Goodness (6 page)

One Tries and Tries to be Sensitive

Another thing I had to put up with these days were the frequent visits from Shirley’s mother.

Mrs Harcourt was a busy, bossy, bustling woman, exhibiting all the character traits of the wife who gives up career for family and is then left stranded when the fledgelings fly the nest (an object lesson for Shirley if only she’d had eyes to see it). She spent an inordinate amount of time on her personal appearance (hair-do’s, sauna, massage), and had taken up photography as a hobby to fill in the becalmed oceans of time between one social function and the next. She always had her camera bag when she came to visit and at some point or other would always pull out a Nikon and take her glasses off to squint through its expensive auto-focusing lens at some unlikely subject, in fact the more unlikely the better, to show what an eye she had, how she saw ‘the unusual in the usual’, as she put it.

She squinted through the lens, maybe at a mess of saucepans inside one of our cluttered cupboards, maybe at soap suds being sucked into the drain, at a coffee mug balanced on the arm of the sofa, but as far as I remember she never clicked the shutter in our house and certainly never showed us any of the results if she did. Perhaps not even she could find anything sufficiently unusual, we are such regular people. She had put on two small shows at the local library in Chiswick, one depicting, from
de rigueur
unlikely angles, various stages of slaughter in a poultry abattoir off the Goldhawk Road, a comment on man’s barbarity to the chicken apparently, the other featuring pieces of flotsam and jetsam washed up on the mudbanks opposite the family’s Strand-on-the-Green house,
clammy with slime and generally unrecognisable. The glaring gratuitousness of these enterprises was one of the few things Shirley and I were still capable of laughing about together.

Otherwise, Mrs Harcourt was a signed-up, card-carrying member of the newly formed SDP, as perhaps only an already wealthy unemployed person could afford to be. Her small head came surprisingly forward from her body and when she spoke, her crisp elocution set a fierce mole above one corner of her mouth in undulating motion. Perhaps this accounted for the immediate impression of pushiness she communicated.

She would come over in her Metro Deluxe, maybe three, four times a week, shortly after Shirley got back from school. When I arrived home a couple of hours later I wasn’t invited to join in whatever discussion was under way. Often they sat together in the kitchen or even the bedroom to make it clear they wanted to be on their own. Once I heard crying. More often there were loud peals of haw-hawing women’s laughter, Mrs Harcourt gasping for breath, probably holding her sides the way older women will, shrieks of ‘Oh dear, oh dear’, Shirley no doubt tossing her hair back, glistening pink mouth wide open, the gesture that had most enchanted me when first I met her.

‘So what do you find to talk about?’ I might ask later.

‘Oh, this and that.’

‘Come on, she’s here every other evening. There must be something.’

‘About Dad, about Charles. She’s worried that he never seems to have any girlfriends. You know.’

‘I’d be worried for the girl if he did.’

‘Then he was arrested last week in some anti-Cruise march.’

‘He likes to be arrested, it reinforces his council flat credentials. ‘ And off the cuff I asked: ‘What’s the score with your dad these days anyway? We haven’t seen him for donkeys.’

Shirley said: ‘What a lemon this cooker is. For God’s sake! You can never be sure what the temperature is. It doesn’t matter how you set it. Either the stuff comes out like charcoal or everything’s raw in the middle.’

‘And me?’ I asked with what I hoped was a wry smile.

‘What?’

‘Don’t you talk about little old George?’

‘Aren’t we insecure?’ she laughed. She said: ‘Of course we talk about you sometimes. It’d be odd if we didn’t. Wouldn’t it?’

‘Would it?’

‘‘I think so.’

‘Okay. And what do you say?’

‘Oh, that you don’t deserve me.’ She stabbed a fork into some casserole meat and smiled sweetly.

‘Tell me more.’

‘Mmm, let me see, that your background’s made you a repressed hypocrite.’

‘Ah, of course, that. Examples?’

‘Though naturally we always agree that deep down you’re a kind, honest man and you’ll probably turn out good in the end.’

‘Naturally.’

But I think I can tell a knife when it’s out. And turning.

I suggested that we try to get away more often if she felt so down. An occasional weekend in Paris; we could afford it now. We were averagely well-off young people, even if we might have done better to save. Or I could even take a week off at Easter. Maybe we could go to Spain, Italy. Or a few days riding somewhere. She said she didn’t want to go away for a weekend, let alone for Easter. She didn’t even want to go away in the summer. We were planning to drive down to Turkey that year, seeing as everybody else seemed to be going to Greece. Now she didn’t want to go. I could go on my own. I said, no, I could not go on my own. What was the point? ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘In your head you live entirely on your own all the time.’

One tries and tries to be sensitive. I said that if she felt really depressed and unhappy maybe, just maybe, she should see somebody, er, get help, I don’t know, a psychoanalyst or something. She said: ‘Do me a favour, sweetheart, please.’ And she said: ‘This flat is impossible, really impossible,
you know that? Not a single window that gets the sun, the carpets are the worst dust traps imaginable, the drains stink, the cupboard doors don’t close, the hot water’s never hot enough, the pipes groan, the oven’s useless, the paint is nearly grey, and you can never do anything about it because the landlady doesn’t want to pay for it. I mean, what are we doing here?’

I felt she was rather exaggerating. Still, at least this was something I could deal with. I suggested that if it was the flat that was depressing her, though she could never say I didn’t help with the cleaning and so on, then why didn’t we buy our own place now instead of waiting.

‘With whose money?’ She was aggressive. I said she knew perfectly well with whose money. A bit of our own and a great deal of her father’s. Surely it was tacitly understood that when we were ready, he’d help us to buy. She said buying our flat wouldn’t solve anything. The flat was awful, but it wasn’t that that was getting her down. I said I didn’t know what else to suggest, it seemed to be me making all the suggestions and then her promptly telling me I was stupid every time I opened my mouth. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t be happy.

‘Don’t suggest anything,’ she said. ‘And above all, stop buying me flowers as if I were dying or something.’

Carrying the Gloomy Can

My mother came over. I think for my birthday. Mother is a great celebrator of birthdays, even when everybody else has forgotten them. She even remembers Hilary’s. It’s a ritual for her, a slavery almost, like the moral code she blindly follows, the tithe of her income in the collection plate, the sense of duty toward Grandfather, the not marrying a man because he’d got divorced a decade before.

She remembered my birthday and brought the traditional, home-baked, lemon-iced birthday cake, arriving at the door after two long bus rides all bright and chirrupy, because of course Mother is never more cheerful than when she knows she’s fulfilling some family duty. I thanked her and kissed her. I was even glad she’d come as I felt it might take some of the tension out of the air. But hardly have we sat down to eat our cake than Shirley is asking: ‘Saved any souls lately, Mrs Crawley?’

It was deliberately hurtful. She had the innocent smile on her face she always combines with her worst sarcasm. My Mother very simply said: ‘It’s not me saves souls, lovey, it’s God,’ and she began to tell us all about Peggy’s darling little boy Frederick. He was so big and blond, he had all his milk teeth already, he was such a gorgeous cuddly little boy. Her big clumsy hands massacred the cake with the flat’s blunt breadknife. ‘For you, George?’

Shirley asked: ‘‘I imagine Peg’s planning another one now?’

Naturally, given the still dubious paternity of the first, this had Mother knitting her brow. But she managed a forgiving laugh: ‘Oh, I wouldn’t know, Peggy never tells me anything.’

‘Vetting possible fathers, perhaps,’ Shirley suggested. ‘She’s into Buddhism these days, isn’t she? Perhaps we’ll have a Chinese in the family.’

When we were on our own a moment in the kitchen I asked her what the hell she thought she was up to. Why couldn’t we just have a pleasant meal together?

‘I hate,’ she said, ‘the way you’re such a goody goody when your mother comes, the way she thinks the sun shines out of your backside. If she knew what you were really like.’

‘And what am I like?’ I asked.

‘You hardly need me to tell you that,’ she said.

‘You were the one, sweetheart,’ I told her, ‘said you wouldn’t mind her coming to live here with us.’

‘Precisely because,’ she replied, ‘she might finally be forced to see the light. We might clear the air.’

‘I swear in front of her,’ I said, ‘I don’t try to hide anything.’

At which, and I’m afraid this is very effective, she simply burst out laughing and walked back into the living room.

Driving Mother home to Acton, I said: ‘Sorry if Shirl was a bit abrasive, Mum.’

‘Was she, love? I didn’t notice.’

‘I don’t know, she seems a bit, er, frustrated these days. I don’t know what it is.’

‘We all go through our bad patches, poor dear,’ Mother said complacently. Then waiting for the lights at the A40, she hazarded: ‘I know it’s none of my business, but perhaps it’s time to start a family. She did tell me she’d like a baby a while back.’

When I said nothing, watching for green – I had the usual hassler trying to edge past me on the inside, something I never allow – she said: ‘I always feel there’s a time in everybody’s lives when it’s just the next logical step to take, the only way to grow.’

I laughed, putting my foot down hard. I love driving. I said, ‘You forget, Mum. I specialise in logical steps, it’s my job, and I can assure you it wouldn’t be. Shirley’s is just a straightforward case of boredom. That’s the problem. Have
a baby and she’d be even more bored. She’d always be trying to dump it on babysitters and relatives.’

Mother said brightly: ‘Well you know you can count on me, love. I have ever so much fun looking after Frederick.’

With a sense that events were in danger of getting beyond my control, I rang up Shirley’s father the following week and began a very, but very careful spiel I’d prepared in every detail: about Shirley being depressed because of the miserable flat we’d been in too long, about the landlady never wanting to decorate or replace anything, about the rental market being so hopeless these days with the ludicrously pro-tenant rules the Labour government had introduced and Margaret hadn’t as yet got round to repealing, about the price of property being so high it was unimaginable for two young people to buy a decent place on their own – and I asked him was there any chance, now I’d put a bit of money together myself, because I was saving about thirty per cent of my income – was there any chance that he could maybe chip in, rather massively actually, and . . .

He said: ‘Not till I’m sure just how the settlement’s going to go with Mary, I’m afraid.’

It was lunchtime and when I’d got the phone down I looked at the world map on the wall where tiny flags showed all the countries where my software was being used. From Panama to Portugal, it said on the brochure, Austria to Australia. Why is it, I wondered, that I am always to be excluded from the intimate affairs of the lives of people close to me? Why? Why do they keep me out? I was hurt, angry.

‘But why should you need to be told?’ Shirley retorted.

‘Because we’re married for Christ’s sake! Because we’re supposed to be sharing our lives. You complain I don’t understand you and then you don’t tell me what I need to know to have a chance. Obviously it’s been upsetting you. It explains everything. And I’ve been faffing about in the dark for months.’

She said perhaps I was right. Yes, probably I was right. But she just hadn’t felt like telling me. She hadn’t the heart to talk about it. It was so awful. Her parents had been
such a fixed point in her life, she’d never even realised really.

She was on the brink of tears, and for once I was allowed to console her.

But over the next months, though it seemed impossible, and above all unnecessary, the tension heightened. Shirley would be sullen and moody on my arrival home and almost anything I said would cause a flare up. I might innocently ask what was for dinner and abruptly be told I could bloody well get my dinner myself. I might, despite office weariness, traffic weariness, a briefcase full of work, offer to go to the Indian shop, pick up some goodies, and immediately have to hear that since I was no good at doing the shopping and always brought home the wrong things there was no point in my going, was there?

Of course, from what one gathers from magazine articles, TV documentaries, radio plays while washing the car, etc., it did occur to me that Shirl might be suffering from some sort of physical/mental illness, or even stress, and that perhaps I should be feeling sorry for her, rather than the opposite. This I honestly tried to do. But then I also thought that if she was prone to suffering from, say, clinical depression (though she never had so suffered in the seven previous years I’d known her), then I personally didn’t want to be the one who carried the gloomy can for the rest of my life, did I? It was a serious problem.

I stroked the wispy hair at the fine nape of her neck as she sat on the floor, back to the sofa, watching TV. She shook my hand off.

Or at least scenes like this occurred. Why couldn’t we be cheerful?

I said: ‘Fancy a pint down the Torrington? Bound to meet somebody.’

She didn’t reply.

‘Bit of a tipple, pinch your nipple.’

Nothing. No response.

I phoned her brother Charles, met him in a pub in Kentish Town and over a couple of jars asked him what he thought.
Had Shirley ever suffered from depression as a child? He smoked heavily from my pack of Rothmans, playing a fifty-p piece across pale knuckles. He said Shirley had always been the parents’ favourite, they had always given her everything – ponies, dance classes, skiing holidays – while he had largely been ignored and then generally made fun of when he tried to point out the social injustice their lifestyle implied. He had given the Filipino maid a wad of notes from Father’s wallet once, though, intimidated and conditioned as the girl was, she had handed them straight back to Mother, after which his father had given him a thorough beating. That was the kind of family it had been. The difference being that while he rebelled, Shirley had lapped it up, and what she was reaping now was precisely the fruit of her mindless and selfish upbringing, the
ennui
of the directionless bourgeoisie. She needed a cause, a sense of purpose. He himself was on a local committee which tried to ensure that eligible people got rehoused. He had been instrumental in saving a number of squats which had been under threat from eviction. He was never depressed at all. With all the suffering there was in the world, he said, it was so damn obvious what one should do with one’s life that he couldn’t understand people lounging around moping.

It didn’t seem worthwhile arguing with someone whose views were so far beyond the pale, so I drank up, paid and got out. Though that evening, just for the record, as it were, I did suggest to Shirley that she might get involved in one of those groups that provides free crêches for working-class mothers.

‘Please,’ she said, chopping lemon, ‘are you out of your mind? Or do you want to turn me into your mother or something?’

So finally I put it to her. Could it really all be simply because she wanted a child?

Could all what be?

Her being so depressed and unfriendly (not to mention obtuse).

‘Oh that. Just a phase,’ she said, breezing about with
saucepans. She kissed me on the side of the neck as I tucked into chops.

‘So it’s not that you want a baby?’ I often do wish, with Shirley, that I had my dictaphone in my pocket.

She shook her head rather exaggeratedly, refusing to take me seriously. I was patient.

‘No, because I mean if it is that, I mean, if you really want children,’ I took a deep breath, ‘then seeing as I don’t, I don’t know why, but I really don’t, I feel complete and happy without them, then I think the best thing to do would be for us to split up so that you’ll be in plenty of time to find another man and we can stop making life a misery for each other. Which seems a crime frankly. I mean,’ I hurried on, talking at her back now as she sloshed water in the pans – Shirley always seems to be doing something with pans – ‘I personally don’t want us to split up, at all, I really don’t, I just want us to be happy together. I’ve said it a thousand times. However, if you . . .’

The saucepans are the new, slow cooking, heavy metal kind, and cost a good month’s salary. Though I’ll give her they’re stylish. I never objected to such purchases. On the contrary, I encouraged anything that would make her happy. I was always so relieved when there was something she actually wanted.

But now at last she turned. She stood with her backside hitched up against the draining board, her fingers gripped to its edge. She was wearing glossy blue running shorts. She looked at me and looked at me and at last after all these months she burst into tears. She wept and suddenly crouched down over pitted red-and-black chequered lino. She said of course she didn’t want us to split up. How could I even imagine such a thing? And she was sorry if she was being unpleasant and bloody-minded. She didn’t even know why she was like this herself. But she felt so upset about so many things. Honestly. And she burst into tears again.

Tears, I must say, have a quite overwhelming, even disabling effect on me. I have never been able to resist them. I had been unable to resist my mother’s as a child and I
was unable to resist Shirley’s now. Hence at this point I gave up any attempt to follow the argument through to some sensible conclusion and hurried from the table to go and comfort her. We cuddled, she cried, I whispered softly, we kissed, looked into each other’s red eyes, confessed, forgave, kissed again and eventually, arriving somehow in the bedroom, made love, with me foolishly, if not unnaturally, hoping the tide had turned.

There followed a very happy two weeks of perfect reconciliation, relaxation, fun. So, yes, it was still possible. Everything was hunky-dory. Turkey was on. We bought our ferry tickets, got the car serviced. We were going to have a great time. Life was great. And then it began all over again: arguments, sulking, general bitchiness. Turkey off. Not only Turkey, but any other holidays I might be planning too. Okay? When I reminded her of all she’d said that evening, all she’d conceded, she either refused to acknowledge that such a scene had ever taken place, or she’d try some bright sardonic line like: ‘All under duress, Your Honour, under duress. My lawyer wasn’t present. I retract everything.’ Or she’d throw back her head, laughing, and say, ‘Oh George, I do love the way you always, always believe you’re right. You’re a phenomenon.’

I spoke to no one about this. Every morning I went into work, joked with Tony, my assistant programmer, flirted mildly with the secretaries, Joyce and Sandra, reported to Johnson and Will Peacock, wined and dined clients, made rude jokey propositions down the phone to switchboard. No doubt you can picture it, the average stale-tobacco, fluorescent-lit office life, with all the little formalities and pleasantries and gallantries, the way you live and brush up against people and talk behind each others’ backs and generally get on famously.

I spoke to no one. Probably it was the same for Shirley. Jolly and lively at work, glum and offhand at home. As if we were only our real selves of old when we arrived in the safe environment of the office, the school. If other people came, Mark and Sylvia, determined to be neighbourly (had
we noticed the lock didn’t engage on the front door, and what about the state of the lawn?), forcing their way in with a few cans of Whitbread’s or a tin of chewy flapjacks, we put on a great front. Shirley was almost too dazzling, I drank heavily, but as soon as they were gone, we slumped. The television. A newspaper. Separate bedtimes.

And it was on one of these evenings, as I remember it, that my heart hardened. I use that Biblical expression because at last after a childhood of Bible studies I understood what it meant: a deliberate, quite conscious shutting oneself off from the tenderer emotions. My heart hardened. I’d had enough.