Midsummer Night in the Workhouse Read online

  ‘But people need propping up.’

  ‘Well, they shouldn’t.’

  ‘Why not? Look –’ and he broke off. If he went on he’d tell too much. And why should he let her get away with this aggressiveness? Her manner was cheerful and relaxed, but it was aggressiveness. He would take the initiative.

  ‘It sounds to me,’ he said, ‘as though you and Jake were going through one of those bad spells.’

  ‘Oh no, darling. Jake and I are fine – we got our bad spells over long ago. We have an agreement now. We’ve got the children, and we like each other very much, so we stick together, but we go our own ways. We observe the decencies, of course – I’d be furious if Jake flaunted an affair under my nose, but he’d never dream of doing that – and we’re as happy together as we’ve ever been.’

  ‘I don’t believe that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s not natural. You can’t possibly not mind.’

  ‘Now that’s a maddening habit, telling people what they feel or don’t feel –’ but before Philip could apologise she had switched her mood, and she went on ‘– though you’re right in a way, of course. It is rather sad, giving up dreams of happy-ever-after-with-my-only-love – one would like it to be possible. I expect I’d have gone on pretending if Jake had let me, and it might have gone on feeling real, too, because then I’d never have had a flutter myself.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you see, I felt like you to begin with, when it was Jake fluttering and me sitting at home forlorn – how could I not mind when he was destroying what I lived for, and all that. But when things started happening to me. . . .’ and she threw back her head and laughed out with such genuine amusement that people turned to look at her and started to smile in sympathy. ‘Oh god!’ she said. ‘Aren’t human beings awful, aren’t they absurd? The things one catches oneself out in!’

  ‘You’re an extraordinary woman,’ said Philip. She seemed at this moment slightly larger than life, her eyes and teeth gleaming in laughter, orange reflections from the shaded lights on her cheekbones and forehead, and the slight cushions of flesh swelling above the rim of her dress giving an almost imperceptible jelly-like quiver which made him salivate. ‘I never realised before,’ he said, ‘what an extra- ordinary woman you are.’

  ‘What was your first impression of me, that time in Kitzbuhel?’

  ‘A mother. You were taking the children off to the nursery slopes and you had that rather daunting sort of calm resourcefulness about you that good mothers have. I thought you probably cooked very well, and said the right things to Jake’s partners, but that what you were most concerned with was your children.’

  ‘I am a good mother, and I do cook well.’

  ‘I know that – and then in the evening it was surprising when you started to take someone off and I saw you were a clown as well.’ He naturally didn’t add that he and Sarah had also seen that when she was free of the discipline of skiing clothes she could look like a barmaid. That’s what Sarah had said, but now it seemed to Philip that his own assent had been superficial, and that if he had paid more attention to Lilian at the time it would have been other things that he would have noticed.

  ‘What was your impression of me?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought you didn’t know you were good-looking, which was nice, and that your manners were too good so that you might be concealing some quite creepy thoughts, which wasn’t so nice.’

  ‘Creepy?’

  ‘Well, critical – ironic. Or anyway not showing what you were really feeling, like at the party this evening. I saw you earlier and there you were, smiling away so attentively at someone, and really all you were longing to do was bolt.’

  It was an acceptable image compared to the reality, and Philip adopted it. Anxiety and tension had fallen away and he began enjoying Lilian instead of watching her, and talking well. He hadn’t talked so amusingly for a long time. It was like riding a bicycle, he thought vaguely; however long you don’t do it, you don’t lose the knack. Between them there started to be that curious suspension of awareness which means that if you chose to be aware you would know what was going to happen next.

  And it did, too, as smoothly as though this were a fantasy. Neither of Philip’s two other infidelities had been so simple. It wasn’t late when they finished dinner, and coffee at Lilian’s place rather than in the restaurant would be so obviously more agreeable that there was no undercurrent to deciding on it. The babysitter lived near and didn’t have to be driven home; the children had gone to bed and to sleep early. While Lilian was tucking them in – checking on them? – it was more the sexiness of the situation than thoughts of her which began to excite Philip: the silence in her living-room, the dim light – she had switched on only one lamp – the smell of the Roman hyacinths planted in a wide copper pan, the width of the sofa, the intimate sound of the clock’s ticking. It was a pretty little French clock, cleverly placed to look surprising but decorative in what was evidently an architect’s room. There was altogether more softness and ornament about than is usual in such a room, but it was used well; either Jake was boss, or Lilian had better taste in rooms than she had in clothes.

  She came in with the coffee on a tray and went across to the drinks table, where she stood with her back to him, raising a bottle of brandy to the light to see if there was any left in it. ‘And why not?’ he thought as he went over and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Why not, for god’s sake, after all I’ve gone through?’

  It was her heat which made his own flare up so violently. By the time they were on the sofa and she was opening his fly she was panting and giving little moans, and he had an erection such as he hadn’t had for years; he had that real tipped-over-the-edge, nothing-could-stop-me-now feeling, and hardly noticed her body’s feel, taste and smell so urgently did he need to get into her. She used words. ‘Screw me,’ she muttered, ‘fuck me, drive it in, drive it in deep,’ and opening his eyes, seeing her face lost to everything but sensation, he was carried dizzily into coming much sooner than he wanted to. But either she was as quick as he, or she was a generous faker: she was there with him, or so it seemed, and had turned herself into a blissful feather-bed.

  Only a few minutes after Philip’s prick had slipped out of the wet warmth where he wished it could stay for ever, the clock on the chimney piece gave a tinkling chime and struck ten. He counted idly, half asleep, then did a double-take: ten – and he had to get back to Highgate no later than he would have done if he’d just had dinner out. Sarah was going to be angry enough already – if, that is, she herself had got back to Highgate. . . .

  ‘I’ll call a minicab,’ said Lilian. ‘You can wash in the down- stairs loo if you want to – look, across there. Don’t worry, love, it won’t take long to get back at this time in the evening.’ Still disheveled and flushed, but calm and kind. Sweet Lilian, he was going to have to think about her later, see her again somehow, get her properly into bed, but now it was only by deliberate self-discipline that he could stroke her hair off her face, kiss her and say the right things. When he was in the loo he must wash himself carefully and make sure that there weren’t any marks on his trousers. Luckily she hadn’t been wearing scent. ...

  She said as he left that the best time to telephone her was between ten and eleven in the morning. ‘It won’t be easy, but it would be nice to meet again, don’t you think?’ The words were brisk but the voice was husky. ‘Yes I do think – of course I do,’ he said; and in the cab he felt marvellous: comfortably distanced from Sarah, restored, in control, immune. Anxiety at the thought of finding the house empty began to niggle halfway through the drive, but when he saw a light in their bedroom confidence returned. It would only be a quarrel, not disaster. Sarah knew that he really did detest that sort of drinks party, so it wouldn’t be incredible that this evening he had flipped and gone off in a temper when he coul
dn’t immediately find her, and he’d tell her he’d eaten with the Morrises. The nearer a lie came to the truth, the better. Lilian might well have left the party early in order to pick Jake up somewhere.

  The dogs came to greet him. Sarah hadn’t yet shut them up for the night in the back passage, their ‘bedroom’ – no, of course not, it was still quite early. She was only upstairs herself because she was annoyed. Philip liked his house. Going up the stairs he was aware of the carpet under his feet – they’d just bought it and scrapped the old one given them by Sarah’s mother – and noticed the shadows thrown on the ceiling by the white paper lampshade he’d designed himself. As he always did when relaxed, he enjoyed the vermilion chest under the window on the landing. It was a pity that Sarah was going to be angry, but it was nice to be home.

  He opened the bedroom door. She wasn’t there – must be in the bathroom, yes, he could hear her – but the dress she’d been wearing was over the back of a chair, her bag and gloves were on the bed and her shoes were by the dressing-table, one of them lying on its side. She was very cross indeed; she hardly ever failed to put things away as she took them off. But the familiar room was welcoming. There would be no point in going downstairs again – it was always Sarah who put the dogs to bed – so he might as well start undressing while she was in the bathroom.

  And suddenly Philip realised that the sound of running water wasn’t made by the taps of the hand-basin, but by those of the bath. They were full on, both of them. Sarah was running a bath. She had come home, hurried upstairs, stripped off her clothes and gone straight to take a bath: she, who always had her bath in the morning except when she took one before going out to a party, which she had done this evening.

  Slowly he pushed his arm back into the sleeve of his jacket, feeling his ribs shake as his heart began to thump. He mustn’t – he couldn’t – be there when she came into the bedroom pink-faced, smelling only of soap and talcum powder. He must go downstairs. A drink – yes, he must get himself a drink, that was what one did.

  He went to the kitchen because it was the room furthest from the bedroom. There was no anger yet, only pain. He observed it with dim interest: he couldn’t describe it, but it was a perfectly distinct pain, like a physical wound. Pain and grief. Pain and fear. Panic, perhaps. He sat at the kitchen table staring straight in front of him, feeling this sensation swell within him and not even thinking of asking himself why it should do so.

  BURIED

  Colonel Cooper and Mrs Klein, brother and sister, forty-eight and forty-six years old, were driving too fast down a lane in Essex on a moonlit night in May.

  ‘You’re going too fast,’ said Mrs Klein.

  ‘Balls,’ said Colonel Cooper. He was a man who rarely used bad language, she a woman who hardly ever did, but when they were together (which was not often) it was curious how they would sometimes speak quite coarsely.

  It was two years since Mrs Klein had last visited Guy Cooper and his wife. She liked their home – it had been hers, too, until she grew up – and she was glad that Guy kept it going now that he had retired. But on her last visit her husband had come with her and she had sworn, as she had done so many times: never again. Guy had not been rude and Harry Klein had not been bored; it had only been for a weekend and anyway the Coopers fascinated him. But Enid Klein had known her brother’s thoughts as clearly as though he had spoken them and she could not endure to see Harry in a room where such thoughts were going on.

  ‘Well, it’s your life,’ Guy had said twenty years ago, soon after their father died. He was staying in her London flat for a night on his way home for leave. ‘If you like it I suppose it’s all right, but it seems bloody unwholesome to me. No air, no green, nothing but stink and racket’ (that had been his picture of London since he was a boy) ‘and those long-haired friends of yours, all talk, no action, natter natter natter on subjects they know nothing about. If you go on like this you’ll end by marrying some frightful Commie Yid.’

  ‘That’s just what I am going to do, if you want to know,’ Enid had answered. ‘Except that he’s a Socialist, but I wouldn’t expect you to know the difference.’

  ‘Good God!’ he had said. ‘Not really? You mean you’ve actually got engaged to one?’

  ‘I’m marrying Harry Klein next month – the economist.’

  ‘Really?’ he had said, not sure whether she was pulling his leg. When she had convinced him, he flushed; but whether with embarrassment at his own gaffe or with anger she was not sure. Whichever it was, he drowned it in a guffaw. ‘My God!’ he roared. ‘It’s too good to be true, it’s just what I’ve always said would happen. Christ! Think of Mama and the uncles!’

  Enid and Guy hardly had a thought in common but they had this way out: this ribaldry. He was putting Harry, she knew, on a level with his own disreputable bachelor affairs of which he could always tell her and at which she would laugh. Once he had seduced a sad girl in Enid’s spare room and Enid, seeing him a monster, had laughed till she cried at his account of it. It was she, on that occasion, who had saved something by summoning up the faces of Mama and the uncles.

  ‘I’ve already told Mama,’ she had said. ‘You’ll find her wearing her expression of doom, but she’ll get used to it.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll all have to,’ said Guy; then, pulling himself together (they had gone separate ways for so long, he did not much care): ‘You’ve always known what you wanted. I expect you’re right and he’s the chap for you. Anyway, E, I hope you’ll be very happy.’ And away he went, out of her life again, to tell his friends, when he thought of it, ‘And now my Red sister is marrying some frightful Jew.’

  Mama had become fond of Harry. He was amusing and distinguished, neither over-rich nor disagreeable to look at. Even the uncles had come to accept him, although they still made a point of bringing his career and position into any conversation with strangers as soon as possible: ‘A remarkably brilliant chap, of course,’ they would always say. And Guy, who hardly ever saw him, would not have said he disliked him. It was just that his courtesy was over-careful; that under his moustache, Enid knew, there was the sup- pressed twitch of a knowing grin. By common consent he and Harry would avoid politics, which meant that to keep talk going Harry had to spend a lot of time being interested in Guy’s affairs. He genuinely wanted to know about farming – he always wanted to know about things – and his questions were sensible, but the fact that he had to ask them was to Guy conclusive evidence that the chap had no idea. He knew his stuff in his own field, Guy didn’t doubt that, and he had never done anything disgraceful that anyone knew of: but he said ‘revoalve’ instead of ‘revolve’ and Guy was sure that he would wear galoshes on a muddy day, throw up if he saw maggots in a sheep’s flesh and would not know how to talk to the men. All of which was true. Guy himself sometimes paddled about in absurd overshoes of rubberised felt, fasten- ing over the instep with a latchet and known in the family as ‘Jemimas’. It was not easy to see in what way they were more correct than galoshes, but it was partly Enid’s own sensitivity to the latter which had made her so detest their visits to the Coopers.

  ‘You’re a freak, darling,’ Harry used to tell her in the days before they had become too accustomed to the situation to think about it. ‘There must have been a scandal in your family’s past that’s coming out in you. Do you think one of the Barbados Coopers legitimised a little coloured bastard, or an Essex one took a gypsy girl by droit de seigneur and adopted the baby? I can’t conceive how civilised thinking crept in otherwise.’ He had never expected her to quarrel with her family, partly because he was too intelligent to mind their attitude, partly because, with all his intelligence, he was not quite able to comprehend its full depths under the sufficiently amiable surface they presented to him. Enid could comprehend it, though, and she often wondered why she had not quarrelled, or not for long. ‘Yes,’ she had said. ‘A raped slave girl would explain why I hate them so much – th
at poor girl’s blood boiling in my veins!’ For it was with hatred, sometimes, that she came away from encounters dictated by habit, good nature and affection.

  This May, Harry was in New York for a conference. Guy’s wife, Lavender, wrote once a year to Enid, saying ‘When are you coming to see us?’ and nostalgic for a country spring,

  Enid had taken this chance of doing so. Now Lavender was in bed with a migraine and Guy and Enid had been without her to dine with neighbours. Back they were driving, much too fast, over a surface left greasy by a light shower.

  ‘Guy, please!’ said Enid.

  ‘You’re becoming a fusser,’ said Guy.

  ‘Well of course, old age,’ she was answering when they came to a bend, Guy cut it too sharply, the car bumped the verge, swayed onto the crown of the road and went into a skid. There were some long, suspended moments while Guy was all his hands on the wheel, concentrating too sharply to think, playing the skid, and Enid was saying to herself in what seemed a calm, slow voice: ‘So here we go at last, as long as it isn’t that oak tree, head on. . . .’ Then, with a crunch, they fetched up, bonnet obliquely into the right-hand bank, less violently than Guy deserved.

  Enid was jolted forward out of her seat. She was on the floor, Guy on top of her, for he had twisted sideways at the last moment in case the steering shaft should be driven backwards. Neither was hurt, but Enid could feel a ladder in her stocking running deliberately the whole length of her left leg.

  ‘You fool,’ she mumbled into her own sleeve. ‘You’ve laddered my stocking.’

  ‘You all right?’

  ‘How can I tell with you on top of me?’