a few cartons of cigarettes.

Christine pitied Mr Bamburger fleetingly, but hated him for getting a tune she would have known. The one she got might be – ‘Vin, listen!' They had started another tune. What was it? It sounded familiar. A girl sang the words, humming when she came to the title line ‘Da da da
da
da.' It was a relic from the past. Christine remembered doing homework to it when she was at school. What was it? Something like I'll
never leave you … I won't forget you … You'll always find me….

What was it? What was it? Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me
this one, she prayed silently.
If you should ask me…? I'll always want you…? I never–'

‘Stop the MUSIC!' bellowed the compère. A telephone bell was ringing through the song. ‘Hallo … hallo …!' she heard him say through the loudspeaker, and then there was a click in her other ear and his voice was coming through the telephone.

‘Is that Mrs Gaegler of Arlington, Virginia? Hallo there, Mrs Gaegler! How's everything in Arlington, Virginia? Pretty swell?' he roistered, although Christine had not been able to find the voice to answer. ‘Well, that's fine. Just fine.' She could hear his voice coming out of the radio a fraction of a second before it came out of the telephone. ‘Now, Mrs Gaegler, we want to give you a chance to win this wonderful jackpot of prizes. Can you name that tune we've just played?'

‘I – er –I – er – could you play a bit of it again?'

‘Sure thing.' The girl sang a phrase or two.

'I'll never leave you,'
Christine blurted out. She was sure. The prize was hers. Sixteen hundred dollars in cash, an electric clothes drier –

‘I'm awfully sorry, Mrs Gaegler. No. I'm afraid you haven't hit the jackpot this time.'

Christine rang off while he was promising her cartons of cigarettes. On the radio she could still hear him talking to her with undiminished bonhomie. She switched it off, very near tears.

‘Oh, Vin–' She turned to him for sympathy, but his voice was angry.

‘You idiot,' he said, ‘losing a chance like that. Why didn't you get it? I thought you knew all the tunes. You've got all day to listen to that damn radio.'

‘I didn't know it,' she said miserably.

‘Well, you ought to have.' He stuck out his lower lip.

‘Did you?'

He turned away from her as the television suddenly came on again with a burst of sound, just in time for the commercial.

He had no right to be so cross, but he was, and so was she -cross with herself as well as him. The glittering haul that had
been dangled before her had been too tempting. It was not fair to tantalize people like that. They were doing it all the time. It was the modern American tragedy.

She and Vinson were still a little cross with each other when they drove to New York the next day. Christine had to keep reminding herself that she was leaving him for several weeks, that she loved him, that he was her husband, that she would undoubtedly miss him as soon as he was not there.

And then on the dockside, as she turned at the foot of the gangway and saw his face left behind among the crowd, and it had the look on it that he had not meant her to see, she did not have to remind herself of these things. She wanted to run back and say she would not go, that she would come with him to Coco Solo, Panama; but her legs took her on up the gangway, and when she went to the rail to lean over and wave, his face was back to normal again.

All these things she thought of as she lay in her bunk and braced her tired body against the rolling of the ship. At night she took sleeping pills to make sure that she would not lie awake and go on thinking, but when she slept she dreamed of Jerry. She had not dreamed of him for months, but on the ship she dreamed of him every night. On the last morning she woke believing that he was still alive. When reality seeped back to her she lay for a while quite still, thinking that she might recapture the dream if she did not move. Then she realized that she was able to lie still, that she was not being shifted from side to side of the bunk. The sea was calm, the boat sailed evenly on, and outside her porthole the early-morning sun glittered on the sea and on an unpretentious coastline of low cliffs and little white houses. She had come home to England.