Mr Wrong (8 page)

‘. . . short of it was that we fell in love. I told her that I was married,’ he added, implying that this showed that he had done all that could be expected of him. ‘She was
marvellous about it. She said she didn’t mind. That a little of me was much better than none at all.’

I bet she did. But Mervyn wasn’t married, so shut up. He was waiting for her. He’d waited eight years now, and had said then, and still said, that he’d wait until she felt free to come to him. I am too lucky to be a bitch. Poor Alan.
But if he feels like this why can’t I go? Just take Julie, and go?

‘. . . it
would
be just before this holiday, she suddenly seemed different. I mean, by then we’d – oh well, you remember that last weekend you had to go to Westmorland
on that research job?’

Indeed yes. Mervyn, though never demanding, had proved a virtuoso at designing reasons that for years now had enabled them to be together ‘enough to keep us kicking’, he said.

‘Well, I took her to Amsterdam. We had a fantastic time. Sorry – I don’t want to hurt your feelings,’ he went on, as though they had just occurred to him. ‘You know
how it is.’

‘Yes,’ she said, before she could stop herself.

‘You really
are
imaginative about other people – in a good kind of way. But don’t worry.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘You haven’t lost your husband. She’s gone off. Some boring little yob she met on the Costa Brava
last year
. When I asked her, last year, whether she’d enjoyed
herself, she just said the place was fabulous, but she’d missed me. She never said a word about him. I knew something was wrong about a month ago, but she was so sensitive, she didn’t
want to tell me. I forced it out of her in the end. She just couldn’t stand our situation. I see it’s an awful one for a woman – feeling that whatever a man feels about it
he’s got his life elsewhere; that she can never be more than a sort of fringe part of his life. So there it is. It’s all over. She was married exactly three weeks and two days after
Margaret. I’m glad I told you, really. I’ve been feeling so lousy. You see, I don’t know whether she hasn’t resorted to marriage just to get away from me. I asked her and
all she would say was that she and Lionel had a lot in common. She was being tactful – loyal – about him. I quite see that. I quite see that if she was going to marry him, she had to,
you know,
stand
by him.’

‘Yes,’ Ruth said – it being the safest if not the only thing to say.

‘You agree? You probably know much better than I how a woman’s mind works – even if you aren’t familiar with the circumstances. Anyway, she’s left the office. There
it is. Here I am, as it were.’ He tried to laugh; it clearly hurt him.

‘Poor Alan.’ Her remarks, she thought, were like the exit signs from a motorway; inevitable, evenly spaced, designed for safety.

Again he tried to laugh. ‘The thing is – what I
can’t
convey – is, well, I was in love with her, that’s all. I’m
still
in love with her.
She’s so
young
, you see. Life seems utterly meaningless: the thought of it going on and on and on . . .’ He buried his head in his large, freckled hands for a moment, and when he took them away, she saw that his eyes were full of tears.

‘Time will make it easier in the end.’ A cliché had always to be offered tentatively to be accepted, she had discovered.

‘That’s what they all say, isn’t it?’ He blew his nose, and then took one of her cigarettes. As she lit it for him, she said:

‘Perhaps it’s better to have had a little of something that was good, rather than nothing at all.’

He looked sharply at her, to see whether there was anything of self-pity or autobiography behind this suggestion, but her face was blank of anything but proper concern. He looked – of
course without knowing it – so like a large dog that had been suddenly and savagely kicked.

‘Yes,’ he said, but in his own case entirely disagreeing with her: ‘I know.’

‘I’ve got you, though, haven’t I?’ he said. ‘I mean – a lot of people – well – not a lot, but people who get into this situation, often
haven’t anyone – have to face it alone. I’m lucky, really, aren’t I? I mean,
you’ll
always be there. We’ve been together – what is it –
twenty-something years now. It’s a long time when you come to think of it.’

‘A very long time.’ She got to her feet. ‘Do you think perhaps that we should join the girls now?’

‘Good old Ruth.’ He put his hand painfully on her sunburned shoulder.

While they walked, as briskly as the heat would allow, down the dusty road and the steps to the river, she thought of that weekend in Westmorland – in March it had been – when she
and Mervyn had camped in a friend’s cottage – slept on a mattress in front of a huge log-fire for comfort, lived on ham, bananas, oatcakes and honey and sardines and Terry’s
bitter chocolate. She had picked wild daffodils for the first time in her life, and one morning they had climbed to the summit of Scafell where there was still early spring snow on which they had
lain to make love. The soft, cold air had carried only the rasping cry of young lambs across great shoulders and valleys of silence. ‘I have much more than luck,’ she thought. ‘I
have the only thing that matters: what everybody in the world will pray for, pretend about, emulate and envy. I’m so lucky I can put up with anything: I can wait.’

At the bottom of the steps she turned to him.

‘We’ll have a lovely refreshing bathe and a delicious picnic.’

He managed a watery smile. ‘Good old Ruth,’ he said again.

Julie thought her father looked positively
down
trodden when he joined them. Her mother’s face had a calm, almost serene appearance. She had been getting at Daddy, no doubt. Although
Daddy was (obviously) frightfully intelligent, there was also something pathetic about him. Christine had said that women sometimes got horrible during the Change of Life. Poor Dad.

‘I’ll race you, Dad, to the other side,’ she said encouragingly. ‘It’s hardly cold at all, when you’re used to it.’

He did not answer at once, and she looked quickly at him to see that he was all right. He was fine – he was only looking at Christine.

Christine lay, looking fabulous, on her towel spread upon the uneven rocks with her Greek bag as a pillow. She had not bathed yet; all the ghastly things she had told Julie from Jasper’s
letter must have upset her. ‘I’d be crying buckets if I was her,’ Julie thought. But she had not cried at all, had explained all about how one had to be objective and it was all
experience. Now her father was saying:

‘I thought I’d like to have a look at the
pont
before a swim. Christine? Would you like to have a go?’

Before Christine could reply, Julie exclaimed:

‘I’d love to, Daddy.’

Without looking at her, he said irritably: ‘You’re wet. I don’t want to wait ages while you dry and change.’

Christine had sat up, and was pulling on her jeans. Now she smiled at Daddy.

‘I’d simply adore to come,’ she said.

After her father and Christine had left, her mother, without a word, handed her a cigarette, and then, after she had lit it, said:

‘Let’s have our fags and then a swim.
Then
we’ll have lunch, and if you feel like it, you and I might go up on the aqueduct. I’d love you to tell me about
it.’

Julie, who had felt horribly outside and snubbed, felt tears pricking her eyes again, so she simply nodded. Then she thought that Dad might be more
interesting
, but perhaps Ma was nicer.
It must be awful not to have anything exciting to look forward to, and she really couldn’t help her age . . .

‘She’s ever so natural, as you can see.’ Mrs Bracken recrossed her legs so that Mr Big (as she privately called each film-director she encountered) could see
her ankles to better advantage. ‘Has simply no idea that she’s not like other children.’

They both looked at Mrs Bracken’s daughter, who stood at the far end of the huge room, biting her nails with such furtive virtuosity that Ted Strong – the director – wondered
whether she had had more years of practice at that (and everything else) than Mrs Bracken claimed.

‘Fern! Come over here, dear. Say good morning to Mr – Mr Strong in French.’

‘Bonjour.’ Fern advanced in tiny steps towards Mr Strong: when she reached him, she curtsied and repeated: ‘Bonjour, M’sieur.’ She wore red tights and a navy-blue crocheted tunic that suggested a smock. A dwarf pregnant would be the heraldic term. Her flaxen hair flowed down her
back, and her patent-leather strap shoes were rounded childishly at the toes. Her ears were pierced and adorned with tiny little golden balls. ‘Comment ça va?’ she piped. ‘No natural, she,’ Ted thought wearily, and came back at once to the watchful dragon Mum. He was used to them: he had made commercials for telly and there was a constant need for
children.

‘She can get along in five languages, can do ballet, tap dance,
or
modern dance. She has appeared since the age of three. She’s eight, now, and of course, I’ve never
neglected her education. She photographs quite beautifully, but the agency will have given you the file on her.’

There was a silence during which Ted tried to think how to get rid of Mrs Bracken in order to find out what Fern might be like without her, and Mrs Bracken wondered feverishly what to make Fern do that would catch the director’s interest. Fern stood with her hands
behind her back staring at her shoes and hating their rounded toes. Outside, huge slanting snowflakes floated down against the window.

‘Fern was a snowflake once – in a panto scene in ever such a big film. Fern, do you remember that little song you used to sing when you did that nice little routine and wore that
pretty white and silver tutu?’

Fern looked at her, and Ted looked at Fern, thereby missing the ferocious, but secret signal that Mrs Bracken sent to her daughter.

Suddenly the child broke into bright smiles. ‘Of
course
I remember, Mummy. I
never
forget.’ She withdrew a few steps from Ted so that he could see her better and broke
into some elementary, but well-executed tap while she sang:

There was a pause in the singing while the tap became more elaborate and frenzied, and then she went on:

When the song, and the appallingly explicit gestures that accompanied it came to an end, Fern finished with a curtsy and her right hand approximately where Mr Strong might
suppose her heart to be. Unfortunately, she had danced herself off the parquet on to the corner of a valuable rug that Ted was particularly fond of, and as she stumbled over it she lost her balance
and slid unerringly on her bottom towards an eighteenth-century marquetry table set with ivory chessmen that he had been planning to send to Sotheby’s in the next appropriate sale.

Mrs Bracken rose to her feet. ‘Oh, my goodness me! Whatever have you done, child?’ She yanked Fern to her feet, dusting chessmen off her as though they were huge breadcrumbs while
she apologized on Fern’s behalf. ‘She’s ever so sorry, Mr Strong: she knows it’s a dreadful thing to have done, she’ll be crying her eyes out when she gets home, if
not before.’ She had begun to set the table to rights, as Ted desperately rescued a bunch of pawns. When he put them back in their place on the table – fortunately undamaged at first
glance – Fern put a timid, bony little hand on his sleeve.

‘Mr Strong – I’m so very s-sorry for what I’ve done. I didn’t mean it, honestly I didn’t. I’m s-so s-sorry.’ He saw to his amazement that huge
tears were coursing down her face, which looked the picture of frightened despair. Her voice, too, had dropped nearly an octave, and the slight stammer made him feel for her.

As he put the last few pieces back on to the table, he said, as heartily as he could, ‘Never mind, no harm done.’ He looked to make sure that the set was complete, and then turned to
Fern. To his dismay her tears had not stopped, and they were only punctuated by little gasps of indrawn breath.

‘Look, Fern, it’s all right, I’ve forgiven you.’

‘H-have you, r-
really
?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then – have I g-got the part?’

He laughed uncomfortably, conscious again of Mrs Bracken’s homing in on this question like some sort of hawk. ‘Well, naturally, I can’t tell you anything about that, yet.
It’s quite a part, you see, for such a young child: I shall have to complete auditions and discuss the matter with my producer.’ He turned to Mrs Bracken and saw her do the opposite of
being relaxed. ‘I’ll let your agency know, Mrs Bracken, of course.’ He looked at where his watch usually was, and found that he had forgotten to put it on. He looked at his wrist
again to make sure: to make sure, also, that Mrs Bracken had received the hint. About thirty seconds after he had begun to be afraid that she hadn’t or wouldn’t, she did.

‘Well, we really ought to be going: I don’t like Fern to be out late in this weather unless she has to be because of working. She’s delicate: sturdy,’ she amended,
‘but delicate.’ While Ted was digesting this remarkable variety of constitution, Fern had begun to climb into a mock-fur poncho with a hood, and Mrs Bracken was twitching her hands into
gloves. Ted put some lights on the stairs, and saw them gladly to the front door, resolving never,
never
to audition a child and its Mum without someone else to support him. ‘Only
then, I’d laugh,’ he said to himself as he bounded upstairs to get himself a Scotch. As he sat down with it, he wondered fleetingly whether the children enjoyed their extraordinary but
boring lives. Probably; children loved attention . . .