"What?"
"If it was just the bearing of children that you couldn't face you
wouldn't be so anxious to avoid talking about adoption, would you?
What you're trying to get away from is the ordinary adult responsibility
of looking after children, bringing them up, educating them!"
"With the mess I've made of my life, why should you want me to?"
"What sort of a mess?"
"You heard what I said downstairs."
"About the child not being mine? For God's sake, woman, I haven't got
your obsession with biological parenthood!"
"'Biological parenthood!'" she echoed in mockery of him.
"Raising children is being their father in the only way that counts!
I don't give a damn whose the children are, yours or ours or neither."
She stubbed her cigarette. "So you don't even want to know who else's
it might be?"
"What for? So I could go and . . . and horsewhip him, or something?"
"Don't make me laugh. You'd never do anything like that in a million years.
You're too spineless."
He jolted to his feet, fists folding over with a faint clapping sound.
She cringed away as though expecting to be punched.
"A nice juicy divorce case," he said after a pause. "Is that what you
want? To keep up with your smart friends, I suppose! Which wife has
Bertie Parsons got to now -- his third, isn't it? I suppose you're
a nobody in your circle unless you're divorced or queer or sleeping,
with your grandmother!"
"Paul, I -- "
"Move!"
"What -- ?"
He dragged the arm on which she was leaning away from the pillows,
turned them over and retrieved his pyjamas from underneath. Seizing his
overnight bag, he tossed into it slippers, razor, toilet gear.
"What are you doing?" Iris cried.
"Going to spend the night at the hospital. The company there may be
mostly insane, but at least they haven't got your particular kind of
nastiness." He slammed the lid of the case.
"But you . . ."
In the doorway he glanced back at her, baring his teeth in a skeletal
parody of a grin.
"I'm sorry if I've proved a disappointment to you, Iris. But there are
some things you should have reckoned with before marrying me. I'm not
scared out of my wits by the idea of children, and I don't take kindly
to being used as a child-surrogate, which is what you've been trying
to make of me, and it doesn't take a hysterical row or the threat of a
lunatic with a broken bottle to work me up to the pitch where I want to
make love. I think if you had to marry a doctor you should have picked
on someone like Swerd. He must be a pretty cold fish to make such a
success of his line of business."
Her face was absolutely white as she reached for the bedside clock
and hurled it at him. He pulled the door to, and heard it shatter into
ringing fragments of glass and metal on the other side.
-- So that's that.
And yet somehow he could not accept what his intellect told him: that
this was final. It had grown to seem a part of being married, as far
as he and Iris were concerned, that mortal insults should be tacitly
ignored the morning after.
-- Maybe she'll realise what she's done; maybe she'll decide that she
wants to patch it up after all. . . . I'm bound to be asked what I'm
doing at the hospital. Whose duty is it? I hope to God it's Mirza's.
I could confess the truth to him, and just possibly to Natalie, I think,
but Ferdie and Phil are the next thing to strangers, so . . .
He was out of the house, out of the gate, before he realised with a shock
he had forgotten to collect the can of petrol. He hesitated. Without
tilting back his head he looked up at the bedroom window. Iris was there,
watching.
-- If I go back in now, it'll start all over again. No, this has to look
serious no matter how willing I am to climb down if she gives the least
sign of relenting.
Dismally he trudged off along the road. When he came to the car, he locked
the case inside and continued to the Yemble garage to collect a gallon
in one of their cans. The dying impulse of his anger sustained him as
he retraced his steps, poured the petrol into the tank, and drove back
to return the can and buy another couple of gallons for safety's sake.
Waiting for the attendant to bring him change, he debated with himself:
give in, or . . .?
-- It's no bloody use. She was right to say I'm spineless. I haven't the
heart to make the final break. If she forces me into it, say by sneaking
away to Swerd while my back is turned, then I can probably go through
with it. But I seem to prefer to let things drift on as they are rather
than face the prospect of starting afresh.
When he drove out of the filling station he turned homeward instead of
towards the hospital, and within another few minutes was in sight of
the house. The instant he rounded the last bend, however, he jammed on
his brakes, pulses in his temples hammering so fiercely he thought he
might faint.
A taxi was drawing away from the house. Through its rear window he
could see the bright blonde outline of Iris's head. Beside her on the
seat were piled the three cases she always travelled with, and she was
drumming on the topmost with the tips of her fingers.
She didn't notice him.
Later it occurred to him that he could have driven after the taxi,
overtaken it, forced her to stop and come back. Instead he sat numbly
until it had disappeared, saying to himself over and over, "You fool --
you fool -- you fool!"
*30*
There was a nearly full bottle of cooking sherry in the kitchen cupboard.
It might be enough to get drunk on. He poured it splashing into a glass,
gulped, poured again.
A tap at the door, and when he went to answer, a tearful Iris ready
to throw her arms around him and whisper close to his ear, "Darling,
it's no good, I can't go through with it, I love you and if it's a boy
we'll call it Derek -- and if it's a girl . . ."
Nothing. No one. Wind in the chimney-top.
The phone rang, and when he picked it up he heard Iris's voice tremulously
saying, "Darling, I miss you and I'm so ashamed of what I've done --
will you take me back so that we can start again?"
The small neat modern form of the two-tone telephone, out of place
against oaken beams and whitewashed plaster; on the memo pad beside it,
the indentations of the note Iris had made, pressing heavily with a
ballpoint pen.
A letter dropped through the door; opened, it ran, "Dear Paul, I want
to marry Gellert because it's his child, not yours, and the threat of
the abortionist was just to let me see your face, my solicitors will be
in touch with you."
The glass was empty again. He refilled it.
"Well, you can't say I didn't warn you," Mirza sighed. "Why didn't you do
as I suggested? You could have found out how much she wanted to keep you,
and if she didn't care enough to mend her ways you'd have saved months
of mental anguish."
And again; the level of the bottle was down to half.
"This is a serious matter," Holinshed told him frigidly. "One must
inevitably judge the competence and social adjustment of psychiatric staff
by the success with which they conduct their personal relationships.
It has come as a shock to me to learn, from reliable sources, that
your wife in in London flaunting an affair with a notorious . . . ah
. . . playboy. Gossip is already circulating among the patients. I cannot
put up with this kind of thing. Your employment at Chent will terminate
directly we find a suitable replacement."
A car pulled up noisily outside. He dashed to the window. But it was
merely someone who had lost his way and was turning around in a gateway
opposite.
"Still hoping your wife might come back to you?" Maurice Dawkins gave the
unpleasant high giggle which he only affected during his peak manic phase,
when he acquired enough false courage to regard his swish mannerisms
as funny. "But I told her about you going around the bend, and she was
absolutely fascinated -- kept ringing up for more and more details. Of
course, I hadn't got them all, so I made some up. She's beside herself,
my dear. Who wouldn't be, finding they'd been married for years to a
lunatic without realising?"
"Of course," Oliphant said, "you're a doctor and I'm only a deputy
charge nurse. But doesn't the fact that you've been in a bin yourself
make you a bit too eager to side with the loonies? We're the ones who
have to clear up the mess when you make mistakes, you know. Seen this
scar where Riley cut my hand at the dance? Dr Jewell says I'll have it
the rest of my life."
"It's a delicate matter, Dr Fidler," Matron Thoroday murmured, "but it's
one which I must bring to the attention of Dr Holinshed. My belief is that
because the disorder for which you were certified bore so much resemblance
to Urchin's condition you're supporting her against my nurses, and this
is making their position intolerable."
"But I wasn't certified! I just had a breakdown from overwork!"
The cry of despair echoed away into the empty house. There was no one
to hear it but himself.
"As you know, I tend to judge my colleagues objectively," Alsop said.
"I'm impatient with failures; either a man has what it takes, or he
hasn't, and I prefer the former. There are few more fundamental failures
than letting a marriage go smash -- and don't offer excuses. You decided
to marry the woman, presumably when you were in full possession of
your faculties and over the age of discretion. If it weren't for the
exceptional success you're making of Urchin's case, I'd -- "
-- No. More like . . .
"What persuaded you to be taken in by this farrago of rubbish?" Alsop
demanded coldly. "I wouldn't expect a first-year student to be hoodwinked
the way you've been! I gather your colleague Bakshad told you that a
marriage like yours was no basis for a proper understanding of women. You
should have taken the comment seriously. You made a miserably bad
choice of a wife, but that's of no concern to me -- I'm keeping this
on a professional level. And my view is that you've allowed your head
to be turned by a clever trickster, because she's young and appealingly
helpless and rather pretty. These notes of yours are worthless. They're
the most spectacular example of self-deception I've ever seen from a
supposedly responsible psychiatrist!"
Back and forth, back and forth, Paul paced with the glass in his hand,
feeling the alcohol gradually numb the nerves of his fingers and toes.
On every tenth or twelfth circuit, he detoured into the kitchen where
he had left the bottle of sherry on the table with the cork out. It was
almost empty now.
-- No, no, no, that's all I've got left. If that's taken away from me
I'm finished, done for, dead.
"I fooled you, I fooled you! My name isn't Urchin, it's plain Aggie Jones
and I come from Wrexham and Main and Da wouldn't let me leave home and
live on my own so I wanted to hide for a few months where they'd never
think to look for me -- "
--
No!
Paul took a deep breath. The first violent shock of Iris's departure had
faded, leaving his mind clear, if a little askew from its usual course.
-- I can't be wrong about Urchin. It all fits: the language no one can
identify, the peculiar cast of her face which resembles no known racial
type, the fact that she had to be taught how to speak English, wear our
kind of clothes, use a knife and fork . . . Wait a moment.
He closed his eyes' and rocked gently back and forth on his heels.
-- In what sense do I mean "it all fits?" That what she claimed today
is true? No, I can't possibly mean that. I'd be a laughing-stock. Lord,
I am getting drunk. I thought this wine was so vile I couldn't choke it
down sufficiently fast, but my head's swimming and the room is beginning
to go round.
He had to open his eyes again, to escape the illusion that the whole earth
was surging up and down beneath his feet.
-- Got to hang en to Urchin's case. Letters in
BMJ
, signed Alsop
consultant Fidler, psychiatric registrar Chent. Notes of work in progress:
new elements in the fantasies of female hysterics with special reference
to. Final paper: I am indebted to my colleagues -- no, former colleagues
at Chent for. By then: "So you're Fidler, are you? Been reading your
stuff in
BMJ
. Thought the eventual paper was a model of its kind.
By the way, there's post due to fall vacant at Nuthouse shortly. Won't
be advertised until next week, but if you're considering moving on . . ."
But the forced attempt to envisage good things happening failed. The nagging
suspicion remained that if he had been so deceived and cheated by Iris,
why not by Urchin too?