The Watchers on the Shore (37 page)

I walk away from him. My heart's pounding and my hands
tremble. Violence upsets me. I always hold that it's hardly ever an
answer to anything. But by God, there's pleasure in it sometimes.
In a minute or two a strange kind of exhilaration seems to take
hold of me. I feel that I'm walking tall, my legs and spine stretched,
and lightly, on the balls of my feet, my heels not touching the
ground. I've got an urge to do something wild. I'd like to smash
something, indulge myself in some enormous act of destruction.

Conroy's car is standing in the drive when I get to the house. I
halt and look at it. I passed a test once so that I could drive Mr Van
Huyten about; but then he stopped going out much and finally sold the car. My licence must still be in order but it's twelve
months since I've been behind a wheel. But I'd like to drive like
hell down winding country lanes, not caring about bends or other traffic; just hurling the car on through the night. To somewhere...

I try the door. It's locked. I go into the house and up the stairs to bed, thinking it's perhaps just as well.

20

So now I'm going home to hurt a good woman who loves me. I
shall put the knife in and watch it stab her to the heart. But a swift
clean wound that will heal. Not the steadily festering sore that
would be our life together from now on. This is for me and for her
as well. Because it's right for both of us in the end and before it's too
late. I can turn away her love that wants to keep me now, not knowing what's to come, and see that it'll pass and there'll be a new life, a
better life, for her as well as for me. The loneliness will be bad for
both of us and it would be easy now for me to settle for the comfort
of what I know, and what I know I shall miss. Until she learns to
hate me for not being what she wanted and has every right to
expect and what she'll find with somebody else if she's lucky.

The obvious thing is the easiest to do. And the one that would
keep me popular. What I'm doing is hard. Being a hero in the
front circle of the pictures with everybody approving is one thing;
the real-life hero with nobody looking on to tell him he's brave is
another. And so is doing what you know is right when you're dead
certain everybody will think you're a bastard for it.

So do I expect a medal for it? What has what they think got to do with my life? They'll think what they like whatever you do and some might be right and some might be wrong. But they can't know because nobody lives inside your skin but you. Not sometimes now and again, but always, waking and sleeping, twenty-four hours a day, from the day you were born till the day you die. How to mend a fuse, fill up a form, buy a house: that's advice anybody can give and take. How to live your
life depends on knowing who you are, and who you hope to be. And it's hard enough to sort out for yourself without bringing somebody else in on the act. In the last resort you're on your own. Nobody knows but you. It's you who makes the decisions and lives with them.

So am I expecting approval for what I'm going to do? Do I send a memo round explaining, so I won't be misjudged? And if I do and manage to get it all down accurately, will they understand then?

Because after all of it I could be wrong. But that's for me to find
out, and you can only take one step at a time, doing the right thing as you see it - the right thing for
you.
Which isn't selfish. It means
that having done what's right for you, you're a better person in
relation to everybody round you. Except the ones who think you're
a bastard and will be hurt for ever because you haven't done the
right thing as they see it.

You can't win. But nobody's totting up a score and there aren't
any prizes at the end of the line. You just plod on regardless.

You can tell I'm no hero because I think of all these things.

Scene One is the living-room, Saturday night; nearly twenty-
four hours have passed by while I waited for the right moment to
speak and realized that there is no right moment to say what I have to say; that you've got to make the moment and you badly need the services of one of these drawing-room scriptwriters who'll set it up
in one of those scenes where stiff upper lip manages to say in cut-
glass accent: 'Felicia, I want you to give me a divorce.' All very
cool and calm and civilized, emotions kept firmly under control...

'It's that girl, isn't it?'

'No.'

'You're going with her. Those letters were right all the time.'

'No. I'm not going with her. She's gone away.'

'Where has she gone?'

'Home, to Cornwall. She's ... she's having a baby.'

'Not yours?'

I'm staggered at her calmness, but then I realize it's like the still
ness of a coiled spring and I wonder what will press the catch and
unleash it.

'No, not mine.'

'Could it have been yours?'

'I haven't seen her for months.'

'That's not what I meant.'

Her control is amazing considering the questions she's asking and the answers I have to give her.

'Yes, then.'

A long shuddering sigh passes through her.

'I knew it. I knew it all the time.'

"Those letters were pure malice, Ingrid.'

'I'm not bothered about the letters now.'

'Ingrid,!...'

I can't get over the way she's taking it, as though it's something she's prepared herself for and is going to see through as bravely as possible. And it's almost to me as though I really love her. I'm nearer to it now than I've ever been since the very beginning. Tenderness even. I want to put my arms round her and comfort her and say, 'Oh, love, love, love. I'm sorry, but it's got to be this way.'

And would that make it any easier for her to take? Perhaps I
should make her hate me, so that she'll be glad to see me go. I feel
like a priest in the Spanish Inquisition comforting some poor sod they're going to roast alive. 'Ah, my son, my son, the flames will
purify you and bring you into the everlasting radiance of God's
grace.' 'Stuff God's grace. Let me out of here!'

'There's that money Mr Van Huyten left me ... half of it's
yours. You've got your job; you'll be all right.'

Oh, Vic, I don't understand all this. I don't know what you want, what you mean. Why do you want to break things up, all this, nearly four years of marriage? We're all right, aren't we?'

'Yes, we're all right. As all right as thousands of couples, I'd say. And we might go on being all right in the same way. Eventually we'd have kids and we'd squabble and bicker a bit and watch 'em grow up. And then they'd leave us and we'd be on our own, glad of a bit of peace and quiet after it all. And we might grow together and find it's what we've waited all our lives for - or we might find we've nothing to say to each other. D'you think I don't know how warm and cosy it is in here? It's cold outside, but I've got to go out and find what there is there for me. And I'm going to do it while there's till time for both of us.'

'But I've got what I want. I don't want anything else. Oh, I
know we fight sometimes and we don't see eye to eye on a lot of
things, but it's what I want.'

'You deserve something better. You deserve a chap who'll love you as you ought to be loved, who'll marry you because he wants to spend the rest of his life with you. Really wants to - and nothing and nobody twisting his arm. There's still time for you to find him. It's not too late yet, but it will be. Every year that passes it'll get more and more too late. It'll close in on us and fasten us a bit tighter.'

'Isn't that what all marriages are like?'

The tears are there now, plain to see; and suddenly I'm scared
I'll get too sorry for her till I can't do what I have to do.

'It's a sham, 'I shout. 'It's phoney from start to finish. It's got nothing to do with anything that's of any value at all. There's a whole world out there that I know next to nothing about and I want to see it and hear it and taste it. I want to
live
in it, and I just don't think I can do it with you.'

'But you could have with her?' Ingrid's voice is still quiet, but
under it there's all the jealousy in the world and the hate one woman
feels for another woman who's touched something of hers.

Yes.' I turn away. All at once I can hardly get the words through my clogged throat. 'Yes, I could have with her.'

'And I suppose you found all this out when she got down on her
back and opened her legs for you!'

Here's the venom now, the words spat out, each one a bullet of vicious contempt.

'That had nothing to do with it.'

'I don't believe you. I know you and I don't believe you.'

'It's not a question of not believing. You can't understand.'

'A misunderstood husband. That's original!'

'You can't understand because sex is the only thing you've ever
given me that we could share.'

'Oh God. Oh, you rotten bugger. You rotten bugger to say a
thing like that to me when she's off carrying another man's baby.'

'Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that.'

'What makes her better than me, except you're the only man I've ever slept with? Is that something to hold against me? How do I compete with a cheap bitch like that? Do I have to go out and find a few more men to sleep with and get a bit of experience?'

Will you keep her out of this? She's gone, I tell you, she's gone.'

'But it's her all the same. Do you think it doesn't hurt to know you've had her? That you've touched me while you've been having her? Well, I'd have forgiven you that...'

'Thank you very much.'

Yes, I'd have forgiven you that. But you cared for her. You cared!'

'And that's what you can't stand?'

'Yes. It's what I can't stand.'

'I believe you'd rather I'd gone with a tart off the streets than
had a genuine feeling for another woman.'

'I'd rather you'd
killed
somebody!'

She spits it at me, eyes scorching my face, before slamming out,
leaving me shaken and shocked, shocked to the very core.

I light a cigarette, wondering how I imagined it could end in
anything but hate. And I thought that writing a letter was cowardly,
that I ought to have it out face to face. Now I know why people
who are away just stay away, and those who are here slip off leaving
a note. So that there won't be the terrible scars of the knives people
ram into each other. No hate to
kill
all the fondness there's ever
been.

I hear the water running in the bathroom and wonder what she's
doing. I'm suddenly scared she'll harm herself and I go through and
try the door. It's locked. I tap on it.

'Ingrid.'

There's no reply and I say her name again.

What do you want?'

'What are you doing?'

'I'm having a bath.'

'Are you all right?'

'What difference does it make to you?'

Perhaps she's cutting her wrists this very second, I think, all
sorts of visions running wild through my mind along with news
paper headlines like 'Jilted wife found dead in bathroom ...
Husband admits quarrel... I was leaving her, he said...'