Lewis Percy (26 page)

‘All right. But it’s your turn to suffer, isn’t it? Women have been oppressed for far too long.’

‘Oh, really? Who’s been oppressing them?’

‘The system, Lewis. The patriarchy.’

‘You make them sound like the victims of persecution. Don’t you think that’s rather insulting to people unjustly imprisoned, people with no rights, no freedom? As I understand it, I have been oppressing my wife by keeping her in relative comfort, by not wilfully infringing her liberty to do
as she pleases, and by deferring to her on every important matter. And for that she decamps, taking my baby with her. What about my pain?’

‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘That woman.’

‘That woman’s name is Emmy Douglas. Was. I dare say it still is. I haven’t seen her from that day to this. She disappeared from my life about three months before Tissy walked out. And I miss her very much. I never see her, not even to bump into. Did you think I did? Is that what this ridiculous exile of Tissy’s is all about?’

‘She would have left you anyway. She said she saw signs that you were interested in that woman when she came to dinner that evening.’

‘Oh, God, Thea, this is ridiculous. Surely you understand a bit more about men than that? They may be curious about other women – they usually are – but that doesn’t make them monsters of infidelity. Real infidelity means leaving your wife altogether for another woman. Rather difficult to do, even supposing one wanted to. And quite rare; more often than not out of the question, simply not possible. And I didn’t do that, did I?’

‘Well, if that’s all you’ve got to say for yourself …’

‘No. It isn’t. I’d like to know why I’m kept standing here like a salesman. I’d like to know why no enquiry is made about my feelings, or how I’m living, or what I intend to do. I’d like to know how my wife has the nerve to hide from me and to go out on the evenings when she knows I’ll be coming round. I’d like to know how my child is going to be brought up. I’d like to be treated with a certain amount of respect, instead of this unbelievable rudeness. You’ve always been a rude woman, Thea. I put it down to your hard life, although I doubt if your life has been harder than anybody else’s. You haven’t improved, have you? I detect no change. And it looks as if your daughter is following in your footsteps. Does she want a divorce, by the way? If so, she can
have one, and I’ll marry Emmy. That might be a good idea all round.’

‘She’ll never divorce you, Lewis.’

‘In that case she’ll have to put up with my visits. At least until the child is old enough to look after itself and make its own choices. Rational choices, I hope. In the meantime I have some rights, you know. For instance, I demand to see my baby and I shall do so. If you don’t tell me the minute it’s born, Thea, and if I’m not allowed full access, I shall divorce Tissy. For desertion. And she can blame that on the system if she likes. And I shall have custody of the child.’

Mrs Harper snorted. ‘You? You couldn’t bring up a child. What do you know about children?’

‘Oh, but I’d marry again, I told you. And at least if the child lived with me I’d teach it some manners.’

But the thought immediately saddened him and put paid to his fighting spirit. Mrs Harper, it seemed, had been shamed into some sort of acquiescence, if nothing more. Was there even a hint of admiration in her eye? If her standard of masculinity had been formed by the stained and supine doctor, might she not welcome this little demonstration of energy? In any event the expression on her face changed to something less challenging – one could hardly call it deference, Lewis thought – as she came to the main motif of the conversation.

‘Of course, you’ll want to continue her allowance.’

‘There’s no of course about it. I’m a man, aren’t I? Anything can be expected of me, any violation of the rules. The rules, of course, have to be set by you. I’ll continue her allowance because I don’t want my wife’s comfort to suffer, that’s all.’

‘The child will have the best, I can assure you of that.’

‘No, it won’t. It will start with an enormous handicap: parents who are separated, and who don’t even talk to each other. I’ll make a deal with you, Thea. You can look after the baby as long as I have the growing child. There are things I can teach it that Tissy can’t. There are places to see …’

His throat thickened, as longing for those places grew
in him, suddenly became intolerable. What was he doing here? He was as free as he ever would be. Why not leave it all, the whole mess, disappear, and come back in ten years’ time? No-one would miss him, that was clear. And if home were no longer home, what was to be lost by seeking another? In his mind’s eye, the street that led to his house, and which he always thought of as bathed in sunshine, became suffused with a darkish mist, drained of colour: a spiteful wind drove dismembered newspapers round his ankles, and dogs barked. The truth of the matter was that he hated now to go home. Every evening his heart sank as the hour approached when he would have to switch off his desk lamp, pick up his briefcase, and begin the long trudge back to Stokenchurch Street. He would have wanted the journey to be even longer. He invented detours, stopped in pubs, although he hated the smell, the noise, and even the beer. He knew he should make an effort, and felt quite pleased with himself on the evenings when he went into a supermarket and bought a bottle of wine and some bread, cheese and fruit. But this pleasure turned into disappointment as soon as he entered his kitchen, and he could no longer be bothered to lay the table. The same plate, the same glass, the same knife, washed the night before and left to drain, were used again and again. One evening, as he sat at the kitchen table, a crust of bread and a rind of cheese on his plate, the plate itself resting on the
Evening Standard
, the visible parts of which he was reading, the doorbell rang. It was Pen: they had had a vague arrangement to see a film which Lewis had forgotten.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Pen, following Lewis into the kitchen and taking in the frugal fare and the workman’s place setting. ‘Any evening will do.’ And then, looking quite stern, ‘This has got to stop, Lewis. You can’t go on living like this.’

Lewis’s shame was compounded by the fact that for the first time in his life he had drunk most of the bottle of wine. He could not even offer a glass to Pen. He felt disarmed, defenceless, and also confused: he knew he was in no fit state to answer any more accusations. Nor did he want to be told
to pull himself together, to make a fresh start, to take decisive action. He did not even want to be told to do what he secretly wanted to do anyway, which was to divorce his wife and marry Emmy. This pressing desire, which was kept at bay when he was not drunk by exercise of the higher mind, by all the weight of his responsibilities, had to be treated with caution. For he was a sentimental bourgeois: nothing less than marriage would do, and it would be months – years, perhaps – before he was free. What he firmly did not want was a brief liaison with the volatile Emmy who, he knew, was incapable of fidelity. He had thought about this a great deal. He forgave her everything, her childishness, her neediness, her disappointment, her desire to punish. She had wanted marriage, and complained that all she got was married men. He would give her marriage: that would be a gauge of his love. But in return he would expect her to behave like a wife. He almost struck his head at his own folly at this point in his reasoning. She would never be faithful to him, that was clear. And why should she be? Faithfulness seemed to have gone out of fashion, replaced by more aggressive, more affirmative modes. Women now had duties towards their own bodies, or so he was told; even Tissy was studying the problem. So that a union with Emmy would be flawed, fatally compromised, for he believed that she would not change. After the first few months she would find somebody new, and then she would tell him that she did not see why she should not have both a husband and a lover. Or lovers. It would not mean that she loved him any the less. He could see her crumpled forehead, her rosy cheeks, her growing puzzlement as she came up against his quaint old-fashioned prejudices. He could see it all because this was the state in which she appeared to him when he had first kissed her, in the park. She was involved with someone then, she told him. And yet she had wanted him, had, in fact, been determined to have him. He wondered if a new lover was always selected to punish the current one, whether she ever rested between them. This, to him, was the difficulty. He had to face the possibility that she was a
genuinely amoral woman, although he understood that they were not called that any more. There was another possibility – and one supremely embarrassing to him – that she belonged to a superior class in which these habits were rife, and that he revealed his genuine lack of sophistication – his essential suburbanity – in failing to come up to her standards.

And he himself was sinking socially all the time, using the newspaper as a tablecloth, finishing the bottle of wine in an effort to procure a decent night’s sleep. He was deeply, mortally ashamed, and sufficiently frightened to vow that things should be different.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Pen, whom nothing escaped. ‘This doesn’t matter. What matters is the future. You’ll have to get a divorce, Lewis. This business with Tissy is putting you in a false position. It’s ruining your life.’

‘It’s the child, you see,’ said Lewis, looking down at his hands. ‘If it weren’t for the child I’d, well, cut loose in some way. But I don’t even know whether she’s coming back or not. She’s left some of her clothes behind. She hasn’t gone altogether.’

‘And do you want her back?’

‘Yes,’ he said, disturbed by the emotion he felt. ‘Yes, I want her back.’ For who does not want the wanderer, the prodigal, to return? Lewis felt, in that instant, that nothing could be worse than to be abandoned, and to feel this dereliction which had so rapidly been translated into physical shabbiness. He saw his glass on the table, surrounded by crumbs. And it was not even a proper wine glass; it had previously held Dijon mustard. He felt like an elderly alcoholic. And Pen had seen him like this, when he had thought himself without a witness …

‘I could do with some coffee, if you’re making it, Lewis,’ said Pen agreeably, and thus signalling that the awkward moment was over. ‘We ought to talk about holidays. Easter’s early this year, you know. I wondered whether you’d like to come down to us in Wales? The family will be there. Emmy, of course, you know.’

‘My dear old thing,’ said Lewis. ‘I know what you’re saying. But I’ll be a father by then. I can’t just turn my back on that, can I? Perhaps I can come to you some other time. I’d love to meet your parents. And Emmy, of course, I know.’ He smiled sadly.

‘Then you ought to get away, after the baby’s born. Look here, Lewis, they don’t want you. I don’t know why but they don’t. You can lose nothing by going away for a week or two, or even a month. After all, it’s not as if they’ll be going anywhere. And it might give them a bit of a jolt, surprise them a bit. Let them do the worrying for a change. Just disappear for a while.’

‘I might do that,’ said Lewis, who privately did not think he would. Then he put on a new recording of Mahler’s Sixth that Pen wanted to hear and they gave themselves over to the pure pleasure of listening. They were both quite calm by the end of the evening.

Showing Pen to the door Lewis said, ‘It’s all so unnecessary. I mean, I wasn’t unfaithful to Tissy, you know.’ He found he could not mention Emmy’s name in this connection, particularly to Emmy’s brother.

‘I know you too well to think you were,’ said Pen, and then, ‘I think I’ll walk part of the way home. I don’t walk half enough, not like you. And I like to saunter a bit after listening to music. George and I often walk home from the Garden.’ On the step he said, ‘She’s a strange girl, my sister. Always upsetting someone or other. No harm in her really, but she causes a certain amount of trouble. See you tomorrow. Sleep well.’

In the midst of this sadness – for it was a real sadness, as if everything were over for him, as if middle age had closed down on him without warning, and for ever – it was a relief to receive Mrs Harper’s telephone call, and to put on his coat again and hurry to the hospital. It was a relief to receive the call at all, for he had not been in touch for some weeks, unable to bring himself to face Mrs Harper’s curious obduracy. It occurred to him that she might have taken
Tissy away to have the baby somewhere else, possibly to a hospital in Jersey. He had stayed away because he could not bear his own tired arguments and the helpless anger they inevitably aroused in him, an anger he would not have been able to control had he encountered the doctor, whose part in this miserable history he particularly loathed. Although he mourned his abandoned condition he longed for a clean slate. He would have to relinquish the baby: that he knew without a doubt. He could not work and look after a small child, and if he were out all day who would care for it? Remembering the colonization of his house by Mrs Joliffe, who threatened to sweep back unopposed, now that Tissy was no longer there to keep her in check, he doubted his ability to find a suitable nurse or housekeeper. No, the child would have to stay with its mother, and its grandmother, and, no doubt, the doctor. The idea made him sick at heart. Yet he still promised himself that he would reclaim it in later life, when they could live intelligently together. If he could wait ten years he would get his son or daughter back. But ten years! How was he to live in that time? It was impossible to think of himself carrying on as he was. He seriously wondered if it would not be better if he were to disappear in some way, remove himself from the various embarrassments he seemed to have brought on himself. But how to do this? What money he had must go to the child. And where would he go? For a dark moment he thought of just going to bed and staying there until he wasted away. They could call it a nervous breakdown if they liked, whoever they were, and always supposing that they were sufficiently interested to enquire. But he was too healthy, too stalwart: he could not ever remember being ill. With a sigh he resigned himself to carrying on.