New World in the Morning (24 page)

That rush of affection dried. Wasn't there some quotation about the weak feeling they had come into their own when they chanced on anybody weaker than themselves? “Wrong, then, weren't you? I want to see Junie,” I announced.

In a way it wasn't a bad beginning.

“Junie's still in bed.”

“And the children, please? I'd like to see my children.”

“Gone to Folkestone. With April and Robert and some of the others. To help take their mind off matters.”

“In this weather?”

“There are worse things than a bit of rain.”

He was starting to win points: two to my one: we weren't even level pegging.

I brushed past him. I knew which bedroom she'd be in. We had several times stayed overnight.

On the staircase I met Junie's mother. Also known as Mrs Fletcher. She drew in close to the banister and looked the other way. But my back felt her watching me intently as—with a wholly spurious reassumption of authority and decisiveness—I pushed open the door to the blue room.

And found Ted and Yvonne in there, naked, making love.

Ted jerked his head round, justifiably startled. But minimized all our blushes with aplomb. “Junie's down the landing, Sam. They've put her in the pink room.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled. “Sorry.”

My mother-in-law was still standing halfway down the stairs. Before she turned I thought I saw the traces of a smile.

“Bitch,” I told her quietly. I don't suppose she heard.

I passed three other bedrooms on that floor. It struck me as ironic that Junie should now be in the pink. Blue was evidently more suited to a man and wife together.

She was sitting up in bed, with an untouched breakfast tray in front of her—or seemingly untouched.

“Hello,” I said.

She appeared to be studying a pair of kipper fillets; her expression as wooden as the tray.

“How are you, Junie?”

“I didn't hear you knock.”

“No,” I answered humbly—and attempted a smile. “But you should have done. I just caught Ted and Yvonne making the most of the twins being taken off their hands.”

Yet it didn't cause amusement. “And ye gods! Even
then
you don't learn!”

“But I forgot to wish them happy anniversary. Ought I to return?”

I paused.

“Junie, I've come to take you home.”

“Have you? What a pity! Such a waste of time! Because I'm not going home.”

“But why? This is silly, darling. This is all so silly.”

“Well, maybe it is. Maybe you should have thought of that before.”

“I know I should. So what can I do to show you that I'm sorry?”

“Oh? Sorry?
Sorry
, are you?”

“You'll never know how much, Junie. Never. But actions speak louder than words. What can I do?”

“Suffer,” she said.

I still couldn't believe it. Not quite. Naturally, over the period of the twenty-odd years during which we'd been boy- and girlfriend, as well as husband and wife, we had many times quarrelled; but Junie had always appeared so…well, temperate…and her anger had chiefly revealed itself through cool detachment. Any shouting or acrimony had come almost exclusively from me. She'd been sulky, hurt, bewildered. She had never been vindictive.

I'd been standing by the closed door. Now I took a few steps forward and slumped onto an upright chair with seat upholstered in pink velvet. The chair looked fragile but I didn't care. (I hadn't very far to fall.) The room being smallish I hadn't wanted to intimidate her by getting up too close.

I suppose there were other forms of intimidation. “Why did you phone John Caterham?” I said. “Were you spying on me?”

I really hadn't meant to add that last bit, or make either sentence sound accusing.

In any case she wasn't cowed.

“All this time,” she said disdainfully. “And you still don't know me, do you?”

“No, I'm sorry, it didn't come out the way I meant it.” As though there were actually some way it
might
have come out as merely pleasant conversation. “Why, then?”

“Just because we hadn't said goodbye.” She gave a hollow laugh. “And, believe it or not, I felt unhappy about that.”

“Yes, so did I. But then you phoned me at John Caterham's simply to say goodbye?”

“And to wish you luck.”

She spoke those last few words as though she found them incredible. That didn't matter. At least she was talking.

At least we both were.

“And you didn't feel Mavis could be trusted to pass on your message?”

“When were we last apart?” she said. “To me it seemed important.”

“To me, too. So why couldn't you have waited in the shop? You knew I wasn't likely to be long.”

“I felt silly.”

We were extraordinarily alike. I remembered thinking there might have been a strain of superstition in my wish to phone her at the house.

“I tried to phone you at the house,” I said.

“I know you did. I rang 1471. Missed you by about an hour.” For a moment we appeared—very nearly—to be back in harmony: discussing interests that we shared. “I'd wondered what you wanted. In fact, that was a big part of it, my deciding to phone you later. That was the instant when it first occurred to me. Otherwise I mightn't have thought of it.”

Dear God. Dear God.

“You could have rung back Mavis.”

Anyhow, all this was way beside the point. Although being way beside the point was undoubtedly the lesser of two evils.

“And, besides,” she added, “after I'd mentioned it, it wasn't only me. Was it?”

“I don't follow.”

“Matt hadn't said goodbye, either.”

“Matt?”

“When he left for school. And then it was him who spurred me on. Wouldn't give me a moment's peace. Straight after supper—oh, for the umpteenth time!”

Her tone had gradually become more animated.

“I told him, ‘They might still be eating, darling, I expect Daddy will only just have got there,' but he wouldn't have any of it. ‘Oh, come on, Mum, you said eight, it's after eight, nobody's going to mind.' He wanted to tell you something about his latest project—wanted to tell you before he told me, because he said you'd appreciate the humour more and anyway he needed your advice. And he was standing right there by the telephone, all ready to grab it, when that woman answered…”

Matt—Mattie—my young Matthias.
Oh, thanks, Pop. You're a good bloke.
His kiss on the back of my neck.

“And I felt such a fool,” she said. “She thought I had the wrong number, thought I must be talking about completely different Caterhams. Sounded as if she thought I were being all quaint and muddleheaded.”

“So what happened?” I asked.

She stared at me.

“What happened? What do you think happened? I told her I wanted the John Caterham who used to live in Deal, in Kent—because naturally it hadn't got me very far mentioning
your
name—and then of course she had to go and get him. ‘My goodness, if it isn't little Junie Fletcher!' he said. ‘I mean, Groves! How
are
you? Don't tell me you're still living in sun-kissed Deal, the pair of you! And how's good old Sam?' But even then I couldn't take it in; I was so
slow
, so trusting; still believed there had to be some very simple explanation. Yet then I remembered how you'd forgotten to leave me the number—and you aren't the kind who normally forgets things like that—even though the Caterhams' address wasn't transferred into our last couple of address books. And I remembered how we'd only managed to get through because Matt had soft-soaped Directory Inquiries. And then, at practically the same moment, the question came back to me, ‘But how
could
he have known the name of
Treasure Island
?'… And I couldn't talk and I was crying and Matt had to take the receiver and he just blurted out, ‘Sorry, goodbye, yes sorry, wrong number!', and they must have thought I was so strange—and rude—and must've sat there talking about it all through the rest of the evening…”

Reliving it, she was crying again now, and I got up a little helplessly and started to put an arm about her shoulders. But she shook it off convulsively and I found myself taking a step backward in dismay.

“It was me,” I said, “whom they'd have thought strange—and stupid—and…and quite beyond words!”

Indeed, I felt surprised they hadn't dialled 1471 and immediately phoned back to deliver such a message. I felt if they'd been nice they would certainly have done so. John had probably been nice enough before he'd moved away from Deal, but could fifteen years have altered him? Perhaps it was the influence of an uncongenial wife; not all wives were as compliant and considerate as Junie.

“Yet now,” she said, “you have the nerve to tell me I was spying on you!” She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

“I'm sorry about that, Junie, I really am. About that and about everything! It was the first time, I swear it to you—the very first time! I truly am sorry.”

“Yes, of course you are! And shall I explain why? Because you got found out!”

“Then please explain this as well: how can I try to put things right?”

“By suffering!” she said again. But this time she went still further. “By suffering like you've made me suffer! And Matt. And Ella. By suffering till it really hurts!”

And she looked me straight in the face as she said it.

I sat down again. But couldn't she see already how much I was suffering? What did I have to do? I wanted to be contrite, yes, but not self-pitying. What woman could possibly look up to any man who felt self-pity? Kipling had done more than set before me an ideal, he had handed me a lifeline: an achievable solution to every problem fate could ever throw across my path. If I'd happened on that poem just one year earlier I might not have run away and cried, face downwards in the grass, in the park, on the afternoon my mother died.

I might not have got out on that windowsill and considered the pros and cons of suicide. Or thought I was considering them.

I still remembered how I used to test myself at school: deliberately ignore my homework to invite punishment; deliberately (once) knock my wicket with the bat; deliberately (once) muff a catch I knew I could have caught—a lost opportunity which had deprived us not only of a win, but also of a draw, and thus heaped opprobrium on my head in place of adulation. Only Hal Smart had known; and not even Hal Smart had fully understood. But there'd been scores of small ways in which I'd aimed to prove I had no breaking point, that adversity could always leave me smiling. Scores? No, hundreds. Maybe thousands. At rock bottom I knew I hadn't forsworn the practice after leaving.

And how could people scoff at Kipling? Even such a brief reminder as this had the power to make me feel less battered, to give me back at least the
idea
of feeling grateful—grateful for a chance to be tested. Yes, yes! Didn't he have it all so beautifully encapsulated?
You'll be a man, my son!
Yes, even such a brief reminder as this had the power to give me back at least the
idea
of tackling each new obstacle with courage, the power to state again that every step which carried me a little further from the abyss was in itself a small victory: one more swastika notched up below the cockpit. “So, sweetheart, when
will
you be coming home?”

“Certainly not today. And I'd rather, please, you didn't call me that. You've probably been calling her that.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I've given you everything,” she said. “All these years I have given you everything!”

“And you'd never hear me deny it for one second!”

“Everything and everything and everything! I haven't any more to give.”

She was working herself up. Fresh sobs I could have coped with; even welcomed. Hysteria was something else.

“What more?” she said. “What more could you expect?”

“Nothing, darling. Absolutely nothing.”

“Sex? Was that it? I gave you all the sex you ever wanted. Did I ever say I had a headache if it wasn't true?”

At the right time we might both have smiled at that.

“No. Never.” Yet I couldn't resist adding, “Though you seldom seemed to enjoy it.”

“And I suppose
she
does?”

I shrugged. But it appeared she was waiting for an answer. I had to mumble it. “That isn't the same.”

“Why not? Because she isn't fat, like me? Because she isn't old, like me? Because she isn't thoroughly worn out by the end of a long day spent looking after a large house, squabbling teenagers, a difficult husband?”

“As a matter of fact,” I said, “you're younger than she is. Over three years.” Had I really been so difficult?

“Is it that woman who came into the shop, the one who's going to buy a house down here?”

I felt nearly as surprised as when Moira had guessed I was carrying a cake.

“How could you possibly know that?”

I saw the look of satisfaction.

“In any case,” I said, “I don't suppose she's thinking about it any more—about buying a house down here.”

“You mean…she's tired of you already?”

I hesitated. Then gave a nod. If ever anything had done so,
that
symbolized a small victory. Another notch below the cockpit.

“It didn't work out,” I said. “That's how I came to be home early.”

“So has she discovered yet you're not that good in bed? Can't she bring herself to tell you how magnificent and strong you are, even when you feed her all the proper lines?”

“What?”

“I said, can't she bring herself to—?”

I got up and made towards the door. I was already opening it when she began to state her terms.