Running to Paradise (26 page)

‘
Quite a few, I should think,’ I said, trying to stay calm, but painfully aware that part of me, that newly awakened part of me, longed to seize my wife by her hair and throttle her with it. ‘That is, if they had such a lovely spot as Maple to go to. Anyway, we can’t afford a cottage at the moment. You’ve no idea how much money you can pour into places like that. And it’s not as if you’re ever prepared to pig it: you always have to have the latest gadget, stuff the place so full of mod cons there’s no room to breathe, let alone unwind.’

‘
I’ve got to have something!’ Beth banged open the pedal bin with her foot and tipped the remains of the lemon sorbet into it, then turned and looked at me, the cut-glass dish — a wedding present from Cousin Milly — still in her hand. For a moment I thought she was going to throw it, then I realised suddenly that the fight had gone out of her.

‘
OK, you win — as usual,’ she said, and now her voice just sounded tired. ‘Go to bloody Maple as much as you damn well like; go and live there if you want to, but don’t expect me to accompany you, that’s all.’ I tried to put my arms round her then, and explained that soon, after next year’s raise, after I’d got my promotion — the latter was in the pipeline I knew for a fact — we’d buy a cottage in the country, but not now, not just yet...’

Of
course, we never did, did we, but from then on Beth took to staying in London at weekends and leaving me to go to Maple on my own.

I
trod carefully across the bright, new carpet, my shoes, wet from the garden, leaving their imprint on the pristine, orange coloured pile — solitary footmarks on a deserted beach — and pulled aside a net curtain. A spider — one of those thin ones, all legs and no body — busied itself in the magnolia leaves beneath the window; above my head, last summer’s flies hung ossified in last summer’s web.

It
changed, though, Char’s and my relationship, once we became lovers. Paradoxically, a lot of the old, happy intimacy went. Was it guilt? I don’t think so. Char didn’t know the meaning of the word, and I think even then I knew Beth’s and my marriage was doomed. No, it was something else. We became wary of each other. I, who had never criticised, began to criticise: to question her indulgence towards Perry, her intake of alcohol, even her treatment of George.

‘
Leave me alone, damn you,’ I remember her shouting after one such session. ‘You’re not my bloody mother. If you want to bully someone, go and bully your wife.’ Horrified, I pleaded I wasn’t bullying her, I was simply trying to help. The three of them, she, George and Perry, would be so much happier, wouldn’t they, if only they didn’t always have to go to such extremes. Disconcertingly, she gave her snort of laughter — the laugh, so Sophia said, that came from Pa. ‘And what the hell d’you think we’re doing then,’ she said, ‘if not going to extremes?’

Sometimes,
underneath all the nonsense, she had an uncanny knack of hitting the nail precisely on the head. It was, I think, one of the reasons that caused certain people to dislike her so intensely, especially certain women. And yet in some odd way Char appeared to expect, even want me to bully her. I had, it seemed, my allotted place in both sides of her nature: not only must I dominate, but I must also be dominated. It was a hellishly difficult path to travel, but the rewards, when they came, were sweet.

Strangely,
or so it seems now — it didn’t then — we seldom felt the gap of years between us. Char never consciously aped the young or anything like that, she simply remained Char and it was enough. But sometimes she would talk of events that were to me part of history, as though they had happened the previous week: the summer manoeuvres of 1913, when she had played at pillow fights with the young subalterns encamped on Bagland Common; Pa masquerading as a porter on Euston Station during the General Strike in 1926; King Edward VII’s little dog following the coffin at his master’s funeral in 1910. Then I would look at her in amazement, and for a split second believe that I was living in a dream; a dream from which I would wake to find myself ‘alone on the cold hillside’; another palely loitering knight, summarily released by his own
Belle
Dame
sans
merci
. Fanciful stuff, I suppose, from a faceless insurance manager from Fulham, but there it is.

And
so the years went on. By the early 1970s, Char’s and my lovemaking had become more or less a routine. I don’t mean the excitement had gone out of it, that never happened, but we had become used to the prevailing circumstances. I would even sometimes spend the odd weekend in London. I had begun to contribute fairly regularly to a history magazine and needed an occasional weekend to work on my articles. ‘You slacker,’ Char would say on the phone, when I rang to tell her I wouldn’t be coming, ‘think of poor me alone with Georgy.’ But really I don’t think she minded all that much.

Oddly
enough I think it was George who minded more than Char. ‘Pity you weren’t here last weekend, Guy. I had to strip down the engine of Perry’s Mini; could have done with some help,’ he’d say fretfully, or: ‘Those damned strawberries, it took me two hours last night to pick them and my back’s giving me hell. You’d have thought Perry might lend a hand sometimes, but you know Perry...’

In
the autumn of 1969, or was it 1970, I can’t remember, Char and I went on holiday together. We hired a canal boat for a few days, the idea being we should visit some of the Civil War battlefields. I was doing a paper on General Fairfax at the time and wanted to get in a bit of local colour. The boat idea was Char’s. Madness of course: I knew next to nothing about such things and she was no help at all, her only experience being weekends spent on Algy’s father’s yacht in the Solent when, as far as I could make out, all they’d ever done was eat bananas, drink black velvets and dance to the gramophone. ‘We had a crew, you see,’ she said, ‘and they did all the work.’ I bet they did.

But
looking back, those few days were the best I ever spent with Char. The boat broke down; I nearly ruptured myself getting us through the locks; Lucas, her wretched West Highland terrier, fell overboard and she insisted I dive in and get him out — actually he could swim perfectly well — but somehow none of those things mattered, I don’t know why, but they didn’t. We stopped at a pub on the way home to Maple after it was over and Char said: ‘There’s only one other time when I’ve been as happy; but we’ll pay for it, one always does.’ I tried to make her tell me when that other time had been, and who else but me could make her happy, but she wouldn’t tell me: And she was right about the paying for it.

By
that time I was pretty sure Beth had a lover. She was taking much more care over her appearance and seemed less tense. She began staying late at the office a couple of nights a week, and quite often she’d be on the phone when I arrived home, but as soon as she heard my key in the lock, would hang up. Then, after a bout of bronchitis, when she claimed my coughing kept her awake, I started to sleep in the spare room and by tacit consent, my cough long gone, I didn’t return to hers. From time to time we went on holiday together, usually to a fishing village on the coast of Spain, far away from the booming Costa del Sol. We’d discovered the place not long after we were married and it was still fairly unspoiled. God knows what it’s like now. But we always went with another couple and so spent little time alone. And our lovemaking, when it did take place, was more often than not, a rather lifeless reproduction of the act of sex bearing little resemblance to the real thing.

It
was late one January evening when I returned home from a four-day managerial conference in Scarborough. It had been a difficult few days, what with one thing and another, and I felt tired and rather dispirited as I let myself into the house. To my surprise, Beth was still up, lying on the sofa, a glass of whisky in her hand.

‘
Why didn’t you tell me Mum was going round the bend? You must have known.’ She sounded tense, not far from hysteria, edging towards a scene.

‘
What on earth do you mean; I would have told you, but she was perfectly alright when I saw her.’ But I knew that was a lie, didn’t I, and yet the words came out so glibly. I had, I suppose, become an expert.

‘
She can’t have been; George says it’s been going on for months.’

I
poured myself a drink with hands that shook only slightly. ‘George says what’s been going on for months?’ There was a pause. Beth sat up and held out her glass; in silence, I poured her another whisky.

‘
Sophie’s back from the States for a few days,’ she said. ‘You were away, so she suggested we drove down to Maple for the night to see how things were.’

‘
And...?’

‘
They were bloody awful. Perry’s in trouble again; Fiona’s chucked him because of his drinking and Mr Sloane says he never turns up at the office—’

‘
So, what’s new? I thought you said it was your mother.’ There was another pause. A taxi pulled up outside the house next door; the door slammed; footsteps going up to the front door; a key in the lock...’

‘
George says...he says Mum’s drinking far too much and when she’s drunk, which is quite a lot of the time, she sleeps with anyone who offers.’

‘
Oh, don’t be so absurd; who offers, for God’s sake?’ I felt like Judas.

‘
Lots of people, apparently: that frightful old Major Palmer for a start and—’

‘
George is making this up, can’t you see?’ This was, of course, a nightmare. I’d wake up in a minute.

‘
Not all of it,’ Beth said, ‘and anyway, Mum was boasting about it herself. She wanted to give Sophie the gory details, but Sophie wouldn’t listen.’

I
tried frantically to think, but somehow couldn’t. All I felt was an insane and terrible jealousy. How could she? What had happened, for God’s sake. Did George know about me? ‘I wouldn’t set too much store by what they say.’ I hoped I sounded both sensible and objective, but doubted it. ‘You know what George and your mother are like: they get drunk and start making up stories about one another; it’s their way of amusing themselves. Anyway, they’re worried sick about Perry.’

‘
You’re talking rubbish and you know it,’ Beth’s voice sounded thin and harsh at the same time. ‘Mum’s not worried about Perry, she never has been; she doesn’t even recognise there’s a problem, and George doesn’t care...’

Beth
was right, of course. Something had been happening to Char in the last few months, I’d just refused to admit it. That look in her eyes I’d seen fleetingly years before at Beth’s and my engagement was often there now. Only three weeks ago I’d walked into the library at Maple and found her standing in the middle of the room holding an empty vase, a mass of pink chrysanthemums scattered round her feet on the floor, a lost expression on her face. ‘These are no good,’ she said as though I wasn’t there, ‘thistles would be better...’ and she slowly ground each flower head into the carpet with the heel of her slipper. Last time we’d made love she’d scratched and bitten me savagely, dragging her long nails down my back, biting into the flesh between my thighs until I screamed out in pain. Christ!

‘
If what you say is true, perhaps she should see a psychiatrist,’ I said, hypocrite that I was.

Beth
snorted. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said. ‘Sophie’s coming to dinner tomorrow evening, we’ll talk about it then. And I suppose we’ll have to tell Ann.’

‘
No!’ The word burst out before I could stop it. Beth got up from the sofa and walked slowly over to where I stood with my back to her, looking blindly out of the window. She turned my face towards hers, and very gently kissed me on the forehead; to my surprise, there was pity, not anger, in her eyes.

‘
Don’t be too upset, darling,’ she said, ‘it’s always been on the cards.’

I
remember driving down to Maple that Friday evening, two days after Beth had dropped her bomb into the complacent citadel of my self-esteem, feeling such hatred for Char, I wanted to kill her. I’d joined the ranks, I told myself, of those discarded lovers of hers. All she’d wanted from me was to prove she was still capable of attracting someone thirty years her junior; anyone, it didn’t matter who, so long as the poor sod was fool enough to fall in love with her. I remember too the salt taste of tears in my mouth, mixing with the double brandy I bought myself in a pub on the way down, and the barmaid’s face, puzzled and slightly apprehensive, as she took my money.

The
previous two days had been an unremitting nightmare. Long, hysterical phone calls from George, rows with Beth, and a ghastly family lunch, consisting of Sophia, Andrew McFee, representing Ann, Beth and myself; Perry, for some reason, had not been asked. The lunch took place somewhere like Rules with Sophia being efficient and sensible,
au fait
already with all the current psychiatric jargon; Andrew looking out of his depth, announcing repeatedly that Ann had said she wanted her mother to have the best treatment money could buy and George mustn’t be allowed to fob her off with the National Health Service, and Beth, my Beth, being emotional and useless, but somehow more endearing than either of the other two.

And
myself? Just a dummy, eating his steak au poivre, listening to Char’s children as they plotted her downfall: replying sensibly when referred to, but otherwise holding his peace, while all the time the real Guy Horton squirmed in hatred and loathing for the lot of them, and that included their hell-cat mother. Because he knew, didn’t he, that they were wrong; Char was no more mad than they were themselves. She was just a lying, cheating, faithless bitch.