Holiday (17 page)

‘At the expense of her mother?’

‘Look. Irene set this up. She made the fuss in the first place.’

‘She may have been right. These things start in a small way. You said so yourself.’

‘She may well. But she made too much fuss. That’s all I’m claiming. I’m not saying that she shouldn’t have checked Meg, chided her, told her to be careful. She’d have my support in that. But to blow her top, put the child’s back up, have the whole house in hysteria seems not very sensible.’ Vernon brushed his neck along the back of his collar. ‘I don’t need to tell you that your-lady-wife needs some handling. You think I spoilt her, don’t you?’

‘She likes her own way, granted.’

‘It’s damn’ difficult for me to see this in perspective. She could be maddening, but she was generous, and helpful.’

‘And wilful.’

‘Could you trust her?’ Vernon’s accusatory finger hovered.

‘I wouldn’t know how to begin to answer that. When we were first married she had a job at which she was good. Then she was at home with Donnie. Sometimes she’d say she’d do some chore. “I’ll clean that spare room up today.” You know. But it didn’t get done. I think that was a kind of suggestion. “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to clean etc. etc?” She wasn’t idle. She was always doing things. Often surprising . . .’

‘She annoyed you?’

‘Let’s say I could have been consulted. She rubbed a beautiful mahogany sideboard down and then painted it baby blue. I could have murdered her.’

‘But,’ Vernon frowned his interest, ‘did she realise how furious you’d be?’

‘That puzzled me. I thought anyone with a shred of taste would have been horrified by what she’d done. But to her, the shape of the thing was ungainly, its mirror a bit fly-blown and these defects made it worthless. The polish, the grain, the lustre of the wood meant nothing. I think now that my reaction horrified her as much as her action did me.’

‘But you were wrong?’

‘I suppose I was.’

‘You raved on at her?’

‘I suppose my few sarcasms could . . .’

‘It still annoys you, Edwin?’

‘Not about a piece of furniture. The fact that I was so stupid about how she felt.’

‘Like me, you should have given in?’

Fisher nodded so that the two sat miserably on their settee watching the constant movement of guests like princely fishes in the high glass foyer. All shone, washed in brightness; no one approached them because there was a plenitude of room. So they kept up their puzzled grief together, added to it by words which no eavesdropper inhibited.

‘Something I’d like to ask,’ Vernon said, brusquely, rubbing his hands. It was then, Fisher thought, he seemed most hypocritical. He did not wait for permission. ‘Who left whom?’

‘Technically, I walked out. But for weeks now we’ve both been threatening each other. Or inviting. It’s pretty childish, when you come to look at it.’

‘I expect you’d got on one another’s nerves. That’s serious.’

‘That’s so. But our behaviour.’ Fisher, launched, wondered at the wisdom of his confession. ‘We were snarling and scratching for the slightest verbal advantage. I feel ashamed. But if I went back it wouldn’t be long before we were at it again.’

‘The marriage is finished, you think?’

‘I don’t know what to think. After a rest we might patch it up. Have another child. I’ve nothing to compare it with. Did we quarrel more often than other couples who stay together? Or more violently? Or efficiently? I haven’t got those answers.’

‘Do you love Meg, Edwin?’

‘God knows.’

They embarked on further rounds of questions. Who did, who was, who could have? Both knew the uselessness of the exchange but at least they mentioned Meg’s name freely and this comforted Fisher.

‘I think,’ he said.

‘Well?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘Come on. Out with it man.’

‘I think you should invite her again. See what happens.’

‘No.’ Vernon shook his head, deepened his wrinkles. ‘No. You’re going back on Saturday. And we’ll let things ride. Let her stew.’

‘She may need help.’

‘I’ll see her next week.’

Fisher considered, jinking money in his pocket.

‘I’ll reply to her card.’

‘Yes, do that. But be careful what you say.’

Fisher nodded. Vernon stood, held out his hand.

‘Thank you Edwin. I can’t say how sorry I am about all this. It makes me feel, somehow, that I’m at fault. But many, many thanks for coming.’ They shook. ‘Now, I’ll go to get rid of these whiskers.’

At the door, the commissionaire saluted, perhaps because no Rolls was arriving that minute. Fisher felt cheered, considered stepping back in for lunch, but made rapidly for the town centre.

The beach seemed noiser, more crowded than before, brighter with bathrobes and wind-breaks. Balls were flung and kicked; families played cricket, shouting and cheating; the shallow sea was blackly dotted with people. He passed Carol and Tricia, in bathrobes, eating ice cream in the company of two young men. Though both girls smiled and spoke, they did not seem pleased to see him. Their beaux, in briefs, were flabby, hairy, on the way to paunches and thin hair. Fisher, half annoyed, wondered why he felt saddened. Mr and Mrs Hollies both jumped from their chairs to wave, to shout.

‘Going places?’ Hollies asked.

‘I’ve just come from the Frankland Towers.’

‘They say it’s lovely there,’ Lena said. ‘I’ve never been in.’

‘The booze tastes the same. It’s the price as is different.’ Hollies.

They invited him to sit down, but he refused, though he did not immediately move on.

‘Are you going for a swim?’ Lena asked.

‘Could be. Are you?’

‘That’ll be the day.’ Her husband laughed.

‘I don’t know. Your wife showed Mrs Smith and myself up last night. She can run.’

‘Can she, by God?’ Hollies said. ‘She’ll be running away from me.’ He amused himself, nobody else, with a wry face. ‘I could go for a drink. How about it?’

Fisher declined.

‘Tell you what, then,’ Hollies spoke expansively, doing the world a favour. ‘You keep my seat warm here with Lena while I go. Shan’t be half an hour.’

‘Perhaps your wife would . . .’

‘You don’t know her. That’s obvious. She’d as soon go in a church as in a pub at dinner time. You sit down. Keep her company.’

Fisher did so, not pleased. Hollies pulled his jacket on, checked his pockets and stumped off.

‘Wouldn’t he have gone if I hadn’t arrived?’

‘Might.’

‘He enjoys himself.’

‘I’ll say this for him. He’ll stop only for the half hour. But he’ll pour beer into himself. And he’ll spend the whole afternoon trailing back and forward, back and forward to the urinals.’

She passed Fisher a bag of fruit, from which he chose an apple.

‘He’s a man who knows his mind, I’d say. Sociable with it.’

‘More so now. When I first knew him, he was a devil for pushing his nose into an argument.’

‘You didn’t like that?’

‘No, I didn’t. But he was well-built. So he didn’t get into trouble. Now, at weekends they have a stripper, and they all sit staring.’

‘They don’t invite the ladies?’

‘No. Though some’d go.’

‘You don’t like the idea?’

‘I wouldn’t do it myself, if that’s what you mean. But he does. All men’s the same. You would, I expect.’

‘I expect so.’

She laughed, screwing up her eyes.

‘Have you never been to a strip-joint, then?’

‘No.’

Slightly worried, she adjusted the hem of her dress.

‘How do you like that Mrs Smith, then? Sandra?’

‘Very much.’

‘She was setting her cap at you, you know. Last night.’

‘Do you think so?’

Mrs Hollies nodded, largely uglifying her face.

‘I bet she leads her husband a ta-ta.’

‘He seems a nice chap.’

‘Wet. Useful with the boys, which is more than you can say of my old man. But he’s got no go about him, no life. No nothing. I like a man who is a man. I’m not saying shouting and yelling his head off, but who lets you know he’s there.’

‘He’s too self-effacing?’ Fisher asked. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘You hadn’t time to notice much with milady playing you on.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’ She mocked him exactly. ‘You want to watch her Mr Fisher.’

By this time Mrs Hollies had completed a complicated operation involving starch-free biscuits, cheese-slices and tomatoes. Now she began to eat, carefully catching the crumbs in a paper serviette, edged with dim roses.

‘I’ll be careful,’ he said maliciously. She did not answer, but ate steadily, rather noisily, tongue licking lips clean.

‘I’m not blaming you,’ she said, dusting her hands. ‘it’s her. I known her sort. Different’s better. You’re married, aren’t you? Or have been?’ He nodded. ‘Your wife’s not here?’ Shook. ‘You know all about it. But I’ve seen her sort.’

‘Why don’t you like her?’

The woman looked up, sharply, almost, he thought, ironically at the naive question, barely disguising a sneer, but not immediately answering.

‘I know her sort.’

‘You mean,’ said Fisher, ‘that you’re not judging her for anything she’s actually said or done, but that she reminds you of some people whom you consider disreputable, and you therefore think she’s something of that nature.’

Mrs Hollies considered. She’d understood the question and grinned wickedly at Fisher’s impudent formality.

‘Was she nuzzling up to you behind that hut? On the sands? Rubbing her titties on your arm?’

‘Were you?’ he asked, sharp.

She blushed, suddenly, redly, so that he felt ashamed, degraded.

‘I’d had one or two, but I didn’t go that far wrong,’ she said. Her voice was humorous, but he could not forget the little hot face. Malice with modesty. ‘I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy walking along clinging to a handsome young fellow.’

‘You flatter me.’

‘No, fair’s fair. And I could give you a better time than that little bit. But I know what you’d fancy. I don’t blame you.’

‘What would you say if I told you, Mrs Hollies, you surprised me?’

‘Not a word.’

She held the fruit bag out again, and neatly took the core from his fingers to drop into a litter-box. Now she sat quite composed, enjoying herself.

‘You don’t mind my talking to you like this, do you?’

‘No.’

‘Come on, then.’ She laughed, richly in her throat.

‘I thought you were a quiet little woman, under your husband’s thumb, so that you did surprise me last night.’

Mrs Hollies returned to eating as if she needed time and mastication to deal with his statements. She finished another elaborate biscuit sandwich.

‘I like you, Mr Fisher. Not only in that way. There’s something about you I don’t always get. I’d give you a pound to a penny on what my Jack’d say or do at any time. But not you. What are you laughing at?’

‘Something you said last night.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘About Jack?’ She fiddled again in a receptacle for a knife and a fruit tart. ‘I said he’d want his sex, didn’t I? And you wonder if we had it. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it?’

‘No. As a matter of fact . . .’

‘Well, we did. I don’t mind telling you. It’s a natural thing, and I don’t see why I should keep it secret. We enjoyed it.’

‘I see.’ Fisher looked away. Nearly naked sunbathers trotted or sprawled round him.

‘You think I’m dirty to tell you. You wouldn’t let on to me, would you?’

‘No. I don’t think I would.’

‘Not with your wife, even? I don’t mean Sandra.’

‘No.’

‘Well,’ she said, blowing sugar-grains from her lips, ‘we’re all made different. Wouldn’t do if we were all alike would it?’ Her voice changed; she had read his warning signal and prepared for generalities. She chatted about her home, its value, its deficiencies; she recalled the terrace in Woolwich where she’d been brought up; she sketched her father’s skill, her mother’s compulsion to work.

Interesting as he found this, he guessed that she talked to win back favour, to excuse a moral lapse. He examined her. A few years back she’d have been pretty, but now she was thin, thinly lined, her bosom too large for the small, lively body. Her slender legs were well shaped, hairless, lightly tanned, those of a young woman. He could have stroked them. She recalled a rabbit she’d kept in a back-garden hutch, and a cat. Her neck stretched stringy, a tense bundle of nerves. Her fingers scraped skin off the air.

Humming, nodding, he encouraged her reminiscence.

When her husband returned, exactly on time, she became quiet, immersed in preparation of his meal. Embarrassed Fisher excused himself, wasted time in an expensive fish restaurant where silver knives and forks were heavy and the waitresses skipped in black frocks and lace caps. Free again, he sat on a bench in the street, picking up scraps of conversation.

Thursday, now he strolled towards the Methodist Church where the iron gates were padlocked, and posters of scragribbed refugees faded in the sunshine. Thursday.

When he was on holiday as a boy the first three days had passed slowly, but by Thursday time flew. Friday flashed a nothing. One bought presents; one ventured into the sea, but home, wash-day, errands reestablished themselves in the mind.

Thursday, of a week at Bealthorpe, on the North Sea. Thursday on the German Ocean.

Ye cannot serve God and Mammon (Matt. 6, 24). He served neither. A time-server. A person of no consequence.

He remembered Meg shouting at him, ‘Don’t you believe anything?’ Round them the Yorkshire valleys and a criss-cross of fields, small mills on the rivers, the ruins of railway tracks and beyond the bald mountains, hunched and ugly, scowling in the summer sun, the moors. The two of them sat, he remembered, under a fantastic pile of rocks, like pillars of grey toffee, curiously smooth amongst the grass, the tall willow-herb, the sycamore bushes that would soon be trees, tired, angry with each other because they’d clambered up a steep road, and kicked about a disused quarry and now at midday were miles from a drink. They’d sat, eating dry sandwiches, swatting at flies, searching for a subject to quarrel over. Money. They were not paying enough for their keep, she claimed.