Sins of the Fathers (86 page)

‘But you don’t understand—’

‘I understand too damned well! You stay away from him!’

‘But surely you don’t believe he’d make a pass at me when he knows I’m engaged to marry someone else!’

‘Whether he behaves like a heel or a knight in shining armour is irrelevant. The point is he’ll upset you by raking up a past
which is best forgotten.’

‘
You’re
a fine one to give me lectures on the subject of forgetting the past!’

Scott’s mouth hardened. I had a split-second impression of anger imprisoned behind the bleak blunt bones on his face.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s just check if I have this straight.’ He never raised his voice. On the contrary his voice had a peculiarly
lifeless quality as if all emotion had been mercilessly excised from it, but he still managed to radiate an immense anger.
‘You’re going to marry me. We’re living right now in a trial marriage, and since this is so I reckon I’m entitled to the rights
of a trial husband; I reckon I’m entitled to tell you to stay away from a man whose one object in life is to get back into
bed with you again.’

‘But what about me? Am I just a kewpie-doll with no mind of her own? Don’t you attach any importance to what
I
want to do? I don’t want to get back into bed with Sebastian! All I want is—’

‘All you want, apparently, is to make a complete fool of yourself!’

‘Look, Scott, if you’d ever been married you’d know that marriage is more than issuing orders and talking about rights whenever
you find yourself in a situation which is disagreeable to you. There are times when you have to trust your partner, times
when there has to be give and take—’

‘Yes, but this isn’t one of those times. Excuse me.’

The bathroom door slammed. I allowed myself a full minute to calm down and then I went to the other bathroom to calm myself
still further by taking a long hot bath. By the time I emerged Scott had disappeared. After dressing quickly I went downstairs
to the library but when no one answered my knock on the door I assumed the room was empty. I turned away, but some instinct
made me turn back, knock again and look in.

He was standing by the window with a glass in his hand. The vodka bottle, quarter-full, was standing uncapped on the table.

‘Oh!’ I said. I was so upset I could say nothing else. I went on standing stupidly in the doorway.

He glanced around. ‘I wanted to be alone. If you can’t leave me alone I’ll get out.’

‘Sure. Okay. Sorry,’ I said, backing away, and closed the door very softly as if I were afraid it might shatter beneath my
fingertips. Upstairs in the living-room I looked at the phone but made no attempt to call Sebastian. I merely sat down and
waited, although what I was waiting for I didn’t know.

He went out ten minutes later. When I heard the front door close I ran to the window and saw him walking swiftly away in the
rain. In the library I found the bottle of vodka. It was empty.

The clock on the mantel told me the time was eleven o’clock in the morning.

[9]

I waited all day for him to come back. Once or twice I started crying but I controlled my tears and forced myself to stay
calm. I could neither eat nor drink. I just waited and waited, longing only for the opportunity to tell him that I wouldn’t
see Sebastian, not if it upset him, because nothing was more important to me than his belief that I loved him enough to prevent
anyone dividing us.

It was after eleven o’clock that night when he returned. Upstairs in our bedroom I was sitting at the vanity as I brushed
my hair, but as soon as I heard the front door close I jumped to my feet and ran to the head of the stairs.

I thought he might be drunk, reeling from side to side of the hall, perhaps even singing. But I was mistaken. There was no
singing, no reeling. When I reached the head of the stairs I saw he was leaning nonchalantly against the panels of the front
door, and it was only when I called his name and he glanced up that I saw how far removed he was from normality.

His eyes were like black holes. They saw me yet did not see me. Very slowly he stopped leaning against the door and straightened
his back but there was no swaying, no stumbling. As always his self-control appeared to be immaculate, and thinking in relief
that he was disturbed but sober I rushed down the stairs to take him in my arms.

I got no further than the fifth stair. Then I stopped. I think it was
because he was so still. His extreme stillness made my scalp prickle, and then suddenly I could feel the violence vibrating
across the yards which separated us and I knew that his immaculate self-control was an illusion, a façade which was already
crumbling before my eyes.

I called out: ‘Just a minute – I’ll be right with you,’ and my lips were so stiff that I could hardly speak. Darting back
to the bedroom I just had time to struggle into jeans and a sweater before he burst into the room.

What terrified me most was his incredible speed. Then when I realized I was terrified I was more terrified than ever. I tried
to get a grip on my terror by telling myself that everything was going to be all right, but I knew now what my instinct had
told me on the stairs. Everything wasn’t going to be all right. Everything was going to be very, very wrong.

He swung the door wide and then using every ounce of strength in his body he flung the door back into its frame. The wood
cracked. The noise reverberated sickeningly in my ears. For a moment he wrestled with the lock but the door must have dropped
a fraction on its hinges for the key refused to turn. In a rage he pulled the key out and hurled it across the room at the
vanity. The mirror instantly smashed. The floor was strewn with glass and my heart was hammering in my lungs.

I tried to be calm, tried to be rational. ‘Scott,’ I said gently, ‘I’m very sorry about—’

‘SHUTUP!’ he shouted at me. ‘Shutup, you fucking bitch!’

I could see now that he was blind drunk. The fact that it was so very far from obvious only heightened the horror; I had begun
to think he had gone out of his mind unaided by alcohol and I might have gone on believing that for some time if he hadn’t
blundered against the nightstand and betrayed his unsteadiness on his feet. The collision maddened him. Furious that anything
should impede his progress he picked up the lamp to smash it but it slipped through his fingers to the floor, and when he
started to curse I heard the blurred consonants at last and knew that although he was using the full force of his will to
obliterate the hallmarks of drunkenness his will was slowly slipping as the poison invaded his brain.

I said in the most normal voice I could manage. ‘I’ll go and fix you some coffee,’ and I tried to slip past him to the door.

He grabbed my wrist, twisted my arm behind my back so fiercely that I screamed, and shoved me away from him. I screamed again,
tripped, fell across the bed.

‘Scott—’

‘You shut your mouth or I’ll kill you.’

I saw now that it was useless to be calm or to attempt to talk rationally. He was far beyond all words of love and comfort.
There was nothing I could do for him. All I could do was get out.

If I could.

He took a step towards the bed. I somehow managed to roll away from him over to the far side but that was very difficult because
my limbs felt like lumps of lead. He began to talk but at first I could not hear him because the blood was pounding so fiercely
in my ears, and then when he raised his voice and I did hear him I wished I could have gone on being deafened by my own terror.
He said I wasn’t to give him orders because he was the one in control; he was the one who gave the orders and dealt out the
punishments. He said he hated everyone who hurt him, but that was all right, that was fine, because hatred kept a man alive.
It was love that killed him.

‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’ he was shouting at me. ‘Why don’t you answer? Can’t you hear?’

‘Yes, I can hear.’ I wanted to leave the bed but I was afraid to stir in case any movement triggered some uncontrollable force
in him, so I stayed motionless and listened to him talking about how love destroyed people, how women destroyed men, how women
had to be punished, had to be beaten back, had to be smashed down, had to be—

I put my hands over my ears.

‘No, you listen to me!’ He was on top of me in an instant, wrenching my hands aside. ‘You listen to me! I’m going to teach
you a lesson, I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget, I’m going to—’

I didn’t think he could possibly be capable of intercourse. What terrified me was what he would do when he found himself impotent.

By this time my thoughts were no longer flashing through my mind in inarticulate images but rapping out short sharp messages
in words. Had to distract his attention. Couldn’t think how. He wouldn’t notice. He couldn’t see anything. He could barely
see me. He was only seeing symbols. He was drowning in his own darkness, suffocating in his own blood.

He was cursing again as he struggled with his clothes and found he had lost control over his fingers. The zipper on his fly
jammed, snapped free, then jammed again.

Mustn’t display panic. Mustn’t display fear. Terror would only turn him on.

‘Darling, you’re so sexy when you’re like this!’ I said. ‘But wait – don’t bust the zipper. Here, let me fix it for you—’

His hands automatically relaxed, leaving his body unguarded. I hit
him as hard as I could, and then in a flash I had grabbed my bag and was running, running, running out of the door, down the
stairs, lots of stairs, running, running, running across the hall, falling against the front door, scrabbling with the lock,
and all the while he was running and shouting behind me, running, running, running with his demonic unnatural speed, and then
the door was open and the night was dark and wet and cold, and I was running, running, running in my bare feet down the road
until suddenly there were bright lights and huge buildings and moving people and I was in Knightsbridge and a cab was cruising
past and I shouted and it stopped and I fell inside.

‘Where to?’ said the driver bored.

I whispered: ‘Anywhere. Just go.’

He drove off. We circled Hyde Park Corner three times but before we could embark on our fourth orbit I knew where I wanted
to be.

Ten minutes later outside Kevin’s Chelsea mews I was ringing the front door bell with a trembling hand.

[10]

‘Have a little Irish whiskey, my dear,’ said Kevin. ‘You’ll love it after the first few hair-raising sips. No, don’t keep
on saying how late it is and how awful you feel about bothering me and what the hell can Charles be thinking. Charles is asleep
and very unlikely to wake up, I don’t give a damn how late it is, and I adore being bothered by beautiful women in distress.
One gets so little of that kind of excitement at my age … Did Scott kick you out?’

‘I ran away,’ I said and broke down, my body shaking with sobs, the tears streaming down my cheeks, the Irish whiskey spilling
from my glass.

Kevin said: ‘That’s better. That’s much more natural.’ I felt his arm slip around me as he removed the glass from my hand.
Then he said: ‘Let me get you a sweater and some socks. You’re very cold.’

I went on crying but by the time he returned I had controlled the sobs and was wiping away the tears.

‘Here you are,’ said Kevin. ‘Put these on and then wrap yourself in this blanket. I’ll make you a hot drink.’

He disappeared again and clumsily I pulled on a pair of grey socks over my bare feet. That took some time because my fingers
were so stiff. Then I struggled into the thick blue sweater and huddled myself in the woolly blanket just as Kevin reappeared
with a mug of dark sweet tea.

We sat for a while on the couch. Very slowly I began to feel warmer. Sipping my tea I stared at the typically English, faded
elegance of that comfortable living-room, the antiques lying casually around as if they had grown out of the floor decades
ago, the jumbled collection of books on the shelves by the fireplace, the scattered papers on the desk, and on the table a
Waterford crystal vase filled with yellow roses.

‘“And the roses had the look of flowers that are looked at,”’ I thought, and suddenly realized I had spoken Eliot’s words
aloud.

‘Ghastly, aren’t they?’ said Kevin. ‘Charles keeps on buying them, but I think their plastic splendour gives the room an air
of total unreality … Do you feel any closer to reality yet, or do you still feel as if you’re struggling in a nightmare?’

‘I’m feeling better. But—’

‘—but everything’s still a nightmare? Tell me about it. A nightmare shared is often a nightmare pared down to manageable proportions.
Besides, since I’ve never liked Scott I’m unlikely to be either disillusioned or shocked.’

‘This’ll shock you.’

‘Oh good. I’m so tediously difficult to shock. It makes life so dull. Shock me.’

I talked in disconnected sentences for some minutes, and when I broke off at last to look at Kevin I saw he was indeed shocked.

‘Kevin—’

‘Yes. Sorry to be so blank. I was just trying to think. You realize, of course, that he’s an alcoholic?’

‘But Kevin, that’s what’s so extraordinary! He’s not! He has complete control over his drinking habits!’

‘My dear,’ said Kevin, ‘if that’s true, why are you here?’

‘But this was just an isolated occasion!’

‘Do you seriously believe this has never happened before?’

I thought of Scott talking of the abrupt termination of his affair with the librarian. I remembered him saying: ‘I got into
bad trouble in the navy.’ I heard him confessing that he had given up casual affairs when he had found himself unable to face
them without alcohol.

I couldn’t speak.

‘You can bet this wasn’t the first time,’ said Kevin, ‘and you can bet it won’t be the last unless he and alcohol part company
for good. God knows I’m a heavy drinker, but at least I don’t make life intolerable for myself and the people around me by
my drinking. Are you going back to him?’