Marnie (22 page)

‘Yes, I think so.’

We sat in silence for a minute or two and then he said: ‘Are you happy coming here?’

‘Oh, yes . . . Yes, quite.’

‘Do you come by tube?’

‘Yes, usually.’

‘Rain. What does rain suggest?’

‘It’s always raining when I come here. Every time so far. My umbrella leaks a pool in your hatstand. The buses make noises with their tyres like kettles boiling. Hiss, hiss.’ I
thought that was quite clever really on the spur of the moment.

‘Water,’ he said.

‘Isn’t that the same thing? Not quite, I suppose.’ I looked down at my ankle. That woman
had
caught my stocking in the tube with her crazy stick. Some women ought to be
locked up, not looking where they were standing, and all the time telling this friend about Charles’s gallstones.

I thought I’d give Roman a run for his money. ‘Water? It rains a lot in Plymouth where I was born. And there’s water all round there. Why do they call it Plymouth Sound? The
sound of kettles boiling. I love tea, don’t you? It’s the cosiest drink. They were always drinking tea at home. Come in, dear, and have a cup, it’s not five minutes since we made
it. Sugar? No, I gave it up during the war. Wasn’t rationing awful?’

He waited a bit but I didn’t go on.

‘Baths.’

‘Baths?’

‘Yes.’

I didn’t speak for a long time but leaned back and shut my eyes. I thought, this isn’t bad. He just waits as long as I wait, and the hour ticks by.

‘Baths,’ I said. ‘Do you take baths, Dr Roman?’

He didn’t answer. I said: ‘Sometimes when I’m in the mood I have two and three a day. Not often, but sometimes. Mark says, What do I waste my time for, but I say, Well
isn’t it better to take too many than not enough? People who don’t wash smell. You wouldn’t want me to smell, would you?’

He said: ‘What do you associate with baths? What are the first things that come into your mind?’

‘Soap, plugs, water, rain-water, Boers, Baptists, blood, tears, toil . . .’ I stopped, because my tongue really was getting ahead of me. What was I talking about?

‘Baptists,’ he said.

‘Blood of the Lamb,’ I said. ‘Made pure for me. And his tears shall wash away thy sins and make thee over again.’ I stopped and giggled slightly. ‘My mother used to
take me to chapel three times every Sunday, and I suppose it’s coming out now.’

‘Did you learn that so young?’

‘And Lucy Nye too,’ I said in a hurry. ‘Lucy was just as bad after Mother died.’

The hour went on like this. Most of the time he seemed to keep on dodging around the same dreary subject of water. I don’t know what was biting him, but after a bit I didn’t enjoy it
so much and thought, let him go and run after himself. Why should I work so hard? He was getting paid, not me.

So we stuck there for a long time, until he mentioned thunderstorms, and I thought, oh, well, this’ll colour his life, so I told him all about Lucy Nye and how she’d made me afraid
of them. And even then I had this funny instinct that he wasn’t believing a word of it.

Anyway, when it was all over I came away with a feeling that for a non-talker I’d talked a lot too much . . .

So on the Friday I went all set to say nothing at all.

But it wasn’t so easy because almost the first thing he said was: ‘Tell me about your husband. Do you love him?’

I said: ‘But of course,’ in one of those light brittle voices, because keeping quiet here might tell more than talking.

‘What does the word love mean to you?’

I didn’t answer. About five minutes later I said: ‘Oh – affection, kissing . . . warmth, friendly arms . . . a kitchen with a fire burning, come in out of the rain,
m’dear . . . God so loved the World that he gave His only Begotten Son . . . Forio knowing my step. Mother cat carrying her kitten away. Uncle Stephen walking down the street to meet me. That
do?’

‘And sex?’

I yawned. ‘. . . Masculine and feminine. Adjectives end in euse, instead of eux. Male and female . . . Adam and Eve. And Pinch-me. Dirty boys. I’ll slap your bloody face if you come
near me again . . .’ I stopped.

There was another long wait. OK. I thought, I can wait.

It must have been another five minutes. ‘Does sex suggest anything else?’ he asked.

‘Only dirty psychiatrists wanting to know,’ I said.

‘What does marriage suggest to you?’

‘Oh, what’s the good of all this?’ I said, getting hot. ‘I’m
bored
. See?
Bored
.’

It was so quiet I could hear my wrist-watch ticking away.

‘What does marriage suggest to you?’

‘Wedding bells. Champagne. Old boots. Smelly old boots. Something borrowed, something blue. Bridesmaids. Confetti.’

‘Isn’t that the wedding you’re thinking of, not marriage?’

‘You told me to say what came into my head!’ I was suddenly angry. ‘Well, I’ve flaming well said it! What else d’you expect! If that isn’t enough I – I
. . .’

‘Don’t upset yourself. If it upsets you we can pass on to something else.’

So it went on. On the following Tuesday we had a real set-to. Then I clammed up and said practically nil for a complete half-hour. I pretended to go to sleep but he
didn’t believe it. Then I started counting to myself. I counted up to one thousand seven hundred.

‘What does the word woman suggest to you?’

‘Woman? Well . . . just woman.’

I relaxed and dreamed about jumping a hurdle.

‘Woman,’ he said much later. ‘Doesn’t it suggest anything?’

‘Yes . . . Venus de Milo. Bitch. Cow. I once saw a dog run over in the street. I was the first one to get to it because it was still yelping and it bit through the arm of my winter coat
and there was blood on the pavement, and the boy driving the baker’s van said it wasn’t his fault and I shouted at him yes it was, yes it was, you should take more bloody care, and the
poor little perisher died in my arms and it was awful it suddenly going limp, just limp, like a heavy old rag; I didn’t know what to do so I left it there behind the dustbins meaning to go
back for it, but when I got home I got in a screaming row for getting my arm and coat bitten . . . Queer; I’d forgotten all about that. Queer how you dig things up.’

He didn’t say anything. Each time I came he said less.

‘You want to know about sex,’ I said. ‘All this beating about the bush really comes down to that, don’t it? It’s the only thing any of your trade are interested in.
Well, all I can tell you is
I’m not
. Mark wanted me to come to see you because I won’t sleep with him! That’s what he told you, isn’t it? Well, it’s the truth!
But I don’t aim to be put in a glass case or stared at through a microscope – a sort of – of freak at a side-show – simply because I have my own likes and dislikes and
choose to stick to them! See? Everything I’ve said you’ve tried to twist round to one meaning, haven’t you? I know your sort. Most men have pretty dirty minds, but psycho-analysts
are in a class by themselves! God, I wouldn’t like to be your wife! Have you a wife?’

After a while he said: ‘Go on, say exactly what you think. But try to relax while you’re saying it. Don’t tense up. Remember you won’t shock me.’

Oh, won’t I, I thought. I could if I really got going. All those filthy rhymes that Louise taught me. Your kind don’t know the half.

He said: ‘Tell me one thing, Mrs Rutland. Apart from this question of – not wanting your husband, are you happy generally speaking, in other ways?’

I kept my mouth shut this time.

‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is, do you feel you’re experiencing and enjoying life to the full?’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘Well, I’d be surprised if you do.’

‘That’s your opinion, isn’t it?’

‘I suspect that for a good deal of the time you live in a sort of glass case, not knowing real enthusiasm or genuine emotion; or feeling them perhaps at second hand, feeling them sometimes
because you think you ought to, not because you really do.’

‘Thanks, I’m sure.’

‘Try not to be offended. I want to help. Don’t you sometimes slightly pride yourself on being withdrawn from life? Don’t you sometimes feel rather superior about people whose
feelings get the better of them? – or ashamed when you give way to them yourself?’

I shrugged and looked at my watch.

‘And isn’t that pity or feeling of superiority an attempt to rationalize a deeper sensation, an overreaction if you like against a feeling of envy?’

‘D’you like hysterical people? I don’t.’

‘I wasn’t talking of hysteria but of genuine natural emotion, which is essential in a balanced liberated human being.’

I pulled up my shoulder strap, which hadn’t slipped after all.

He said: ‘But even hysteria is much easier to set right than your condition. You’ve grown a protective skin to defend yourself against feelings. Unless you try to come out of it the
skin will harden until the real
you
inside shrivels and dies.’

‘And d’you think all this talking is going to help?’

‘It will, I promise you; but only on certain conditions. That’s why I’m breaking my general rule and trying to interpret your problems far too soon. So far, Mrs Rutland, except
for one or two rare outbursts like today, you have been watching your step all the time. Whenever anything has seemed to come to your lips that represented the true Free Association I’m
seeking you have bitten it off sharp. Well, that’s not uncommon at the beginning, especially in a woman of perception like yourself – but I have to differentiate between involuntary
suppression and deliberate suppression. An analyst can only help a patient who tries to help herself.’

‘What d’you expect me to do?’ I said sulkily.

‘I want you to stop being frightened of what you’re going to say.’

It was that night we went to the concert at the Festival Hall. I went in the wrong mood to sit still for two hours while a lot of sad-looking men and women played prim
classical music. The only thing that could have done me any good at all was perhaps jazz, which did at least set your blood moving, your arms and feet twinkling.

I yawned all through the first part of the concert – or at least half the time I struggled not to. The lights and the noise and the dressed-up audience made me sleepy and yet at the same
time restless. The second half I thought I was never going to get through, except for the last piece. By then I’d soaked in some of the right mood, or perhaps it was the music. It was
something by Brahms. I think it was his fourth symphony. But it might have been any of them.

Anyway, Mark saying it was different from when it was canned, I could see there was this difference. The horns and things showed you what ‘brassy’ meant, and the strings had a sort
of reedy sound, like wind blowing through grass, like wheat stalks shivering, like the crying of trees. In the end it got me; it was like it had slid under my skin and was playing on exposed
nerves. I forgot all the sad-looking people and Mark next to me and the gangway on the other side and the lights and the antique faces in the orchestra, and I felt as if I was alone on a peak of a
mountain and what I’d done with my life so far was pretty much of a dream and only these few seconds were real.

But you couldn’t stay up there, it was too cold or the light was too bright or something, and suddenly the music had stopped and people were getting up and moving out. I wiped the sweat
off my forehead and nodded to Mark and we followed the others down to the January wind and the waiting cars.

Afterwards we went to a night club. It was his idea not mine, but by then the want to jive had left me because something else had been there and taken its place. But the something else had gone
and left an emptiness, and nothing much mattered any more. We got home about one. I don’t know if he thought the evening a success, but for me it had been too up and down; somehow except for
just those few minutes I’d never been in step – and even those minutes I hadn’t so much been walking as flying.

When we got home I said I was tired and went quickly to bed and put the light out. I watched his light for a time, afraid because of something about him that evening.

Thought up two or three different excuses, including of course the most obvious one. I’d never used it even on the honeymoon because I was shy of speaking about it to a man. But I thought
I might keep it as a sort of last resort tonight.

I heard him moving about for a long time. It must have been three before he put his light out. But he didn’t come in.

I’d missed two Saturdays at poker, but the next one I went again, and this time I gambled heavily. It was quite unlike me. I was losing my judgment. But I won twenty
pounds. That’s the way it is sometimes; you get the luck when you don’t deserve it. That week I’d sent Mother a hundred pounds in two Money Orders, so I was within scraping
distance of rock bottom.

On the Sunday morning Mark said: ‘These Saturday nights with Dawn Witherbie get later and later. What do you do, go dancing?’

‘No, we went to the pictures and then I went home with her, and her mother wasn’t well, so I stayed on until the doctor came . . . How did you know I was late?’

‘I thought I heard the car about two, so I waited and then went and looked in your bedroom and it obviously wasn’t.’

‘No, it must have been later than that.’

‘It was nearly four. I didn’t get to sleep again until after I
had
heard the car.’

I rubbed a small stain on my riding breeches.

He said: ‘Anyway you seem to come up bright and fresh every Sunday . . . How are you going on with Roman?’

‘Doesn’t he tell you?’

‘No, he hasn’t said anything yet.’

‘I’d like to give it up. It’s upsetting me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I’ve done weeks and weeks now. It’s far beyond what I promised. I don’t
want
to go on. I come away feeling tired and depressed.’

‘Shall I ring him next week, and ask him what he thinks?’

‘Oh, I know what
he’ll
say. It’s only the beginning for him. He’s making a good thing out of it.’

‘He’s far too honest to go on only for that reason.’