King of the World (4 page)

“We’re going out for a takeaway,” he said. “I’ve explained to our guest that in dealing with such a stingy, inhospitable pair as you two, it’s the only –”

“
Inhospitable
! Oh, that’s not fair!” cried Diana, cut to the quick. “Look at all the times when I’ve …”

“I wouldn’t dream of looking at them” Alistair replied haughtily. “That would be looking at the past, wouldn’t it? Only the Oldies look back at the past. I’m a Now-person. I live in the present. The Present is all we have, and if the present consists of two greedy, sef-indulgent harridans refusing to share their delicious meal …”

By now, just a little too late, Diana realised that he was joking, and she gave an appropriate little laugh.

Then, suddenly, she tensed up again and became serious.

“You
are
coming back, aren’t you, Ali? For the night, I mean? It doesn’t matter how late …”

He laughed, amiably enough, and chucked her under the chin.

“Of course I am, chicken! Wouldn’t miss it for
anything
!” He laughed again, and winked mischievously at Bridget; making her wonder, yet again, if, perhaps, he
did
know what Diana was up to, after all? And was keeping quiet about it in order that, whatever happened, no one could possibly say it was his fault?

It was after midnight when Alistair and his protegé returned. Bridget had been on the point of falling asleep when she was roused by the furtive opening and shutting of the front door, followed by the hushed and unnerving tumult that is characteristic of people trying to be quiet.

Diana, as Bridget well knew, wasn’t a deep sleeper at the best of times, insomnia was more her style; and on this night in particular, with thermometer, stopwatch and menstrual chart all at the ready, she most certainly wouldn’t be sleeping.

So Bridget calculated; and swiftly following on this thought came its comforting corollary; namely, that Diana should be the one to get out of bed and cope with whatever needed coping with. Organising the spare bed (for at this hour there was no option
but
to allow the woman to stay the night). Clean sheets, towels, pillow-cases; making her a mug of something or other; asking her what she liked for breakfast, and when she wanted to be woken. Bridget lay very still, determined to do absolutely nothing.

It was fair enough. The whole thing was Alistair’s fault; he was Diana’s boy-friend, not hers. Snuggling down under the duvet, feeling deliciously un-guilty
about sloughing off all responsibility for what was happening, Bridget was soon asleep. It wasn’t until morning that she realised there was a price to be paid for this sloughing-off of responsibility. There always was.

For by leaving the whole awkward predicament to Diana, she had been, in effect, leaving it to Alistair, and ensuring that his impractical decisions would
prevail
. Diana would be sure to go along with whatever he recommended; and this, while Bridget slept, was exactly what came to pass.

Norah was to stay. Not just for this one night, but “Until she’s got herself sorted out.”

“And look, she’s even paid a week’s rent in advance!” proclaimed Diana, flourishing in front of Bridget’s face a little clutch of bank-notes, for all the world as if they were a symbol of victory: when, in fact, as Bridget could see at once, they were a symbol of abject defeat.

Norah had won. She now had a
right
to be here. Not just for the one week, but for all the foreseeable weeks while the intricate and time-consuming legal complications of getting her out dragged on, and on, and on …

Bridget tried to convey her dismay and apprehensions to Diana, but with only partial success; for Diana was already in a hurry, pouring soya milk onto her muesli with one eye on the clock.

“Oh, but Bridget, she’s not
like
that, I’m sure she isn’t. She knows she’s only filling in until we get a proper permanent tenant – and, let’s face it, we haven’t got one yet, have we? There’s no harm in getting a little money while we wait – and in cash, too. I can’t possibly get to the bank this week, and you know what a bore it is queuing up outside those cash-dispensers, and half the
time they don’t work anyway. Here, you have half!” – and she proffered the handful of notes spread out in a fan, like a deck of cards.

Bridget was about to refuse indignantly; then changed her mind and accepted. These notes, added to the contents of her own wallet, would enable her to return the whole sum to Norah, in cash, this very morning. That way, the whole transaction would be rendered null and void; surely it would? The thing would have to be done nicely, of course; no point in causing offence, and perhaps further fuss …

It was mid-morning, and the others had long left for work, when Norah, wearing the over-large flowered housecoat that Diana had lent her, made her way into the kitchen. The first thing she saw was Bridget’s note, propped up against the electric kettle, so that she couldn’t even make herself a cup of tea before reading it.

It was a nice enough note: “… welcome you here as our guest for a day or two … Couldn’t possibly accept any money … Must have a proper talk this evening …”

Slowly, Norah put the letter back into the envelope, together with the spurned bank notes. She no longer felt like having a cup of tea, and so she wandered out of the kitchen, still clutching the letter and the money in a trembling sweaty hand. Catching sight of the winter sun pouring in through the big windows of the room where they had all been sitting last night, she moved into its quiet glow and settled herself in one of the deep armchairs that faced towards the windows. An expanse of sky confronted her, and a criss-cross of black twigs belonging to a tall tree.

She turned the envelope over in her hands once or twice, but didn’t re-read Bridget’s note. She knew well enough what it said. It said that she couldn’t stay; not for more than a few days, anyway; at most, a week or two. Would a week – two weeks – be enough for her purposes? She must think … think.

The important thing was that they mustn’t discover why she had come, nor where she had just come from. Insanity frightened everyone, and with reason – no one knew that better than Norah herself, which was why she must think so hard, and so rapidly. Before they all got back this evening, she must have decided exactly what she was going to tell them.

Unfortunately, she had already closed some of her options by what she had already told them; perhaps she had already made things worse for herself?

What had possessed her, for instance, to tell them that she had no children? The television woman, Diana, had pounced on it at once: Why, if she had no children, had she needed to go to a refuge at all? An
independent
, able-bodied woman like herself – why couldn’t she have just walked out on her husband and found herself a job?

A good question. She, Norah, should have thought of it herself, and adapted her story accordingly.
Obviously
, she couldn’t have told them about Christopher, because that would have involved telling them what had happened to him; but surely she could have invented some imaginary child? A little girl called Alice,
perhaps
, aged nine, with long blonde hair and
learning
the violin? Or a son about to take his degree in Modern History and hoping to get into
publishing
?

But the trouble with this sort of thing was the questioning that would follow. Why doesn’t your son do something to help you? surely he’s old enough now to stand up to his father? Or: How is it you’ve run away without your little girl? Surely you’re not leaving her alone with her cruel and violent father?

And that was another problem: the way she’d made Mervyn out to be physically violent. He wasn’t anything of the kind, He’d never laid a finger on her, and she knew he never would. He was a reserved, intellectual man, a consultant psychiatrist at the local hospital, and he had honestly tried to help her with her problems; at the beginning, anyway.

Much of her anxiety, he’d assured her, was due to an unresolved fixation on her father that had damaged her relationships with men, including, of course, himself. Because her father had been critical, he’d explained, she saw criticism everywhere, so that when he, Mervyn, tried to offer helpful advice, she twisted it into some sort of attack. This made her very difficult to get on with, Mervyn pointed out; she seemed unable to tolerate the ordinary give-and-take of normal human intercourse. This, he’d told her, was the reason she was having such problems with Christopher. He, too, was a male, and so it was inevitable that he would arouse his mother’s unconscious fears.

“You can’t expect a thirteen-year-old to cope with the distortions of reality that you introduce into your relationship with him,” Mervyn had pointed out, in those early days, when the troubles had only just begun; and Norah, younger and less cowed in those days – had snapped back smartly:

“What do you mean, ‘distortions of reality’? You
mean I’m mad, don’t you? That’s what you’re saying – that I’m mad!”

“That’s not a word we ever use,” he’d reproved her gravely. “No one – no one at all – is any longer classified as ‘mad’. We don’t admit of any such clear-cut category. Let us just say that your hold on reality is – well – is a little tenuous …”

“Tenuous”. The word had angered her at the time, and now, more than four years later, it still seemed to add up to a devious way of saying she was mad. She remembered rushing in to her next-door
neighbour
for reassurance, confident of receiving it in full measure. She and Louise had long been in the habit of conferring together over their respective marital problems, and very soothing it was, for they always took each other’s side in whatever the argument might be.

“Mad? My dear Norah,
of
course
you’re not mad!” Louise had cried, as Norah had known she would, “I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous!” And then, elaborating on this as they settled themselves around Louise’s kitchen table with their cups of instant coffee, she continued: “They” (meaning
men
, of course, and husbands in particular) “They love to say that sort of thing, just to boost their own egos. It makes them feel grand, you see, to be the one
without
the failing in question, whatever it is. After all, your Mervyn
is
a psychiatrist and so he has to keep reassuring himself that he’s the pillar of sanity in a mad world. Desmond’s the same actually, only in our case it’s about money, not sanity. It’s considered my wifely duty to be the little pea-brain who can’t understand figures and is madly extravagant. When actually
he’s
the one who keeps
exchanging cars and buying new Hi-Fi equipment, even if he is a financial adviser.”

Norah, feeling better already, murmured her
sympathy
and whole-hearted agreement. The diagnosis seemed to be spot-on; at this stage of the problem, anyway.

But what, the two of them then asked each other, could you
do
? Argue back? Point out that you had bought your winter coat at a jumble-sale? That you had recently been complimented by your boss on the clarity and conciseness of your reports – hardly the kind of accolade to be awarded to a mad-woman?

Or should you, Louise mused, take the thing in your stride and let the husband get away with it? This way you at least ended up with a contented spouse, aglow with self-approval – surely an easier creature to get on with than one racked by guilt and self-doubt?

“And especially if he’s a psychiatrist,” Louise
speculated
. “Being in the right when everyone else is in the wrong is an essential tool of his trade, like a tractor is for a farmer. Take it away from him and he’s had it. In his heart he knows this, and that’s why he’s so touchy …

“If I were you, Norah, I’d let it ride, I really would. Take it as a joke. Say something like: ‘Oh, well, we’re all mad these days, and can you wonder, with this Government?’”

But Norah and Louise had not gone into the political situation in that cosy chat four years ago. They almost never did, so engrossed were they in their own concerns. It had been fun, though, Norah remembered. She and Louise always had fun when they got chatting, even about their troubles.
Especially
about their troubles,
you might say. Until, that is, the real darkness set in; the real, escalating terror, which could not be confided even to Louise.

The sun had shifted by now, and Norah shifted with it, moving across the room and resuming her vigil at the end of the divan with its bright scatter-cushions, which caught the winter light invitingly. Not that she could see their glowing colours once she was sitting among them, but in a funny way she still felt their quiet welcome into the sun.

Maybe she was going to be allowed to stay after all?

Bridget felt rather mean, going away for the weekend like this, leaving Diana to cope alone with this Norah woman, who was still there.

Not that there was any real reason for Bridget to feel guilty. She herself had taken no part in the decisions which had led to the wretched woman being allowed to land herself on them. She had been against it right from the start. She had seen the danger of being stuck with Norah, and to avert it had been prepared to stick her neck out and be the mean-spirited, ungenerous, un-compassionate one who had the nerve to say “No”. The fact that compassion had prevailed – if indeed it had been compassion, not weakness on Diana’s part, and sheer mischief-making on Alistair’s – was nothing whatever to do with her. So what could be more right and reasonable than that Diana and Alistair should be the ones left to cope with the consequences of their own virtue? Do-gooders would get more respect, Bridget reflected, if they were faced more often with the actual consequences of the good they had done.

Watching the Essex countryside surging past the windows of the Inter-City train, Bridget made further excuses for her defection by recalling that this wasn’t an impulsive jaunt in pursuance of her own pleasure,
it was a duty, a rigid item in her time-table, fixed many weeks in advance. She made it a rule, in her busy and absorbing life, to find time for a visit to her parents not less than four times a year, not counting Christmas. It was an effort; but, like every other kind of effort, it became easier once you’d made up your mind that you’d
got
to do it, that there was no option. Once you allowed the slightest flexibility into the situation, the strain of it all automatically doubled. You found yourself burdened not only with the task itself, but with the having to decide whether to do it or not; you had to wrestle with your conscience as well as enduring whatever needed to be endured.

How long was it since Bridget had actually
enjoyed
being at home? As a child, she’d been happy enough. There’d been lots of things at home which had been fun: the swing in the garden; the family tortoise, who reappeared so faithfully with the returning sun. There had been the old apple-tree, too, with its twisted branches among which she would sit, absorbed in a book, for whole summer afternoons. Indoors, too, there’d been plenty to do, lots of books and toys, and a mother whom, as a child, she had loved devotedly, and who had always been extremely good company.

Even so, looking back over her school-days, she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t preferred term-time to holidays; weekdays to weekends.
Certainly
, by the time she went to Cambridge, Bridget used to set off at the beginning of each term with a heart singing with joyous excitement; and had returned home for the vacations with a sort of dulling of the spirit; a sense of life having come to a temporary standstill.

Perhaps all this was normal? Perhaps this was how growing-up was for everyone?

Sad, though. She thought of her father, waiting lovingly in the car-park, anxiously scanning the
little
crowd emerging from the small country station that served the market town to which he and her mother had retired. It would be almost dark by the time she arrived. Already the vast East Anglian skies were darkening beyond the speeding windows, and little scattered lights were coming on here, there and everywhere.

In less than ten minutes she would be there.
Irrationally
– indeed quite idiotically – she wished she had taken one of the slow, infrequent local trains, stopping at every single station, instead of this insurgent monster, swallowing up the distance, and with it her last minutes of solitude, at such unconscionable speed.

“Lovely to have you back, darling,” her mother was saying, gesturing vaguely with the teapot to offer a second cup of tea without interrupting the conversation.

“Do have one of Mary Foster’s mince pies. She made them specially and brought them in when she heard you were coming. They’re nice and hot still.”

The plate of mince pies as well as the tea pot were now swaying tentatively a few inches above the table, and Bridget felt constrained to take one of the bulging little things, though normally she never ate anything at tea-time.

“How nice of her,” she said politely, taking a
reluctant
bite, and wishing she could remember who on earth this Mary Foster might be. These visits home would be much more interesting if her parents hadn’t moved from the comfortable North London suburb where Bridget
had grown up, and where several of the children she had once played with were still living as adults, and could be visited in their various homes. Most of them, of course, were married by now, a fact which her mother never failed to point out – very, very lightly, and looking painstakingly away from her daughter as she said it. All the same, news of these old acquaintances would have been marginally more interesting than news of these Mary Fosters and suchlike: the new neighbours of whom Bridget knew absolutely nothing, and about whom she could not bring herself to take the smallest interest.

It was the same for her parents, she suspected, when (in response to their eager request to hear news of “What you’ve been doing, darling”), she actually tried to tell them about her life. About this morning’s International Steel Manufacturers Conference, where she’d been interpreting for the Russian delegation. Dutifully, she racked her brains for some incident of the morning that might be mildly amusing – as well as comprehensible – to the uninitiated. The argument at lunch-time, for instance, about the gaffe made by the new Swedish delegate who had replaced dear old X …

How
could
they be interested, when they knew nothing about dear old X and his foibles? By the time she’d explained all this, the whole story would have become so long and so tedious as to be intolerably boring to both narrator and listeners.

Instead, at her father’s insistence, she set herself to explain the basic objectives of the conference; and soon found herself bogged down in technical details about the world steel market which were far, far more boring even than Mary Foster’s mince pies.

Thus she was about to stop, to spare them any more of this pointless pretence of listening, when she realized, with a little shock, that her parents seemed to be
interested
in what she was telling them. Far from being glazed with boredom, their eyes were bright with interest as they leaned towards her apparently taking in every word.

For a fraction of a second she was deceived by this, into feeling that contact had miraculously been
generated
in this unlikely area. But of course it was not so: she realised almost at once what it was that they were so pleased about.

What
a clever daughter we’ve got, they were telling themselves. Just listen to the long words she’s using! All these technical terms – all these statistics about millions and billions of pounds – all these foreign countries whose economic systems she seems to understand! How marvellously the education we struggled to give her has paid off!

Yes, this was what they were thinking. They didn’t care about the steel market at all! A childish, irrational fury surged up in Bridget uncontrollably; it reached her throat, and she heard her own voice grinding to a halt.

Why? Why be enraged by the innocent and harmless pleasure they were taking in her discourse? Why did she have this sense of being insulted and belittled to the very core of her being? If they had merely been bored by her recital she could have accepted it, even have sympathised. But
this
…!

As always, her mother was the first to realise that something had gone wrong; also, as always on these occasions, she set herself to smooth things over. Very
often, she did not know what had spoiled things, but it didn’t matter because the smoothing technique was the same in every case, and indeed it quite often worked.

Beneath half-lowered lids, Bridget studied her
mother
’s face as well as she could in the dull, pinkish glow from the heavily-shaded, low-slung lamp which was the room’s only illumination. Strange how a civilization which with such labour, such ingenuity and skill, had at last succeeded in replacing the dim, guttering candles of the past with limitless floods of illumination at the touch of a switch – that it should have reacted to this crowning glory of light by adopting a fashion for the dimmest lights possible, obscured by the most opaque of shades, in living rooms all across the land.

Of course, it made faces look younger, up to a point. It was making Bridget’s mother look younger right now, blurring the worry-lines around her eyes, and dimming the ever-encroaching grey in her mousy brown hair. It had been more chestnut when Bridget was a child, bright chestnut and shoulder-length, swinging in the sunshine as she’d walked Bridget to school; and earlier still, when she’d helped Bridget to rig up a tree-house in the old apple-tree. The tree-house hadn’t worked very well, it had been much more comfortable just sitting among the branches without it: but, oh, it had been fun to make! And it had been fun, too, to lower a basket and then draw it up to see what exciting thing Mummy had put in it: sultanas, perhaps, or a couple of ginger biscuits, or perhaps even a Mars Bar.

How close they had been once, she and her mother! What had happened to that closeness? The swinging sunlit hair was gone, to be replaced by this dull bob,
much more suited to a middle-aged woman. What else had gone? To be replaced by what?

Almost desperately searching for clues in her
mother
’s anxious, dimly-lit features, Bridget saw one thing clearly enough: her mother was frightened. Frightened of
her
, the high-flying daughter to whom she could no longer relate, and whose present life-style was beyond her comprehension. Beyond her
comprehension
too was what on earth she had done to upset this prickly, inscrutable daughter in mid-conversation; but whatever it was, she was determined to put it right by her well-tried technique of changing the
subject
.

Bridget saw it coming.

“How’s your friend Diana?” her mother asked
tentatively
, anxious, lest even this polite enquiry should turn out to be controversial.

As indeed it could have been, what with Alistair and the infertility treatments and all the rest; but Bridget set a hasty selection-process in motion and launched into a brief account of Diana’s T.V. assignments, including the possibility of a programme on battered wives. Women everywhere are fascinated by battered wives, and Mrs Sadler was no exception; and so the
tea-table
conversation became relatively easy and pleasant for a while – though boring, alas, to Mr Sadler, who didn’t see why, since he didn’t batter his own wife, he should be expected to take any interest in people who did. It was like expecting a football-hater to listen to endless post mortems about Nottingham Forest and Arsenal.

He retreated, only slightly disgruntled, to his own domain, and the mother-daughter conversation shifted
focus, in just the direction that Bridget had feared it might.

“And how’s this boy-friend of hers, this Alistair?” the older woman asked; and Bridget, knowing already where this was leading, answered warily.

He was fine, just fine (not that this was what her mother actually wanted to know). And, yes, he still came round to the flat quite a lot; and, yes, he still seemed very fond of Diana … and here Bridget could see the crunch coming.

“He can’t be all
that
fond of her,” – Mrs Sadler was already looking away from her daughter and nervously fidgeting with the tea-things – “I mean, he’s been coming around for two or three years now, hasn’t he? Isn’t it about time he said something about
marriage
?”

It was, actually; but Bridget wasn’t going to admit this across the generation-gap. “Oh, but mother, it’s not
like
that!” she protested. “Not these days. Girls of my generation – they just don’t think like that any more.”

They do, as a matter of fact, but why admit it? Especially in view of what was to come next.

“Because I’ve sometimes wondered,” Mrs Sadler was continuing, her glance darting furtively around the room, from the brown velveteen pelmet to the brightly-polished fire-irons – anywhere except at her daughter’s face – “I’ve sometimes wondered whether – actually – it’s altogether Diana that he comes to see …”

There, it was out! No wonder her mother was scared to look her in the eye! Bridget struggled to control the angry words that were rising to her lips.

“This is the absolute, outside limit!” she longed to
say, “Trying to marry me off to every single man you ever hear of my meeting! You don’t care what any of them are like, or how bloody awful and impossible they may be. You don’t give a damn whether I could possibly ever be happy with any of them, all you care about is that I should be
married
. Just because all your friends’ bloody daughters are married.

And now, to crown it all, you are hinting that Diana’s vulgar, chicken-brained boy-friend might turn out to be my Mr Right! You don’t know anything about him, and what’s more you don’t care! He could be Jack-the-Ripper, he could be half-dead of Aids, and you wouldn’t give it a thought! Just so long as I ended up
married
to him!

Can’t you see how insulting it is? All the needling and hinting about me not being married yet? Yes, I
know
all my old friends are married by now. I
know
that I’m twenty-eight, and that in less than two years I’ll be thirty. I can do sums, you know: I’m the one that got a starred ‘A’ for maths, remember?”

But of course she said none of these things. What would have been the use? The whole subject had by now become a no-go area between herself and her mother, and both instinctively drew back from any threat of direct confrontation. Time was – when Bridget was only in her early twenties and the
subject
had not yet built up a head of steam – when the two of them could discuss the subject almost rationally.